Universal Probabilty Bound?

[welsberr]

rossum and I had a few go arounds on how design can be proven. It may be that because we actually live inside the design frame of reference that we cannot differentiate design. In other words, we would have to be outside this frame of reference to actually see design. Being in the frame itself everything looks designed to us, but that could be that the entire frame is designed therefore everything in it.

Jeff and I considered the sufficiency of Dembski’s “complex specified information” to distinguish a recent event from a ancient one, and found it lacking. There is some overlap with your “design frame” concept.

There are some issues which arise from such a defense, however. Dembski stipulates that algorithms can serve as conduits for prior specified complexity and add a certain amount of information as well [19, p. 160]. Dembski has not produced a demonstration that anything beyond, say, cosmological constant tuning might be needed as the sole role for a distantly removed intelligent designer, perhaps one who did part of what Dembski describes: “The fine-tuning of the universe and irreducibly complex biochemical systems are instances of specified complexity, and signal information (name removed by moderator)utted into the universe by God at its creation.” [17, p. 233] Even if we accept this nearly Deist construction of events minus the gratuitous inclusion of irreducibly complex systems, natural processes could then have provided the means by which such an initial influx of specified complexity at the beginning of the universe becomes the basis of the whole of biological diversity. Dembski’s framework is, as we have pointed out here, incapable of distinguishing between such a scenario and one requiring more recent
interventions by an intelligent agent. In this regard, specified complexity becomes something like the cosmic microwave background radiation: it can be detected almost anywhere one looks.

Essay on Dembski’s “complex specified information” (2003)

In my opinion, airy dismissal is not an effective mode of argument (nor the genetic fallacy, nor still a genetic fallacy based on an incorrect premise). That’s why the essay runs to 54 pages. I don’t tend to take one or two sentences as comprising a serious response.

Wesley R. Elsberry

 

[rossum]

rossum and I had a few go arounds on how design can be proven. It may be that because we actually live inside the design frame of reference that we cannot differentiate design. In other words, we would have to be outside this frame of reference to actually see design. Being in the frame itself everything looks designed to us, but that could be that the entire frame is designed therefore everything in it.

I disagree with you less than you may think. As I see it, your problem is that you are making a fundamental mistake about the “frame of reference”.

Because of our imperfect senses, we cannot truly know the real world. Our sense organs do not give us the complete picture, only a partial picture. To compensate for this, we build an internal model of the world, and we operate as if that model was correct. In most cases, it is, or it is close enough to correct to be useful.

However, our internal model is just that – an internal model. It is not reality as it actually exists external to ourselves. Our models are internal to ourselves.

A common error is to mistake our internal model for the external reality, and to attribute properties of the model to the external reality.

Since our internal model is actually designed, by ourselves, our internal model does, correctly, appear to be designed. However if we make the mistake of applying properties of our model to the external world, then the external world can also appear designed, when actually it isn’t. Design is a property of the model, not of the external world.

For example, an arachnophobe will sense terror whenever sensing a spider. That terror is not a property of the spider, but an internal property of that person’s model. We need to distinguish between genuine properties of external reality, and what are merely properties of our own internal model. Design is a property of our internal model.

rossum

 

[inocente]

rossum and I had a few go arounds on how design can be proven. It may be that because we actually live inside the design frame of reference that we cannot differentiate design. In other words, we would have to be outside this frame of reference to actually see design. Being in the frame itself everything looks designed to us, but that could be that the entire frame is designed therefore everything in it.

Thanks. Sounds like Kipling’s “And what should they know of England who only England know?”, i.e. only by living in foreign climes can we hope to understand our own neck of the woods, the problem here being that we can never leave our frame.

Possibly in similar vein to rossum, I’d say that as humans we have certain intuitions and preferences, one of which is to see design all over the shop, from faces in clouds to our fate in tea leaves, and we need to be very cautious about intuitions when it comes to objectivity.

