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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.

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Thus Kauffman, to prevent the probabilities from getting too small, conjectures laws of self- organization according to which life will almost surely arise spontaneously on a planet like ours. From the perspective of the Explanatory Filter, all of these moves have but one purpose: to block the conclusion that the proper mode of explanation for life is design.

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Sorry it took so long to get back here.  Picking, processing and eating some of the 569 morels weighing just under 8 pounds were responsible.  All picked in a 24 hour period.  Priorities ya know.

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So, again, the UPB does not exhaust the universe's resources. What it exhausts are the resources of a completely dead, bland, unchanging universe. In slightly technical terms, it only exhausts the resources of an hypothetical universe that would be in complete thermodynamical equilibrium. Such an equilibrium is clearly not the case for our universe as observed everywhere around us. Yes, it is a bit of jargon, but it is made slightly more precise that way.

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Thus Kauffman, to prevent the probabilities from getting too small, conjectures laws of self- organization according to which life will almost surely arise spontaneously on a planet like ours. From the perspective of the Explanatory Filter, all of these moves have but one purpose: to block the conclusion that the proper mode of explanation for life is design.

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Can you see how disingenuous that is ? How can you argue with such dogmatic non-sense ? Dembski seems to dismiss anything that explains something in terms of laws by, purposefully of not, misunderstanding it, and then rushing until the third step of his explanatory filter. He never really explains why these falsifiable conjectures aren't valid other than by calling them "conjectures", let alone did he try to understand the ramification of such ideas.

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deimya said:

As for the EF, I'll try to break up my argument against it.

In order not to produce false positives:

• the first filter entails the extraordinary claim that one may exhaust the necessities of all natural laws on top of the claim that all natural laws have been exhausted. Another way of seeing it is that it entails the extraordinary claim that science is done and that we have the actual capacity to dry it out of all its outcomes empirically or using gedankenexperiment. Hence the argument that science must be static for the 1st filter to make sense, which it is not.
  
• the second filter, by referring to chance, has recourse to possibilities of natural laws when there are no more necessities (for something to happen by chance, it must at least not violate any known natural laws), and therefore puts one in the hypothetical situation of the exhaustion of all laws. In terms of present day pure sciences, the common denominator and paradigm that glues together and permeates everything is energy, and the only situation in which energy doesn't produce any necessities is the case when it is evenly distributed across all possible states of the universe, when it doesn't flow any-more. This is the case of a universe in thermodynamic equilibrium (synonymous with maximum entropy), a case that doesn't apply at all.
  

Hence my claim that from the evidences of the world around us, the EF should never get past its first filter, and each time it does so has a virtually unit probability of producing a false positive. One may reply that one produces a true positive when looking at a watch and using the EF to finally claim it is designed, but one must keep in mind that the "designer" of such watch is also part of the necessities of natural laws. Indeed, the designer is inextricably part of the universe in general, and more importantly of the earth in particular, the latter forming an ecosystem through which a incredible amount of solar energy flows, and therefore a system that abounds of necessities , i.e. in thermodynamic equilibrium.

Assigning probabilities to systems out of equilibrium is a notoriously difficult problem in physics and biophysics. It has to do with chaos, dynamical systems and our lack of present understanding of them.

One may want to discuss the metaphysical naturalism therein, but the point is that the EF isn't good enough, or at all.


With all that said, I can't help but crave for some of your delicious morels. I should take the time and go mushroom hunting too. It's certainly more lively than reading about Pad� approximates and continuous fractions.

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deimya said:

I did not read Biochemical Predestination but from what I got (google and all that), it is one of the first textbook advocating necessity and it came out in 1969.

Reading the few counter arguments I could find, supposedly related to Kenyon's "conversion", they seem to suffer from the same misinterpretation of probabilities (e.g. roll a dice a thousand time and the probability for obtaining the actual sequence of number you obtain is vanishingly small, yet it is the precise sequence you obtained after all) by assessing necessities with respect to a posteriori probability distributions rather than a priori and therefore, unknowingly at best, commit themselves to unrealistic probability counting.

Said another way, it unwittingly posits oneself to a situation where the probability distribution is maximally uncertain in the past rather than the future. It is thus equivalent to assuming the past situation of early Earth and universe to be in thermodynamic equilibrium situation (maximum uncertainty/entropy) in the past and then trying the assess the probability of life arising from such situation. It therefore seems to me that the book isn't well grounded in far from equilibrium thermodynamic.

