Science versus ID: Message in the sky

Mssage -> Message

No, "Massage".

No 'comming of the lord' jokes, please.

But, if you could create a universe in your laboratory, wouldn't you want to leave a message inside?

So the idea is that we look for signals from a creator, under the assumption that we can decode the mind of said creator, who we don't know is there, and then look for said information that requires advanced knowledge for us to even find it, under the assumption that the supreme being, who wants to leave the message, also wants to hide it.

I say go with the Hitchhikers Gude to the Galaxy Method. *I* want giant flaming letters reading "We Apologize for the Inconvenience."

Re "In the limit, a designer could therefore impart information into the universe without inputting any energy at all."

Um. He does realize that imparting even a bit of information would involve changing the location or state of at least a subatomic particle? Last time I checked, moving even one electron takes nonzero energy.

Henry

"Thus, we suggest that the coded message would simply be an announcement along the line 'Hey guys, the universe is governed by gauge theories, and the relevant algebras are such and such.'"

When I was a kid, I had an ant farm. It was a fascinating little world, but I never felt the need to try to communicate with the ants.

— stevaroni

Um. He does realize that imparting even a bit of information would involve changing the location or state of at least a subatomic particle? Last time I checked, moving even one electron takes nonzero energy.

— Henry

D_mbski wrote;
In the limit, a designer could therefore impart information into the universe without inputting any energy at all.

WD, why do you still insist on seeking the fifth leg to the cat? Do not complicate your life when you already know (and have asserted so) that everything came to be because,
POOF, GODDIT

Stevaroni, I am rolling on the floor after reading your post. That is hilarious.

All that's needed, however, is a universe whose constitution and dynamics are not reducible to deterministic natural laws. Such a universe will produce random events and thus have the possibility of producing events that exhibit specified complexity (i.e., events that stand out against the backdrop of randomness).

— Dembski

Random events and the possibility of producing events that exhibit specified complexity... Wow, quite an admission and quite a problem for those who thus believe that the complement of regularity requires an intelligent designer to produce specified complexity.

So the idea is that we look for signals from a creator, under the assumption that we can decode the mind of said creator, who we don't know is there, and then look for said information that requires advanced knowledge for us to even find it, under the assumption that the supreme being, who wants to leave the message, also wants to hide it.

Yup. And all of this without even trying to discuss or speculate on the nature of this creat -- oops, I mean designer. 'Cause that would be religion, see, and ID is NOT ABOUT RELIGION, nosireebob, you better get that straight...

Dembski seems to be confusing the fact that...

Look, this is getting boring. Just wake us up when Dembski DOESN'T confuse something with something else...

Since the right key converts any message into any other message, the secret of universe is indeed encoded in the digits of pi. Unfortunately, a different key turns pi into an endless series of recipes for hush puppies, and another makes it into a Latvian translation of Fanny Hill.

42

Look, this is getting boring. Just wake us up when Dembski DOESN'T confuse something with something else...

I have fixed the title, and in an irrational fit of type-editing I put punctuation in Pim's post, since he was obviously in a hurry...

(Commas, Pim, commas! And the occasional colon!)

Re "Stevaroni, I am rolling on the floor after reading your post. That is hilarious."

The goat disagrees. ;)

Comment #104098 Posted by Nick (Matzke) on June 6, 2006 01:49 PM (e) | kill I have fixed the title, and in an irrational fit of type-editing I put punctuation in Pim's post, since he was obviously in a hurry... (Commas, Pim, commas! And the occasional colon!)

One thing that is striking about the idea of Hsu, et al, with regard to ID/creationism, is that by no means would they be looking for "specified complexity" as such. They'd be looking for specificity, all right, but it is the kind of specificity that, amazingly enough, is specified in advance by researchers, not "identified" by probability measures afterward.

This is the thing: we know that, under some (many, actually)circumstances, the specification of the fundamental interactions governed by gauge theories, or sequences of prime numbers, would not appear in the data under "natural conditions". Hence we might at least suspect that certain kinds of data appearing where we would not expect it to be, at least could be the result of intelligence. True, it might be due to something else, but certain data that could be specified by ourselves as well as by the "creator of the universe", and which would not be expected otherwise, might give us reason to hypothesize such an unknown intelligence.

By contrast, finding the information in complex DNA sequences is not going to tell us much. DNA strands are unavoidably contain information, and we cannot specify through principles what kind of information they will contain. Evolution, design, or sheer randomness might be responsible for the information contained in DNA. Without a specific designer, whose specifications become our specifications for identifying that designer, it is very unlikely that we could pin down the existence of this designer.

Perhaps if DNA contained information about gauge theory or prime number sequences, we might again suspect that some kind of intelligence was responsible--whether or not we could be sure. These sorts of scenarios seem to be about the only plausible way of giving evidence for an unknown designer through DNA.

So this particular analogy may tell us something, which is that ID has no characteristics to indicate a designer of "natural" DNA. Whether or not Hsu, et al, have an idea that is at all worthwhile on its own, at least it shows that anyone looking for specified information to indicate an unknown designer is not going to follow the ID scenario. The EF is ignored in even mildly serious hypothetical situations, while the usual method of matching up information that can be specified by intelligences independently is still the preferred method of determining intelligence in a situation involving the unknown.

Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/b8ykm

The goat disagrees.

Ahhh, but information is carried on a non-infinite wavelength carrier wave.

Have you not seen the elegant sine wave signature of His Noodly Appendage!!!

This is arrant idiocy. The only reason a creator would set up the message in advance (ie, putting it in the CMB), rather than simply giving it directly to his little subjects, is that he/she/it either could not or would not interfere with the universe after its creation. In which case, the universe could be preset to evolve life, but this would be indistinguishable from a sheerly deterministic universe without massive amounts of essentially unknowable information. And the process that resulted in life on Earth would still be occurring via evolution from a common ancestor. This would also negate any concept of free will.

