Posted on 11/07/2002 7:07:47 PM PST by Nebullis
Confused as ever aren't you. The quotation is from Sciam, had it been about only Hardison, his program would have been the only post.
I suppose you could see it this way. Also, these methods would lead to different objects, objects which alone are amenable to current tools and methodologies.
True. Perhaps a larger font of random cut-n-pastes will catch the attention of the real thinkers.
Meadow muffins!!
This is just their opinion. That does not make it fact.
I'd like to hear what Darwin, Huxley and the late Steven J. Gould have to say about it today!
The scientific methods always lead to different objects. One doesn't need to topple the nature of science to do that. And if ID is true, science will hit upon it.
It isn't about what one guy did or didn't say in the 1980s, whether he's Colin Patterson or Niles Eldredge. It's about what is true.
It's exactly what one guy said. And it's exactly about the truth of what that one guy said. You're attempt at trying to change the subject is just more Evolutionary Logic. You simply can't admit Eldredge contradicted himself.
You can't provide anything from the source because you've never looked at the source. All you can do is try to change the subject. That is so very, very sad.
Please, make your point from the evidence available at the original source.
but only those amenable to the methodology.
The objects differ in the sense that all objects are within the domain of a methodology. Proof, predictability, or probability in method restrict the scope of the domain of scientific inquiry. All objects outside of that domain are "not true" with respect to the methodolgy.
I'm with VadeRetro here. But if you can't see his point, you should step back and leave it alone for a time instead reiterating the same message. Otherwise, you might just as well post in blue.
JennyP, your last sentence is troubling to me: That's not much more than the very criticisms we lay on ID ("there's no positive evidence for ID"), except that he spins them as opportunities for further research instead of criticisms of the theory. IMHO, yours is the same kind of argument made by creationists to which evolutionists respond "that will be found someday."Both ID and evolution make predictions. Science should not be prejudiced to pursue one and not the other.
I understand your objection, and my statement does sound like it could come perilously close to bouncing back at me. But it won't. :-)
What I'm saying is, ID can point to no positive evidence for ID. Every one of its current arguments amount to saying "there's a hole in Darwinian theory here." But even if those claims are true, merely pointing out a hole in an existing theory does not prove your competing theory. There are any number of competing sub-theories or future discoveries that could fill the gap without necessarily hurting the overall theory. And if those don't show up, there are any number of possible competing theories for the "supertheory" itself.
Dembski's example of steganography in the DNA is fine, but that's a prediction he makes of evidence that will show up someday. That's not positive evidence he can point to today. (I'll deal with his steganography prediction in another post.)
Over at the ARN & the ISCID message boards, from what I can make out of their dense philosophical discussions, it looks like the ID people (Dembski included) shy away from discussing "designer-centric" theories. They seem to want to insist that only "design-centric" theories are worthy of discussion. I agree with the evolutionist critics there: You can't say, in any meaningful way, that an object was designed, unless you A: know something about the probable designers, like their motives, thought processes, capabilities, etc., or B: are comparing it by analogy to something you already know humans design. (Which I think is a less-reliable variation of A.)
IOW, you can't make a purely negative case by elimination for ID. You have to come up with something positive. And IMO Dembski's hope that someday some kind of hidden message will turn up in the DNA doesn't cut it.
CalConservative makes a popular claim for ID as a useful research program: That if you assume a biological structure is designed, it will point you towards understanding how it works. I think this is true as far as it goes. But it's like the Weak Anthropic Principle (WAP): The world must be amenable to life, else we wouldn't be here. But like the WAP, the WDP ("Weak Design Principle?" cool!) is a very weak circumstantial argument for ID: If the structure didn't do something useful, then it probably wouldn't survive the selection process for us to see it today. But both evolutionists & IDers claim that their favorite process creates useful things, so the WDP doesn't help either side.
Not to worry.... I understand that "Reader's Digest" is coming out with an online series for all FR threads of more than 250 replies.
You'll be up to speed in no time.
Until that happens, I recommend you skip all replies posted in BLUE FONT. It's a great time saver, and you rarely ever miss anything worth reading.
You would, however, miss most of the fun that way. It is amusing to watch someone sink ever deeper into the quicksand of his own making, rejecting all aid that is generously offered, insulting his would-be rescuers, and insisting that they're the ones who are sinking while he's conquering Mt. Everest.
Indeed. But RA's major concern was with catching up with the thread, starting 300+ posts behind everyone else.
I submit, if you read the knee-slappers, you'll never have time to catch up: you'll be too busy laughing....
Section 10. Steganography of Dembski's speech states that second-order steganography would, in my view, provide confirmation for ID. For lurkers, he is speaking of an "operating manual" being encoded in organisms. He says Dense, multi-layered embedding of information is a prediction of ID.He also indicated that first-order steganography (i.e., the embedding of functional information useful to the organism rather than to a scientific investigator) could also provide strong evidence for ID.
