Posted on 12/11/2002 6:28:08 AM PST by A2J
Do you forgive Clinton? Is one to believe automatically in the sincerity of a sinner who asks for forgiveness yet doesn't mean to actually repent?
Indeed, I forgive Clinton. If Osama bin Laden asks for forgiveness, I forgive him as well. I'm not their or anyone's problem, Christ is --- because judgment has been given to Him:
Indeed, I've been called a Jesus freak for decades now. I take that as a backhanded compliment!
I don't expect other believers to see things the way that I do. But I do make it a point in my nightly prayers to forgive any thoughts, deeds or words against me and then I ask for His help to forget every offense. I am a very happy, joyful person because of it!
Jhn 8:7 So when they continued asking him, he lifted up himself, and said unto them, He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her.
Jhn 8:8 And again he stooped down, and wrote on the ground.
Jhn 8:9 And they which heard [it], being convicted by [their own] conscience, went out one by one, beginning at the eldest, [even] unto the last: and Jesus was left alone, and the woman standing in the midst.
Jhn 8:10 When Jesus had lifted up himself, and saw none but the woman, he said unto her, Woman, where are those thine accusers? hath no man condemned thee?
Jhn 8:11 She said, No man, Lord. And Jesus said unto her, Neither do I condemn thee: go, and sin no more.
However, not sure that evolutionists would consider that a falsification.
To the contrary, I believe if paleontologists discovered fossils of modern man in geological layers dating back to billions of years ago, and could find no other explanation for it --- they would declare the common descent pillar of theory of evolution false.
I don't think they would throw the baby out with the bathwater, though. IMHO, they would continue research in genetic inheritance and mutations, etc. And I would consider that a good thing since it offers so much hope in medicine.
I say this because von Neumann's challenge has been taken quite seriously by physicists, information theorists and mathematicians. In the end, I expect they will conclude a level of algorithmic information content at inception which will falsify the randomness pillar. That is what leads to my layman's hypothesis: algorithm at inception is proof of intelligent design.
We shall see. Meanwhile, absent evidence of the Designer's Algorithm, everything seems to have left a trail of evidence which is indistinguishable from the theory of evolution. It would be supremely ironic if that trail of evolutionary evidence leads us to your Designer. Not so bad, for a satanic theory. Until then, evolution is what we have. Half a loaf, A-girl. It's not everything, but it's a start. Until then, hugs.
But this is essentially equivalent to saying that our mere existence proves intelligent design i.e. "the universe exists, therefore it was designed". All algorithms in any theoretical sense are context-free. You can no more find meaning or design in algorithms than you can in information. Some algorithmic machinery had to exist if the universe was to exist, but the specific selection of algorithms is utterly arbitrary.
Using "algorithm" in you hypothesis is essentially relabeling an old argument. All dynamic systems that can exist will have algorithms, and a really large chunk of the algorithm space will produce interesting results. As such things go, this seems like a relatively weak hypothesis. You are using the conclusion as a given, in that existence, even existence where humans don't exist, has some random algorithm as an implicit premise. This really doesn't prove anything in a logical sense because it is circular reasoning, at least as far as the terms and mathematics are concerned.
Unless, of course, I completely missed something (always a possibility).
The question was what is the new definition of materialism. If you do not want to answer, that's okay.
It would be supremely ironic if that trail of evolutionary evidence leads us to your Designer.
Indeed, it would be ironic - but that's one of the things you have to love about science. They may go kicking and screaming, but if the evidence and the theory are sound - they will go. Hugs!
It is the kind of algorithm I expect them to find that will exclude any possibility of happenstance. What I expect can be clearly distinguished from random information.
At the very lowest level - I expect to see something like a finite state machine, where information (perhaps mRNA) compiles autonomously, changes states, compiles again autonomously, changes states, and so forth - structuring it's own information content (memory) at each step, converting memory to symbolic tokens. I expect that algorithm to be inviolate and the heart of self-organizing complexity.
Like I said before, as a layman, my views are of no particular significance to anyone but me. If I were credentialled however, I would delve into this much deeper.
I am not sure what you are driving at here. What I was trying to point out is that since the stars are so far away, any good bright star catalog along with the sun and earth as a reference can be used for solar system navigation even if the catalog uses a celestial equator that has been derived (a plane extended) from the earth's equator.
.. .. .. more like mold // worms // flies ! ! !
How can matter write algorithms? Has the issue been so conclusively decided that even materialists have given up on randomness and are ascribing intelligence to rocks?
My dear, you are describing an intrinsic capacity of all finite state machines. All Turing machines are functionally equivalent, even if implemented in wildly different forms. This is a core theorem of computation theory, though most people find it unintuitive (e.g. all possible forms of finite state computation can be implemented as a giant lookup table).
The problem is in your usage of "algorithm". "Algorithm" is nothing more than a term for meta-information. The totality of information that exists in anything is the sum of its information, meta-information, meta-meta-information, etc. For any type of finite state machinery this sum is computable and finite, and when organized efficiently represents the Kolmogorov complexity of the system you are analyzing. This measure of information includes the entirety of any algorithmic content in the system.
This is one of those cases where a common shortcut definition causes problems. The Kolmogorov complexity is often used to roughly mean the minimum amount of memory required to store a certain amount of information, which is conceptually a good approximation of its actual definition. In actuality, it includes a measure not only of the information, but the meta-information (read: "algorithms"), meta-meta-information, and so on. For the mathematical measure of any system, what you are calling "algorithms" is information, higher order information to be precise. It is identical to information in the classic information theoretical sense that most people understand information. This is a very common misunderstanding, even by people who work in the same general field.
Because "algorithms" are defined in terms of proper information theoretic "information", they are bound by the same restrictions. Among these is that information is intrinsically context-free. This means that no arbitrary piece of information (or "algorithm" if you prefer) is more important or meaningful than any other. In any case where there is no known context, like the case we are talking about here, it is not possible to recognize "design". Any opinion on whether or not some piece of information pulled out of the ether is "design" is purely subjective in the worse sense of the word. To make matters worse, any efficient representation/implementation of information looks random by definition. And here is something else that will cook your noodle even more: It is not possible to perfectly define the "algorithm" of the universe within the universe. The nasty self-modeling inequality of computational information theory doesn't allow it; the best we can do is find a modest approximation to the real solution (the AIT analog of Godel's Incompleteness theorem).
The punchline to all this is that even if the universe WAS designed, there is absolutely no way for us to detect it. Worse, we can't even rationally assert the probability that it is because it is not possible for us to have the context to make that assertion. So with respect to the universe and the hypothesis of its design, you'll have to put me in the camp of the Strong Agnostic, which is to say I believe that it is mathematically impossible to prove design or even the rationality of the hypothesis within this universe. It may be a hard pill to swallow for some people, though I personally don't see much value in having an answer to this question. Mathematics pretty ruthlessly smacks down the possibility of us ever being able to rationally know or believe that the universe was designed (even if, in fact, it was). There is literally no way for "design" to rise above the mathematical noise floor for us wee critters cruising living inside our universe.
Back to Computational Information Theory 101 for you. "Algorithms" and "information" are the same mathematical stuff. Certain engineering disciplines (e.g. those that deal primarily with zero-order machinery) make a distinction, but it is only a distinction of convenience within that practice. Nobody ever said matter "writes" algorithms.
Let's talk about another entirely different topic in information theory. That topic would be Signal-to-Noise ratios...
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.