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Author Topic:   Detecting Design
Iblis
Member (Idle past 3886 days)
Posts: 663
Joined: 11-17-2005


Message 5 of 59 (540241)
12-22-2009 9:47 PM
Reply to: Message 3 by Tanndarr
12-22-2009 6:24 PM


Re: Once more into the breach
Mmm, don't give up yet. I'm interested in this. Here's an illusion I fell into briefly over in the ID-ology thread.
I had the idea, when reading your comments about Mount Rushmore, that you were talking about some hypothetical future edifice, once the sharp edges and tool marks had eroded away and the various plaques decribing its construction and tour guides yammering on about it were gone. Someone standing off in the distance could still see several big heads, but there would probably also be people who argued that it was just an illusion formed by natural processes, the way they do when Elvis appears on a burnt pop-tart, for example.
In such a case we ought to be able to go in there and do some science and settle the question as to which view was true, and I had the idea that you were saying that this was similar to the science Dembski was describing in relation to biological systems. You were making more sense to me than you ever had before.
So, how would we tell? How do we know that those Cro-Magnon cave-paintings arent the same kind of things that Jesus keeps popping up on all over eBay? I know we know, but how do we know? What's our method?
I don't like CSI, because the word "Specified" is another delusional tail-chaser like "Design". Matt Young uses the word "Non-random" in its place, but he also describes an analogy for evolution, the well-known mechanism by which it occurs. What distinguishes this from that?
The fact that they are big heads, isn't enough. The fact that there may be a tradition that someone made them, absolutely isn't enough. There are traditions all over the UK that this or that giant random monolithic feature is King Arthur's codpiece or the the shoe of Finn mac Cool. And, they aren't. We know that.
How do we know?

This message is a reply to:
 Message 3 by Tanndarr, posted 12-22-2009 6:24 PM Tanndarr has replied

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Iblis
Member (Idle past 3886 days)
Posts: 663
Joined: 11-17-2005


Message 9 of 59 (540715)
12-28-2009 2:37 AM
Reply to: Message 8 by Coyote
12-22-2009 11:56 PM


Is it science?
I, want a lot more information still I think. I'm not pressuring you, I'd like to hear from a variety of fields and see if it all sounds the same.
There were no formulas when I studied, and probably none since.
We learned by looking at thousands of examples of natural breaks, and thousands of examples of breaks from known sites.
We learned to look for certain clues; if those clues are present we can infer human manufacture--but of course you can never prove it.
This sounds like, identifying human design in the real world is still more of an art than a science. The kind of thing you may get a knack for by practicing, but can't develop a comprehensive methodology for.
One of the primary clues for North American archaeology is that most artifacts are found in sites, with a clear association to human activity. Those are easy.
It gets tougher with ancient sites where most non-stone clues are long gone. And the paleontologists, dealing with isolated remains perhaps millions of years old, have to be real experts. And most of them are, or consult with those who are.
And this sounds like more of that, plus a lot of exactly what he is saying about context and so forth. Is that really all we have?
Take my example, what if you found some big head looking things that were too eroded to be sure about these "breaks". They have consistencies though, that resemble eyes and noses and maybe an ear or two on some of them. Irregularities on the tops and sides, too, that could well be an attempt to represent hair.
Human or natural? Or we just don't know?

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Iblis
Member (Idle past 3886 days)
Posts: 663
Joined: 11-17-2005


Message 14 of 59 (541823)
01-06-2010 1:39 PM
Reply to: Message 13 by Tanndarr
01-06-2010 12:26 PM


identifying design based on knowledge of the designer
If the liths are found stratigraphically co-located with evidence of hominid occupation then the reliability of identification as a lith increases.
This context argument keeps coming up. Would it be correct to say that the only way real science can identify unfamiliar design is by knowing other details about the imputed designer?

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Iblis
Member (Idle past 3886 days)
Posts: 663
Joined: 11-17-2005


Message 19 of 59 (542406)
01-09-2010 8:12 PM
Reply to: Message 15 by Tanndarr
01-06-2010 2:06 PM


Re: identifying design based on knowledge of the designer
1. Evidence of manufacture
2. Co-location with evidence of occupation
3. Materials not native to the region of the find
I would think that if any one of those criteria were particularly good it might reliably identify the item as an artifact just by itself. Reliability of the identification shifts as additional evidence supports or refutes the original identification.
I'm going to skip past the singular there for now and ask this:
Does this mean that if we found evidence of manufacture AND materials not native to the region, we could reliably infer design?
A good example is Stonehenge. Really it's just a bunch of rocks. But those rocks appear to be cut intentionally, and at least some of them turn out to be from other parts of Britain than Salisbury. Even if we didn't know about the pre-Iron Age inhabitants of the area, would we be able to infer design? Even if all the stones had fallen down so that none of them were tabled anymore?