Sorry - what I was referring to as "arrant idiocy" was Dembski's assertion that this idea had anything to do with ID in its current incarnation.

The biblical era... not such a good time for the goats.

But it is likely that Dembski is just following his creationist impulses here, since the real point is that the Word made everything (the gospel of John, with which Dembski equates ID), and "without him not anything was made that was made." The Privileged Planet also gave the game away, when it essentially took all of the features of our world to have been specifically made to support humans and their investigations.

The real question is how a paper tangentially critiquing SETI ends up being seen as supportive by D*mbski, when SETI has been mentioned as demonstrating design methods.

D*mbski works in mysterious ways.

The biblical era... not such a good time for the goats. Fortunately, things are much better Today.

If the message is there, it will probably read as the cosmic equivalent of "Made in China"

The biblical era... not such a good time for the goats.

Hmm. Could this relate to the choice for menu for one of the denizens of Jurassic Park?

Henry

Steve S. said
....Not as bad as K.E.'s, though.

May the retribution of a thousand foreskin collectors be visited upon thee.

I'm praying to The Great Bearded Goat Sacrifice God in the Sky (TGBGSGS)(or gods ..just in case) that in exchange for all that blood, I at least get one little itty bitty confirmation he/she/it is there to absolve me of guilt when I smite my foes (and kill their women,children,goats and mice).(No guilt? Don't worry, psychopaths have gods too...they're the gods that really frighten me).

In the meantime, even if I don't get an answer, I'm just going to make a nice big fat assumption that he/she/it is there and carry on regardless.

Oh *LATE NEWS* I got that confirmation, W got a message from TGBGSGS .....guilt (if any) taken care of.

Could this relate to the choice for menu for one of the denizens of Jurassic Park?

A good example of how this can be turned into a scientific concept is given in a paper submitted to Arxiv called "Message in the Sky"

but only some, just for the sport of watching them go at each other. This "concept" might be dubbed "lurker in the sky".

You're very clever, young man, very clever," said the old lady. "But it's hackers all the way up."

so... God is just trolling?

Dembski claims that Freeman Dyson agrees with him on the physics question:
http://www.uncommondescent.com/index.php/archives/1191

Continuing stevaroni's discussion:

God: "I dabbled with an entirely new method of superstring formation in a distant galaxy today, what did you do?"

Dembski: "I learned how to write in Jello."

God: "I need to spend more time with beetles."

"The biblical era... not such a good time for the goats."

It's still the biblical era, and it's still not a good time for goats.

Dembski claims that Freeman Dyson agrees with him on the physics question: http://www.uncommondescent.com/index.php/archive...

What's more, the energy in quantum events is proportional to frequency or inversely proportional to wavelength. And since there is no upper limit to the wavelength of, for instance, electromagnetic radiation, there is no lower limit to the energy required to impart information. In the limit, a designer could therefore impart information into the universe without inputting any energy at all.

I have thus reached the same optimistic conclusion concerning communication as I reached in the previous lecture about bilogical survival. It is in principle possible to communicate forever with a remote society in an expanding universe, using a finite expenditure of energy. (Emphasis added)

Très Bon RBH. You're on to it.
Our Bill WHO art in Heaven wants us to believe that an EM receiver with an infinitely small bandwidth filter integrating over an infinitely long period of time will produce a "1" god exists or "0" it does not exist.
No prizes for guessing what his assumptions are prior to us reaching an infinite amount of time (given that time is dimensionless) or even that dimensionless time as we define it is only 15BY old.

Logically he knows his material god can't exist

"Dyson's "finite expenditure of energy" is not Dembski's "without inputting any energy at all"."

And mathematically that means D*mbski confuses something like a timedendent 'Fourier series' for a continuously damped 'carrier wave' radiation with something like a Laplace transform or a windowed continuous Fourier transform for an intermittent communication. Maybe he should take a refresher course in math?

Dembski's arguments remind me of one of the best explanations of intelligent design to hit Saturday morning television: When Heckyl turned to Jeckyl and said, "We're cartoon characters--we can do anything!"

In the limit, a designer could therefore impart information into the universe without inputting any energy at all. Whether the designer works through quantum mechanical effects is not ultimately the issue here.

I really don't get all this stuff at all.

What does Dembski want--to prove that nature is unnatural, a contrivance? Why does he need to believe such a thing?

Why not ascribe to nature all the powers that one ascribes to God (who doesn't "come from" anywhere, who was not created, etc.) when nature is, certainly, here? I don't understand this anti-naturist perspective. Religious believers think that atheists are negative, but a belief in something is a disbelief in something else, and it's religious believers who don't believe in the universe.

Pim here misquotes. There needs to be an ellipsis between the first and second sentence because Pim left out,oh,only about 11 paragraphs of further explanation between those two sentences. And all this time we've been told that it is only the "creationists" that quote mine!! Guess that myth is now finally laid to rest!! Pim, thanks for finally making clear the double standard that exists regarding the charge of "quote mining".

— Donald M

Pim here misquotes. There needs to be an ellipsis between the first and second sentence because Pim left out,oh,only about 11 paragraphs of further explanation between those two sentences.

— DonaldM

In the limit, a designer could therefore impart information into the universe without inputting any energy at all. Whether the designer works through quantum mechanical effects is not ultimately the issue here.

Donald M (and Bill Dembski) should learn to use Google before making such charges.

In addition, the author of the PT post deliberately misquotes me, juxtaposing two passages from my work without any indication that several pages of text intervene between the passages. Here is the passage attributed to me at PT exactly as it appeared there (at the very least, there should have been an ellipsis before "Certainly quantum mechanics ..." as well as an indication that his actually is not the start of a sentence):

Pim,

I'm sure retractions of the quote-mining charge will be forthcoming from both Dembski and Donald M., once it becomes apparent to them that Dembski did write, and post, the paragraph exactly as you quoted it.

