Thursday, February 10, 2011

Is Intelligent Life with Superior Technologies inherently unstable?

We’ve never made contact with other intelligent life forms on other planets within other solar systems that possess sufficient technologies to communicate over long distances. Many ID advocates argue that’s because conditions on Earth are unique in the universe and no such other life forms exist. With an estimated 100,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 other planets in the universe such “uniqueness” seems very unlikely. Other factors are undoubtedly the immense distances between stars, the possibility that an alien species may have different technologies and communicate in ways that we don’t understand yet, etc.


Of course in order to communicate with another form of intelligent life both sides of the conversation need to have adequate technologies. If some intelligent life sent us messages as recently as two centuries ago no one would have had a sufficient technology to even receive them, much less interpret them.

Another factor that isn’t discussed much is the possibility that any civilizations with sufficient technologies to communicate over interstellar distances are inherently unstable. In other words, once such technologies are understood and implemented, something inherently happens to that society so that it destroys itself or loses that technology within a few centuries. Note that I am not suggesting that “intelligent life” itself is necessarily unstable. Instead I am suggesting that the use of advanced technologies may be unstable. It’s possible that an organism such as a dolphin could evolve significant intelligence but be unable to use new technologies simply because they lack opposable thumbs.

The most obvious possibility for instability is a nuclear conflict. If you have sufficient technologies to send radio signals, it is quite possible that you are close to understanding how to create and use nuclear weapons. It could be argued that we were very lucky here on Earth. It is unlikely that Adolf Hitler would have had any qualms about using nuclear weapons if he would have had them and he missed having that technology by just a few years.

But there are many other possibilities. Maybe strong technologies result in destruction of the environment of a planet within a short time (i.e. a few centuries). Life could then diminish to the point that mere existence becomes more important than trying to communicate with life on other planets. In his book “Collapse”, Jared Diamond demonstrates that environmental damage has been a significant factor in all societies on Earth that have collapsed such as on Easter Island, Mayans, etc. Of course those specific collapses didn’t involve the use of modern technologies. But it is very likely that such technologies could increase the rate of environmental damage.

Another alternative I’ve heard of is that eventually technologies become so fascinating in and of themselves that interactions between the living things become secondary in importance and the intelligent species stop reproducing. I think that there are signs that such things could happen.

I have a nephew who spends basically all of his free time playing video games. (Yes, I have mentioned my observation to his parents. Fortunately I can report that he now has a girlfriend and spends less time on these games.) A while ago I saw on a local news channel a video of two teenagers sitting a couple of feet away from each other on a park bench texting on their cell phones. There isn’t anything remarkable about that except for the fact that they were texting each other! Many people spend large parts of their free time on the Internet now. Others consistently find something on their 200+ cable channels to watch.

Such people are still a relatively small percentage of the overall population, but all of those technologies are also relatively recent. Video games have been with us for just a few decades. How addictive will they be a century from now? What will you be able to do on the Internet in 50 years? It is likely that in just a couple of decades you will be able to watch any movie ever made “on-demand” in high definition, 3-D on very large television screens. How compelling will that be for many people?

In fact, what new technologies will be available in the 22nd century that we can’t even imagine in 2011? There may even be some that offer sexual satisfaction in ways that we can’t imagine now.

If humans stop interacting with other humans, they don’t reproduce. Eventually the society ceases to exist.

Then, of course, there are other possible technologies that are unstable which humans haven’t experienced yet because our technology is still a bit limited. Some have suggested that it may be possible to create a significantly large black hole on Earth. Such a thing would destroy life here. We don’t know how to do that but maybe it is indeed possible.

With all of those risks (and maybe more that we are not aware of), it is quite possible that it is rare to find an intelligent civilization that lasts for more than, say, 3-4 centuries. So if intelligent life exists on any other planet we will need to be looking at that planet during the relatively very small window of time that radio signals coming from that planet may contain signs of intelligence.

Sunday, January 23, 2011

Intelligent Design and ‘The Face on Mars’

As we all know, Intelligent Design advocates – led by people like William Dembski – insist that there are scientific and even mathematical techniques that can be used to identify things that are “intelligently designed”. They have focused their attention on issues relating to the biodiversity of life, primarily evolution and abiogenesis. But if their claims are true then there would be a number of other applications for their techniques.


