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Patterns vs. Design
    #10308681 -

This is a tangent from the ID discussion.

As 'design' cannot be quantified or clearly described ahead of time (post hoc) we (or some of us) are left trying to differentiate between the two.

MM states that the intricate patterns of snowflakes do not show design, but that other intricate designs do; yet there is no litmus test.

I clearly remember all of the hoopla over the "Face on Mars" - clearly of alien design and the surrounding "City of Cydonia" structures confirmed such design. Alas, it was a mere play of light and shadow and rock, and not an ancient city.

Before that some oceanic divers 'discovered' the Bimini Road in the Caribbean - proof to some people of Atlantis, as the giant rock slabs were too regular and too perfect to be anything other than man-made. Wrong. It was a natural geographic formation.

Without some sort of template, analysis or identification is ALWAYS after-the-fact and used to support some specific position.

The final canard is that of probability. The odds of something happening is too great to have been mere happenstance; therefore it was designed. As I have repeatedly pointed out the chance of being dealt any bridge hand is (52*51*50*49*48*47*46*45*44*43*42*41*40) which is a damned huge number (try to get your calculator to handle that), yet it means absolutely nothing.


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Re: Patterns vs. Design [Re: OrgoneConclusion]
    #10308820 -

The funny thing is life is clearly not intelligently designed anyway.  There are so many redundant systems that don't serve a purpose, non-redundant systems that should have redundancy (like the heart), and so many flaws that if we were designed then I would hope the designer got fired for incompetence.

Life is extraordinarily complex, but designed things are as simple as can be.  Thats the mark of a good designer/engineer, they can take away all the un-needed components and make their device as simple as possible.  Biology is the opposite; its overtly complex.

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Re: Patterns vs. Design [Re: DieCommie]
    #10308876 -

Quote:
Biology is the opposite; its overtly complex.


Like dating... :tongue:


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Re: Patterns vs. Design [Re: DieCommie]
    #10309442 -

Qubit said:
The funny thing is life is clearly not intelligently designed anyway.  There are so many redundant systems that don't serve a purpose, non-redundant systems that should have redundancy (like the heart), and so many flaws that if we were designed then I would hope the designer got fired for incompetence.

Life is extraordinarily complex, but designed things are as simple as can be.  Thats the mark of a good designer/engineer, they can take away all the un-needed components and make their device as simple as possible.  Biology is the opposite; its overtly complex.


Well, that would be true if the designer was able to work from scratch.  In the case of evolution, you're looking at using and adjusting already existent body parts and functions toward new uses(for example, birds and bats evolving wings out of hands).  By that standard, nature is quite brilliant in its designs.


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Re: Patterns vs. Design [Re: Silversoul]
    #10309488 -

Why anthropomorphize nature?  Nature has no intent, it doesn't design anything.

At most you can say it's mechanisms perform a type of optimization.  An optimization that can find novel solutions which design cannot.  But on the other hand it also lacks foresight and simplicity as it only works one generation at a time with no end goal.

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Re: Patterns vs. Design [Re: OrgoneConclusion]
    #10309626 -

OrgoneConclusion said:
The final canard is that of probability. The odds of something happening is too great to have been mere happenstance; therefore it was designed. As I have repeatedly pointed out the chance of being dealt any bridge hand is (52*51*50*49*48*47*46*45*44*43*42*41*40) which is a damned huge number (try to get your calculator to handle that), yet it means absolutely nothing.


:thumbup:

Humans love to make meaning out of things, especially when it's something novel or unlikely. I call it synchronicititis... 

For an interesting show on the topic of how probabilities influence people's beliefs about the world watch Derren Brown's 'The System'. He develops a system which can predict a winning horse every time. He even demonstrates how he can flip a normal coin and get heads 10 times in a row with no trickery or design involved at all. Unlikely yes. Possible yes. Intelligent? I'll let you decide.