Shades of Walter ReMine and his Biotic Message! Or, shades of that lame ST:TNG episode. Here's Dembski's steganography remarks:
10. Steganography
Finally, we come to the research theme that I find most intriguing. Steganography, if you look in the dictionary, is an archaism that was subsequently replaced by the term "cryptography." Steganography literally means "covered writing." With the rise of digital computing, however, the term has taken on a new life. Steganography belongs to the field of digital data embedding technologies (DDET), which also include information hiding, steganalysis, watermarking, embedded data extraction, and digital data forensics. Steganography seeks efficient (that is, high data rate) and robust (that is, insensitive to common distortions) algorithms that can embed a high volume of hidden message bits within a cover message (typically imagery, video, or audio) without their presence being detected. Conversely, steganalysis seeks statistical tests that will detect the presence of steganography in a cover message.
Consider now the following possibility: What if organisms instantiate designs that have no functional significance but that nonetheless give biological investigators insight into functional aspects of organisms. Such second-order designs would serve essentially as an "operating manual," of no use to the organism as such but of use to scientists investigating the organism. Granted, this is a speculative possibility, but there are some preliminary results from the bioinformatics literature that bear it out in relation to the protein-folding problem (such second-order designs appear to be embedded not in a single genome but in a database of homologous genomes from related organisms).
While it makes perfect sense for a designer to throw in an "operating manual" (much as automobile manufacturers include operating manuals with the cars they make), this possibility makes no sense for blind material mechanisms, which cannot anticipate scientific investigators. Research in this area would consist in constructing statistical tests to detect such second-order designs (in other words, steganalysis). Should such second order designs be discovered, the next step would be to seek algorithms for embedding these second-order designs in the organisms. My suspicion is that biological systems do steganography much better than we, and that steganographers will learn a thing or two from biology -- though not because natural selection is so clever, but because the designer of these systems is so adept at steganography.
Such second-order steganography would, in my view, provide decisive confirmation for ID. Yet even if it doesn't pan out, first-order steganography (i.e., the embedding of functional information useful to the organism rather than to a scientific investigator) could also provide strong evidence for ID. For years now evolutionary biologists have told us that the bulk of genomes is junk and that this is due to the sloppiness of the evolutionary process. That is now changing. For instance, Amy Pasquenelli at UCSD, in commenting on long stretches of seemingly barren DNA sequences, asks us to "reconsider the contents of such junk DNA sequences in the light of recent reports that a new class of non-coding RNA genes are scattered, perhaps densely, throughout these animal genomes." ("MicroRNAs: Deviants no Longer." Trends in Genetics 18(4) (4 April 2002): 171-3.) ID theorists should be at the forefront in unpacking the information contained within biological systems. If these systems are designed, we can expect the information to be densely packed and multi-layered (save where natural forces have attenuated the information). Dense, multi-layered embedding of information is a prediction of ID
Dembski says that steganography aims to hide messages inside what looks like other, unrelated datastreams. From what I know of steganography (not much), this is accurate. (See for instance the 9/11 terrorists embedding their messages to each other inside porn pix.)
But then Dembski thinks these hidden messages are there in order to act as an "operating manual"! This makes no sense, for 2 reasons: 1) Why hide the operating manual? and 2) The organism is the operator. We don't really need a separate operator's manual, since medicine's practice of reverse engineering our bodies (& that of other animals & plants) has worked rather well. Plus, if the designer did want to include an operator's manual, then why hide its message? Why not encode it in the DNA in as plain a way as possible? After all, we only discovered DNA in the 1950's or so, and we haven't been able to begin to read out the letters until the '80s or '90s.
Also, Dembski says, "Should such second order designs be discovered, the next step would be to seek algorithms for embedding these second-order designs in the organisms". First off, he's describing the possibility of inferring steganographized data using statistical tests. I can see how this could give clues to likely places to look for a hidden message, but saying they would be "discovered" at this point is making too big a leap. Secondly, he then wants to search for the algorithms which would be necessary to decode this inferred hidden message. Here there are 2 possibilities: 1) The Designer knew who we would be, and wanted to communicate to us, or 2) He didn't know who exactly would arise with the capacity to read the message, but He was confident that some kind of intelligent being would eventually arise.
Under 1), the message should be in English or some other known language. Under 2), well, maybe the message spells out a vector diagram in some unknown coordinate system, a'la Contact. Hopefully it's something nice & simple & universally understandable like that! But then, if it's meant as an operating manual for our bodies, then it would have to be a very long message or very big diagram.
Just a lot of problematic implications in this conjecture of his, IMO. Certainly nothing useful that I can see for today's science.
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