Specified complexity

[lee_merrill]

Terribly circular.

Well, why?

My reference described that there is not a uniform probability for each face of the dice.

Then that is not a fair die. But we can speak of chance causing an event, even if the probabilities are not uniform.

Blessings,
Lee

[lee_merrill]

The problem with Dempski's explanatory filter beyond human Intelligent Design there is no way objective way to differentiate what is simply a product of natural causes, and some other intelligent source, except maybe aliens.

Well, no, we do understand what may be concluded to be the result of chance or a law of nature, so these can be ruled out as objects of design. No knowledge of the designer is needed to make these choices.

Blessings,
Lee

[shunyadragon]

Well, no, we do understand what may be concluded to be the result of chance or a law of nature, so these can be ruled out as objects of design. No knowledge of the designer is needed to make these choices.

Blessings,
Lee

There is no such thing as chance or natural law. Chance is just an awkward way of describing the variation of outcomes of events determined by the laws of nature.

This is the classic failure of Dempski's explanatory filter. It can never exclude the possibility of the cause being simply the laws of nature and natural circumstances.

The variability of the outcomes like with dice or whatever may be described in various ways like randomness, but as per the article the cause is the laws of nature, environment and the design of the dice, and the outcomes could not be described as totally by chance. Reread the reference again.

[shunyadragon]

But is this use of "specified complexity" different from the one Dembski proposes? Or it's (essentially) the same argument? Plus, does Dembski mentions Leslie Orgel at all in his argument/book/monograph/whatever?

Thanks.

I went back and read some things about Leslie Orgel, and found that yes he used 'specified complexity' to describe that which is designed and made by human technology, but he did not use it beyond that as Dempski and the Discovery Institute to search for specified complexity as evidence for Intelligent Design in nature.

[shunyadragon]

Well, here, an archeologist will certainly reject any object that is caused by chance or a law of nature, this should be self-evident.

Blessings,
Lee

No, the archaeologist will reject any object made according to the laws of nature, and natural processes without signs of human technology.

[TheLurch]

Well, here, an archeologist will certainly reject any object that is caused by chance or a law of nature, this should be self-evident.

Then it should be easy to find instances where archeologists go through this process when examining ambiguous items.

[shunyadragon]

Well, here, an archeologist will certainly reject any object that is caused by chance or a law of nature, this should be self-evident.

Blessings,
Lee

I thought I may add examples of how archaeologists make the determinations: (1) Archaeologists find flint nodules with natural whitish rinds, and only evidence of natural causes and of course the laws of nature. Then they find pieces of flint with characteristics of human technology of making tools. The characteristics are tool shapes and chip debris. (2) Archaeologists find mineral crystals that show the natural pattern of crystal growth characteristic of each mineral. Then they find gem stones carved with shapes that are not natural characteristics of the mineral such as oval, round or cut crystal shapes, and determine they are made by human technology.

No observation of anything occurring by chance in the determinations of the archaeologists.

[shunyadragon]

The following is an interesting claim of the discovery of primitive life 2.1 billion years old that is an example of whether the discovery was organic complex life, simple single cell life forms, or non-life inorganic mineral deposits. Are what appear to be conclusions at present is that it is organic life, but there is a question whether it is colonies of simple single celled bacteria or multi-cell organism. Part of the disagreements center around whether natural inorganic processes could have produced what appears to fossils of organic life.

This is an example of what Leslie Orgel described as the problem of 'specified complexity' of organic life versus a product of inorganic natural processes.

Source: http://micetimes.asia/paleontologists-have-found-traces-of-multicellular-organisms-age-2-1-billion-years/

Paleontologists have found traces of multicellular organisms age 2.1 billion years

Paleontologists from France and Canada discovered in Gabon traces of macroscopic organisms that lived at the bottom of shallow seas approximately 2.1 billion years ago. It is 600 million years before the time of life previous record.

It should be noted that skeptics argue that found by researchers of the samples were traces of colonies of bacteria or inorganic entities, for example, the nodules of sulphur.

The researchers conducted a series of analyses of the chemical composition of fossils, which confirmed that the organic traces of them still there, and traces of sulfur no. Moreover, scientists have discovered a series of fossils that can be interpreted as traces of crawling.

The discovery by researchers means that multicellular organisms appeared on Earth almost at the moment when its atmosphere began to contain appreciable amount of oxygen biogenic origin. However, it is likely that the detected multicellular soon became extinct and left no descendants.

© Copyright Original Source

[lee_merrill]

Then it should be easy to find instances where archeologists go through this process when examining ambiguous items.

Though these questions are so fundamental that they don't need articulating.

Blessings,
Lee

[shunyadragon]

Though these questions are so fundamental that they don't need articulating.

Blessings,
Lee

Than why did you bring them up? I explained how archaeologists differentiate objects of human technology from objects of natural processes formed by the laws on nature only, and it has nothing to do with the bogus differentiating chance from natural processes as the cause.