For example, there is the rock formation called ‘The face on Mars’.

One of the images taken by Viking 1 on July 25, 1976 revealed a rock formation that resembles a human face. The image resides on a mesa in the portion of Mars called “Cydonia” which lies in the planet's northern hemisphere. You can see pictures and a discussion at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cydonia_(region_of_Mars) .

As Wikipedia says, “Some commentators, most notably Richard C. Hoagland, believe the ‘Face’ to be evidence of a long-lost Martian civilization along with other features they believe are present, such as apparent pyramids, which they argue are part of a ruined city.”

Once the image was presented the focus was clearly on whether or not this face is “intelligently designed”. So clearly this “Face of Mars” would seem to present an ideal opportunity to demonstrate the techniques advocated by Dembski and others.

In fact, as you study the details, the ideal features of the match become more and more apparent.

First, the discussion is about whether or not carved faces in rocks are intelligently designed. We know that this is a perfect example of where ID techniques can be used because of the words of William Dembski himself!

At http://www.designinference.com/documents/2003.08.Encyc_of_Relig.htm Dembski says:

“Intelligent design begins with a seemingly innocuous question: Can objects, even if nothing is known about how they arose, exhibit features that reliably signal the action of an intelligent cause? To see what’s at stake, consider Mount Rushmore. The evidence for Mount Rushmore’s design is direct—eyewitnesses saw the sculptor Gutzon Borglum spend the better part of his life designing and building this structure. But what if there were no direct evidence for Mount Rushmore’s design? What if humans went extinct and aliens, visiting the earth, discovered Mount Rushmore in substantially the same condition as it is now?

“In that case, what about this rock formation would provide convincing circumstantial evidence that it was due to a designing intelligence and not merely to wind and erosion? Designed objects like Mount Rushmore exhibit characteristic features or patterns that point to an intelligence. Such features or patterns constitute signs of intelligence. Proponents of intelligent design, known as design theorists, purport to study such signs formally, rigorously, and scientifically. Intelligent design may therefore be defined as the science that studies signs of intelligence. “

Mount Rushmore, of course, consists of “intelligently designed” carved faces in rocks.

The “Face on Mars” is – at least potentially – is an “intelligently designed” carved face in a rock.

It would seem that we have a perfect fit!

Second, this “face” was very controversial. On September 8, 2000, an online poll produced the following results: 37 percent said it was made by aliens, 31 percent thought it was a natural geographical feature, and 32 percent answered that they thought there was not enough data to decide either way. It would be difficult to construct a set of statistics showing more indecision (and therefore more controversy) among the general public.

Third, the timing was nearly perfect. In 1998 – a mere two years before the poll mentioned above – William Dembski published his book titled "The Design Inference: Eliminating Chance through Small Probabilities". That book discussed ideas such as "specified complexity" that could be used as a tool to identify ID.

Fourth, Intelligent Design claims have been called religious. This has been true throughout the ID debate. Most significantly the Dover, PA, court decision stated, in part, that ID “cannot uncouple itself from its creationist, and thus religious, antecedents."

But the face on Mars has no religious connotations at all. As mentioned on Wikipedia, even those who think that the face is intelligently designed say that some sort of Martian civilization – rather than some “god” or “God” - created it. So by examining the “Face on Mars” with their techniques ID advocates could clearly show that their claims are NOT only based solely on religion.

Fifth, the potential significance of this discovery could hardly be more significant. If, in fact, this rock really is intelligently designed, it would be, without any real debate, the most significant archaeological discovery in human history. We would have disputable evidence that some form of civilization lived on Mars or that some other alien civilization visited there and created this face.

So, all of the pieces come together here. I can’t imagine that anyone could construct, even in their imagination, a better opportunity for ID advocates to show the value of their hypotheses.

With such a significant opportunity presented to them, surely a number of papers were published in the ID literature on this subject.

Right?

Alas! No ID advocates seemed to pay any attention whatsoever to the “Face on Mars”. The Discovery Institute, for example, has no articles at all about “Cydonia” – the location of the “Face”.

What can we conclude from this?

It’s simple. ID really is religious and ID really has no intellectual, scientific or mathematical validity.

Sorry, ID advocates.

