Simple evidence for ID

I'll raise the point I mentioned in the previous off-shoot in the other thread...What evidence do we have that this is the absolute perfect design from an absolute perfect creator? I suggest that nature as we know it is continuously evolving and the current state is inherently flawed, and will remain flawed since there can be no end-all perfect build in nature.It would be interesting to see if there were some suggestions on improving current design, for the human body for example. What implications would such an experiment have on defining the creator?

When asking a question about a creation it's often helpful to determine what the goal was. Things ARE because they are; however, things are CREATED to serve a purpose. What is that purpose? I believe Christians state that humans are God's most prized creation. The pinnacle of self-awareness and self-improvement.But what was the goal of creating a mind such as that? If I am creating a mind, and I am the all-powerful God who can do anything, what would I create for my humans? Would I limit them? Our minds suffer from several major deficiencies.Neurons are slow. Neurons have a firing rate of only 200 times per second, and the signals travel at a maximum speed of only 150 meters per second. We lose neurons as we age, rather than adding on additional brainpower. Neurons cannot be directly "reprogrammed" by our high-level consciousness. We can't improve our own "source code." We can't retain our memories indefinitely. We can't transmit thoughts from one brain to another. When the fragile biological brain decays or is destroyed, the mind dies with it.Now WE, the "created" are the "creators." We are engineering not just brains but minds. A desktop nanocomputer consuming 100 watts of power would process 1018 instructions per second (Based on a CPU-scale system containing a million transistors that would fit within a 400-nanometer cube, run at 1GHz, and consume 60 nanowatts -- MIT/SIAI estimate 2004). That's a billion billion instructions per second, roughly a billion times faster than a modern Pentium chip, and an order of magnitude higher than most estimates of the power of a human brain. (1011 neurons and 1014 synapses firing 200 times per second ~ 1017 operations per second.) A faster nanocomputer might consume a hundred kilowatts, process 1021 operations per second - ten thousand brainpower - and still fit inside a single cubic centimeter.The mind can be expanded upon. The question is, was this the goal? A self-aware human mind created by "The Creator" that would expand upon itself through knowledge and technological advancement? Or is such a "Created Creator" evidence that such a Godlike singularity does not exist since His goals do not seem to have been well thought out?This message has been edited by dsv, Sunday, April 24, 2005 03:20 PM

I don't understand why you would want the thread to be closed. You, yourself, wanted to start a topic on this, now you don't want to discuss it or bring up any of the points you had in mind for the thread?

I wish I hadn't wasted my time with my reply then... bah!

Good question. But if I can plan devil's advocate for a second (no pun intended), is this technological advancement part of God's plan or part of God's gift of free will?If I may be so bold, it seems that often times the bad things humans do is written off to free will and the good deeds are due to God's divine plan.I'm not well versed in Christian scripture but to the best of my knowledge God created humans to be the most intelligent creatures in the Universe (Earth?). What happens when the lines of biology and technological engineering blur through technology? What happens when we create an "awake" machine? I know, I'm getting heavy into philosophy and futurism here...Back on topic...There is a myth that every single creature created by God plays a specific role and creates the balance that we see. I argue that this is not so, the ecosystem evolves to changes (although sometimes slowly, so don't run outside and start killing off species).Exhibit A: The Aye-Aye (A face not even its mother could love | Science | The Guardian)I mean... come on.