Dembski's complaining that the quote you use leaves out several paragraphs that were in his original work. Was the text from meta-link source you mention provided by directly by Dembski as is, or was it adapted/abridged by a third party? If it was provided by Dembski himself (it's hard to tell) then he hasn't a leg to stand on.

If you tell the truth you don't have to remember anything.

— Mark Twain

This misquotation thing is just hilarious. Here's another version of "Intelligent Design coming clean" (IDCC) by Bill Dembski, in which the paragraph is exactly as quoted by Pim (this version is on ID-friendly ARN, so it's quite unlikely that they purposefully mangled Dembski's piece).

I am not sure about the timeline, but IDCC came before No Free Lunch (NFL), from which I think Dembski's lengthy quote is taken (the origin is unclear from his post). However, I wouldn't be surprised if ID critics commented on the physical impossibility of infinite-wavelength, zero-energy information transfer as soon as IDCC appeared. Therefore, it is at least plausible that Dembski added the "clarifying" passage in NFL at least in part to counter the criticism that his original statement made no sense. If that were the case, for him to now accuse Pim of misquotation by citing the revised NFL passage instead of the original in IDCC would be amazingly dishonest. Perhaps Dembski can clarify this.

When I talk in this style, I am mixing knowledge with values, disobeying Monod's prohibition. But I am in good company. Before the days of Darwin and Huxley and Bishop Wilberforce, in the eighteenth century, scientists were not subject to any taboo against mixing science and values. When Thomas Wright (1750), the discoverer of galaxies, announced his discovery, he was not afraid to use a theological argument to support an astronomical theory. "Since as the Creation is, so is the Creator also magnified, we may conclude in consequence of an infinity, and an infinite all-active power, that as the visible creation is supposed to be full of siderial systems and planetary worlds, so on, in like similar manner, the endless immensity is an unlimited plenum of creations not unlike the known.... That this in all probability may be the real case, is in some degree made evident by the many cloudy spots, just perceivable by us, as far without our starry Regions, in which tho' visibly luminous spaces, no one star or particular constituent body can possibly be distinguished; those in all likelyhood may be external creation, bordering upon the known one, too remote for even our telescopes to reach."

1. Any computer program can be expressed as a binary number.
2. Numbers go up to infinity
3. 1 & 2 imply that there are an infinite number of computer programs.
4. If 3 is true, then there is a program, which, if run on a suitable computer, is a simulation of our universe.
Therefore, we are either living in our universe or a simulation of our universe.

How do we know which we are living in?

Sign of the goat. Beware.

http://www.jesus-is-savior.com/False%20Religions/Wicca%20&%20Witchcraft/signs_of_satan.htm

Deacon Barry perhaps we are living in a SIMULATION of the SIMULATION of the universe.

3. 1 & 2 imply that there are an infinite number of computer programs. 4. If 3 is true, then there is a program, which, if run on a suitable computer, is a simulation of our universe.

Dembski's complaining that the quote you use leaves out several paragraphs that were in his original work. Was the text from meta-link source you mention provided by directly by Dembski as is, or was it adapted/abridged by a third party? If it was provided by Dembski himself (it's hard to tell) then he hasn't a leg to stand on.

It's gotta be tough for Dembski. With all the self-plagiarising he does, keeping track of what he wrote where has to be confusing for him.

RBH

Thanks to the link to Dembski's bad prose... I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for an apology, or a bottle of single-malt scotch from Buffalo Bill.

HOWEVER, as is often the case in science, while looking for one answer, you discover a question: ie WHERE IS DAVESCOTT?
I have not seen the retard post since May 25, back in his hate-the-ACLU tirade phase... Has Buffalo Bill finally hog-tied and spanked him? Voted him off the Island? Fired him ala Trump? Maybe Buffalo Bill turned on him and turned the retard over to Homeland Security?

Maybe a contest, or a pool for the correct answer? Profits to go to ACLU or charity of choice?

The number of the beast indeed!

Dembski's complaining that the quote you use leaves out several paragraphs that were in his original work. Was the text from meta-link source you mention provided by directly by Dembski as is, or was it adapted/abridged by a third party? If it was provided by Dembski himself (it's hard to tell) then he hasn't a leg to stand on.

#3 This is sickening. How can one expect a meaningful scientific debate (or even a reasonable dialog) when the other side is so blatently dishonest? Obviously we cannot - and so we should not have such lofty expectations of our adversaries as for them to be honest. But nevertheless we need to stay focused on the facts, take the high ground, and let them drown themselves in their own tidal wave of lies and deceit. Comment by dougmoran --- June 7, 2006 @ 12:31 pm

Thanks, RBH. A comment has just appeared on Dembski's thread pointing out the existence of the ARN copy. We'll see what happens next...

Re "4. If 3 is true, then there is a program, which, if run on a suitable computer, is a simulation of our universe."

Maybe for a finite space-time, but not an infinite one.

Does current cosmology theory take a position on whether space is finite or infinite? (I gather that GTR by itself implies that a forever expanding universe would be infinite, but I'm not sure if the recent dark energy/dark matter hypotheses might affect that conclusion.)

Henry

Any good programmer knows how to create a simulation of a universe:

iID = Universe_ID_Number;
oUniverse = iID / 0;

unfortunately our computer software doesn't know how to interpret this, proving once and for all the God has a better compiler.

Steve S - I think that our tsunami of truth(iness) trumps dougmoran's " the tidal wave of lies and deceit".

And you are right about DaveScott - who reeally cares?

Re "LOL you make me sick, PvM, with your tidal wave of lies and deceit. LOL."

Yeah, better watch them there tidal waves...

There may be an infinite number of computer programs, but that doesn't mean our universe is represented by one of them.