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Re: Patterns vs. Design [Re: DieCommie]
    #10310847 -

Qubit said:
The funny thing is life is clearly not intelligently designed anyway.  There are so many redundant systems that don't serve a purpose, non-redundant systems that should have redundancy (like the heart), and so many flaws that if we were designed then I would hope the designer got fired for incompetence.




An old Ken Miller saw.  He fails to differentiate between wisdom and intelligence.

:thumbdown:


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Re: Patterns vs. Design [Re: DieCommie]
    #10310862 -

Qubit said:
The funny thing is life is clearly not intelligently designed anyway.  There are so many redundant systems that don't serve a purpose, non-redundant systems that should have redundancy (like the heart), and so many flaws that if we were designed then I would hope the designer got fired for incompetence.

Life is extraordinarily complex, but designed things are as simple as can be.  Thats the mark of a good designer/engineer, they can take away all the un-needed components and make their device as simple as possible.  Biology is the opposite; its overtly complex.


We are prototypes. You gotta see homo sapien 2.0.

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Re: Patterns vs. Design [Re: OrgoneConclusion]
    #10310903 -

OrgoneConclusion said:
The final canard is that of probability. The odds of something happening is too great to have been mere happenstance; therefore it was designed. As I have repeatedly pointed out the chance of being dealt any bridge hand is (52*51*50*49*48*47*46*45*44*43*42*41*40) which is a damned huge number (try to get your calculator to handle that), yet it means absolutely nothing.


Mischaracterization of low probability in conjunction with the explanatory filter.  The filter does not assign intelligent causation to artifacts or events with extremely low probability if they could have happened by natural law or chance.

The number used by the filter is interesting though.  As well as how it was arrived at.

(5) Universal probability bound (UPB). The term "bound" refers to a limit.  Universal probability refers to the number of chances in the universe.  In probability Borel's Law, named for French mathematician Emile Borel, refers to something so improbable it could not happen by chance- one out of 10 to the 50th power(one followed by 50 zeros).  UPB is 10 to the 150th power.  This is arrived at by multiplying the number of all the subatomic particles in the universe (you know, the little pieces)-10 to the 80th power- by the number of times matter can change within a second-10 to the 45th power-times the age of the universe in seconds times one billion-10 to the 25th power.  This is the most conservative measurement there is for something happening due to chance.

UPB exhausts all the natural resources in the universe.


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Re: Patterns vs. Design [Re: OrgoneConclusion]
    #10310947 -

OrgoneConclusion said:
MM states that the intricate patterns of snowflakes do not show design, but that other intricate designs do; yet there is no litmus test.




That is a mischaracterization of my thought.  What I actually said was:

Quote:
The arrangement of a snowflake's atoms and structure can be described as complex (an example I'll probably use in my answer to John).  According to the EF it falls under natural law, thus eliminating it from design.


Eliminating it from [intelligent] design.  In context I was referring to intelligent design, not natural design.  I'm impressed you were reading it at all though.

Not only would I classify snowflakes as complex, they are obviously a design.

Pretty one too, don't you think?



Poor John's not getting much play with his flagellum thread in the science forum.  I think it's funny.  Those guys are mostly computer geeks.  :nerd:

Edit: The litmus test is the explanatory filter.


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Edited by Mr. Mushrooms (05/09/09 12:09 AM)

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Re: Patterns vs. Design [Re: Mr. Mushrooms]
    #10312014 -

OrgoneConclusion said:
Quote:
I've seen the claim made that this is so but I've seen no good evidence put forth to suggest it is so.

'

What about reposting the same ID drivel over and over again while telling the other posters that they don't get it?



Posted in the Science forum after my posts in this thread.

Go on, tell us about the drivel here after I shredded your arguments in this thread.  Or was that just a baseless claim?

:popcorn:

:lol:


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Re: Patterns vs. Design [Re: Mr. Mushrooms]
    #10312137 -

:popcorn:


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Re: Patterns vs. Design [Re: DieCommie]
    #10312242 -

Qubit said:
The funny thing is life is clearly not intelligently designed anyway.  There are so many redundant systems that don't serve a purpose, non-redundant systems that should have redundancy (like the heart), and so many flaws that if we were designed then I would hope the designer got fired for incompetence.

