Intelligent design's predictions

[articulett]

As long as Intelligent Design proponents get people to think that scientists think this all happened randomly-- then god seems to make sense. But once they understand natural selection... what it really is... then any god is unnecessary.... even cruel, inefficient, and wasteful. He performs on par with a blind algorithm.

http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?t=94834&page=31

 

[articulett]

To Tai et. al-- having random components does not a random process make. Although stochastic processes are often called random processes-- it's not the processes themselves that are random-- just the inputs. Just as algebraic equations can have random variables.


Firegarden, those who need to define evolution as random cannot understand the information you are giving them. They need to define evolution as random just as Behe does-- because it makes it seem murky -- unlikely. Once you actually understand natural selection-- ala "the selfish gene"-- evolution becomes obvious... clear... and god is superflous...

When you have someone focusing on the randomness of evolution, you have someone who doesn't understand evolution as well as he imagines he does. And as far as I've seen, you are unlikely to clue him in to his own ignorance. Such people have a need to believe that scientists think this all happened "randomly"-- and a need to make others think this is what scientists are saying as well (See Behe-- see Dawkins review of Behe's book.)

 

[FireGarden]

To Tai et. al-- having random components does not a random process make. Although stochastic processes are often called random processes-- it's not the processes themselves that are random-- just the inputs. Just as algebraic equations can have random variables.

That says it well.
We don't know what the output will be because we don't know the input. The process of changing one to the other is itself not random.

Firegarden, those who need to define evolution as random cannot understand the information you are giving them.

I try not to make conclusions like that.

To be fair to Tai,
There is a sense in which the programme I linked to could be used as a random number generator -- just use the stats it gives. But it would be silly to do so because the programme itself uses a better random number generator as input.

If I could quantify 'better', then the argument might be easier to write down.

 

[Ichneumonwasp]

Oh Christ, this discussion again?

 

[articulett]

Oh Christ, this discussion again?

But of course. What else does Intelligent design have except to pretend that scientists think this all came about randomly...

So Behe was on POI spouting this usual obfuscation... and Tai' has some similar notion in his sig-- and Mijo has to say that it really is random... same ol'; same ol'

The best strategy ID has is to make sure that people don't understand natural selection. So long as people think that scientists think that life came about randomly-- they can imagine that sounds as impossible as the proverbial tornado in a junkyard assembling a 747... and so it seems like there must be a designer. But when you understand the basic algorithm of evolution...really understand it... it makes so much sense... it seems obvious, right? So I think all their energies have to go into making sure that they and others don't understand natural selection while pretending they understand it just fine.

Do you know of any intelligent design argument that doesn't rely on this notion that "scientists think this all came about randomly"? That is the only think that ID can claim to address. If it wasn't randomly-- then it was by design they infer. Scientists say, it wasn't randomly-- it was by natural selection over time-- the very opposite of random-- This is a much better explanation than top down design... but as long as nobody understands it, then top down design sounds like a viable alternative.

 

[mijopaalmc]

The problem is that articulett hasn't actually read anything I have written since about, oh say, June. Had she actually bothered to read what I had written she would understand that saying that evolution is a random process is not a denial of the occurrence of evolution. It is merely a more accurate description of what happens during evolution.

As I have mentioned before, not every individual of a given phenotype survives and reproduces. This means that their survival is not fully determined by their phenotype and is therefore based on a probability and not a certainty. There are, however, examples where almost all individuals of a given phenotype do survive while individuals of all other phenotypes perish, but these instance are far from universal and only represent situations where the probability of survival for a given phenotype is almost 1, but not counterexamples to the premise of the evolution's randomness.

I would like to know what exactly articulett doesn't understand about this explanation and thinks is characteristic of creationist argumentation.