4. If 3 is true, then there is a program, which, if run on a suitable computer, is a simulation of our universe.

— Corkscrew

June 7, 2006 Casting pearls before swine --- okay, I'll do it [take #2] In my previous post, I attributed a deliberate misquote to the author of a PT blog posting. The PT author gave no citation for the quote (why was that??), so I took it to come from my book NO FREE LUNCH, which it did, though the quote as given at PT left out some crucial portions of text. As it turns out, the quote in question appeared in an earlier paper of mine (unpublished except on the web, portions of which were then incorporated into NFL) exactly as it appeared at PT (see http://www.arn.org/docs/dembski/wd_idcomingclean.htm). I therefore withdraw the charge of egregious quotemining. On the other hand, I don't at all withdraw charge of needless crowing about a nonexistent physics error. Anyone who knows anything about mathematics knows that the behavior of a function as one takes a limit can differ drastically from the behavior of the function at the limit point. Moreover, any ambiguity was cleared up in my book NO FREE LUNCH. Finally, if they have a problem with the point I'm making there, let them take up the lectures by Freeman Dyson to which I referred them. Filed under: Intelligent Design --- William Dembski @ 2:03 pm Comments (0)

Ah, but it does. The number system represents everything that can be described. There is therefore an accurate description of our universe within the number system.

Which number system are we talking about here? The set of finite binary numbers is significantly "smaller" than the set of reals, which doesn't include infinitesimals, etc etc. There is a stupid range of different infinities on offer.

Which number system are we talking about here? The set of finite binary numbers is significantly "smaller" than the set of reals, which doesn't include infinitesimals, etc etc.

Henry J: It depends on the particular cosmological conjecture. Some require finiteness, others do not. Just now, take your choice as there is no data beyond the observable universe. This puts no constraint on any cosmological conjecture beyond the observable...

Quote mining usually refers to using a quote to say something different than what the author intended to say. Dembski complains - incorrectly as it turns out - that PvM quote mined his statements and pastes a huge amount of stodgy prose from his book on his web site to prove it. Egg all over his sanctimonious face because now he accepts that he wasn't quoted mined at all. So the question remains, what was Dembski's original point with his two quotes? If the two quotes (from his book and his article) actually mean different things then which is correct? If they don't mean different things then even if PvM had "quote mined" Dembski exactly how did it misrepresent Dembski?

Conclusion: Dembski is yet again was using dishonest obfuscation to imply that PvM changed his meaning when in fact he hadn't even if he had left out the ellipses. It's very childish behavior - Jimmy tells his Mom that his brother "Jack called Mrs Smith next door a big fat ugly lump." Jack claims that Jimmy is lying and he didn't say that. In fact he called her an "ugly big fat lump." Similarly Dembski tried to imply that PvM had altered his meaning by claiming that he had been misquoted when, in fact, the two things don't imply each other.

It's hilarious that Dembski, as usual, got nailed. When will these idiots ever learn that serious ID critics are super careful not to given even the hint of quote mining.

All you need is Peano Arithmetic (N, +, *, =) to represent anything that's describable (in the formal sense of "describable"), including Turing machines.

What's more, the energy in quantum events is proportional to frequency or inversely proportional to wavelength. And since there is no upper limit to the wavelength of, for instance, electromagnetic radiation, there is no lower limit to the energy required to impart information. In the limit, a designer could therefore impart information into the universe without inputting any energy at all.

— Dembski

iID = Universe_ID_Number; oUniverse = iID / 0;

If Dembski had done the minimal research of cut and pasting the quote into Google he would have found the following link

#2 The author of the PT article is Pim Van Meurs (PvM) of talk.politics.guns fame 10+ years ago when he was an undergrad foreigner studying marine biology at UC San Deigo. As far as I know he failed to graduate, married a U.S. citizen (rumored to be an illegal marriage of convenience)in an attempt to remain in the country, and eventually moved back to the Netherlands (deportation rumors swirled). Rumor had it he was fired from a NOAA job in Seattle for spending all his time at work surfing the net. Maybe he should have been less interested in gun laws in a country that wasn't his home and more interested in his college studies and his job. Interestingly, of all the contributors on Panda's Thumb, Pimmy is the only one who doesn't have an entry in the list of contributors. He is also the most prolific contributor at PT by far. My take on that is it would be too embarrassing for PT to list his dismal record along with the people who've actually done something constructive in their lives but they want him around because he's willing to lie and perform hatchet work on people like Bill Dembski and they can remain at arm's length with plausible deniability of agreement with anything Pimmy says. He probably hooked up with talk.origins, antievolution.org, and PT founder Wesley Elsberry (who also does marine biology work) in San Deigo or Seattle and switched his net surfing addiction from gun control to evolution at that time. And/or maybe he's like Wesley's pet monkey who everyone knows stinks and flings feces but can't criticize because his owner loves him. So, when it comes to anything Pim Van Meurs has to say, I say "consider the source" and take it with many grains of salt. Comment by DaveScot --- June 7, 2006 @ 3:06 pm

#3 It still seems like a quote mine to me, if less egregious. Comment by dougmoron --- June 7, 2006 @ 3:26 pm

#4 DaveScot wrote: "As far as I know he failed to graduate..." But the following link shows that he earned his PhD in 1995: http://sioalumni.ucsd.edu/foralumni/dsp_detailAlumni_public.php?alum_id=1257 It took me 30 seconds to find this using Google. Dave, why do I have to tell you something you could have easily found out on your own? Because I didn't look for anything beyond what was on usenet. -ds Comment by zapatero --- June 7, 2006 @ 3:31 pm

To summarize the goat related discussion:

We started with Stevaroni's comment about disemboweling goats as sacrifices which is followed by a comment from the goat noting that the biblical era was not a good time for goats with disemboweling. I point out that things are better now and reference a recent conference where lambs are now included and instead of disemboweling, goats are roasted. I then point out that perhaps goats are in league with evil space alien designers, including references. This pictorial evidence shows the roasting of both goats and alien designers. Henery J questioned whether the dinosaurs of Jurassic Park play any role in goat control. I continue to support my position by stating that dinosaurs were recreated keep the goats and evil alien designers in check. Erasmus then contributed further evidence that goats are truly evil and have infiltrated the highest levels of our government.