[lee_merrill]

Than why did you bring them up?

Because such questions are fundamental to the way we detect design.

I explained how archaeologists differentiate objects of human technology from objects of natural processes formed by the laws on nature only, and it has nothing to do with the bogus differentiating chance from natural processes as the cause.

Though chance could refer to the operation of natural processes, such as weathering of rock.

Blessings,
Lee

[shunyadragon]

Because such questions are fundamental to the way we detect design.

Such questions? No such questions are relevant to science.

Though chance could refer to the operation of natural processes, such as weathering of rock.

Blessings,
Lee

No chance could not, because the processes such as weathering of rocks are natural processes and very predictable, and do not occur by chance. A good part of my career was identifying types of weathering.

[TheLurch]

Because such questions are fundamental to the way we detect design.

But they're really not. And i've actually read a number of archeology research papers, so i know what the logic there looks like.

Typically, as i said earlier, the first distinction is the date and location of an artifact, and how that fits with what we know about our ancestors' evolution and migrations. This eliminates most things from design considerations, since there was nothing around that was doing any designing. The next step is whether a natural process could create something. You could try to map this onto the "chance or law" verbiage, but it really doesn't fit. There's really no "law" that flakes of rock (to give one example) follow when they form, because they form naturally by multiple mechanisms; it requires multiple lines of evidence, including similarity to rocks that we know were worked by humans or pre-human ancestors.

It's also a bad mapping because chance becomes an issue elsewhere. Butchering a bone or flaking a rock edge will make scratches on it. Using a rock as a tool will often get stains on it. But etchings and pigments are also the earliest known indications of symbolic thought. So the question of whether a given feature is likely to be accidental or intentional is a big issue - which goes into chance, but not law in any sense.

All of these issues are, of course, informed by the fact that we know the designer was human in all the cases we're looking at.

So no, the ID formulation isn't fundamental to how the people who specialize in detecting design do their work. The two don't map to each other, and the desire by ID proponents to abstract away the identity of the designer is completely foreign to archeology.

But, you know, i said all of this above, and yet Mr. "happy to learn" keeps repeating the same thing regardless.

[DayOneish]

Is specified complexity a circular concept? A friend of mine said so.

Leslie Orgel said: ''Living things are distinguished by their specified complexity. Crystals such as granite fail to qualify as living because they lack complexity; mixtures of random polymers fail to qualify because they lack specificity''.

My friend: ''ABSOLUTELY WRONG!

Living things are distinguished by their autonomy, since they are autonomous agents that present their own active processes such as growth, reproduction, locomotion, regeneration, etc. Although living beings are indeed complex, this is not theoretically crucial to their recognition as such. If simple entities like crystal spheres moved on their own, grew up, reproduced, etc., we would have to recognize them as living or totally change the way we understand life.

To make matters worse, note that there is no definition of what such a specification is, which, without surprise, is more of a begged question, for it is obvious that what they understand as this specificity is precisely the result of a intelligent information, which would explain the appearance of design''.

Do you agree with this? What's your take on specified complexity?

Your friend's argument is so idiotic that I've had to reread 12 times to make sure I'm getting it correct.

You friend's argument, in a nutshell: "if crystals were something entirely different from crystals, and exactly like lifeforms, we would recognize them as lifeforms, therefor, there's no difference between crystals and lifeforms."

I have to say, in my many years of reading the Darwin vs. design debate, this might be the worst "argument" I've ever read.

Crystals are just basic fractals -- simple repeating patterns -- and are easily explained by physics. That design-deniers are forced to cling to them is strong evidence of how weak and desperate their position is.

If life were anywhere near as simple as a repeating pattern, don't you think the origin of life would've been solved centuries ago?

The foundation of life is a genetic code and cellular machinery capable of reading and processing that code -- this is light years beyond basic fractals.

[DayOneish]

The concept of specified complexity is incredibly simple.

It's many parts (complexity) arranged in a manner as to give that complexity meaning or function (specification).



If you're able to recognize the sandcastle in that picture, you're able to recognize specified complexity.

The artist has taken the sand on the beach -- complex, but unspecified -- and arranged it into a specific pattern, creating specified complexity.

Nature can produce very, very, very, very low levels of specified complexity -- basic fractals. However, the only known cause for high levels of specified complexity is intelligence, thus, when we find high levels of specified complexity, scientific reasoning says we must infer an intelligence.

Guess what has more specified complexity than any other structures in the known universe? Living systems. Life is library after library full of specified complexity, which acts as a programming language, controlling our develop and the operation of everything in our bodies, from the microscopic (cells) to macroscopic (limbs, organs, etc.).

And that, my friends, is the whole problem: there is a large group of people who don't want this to be true. It challenges their ideology. And so they fight it, tooth and nail, and come up with a lot of really bad excuses for why it can't be true.

Yet, it remains true.