Defining "complexity"

An arrangement of parts is complex if it is improbable. For example, the previous sentence is an improbable arrangement of letters, therefore it is complex.

How do you establish if it is improbable? Do you have anything else than the ‘tornado-in-a-junkyard’ approach (which completely misses the evolutionary process)?

Relevant thunderf00t video regarding specified complexity

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It doesn’t matter if ID definition of complex doesn’t match perfectly the common meaning of the word. Such discrepancy between the scientific and common usage of some words is common. What matters is consistency; You define the meaning of a word and then stick to it.

Crispr, now that I’ve given some time for others to respond…
I think if you’ll re-read what I said, although it was written tongue-in-cheek, you’ll see that it wasn’t a complete evasion of the question. True, it would be nice if we could give “increased complexity” a more rigorous definition. However, that doesn’t mean that those of us who question evolution should abandon our question. It may not have complete ‘rigor’, but I think anyone can admit there is certain more complexity in a human than there is in a microbe.

I thought this thread had a great title: “Define ‘complexity’”. Many times when we bring up this challenge, that’s the response we get. I have to say, in some ways, that almost seems like an ‘evasion’.

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LoL.
Oh no worries, I have incredibly thick skin. Plus, as you’ll see in my other post, I actually loved the title of this thread: “Define ‘complexity’”

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This is still vague. What exactly is improbable about a complex arrangement of parts?

Its improbable yet you wrote it and can write it at will again. Again how is this improbable since you think it is?

You are off topic here, for mere complexity is not enough to draw a design inference.

Yet that specific sentence is much more likely than a random deal of cards.

There are 5.36 x 10^28 possible deals of cards for the game bridge. ((52)!/(13!)^4).

Yet despite the improbability of a given hand being dealt, that hand was dealt.

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I’m not asking you how you draw a design inference, I’m asking you how you establish if something is improbable.

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Since they are 26 letters, and assuming that the space count for an additional letter, the probability that this sequence of letters occurred by chance is 1/(27^45). I don’t know for you, but I would call such an arrangement of letters an improbable arrangement.

Not surprising for improbable events happen all the times. In fact, the probability of being dealt with an improbable hand is one!

Just like your sentence, eh?

Whatever sentence you wrote was improbable

An arrangement of parts is complex if it is improbable. For example, the previous sentence is an improbable arrangement of letters, therefore it is complex.

Like I mentioned regarding the 100 prisoner problem whose success probability was relatively impervious to the number of prisoners, the probability of a given functional sequence of amino acids or nucleotides may also be relatively impervious to the number of amino acids or nucleotides; given life, on which mutation and natural selection can act, may cause larger sequences of functional nucleotides or larger numbers of amino acids in functional proteins an inevitable product of life.

Indeed, the probability of life itself may simply be almost identical to the probability of the prequisite components in one place to form life.

Which may be much much simpler and likely to happen than many creationists usually conceive.

Life may be simply a “dynamic kinetic stability” phase of matter which occurs if the required components are present to form self replicators.

Pross then engages in a discussion of chemical stability and instability and introduces a concept he calls “dynamic kinetic stability,” which applies to replicative systems. Dynamic kinetic stability, or DKS, is central to Pross’s attempt to develop a chemical explanation of life. “In the context of chemical systems,” he writes, “static and dynamic forms of stability are very different. In the ‘regular’ chemical world a system is stable if it does not react. … In the world of replicating systems, however, a system is stable (in the sense of being persistent and maintaining a presence) if it does react—to make more of itself, and those replicating entities that are more reactive, in that they are better at making more of themselves, are more stable (in the sense of being persistent) than those that aren’t. This is almost a paradox—greater stability is associated with greater reactivity.”

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OK I see your point. So?

A single part is presumably also complex if it is improbable – right? Echoing what everyone else is asking: how do you determine whether something is probable or not?

It does if it confuses people and provides a basis for equivocation.

Science usually redefines words because there isn’t already a word to the precise concept in question. What’s the point of defining ‘complex’ as ‘improbable’ when the latter word already works just fine and is less confusing?

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But that’s not how you generated that arrangement, so that’s not it’s probability of occurring, so what you call it doesn’t matter.

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Spot on.

If letters are drawn at random from a bag containing one of each letter of the alphabet, with replacement, and a specific sentence is the desired goal, then yes, that specific sentence occurring by chance is wildly improbable.

But with selection by a human author, and the understanding that there is a finite but large set of ways of capturing the same thought in a sentence, the fact that I’m writing these particular sentences now is much less improbable.

There are contingencies - I might have had more drinks than I have and be typing worse, or I might have decided to game for longer instead of dropping by here, or to head up to bed.

But that analogy illustrates why the ID probability arguments are bunk: they model the situation as random selection with a specific goal, and get very tiny probability numbers. But non-random selection (by natural selection) and the fact that there are a range of protein structures that would serve, means that the thing their model models is not reality.

And that therefore the numbers are meaningless.

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There are a number of problems with this:

  1. It is not just a case that “ID definition of complex doesn’t match perfectly the common meaning of the word” (my emphasis) – it is that it is a ludicrously awful match to any meaningful definition of the word.

  2. It is also redundant. We already have, by your own admission, a perfectly good word for this: improbability. This means that, apparently, we should simply refer to ID’s arguments as Irreducible Improbability and Improbable Specified Information.

  3. It is not clear that Behe’s Irreducible Complexity is in fact consistent with this definition, as he does not appear to define it in terms of (im)probability.

  4. Consistency is not all that matters. Comprehensibility and utility matter too. And a definition this idiosyncratic and redundant would appear to be neither widely-comprehensible nor in the least bit useful.

  5. Beyond very simply situations, like tossing a fair coin or throwing a fair die, probabilities are estimated, not known with certainty. These estimates can vary wildly with your assumptions – and ID’s assumptions are often criticised as being ludicrously unrealistic. This in turn means that your definition renders complexity to be not a fixed amount.

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