What is an ID proponent's basis of comparison? (edited)

But why are you being so vague? We know, specifically, that all CSI we know the origin of is from humans. Why do you get to decide how vague we are? I could say, humans are natural, thus all CSI is natural, but you would have a problem with that, I assume. Mutation is a big one. What stops mutation from creating new information in DNA? And even if I didn't have such an obvious response, you're arguing from ignorance, which is a logical fallacy. Just because we don't know of an option doesn't mean the option doesn't exist. You're assuming we have all possible information at our disposal to answer this question. Why is that? No, but some of them will be, others won't be, but all well-made cars, as far as we know, are red, if we're only looking at red cars. No, the only known cause of CSI is humans. Do you have evidence of other intelligences making CSI? I don't know what the NFL theorem is, to me NFL is National Football League. How can it be tested? It's asserting an absolute, and absolutes can't be proven. Besides, what stops an error from occuring in DNA, or in a manuscript for that matter? The algorithm was designed, but the output wasn't. That's the whole point. The output wasn't designed by intelligence. But the algorthm could be deisgned anyw ay, and it would still create output. Whay can't an environment act in the same way as the algorithm? What makes the intelligence the deciding factor, rather than the fact that there are constraints, regardless of why or how they got there? You're focusing on the least important part and kaking it the most important.

Evolution (actually random mutations) produces new biological functions all the time:
Bacterial resistance to antibiotics or bacteriophage
The ability for some human adults to digest lactoseJust to name a couple extensively documented ones.It is incorrect to state that evolution is not directed. Evolution IS directed, by natural selection. The same way the flow of a river is directed by gravity and the surrounding landscape. However, there is no end goal of complexity (which is why >99% of life on the planet is microorganismal).

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We have many intuitions in our life and the point is that many of these intuitions are wrong. The question is, are we going to test those intuitions?
-Dan Ariely

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But why are you being so vague? We know, specifically, that all CSI we know the origin of is from humans. Why do you get to decide how vague we are?

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I'm not vague. The problem is that humans also exhibit CSI and therefore could not have designed themselves.

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I could say, humans are natural, thus all CSI is natural, but you would have a problem with that, I assume.

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Because there are no known natural processes that create CSI.

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Mutation is a big one.

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Mutation is a schnge in a position of a nucleic acid. It is the same source of new information as if a CD got chiped by a CD-ROM. It's a source of loss of information, not gain.

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What stops mutation from creating new information in DNA?

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The lack of teleology.

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And even if I didn't have such an obvious response, you're arguing from ignorance, which is a logical fallacy. Just because we don't know of an option doesn't mean the option doesn't exist.

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How can I be arguing from ignorance when I have evidence for intelligence being able to create CSI?

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You're assuming we have all possible information at our disposal to answer this question. Why is that?

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No I do not. I'm making an inference to the best explanation. That's what science is supposed to be doing. I could be wrong. But theories in science come and go. That's how it is.

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No, but some of them will be, others won't be, but all well-made cars, as far as we know, are red, if we're only looking at red cars.

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But there is nothing in those red cars that specifically ties them to being well made.

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No, the only known cause of CSI is humans. Do you have evidence of other intelligences making CSI?

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But what in humans is that makes CSI? I don't need evidence for other intelligences. I extrapolate on what is already known. The higher the intelligence, more CSI it can produce. So it's obvious that there should ba an even higher intelligence for the CSI that humans didn't produce.

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I don't know what the NFL theorem is, to me NFL is National Football League. How can it be tested? It's asserting an absolute, and absolutes can't be proven. Besides, what stops an error from occuring in DNA, or in a manuscript for that matter?

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If you read the link I posted to you few posts back you would know. NFL is a No Free Lunch theorem. [quote]The inability of any evolutionary search procedure to perform better than average indicate[s] the importance of incorporating problem-specific knowledge into the behavior of the [search] algorithm.[/quote]It explains that no evolutionary algorith can produce new information unless it takes in intelligent input first.CiteSeerX — No free lunch theorems for optimization

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The algorithm was designed, but the output wasn't. That's the whole point. The output wasn't designed by intelligence.

