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Lily_Bernans
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O no, I’m sure she would rather converse in some extraterrestrial language!
Have a great weekend, Christine! Blessed Advent!
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Have a great weekend, Christine! Blessed Advent!
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Lily_Bernans
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Thank you, Eric. Your contribution has been very fruitful, in my opinion.
It is valuable on whatever thread I encounter you.I had forgotten Aquinas was called “ignorant.”
We can all only hope to be one iota as brilliant as he was!This thread takes too much of my time as well, and my students are deserving of almost all of my time. After all, I am paid to teach them Christology and Moral Theology!
Have a wonderful weekend, Eric, and a Blessed Advent. I hope to see you on other threads! You, too, Christine!
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inocente
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You didn’t seem to have noticed my post #189 so I’m repeating my request.
Would you or Eric, or anyone else who knows about Kolmogorov Spaces, please answer a couple of stupid questions:
- I looked up Demski’s specified complexity thing, and couldn’t see any mention of Kolmogorov Spaces, only of Kolmogorov Complexity. Where do Kolmogorov Spaces fit in?
- Sticking with Demski, one of my previous roles was software engineering so I think I understand Kolmogorov Complexity. It’s a measure of algorithmic complexity, it’s the length of the shortest program which can reproduce a given piece of information.
But suppose we didn’t know how to calculate Pi, we didn’t know any formulas and could only obtain the value empirically by trial and error measurements. So imagine there’s an entire industry of people inventing more and more subtle experiments to measure Pi ever more accurately. As far as we could tell, therefore, the Kolmogorov Complexity of Pi would be through the roof, since the program giving its value couldn’t use a formula but would have to literally specify every digit of Pi obtained in the experiments, potentially going on for ever.
So to summarize: if we didn’t know any formulas to calculate Pi, its Kolmogorov Complexity would be high, but in reality we do know formulas so the Kolmogorov Complexity is low. Likewise the Kolmogorov Complexity of many physical constants is high because we don’t (currently) know any formulas to calculate them, but would be low if we did. In other words the intelligent design notions of complexity and fine-tuning appear to rely on our current state of knowledge and as such are appeals to ignorance, fallacies of informal logic. Or is that not the case?
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Pallas_Athene
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The Kolmogorov space is the description of all the possible outcomes of a probabilistic experiment. A simple example: when you toss a die, the possible outcomes are described by the set of: {1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6}. If the die is “regular”, then all the outcomes carry the probability of 1/6. If the die is “loaded” then the probabilities are different from this value.
As such probability theory is NOT applicable for those questions where the Kolmogorov space cannot ascertained. But the proponents “intelligent design” and “fine tuning” are not aware of this, and it looks like that they don’t want to learn it - as we have seen in this thread.
The other problem with their “reasoning” is that they don’t know the difference between the “a-priori” and “a-posteriori” probabilities. I know you are already aware of this, so in a sense I am preaching to the choir, but maybe some ignorant people will also read it, and learn from it.
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Peter_Plato
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Ah, but what you are leaving out of your account is that the Kolmogorov space cannot be “ascertained” not because it is unknown, but because it is open-ended, in fact bordering on infinitely so. This would be pretty much the same sense in which it might be said that pi “cannot be ascertained.” Ergo, it is untruthful to say it "cannot be ascertained’ as if it were completely unknown. It is known and known to be open-ended, which is precisely why the probability of the fine tuning of the universe can be said to be infinitesimally small, bordering on impossible.
Now, unless you – that would be the cosmologist you –*can provide sufficiently explanatory reasons for why the cosmological constants are set where they are, your pursuit of the “probability” angle on this amounts to so much bloviating. That is what is required for you to reduce the Kolmogorov space from infinite or nearly so, to where you would like it to be. That you haven’t done. :hey_bud:
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inocente
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Demski doesn’t appear to mention Kolmogorov Spaces in his Intelligent Design as a Theory of Information, he instead refers to Kolmogorov Complexity.