Tuesday, January 18, 2011

More Evidence that ID is NOT scientific

The post below that I am responding to is from a confirmed advocate of Intelligent Design. In fact he is SUCH a strong advocate of ID that he basically considers it to be inerrant. He’s never questioned a single claim ever made by any members of the Discovery Institute.

> In brief (and in the words of design theorist Stephen C.

> Meyer), "the theory of intelligent design holds that there

> are telltale features of living systems and the universe

> that are best explained by an intelligent cause - that is,

> by the conscious choice of an intelligent agent - rather

> than by an undirected process."


> With respect to the biological world, the science of

> intelligent design is committed to the following

> propositions (elucidated by design theorist William Dembski

> in "The Design Revolution" and paraphrased here by me):

Here we begin a list of things that supposedly show that ID is both true and scientific.
It is, in fact, neither.
One thing that we need to look at is how specific the claims of ID advocates are. One of the requirements of a truly scientific hypothesis is that it must be specific. If it is not specific, then it is not really testable.
I’ve had creationists tell me that God must have created nature because much of it is so “beautiful”.
But what does that even mean? How do you specifically and objectively define “beauty”? So clearly that is a non-scientific argument. (As a matter of fact, we probably evolved to develop a sense of beauty based on how the natural world looks. Regardless of how flowers looked, we would probably consider them to be beautiful because that’s how they look and we’ve grown accustomed to that look.)
The examples given below include many that strongly demonstrate how this requirement is not followed.
Evolution makes MANY very specific claims. An obvious example is the one that has come close to being a cliché:
Evolution would be falsified if a mammalian fossil was found in pre-Cambrian rock.
Note how specific that is, both in the type of fossil as well as in the age of the rock.
ID can't come close to matching any such thing. That's how we know that it is CERTAINLY not science and almost certainly untrue. (ID cannot be falsified.)
Also, of course, ID is competing against Darwinian evolution. So if ID is making some sort of claim or prediction, that claim must be something different from what Darwinian evolution would claim or predict. Otherwise there is no reason to discard evolutionary hypotheses in order to adopt ID.
Finally, a scientific hypothesis must make some claim about what we will find (or can guarantee something that we won’t find) in the future. If all it does is look at evidence retroactively then it is not science. Our understanding of cosmology allows us to understand what caused eclipses in the past. But it also predicts future eclipses. Similarly evolution looks at things that happened in the past, but then it applies its theories to that evidence and makes specific predictions about the future. ID can’t do that.
> 1) Specified complexity is a reliable indicator of

> intelligent design. (Note: Design theorists develop the

> concept of specified complexity in several ways, such as

> complex specified information, irreducible complexity,

> functional complexity, etc.)
Ironically, lack of specificity noted.
How "complex" does it have to be?
How "specified" does it have to be?
An ID advocate would point out that many words have been written describing “specified complexity”. But those many words don’t really apply. William Dembski has written many of them and he specifies in his “Explanatory Filter” that if an event occurs with a probability of less than 10-150 power then it is necessarily the result of design. The problem is that none of those calculations seem to apply when a specific genetic feature is found. No one ever seems to calculate the specific odds of that feature evolving or not. They simply point to it and insist that it must be the result of Intelligent Design.
Can anyone identify some specific species or family of animals that would exhibit this characteristic? Can someone say, for example, that some genetic feature will be found to be “irreducibly complex” before it is studied?
Of course not.
What specific genetic characteristic will exhibit this feature?
No ID advocate can say.
Darwinian evolution can make very specific predictions. Darwinian evolution didn't specifically predict DNA. But once DNA was discovered and sequenced, evolution could make very specific predictions about what will be found in specific samples of DNA in the future. Example: No primate will have a working GULO gene. If we find additional specimens of the so-called 'Hobbit' (Homo floresiensis) on islands in SE Asia and are able to sequence their DNA, as was done for Neanderthals, evolution says with certainty that it will not have a working GULO gene.
That's the sort of specific claim – involving a specific gene in a specific type of organism - which evolution can make. Clearly ID falls far short of making any such specific prediction. That's one of the many reasons why ID is totally useless.
Effectively this "prediction" [cough, cough] can be summarized like this:
In the future ID advocates will continue to use the God-of-the-Gaps argument.
To that extent, the prediction is guaranteed to come true.
Putting it another way, all this is saying in essence is that all living things will have intricate DNA that "does stuff". Genes "do stuff". In that sense this is also something that Darwinian evolution would predict.
**IF** some organism had a very non-intricate genome (say a few thousand base-pairs) that would falsify Darwinian evolution.
So Darwinian evolution also predicts that living things would have intricate DNA with genes.
Note that there is even reasonable to expect an Intelligent Designer would create genomes lacking intricacy. Often the most elegant designs are the simplest ones. A procedure in a computer program taking, say, three lines is often considered to be a "better" design than one that takes, say, ten lines. So there is no reason for intricacy to be a necessary consequence of Intelligent Design. Obviously this is a feature of living things that ID advocates are trying to embrace that doesn’t really support their claims.
Oh-for-one.
> 2) Many biological systems and subsystems exhibit