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The output was predisposed by the design of the algorith itself. The algorith ran it's course, and got the desired output. All the information the algorithm needed to produce the output was already in it. It came there from the intelligent input that built it. The algorithm itself produced no new information. The only thing that the algorith did was transform and process the inputed information to output the desired information.

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But the algorthm could be deisgned anyw ay, and it would still create output.

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Nope. It would create an input but it could be wrong. You need a cpecific input for a cpecific output.

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Whay can't an environment act in the same way as the algorithm?

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Becasue the environment has no ability to plan ahead and produce new information and buid such an algorithm.

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What makes the intelligence the deciding factor, rather than the fact that there are constraints, regardless of why or how they got there? You're focusing on the least important part and kaking it the most important.

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That's because it is the most important part! The constraints are defined by an intelligence for a specific goal! That's the whole point. You yourself said that evolution has no goal. Meaning it has no constraints. Which means that mutations will happen randomly. They will not be constrained to a specific goal to produce a specific biological function.

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Evolution (actually random mutations) produces new biological functions all the time:

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Nope. Evolution has never been known to produce new information.

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Bacterial resistance to antibiotics or bacteriophage

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This is loss of information.

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Bacterial resistance to the antibiotic, rifampin, can result from a commonly occurring spontaneous mutation. Rifampin inhibits bacterial transcription by interfering with normal RNA polymerase activity (Gale et al., 1981; Levin and Hatfull, 1993). Bacteria can acquire resistance by a point mutation of the -subunit of RNA polymerase, which is encoded by the rpoB gene (Enright et al., 1998; Taniguchi et al., 1996; Wang et al., 2001; Williams et al., 1998). This mutation sufficiently alters the structure of the -subunit so that it loses specificity for the rifampin molecule. As a result, the RNA polymerase no longer has an affinity for rifampin, and is no longer affected by the inhibitory effect of the antibiotic.

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Look at table 1. You will see, that all accounts of the supposed gain in information from the resistance to antibiotics is actually a loss of information. The mutations made the proteins brake down, or loose the afinity to bond witht he antibiotic. And that's how we get the resistance. Not by making new structures and biological functions, but by braking them.http://www.trueorigin.org/bacteria01.asp

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The ability for some human adults to digest lactose

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This is not the product of gaining new information by evolution. This is more akin of switching a light swithc from "on" to "off". There is a specific mechanism that does this in people.

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However, lactose deficiency in adults is not in fact abnormal, but the norm! Research has shown that the gene for lactase normally switches off as children are weaned. And a genetic mutation that results in lactase production not being switched off accounts for the ability of certain people to drink milk into adulthood.

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Lactose intolerance - creation.com

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Just to name a couple extensively documented ones.

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It seems you were wrong.

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It is incorrect to state that evolution is not directed. Evolution IS directed, by natural selection. The same way the flow of a river is directed by gravity and the surrounding landscape. However, there is no end goal of complexity (which is why >99% of life on the planet is microorganismal).

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My not-directd, I mean there is no goal in mind.Edited by Smooth Operator, : No reason given.