 

[inocente]

Surely, you would agree that if we were playing 5 card draw and I won with 4 Aces 12 hands in a row that would cry out for explanation?
Or that if we came across an arrow stuck to a barn in the middle of a bullseye that it did not come to be there by chance?

Yes, my issue is that I don’t believe we can really calculate that kind of probability in nature.

For instance, consider trying to estimate the probability of ants appearing as a species somewhere in the universe. One problem is deciding what’s important, what are we aiming for - the exact species almost certainly only occurs on Earth, but perhaps a similar “engineering solution” has developed or will develop in lots of other places, we don’t know. Another problem is we don’t know anything like all the detail which led to ants developing on Earth, so we have to make lots of simplifying assumptions. I think our level of uncertainty will swamp our probability estimate in any such calculation. The idea may sound great after the third beer, but just isn’t practicable.

*As for applying this to the universe and God, there are fewer maybe’s than you think. You say “maybe” the universe is fine-tuned, but this is widely accepted, so let’s take that maybe away.

Since, this is the result of chance, necessity or design, then we would have to consider the alternatives to design. Chance and necessity strike me as weak, this leaves design.*

OK, but to me fine-tuning just means we have some free parameters, meaning we have to use some magic numbers to get our answers to match observation, meaning we haven’t yet discovered how to calculate them from first principles.

I mean, suppose we had a total blind spot about how to calculate pi and could only derive it empirically. We could dream up all kinds of tidy explanations about why pi is so amazingly fine-tuned, but none of them would be likely to be right because we would be trying to impose our preconception of what’s a tidy answer.

 

[Alberti_Devoveo]

Whatever. It should show you that I value logic and reason.

I do not get that from your refusal to answer. I get stubbornness to answer a simple & stupid question, plus a tad bit of arrogance to think that Gedankenexperiments, which have sufficed for scientists for many decades before you were born, are useless.

By the way, I want to point out the irrationality of your stipulation that if a problem has multiple solutions, then (according to you) it has no solutions. Look that the problem of Pythagoras, x[sup]2[/sup] + y[sup]2[/sup] = z[sup]2[/sup], where the three unknownd, x, y and z must all be positive integers. Obviously this equation has infinitely many solutions (one of them would be 3, 4 and 5) - but according to you, it has no solutions - because it has more than one. On the other hand the equation of x[sup]3[/sup] + y[sup]3[/sup] = z[sup]3[/sup] really does not have any solutions where x, y and z are all positive integers.

Of course I would agree the assertion, as it logically expected. Just writing x[sup]2[/sup] + y[sup]2[/sup] = z[sup]2[/sup] alone will not suffice for an answer or even a question really, you need to actually be solving something. Suppose you said that x=12, then I could say that there are two possible solutions: (12, 5, 13) or (12, 35, 37). There is no answer until you actually compare it to a triangle in front of you (drawn or an object) and see that y=5, so it must be the first option.
Again, this goes back to the difference in the view of a physicist who seeks answers to reality and the view of a mathematician who could care less about reality.

 

[inocente]

Have any of these details been completely realized? If not, there still exists no actual infinity, it is only a potential one.

Not sure but as it’s a set with an infinitely recursive boundary, I’ll guess it’s an actual infinity from the Wikipedia definition: Actual infinity is the idea that numbers, or some other type of mathematical object, can form an actual, completed totality; namely, a set. Hence, in the philosophy of mathematics, the abstraction of actual infinity involves the acceptance of infinite entities, such as the set of all natural numbers or an infinite sequence of rational numbers, as given objects.

Was this computation designed, or did it pop into existance by itself?

I’m agnostic on whether math is discovered or invented, can’t get excited about it for some reason.

 

[inocente]

Perhaps you should read my post where I give the link to the Rosetta Code link that shows about 50 different programs that calculate the Mandelbrot set.

Sorry, missed that link in my rush yesterday. You said “The fact that we have images of Mandelbrot set suggests that it is hardly infinite, since it can be contained on a single image.” and I was just observing that it has an infinite boundary (for anyone who can’t visualize why, see the animations here for another fractal, the Koch snowflake).