 

[articulett]

So lets compare that with what Behe is saying about his insistence on describing evolution as random as he reacts in ire over a review of his book:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/blog/A3DGRQ0IO7KYQ2

At the end of his essay our reviewer suddenly reveals his skill at mind reading: “It is clear that Behe is driven not by a truly scientific investigation, but instead metaphysics.” And this: “He is obsessed with ‘randomness,’ which he incorrigibly associates with ‘Darwinism’ and cosmic purposelessness.” Now, wait a darn second. Wasn’t it Darwin himself, we are constantly assured, who based his theory on “random” variation? So it’s “incorrigible” to associate with Darwin’s theory something which Darwin himself associated with it? And isn’t there a rather well-known evolutionary biologist with the initials Richard Dawkins currently traveling the world to tell us exactly that Darwinism means purposelessness?

Let's see... does Behe aim to use clearer language or does he argue a tangential reason for describing it in a way that is referred to in the wedge document? Is his goal to explain evolution or to make it sound like scientists think that evolution is random? If scientists think evolution is random-- why do they go overboard repeatedly to show how natural selection is the OPPOSITE of random. And why would someone who actually wants to convey understanding of a topic continue to insist that it's somehow clear and useful to describe things in a way that Behe does?? Especially after being shown repeatedly that this over emphasis on randomness leads to the tornado/747 strawman and doesn't convey a single thing about how natural selection over time is really responsible for complexity and the perceived design!?

I'm just curious why Behe, T'ai, and Mijo are insistent on the focusing on the random aspects of evolution while being totally unable to convey what natural selection is and how it's responsible for the incremental building of information over time. If you don't understand and can't convey natural selection-- you haven't got a means offering useful information about evolution... because you clearly don't understand what it is.

I've read it all Mijo. It's just that you never say anything. Yes, I understand that anything having to do with probability is rightfully described as random to you. I understand that you think you are being clear and that Dawkins isn't although nobody else agrees. I think everybody would find Dawkins description of why natural selection is not "random" and why it's misleading to describe it that way much clearer and easier to understand that whatever it is you and Behe are jibbering on about regarding why you are beholden to using that word.

You know that word leads to the tornado/747 analogy. You've done nothing ever to ameliorate your explanations to distinguish it from that and you insult those who convey information on the topic much better than you (like Dawkins). In fact, like Behe and T'ai you actually imagine yourself as more knowledgeable and more explanatory than him.

So, how is your understanding of evolution different than Behe's again, Mijo? And why is Dawkins less clear than you?

 

[FireGarden]

As I have mentioned before, not every individual of a given phenotype survives and reproduces. This means that their survival is not fully determined by their phenotype and is therefore based on a probability and not a certainty.

But survival is still driven by cause and effect.

More importantly, it doesn't matter from the stand point of evolution. Suppose the programme I linked earlier didn't use a random number generator, but instead used 1,2,3,... as the input. ie: a non-random input. The programme would still produce the effect of searching the data space for something fitting the selection criteria.

Dawkins says it well:
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/chance/chance.html

Darwinism is widely misunderstood as a theory of pure chance. Mustn't it have done something to provoke this canard? Well, yes, there is something behind the misunderstood rumour, a feeble basis to the distortion. one stage in the Darwinian process is indeed a chance process -- mutation. Mutation is the process by which fresh genetic variation is offered up for selection and it is usually described as random. But Darwinians make the fuss they do about the 'randomness' of mutation only in order to contrast it to the non-randomness of selection.


It is not necessary that mutation should be random for natural selection to work. Selection can still do its work whether mutation is directed or not. Emphasizing that mutation can be random is our way of calling attention to the crucial fact that, by contrast, selection is sublimely and quintessentially non-random. It is ironic that this emphasis on the contrast between mutation and the non-randomness of selection has led people to think that the whole theory is a theory of chance.

Even mutations are, as a matter of fact, non-random in various senses, although these senses aren't relevant to our discussion because they don't contribute constructively to the improbable perfection of organisms. For example, mutations have well-understood physical causes, and to this extent they are non-random. ... the great majority of mutations, however caused, are random with respect to quality, and that means they are usually bad because there are more ways of getting worse than of getting better. [Dawkins 1996:70-71]

btw,
That article also mentions some evolutionists who talk of chance. So such talk doesn't always imply creationism.

