Sorry, that wouldn’t do it as there may be an Intelligent Entity manipulating the coin flips through undetectable external means. Try again.
Well, as far as mathematically defined ID is concerned, my scenario would falsify it. Perhaps it cannot falsify the ID in your mind.
Here’s a bit of justification for my narrow definition.
ID in general is the proposition that intelligent agency is empirically detectable. As such, we need to be able to empirically distinguish between chance and necessity, and intelligent agency. CSI is one mathematically defined way to do this.
However, if laws (necessity) can produce CSI, then there is no in principle way to distinguish between chance and necessity, and intelligent agency.
So, that is why I define ID so narrowly around CSI.
I didn’t ask you about mathematically defined ID. I asked you about empirically observed biological evolutionary results. Those darn bumblebees keep flying despite being “mathematically impossible”. 
If you define CSI as “that which requires intelligence to create” then your argument is completely circular. Dr. Swamidass has pointed this out to you multiple times I believe.
Then this creates a contradiction. If natural laws can produce MI, then MI is not a signature of intelligence.
It means that when cancer genomes evolve, the target sequences are not independent of their starting point. A human cancer genome target is going to be close to a normal human genome. For the same phenotype (cancer), a dog cancer is going to be closer to a normal dog genome than a human genome. So even though the “function” cancer seems arbitrary, the actual sequence targets are very close to their starting points. They are not independent.
Function can be specified as “cancer”, but the “target” in sequence space is very strongly determined by the starting point “normal.” We can quantify how much too. So the the target sequences are never independent of the starting point. This is true for cancer, and also in the evolution of species too.
I have a few questions about this but unfortunately I have to sign off for the night. Okay if i ask them tomorrow?
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Sure, but I’ll need to take a break from this site soon. I may not respond for a number of days. But, I’ll get to whatever your questions next time I sign on.
Right, but here you are just begging the question that species evolved. I see this sort of fallacy a lot with evolution arguments. They assume evolution is true, and then deny the precedent to “disprove” ID arguments, and then say this proves evolution. Total circularity. Many people need an introductory course in logic, it seems.
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Now if you would read the ID literature more carefully, you’d realize MI is not coextensive with CSI. CSI is a kind of MI, but more qualified than MI, i.e. the specification must be independent.
If you’ve been reading my posts carefully you’d know this is not what I’m saying. But you seem to, like @swamidass, be more interested in beating on ID than understanding it. Sigh, I’ve come to expect this by now, and is what got me interested in ID in the first place. What is it about ID that makes so many otherwise well qualified people make horrible arguments to try and disqualify it? Whatever it is, must be something pretty important.
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That is not what is happening it all.
I’m seeing math errors everywhere in these information arguments. I cannot make sense of a mathematical argument with obvious math errors. These are unequivocal errors that ID proponents are very resistant to seeing. Look at this exchange…
Yes I am totally exasperated as I say this to @kirk. We’ve had email exchanges before. This might be around the 10th time I’ve explained to him that he has the math wrong here. It took literally writing out the equations:
At that point he writes:
Remember I deal with PhD students all the time. This is a very abnormal experience for me. I love teaching students. I am good at it. It usually does not take this much effort to get someone to see a mathematical error. Something else is at play here, but I don’t know how to name it.
To @Kirk’s credit, I do not think he is dishonest. I do not think you are dishonest either. It looks instead like he genuinely couldn’t see the blazingly clear error I could see. For years I’ve been watching him argue (and watching others parrot him) that 1 + 1 = 3 (metaphorically), where it is just so obvious that this is false to me.
Now, having realized a dramatic and foundational error in his math and understanding, I’m taken a back by the claim that this is just “minor,” and then charge into a direct error that arises from not understanding the consequences of the first correction:
As I explain to him here:
It has been the same issue with your work @EricMH. This is my bread and butter. I’m really good at computational biology, and coming up with how to leverage information theory to solve real problems here. I know how this works. I read the ID information theory work and it is just making mathematical errors.
So I am not attacking ID. I’m just saying that ID certainly does not benefit from fallacious arguments based on math errors. And yes, I do understand ID arguments. I’ve engaged with you guys far more than any one else with this level of training, right?
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@EricMH this has been your claim. Here is one example:
This is just a few samplings. You are saying that Intelligence is a uniquely capable of creating CSI. However, to your credit, you have changed your position on some of this. Now you acknowledge that observing MI in nature is not necessarily evidence of CSI. So what is CSI?
It seems to reduce to merely some immeasurable thing that is defined as what is uniquely produced by intelligence.
Total failure on your part. Evolution isn’t assumed to be true. That evolution has happened is a conclusion based on over a century’s worth of consilient scientific evidence from dozens of independent scientific fields. There is nothing circular in the conclusion at all.
One person need to take a Biology 101 course and stop regurgitating useless old Creationist PRATTs.
What is it about evolutionary theory that makes so many scientifically unqualified people people make horrible arguments to try and disqualify it?
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Romans 1:20 comes to mind:
For the invisible things of him since the creation of the world are clearly seen, being perceived through the things that are made, even his everlasting power and divinity; that they may be without excuse:
I do not find it all all surprising that there is nowhere for the disbeliever to turn where there are not indicators of design. For example, if we only look inside the cell we will find that there is no reason at all to think intelligent design is a valid option.
Oops!
So to Joshua’s point, even if random mutation and selection could do everything it is believed capable of doing, there are still the conditions that would make such a thing possible to consider. And of course, following Dawkins, we can easily conceive of just how improbable that state of affairs would be. So “the probability argument” remains intact. It’s not replaced.
Speaking of catch 22. If we ever create life in the lab will that validate ID? This sort of ties in with the recent Nobel prize and seeing protein engineering as a sort of validation of ID.
So I actually grant that what we see can be thought of as a game of catch 22. Not sure what to make of it though.
That award might go to Tom English.
I would like to say that in not understanding the mathematics underlying some of the ID arguments I have personally avoided them. Wisdom perhaps?
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I’m doubtful of this. I’m pretty sure you don’t know the half of how I’ve engaged with ID.
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Sure, in exactly the same way humans creating electrical discharges with a Van De Graaff generator validated lightning bolts are created by Thor’s hammer.
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