Evidence of design .... ?

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The body of my car is incredibly weak. The most common speed limit I encounter is 35 mph. Yet if I hit a telephone pole at this speed, my car does not bounce off it. It folds, pops, and crumbles.

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Depending on how old your car is, it may be designed to
behave in this way to protect the passengers and drivers
(by absorbing the brunt of the impact)... quite a good feature
over-all.

I'd have to agree, since logically if you know how
a designer would do it, you can rule out things as
wouldn'ts if its not what the designer would do.If you see what I mean.

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Then again, I suppose what constitutes a flaw depends on one’s idealistic expectations.

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Not entirely, no.Take the combined opening of the air and food passage
in humans. One would not expect this arrangement, which
has no advantage, to appear in an intelligent design...and
many other animals do not have this arrangement.I don't think it is too idealistic to expect a designer to
ensure that two necessary functions do not have a common
mode failure ... and even more importantly that a fault in
one essential system doesn't cause a separate, independent
essential system to also fail.

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Then again, I suppose what constitutes a flaw depends on one’s idealistic expectations.

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I wonder why we're supposed to be 'idealistic' enough to conclude that life displays a grand design, but not enough to expect that the design would be grand.As Peter pointed out, the design of our shared trachea/esophagus makes sense and is impressive in the context of evolutionary biology, since the structure is derived from our forebears the lungfish, who had to swallow air in order to 'breathe' out of water. It's no testament to the foresight of an Intelligent Intervener.

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The problem with the flaw argument is that it has a built-in moving goalpost.

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The same can be said of the "design" argument. We're never allowed to regard biological structures as such, and decide on any independent terms whether they betray an evolutionary design history or offer evidence of ID. Intelligent Design advocates have to be excused for always talking in terms of cars, mousetraps, and other man-made machines, since analogies have to suffice in lieu of any scientific support for their hypothesis.[This message has been edited by MrHambre, 06-30-2003]

Here’s an illustration of my point, The problem with the flaw argument is that it has a built-in moving goalpost. Let’s say we fix the flaws in Pogo’s list. Someone will eventually come along and find ways in which the improvements are not good enough or point to other flaws :

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Take the combined opening of the air and food passage in humans. One would not expect this arrangement, which has no advantage, to appear in an intelligent design...and many other animals do not have this arrangement.

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Yet I can think of advantages to this arrangement:1. Every time you take a breath, you take impurities into your respiratory tract. It is lined with a sticky blanket of mucus that in turned is moved by cilia movement. The mucus traps the impurities and the cilia move the mucus blanket to the back of the throat, where it is swallowed. The impurities are either digested and absorbed or crapped out of the body. Thus, the arrangement is a clever way of handling a problem faced by our respiratory system.2. The mouth serves as an excellent back-up system for taking in air. It is used every time the nasal cavity swells shut (a cold, for example) or when the demand for air becomes excessive (during exercise).3. The respiratory and digestive system actually have a shared function — the sense of taste. Impulses from olfactory (nose) and gustatory (tongue) receptors participate in this sense (which is why you can’t taste when you have a cold).4. The mouth acts as a more effective conduit for expelling air (under high pressure) when you cough. This is why you naturally open your mouth when you cough.The disadvantage associated with this arrangement is, of course, aspiration. Does it outweigh the advantages?I checked out some statistics on the web. In 2000, 13 children from Arizona died from choking (children seem more susceptible to choking given their tendency to put things in their mouths). And census data shows that Arizona has 1,366,947 children.Let’s assume a very conservative 100 swallows per day. That would mean there were
5 E^10 swallows among the Arizonian children in 2000. Thirteen of these resulted in death, giving us an incident of 2.6 E^-10. That’s not a terrible failure rate. For example, I start my car, on average, about 10 times a day. And I’d guess that it fails to start about once every 1.5 years. That’s a failure rate of 4.1 E^-4Now, how many swallows does a person perform over a life time? Let’s say 1000/day. A person who lives to 80 will have performed 2.9 E^7 swallows. Even with this excessive swallowing of food, such a person is well below the failure rate associated with the trachea/esophagus arrangement. Explaining why choking deaths are not a major cause of death and also while most are preventable.The flaw associated with the trachea/esophagus reminds me of people who claim that flight is a flawed way to travel. Accidents can happen. But in the large scheme, air travel and swallowing are pretty darn safe.[This message has been edited by King Crimson, 06-30-2003]