Perhaps it would be clearer to say that natural selection is not random. It makes a clearer break between process and outcome. Perhaps the word "evolution" doesn't do that so well.

 

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

Well, just an example of you extrapolating wildly, that's all.

What the hell? You're the one extrapolating, T'ai:

Well gee, let's find some scientist (n=1) with wacko beliefs, then graft that belief on to apply to all scientists (n = many).

I never said that I thought all IDers believe that god pokes genomes. I did, however, ask what the alternatives are, other than god setting it all up at the beginning and then bowing out of the program. I've yet to hear a third suggestion, even though I'm sure I've set up a false dichotomy. Is there a third possibility?

Antony Flew and David Berlinski come to mind as people who consider a designer can be something other than 'god'. Of course many explicitly say they allow for any designer to be something other than 'god'. But apparently by asking for examples of specific people, I can tell you don't get that a person's beliefs are irrelevant to what a theory says.

I certainly understand that a person's beliefs are irrelevant to the theory. What isn't irrelevant, however, are the actual proposals for what the designer is. That would be part of any real theory of intelligent design, wouldn't it?

Well that's obvious enough, since science asks questions like 'if' design occured, not 'does the designer like long walks on the beach?'. If you personally equate ignoring things outside a theory to the theory being stagnant, well, that's your choice, but I dont see much good logic in it.

Dude, it's a theory of intelligent design, for God's sake! It's all about intelligent design and, by only the tiniest of extension, about who the intelligent designer is, where he is, and how he works. In fact, one could argue that if you can't identify the intelligent designer, the proposal that things are intelligently designed is vapid, stagnant, and effectively worthless.

Maybe an identity other than 'higher intelligence' is somewhat unobtainable to know, kind of like knowing how everything started given a naturalistic worldview, eh?

Maybe then you've got nothing. Because surely you'll agree that "Gee, you know, I find it really hard to believe that this thing evolved all by its naturalistic self" is not a compelling theory. It's a god of the gaps argument, literally.

~~ Paul

 

[articulett]

Mijo had a whole thread related to this topic. His conclusion at the beginning of the thread was that natural selection is random because it is probabilistic and, therefore, evolution is random. His view never altered after hundreds of pages. Most people speaking of evolution will use random or chance to refer to mutations... and then describe how natural selection picks from that pool of randomness. It's natural selection that is the key for understanding that which seems impossible to understand. But Mijo does not understand natural selection. Nor does Behe... hence the continual focus on random.

I'm not sure I've ever seen anyone so beholden to describing evolution as "random" every explain natural selection well nor convey evolution in a way that could not be an argument for the tornado/747. I don't think Mijo can stop focusing on the randomness of evolution anymore than Behe can or will. I think all conversations towards Mijo on the subject will result in the exact same nothingness exhibited by Behe in the amazon quote. And, like the reviewers of Behe's book and Dawkins, I am well aware of what this focus on randomness is obscuring. The web document pretty much delineates this strategy... because clearly it works. Those who think that scientist think that this all came about randomly-- can't or don't understand natural selection... the process that makes an intelligent designer superfluous.

 

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

As I have mentioned before, not every individual of a given phenotype survives and reproduces. This means that their survival is not fully determined by their phenotype and is therefore based on a probability and not a certainty. There are, however, examples where almost all individuals of a given phenotype do survive while individuals of all other phenotypes perish, but these instance are far from universal and only represent situations where the probability of survival for a given phenotype is almost 1, but not counterexamples to the premise of the evolution's randomness.

The fact that only some individuals of a given phenotype survive could be entirely deterministic.

~~ Paul

 

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

I'm just curious why Behe, T'ai, and Mijo are insistent on the focusing on the random aspects of evolution ...

I think I understand Behe and T'ai, but I have to agree that Mijo has me confused.

