Posted on 01/20/2005 12:54:58 PM PST by Jay777
ANN ARBOR, MI — The small town of Dover, Pennsylvania today became the first school district in the nation to officially inform students of the theory of Intelligent Design, as an alternative to Darwin’s theory of Evolution. In what has been called a “measured step”, ninth grade biology students in the Dover Area School District were read a four-paragraph statement Tuesday morning explaining that Darwin’s theory is not a fact and continues to be tested. The statement continued, “Intelligent Design is an explanation of the origin of life that differs from Darwin’s view.” Since the late 1950s advances in biochemistry and microbiology, information that Darwin did not have in the 1850s, have revealed that the machine like complexity of living cells - the fundamental unit of life- possessing the ability to store, edit, and transmit and use information to regulate biological systems, suggests the theory of intelligent design as the best explanation for the origin of life and living cells.
Richard Thompson, President and Chief Counsel of the Thomas More Law Center, a national public interest law firm representing the school district against an ACLU lawsuit, commented, “Biology students in this small town received perhaps the most balanced science education regarding Darwin’s theory of evolution than any other public school student in the nation. This is not a case of science versus religion, but science versus science, with credible scientists now determining that based upon scientific data, the theory of evolution cannot explain the complexity of living cells.”
“It is ironic that the ACLU after having worked so hard to prevent the suppression of Darwin’s theory in the Scopes trial, is now doing everything it can to suppress any effort to challenge it,” continued Thompson.
(Excerpt) Read more at thomasmore.org ...
What is it? What is the specific fragment of algorithmic information that only exists in "live" things and never in "dead" things (or vice versa)? If the term has meaning, such a thing is a describable and we will have found our universal metric.
Also, "successful communication" is a subjective rather than objective measure. Every successful communication can be viewed as an unsuccessful communication in a myriad of other contexts -- this has been brought up before. A "dead" thing very successfully communicates in many other contexts as it decays. What constitutes true decay? DNA is a very stable material, and we can drop ancient DNA into modern cells and get the whole system to start running. If the DNA is running in a molecular machine normally associated with organisms, is it "alive" again? If so, that would seem like successful communication even within your chosen context even though the organism was "dead" for tens of thousands of years. Not that this is any different than single-celled crystalline spores that can automagically turn into living things after millions of years, just a more complex behavior of the system that is our universe.
The problem with the notion of "successful communication" is that it can mean whatever anyone wants it to mean -- there is no objective metric. The system churns with boring regularity and will produce the results regardless, letting other parts of the system (us) argue about "alive" or "dead". At the bottom of it all, there is nothing more but the state space of the system interacting with itself to produce a different conformation. This is what is actually happening. That we've dressed it up with all sorts of neato terms like "alive" or "dead" is not a reflection on the basic character of the system -- the system is what it is and nothing more.
My point for the day: The map is NOT the territory. Many people here have been treating the map as interchangeable with the territory (a very, very common reasoning flaw -- no great sin there). I'm trying to get people to stop arguing over various interpretations of the map and to start walking the territory, but it seems that there is a lot of reluctance to do so for fear of what might be out there in the great wild yonder.
It applies to discrete (i.e. "quantized") systems as much as anywhere else, something that should be obvious. Intrinsic quantization is fine (like the Planck constants), but we are talking about arbitrary quantization and mapping generated in the language that are not direct metrics of anything. Given the set of all integers, where is the dividing line between "large integer" and "small integer"? How many hundred dollar bills (quantized wealth) makes one "rich"? Reduction to real measures is important if a discussion is to be meaningful. Mere personal attachment to terms and ideas does not make them real measures.
Mapping a measure into an abstraction does not change the underlying nature of that measure. It does not matter whether the measure itself is discrete. Saying 'I am wealthy" is a meaningless statement. It could mean I own three goats in outer Mongolia, or it could mean I have precisely US$4,362,936.00 net worth in Los Angeles, both of which would be far more meaningful statements than just saying that "I am wealthy". Wealth is a relative measure, not an absolute one, and treating it as though it is an absolute measure is ignoring the intrinsic subjectivity of the definition of that term.