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Yet I can think of advantages to this arrangement

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I think you misinterpreted our objections. The trachea/esophagus arrangement was indeed advantageous to the lungfish from whom we inherited it. Every 'advantage' you listed in defense of the arrangement is perfectly consistent with the evolution of the human throat within the constraints of its inherited framework.However, what we are trying to establish is whether this arrangement has advantages over and above all other conceivable designs, which would certainly be more persuasive evidence of Intelligence. We have a plausible explanation for the structure, advantages, and shortcomings of the design. You merely assume that it's a product of Intelligence based on the fact that it's 'pretty darn safe'?

None of 1..4 cannot be accomodated by a design that doesn't
have a single point of failure.Your calculations are also way off.13 incidents over a year resulted in fatalities, that does
not tell us about unreported events or near-misses that have
been averted by 'operator intervention'.Even then we have 13 incidents of failure in 8790 hours
which is 1.5 X 10E-3 failures per hour.Safety critical systems designed by people have an allowable
failure rate of 10E-9 per hour, even military applications
are only allowed 10E-8 per hour ... and non-critical automotive
failures are acceptable at 10E-7 per hour.And your 13 was only in one state.

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I think you misinterpreted our objections. The trachea/esophagus arrangement was indeed advantageous to the lungfish from whom we inherited it. Every 'advantage' you listed in defense of the arrangement is perfectly consistent with the evolution of the human throat within the constraints of its inherited framework.

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You are moving the goalposts again. The original claim was that there was no advantage to the arrangement. I refuted that claim. In fact, let me add one more advantage — the same tongue that is involve in the digestive process also plays an important role in vocalization/speech.

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However, what we are trying to establish is whether this arrangement has advantages over and above all other conceivable designs, which would certainly be more persuasive evidence of Intelligence.

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That’s a strange thing to establish given that none of you have the slightest idea about how to actually design a humanoid organism. Sure, you can imagine states and maybe even draw something on the piece of paper. But that’s not the same thing as actually designing such a thing. Conceiving a way to split apart the respiratory and digestive tracts of a mammal is not the same as demonstrating this is a better design (considering the overall organism).Furthermore, you apparently want to tie Intelligent Design to The Best Possible Conceivable Design. That’s called Turning Intelligent Design Into a Straw Dog.

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We have a plausible explanation for the structure, advantages, and shortcomings of the design. You merely assume that it's a product of Intelligence based on the fact that it's 'pretty darn safe'?

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You are the one assuming that I assume it’s a product of Intelligence.

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None of 1..4 cannot be accomodated by a design that doesn't have a single point of failure.

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Actually, I added another above (make it five). I suppose we could conceivably accommodate all these changes, such that we keep the advantages and drop the disadvantage. Whether such a creature would truly be better off is, in the end, only a speculation. The problem comes when we add in all the other flaws that are supposed to be corrected. When we put all the corrections in place, it’s not clear such an entity would be a better version of a human being. As far as we know, you may have just created a whole new series of problems (that could be considered flaws).

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Your calculations are also way off.

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I don’t think so. I estimate failures per swallowing event and you estimate failures per hour. I think the former method gives us a better feel for how well the system performs. For example, if we take your figure of 1.5 X 10E-3 failures per hour, this doesn’t have much meaning. For the same figure equates with one failure every 667 hours. That’s about 28 days. Sorry, but I don’t nearly choke to death every month. Again, if there were 5 E^10 swallows among the Arizonian children in 2000, 13 failures is not a sign of bad design.

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13 incidents over a year resulted in fatalities, that does not tell us about unreported events or near-misses that have been averted by 'operator intervention'.