But you're jumping to unwarranted conclusions. We have exhibit A: all CSI with known origins is created by humans.We have exhibit B: CSI we don't known the origin for.How do you go from these two exhibits to "Some other, unknown, unseen, unevidenced intelligence created this CSI for which we have no evidence for the origin of? Mutation is a change, an addition, or a loss of a base or group of bases. In your CD example, to make it more appropriate to biological mutation, you're copying the CD onto your computer. While it's copying, you jump really hard on the floor, and the CD skips back a couple millimeters. The recording software keeps recording, but now you have a duplicated part of the data you were copying. Well, what do you know, it's a gain in information. Amazing how that works.And, lest you say, but the jumping is an action by an intelligent agent, a CD can skip through technological malfunction, too. Just as the DNA copying mechanism can "skip" back and recopy a portion it has already copied. This is an increase, a gain, more information than was ther before. You have humans creating a specific subset of CSI, and other CSI for which we have no evidence on the source. You are then positing a source and claiming it si the only option. You have a lack of evidence and are using that as evidence in itself. If I have very sensitive weather equipment that shows that weather near the ocean shore is affected to a large degree, perhaps even created, by the interaction of the water and the air, and that's all the weather I look at, am I scientifically sound in saying that, because all weather I know the source of is from ocean water interacting with air, that all weather is created by ocean water interacting with air? When someone points out to me weather being created over mountains, and I assert, there must be some type fo ocean water floating above the mountain that we can't see, am I making an argument from ignorance, or am I making an inference to the best explanation? You're doing nothing more than my misled weather person. Life on this planet is predisposed by the enviornment in which it develops. Evolution ran its course, and got the desired output. DO you not understand using an experiment to mimic natural events?Yes, new information came from the algorithm. In one case, they wanted to get a better walking program for a robot. They started with what they could come up with on their own, and then let the computer work it over from an evolutionary standpoint. The computer came back with a novel program to create a novel walking style that the scientists had never seen, never considered, and wouldn't have been able to come up with on their own. In that case, the random mutations did better than an intelligence. OK, fine. I'll reset the example. You have a field of well made cars at a Ferrari enthusiasts convention, but you decide to only look at red cars. All the cars you look at are well made, they're all Ferraris. "Hmm, every well made car I know the color of is red, therefore, all well-made cars are red." Again, you're assuming your conclusion here ecause you want there to be a higher intelligence. You have no higher intelligence in evidence, in fact, you have one example of intelligence. So, you have one intelligence make a certain type of CSI. How can you infer from that that a higher intelligence would make more? How do you know this? Are you assuming it? What CSI, made form a known higher intelligence do you have with which to compare our own? Why does it need to plan ahead? It only needs to plan if a single output is the desired end point. If any end point can be an end point, then it matters not what path things take, thus no planning ahead is necessary.If you want to get form your house to the Grand Canyon, you need to plan a route, perhaps trying to get their faster or more efficiently than other paths. If you merely want to be somewhere else, and it doesn't matter where, there's no need to plan, you just go, and viola, you got there! See that, you said it yourself, "specific goal." There is no specific goal, there's just a variety of possible outcomes, and one is what actually happens. We're not the goal of the universe, we just happen to be what ended up here.

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In algorithmic information theory (a subfield of computer science), the Kolmogorov complexity of an object such as a piece of text is a measure of the computational resources needed to specify the object.

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And this is related to its probability of occurrence how?It is obvious to me that you don't know what you are talking about.

That table so conveniently leaves out resistance gained by the PRODUCTION of beta-lactamases, which cleave the beta-lactam ring of penicillin-like antibiotics. Or how about restriction enzymes which enzymes that have evolved to cut the DNA of invading viruses?I maybe didn't use the best examples before, but they were just off the top of my head. Here, have some more.* The ability of a bacterium to digest nylon (Negoro et al. 1994; Thomas n.d.; Thwaites 1985)
* Adaptation in yeast to a low-phosphate environment (Francis and Hansche 1972; 1973; Hansche 1975);
* The ability of E. coli to hydrolyze galactosylarabinose (Hall 1981; Hall and Zuzel 1980);
* Evolution of multicellularity in a unicellular green alga (Boraas 1983; Boraas et al. 1998);
* modification of E. coli's fucose pathway to metabolize propanediol (Lin and Wu 1984);
* evolution in Klebsiella bacteria of a new metabolic pathway for metabolizing 5-carbon sugars (Hartley 1984)Even just one of these is sufficient to render yours statement "Evolution have never been known to produce new information" false.And stop saying evolution in this case. Mutations produce new information. Are you seriously trying to say that there is no such thing as a mutation that could produce a new protein with a new function?

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We have many intuitions in our life and the point is that many of these intuitions are wrong. The question is, are we going to test those intuitions?
-Dan Ariely

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But you're jumping to unwarranted conclusions. We have exhibit A: all CSI with known origins is created by humans.

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We have exhibit B: CSI we don't known the origin for.

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How do you go from these two exhibits to "Some other, unknown, unseen, unevidenced intelligence created this CSI for which we have no evidence for the origin of?

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Because there is currently no better explanation.

