Why are We Disagreeing with ID?

[swamidass (S. Joshua Swamidass)]

I think psychological projection is far more coherent and empathetic an explanation than widespread Frank dishonesty.

[lee_merrill]

@swamidass

Are you aware I wrote a book legitimizing the miraculous creation of Adam?

No, I wasn’t aware of that, sorry I mischaracterized your view.

@swamidass

These things are places of agreement between us and therefore are not plausible explanations why I reject the arguments you are making.

Perhaps it’s because the arguments are making some critical missteps?

Well, that’s why I like to discuss my views, I’m glad to be convinced of any missteps I am making.

[lee_merrill]

@T_aquaticus

More to the point, we keep begging ID proponents to use the scientific method, but they refuse to. Instead of empirical and objective measurements we instead get subjective opinions, such as “it looks designed”.

I refer you to Behe’s definition of irreducible complexity: “An irreducibly complex evolutionary pathway is one that contains one or more unselected steps (that is, one or more necessary-but-unselected mutations). The degree of irreducible complexity is the number of unselected steps in the pathway.”

@T_aquaticus

ID proponents dispute the observed fact that neutral mutations accumulate in genomes.

No, they don’t, unselected mutations would almost by definition be neutral.

[lee_merrill]

@Paul_King

Perhaps you would like to show how things that are not designed cannot have “unselected steps” ? Are you perhaps suggesting that unintelligent processes recognise and intentionally avoid unselected steps?

But where did I say things that are undesigned cannot have unselected steps? Behe even uses chloroquine resistance, with an unselected step, as an example.

@Paul_King

@lee_merrill

But unselected steps are indeed more difficult to get through, and the more such steps there are in a row, the exponentially more difficult it is for evolution to get through them.

This is the usual error of using an a priori probability after the fact. The probability of following a particular path after it has happened is simply not relevant.

So you cannot compute the probability of drawing a full house, once you have one in your hand? Of course you can.

[Puck_Mendelssohn]

@swamidass

I think psychological projection is far more coherent and empathetic an explanation than widespread Frank dishonesty.

For the victims, sure. Not for the perpetrators.

[Dan_Eastwood]

@lee_merrill

I think there is a commitment to some form of methodological naturalism, therefore any possibility is preferable to design.

There are atheists who support design. I grant that, outside of Raeliens, they are rare.

[T_aquaticus]

@lee_merrill

I refer you to Behe’s definition of irreducible complexity: “An irreducibly complex evolutionary pathway is one that contains one or more unselected steps (that is, one or more necessary-but-unselected mutations). The degree of irreducible complexity is the number of unselected steps in the pathway.”

Behe’s claim that these systems can not be produced by evolutionary mechanisms is the claim that lacks scientific merit.

Can a reducibly complex system be produced by evolutionary mechanisms? Yes or no?

If yes, can evolution remove parts from the system as long as those losses don’t reduce or damage the function? Yes or no?

If yes, why can’t this process continue until no more parts can be removed?

@lee_merrill

No, they don’t, unselected mutations would almost by definition be neutral.

Do you agree or disagree that neutral mutations regularly become fixed in the genomes of most eukaryotes.

[swamidass (S. Joshua Swamidass)]

@lee_merrill

@swamidass

Are you aware I wrote a book legitimizing the miraculous creation of Adam?

No, I wasn’t aware of that, sorry I mischaracterized your view.

Would you be willing read it?

The Genealogical Adam and Eve

I would be interested to hear your response to it.

[Dan_Eastwood]

@Rumraket

Dawkins doesn’t anywhere say all of evolution is like that and I don’t think it is reasonable to accuse him of having implied such a thing with his model. All models are simplifications, yet we can understand that one can model a phenomenon without thinking the modelers are somehow saying the model is accurately reflecting reality in all aspects.

There is a considerable body of work in Computer Science literature to indicate that Genetic Algorithms are highly efficient at certain classes of difficult problems. In terms of computational complexity they can solve some problems in a number of operations “on the order of” \large{O[} n\cdot \log{n} \large{]}. In practical terms, the time needed to run a program that will find the solution increases only slightly more than linear time for complexity \large{O[} n \large{]} as n increases.

Now that’s computer science, not biology, but some in this field have noted they see no reason why it could not be applied to biology.
For anyone interested, search “hyperclimbing” on Google Scholar, and get ready for some difficult reading.

EDIT: or “Hyperheuristics”

[lee_merrill]

Sure, I’ll give it a read. Thanks for the pointer…

[lee_merrill]

@Faizal_Ali

That is a very poor understanding of methodological naturalism. It does not preclude the possibility of design. For instance, when archaeologists identify some stone artifact as having been designed by humans, they are still employing methodological naturalism.

@CrisprCAS9

Have you ever heard of the field of archeology? Design is perfectly compatible with methodological naturalism…

Well, I meant as here: “In philosophy, naturalism is the idea or belief that only natural laws and forces (as opposed to supernatural ones) operate in the universe.”

In particular, that evolution is a process unmodified by designer(s).

[Paul_King]

@lee_merrill

But where did I say things that are undesigned cannot have unselected steps?

When you claimed that:

@lee_merrill

An irreducibly complex evolutionary pathway is one that contains one or more unselected steps (that is, one or more necessary-but-unselected mutations). The degree of irreducible complexity is the number of unselected steps in the pathway.”

was a “definition for design”. As you did:

@lee_merrill

This is definitely a definition for design,

@lee_merrill

So you cannot compute the probability of drawing a full house, once you have one in your hand? Of course you can

That is certainly not anything I said. What I said is more on the lines that it would be pointless to calculate getting the exact cards you got in the exact order they were dealt. Even though it could be done. Surely you can see that having a full house is the outcome not the path travelled to get there.