We only have one data point for life: the one we know of, hence the very risky business of making sense or nonsense of it using probabilities. Such is our plight.

Anyway, all this is only as good as the information I could find on the internet. They hold a copy of Biochemical Predestination at the the chemistry and biology department library, I'll try and have a look at it during my next coffee break.

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johnm214 said:

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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Do you want to propose a mechanism for having one of these 'light sensitive protein complex' that is part of a self-replecating, adaptable organism ingetrating its energy use and production to specific levels across billillions of biological processes in the organism?

Photosynthesis is elegant because it can adapt to different light conditions, because it is sufficiently complicated that mutations in the genes that control for aspects of the organism can affect the organism so slightly that beneficial mutations can start to emerge from the chaos.

I think it is severly close minded to consider a solar cell as better than photosynthesis.



solar cells do NOT function self-sustainedly within a system that reproduces itsel and maintains itself and adapts to changing environments. Solar cells do not exist holographically within every part of a multifaceted complex organism.

Every solar cell we know has been created by a person or a machine made by a person.

every specimin of photosynthetic organism, on the other hand, utilises technology that has sustained millions / billions / 6,000 years.

Whether it was designed or not, it is absolutely beautiful.

You see the solar cell as more elegant because it seems to do its function more efficiently and simply. But that is to reduce photosynthetis to 'harnessing of light energy'.

That is not what photosynthesis is.. photosynthesis is a lot more. It not only harnesses light energy but does so using biochemical units that can be coded into a standardised DNA/RNA system, harnessing the energy into chemical potentials that are sustained in a specific balance by hundreds of different factors all interacting simultaneously. This occurs seperately in each cell and can be activated differentially across seasons or if conditions change. The functionality of this system is wound in with the functionality of thousands of other systems within the human body.

Solar cells on the other hand can produce a gross electrical potential. This is obviously more efficient for our HUMAN uses in technology because we want to harness enough energy to use our appliances, as well as do so with materials that we can find and use and understand ourselves. But as of yet I have not seen any solar cell technology that can exist in nature and withstand the forces of generations and ages gone past.

As for your comment 'light sensitive protein that produces ATP', what do you think happens in Chloroplasts?

Light sensitive proteins focus energy into a process that leads to ATP being available.

Proteins do not 'produce' chemicals... they interact with the chemicals around them. EAch stage of the interaction needs to be moderated to ensure that the process occurs smoothly. Thus it is beneficial for there to be a few stages involved in the process that leads to ATP being available, because this way there are more potential, subtle ways that the plant can adapt. Although the process is less efficient in quantitative terms of energy conversion, it is far more elegant than any man-made technology because it exists in such a complex, inter-related ecosystem and has managed to exist along side so many different factors in the world.

Solar technology is only good in the small, specific, humane world of controlled systems and isolated functionalities.

Hey, solar technology is fuckin amazing too.. but its not quite as beautiful nor elegant as photosynthesis, in my opinion. I hope that my extrapolations in this post can help convert at least one of you

This is not a flame - I am an honest advocate of the complexity and beauty in life.

OrgoneConclusion said:

I can't help but notice that no one addressed the two examples I gave in the OP. Many tens of thousands thought the two artefacts mentioned to be designed, but when examined closely, turned out to be natural in origin.

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OrgoneConclusion said:

I can't help but notice that no one addressed the two examples I gave in the OP. Many tens of thousands thought the two artefacts mentioned to be designed, but when examined closely, turned out to be natural in origin.

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johnm214 said:

What are these bullets and how have you beaten him?

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johnm214 said:

I've not seen any argument explaining how the explanatory filter, which you seem to say might as well define ID, would dispose of the examples you or he raises with any reasoning.

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johnm214 said:

In fact, I've never seen the explantory filter used- its all just vague claims.

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johnm214 said:

Its like saying you've got a scientific way to test god:  "get evidence of god , if the evidence leads to the conclusion that god exists then god exists".  It may well be true but it doesn't cover how you actually go about finding such evidence.  Likewise with the chance of something being natural ans so forth to the extent I've seen here.

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