So, we have taken the old concept of disemboweling goat sacrifices and repackaged it into goat/lamb roasting and held a conference at the Hilton on the publics perception of our new concept. Provided evidence that supernatural mechanisms are not involved but purely naturalistic mechanisms (space aliens). Shown that at the highest levels of power in this country there is bias against our concept, goats rule.

And the obvious question arises as to the motives and intentions of the space alien overlords.

Sound familiar?

Delta Pi Gamma (Scientia et Fermentum)

It is, however, absolutely crucial to remember that just because something is describable does not mean that it is computable.

Donald, old buddy, you're back! Has it been four weeks already?

Yes, yes, yes, Donald ---- science doesn't pay any attention to your religious opinions, and you don't like that. Right. We got it. Really. We heard you the first hundred times.

Of course, weather forecasting or accident investigation or medical practice or the rules of basketball also don't pay any attention to your religious opinions, do they.

If it makes you feel any better, Donald, none of them pay any attention to MY religious opinions either. Of course, I don't throw tantrums over it, like you do. (shrug)

But hey, now that you're here for another drive-by (and I assume FL will shortly follow), let me repeat my questions for you once more, just in case you missed them the first dozen times:

What, again, did you say the scientific theory of ID is? How, again, did you say this scientific theory of ID explains these problems? What, again, did you say the designer did? What mechanisms, again, did you say it used to do whatever the heck you think it did? Where, again, did you say we can see the designer using these mechanisms to do ... well . . anything?

Or is "POOF!! God --- uh, I mean, The Unknown Intelligent Designer --- dunnit!!!!" the extent of your, uh, scientific theory of ID .... ?

How does "evolution can't explain X Y or Z, therefore goddidit" differ from plain old ordinary run-of-the-mill "god of the gaps?

Here's *another* question for you to not answer, Donald: Suppose in ten years, we DO come up with a specific mutation by mutation explanation for how X Y or Z appeared. What then? Does that mean (1) the designer USED to produce those things, but stopped all of a sudden when we came up with another mechanisms? or (2) the designer was using that mechanism the entire time, or (3) there never was any designer there to begin with.

Which is it, Donald? 1, 2 or 3?

Oh, and if ID isn't about religion, Donald, then why do you spend so much time bitching and moaning about "philosophical materialism"?

(sound of crickets chirping)

You are a liar, Donald. A bare, bald-faced, deceptive, deceitful, deliberate liar, with malice aforethought. Still.

Time to run away again, Donald.

See you next month.

Regarding a computer program to model the universe - I'd imagine that it all depends on the fidelity you want and what you're trying to model. Like on one extreme I could make a program that modeled the existence of the universe - 0 for nonexistent, 1 for existent. One line. My question, though, is if you're trying to model all of the individual particles of the entire universe, assuming that your computer is built out of material from the universe, is it possible to have enough material making up your computer that you could model the universe faster than the actual interactions?

Like in my line of work, I use computational fluid dynamics to model airflow around an aircraft. It takes several hours to get a low fidelity result, and up to several days to get a good, accurate result - all of which happens instantaneously in real life. I'm sure this could be accelerating by adding more computers or using more powerful computers, but at what point are there more particles in your computer than the particles that you're modeling? Would a computer needed to model the universe need more particles than actually exist in the universe?

Pim here misquotes. There needs to be an ellipsis between the first and second sentence because Pim left out,oh,only about 11 paragraphs of further explanation between those two sentences. And all this time we've been told that it is only the "creationists" that quote mine!! Guess that myth is now finally laid to rest!! Pim, thanks for finally making clear the double standard that exists regarding the charge of "quote mining".

— Donald M

Coin wrote: Whether it is on google or not, quoting a paper without citing its exact origin is generally not a good idea, and linking a Dembski blog entry and then quoting an entirely different Dembski paper in the next paragraph is very likely to cause confusion with readers. Perhaps you should edit the original post and add an update linking to the specific paper you quote, for clarity.

1. Any computer program can be expressed as a binary number. 2. Numbers go up to infinity 3. 1 & 2 imply that there are an infinite number of computer programs.

4. If 3 is true, then there is a program, which, if run on a suitable computer, is a simulation of our universe.

Therefore, we are either living in our universe or a simulation of our universe.

I mean, no one can actually be that stupid, that dishonest, and that cowardly, can they?

I've cyber-known Donald for going on five years or so now. His three chords haven't changed a note in all that time. (shrug)

Therefore, we are either living in our universe or a simulation of our universe. How do we know which we are living in?

There may be an infinite number of computer programs, but that doesn't mean our universe is represented by one of them. Ah, but it does. The number system represents everything that can be described. There is therefore an accurate description of our universe within the number system. Proof that the universe is necessarily describable is left as an exercise for the student.

It's gotta be tough for Dembski. With all the self-plagiarising he does, keeping track of what he wrote where has to be confusing for him.

I therefore withdraw the charge of egregious quotemining.

The operating axiom (assumption?) of physics is that the Universe is formally describable.

Finally, it is also worth noting that the Church-Turing thesis (which appears in a number of the above posts either in mangled form or as an implicit assumption) is only a hypothesis. The Church-Turing thesis states that the turing machine is the most "powerful" possible computing device, and all other computing devices can be emulated by a turing machine (and vice versa). We believe the Church-Turing thesis is true and have a number of reasons to think this is true. It has not, however, been proven to be true.