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Good point. But we can balance this out by considering that most choking events are a consequence of behavior, not a break down in the anatomy/physiology. Most choking events occur because people rush and swallow food without sufficient chewing or because they laugh and talk excitedly while eating. Alcohol consumption also plays in a role in many choking events. So, we could raise the incidents by gathering unreported events or near-misses, but then lower it again by factoring out choking events caused by sloppy use of the system.

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And your 13 was only in one state.

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I’m assuming the frequency of choking is not much different in Arizona than in other places. Add more states, you have more choking events. Not surprising since you also have many more swallowing events.

I'm not sure that I said there was 'no advantage' to the
design, what I have said is that if a human design team were
working on a similar problem that this design would have been
rejected via the safety analysis.If humans engaged in design actively seek to elliminate
common mode failures, and the human body has common mode
failures in what way is there evidence for design?It's not about suggesting that ID == BestD at all.ID postulates that organisms exist due to an intelligent designer's
interventions. To find suitable evidence of design we can look
to existing designed systems and see if there are similarities
between biological systems and what we would expect to find
in an intellgently designed system.One feature of safety critical system design is safety analysis
to identify potential failure modes and mitigate them. A further
aspect of such analysis is the ellimination of common mode
failures (especially in independent, critical sub-systems).Human bodies do not appear to have undergone any kind of design
review process or safety analysis because there are features
present that even a human designer at our level of technology
would reject.We are left with two possibilities (and sub-variants of)1) The designer was not very good.
2) There was no intelligence behind the design.1..5 do not outweigh the dis-advantage. The disadvantage in
this case can lead to catastrophic system failure (i.e. death)
none of the advantages you mention can possibly outweigh that.It's not about finding corrections for the sub-optimal ... it's
about looking at known intelligent design processes and seeing
if the human-solution appears to be designed based upon what we
know of how we design things.You may not feel that failures per hour has much meaning ...
the entire systems and safety community would tend to disagree
since this is a probabalistic measure of failure in use
in all human engineering.In a safety critical system ANY catastrophic failures that are
due to the design are intollerable. That's why failure rates
are set at 10E-9.Mis-use is not a mitigation either. The people who choke do so
during an 'intended' (if human's were designed) function of the
system. That the system can normally operate in a way that disrupts another safety critical system is NOT evidence that design effort has been put in.

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I'm not sure that I said there was 'no advantage' to the design, what I have said is that if a human design team were working on a similar problem that this design would have been rejected via the safety analysis.

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Your original reply to me explicitly stated:

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Take the combined opening of the air and food passage in humans. One would not expect this arrangement, which has no advantage, to appear in an intelligent design...and many other animals do not have this arrangement.

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You did claim there was no advantage to the system and that is what I replied to.

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If humans engaged in design actively seek to eliminate common mode failures, and the human body has common mode failures in what way is there evidence for design?

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You skipped over my argument from above: Actually, I added another above (make it five). I suppose we could conceivably accommodate all these changes, such that we keep the advantages and drop the disadvantage. Whether such a creature would truly be better off is, in the end, only a speculation. The problem comes when we add in all the other flaws that are supposed to be corrected. When we put all the corrections in place, it’s not clear such an entity would be a better version of a human being. As far as we know, you may have just created a whole new series of problems (that could be considered flaws). Are you now going to make your argument stick by moving goalposts concerning types of flaws?

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It's not about suggesting that ID == BestD at all.

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Then you need to first hash this out with MrHambre, who tells me that you guys are trying to establish is whether this arrangement has advantages over and above all other conceivable designs. Otherwise, we have multiple moving goalposts around here.

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ID postulates that organisms exist due to an intelligent designer's
interventions. To find suitable evidence of design we can look
to existing designed systems and see if there are similarities
between biological systems and what we would expect to find
in an intellgently designed system.

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Here, you first need to hash this out with NosyNed. He tells us that we can’t take this approach because the analogy between things humans design and natural things is totally off base.

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One feature of safety critical system design is safety analysis
to identify potential failure modes and mitigate them. A further
aspect of such analysis is the ellimination of common mode
failures (especially in independent, critical sub-systems).