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Mutation is a change, an addition, or a loss of a base or group of bases. In your CD example, to make it more appropriate to biological mutation, you're copying the CD onto your computer. While it's copying, you jump really hard on the floor, and the CD skips back a couple millimeters. The recording software keeps recording, but now you have a duplicated part of the data you were copying. Well, what do you know, it's a gain in information. Amazing how that works.

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Not quite. You have more complexity, but not more specified complexity. To have more information you need both more complexity and more specificity. This would increase what we would call the statistical part of information. Only the amount of bits needed to record it. But you have no more of semantics, and that's what you need also to have new CSI.For an example:MY HOUSE IS BIG!This is information. If I duplicate this 4 times, I wil get this:MY HOUSE IS BIG!
MY HOUSE IS BIG!
MY HOUSE IS BIG!
MY HOUSE IS BIG!Did I get new information? No, I got more LETTERS, but they give me the same amount of semantics, that is, meaning, as the previous version. Yes, you ahve more statistical part, but that is obviously not enough. You need both complexity and specificity.Now for the third example, we are going to increase the information.MY HOUSE IS BIG!
AND IT HAS A RED ROOF!As you can clearly see, you have more statistical part, and more semantics than in the first case. Not only do you know my house is big, but you also know it has a red roof. Now this is real increase in information.

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And, lest you say, but the jumping is an action by an intelligent agent, a CD can skip through technological malfunction, too. Just as the DNA copying mechanism can "skip" back and recopy a portion it has already copied. This is an increase, a gain, more information than was ther before.

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No, it's more nnucleotides, not necessarily more information. New nucleotides do not equl new information as same as new letters don't equal new information.

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You have humans creating a specific subset of CSI, and other CSI for which we have no evidence on the source. You are then positing a source and claiming it si the only option.

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I'm not saying it's the only ultimate option. I'm saying it's the only current option. This is called the inference to the best explanation.If you saw an icecube, whould you conclude that it's temperature was cooled down by some source to less than 0C? Just because you didn't see it happen, would you conclude that even though all icecubes up 'till now have been under 0C, that this one is over that temperature?What I'm doing is called the inference to the best explanation. If you dont' like my method than take it up with Darwin because he also used it.

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You have a lack of evidence and are using that as evidence in itself.

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What lack of evidence? Did you actually see every singel life form evolve from the first cell?

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If I have very sensitive weather equipment that shows that weather near the ocean shore is affected to a large degree, perhaps even created, by the interaction of the water and the air, and that's all the weather I look at, am I scientifically sound in saying that, because all weather I know the source of is from ocean water interacting with air, that all weather is created by ocean water interacting with air? When someone points out to me weather being created over mountains, and I assert, there must be some type fo ocean water floating above the mountain that we can't see, am I making an argument from ignorance, or am I making an inference to the best explanation? You're doing nothing more than my misled weather person.

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Well it is possible for other sources to create a specific result, but untill we find them there is no reason to invent them. If you didn't investigate other source, than you are arguing from ignorance. But we have investigated other sources and they have been shown not to be able to do what intelligence can. So untill we find them intelligence will be the only known source. I'm not saying there aren't any, but we have no good candidates for now.

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Life on this planet is predisposed by the enviornment in which it develops.

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No it is not. The enivronment does not dictate life to arise from non life. Just as ink and paper do not dictate to themself and predispose a novel.

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Evolution ran its course, and got the desired output. DO you not understand using an experiment to mimic natural events?

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What?

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Yes, new information came from the algorithm. In one case, they wanted to get a better walking program for a robot. They started with what they could come up with on their own, and then let the computer work it over from an evolutionary standpoint. The computer came back with a novel program to create a novel walking style that the scientists had never seen, never considered, and wouldn't have been able to come up with on their own. In that case, the random mutations did better than an intelligence.

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No. You don't get it. The algorithm by itself would be able to do nothing unless it was fed information about the problem from the start. It's like a really big calculation. People just don't have time to do it, so they let the computer do the work for them. But untill you made the computer and the algorith, you can't make it do anything.When you type in 2+2 in the calculator, and it gets you 4, did it produce new information? Did the calculator itself produce this n umber 4? No it didn't. It has been programed before to give you this number.It's the same with the evolutionary algorithms. They have been programed from the start with vast outcomes. And some of those combinations of outcomes, the scientists don't know if they will be usefull. But non the less all the information is already in the computer. So since the scientists can't bother with the calculations, because it will take to much time, they let the computer do it's job and select the best possible combination. But as I said, all the combinations are already in the machine. The evolutionary algorithm just picks the best one becasue it is too much tiresome and time consuming for scientists to do it hemselves.