 

[rossum]

Yes, my issue is that I don’t believe we can really calculate that kind of probability in nature.

For instance, consider trying to estimate the probability of ants appearing as a species somewhere in the universe. One problem is deciding what’s important, what are we aiming for - the exact species almost certainly only occurs on Earth, but perhaps a similar “engineering solution” has developed or will develop in lots of other places, we don’t know. Another problem is we don’t know anything like all the detail which led to ants developing on Earth, so we have to make lots of simplifying assumptions. I think our level of uncertainty will swamp our probability estimate in any such calculation. The idea may sound great after the third beer, but just isn’t practicable.

We may not be able to state probabilities, but we can make some predictions. Anything that swims quickly in water will tend to have a streamlined shape, blunter towards the front and more tapered towards the rear. That general shape is determined by the hydrodynamic properties of water, and will be efficient for speedy movement in water.

Similarly, the six legged configuration of insects could be common. If an insect lifts three of its legs, then the other three make a stable platform, as with a three legged stool – it doesn’t wobble. Using three legs to step while standing on the remaining three may well be a common strategy.

Flight is another situation where the physics of the atmosphere imposes limits on what can usefully evolve, at least for large organisms. Flight (or being blown away by the wind) is very easy for small organisms.

rossum

 

[Alberti_Devoveo]

Sorry, missed that link in my rush yesterday. You said “The fact that we have images of Mandelbrot set suggests that it is hardly infinite, since it can be contained on a single image.” and I was just observing that it has an infinite boundary (for anyone who can’t visualize why, see the animations here for another fractal, the Koch snowflake).

The animation at wikipedia is an artifact of changing the region of interest & recalculating the fractal, then looping the fractals over.

 

[buffalo]

I disagree with you less than you may think. As I see it, your problem is that you are making a fundamental mistake about the “frame of reference”.

Because of our imperfect senses, we cannot truly know the real world. Our sense organs do not give us the complete picture, only a partial picture. To compensate for this, we build an internal model of the world, and we operate as if that model was correct. In most cases, it is, or it is close enough to correct to be useful.

However, our internal model is just that – an internal model. It is not reality as it actually exists external to ourselves. Our models are internal to ourselves.

A common error is to mistake our internal model for the external reality, and to attribute properties of the model to the external reality.

Since our internal model is actually designed, by ourselves, our internal model does, correctly, appear to be designed. However if we make the mistake of applying properties of our model to the external world, then the external world can also appear designed, when actually it isn’t. Design is a property of the model, not of the external world.

For example, an arachnophobe will sense terror whenever sensing a spider. That terror is not a property of the spider, but an internal property of that person’s model. We need to distinguish between genuine properties of external reality, and what are merely properties of our own internal model. Design is a property of our internal model.

rossum

I didn’t know I “had a problem”.

You make good sense here. I contend that this very problem is why we can easily be led astray by faulty reasoning of our science. Worldviews pervade and cloud the truth.

Without Revelation I am afraid we would be mired in this loop forever. Revelation gives us relevant information from outside the frame and is our best source to stay on course.

 

[rossum]

Without Revelation I am afraid we would be mired in this loop forever. Revelation gives us relevant information from outside the frame and is our best source to stay on course.

But which Revelation? There are a number to choose from.

rossum

 

[ivebeenshown]

But which Revelation? There are a number to choose from.

rossum

Glad you mentioned this.

I think a lot of Christians forget Christ’s words to Peter. In Matthew 16, the Pharisees demanded a divine sign to prove Christ’s authority. Jesus told the people to keep their guard against the Pharisees’ teachings, and then told Peter that his knowledge of Jesus as the Messiah was a gift from God and not from ‘flesh and blood’ – i.e., our faith is not a purely natural conclusion.

God may be discerned from nature but his full revelation, the deposit of faith… it can only be known by grace.