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The question that matters is the cost of eliminating any particular design feature, as this often translates as redesigning other features of the whole unit. In this case, the failure rate of the trachea/esophagus junction is not clearly serious enough to justify a complete overhaul of the system, given that any particular individual is highly unlikely to die from aspiration (as the data show).

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Human bodies do not appear to have undergone any kind of design review process or safety analysis because there are features present that even a human designer at our level of technology would reject.

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We are left with two possibilities (and sub-variants of)

​

1) The designer was not very good.
2) There was no intelligence behind the design.

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Not at all. Until you design a humanoid body that lacks the design flaw, but is no worse in any other way, your conclusions are rooted in raw speculation. One could argue that the designer does not appear to be very good, but then we don’t have anything solid to move this beyond the level of appearance. Sorry, but a failure rate of 2.6 E-10 is not bad design.

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1..5 do not outweigh the dis-advantage. The disadvantage in this case can lead to catastrophic system failure (i.e. death) none of the advantages you mention can possibly outweigh that.

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This is a matter of opinion. The advantages I cite impart a day-by-day increase in the quality of life that is shared by all members of the human species. In return, there is a tiny little chance that any particular member of the species might choke to death and we can drive this chance to essentially no chance with some modest, common sense, behavioral adjustments. It’s not at all clear that the disadvantage outweighs the advantages, especially given that we nothing to compare it to.I’d also be careful about making death a problem. At some point, all organisms will die, meaning at some point a design decision will be made that allows for the potential for catastrophic system failure to occur. Unless, of course, you demand immortality from design.

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It's not about finding corrections for the sub-optimal ... it's about looking at known intelligent design processes and seeing if the human-solution appears to be designed based upon what we know of how we design things.

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Like I said, you’ll first have to argue this with NosyNed and determine whether or not analogies are allowed or out of place.

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You may not feel that failures per hour has much meaning ...the entire systems and safety community would tend to disagree since this is a probabalistic measure of failure in use in all human engineering.

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It’s not a question of feelings. Your numbers would mean that I should have a life expectancy of 28 days. Clearly, something is wrong with the way you analyze this. Thinking in terms of swallowing events is a superior approach.

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In a safety critical system ANY catastrophic failures that are due to the design are intollerable. That's why failure rates are set at 10E-9.

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I suppose this would be relevant if we swallowed 10 E9 times/hour. But if we assume 100 swallows/day, that’s only about 4/hour. A failure rate of 10E-9 is needlessly excessive.

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Mis-use is not a mitigation either. The people who choke do so during an 'intended' (if human's were designed) function of the system.

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I don’t agree. I once got lazy and used a chainsaw to saw away the roots of a bunch of large shrubs. I sawed through the dirt(it worked), but I eventually gunked up the chainsaw. I didn’t attribute its failure to flawed design.

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That the system can normally operate in a way that disrupts another safety critical system is NOT evidence that design effort has been put in.

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I am not arguing that the system (or human body) is designed. I’m pointing out that you have failed to establish that the trachea/esophagus junction is a design flaw (beyond the level of it looks flawed). If I did think the system/body was designed, I would find your argument unconvincing.[This message has been edited by King Crimson, 07-01-2003]

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I am not arguing that the system (or human body) is designed.

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Really? I am. This system, along with the rest of the 'humanoid' body, is a product of millions of years of evolution. The design work was done step-by-step within the constraints of the pre-existing system. You're the only one arguing over the effect of 'improvements' to the system. All we're saying is that this is the structure we expect to see in organisms who evolved from lungfish.The evidence for evolution is in precisely these anomalies, which were inherited from our forebears. The trachea/esophagus system is impressive in that context. Your attempts to rationalize the ingenuity of its design in any other context are both irrelevant and comical.

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quote:
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ID postulates that organisms exist due to an intelligent designer's
interventions. To find suitable evidence of design we can look
to existing designed systems and see if there are similarities
between biological systems and what we would expect to find
in an intellgently designed system.
---------------------------------------------------------------------

​

Here, you first need to hash this out with NosyNed. He tells us that we can’t take this approach because the analogy between things humans design and natural things is totally off base.