And nowhere in my quote do I say that zero-energy waves impart information --- I say that they do in the limit. Let me suggest you read the appropriate chapters in Michael Spivak's calculus book on limits. In the meantime, you're out of here. ---WmAD

Considering that the natural numbers, which are isomorphic to "binary numbers", are an infinitesimal subset of the reals, which are an infinitesimal subset of the complexes, etc., clearly not everything can be represented by a "binary number" --- proven by Georg Cantor.

Every time I get into it with PT, I get this sick, dirty feeling, like I've been to an outhouse that's in constant use but hasn't been cleaned in years. I'm closing this thread down as well and will be more careful in the future about taking their bait.

— William 'outhouse' Dembski

You don't get it.

Additionally, if you don't understand that physics does indeed presume that reality can be formally described, you're a fool.

You don't get it. That hierarchy of infinities can still be described in finite terms --- just because a transcendental's numeric form requires an infinite number of digits to represent does NOT mean that it cannot be precisely defined and its concept manipulated in a finite form.

PvM said:

In the limit, a designer could therefore impart information into the universe without inputting any energy at all.

So his god is powerless..... AND therefore....possesses zero information?

That would sum up his projection nicely, it would also explain why his ideas resonate so loudly in the empty space that pass for brains in his personality cultists.

Expect more hot air from the Deceit Industry( apparently a religiously motivated minority political identity lobby group) to correct this energy and information (spin) shortage.

I therefore withdraw the charge of egregious quotemining.

Not quite the same as "I apologize for being a conclusion-leaping jackass", but I guess it's the best one can expect.

Every time I get into it with PT, I get this sick, dirty feeling, like I've been to an outhouse that's in constant use but hasn't been cleaned in years. I'm closing this thread down as well and will be more careful in the future about taking their bait.

Let me be a bit more precise ... there are only aleph-0 possible definitions and descriptions, but C (>= aleph-1) transcendentals. Therefore, not all transcendentals can be uniquely described.

The operating axiom (assumption?) of physics is that the Universe is formally describable.

— Poppers Ghost

There is no such axiom or assumption --- no claim of physics is dependent upon such an assumption.

Every time I get into it with PT, I get this sick, dirty feeling, like I've been to an outhouse that's in constant use but hasn't been cleaned in years.

— Dembski

And nowhere in my quote do I say that zero-energy waves impart information --- I say that they do in the limit.

— Dembski

Let me suggest you read the appropriate chapters in Michael Spivak's calculus book on limits. In the meantime, you're out of here. ---WmAD

— Dembski

Well said, Dembski's response merely seems to serve to appease his disciples more than presenting a scientific argument. Freeman Dyson's arguments have little relevance to Dembski's own statement about imparting information at zero energy.

As to programming the following seems sound to me:

1) The universe is finite.
2) The universe consists of rules and structures which can be defined and described, though it is far beyond are present ability to do so.
3) Based on 1 and 2 the universe could be expressed as a computer model which is also finite
4) Any computer program can be expressed as a series of 1s and 0s.
5) Any series of 1s and 0s can be interpreted as a number represented in binary (base 2).
6) Based on 4 and 5 any computer program can be expressed as a number. (a base 10 number (0-9) simply requires fewer digits than a base 2 number (0-1))
7) Based on 3 and 6 the universe can be expressed as a finite number.
8) Our number system is unbounded and thus contains all finite numbers including the number for our universe.

What falls apart is that since the universe is finite and our number system is not, then there exists numbers which cannot be expressed within our universe.

Every time I get into it with PT, I get this sick, dirty feeling, like I've been to an outhouse that's in constant use but hasn't been cleaned in years.

What exactly is the issue which requires zero energy information?
As far as I know information does not represent energy itself.

As an analogy consider ink spilled on a piece of paper.
You can calculation the total energy based on the mass of the ink and paper, the thermal energy, the gravitional potential energy, etc.
So whether the shape is a generic blob, a perfect circle, a religious symbol, or fortune cookie messages is irrelevent to the total energy of the system (or the universe).

Based on this if an given ink blot was suddenly replaced by a detailed message from God the net effect in terms of energy would still be zero.

From this prespective information can be imparted without changing the net energy of the universe. Besides why would we choose to believe that a designer / God who exists outside the system was unable to impart or take energy. An entire galaxy could pop in or out of existence and if we weren't looking in the right direction we would never know.

What's that, you say? Even the infinitely-large description space of the positive numbers doesn't necessarily permit certain categories of transcendentals to be defined?

— Caledonian

Well gee, I guess that would imply that the description space that corresponds with the nature of the cosmos won't necessarily include certain types of transcendentals

— Calcedonian

As to programming the following seems sound to me:

1) The universe is finite.

2) The universe consists of rules and structures which can be defined and described, though it is far beyond are present ability to do so.

This isn't accurate... if we develop quantum computers that can compute functions that Turing Machines can't, then it will be natural to extend the notion of "effectively calculable" to quantum computations and the C-T thesis will have to be abandoned or more narrowly construed.

I posed a very simple question to Dembski, and rather than answer it, he removed it. I have my own theory why; anyone have any different ideas?

Alann,
Re "What falls apart is that since the universe is finite and our number system is not, then there exists numbers which cannot be expressed within our universe."

Including presumably the number that represents the universe itself. Well, unless one counts that the universe itself is the expression of that number.

(Of course, that argument presupposes a finite universe, which is not guaranteed to be the case afaik.)

Henry

Stop there. There is no reason to believe that there is a "description space", whatever that means, that corresponds with the nature of the cosmos.

In fact the entire argument here is more or less over whether or not the entire cosmos can be fully described [to or by a computer].

Physicists work toward uncovering descriptions which fully specify the laws of the physical universe. This in no way implies a requirement that there is a description which fully specifies the universe itself.