 

[buffalo]

But which Revelation? There are a number to choose from.

rossum

Aaahhhhhhhhhhhhhh. :bigyikes: You know well which one. A guy as astute as you should be able to eliminate the obvious one’s. After that there are only a few to dig into.

 

[rossum]

Aaahhhhhhhhhhhhhh. :bigyikes: You know well which one. A guy as astute as you should be able to eliminate the obvious one’s. After that there are only a few to dig into.

Abrahamic Religions
1.1 Jewish
1.2 Samaritan
2.1 Christian/Catholic
2.2 Christian/Orthodox
2.3 Christian/Protestant
3.1 Islam/Sunni
3.2 Islam/Shia
4.1 Mormon
4.2 Baha’i

Non-Abrahamic
5.1 Sikh
5.2 Hindu/Vaisnavaite
5.3 Hindu/Shaivite
5.3 Hindu/Durga/Mother Goddess
6.1 Buddhist/Theravada
6.2 Buddhist/Mahayana
6.3 Buddhist/Vajrayana
6.4 Jain
6.5 Zoroastrian-Parsee
6.6 Taoism
6.7 Confucianism
6.8 Shinto
7.1 Animist
8.1 Scientology
9.1 Tenrikyo

No doubt there are more.

rossum

 

[davidv]

Abrahamic Religions
1.1 Jewish
1.2 Samaritan
2.1 Christian/Catholic
2.2 Christian/Orthodox
2.3 Christian/Protestant
3.1 Islam/Sunni
3.2 Islam/Shia
4.1 Mormon
4.2 Baha’i

Non-Abrahamic
5.1 Sikh
5.2 Hindu/Vaisnavaite
5.3 Hindu/Shaivite
5.3 Hindu/Durga/Mother Goddess
6.1 Buddhist/Theravada
6.2 Buddhist/Mahayana
6.3 Buddhist/Vajrayana
6.4 Jain
6.5 Zoroastrian-Parsee
6.6 Taoism
6.7 Confucianism
6.8 Shinto
7.1 Animist
8.1 Scientology
9.1 Tenrikyo

No doubt there are more.

rossum

These are religions, not revelations. For instance, Jews, Muslims and Christians share the revelation of God in the burning bush. The person of Jesus Christ is a revelation for the whole world.

 

[buffalo]

Abrahamic Religions
1.1 Jewish
1.2 Samaritan
2.1 Christian/Catholic
2.2 Christian/Orthodox
2.3 Christian/Protestant
3.1 Islam/Sunni
3.2 Islam/Shia
4.1 Mormon
4.2 Baha’i

Non-Abrahamic
5.1 Sikh
5.2 Hindu/Vaisnavaite
5.3 Hindu/Shaivite
5.3 Hindu/Durga/Mother Goddess
6.1 Buddhist/Theravada
6.2 Buddhist/Mahayana
6.3 Buddhist/Vajrayana
6.4 Jain
6.5 Zoroastrian-Parsee
6.6 Taoism
6.7 Confucianism
6.8 Shinto
7.1 Animist
8.1 Scientology
9.1 Tenrikyo

No doubt there are more.

rossum

Not all are religions. Some are philosophies.

Religion - to bind oneself to God.

 

[rossum]

These are religions, not revelations.

The Jewish and Samaritan Torah’s are different. The Catholic, Orthodox and Protestant churches use different versions of the Bible. The Mormons include the Book of Mormon in Revelation. Islam uses the Qur’an. I will grant you that the Sunni and Shi’a Islam both use the same version of the Qur’an, though they interpret it differently.

For instance, Jews, Muslims and Christians share the revelation of God in the burning bush. The person of Jesus Christ is a revelation for the whole world.

Jews do not see Jesus so. Muslims and Bah’ai see Him as a prophet of God. Hindus see Him as one of many avatars of God, Buddhists see Him as a Bodhisattva.

There are many different approaches possible to Jesus of Nazareth.

rossum