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I think there are two different things going on here and you misapply my objection to the analogy.One point is using manufactured things that we know are designed and saying "these can't come about by accident they had to have a designer" and then, by analogy, saying that a living thing couldn't have come about by "accident" it, by analogy, had to have a designer.The point of the evolutionary idea is that it demonstrates that "design" can appear without a designer. But it requires imperfectly reprocing things to work on and that doesn't apply to a manufactured object.The second point being made is that if we just look at some design but don't know if it is "intelligently designed" or not is there a way to distinguish one that is designed from one that evolved? This isn't considering the manufactured or reproducing aspects and is different from point one above.In this case the ID folks are not only claiming an "intelligent" designer but an all-knowing all-powerful one as well. One might be expected to figure the designs from this guy would be pretty darn good and clearly distinuguishable from "designs" that evolved which doesn't have any future knowledge, is constained by what is there as a starting point and is subject to contingent events.Well, when we look at the two ends of two different ways of arriving at a "design" we see that that of living things is pretty clearly (for many reasons, some of which have been given) not in the "intelligently" designed side of the fence but rather on the evolved side. This view isn't by analogy but is by comparing and contrasting.How clear is all that?edited to change object to objection[This message has been edited by NosyNed, 07-02-2003]

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You did claim there was no advantage to the system and that is what I replied to.

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My apologies, I shall be more careful with my wording.

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Actually, I added another above (make it five). I suppose we could conceivably accommodate all these changes, such that we keep the advantages and drop the disadvantage.
Whether such a creature would truly be better off is, in the end,
only a speculation.
The problem comes when we add in all the other flaws that
are supposed to be corrected. When we put all the corrections in place, it’s not clear such an entity would be a
better version of a human being.
As far as we know, you may have just created a whole
new series of problems (that could be considered flaws).

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I'm not really talking about running through and correcting
the flaws. I'm talking about analysing the 'human body design'
to find indications of intelligence behind that design.One aspect of engineering design approaches is safety analysis,
and since there are safety critical functions within the
human body one would expect an 'intelligent designer' to have
analysed his/her/its design to remove design features that could
operate to disrupt these safety critical functions.

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Then you need to first hash this out with MrHambre, who tells me that you guys are trying to establish is whether this arrangement has advantages over and above all other conceivable designs. Otherwise, we have multiple moving goalposts around here.

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Mr Hambre may have a slightly different view to myself. You are
responding to me within this post, however.IFF your IDer is the christian God, then Mr.Hambre is correct.
Why would an omniscient, omnipotent God create anything that
could be improved upon (and even would such a God be able to
create something sub-optimal)?

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Here, you first need to hash this out with NosyNed. He tells us that we can’t take this approach because the analogy between things humans design and natural things is totally off base.

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I'm not comparing manufactured items with biological systems.I am applying what I know about human design approaches to the
human body. If those design approaches indicate that a human
design team would not have allowed something into the design
then the case for intelligence is lessened.

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The question that matters is the cost of eliminating any particular design feature, as this often whole unit. In this case, the failure rate of the trachea/esophagus junction is not clearly serious enough to justify a complete overhaul of the
system, given that any particular individual is highly unlikely to die from aspiration (as the data show).

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The 'cost' depends on the value you place on a human life, and in
this case cannot be great since other animals have systems
which effectively prevent this problem.

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Not at all. Until you design a humanoid body that lacks the design flaw, but is no worse in any other way, your conclusions are rooted in raw speculation.

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No, they are rooted in analysis (if somewhat limited in scope).
The identification of something that would be considered a
design flaw is sufficient to make comment on the intelligent design
effort put in.The more serious the flaw, the lower the intelligence level
of the designer or the lower effort placed in design review.

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One could argue that the designer does not
appear to be very good, but then we don’t have anything solid to move this beyond the level of appearance. Sorry, but a failure rate of 2.6 E-10 is not bad design.