Life is extraordinarily complex, but designed things are as simple as can be.  Thats the mark of a good designer/engineer, they can take away all the un-needed components and make their device as simple as possible.  Biology is the opposite; its overtly complex.


I agree that the trend of nature does not show any driven purpose, but I disagree that the systems are "poorly designed" or in any way inelegant.

In fact, just a couple weeks ago I said to myself in microbiology lecture "god damn, I sure am glad I bailed out of mechanical engineering into biology ... I almost completely missed out on all the truly elegant systems."
For example, the system behind photosynthesis is a work of art ... and THIS is why some people assume a higher intelligence, because no human has ever come up with a design that elegant.


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Weedmaster P knows the truth.

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Re: Patterns vs. Design [Re: laserpig]
    #10312759 -

Really?  What makes photosynthesis so elegant?  It a big complicated process that isnt even half as efficient as designed solar cells.  The simpler, more efficient solar cells seem to be more elegant to me.

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Re: Patterns vs. Design [Re: DieCommie]
    #10312786 -

If we're debating elegance then this is either going to come down to personal opinion or we're going to have to be the first humans ever to find the explicit definition of beauty.


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Weedmaster P knows the truth.

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Re: Patterns vs. Design [Re: laserpig]
    #10312818 -

So you think less efficient, more complicated processes are more elegant and beautiful than simple and efficient design?  I dont.  From wikipedia: Elegance is the attribute of being unusually effective and simple..  Elegance is not just beauty, and from this definition I think its clear that a solar cell is more elegant than photosynthesis.

Still, I do see elegance in nature sure.  Novel solutions are evolution's strength and there lies the elegance of evolution I think.  But there is equally if not more elegance in the simplicity of design.

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Re: Patterns vs. Design [Re: DieCommie]
    #10313008 -

I have to agree with qubit.


Photosynthesis is way overly complex, and is therefore subject to a bunch of problems that aren't neccesary.  All those steps can be poisoned or thrown out of wack even if ever piece is faithfully produced.



Why couldn't plants just have a light sensative protein complex that produces ATP?  Glycolysis and the calvin cycle could be similarly rearranged to be much simpler and use less.


I mean, the natural process works, but to call it elegant in simplicity seems a bit much to me.


qubit, what is this efficient solar cell that can rival photosynthesis?  I wasn't aware anything was even close on an energy in/energy out scale.  I would guess you could perhaps use more of the light actually present in an area, don't know how well plants do in that regard, but I thought plants where very efficient on pretty much every scale, especially given the percent of energy outputted vs taken in.

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Re: Patterns vs. Design [Re: johnm214]
    #10313643 -

This link is relevant to the discussion: http://www.technologyreview.com/biomedicine/14148/

Quote:
To become a professional antenna designer, you can follow one of two paths: you can enroll in college- and graduate-level courses on electromagnetism, immerse yourself in the empirical study of antenna shapes, and apprentice yourself to an established technician willing to impart the closely guarded secrets of the discipline.

Or you can do what Jason Lohn did: let evolution do the work.

Physicists know a lot about Maxwell's equations and the other principles governing wireless communications. But antenna design is still pretty much a dark art, says Lohn, a computer scientist working at NASA Ames Research Center outside Mountain View, CA. "The field is so squirrelly. All your learning is through trial and error, the school of hard knocks."

So why not automate trial and error? Antenna design, Lohn believes, is one of many engineering problems that could best be solved by evolutionary algorithms, an emerging class of software that produces lots of different designs, rejecting the less fit in order to select the most functional. The resulting designs often seem a little inhuman -- inelegant and uncanny.



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We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.

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Re: Patterns vs. Design [Re: Mr. Mushrooms]
    #10313732 -

Quote:
UPB exhausts all the natural resources in the universe.