I’m asking Lily or Eric to explain why they are talking about Kolmogorov Spaces instead of Kolmogorov Complexity.
See also en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Specified_complexity
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CHRISTINE77
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LOL I’m not talking about how you respond to me ME (I couldn’t care less). I’m talking about the way you talk to everyone who disagrees with you.
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CHRISTINE77
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You too Lily - time to get off these atheist threads and concentrate on the coming of our Lord!:christmastree1:
Have a great weekend, Christine! Blessed Advent!
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inocente
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I think you’ll find He’s with us all year long. It’s Santa who only visits on Dec 25
.Or do you have advance news of the Rapture?
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Peter_Plato
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Except that it was Pallas Athene who was talking about Kolmogorov Space.
In fact, he was the one to bring it up initially in post #149
forums.catholic-questions.org/showpost.php?p=13491181&postcount=149
So, you should be asking Pallas Athene to explain why he is “talking about Kolmogorov Spaces instead of Kolmogorov Complexity.”
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CHRISTINE77
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No I’m talking about Advent. But I guess Baptists don’t know about that.I think you’ll find He’s with us all year long. It’s Santa who only visits on Dec 25
Or do you have advance news of the Rapture?
But we never know the time of his coming…keep those lamps burning!
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Nixbits
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Peter Plato:
I wasn’t aware that science had established the possible upper and lower limits, or the degree inter-dependence if the fundamental constants, far less that we know anything about the probability distribution.
I don’t think we even know enough to judge if the particular set of constants that we observe in our universe is towards the upper end of favourability for life. There may be a set that is far more conducive to life. We just don’t know (yet). So we can’t even judge if our universe can be legitimately described as ‘fine-tuned’.
Help me out here, as I may not be following you correctly. Are you saying that the number of possible combinations of the fundamental constants of a universe are unbounded?
I wasn’t aware that science had established the possible upper and lower limits, or the degree inter-dependence if the fundamental constants, far less that we know anything about the probability distribution.
I don’t think we even know enough to judge if the particular set of constants that we observe in our universe is towards the upper end of favourability for life. There may be a set that is far more conducive to life. We just don’t know (yet). So we can’t even judge if our universe can be legitimately described as ‘fine-tuned’.
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ericc
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I won’t have a clue. Sorry. I was hoping to learn something from those who might.
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Aloysium
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He wasn’t. This thread got rather confusing.
The point is that given the coinstants and the behaviour of matter as we understand it, the probability that life would emerge spontaneously as it has, is impossible.
Atheists should not despair; they, as you observe above in your post, may postulate that there exists some yet to be discovered blind principle, force, energy, or whatever that has some neutral, non-giving purpose devoid of any aesthetic properties which governs “life” in the universe. Dr. S. (Ciggy?) Freud held that the forces of libido and thanatos were behind not only our desires and emotions, but the entire cosmos, bringing things together and tearing them asunder. In the popular pseudoscientific mythology, we are imagined to be heading forward intellectually and into space along with all the extraterrestials out there. This of course is completely opposed to the scientific finding that we have been dropping an average of one IQ point a decade since this measurement began at the time of Darwin. Fitting irony, I figure.
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Nixbits
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Sorry, Aloysium, I must have missed some posts. Where was the evidence or argument that demonstrated this impossibility?
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Aloysium
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There can be no evidence because it cannot be determined.
That’s what all the talk of statistical spaces was about.
The matter boils down to something like this:
What are the odds that you would exist as you do in yourself?
- 100% because you do.
What are the odds that your existence could been predicted by others? - 0% because only you, those who know and love you and God would know of your existence as yourself.
Now, multiple those odds by those that matter would come together to form life solely on the basis of those known constants.
Go further and multiply that by the odds of your very existence.
In other words, it is common sense, that anyone would get other than someone who wishes not to or has a belief system that causes them to automatically reject it.