Ambiguity is useful in practice because it greatly reduces transaction costs. But that does not mean that we should pretend that there is no ambiguity when it comes time to be rigorous. The fallacy is in pretending that a descriptive term is a direct measure of something when it is not in fact.
It is not however algorithmic information theory - it's plain old, vanilla, information theory but the mathematics give a measurement which is useful to the purpose at hand.
One of these days perhaps the likes of Adami will come up with something better in algorithmic information theory. But he's not there yet.
I've gotta go now but will try to come back and address some of your other points later this evening.
With all due respect, not bloody likely. Perhaps you should look into how algorithmic information theory fits into the broader spectrum of mathematics. I could actually interpret the above as suggesting that you have a very funny notion of what mathematics is and how it is structured.
Algorithmic information theory is the unifying great-grandfather theoretical construct of a huge swath of mathematics. You are trying to figure out and "solve" fundamental relationships that are already understood and proven, you just haven't figured that part out yet. You really do not understand algorithmic information theory -- "plain old, vanilla, information theory" is but a tiny facet of its scope.
As for Adami, he is doing nothing but applied mathematics -- there is no "new" fundamental theory anywhere there, certainly not a mathematical one. In fact, everything he does uses well-established vanilla algorithmic information theory that has been around for twenty plus years and is contained within its scope, including all the "quantum" stuff (which requires no novel treatment for the most part). How is it that you do not recognize this?
Well you know men are much better at math than women, anyway.
Oh, man, this isn't going to be pretty.
What's the matter shubi, tired of living? :-)
Just supporting the Pres. Summers of Harvard.
The Bell Curve affirms the conclusion that men are better at math, but it also says Asians are better than anyone at math.
Its pearl of great worth is Kolmogorov complexity, which is not that difficult to embrace – and, IMHO, not much more illuminating than von Neumann’s cellular automata for understanding biological complexity.
However, if you truly believe the Shannon model is no longer up to the task, you ought to contact the National Institute of Health and the various pharmaceuticals right away.
As for me, I'll stick with Shannon entropy on the forum rather than Kolmogorov entropy to measure information in biological systems (successful communication, life v non-life/death) and to convey the principles of information theory.
..who immdiately donned sackcloth and ashes and went crawling on his hands and knees to NOW, begging for forgiveness.
I don't disagree that men are on average better at some aspects of math. I just think saying so is likely to be injurious to your health. :-)
The feminazis and lefties on campuses remind me of creationists. The try to restrict speech and intimidate people into accepting untruths.
One of my daughters is an engineer. Many of the the men in her engineering class understood higher math quicker than she did and she had to work harder than many of them on the math. But once she understood it, they were at parity. However, she does much better at communicating than most of the total math jocks.
This has shown me that we should allow women to learn math in a different way than men. They might need more time to absorb the concepts, but once they get them it is about even. Their verbal skills being better than men makes a big difference in moving on to management level jobs. My daughter makes big bucks now because of the differences between men and women.
It is funny that I hit the math wall and could not get by calculus. I think if I had been taught in a slower more methodical way I could have done it. I have four children and two of them seem to have inherited the math gene from their chemical engineer grandfather. One is a boy and one is a girl. The boy scored 100 points higher in math than the girl on the SATs (the boy had a near perfect score). This is not scientific of course, but I think it shows the difference.
"who immdiately donned sackcloth and ashes and went crawling on his hands and knees to NOW, begging for forgiveness"
That one woman professor who said she felt "sick" and left the room when Summers was throwing out his ideas for discussion, illustrates the anti-intellectual quality of the left.
What makes me sick is that these idiots are educating our youth as the "leaders of tomorrow". Something needs to be done quickly to get real education going again.
Ward Churchill, the fake indian, is the poster boy for ignorance and useless time-wasting subjects.
One of my daughters is an engineer. Many of the the men in her engineering class understood higher math quicker than she did and she had to work harder than many of them on the math. But once she understood it, they were at parity. However, she does much better at communicating than most of the total math jocks.
