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Author Topic:   What could/would falsify Irreducible Complexity?
RAZD
Member (Idle past 1405 days)
Posts: 20714
From: the other end of the sidewalk
Joined: 03-14-2004


Message 69 of 72 (485851)
10-12-2008 12:14 PM
Reply to: Message 60 by Kevin123
10-11-2008 6:26 PM


simple problems ...
Welcome to the fray, Kevin123,
The test would be easily conducted. You use two separate rooms and each of these rooms would contain different materials. In the first room random forces would be applied to the materials, in the second room an intelligent agent (human) would be introduced. Which one produces an item that is IC? Conduct that experiment billions of times and the results would be the same. Therefore based on scientific methods which is the better theory based on experimentation and observation?
If you are attempting to test ID against evolution, then (a) this is not a falsification test for ID, as both could work at different speeds and who finished first is irrelevant, and (b) it is not a representation of evolution but of random events, so the failure of this portion signifies nothing (while eventual success would be noteworthy). Likewise the testing of human intelligent design against human intelligent design proves nothing, because we already have an exceedingly high opinion of our intelligence, and think that anything we do approaches god-hood.
You are also not considering other possibilities that are possible. Let me rephrase your proposal to show some of your logical errors:
There are three rooms, in one you have a computer in a room operated by random code generation processes capable of being guided by an outside undetectable (ie supernatural) intelligence, in the second room you have a human programmer before a computer, and in the third you have a computer that operates by a simple algorithm: try 10 variations, take the best solution, make 10 variations on it and test again.
The first one models intelligent supernatural design, the second models intelligent human design, and the third one models mutation and selection.
The task is to design something that a human cannot design. Which one/s do you think will succeed? Do you consider the failure of the first room as falsification of ID?
Note that this third example is a common occurrence these days
Evolutionary computation - Wikipedia
quote:
Evolutionary computation uses iterative progress, such as growth or development in a population. This population is then selected in a guided random search using parallel processing to achieve the desired end. Such processes are often inspired by biological mechanisms of evolution.
Note that this is serious science, and there is at least one journal dedicated to it:
http://www.mitpressjournals.org/loi/evco?cookieSet=1
quote:
Evolutionary Computation provides an international forum for facilitating and enhancing the exchange of information among researchers involved in both the theoretical and practical aspects of computational systems of an evolutionary nature.
The journal publishes both theoretical and practical developments of computational systems drawing their inspiration from nature, with particular emphasis on evolutionary algorithms (EAs), including, but not limited to, genetic algorithms (GAs), evolution strategies (ESs), evolutionary programming (EP), genetic programming (GP), classifier systems (CSs), and other natural computation techniques.
Enjoy.
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Edited by RAZD, : added "likewise" sentence
Edited by RAZD, : clarity inside the first room

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Rebel American Zen Deist
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This message is a reply to:
 Message 60 by Kevin123, posted 10-11-2008 6:26 PM Kevin123 has not replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 70 by dwise1, posted 10-12-2008 4:10 PM RAZD has replied

  
RAZD
Member (Idle past 1405 days)
Posts: 20714
From: the other end of the sidewalk
Joined: 03-14-2004


Message 71 of 72 (485877)
10-12-2008 4:39 PM
Reply to: Message 70 by dwise1
10-12-2008 4:10 PM


Re: simple problems ... complex solutions?
Yeah I've heard similar stories. The one I like is the optimized antenna design:
Page not found
quote:
Evolutionary design is a computerized creative process which relies on the same notions of natural selection and mutation that underlie biological evolution. Take a large number of individuals, each slightly different. Introduce some mutation, either by randomizing small bits or mixing elements from individuals (the electronic version of sexual reproduction). Check the resulting generation against the goal -- how well do the various designs accomplish the needed task? Get rid of some of the designs that do very poorly, add more of the designs that do fairly well. Now repeat the process. Many thousands of times.
NASA's 2004 conference on evolvable hardware just finished up, and it turns out that NASA is doing some of the most interesting work around with evolutionary design. The Evolvable Systems Group researches techniques for engineering hardware for NASA missions without explicit blueprints. Antenna design consumes a great deal of their attention, as some of the interactions between components in the antenna frame and with the spacecraft itself can be very difficult to model. The antennas that the evolutionary designs come up with often don't really look like traditional devices (see above), but that's okay: it's how they work that counts.
As funky as these antenna designs are, I think that the most intriguing research the ESG is now doing is with coevolutionary algorithms. (The ESG site links to a paper on coevolutionary design the group did for the 2002 IEEE Congress on Evolutionary Computation here -- PDF. It's heavy going, but interesting.) Whereas traditional evolutionary design is a strictly Darwinian, competitive process, coevolutionary design integrates cooperative aspects as well, making for a richer, more complex evolutionary environment -- and one which better mimics reality.
(link in the original)
Enjoy.

we are limited in our ability to understand
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Rebel American Zen Deist
... to learn ... to think ... to live ... to laugh ...
to share.


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This message is a reply to:
 Message 70 by dwise1, posted 10-12-2008 4:10 PM dwise1 has not replied

  
RAZD
Member (Idle past 1405 days)
Posts: 20714
From: the other end of the sidewalk
Joined: 03-14-2004


Message 72 of 72 (485879)
10-12-2008 4:47 PM
Reply to: Message 70 by dwise1
10-12-2008 4:10 PM


Irreducible Complexity, Evolution and Falsification of the ID premise
The result worked very well and was highly complex -- irreducibly complex, in that any change to it after the fact that a person would try would cause it to fail to work.
We have also seen "irreducibly complex" functions evolve in biological systems (Irreducible Complexity, Information Loss and Barry Hall's experiments), and the point to be made is that this falsifies the ID conclusion that IC systems must be designed if they can't evolve.
Once you have demonstrated that ONE IC system can evolve naturally then the onus shifts for proof on any other IC system to show that it cannot possibly evolve if you are going to use the ID argument.
This of course is an impossible task (proving a negative) and thus the concept that an IC system is proof of ID is falsified.
Enjoy

we are limited in our ability to understand
by our ability to understand
Rebel American Zen Deist
... to learn ... to think ... to live ... to laugh ...
to share.


• • • Join the effort to solve medical problems, AIDS/HIV, Cancer and more with Team EvC! (click) • • •

This message is a reply to:
 Message 70 by dwise1, posted 10-12-2008 4:10 PM dwise1 has not replied

  
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