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Your missing the point.These failures are CAUSED by a design feature.

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This is a matter of opinion. The advantages I cite impart a day-by-day increase in the quality of life that is shared by all members of the human species...

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So a car with brakes designed such that
when they fail they cause the steering to turn
90 degrees clockwise would be OK so long as the stereo was neat
and it only happened 13 times a year?

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I’d also be careful about making death a problem. At some point, all organisms will die, meaning at some point a design decision will be made that allows for the potential for catastrophic system
failure to occur. Unless, of course, you demand immortality from design.

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And I'd be careful about bringing this up to support ID.What is the basic function of animal death? That is why
Do organisms need to die? Or reproduce for that matter.... in the above I meant 'premature death' though. I have to
admit, and I have already promised to try to be more careful
with my wording.

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It’s not a question of feelings. Your numbers would mean that I should have a life expectancy of 28 days. Clearly, something is wrong with the way you analyze this. Thinking in terms of swallowing
events is a superior approach.

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Failures per hour is a probablistic boundary value which
designs must gaurantee to meet in order to be considered
safe.Safety analysis processes have defined boundaries for this
for different categories of system. For safety critical
systems this is 1E-9 per hour.It's the way its done.Your method is inferior as it is based upon an unsupported
assumption about the number of swallows per day, and incomplete
'choking' data.My value is based upon your data for catastrophic events.

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I suppose this would be relevant if we swallowed 10 E9 times/hour. But if we assume 100 swallows/day, that’s only about 4/hour. A failure rate of 1E-9 is needlessly excessive.

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Tell that to the parents of those kids ...1E-9 is the failure rate figure that airliners are designed
to ... at no-expense spared. It seems your view on whether or
not it is worth it is not that of the engineering community.Perhaps the IDer just doesn't care.

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I don’t agree. I once got lazy and used a chainsaw to saw away the roots of a bunch of large shrubs. I sawed through the dirt(it worked), but I eventually gunked up the chainsaw. I didn’t attribute its failure to flawed design.

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You are quite correct ... it is not a designed flaw because the
chain saw is not designed to cut soil.The arrangement we are discussion IS designed to swallow food,
and to allow air in/out of the lungs.When people choke the throat is not (in general) being put to
inapproriate use.

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I am not arguing that the system (or human body) is designed. I’m pointing out that you have failed to establish that the trachea/esophagus junction is a design flaw (beyond the level of it looks flawed). If I did think the system/body was designed, I would find your argument unconvincing.

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I've actually applied a certain level of analysis to the
issue.1) Breathing is a safety critical function.
2) Eating is a mission critical function.... I've just realised something.In terms of swallowing failure rate you may well be correct
to say that the rate is acceptable. (2) is mission critical
and if you fail to do it it doesn't have immediate negative
consequences ... only continued failure will be a problem.(1) on the other hand is safety critical and a failure of as
little as a couple of minutes can be catastrophic. This
feature should be designed more rigorously.The problem (and I have pointed this out) is that there
is a causative chain of failure.A failure is sub-system (2) CAUSES a failure in sub-system (1).It is this that suggests low intelligence in the design.[Edited to change 10E-9 to 1E-9 ... got my notation mixed
up there ... sorry!!!][This message has been edited by Peter, 07-02-2003]

1) Cars, chainsaws, mousetraps, and various other man-made artifacts can be compared to biological systems in order to support the hypothesis of Intelligent Design. However, evolutionists aren't allowed to compare the same artifacts to biological systems in order to point out problems in the hypothesis of Intelligent Design.2) Various objections to the hypothesis of Intelligent Design should be judged against each other rather than considered separately. This way evolution has to show consistency and uniformity and not the hypothesis of Intelligent Design.3) Accuse the evolutionists of raw speculation, and demand detailed eyewitness evidence of any of its claims, even if it concerns ancient biology. Try not to mention that raw speculation is the basis of the hypothesis of Intelligent Design.4) Equivocate. Flunk math. Claim victory.

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4) Equivocate. Flunk math. Claim victory.

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Pure genius...------------------
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