This has shown me that we should allow women to learn math in a different way than men. They might need more time to absorb the concepts, but once they get them it is about even. Their verbal skills being better than men makes a big difference in moving on to management level jobs. My daughter makes big bucks now because of the differences between men and women.
It disturbs me greatly that political correctness has taken many subjects off the table and has caused our society to make absurd and costly false equalities.
The most obvious example that comes to my mind was during the Clinton years when all of the Armed Forces – except for the Marines – were required to reduce their physical standards so that women could meet them. The men were no longer challenged. Notably, all of the services – except the Marines – had difficulty meeting their recruitment goals.
In a related example, whereas it used to take 2 men to carry a stretcher in the battlefield – now regulations call for 4 – because women do not have the same upper body strength.
That is a false equality.
I had many friends who worked in the fire department in San Antonio. They love and respect women – but frankly were quite concerned how they would be able to handle the situation of pulling a 300 lb man out of a second story building. That is understandable. The police department had a similar concern about the weight of the belts they must carry. And sure enough, the first police woman to try to swim a river after a suspect drowned.
Certainly there are women who are strong enough to carry a belt, a stretcher, pry a large man out a window or meet the previous physical standards for the military. These should not be held back. OTOH, it is a burden to the taxpayer to force a false equity.
Jeepers, we don’t do it on sports teams or in entertainment. Where a particular ethnicity or gender excels in a sport, they will dominate by the numbers because it is all about winning. False equality seems to be less important than winning. Likewise, if the role calls for a woman – a man is not cast and so on. But then Hollywood has always enjoyed an exemption from the political correctness it demands of others.
I’m not yet convinced – though I could be persuaded – that superiority of German engineering, Asian mathematics and the like is genetic. The social structures and methods of education are quite different and would need to be shown as not relevant to their apparent superiority in certain disciplines.
All of which brings me back to men and women and math.
There are obvious genetic differences between the sexes. But as with the examples in the military – there are also notable exceptions. Lisa Randall stands out as a prime example.
IMHO, the wrong approach would be to lower the standards of math education to level the playing field and create a ‘false equality’ as was done by Clinton’s administration wrt the military.
I am one of those women who are drawn to mathematics – in particular, geometric physics. Condescension would be insulting, thus I greatly appreciate it when tortoise and Doctor Stochastic battle it out with me toe-to-toe.
tortoise and I have an ongoing dispute on algorithmic information theory. For those who are deeply involved in that field, it has the keys of a mathematical ‘theory of everything’. and evidently therein exists a tendency to think of AIT as preeminent to all other disciplines.
Though I readily agree to the “unreasonable effectiveness of math” - I beg to differ as to preeminence. IMHO, preeminence goes to geometry from which mathematics and the physical laws arise. IOW, mathematical structures (though existing beyond it) apply to and because of, space/time. I believe that Einstein (pure marble of geometry), Vafa, Randall, Barrow and Tegmark would be more in my ballpark than tortoise's - but then tortoise is speaking of pure math.
IOW, the argument may well reduce to a point of view - mathematics alone or mathematical physics.
Likewise, Doctor Stochastic and I have an ongoing dispute over randomness. In his corner are random number generators (he has authored many), Brownian motion and the ilk. In my corner are physical causation, Wolfram’s pseudo-randomness and the ilk.
These disputes are great fun for those of us who are actually interested in them. And we share a great mutual respect as we stand there toe-to-toe and assert our contrary views.
But it would be a mistake to presume that I must be wrong because I am a woman and they are not …
"It disturbs me greatly that political correctness has taken many subjects off the table and has caused our society to make absurd and costly false equalities."
PC is destroying our country.
"The most obvious example that comes to my mind was during the Clinton years when all of the Armed Forces – except for the Marines – were required to reduce their physical standards so that women could meet them. The men were no longer challenged. Notably, all of the services – except the Marines – had difficulty meeting their recruitment goals."
Women should be in separate status like they were in WWII.