[Faizal_Ali]

@swamidass

I think psychological projection is far more coherent and empathetic an explanation than widespread Frank dishonesty.

Stephen Meyer, who has a degree in Philosophy of Science from Cambridge, has said that methodological naturalism would prevent a scientist from concluding that the Rosetta Stone was carved by human beings, and that the only permissable conclusion would be that it was created by random natural forces like wind or rain erosion. (This is very similar to what @lee_merrill suggested above).

I choose to be charitable and presume that Meyer is not so utterly stupid and incompetent in his field that he would actually believe that.

[SlightlyOddGuy (Matt)]

@T_aquaticus

Behe’s claim that these systems can not be produced by evolutionary mechanisms is the claim that lacks scientific merit.

Hasn’t Behe already admitted there are irreducibly complex systems that have evolved? And that he’s now saying it’s systems that have some kind of arbitrarily higher complexity level that are now impossible to evolve? IIRC he said this in an interview with @dsterncardinale.

[CrisprCAS9]

@lee_merrill

In particular, that evolution is a process unmodified by designer(s).

Sure, for evolution. But not all biology, necessarily. When I look at GFP-expressing kittens I still infer design, and I think I have good reasons to do so. Not least of which is the fact that we have the design documents to hand. The simple claim that ‘elements of biology were designed’ has no inherent supernatural element, so is compatible with methodological naturalism. If you are saying that ID necessarily requires supernatural assumptions, then you are the one excluding it from science.

[Rumraket (Mikkel R.)]

@lee_merrill

I think there is a commitment to some form of methodological naturalism, therefore any possibility is preferable to design.

I think design is a natural process, and there’s no evidence that the process of learning about, designing, and manufacturing anything involves something that is necessarily fundamentally untestable and/or separate from observational physical reality.

In particular I think this thing with “mind” or “intelligence” as responsible for “design”, being somehow superior to biological evolution as an explanation for anything, is completely mistaken and misguided.

All minds we know of take the form of physical brains with physical bodies, and they all without exception have to learn to do any designing. And they all either evolved or were designed and produced by things that evolved. Positing merely that some sort of mind or intelligence exists doesn’t magically solve questions about origin or function.

There isn’t anything you can do that isn’t either the product of learning, tutoring, and practice, or some sort of evolved instinctive behavior. Mind or intelligence doesn’t produce things as if by magic by wishing things fully formed into thin air with some sort of a priori knowledge and magically total comprehension. Design of all forms we know of is, curiously highly analogous to biological evolution, the product of some extremely long process of learning and development involving lots of trial and error.

When it comes to “minds” or “intelligence” being able to solve things like “search problems” or overcome other such “probabilistic barriers”, it’s still only through trial and error. An evolution-like process of learning. A mind can’t just “know” where to find a workable solution in a large space of nonfunctional structures, otherwise “minds” could be used to solve things like directly guessing correctly long complex passwords. But no amount of intelligence is going to make you able to just know out of nowhere what a password to something is. You have to either have “inherited” information about what is likely to be among good candidate passwords before(obtained knowledge from prior research and studies of often used passwords), or do blind, brute-force sampling among trillions and trillions of password before you happen to guess the correct one by chance.

This whole “design” stuff is a fantasy that has no connection to reality, or our knowledge of how “minds” actually work or how designing and manufacting things actually occur in reality. Minds aren’t supernatural, they’re just another material and physical process contingent on history and embedded in their local physical circumstances. And they all have to learn slowly and painfully how to do simple things first and more complex things later can be built on top. Notice how all the things you can do you had to learn first (the copying of information gained from previous generations of trial and error), and we have entire institutions called schools with people employed to copy and paste information into your brain. You have to learn either by memorization (inheritance, reproduction of information passed on from previous generations of learners), or by trial and error.

[John_Harshman]

@lee_merrill

Behe even uses chloroquine resistance, with an unselected step, as an example.

To be more precise, he refers to a deleterious step. Is he right about that?

[nwrickert (Neil Rickert)]

@lee_merrill

In particular, that evolution is a process unmodified by designer(s).

A beaver designs a dam. An ant colony designs an ant hill. Both of those change the environment, and can thus modify future evolution.

My main objections to the ID movement, are these:

• They claim it is scientific, but there isn’t any real science being done;

• They do not give clear definitions of “intelligent” or of “design”.

• They tend to have a very narrow view of “intelligent”. For myself, I see some intelligence in all biological systems.

[swamidass (S. Joshua Swamidass)]

@Faizal_Ali

I choose to be charitable and presume that Meyer is not so utterly stupid and incompetent in his field that he would actually believe that.

That’s not his point. He is saying that consistent usage of MN, if used to exclude design a priori, would entail reject design inference with the Rosetta Stone.

The claim is that MN is being unfairly and arbitrarily applied to exclude the ID program.

[Rumraket (Mikkel R.)]

@nwrickert

My main objections to the ID movement, are these:

• They claim it is scientific, but there isn’t any real science being done;
• They do not give clear definitions of “intelligent” or of “design”.
• They tend to have a very narrow view of “intelligent”. For myself, I see some intelligence in all biological systems.

The worst part of all this is that the way ID-proponents use the term, “intelligent design” isn’t a hypothesis with any predictive or explanatory power. It’s just this nebulous idea that there is some sort of magical power that can somehow just spontaneously make something come into existence, or has some other form of control over physical reality that can’t be tested in any experiment.