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OK, fine. I'll reset the example. You have a field of well made cars at a Ferrari enthusiasts convention, but you decide to only look at red cars. All the cars you look at are well made, they're all Ferraris. "Hmm, every well made car I know the color of is red, therefore, all well-made cars are red."

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Wrong, since we have already looked at other sources in nature and found them lacking.

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Again, you're assuming your conclusion here ecause you want there to be a higher intelligence.

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You are assuming you know me.

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You have no higher intelligence in evidence, in fact, you have one example of intelligence.

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The CSI in living organisms points to a higher intelligence. It's a logical necessity.

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So, you have one intelligence make a certain type of CSI. How can you infer from that that a higher intelligence would make more?

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Becasue we see in people that those with higher intelligence can create more than those with less intelligence.

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How do you know this? Are you assuming it? What CSI, made form a known higher intelligence do you have with which to compare our own?

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It doesn't have to be known. Because a design by logical necessity means there is a designer.

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Why does it need to plan ahead?

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So it can get the desired goal.

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It only needs to plan if a single output is the desired end point. If any end point can be an end point, then it matters not what path things take, thus no planning ahead is necessary.

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Yes, but not all outcomes are biolocically relevant. And only some are better than other, and those are the ones you specifically need.

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If you want to get form your house to the Grand Canyon, you need to plan a route, perhaps trying to get their faster or more efficiently than other paths. If you merely want to be somewhere else, and it doesn't matter where, there's no need to plan, you just go, and viola, you got there!

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True. And do you need specific nucleotide positions for specific biological functions or not?

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See that, you said it yourself, "specific goal." There is no specific goal, there's just a variety of possible outcomes, and one is what actually happens. We're not the goal of the universe, we just happen to be what ended up here.

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That is your assumption, save it for later. Anyway, if we are talking about biological reality, there are only specific outcomes that will work. So yes, there is a specific goal.

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And this is related to its probability of occurrence how?

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I already explained it to you. The bigger the complexity, the less chance you can reproduce it by chance.If you have a lock with 1,000 combinations, and you have a lock with 10,000,000 combinations, which one has less chance of being opened by chance? Obviously the latter one. The occurance of the desired combination that openes the lock is inversly correlated with lock's combination complexity.

And what does the chance of reproducing it have to do with Kolmogorov complexity, the computational resources required to specify the object?

You're quite wrong here. Intelligence set up the methods of information recording, selection, mutation and reproduction, but once that's done, and the information recording system has been initialised, the systems just operate and generate 'specified complexity' without any guidance from anyone. In other words, the solutions are not known in advance, no intelligence guides the process and no active information is supplied to get to the desired goal.What this means is that evolutionary systems, once set up, have been demonstrated to do what you claim is impossible, that is generate 'specified complexity' without intelligent guidance.If you still don't believe this, I will supply you a link or two.You could validly ask - could such an evolutionary system arise naturally? But that would be a separate question. Would you like to debate it in a separate thread? I think it's a very interesting topic where there actually is something to debate.

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That table so conveniently leaves out resistance gained by the PRODUCTION of beta-lactamases, which cleave the beta-lactam ring of penicillin-like antibiotics. Or how about restriction enzymes which enzymes that have evolved to cut the DNA of invading viruses?

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Again, it's the same thing as with the lactose. Those functions are turned on when they are needed.

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* The ability of a bacterium to digest nylon (Negoro et al. 1994; Thomas n.d.; Thwaites 1985)
* Adaptation in yeast to a low-phosphate environment (Francis and Hansche 1972; 1973; Hansche 1975);
* The ability of E. coli to hydrolyze galactosylarabinose (Hall 1981; Hall and Zuzel 1980);
* Evolution of multicellularity in a unicellular green alga (Boraas 1983; Boraas et al. 1998);
* modification of E. coli's fucose pathway to metabolize propanediol (Lin and Wu 1984);
* evolution in Klebsiella bacteria of a new metabolic pathway for metabolizing 5-carbon sugars (Hartley 1984)

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Again the same thing. All changes are either built in switching from on/off position. Or a simple degradation. There is nothing new being built to help the cell perform a new function.