Hello Ben, nice to meet you. Very good post, I enjoyed it. I agree with you but for the point of this topic I was attempted to illustrate that perhaps the Intelligently Designed human is not necessarily the most optimized. Of course I realize this is easily refuted by suggesting there is a divine plan and the absolute best human is not necessarily what is desired by the Creator.However if we're looking at it from an evolutionary standpoint we can realize that the current state of organisms is not the final product but is simply in a never-ending process of change (presumably improvement).I agree with pretty much all of your points on architecture. It's my primary area of study and I believe you're fairly spot on in your opinions. Since technological advancement isn't really the focus of the thread I'll refrain from having a long discussion about the philosophies of futurism (although that would be fun sometime!) but I want to respond to a couple things. That depends on what your definition of "not even close" is. A few centuries? A decade? Maybe longer? Considering our model for the future breaks down once we reach that point, it's hard to judge accurately.I agree with you though, however I don't think we will be the ones to create the first truly human-like mind. It's much more likely that it will be created by the more primitive machine that is capable of recursive self-improvement. After all, it's hard to say what a smarter than human machine would be like if we are only human.A created smarter machine is not just better architecture, it's vast and "deep" -- and problematic, I suppose. Not limited to neurons, any cells. If we had real control over our bodies through our self-conciousness, would it not be beneficial to not have cells turn cancerous, for example?Bringing it back to the OP, would such a "feature" not be well suited for a designer to consider? You're thinking in terms of a machine in today's world. Code is code, that's correct. However, what is to say that there could still be interpretation such as there is with language? Direct mind communication maybe not be spoken but it can still be linguistic. Giving your creations the ability to communicate without geographical and thus cultural barriers would be something, in my opinion, the Creator would consider.I hope I've helped to make my points somewhat clear, and thanks for your reply and insightful post.[EDIT: Fixed some typos, there's probably more, very tired < !--UB -->This message has been edited by dsv, Sunday, April 24, 2005 10:01 PM

I agree with you to some degree. I think it's possible to have what begins as a hard-coded structure evolve into a self-concious being of interpretation through self-improvement. We may not have the ability but who is to say an entity that is smarter than human wouldn't? Are you familiar with the Chinese Room Argument? (related)One of the main problems with higher-than-language communication, as I'm sure you know, is representative awareness (referring to "something"). Intentionality, something possessed by words and mental states of being "about" -- representing, referring to -- something.An example used in the argument, the belief that Fido is furry is a mental state that is about Fido. The word "Fido" refers to the dog named... Fido. Don't confuse intentionality with intending something -- the latter is just another example (along with believing and desiring) of an intentional mental state. Something has "derived" intentionality just in case it has intentionality in virtue of the intentionality of something else. Plausibly, "dog" refers to dogs in virtue of the beliefs, intentions, etc., of English speakers -- hence "dog" has derived intentionality. My belief that dogs have fur is an intentional mental state, and doesn't have its intentionality in virtue of the intentionality of anything else -- hence my belief has underived (or original) intentionality. If thinking is conducted in a language written in the brain, then the words of this language have underived intentionality.The Chinese Room argument is directed against the claim that instantiating AI code is sufficient for underived intentionality.Weak AI; the principle value of the computer in the study of the mind is that it gives us a very powerful tool -- e.g. it enables us to simulate various kinds of mental processes. (standard)Strong AI; an appropriately programmed computer literally has cognitive states. (disputable)There are also two kinds of "strong" AI, "strong strong" and "weak strong." Strong Strong is a computer program (i.e. an algorithm for manipulating symbols) such that any (possible) computer running this program literally has cognitive states. Weak Strong is a computer program such that any (possible) computer running this program and embedded in the world in certain ways (e.g. certain causal connections hold between its internal states and states of its environment) literally has cognitive states.Some doubt "strong strong" AI on the grounds that nothing could make a symbol (in an AI machine) refer to a thing if the computer has forever been floating off in deep space, causally isolated from the thing. As for "weak strong", there is a large literature on what sorts of connections between symbols and other parts of the world would suffice to give those symbols underived intentionality.

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We have been sending symbols off into deep space for a long time now. It has been said that deep space travelers in a far advance species will likely be more technological than biological, such is possibly the only way something could survive the time and distance. How would that code(?) "compute" our symbols?Awesome isn't it?It is clear that our minds are an astounding biological miracle (I dare say!) but we are using our human minds to conceive what the perfect mind is. That doesn't work, we have to push, HARD. Is this biological slush box we have in our skulls really something? Maybe it's just the tip! Perhaps our minds can create even greater minds that can create still greater minds and so on.Who is the creator now? Would we then be the Gods?