> specified complexity.
Vague, and ironically "unspecified" assertion noted.
How "specified" is it?
How much "complexity" is needed?
“Complexity” (as synonymous with “intricacy) is not a necessary sign of Intelligent Design. If you compare a telephone pole to a typical oak tree, the oak tree is many orders of magnitude more intricate. But it is the telephone pole that is intelligently designed.
Oh-for-two.
> 3) Undirected material mechanisms do not suffice to

> explain specified complexity in the biological world.
TRUE!
Surprised?
But Darwinian evolution is FAR from "undirected". It has a very powerful directional force called "natural selection". ID advocates should learn something about it. A Victorian gentleman named Charles Darwin wrote a few books about that subject. Before Darwin people made the very same argument that is being made here. After Darwin those same people recognized the existence of such a "directed" force – natural selection.
So this is also a prediction made by Darwinian evolution. So it doesn't count as an argument in favor of ID.
Oh-for-three.
> 4) Intelligent design is the best explanation for

> biological systems and subsystems exhibiting specified

> complexity. (Note that ID doesn't concern itself with

> speciation, which is the central concern of Darwinian

> evolutionary theory.)
Wrong and wrong.
Intelligent design actually explains exactly NOTHING in the natural world. That's true of any "God of the Gaps" type of argument - which is all that ID is. Secondly, even the phrase "specified complexity" is totally meaningless because it is inconsistent to the point of being contradictory.
Oh-for-four.
> To flesh out those propositions and give them

> scientific rigor, ID theorists use these tools:

> probability theory, recursion theory, stochastic

> process theory, information theory, bioinformatics,

> biochemistry, biophysics, molecular biology,

> microbiology, genetics, computer science,

> paleontology, Dembski's explanatory filter, abductive

> and inductive reasoning, and philosophy of science

> (to name only the tools that readily come to mind).
Wow. That's a LONG list.
Strange indeed that NONE of it supports ID and ALL of it supports biological evolution instead. Most obviously the “Philosophy of Science” doesn’t support ID! That philosophy says that scientific hypotheses must make specific predictions that can imply tests that could potentially falsify them. As we see here, there are no such specific predictions and, therefore, no such tests.
I don't see here a single example of how any of those things support ID in any way that evolutionary theories aren't also supported.
Oh-for-five.
> ID also makes a number of testable predictions, such as:
> 1) Natural structures will be found that contain many

> parts arranged in intricate patterns that perform a

> specific function (e.g. complex and specified information).
Define "many". Is that ten? Is it 100? How about 1000?
Define "intricate". Exactly how many components are needed to meet this claim?
Define "specific".
Obviously this is complete non-scientific nonsense. There isn't a single word here that has, very ironically, any "specificity". Anything so vaguely defined can be matched by anything in nature.
We KNOW that "specified complexity" is intellectual and scientific nonsense. We also KNOW that "intricacy" says absolutely NOTHING about whether or not something is intelligently designed.
Oh-for-six.
> 2) Forms containing large amounts of novel information