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Yet, the EII enzyme still possesses the esterase function of the parent esterase. Thus, the mutational alteration results in a reduction of the parent enzyme’s specificity (Figure 4). This enables it to hydrolyze a wider range of oligomers that include nylon oligomers.

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A Creationist Perspective of Beneficial Mutations in Bacteria | Answers in Genesis

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HGT of plasmids merely transfers genetic material from one cell to another. Introduction of specific genes, such as antibiotic resistance genes, via a plasmid can be beneficial for bacterial survival. However, HGT of plasmids does not directly account for the origin of the gene(s) being transferred, merely their movement within the microbial world. The genes’ existence is a priori.

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Or as you can see we have systems that transfer already existing genes, that is, already existing information to other cells, by transposons. So now other cells can perform functions that those that gave them the genes could. This is just copying of already existing information. This is all there is, unless you can show that there are some examples that specifically state that new information has been evolved by a darwinian process.

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Even just one of these is sufficient to render yours statement "Evolution have never been known to produce new information" false.

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Acutally it's not since all you showed my are examples of degradation or systems performing their functions which you mistook for evolution.

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And stop saying evolution in this case. Mutations produce new information. Are you seriously trying to say that there is no such thing as a mutation that could produce a new protein with a new function?

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I have never seen any. Show me evidence. I want to see an article that specifically shows how a darwinian process has built something new. Not just switched an already system on, or degraded it, or transported it from other cells. But actually built something new.

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And what does the chance of reproducing it have to do with Kolmogorov complexity, the computational resources required to specify the object?

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The more bits you have the bigger event you can specify.

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You're quite wrong here. Intelligence set up the methods of information recording, selection, mutation and reproduction, but once that's done, and the information recording system has been initialised, the systems just operate and generate 'specified complexity' without any guidance from anyone.

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Well duh! That's the point. The guidance is in the starting parameters. Nobody said an intelligence is going to be guiding the algorith every single step of the way. But the initial parameters will. And they are designed by an intelligence.

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In other words, the solutions are not known in advance,

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It's not known but it exist. And it has been among other solutions inputed in the computer by an intelligence.

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no intelligence guides the process and no active information is supplied to get to the desired goal.

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The initial parameters are what is guiding the process and they were designed by an intelligence.

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What this means is that evolutionary systems, once set up, have been demonstrated to do what you claim is impossible, that is generate 'specified complexity' without intelligent guidance.

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Again, wrong. Everything is in the initial parameters! That's where the guidance comes from.

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If you still don't believe this, I will supply you a link or two.

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Please do.

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You could validly ask - could such an evolutionary system arise naturally? But that would be a separate question.

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Obviously it couldn.

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Would you like to debate it in a separate thread? I think it's a very interesting topic where there actually is something to debate.

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I'm all for it.

[qs]Not really. You should read Wolpert's work on NFL theorems.quote:The inability of any evolutionary search procedure to perform better than average indicate[s] the importance of incorporating problem-specific knowledge into the behavior of the [search] algorithm.He basicly explains how for any kind of algorith, including evolutionary algorithms, you need to input information first to get any information out. An algorith by itself is useless unless it uses an intelligent input.[/qs]Sorry Smooth Operator, one of the authors of the original no free lunch paper you quote has written an explicit refutation of the use made of NFL theorems by Dembski. Note that he is also quite critical of some evolutionary biologists so he is clearly not biased in their favour.He says in essence that Dembski's use of the NFL theorems is so vague and imprecise that he actually demonstrates nothing. Here's a link.Talk Reason: arguments against creationism, intelligent design, and religious apologeticsYou are also misunderstanding what the NFLs claim. They say that if you want the best results when searching a specific space you need a tailored search algorithm. This is not the same as your claim that you need intelligent input for the algorithm to work on. You can see this by reading your own quote above.Edited by Richard Townsend, : added 'the best'