The main problem with women in combat is it is too distracting to the men. We don't like to see women get hurt. Acclimatizing men to watching women get blown up is a bad idea. I am a combat vet. If my ship had gone out of port with a bunch of women on it, my wife would have burned down the Naval base. ;-)
"In a related example, whereas it used to take 2 men to carry a stretcher in the battlefield – now regulations call for 4 – because women do not have the same upper body strength."
Woman should not be in combat. It would be ok for them to be in radar planes, intell and other support. But we should not have them anywhere close to ground combat. The Navy shouldn't have them on board either. Putting a bunch of teenagers on a boat together is like having a naked coed sleepover. ;-)
"That is a false equality."
Agreed
"tortoise and I have an ongoing dispute on algorithmic information theory"
I am as ignorant of AIT as creationists are of biology.
"These disputes are great fun for those of us who are actually interested in them. And we share a great mutual respect as we stand there toe-to-toe and assert our contrary views."
Yeah, I don't have any problem with honest debate. What bothers me are the so called "christians" who keep posting the same fraudulent arguments as if they had any merit.
"But it would be a mistake to presume that I must be wrong because I am a woman and they are not … "
What I have learned in over 35 years of marriage is that woman are always right. ;-) (At least if you don't want the sofa for a bed for a few days.)
I really like that ad where the wife comes out in a new dress and asks if she looks fat in it. The guy says, "You betcha".
add me to your list please
"...evolutionists should have no problem with the introduction of "intelligent design" or raw "creationism" into the schools...
I certainly don't, so long as such metaphysical conjectures aren't taught as science."
Yeah, ID and creationism should be taught in a class called
"How to misinterpret the Bible".
ID is not a scientific theory. ID is mere speculation based on misinterpretation of the Bible.
evolution-change in allele frequency in populations over time.
Evolution does not contain origin of life, just species.
Macro and micro evolution are the same process.
Concerning women in the military, one of the innovative ideas of the Clinton administration was to make room on those already cramped submarines for women. Jeepers!
Because God is both Creator of "all that there is" and Author of Scripture, I expect them to agree and have never been disappointed.
We Christians receive Truth from the Spirit - both the living Word of God Jesus Christ (John 1, Rev 19) and the written Scriptures. Truth always trumps facts. Hence the 31 sentences of Genesis 1 trump the hundreds of thousands of volumes of scientific text: mechanical, literal and poetic translation of Genesis 1
Or to put it another way, when a believer perceives a conflict between Genesis and science – since God is author of both – the believer must conclude that either (a) he doesn’t understand either the Scriptures or the science or (b) that he must accept the Scripture on faith.
At bottom, there is no scientific argument against the declaration that God created “all that there is” last Thursday.
Personally, I see perfect harmony between Genesis and science because:
b) The perspective of time (space/time) passing changes from the inception of “all that there is” in Genesis 1-3 to earth in Genesis 4 when Adam is banished to mortality.
c) Relativity and inflationary theory tell us that time is relative. Six days from the space/time coordinates of the inception of this universe is equal to roughly 14 billion years from our space/time coordinates on earth.
Schroeder: Age of the Universe
In case you want to know, this exponential rate of expansion has a specific number averaged at 10 to the 12th power. That is in fact the temperature of quark confinement, when matter freezes out of the energy: 10.9 times 10 to the 12th power Kelvin degrees divided by (or the ratio to) the temperature of the universe today, 2.73 degrees. That's the initial ratio which changes exponentially as the universe expands.
The theological difference hinges on the interpretation of Scriptures, particularly Romans 5:12-14 and I Corinthians 15:42-48. A large segment of Christians (including Roman Catholics) view Adam as the first ensouled man, a smaller segment view Adam as the first mortal man.
My musings are squarely in the middle, i.e. 6000 years since Adam at earth’s space/time coordinates plus 6 days from the inception space/time coordinates and Adam as the first mortal man with the breath of God (neshama – Genesis 2). All other creatures in Genesis 1 have a soul, a nephesh, but not a neshama.
It is a waste of time to argue a theological point such as YEC using science. It is doctrine and must be argued with Scripture, lexicons and ancient manuscripts. If one is unable to make such a theological argument, I suggest it is better just to ignore the YEC post altogether.
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