T'ai says "That's not any type of 'misleading' ..." and yet clearly many people are mislead and confused about how evolution works. From this I gather than T'ai thinks either that these people are stupid, or that evolution is in fact totally random and therefore irrelevant to the origin of species.

~~ Paul

 

[articulett]

I think I understand Behe and T'ai, but I have to agree that Mijo has me confused.

T'ai says "That's not any type of 'misleading' ..." and yet clearly many people are mislead and confused about how evolution works. From this I gather than T'ai thinks either that these people are stupid, or that evolution is in fact totally random and therefore irrelevant to the origin of species.

~~ Paul

You understand Behe?!? I mean I understand his motives, but is he actually saying anything?

 

[Ichneumonwasp]

Mijo, I'm sorry, man, but in all those previous conversations did you honestly think that people were arguing that phenotype is entirely deterministic for outcome? Is that what this is all about? I don't know anyone who actually thinks that.

We all know there are contingencies that enter into the picture at almost every level. How many times has Gould's name risen in these discussions?

 

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

You understand Behe?!? I mean I understand his motives, but is he actually saying anything?

Oh no, I was just talking about his motives.

~~ Paul

 

[articulett]

Mijo, I'm sorry, man, but in all those previous conversations did you honestly think that people were arguing that phenotype is entirely deterministic for outcome? Is that what this is all about? I don't know anyone who actually thinks that.

We all know there are contingencies that enter into the picture at almost every level. How many times has Gould's name risen in these discussions?

We just don't have a need to refer to these contingencies as random...rather they are part of the environment... the selection process. We don't confuse it with randomness of mutation which is not truly random either... in that there are physical reasons for mutations... but they are random in they occur without concern to whether they benefit their potential replicator or not. And the environment decides which of these mutations gets to live on and replicate.

That is why things look designed... that is, it looks like the butterflies knew to evolve parasite resistance... http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/19733274/ But what happened is that the mutation referring resistance got passed on preferentially because it allowed it's replicators to survive. THAT is what natural selection does. It seems "amazing" to a mind that notices patterns and meaning... until you understand the process. And then it just seems obvious. Although the mutation was random... the fact that it is now incorporated in the butterfly genome and in all subsequent generations is most decidedly NOT random. But by Mijo's, Tai's, and Behes obfuscation, it IS. If you don't understand selection, then you might think that the butterflies had a guardian angel... (or maybe the parasite had a guardian devil--though I'm sure it's genome will evolve it's own tricks.)

Their misperception or poor explanation of the process is exactly the kind of murkiness that allows magicians to fool people. And Darwin and Dawkins are experts at revealing this trick utilized by clergymen. The smoke and mirrors is the word "random"-- understanding "natural selection" blows the cover off the "mystery" and "amazingness" and "seeming miracle" of "how it all fits together"--that is why the faithful and dishonest shun the term and explanations of such.

You can still insert god where ever you want... it's just that he's no longer necessary as an explanation... plus he's complex and all complexity evolves over time via natural selection-- so he becomes the proverbial unfathomable tornado creating a 747... or something that lies outside of measurement and understanding... like Francis Collins god.

Gettin back to the OP-- does ID predict anything? I think it's a dead end. Doesn't it just say "this is beyond your understanding... don't look further"... To me, it's like Uri Geller claiming he doesn't know how his powers work...

 

[Ichneumonwasp]

We just don't have a need to refer to these contingencies as random...

Hey, I agree, which is why Gould always used to the term "contingent". He was forever engaged, as you know, in similar types of debates over terminology, largely in the arena of evolutionary psychology (where similar discussions continue to rage).

I just can't believe this garbage has surfaced yet again. I guess Michael Myers really never dies.

And as to the OP, yes, intelligent design can make predictions. But as the OP points out, it fails miserably with the types of predictions it makes. So they change the rules, which is why we all share the opinion that it cannot make predictions. It really can make a few predictions. But it is forever stuck in the ad hoc explanation game afterwards trying limn out the reasons why light must pass through multiple cells layers before reaching photoreceptors. I would really like the intelligent design argument for why eukaryote cells contain at least one (mitochondria) and probably two (peroxisomes) foreign invaders as part of the "design".