> will appear in the fossil record suddenly and without

> similar precursors.
Define "large".
Define "novel".
Define "information".
Also note that this claim doesn't demonstrate why this is necessarily a prediction of ID. Humans are intelligent designers. Their designs often change gradually over time. Look at a series of pictures of the Chevrolet Corvette for each model year from its inception until now. Automobiles are obviously intelligently designed. Yet these designs change gradually over time. So in what possible way are sudden design changes a necessary requirement of ID?
In fact, just about everything that humans have designed has changed gradually over time. Computer designs have changed gradually over time. Airplane designs have changed gradually over time. Even the human design of things like golf clubs has changed gradually over time. Gradual change over time is a much more common sign of intelligent design than not, at least if we look at humans designs.
At best, what we are talking about here are the imperfections in the fossil record and not evidence for or against ID or evolution. Clearly this is just another very obvious example of the "God-of-the-Gaps" argument - which is the sum total of ALL ID theories.
Oh-for-seven.
> 3) Convergence will occur routinely. That is, genes and

> other functional parts will be re-used in different and

> unrelated organisms.

Define "routinely".  Should we see it 90% of the time?  How about 50%?
Define "convergence". How closely do two genetic traits in two different organisms have to be in order to make them "convergent"?
Moreover, the natural world consists of MANY examples of places where such convergence would make complete sense to an "intelligent designer" but, instead, NO such convergence exists.
Using the example I often point to: fish and cephalopods (squids and octopi) have different eye "designs". Yet they live in precisely the same environment. This would seem to be a PERFECT opportunity for routine "convergence".
Right?
Alas. Fish have the same eye design as all other vertebrates. Cephalopods (squids and octopi) have a different eye design.
This would seem to represent a perfect opportunity for ID to make a specific prediction. It could predict that all organisms living in the ocean would have a “convergent” eye design. That would be actually testable and could make ID something like science. But, of course, ID can’t make specific predictions. That’s why ID is totally useless as well as not scientific.
Evolution has an explanation for these non-convergent designs. Eyesight provides very strong adaptive advantages for any organism capable of movement. I don’t even need to explain those advantages. So that once something such as a light-sensitive spot appears on an organism that, at least, allows night to be distinguished from day, it is easy to see how changes improving that spot’s ability to “see” would be strongly influenced by natural selection. But we would expect to see different “designs” if they were the result of different random genetic changes influenced by natural selection. That's precisely what we see.
ID has NO explanation.
Another example of non-convergent “designs” where we might expect them: cetaceans (whales, porpoises and dolphins) are comparable in size to sharks and they also move through precisely the same environment – the water in the oceans.
This would appear to be another perfect example of an opportunity for convergence in the design of their tails.
Alas. The tails of cetaceans move vertically. The tails of fish, including sharks, move horizontally. They are different, non-convergent "designs".
Why?
Evolution has an explanation. The tails of cetaceans evolved from the back legs of land animals. If you put your legs together it is obvious that they move more easily up-and-down than they do from side-to-side. That’s true for all mammals. So the proposed evolution of cetaceans from land mammals makes perfect sense in the context of the way that cetacean tails move.
ID, obviously has no explanation.
Convergence --> NO support for ID.
Oh-for-eight.
> 4) Much so-called "junk DNA" will turn out to perform

> valuable functions.
Define "much".
ID advocates can’t do so. This may be the single most egregious example of ID advocates lacking any specificity in their predictions.
If an ID advocate had said "most" instead of "much" then we would have an implied number - 51%. But "much"? What does that mean? How do we measure that? If 1% of “junk DNA” is found to be useful, that would mean that some 30 MILLION base pairs now have a function. You could argue that is “much”. But it would still leave well over 90% without a use. That would argue that our hypothesized 1% isn’t “much” at all. So, ID advocates are simply making a rhetorical argument rather than a scientific one.
Furthermore, how long do we have to wait? What if a century from now we haven't found "much" (whatever that means) functional junk DNA. What will happen? Clearly ID advocates will simply say that we have to wait longer.
Evwn evolutionists predict that SOME "junk DNA" will turn out to perform valuable functions. In fact it is the mainstream scientists - those who accept evolution – that are discovering these functions.
It is NOT the ID "scientists" [cough, cough] doing that sort of research.
So the difference between ID and evolution here is the difference between the definitions of the word "much" and "some".
Oh-for-nine.
> The above predictions are taken from:
> http://www.ideacenter.org/stuff/contentmgr/files/becbd98b35e8e07260d4e8e92784cbb/b/miscdocs/thepositivecasefordesign_v3.pdf

Clearly that web site is nothing but non-scientific nonsense.