"That the universe was started by superior Beings is not only the province of religious thoughts from the earliest days of the human race...."

Uh, no. I realize this may be a quibble, but the need for a creation story is primarily associated with monotheism. And especially with the Big Three. Most polytheisms don't bother. Creation stories are only important in a religion which has a linear sense of time and an end point for history.

For examples, and how this (mis)shapes religious belief, see Jordan D. Paper, The Deities Are Many: A Polytheistic Theology.

If you don't know what it means, how do you know that there is no reason to believe the statement I made? You don't even understand the argument I'm making.

— Calcedonian

Physicists work toward uncovering descriptions which fully specify the laws of the physical universe. This in no way implies a requirement that there is a description which fully specifies the universe itself.

— Calcedonian

Um... it doesn't imply it, it IS it. A full specification of the laws of the cosmos would make it possible (not within the cosmos itself, of course) to describe every possible configuration of said cosmos, including one which accurately describes the cosmos we're actually in.

A full specification of the laws of the cosmos would, one expects, necessarily fully specify the class of configurations the cosmos can exist in. This is not the same thing as being able to fully describe every individual member of that class.

What is the cardinality of the set of universe configurations, or in other words, how many configurations of the universe are there? If there are as many universe configurations as there are natural numbers, then sure, we can describe any one of those configurations to a computer. If there are as many universe configurations as there are real numbers, then there exist configurations which cannot be assigned a description.

No such assumption my ass. Physicists would shoot themselves if it was proven that math was inadequate to describe the Universe (i.e. not formally describable).

Uh, no. I realize this may be a quibble, but the need for a creation story is primarily associated with monotheism. And especially with the Big Three. Most polytheisms don't bother. Creation stories are only important in a religion which has a linear sense of time and an end point for history.

— Ron Starr

Let me be a bit more precise ... there are only aleph-0 possible definitions and descriptions, but C (>= aleph-1) transcendentals. Therefore, not all transcendentals can be uniquely described. What's that, you say? Even the infinitely-large description space of the positive numbers doesn't necessarily permit certain categories of transcendentals to be defined?

Either way, all I was trying to say is that the C-T thesis is not a general truth and shouldn't be relied on. Or rather, just because something follows a set of mechanistic rules does not automatically mean it can be emulated by a "computer".

there are no reasons to assert that computational systems cannot utilize real numbers

What's that, you say? Even the infinitely-large description space of the positive numbers doesn't necessarily permit certain categories of transcendentals to be defined? Well gee, I guess that would imply that the description space that corresponds with the nature of the cosmos won't necessarily include certain types of transcendentals, and thus no interactions involving those numbers would ever take place. In other words, there would be no meaningful way that those numbers could be said to be part of existence.

Measurements in the physical sciences are almost always conceived of as approximations to real numbers. While the numbers used for this purpose are generally decimal fractions representing rational numbers, writing them in decimal terms suggests they are an approximation to a theoretical underlying real number.... Computers can only approximate most real numbers....

physics is clearly not dependent on an assumption that the universe is describable because no claim of physics would have to be rejected in the absence of such an assumption.

The same was true of Einstein and his reaction to QM, which in essence says that the universe isn't describable.

PsG said
Perhaps one could take the apparent quantization of physical quantities as evidence that the universe is a simulation

In the quote above it only seems like a simulation if you remember the past and project into the future, if one considers time in the absolute 'here and now' the 'simulation' no longer is a simulation but just is.

DonaldM should be able to back up his assertions that I left out 11 paragraphs of further explanations when I quoted Dembdksi

Is Donald now so desperate that he has to accuse people of quote mining for providing an extensive quote?

DOCTOR (MILLIGAN): (Getting rapidly out of his chair and staring intensely at camera) This is a doctor sketch! (Eyes patient suspiciously) What do you want? PATIENT: Doctor, do you have anything for Amnesia? DOCTOR: (Incredulous) For WHAT? (Patient scratches his head) MILLIGAN: (Grinning, to camera, out of character) For people with bad memories, here it is again! PATIENT: Here's what again? DOCTOR: (Forgetting) Erm...er...(gives withering, cross-eyed look to camera followed by a freeze-frame!!!

DonaldM: Your deliberate subterfuge has been exposed.

Donald never learned the first rule of holes.

Since physics is nothing but attempts to accurately describe the cosmos, if the universe could not be described, all of physics would have to be discarded.

Fortunately, "the cosmos cannot be accurately described" is a contradiction in terms, as the statement itself is an accurate description.

I suspect you knew full well that Dembski had, in fact, expanded on this paper in NFL, yet chose to use the paper instead. IN other words, Pim, you deliberately chose to misrepresent the Dembski's argument.

— Donald

Dembski kind of half retracted it, and closed the comments on the threads. And grumbled that his interactions with PT don't make him feel good. LOL no doubt. But even he didn't try to replace the allegation with a hypothetical new allegation to blame on Pim, like Donald does.

Because Dembski knows the first rule of holes.

Because Dembski knows the first rule of holes.

Yep .....fill 'em real quick before anyone notices and use the Bart Simpson defense 'I didn't say Zero Energy Waves', he couldn't lie straight in bed.

I haven't repudiated anything, if he would but read my newest article on specification. Regardless of whose court he thinks the ball is in, his criticisms are now out of date.

— Dembski (you can Google this, Donald)

Of course they could be assigned a description --- they just can't be assigned a description that a computational system limited to natural numbers could examine. [snip] In such cases, the descriptions would be infinitely long. They would still *exist*, though, just as the end states of procedurally-generated fractals can be said to exist despite never being reachable.

— Caledonian

If phenomena within the universe can be based on the real numbers, there are no reasons to assert that computational systems cannot utilize real numbers.

— Caledonian

Since physics is nothing but attempts to accurately describe the cosmos...