 

[Wowbagger]

Evolution is a fact.

Let me ask a question that might help clarify things, around here:

Mijo, do you accept that evoution is not only a fact, but a fact powerful enough to explain all of the wide variety of life around us, with no pre-existing entity or intelligence necessary?

I image that Michael Behe might also accept evolution as "fact", but he would also be inclined to think that it not powerful enough to explain everything, and therefore would also try to claim that something else must help in the designs.

Anwering my question should help clarify if you really are a creationist, or not. Not that your answer is really terribly relevant to the overall discussion of ID's "predictions". But, at least it will shut some of us up about it.

 

[articulett]

Hey, I agree, which is why Gould always used to the term "contingent". He was forever engaged, as you know, in similar types of debates over terminology, largely in the arena of evolutionary psychology (where similar discussions continue to rage).

I just can't believe this garbage has surfaced yet again. I guess Michael Myers really never dies.

And as to the OP, yes, intelligent design can make predictions. But as the OP points out, it fails miserably with the types of predictions it makes. So they change the rules, which is why we all share the opinion that it cannot make predictions. It really can make a few predictions. But it is forever stuck in the ad hoc explanation game afterwards trying limn out the reasons why light must pass through multiple cells layers before reaching photoreceptors. I would really like the intelligent design argument for why eukaryote cells contain at least one (mitochondria) and probably two (peroxisomes) foreign invaders as part of the "design".

Yes... and the explanation for that non-working vitamin C gene we share with ape kin. What kind of design is that? That's not intelligent... that's just lazy. And it's not random either... there's a reason why we and our closest kin share the same broken gene... it's natural selection... the bad gene went along for a ride in an otherwise very successful genome... and stuck around, because it's harmless-- and even unnecessary if you eat lots of fruit. It's just a remnant of ancestors long ago...

Not only does intelligent design not explain anything... the randomness just explains a piece of the puzzle (vitamin C gene mutated)-- it doesn't explain what follows (great apes have a broken vitamin C gene in the same place with the same mistake that renders it useless.)

Nothing in biology makes sense unless you understand natural selection... and then everything makes sense... and it's a useful understanding that can be applied to the evolution of everything-- language, technology, the internet, computer viruses, species, languages, science, ecosystems. It's the same basic algorithm.... information that is good at getting itself copied coding for better information/better information processors/ better information replicators/ and better information storage over time. http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/bios/tooby.html

I resent that ID proponents keep people from having this great tool for dissecting all kinds of complexity and understanding all kinds of seeming impossibilities (so they can pretend to have special knowledge that is beyond the understanding of the masses.) In my mind it's like telling kids, "you're too stupid to read... reading is too hard... you have to sound out each letter and then put it together to make a word ... etc." The obfuscation has sinister intent and promotes ignorance.

 

[mijopaalmc]

Mijo, I'm sorry, man, but in all those previous conversations did you honestly think that people were arguing that phenotype is entirely deterministic for outcome? Is that what this is all about? I don't know anyone who actually thinks that.

We all know there are contingencies that enter into the picture at almost every level. How many times has Gould's name risen in these discussions?

Therein lies the inconsistency you can't argue that survival is non-deterministic and then say that it is non-random. "Random" and "deterministic" in their mathematical senses, which is how I have always used them (a courtesy which has not been returned by those who disagree with me), are antonyms and the only two possibilities for describing a particular aspect of a system. In other words, if a system is non-deterministic (in the mathematical sense), it is random (in the mathematical sense), and if a system is non-random (in the mathematical sense), it is deterministic (in the mathematical sense).

By the way, I have mentioned many times in previous discussion that I am not inextricably bound to "random" as the word that one must use to describe evolution. I do however think that it is important that emphasize the idea of randomness/stochasticity/probability/contingency when discussing evolution rather than insisting that evolution is non-random but somehow based probability.