All these arguments about probability bounds are only valid for equilibrium ensemble. In an equilibrium ensemble, every possible states might occur if given enough time, but the probability of occurrence of even remotely ordered state quickly becomes vanishingly small and only arises in the for of statistical fluctuations.

Just to give an example, say you have a cubic compartment filled with some simple gas. After a short time, molecules of the gas are evenly distributed and will stay so for arbitrary long times. In such a state, the probability that every molecules of said gas end up on the right half of the compartment, although non-zero, is vanishingly small, so much so that you would need to wait several billion times the age of the universe for such a event to occur.

Following such lines, many design proponents argue that for life to have occurred by chance is vastly improbable, and they are right, but only insofar that we keep in mind the hidden assumption of "life as a fluctuation", of life out of a system at equilibrium.

In a chemical system with various initial CHNOPS (Carbon, Hydrogen, Nitrogen, etc) compounds, those compounds which form 97% and more of the total atomic composition of all living things on Earth we know of (97.90% for man supposedly), held at 1 atmosphere and 500 C, the equilibrium concentration of fairly simple compounds like pyrimidine or phenol is of the order of 10^-32, or one part per quadrillion quadrillion (sic). Extrapolate to RNA and such numbers become mindbogglingly small.

The UPB is conservative, yes, and a good guide in equilibrium systems were any deviation is considered as a statistical fluctuation. Therefore it doesn't apply to earth, even less so to the universe when looked at at different time and length scales.

It therefore seems to me that claiming that the UPB exhausts all of the universe's resources is to thoroughly misunderstand what these resources are. At best it is a false dilemma or lack of imagination.

To give an idea, let's go back to this compartment filled with gas. Put this perfectly isolated compartment between a heat source and a heat sink, that is heat it at one end and let the heat dissipate at the other end. Wait a while and what you'll see is that there is a temperature gradient along the compartment and also a concentration gradient, more molecules at the cold end and less at the hot end. Apply a bit of the same equilibrium statistical physics used before and you arrive at the erroneous conclusion that such a state is extremely improbable, that you would have, in an equilibrium situation, to wait several times the age of the universe for such a configuration of the gas molecules to occur as a fluctuation around the equilibrium state.

Yet it is the very steady state of your compartment and gas system, a state easy to make possible at will by simple applying a very simple energy flow through the system (heat source/sink).

If you don't have a simple gas but again a CHNOPS mixture, applying an energy flow through such a system breaks the detailed balance of the equilibrium state. Detailed balance means that every reaction occurring in one direction while occur equally often in the other direction. By doing so, the system has to dispense the energy flow it is subjected to by creating chemical pathways along which compounds of higher complexity are formed. That is your system is overflowing into more complex reactions in order to locally and globally conserve energy to do whatever it can with the energy it has. Keep the energy flow and your system settle into a steady state with at least one chemical cycle from which more complex molecular structures arise that would otherwise be mindbogglingly improbable in equilibrium situations.

Apply several flows in the form of mass transport, heat transport, yearly and daily solar radiation cycles, geothermal processes, etc, and you not only get a mess, but you're not even in a steady state situation any more. That is all hell break loose on quite short time scales and matter becomes in a sense "activated" and starts to explore more freely its chemical landscape in which it may lock into certain valleys in the form of cycles, hyper-cycles, replicating processes, and up to whole ecosystems, but only as long as these flows are kept in place. Shut off the sun and virtually all life dies in a matter of days or weeks.

What actually happen in these "out of equilibrium" situation is very difficult to predict, but very simple experiments and proof of concept have been done already from which, in particular, the "primordial soup" concept arose. Yet, too often the important conceptual details and corollaries behind such hypothesis are more often then not passed over and one rather focuses on specific conclusions, details and experiments; biology is still mainly an empirical science and the mass of data is so overwhelming that conceptual research is stuck with an embarrassment of riches.

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Re: Patterns vs. Design [Re: deimya]
    #10313897 -

Source?


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