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Iblis
Member (Idle past 3886 days)
Posts: 663
Joined: 11-17-2005


Message 41 of 59 (542663)
01-11-2010 5:03 PM
Reply to: Message 29 by Brad H
01-10-2010 4:21 AM


Re: identifying design based on knowledge of the designer
If I were flying over a small island and saw "natural" drift wood formed on the beach to say, "Marooned...send help!" It would be absurd to conclude they just randomly floated in to that position. Likewise if I saw a cloud floating by on a lazy summer's day that kind of resembled the cartoon character "Sponge Bob Square Pants," it would be equally absurd for me to think it was "designed" by an intelligent source. In both cases I am relying on my own knowledge of human activity. I am not aware of any giant cartoon cloud making machines anywhere made by humans, but I am aware that only humans can form coherent sentences out of drift wood. So in one sense it is a "quantity" of evidence because of our knowledge and understanding about human activity so far.
Right, and this is the inference of design based on a detailed and certain knowledge of a designer. I believe we are all agreed that this is a good point of methodology, where available.
Remember the "face" on Mars?
Yep. What rote methodology can we use to successfully distinguish out design between the face on Mars and the face on the Sphinx? Between the rocks at Stonehenge and those in the Devil's Postpile? Between the faces at Mount Rushmore and the various Seats, Hoofprints, Heads, and Giants in the British Isles? Between the Venus de Milo and the asteroid Eros?
For a while there it could have been interpreted either way.
Not really, it was a digital ghost, similar to most c21 UFO pictures. But sure, what if it weren't? What then? Is it or isn't it? How do we know?
Knowledge of a designer doesn't help us here, we have no supporting evidence for people on Mars. That doesn't mean they aren't there, but a big recognizable shape doesn't mean they are either. Eros is a giant stylized pseudo-heart shape. We do not infer the presence of a division of Hallmark in the sky. Why not?

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Iblis
Member (Idle past 3886 days)
Posts: 663
Joined: 11-17-2005


Message 44 of 59 (542678)
01-11-2010 8:06 PM
Reply to: Message 11 by Parasomnium
12-28-2009 6:53 AM


distinguishing design based on a knowledge of the process
Something that may help us that we haven't touched on real hard yet is the distinction between design in an informational sense -- the structure of complexity -- and design in a functional sense, inference of a designer.
Another question that bugs me about design is whether it, once detected, necessarily implies an intelligent designer. ID-ists always implicitly assume that it does, but I think it's possible for design to arise in (two?) different ways. One way is by intelligence, exemplified by Paley's watch; another way is by a long series of small steps, with trial and error as the guiding principle. In both ways "a lot of work is done"*, either by a lot of careful planning and very few trials, or by no planning at all and a great many trials. In the first method the work is invested in the planning, in the second it goes into the trials. Humans can use both methods with success. If a mechanism can be found that automates the second method, then there is no reason to conclude that a designer must by necessity be involved.
This describes our problem very well. Things may look "designed". But we know that some of them aren't. What's our best methodology for telling the difference that has been offered up so far?
For me, the question then becomes: how can we determine which of the two methods led to the design we see? (A useful indicator might be the many dead ends we see in the design of life. They do not point to careful planning.)

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Iblis
Member (Idle past 3886 days)
Posts: 663
Joined: 11-17-2005


Message 48 of 59 (544112)
01-23-2010 8:57 PM
Reply to: Message 45 by RAZD
01-11-2010 10:33 PM


Inferring design based on hypothetical use
B. We can clearly identify purpose/s for the artifact.
Let's touch this harder. This strikes me as a way to do some science. We find a sharp flint, for example, but we don't have enough of the other things like knowledge of the designer and certainty as to the method and so forth to just declare it design for sure. So we hypothesize that it is design, for a use, like cutting trees. You follow? So now we need to look for fossils of cut wood. If we find them, our hypothesis is somewhat confirmed, and we have learned something about the proposed designer, he uses wood for something. We can chain on learning more about him by this method and checking our conclusions against the available evidence.
On the other hand, so we don't find evidence of cut wood. In the meantime though, we do find sharp breaks in unidentifiable bone-like things. Maybe he uses the flint to prepare his food? We keep looking, find more and more stuff like this, we know he is culinarily creative. On yet the other hand, we find that some of these bones are, his own. Assuming our ideas about preparing food are standing up, we know he is cannibalistic. If we find strange glyphs or markings that may be pictures of humans with wings or animal heads, then Perhaps he is cannibalistic in a religious manner?
And so on. Any of our hypotheses may be wrong. But if they stand up to testing, then we are not only justified in our "design" concept, we are learning about the imputed designer from his artifacts. Stonehenge is a good example here. Let's say we aren't sure those are tool marks, and those rocks could have been hewn and moved by glaciers. Nevertheless, we decide to pursue the idea that it's designed. What shall we try out as its purpose?
It could be a funerary monument. Let's dig for bodies. Wow! I found one here under this main rock! Oh and look! There's some more here! And these appear to have been killed intentionally! We are learning a bit about this designer now, aren't we? But of course, if the bodies were still there, instead of having been dug up in the 19th and 20th and stored in museums, we wouldn't be having such trouble detecting design in the first place, so while exemplary this doesn't apply well to our real problem.
So what else is there? Well, hmm. This rock seems to line up with this rock at the winter solstice. And these here line up with those at the summer one. And if you look this way then these will show the equinoxes. Is it a calendar? If so, then the alleged designer understands something about astronomy. How can we test this hypothesis? Let's look at these other arrangements of rocks we think are similar and see if -- wow, this one lines up with the solstices too! And if we work the dates we see that the best arrangement for this one was x thousand years ago, while the perfect match for that one is only x thousand years ago.
Wow, we have learned a lot about the designer by assuming he is there and then checking our hypothesis against other kinds of evidence.

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