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Peter_Plato
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Cosmologists understand very clearly the function of each of the forces or constants in the universe and what these do with respect to matter and the resulting forms possible in the material realm.
Some examples:
If the strong nuclear force constant were even slightly higher there would be no hydrogen and the nuclei essential for life would be unstable. If the force were slightly lower there would be no elements other than hydrogen and since carbon – the element which permits all the combinatorial possibilities that build all the requisite proteins – wouldn’t exist, neither would any carbon-based life forms. Since no other element besides carbon permits the range of combinatorial possibilites required by complex life forms, life would be relegated impossible.
If the weak nuclear force constant were any higher there would be too much hydrogen converted to helium in the Big Bang and too much heavy element material would be made by star burning and no expulsion of heavy elements from stars would result. This would severely limit the formation of planets and requisite life forming molecules. If the constant were smaller there would be too little helium produced from the Big Bang and therefore too little heavy element material made by star burning, which would mean no expulsion of heavy elements from stars.
If the gravitational force constant were larger, stars would be too hot and would burn up quickly and unevenly. If smaller, stars would be so cool that nuclear fusion would not occur resulting in no heavy element production.
If the electromagnetic force constant were larger there would be insufficient chemical bonding and any elements more massive than boron would be unstable given fission. If smaller there would be insufficient chemical bonding to produce any elements.
I could go on with about 28 other constants, but I would suppose you get the picture.
Given how matter remains stable as a function of the forces that underwrite that stability, it is pretty clear to physicists how even minor changes to any of the forces would affect the whole and would result in a life prohibiting universe. This is why the universe is spoken of as highly finely tuned to be life-permitting.
Given that these constants were set and tuned to each other basically at the instant of the Big Bang when all matter, time, space and energy came into being, there is no explanation for why they were set and tuned the way they were. And yes, there is nothing in the nature of the constants that shows that each of them could not have been set anywhere along a wide, virtually unbounded, range with the results being drastically different and, within a very miniscule margin of error, life prohibiting.
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Nixbits
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You’ll need to help me out again. We’re clearly not on the same page. I asked where was the evidence or argument that it is impossible that life started naturally. You started by saying ‘it cannot be determined’, but then you go on to argue for it anyway. I’m confused.
I disagree. What are the odds that I did come into existence? 100%, because I’m here. What were the odds, before the event, that I would come into existence as I did? I haven’t a clue.
What does this have to do with the question I asked about life in general?
I haven’t the faintest idea what the odds are that the fundamental constants of the universe should be as they are, and I’ve seen no evidence that even the smartest scientists know this (yet) either.
Ah-hah! Now we’re getting to the heart of the matter. I’m not sure what you mean by ‘solely on the basis of those known constants’, but I’m asking for the evidence or argument that has convinced you that the probability of life starting spontaneously by natural means in our universe is zero. So far, I’m still in the dark.
I haven’t a clue what the odds are. It seems to me at least theoretically feasible that, given the right conditions and enough attempts, that life could start spontaneously. Maybe it could happen that way. Maybe not.
You keep bringing me into this, but I don’t see how my specific existence is in any way relevant to the question we’re discussing.
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Peter_Plato
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Retrospective determinism – a logical fallacy and, therefore, a probabilistic one, as well.
If you have a coin with two sides, your “odds” of getting one side are 50% or 1 out of 2. You know that because you knew BEFORE you threw the coin the number of possible outcomes.
You can’t say, after the fact, that your odds of flipping “heads” was 100% because that’s what came up. That isn’t how probability works.
The probability of you coming into existence – as you – is unknown, therefore it isn’t 100%. It is more like a division by zero error. The quotient is indeterminable in virtually the same sense that dividing by an infinitely small number gives… well…an infinitely small quotient. Nothing else left to say.
With respect to the cosmological constants, the total possible outcomes are indeterminate, not because they are unknown but because they are incalculable - i.e., bordering on the infinite.
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inocente
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Doh, same here.
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