— Caledonian

Fortunately, "the cosmos cannot be accurately described" is a contradiction in terms, as the statement itself is an accurate description.

— Caledonian

But what does "mechanistic rules" mean, if not the sort of recipe-following that the Church/Turing/Post abstractions do fully capture?

— Popper's Ghost

As to my previous comments on programming:

The universe is finite was meant as an assumption, the rest of the argument would still hold true if you alternately use a simplest representation of a infinite universe as an immense yet finite subset.

I believe it is fair to say the universe is describable. To explain what I mean take an Electron. An electron cannot be represented as a simple physical object (because of the Heisenberg uncertainty principle); however it can be represented as a probability cloud, and we are able to mathematically express its interactions making it describable.
I think the concept of a hypothetical snapshot of a finite universe does not require a proof, since the universe itself would represents a snapshot.

As far as I know the only concept which cannot be accurately modeled is pure randomness where the result of an interaction cannot be predetermined. If our universe contains pure randomness we can still produce a model which substitutes the pseudo-randomness available to a computer, with the understanding that while a given state can be duplicated the end results may vary by the degree of true randomness.

Back to zero energy waves:

I think its clear that a zero energy wave is nonsensical. In much the same way 1/0 does not equal infinity, it can only be correctly described as undefined; while the limit of 1/n as n->0 does not equal infinity either instead it is said to approach infinity.

What I wonder is if you can theoretically have a negative energy wave?
If so the simultaneous creation of a negative and positive wave could happen without changing the net energy of the universe, and still be able to convey information.

Of course the more relevant question is: Why does God need zero energy waves?

Dembski (you can Google this, Donald) wrote:

I haven't repudiated anything, if he would but read my newest article on specification. Regardless of whose court he thinks the ball is in, his criticisms are now out of date.

In other words, "I'm not going to repudiate my earlier work, but I'm not going to be held accountable for it either."

Donald, I think you should post far more often than you do now.

Far far far more often.

Please?

PRETTY please?

Yeah, post away, Donald! You make our arguments far more effectively in your unintended and "back-handed" way than most of the rest of us do with our, um, forehands.

But I want to be clear that you're also included in the cut-off from the "Special" Oregano topping.

You babble quite incoherently enough as it is.

physics is clearly not dependent on an assumption that the universe is describable because no claim of physics would have to be rejected in the absence of such an assumption. Have you the brain worms? Since physics is nothing but attempts to accurately describe the cosmos, if the universe could not be described, all of physics would have to be discarded.

Since physics is nothing but attempts to accurately describe the cosmos, if the universe could not be described, all of physics would have to be discarded. There is a difference between "describe" and "accurately describe" especially if you take the term "accurate" as an absolute. Becoming more and more accurate while knowing full well that you can never be perfectly accurate is not futile.

Well, since you didn't bother to reference from where you drew the quote, like Dembski, I assumed it came from NFL, page335. Telling me that *I* should have googled the quote or something is about as disingenous as it gets, Pim. YOU should have made clear from where you drew the quote.

— Donald McLaughlin

physics is clearly not dependent on an assumption that the universe is describable because no claim of physics would have to be rejected in the absence of such an assumption. Have you the brain worms? Since physics is nothing but attempts to accurately describe the cosmos, if the universe could not be described, all of physics would have to be discarded.

By the phrase "mechanistic rules" in that post I was trying to express the idea of something that follows the rules of the physical universe.

— Coin

I don't get it... I though Dembski declared that ID was not a mechanistic theory. Why now the sudden interest in explaining the mechanism of the Designer imparting information into the Universe?

DonaldM, you should be ashamed of yourself. You are a pitiful excuse for an IDist.

You know what an assumption does, dontcha Donald? It makes an ass out of you and umption.

Well, since you didn't bother to reference from where you drew the quote, like Dembski, I assumed it came from NFL, page335. Telling me that *I* should have googled the quote or something is about as disingenous as it gets, Pim. YOU should have made clear from where you drew the quote. But given the way you consistently misrepresent ID in general and Dembski in particular, I'm not surprised that you wouldn't take the time to reference your quote in the OP.

— Donald M

You didn't provide the extensive quote from NFL. I suspect you knew full well that Dembski had, in fact, expanded on this paper in NFL, yet chose to use the paper instead. IN other words, Pim, you deliberately chose to misrepresent the Dembski's argument. That is the very thing you accuse IDPs of doing all the time...quotemining.

— Donald M

Your deliberate subterfuge has been exposed.

In the limit, a designer could therefore impart information into the universe without inputting any energy at all

Perhaps it's best to just accept that Dembski has no formal training in the area of physics?

The anger in Don's post suggests to me that he's steamed about Dembski making him look like an ass. Maybe he'll be a little less credulous in the future.

Really, Pim, it doesn't matter a whit what you say to him; he'll be back in a couple of weeks, with the exact same IDiotic arguments as always.

And attempting to do something obviously does not rest on an assumption that it can be done,

You are funny Donald, you blindly copied Dembski's accusations but unlike Dembski you seem to be unable to at least make an effort to apologize.

But rules are imposed by us, in our attempt to describe phenomena; the universe simply is what it is, and it may or may not be fully describable in terms of following a set of rules.

It ahs been a sunny and long weekend. I see that Dembski has commented on the discussion anyway.

"And nowhere in my quote do I say that zero-energy waves impart information --- I say that they do in the limit."

Either way we construe this limit - max amplitude going to zero, or wavelength going to infinity (or equivalently signal bandwith going to zero) - the result will trivially be that no energy and no information is imparted. Even allowing for QFT zero energy, entropy going to infinity means information goes to zero.

Not only has Dembski multiply showed his incompetence in modelling real physics, biology, or web searches, he is naively incompetent in checking his ideas against basic knowledge. One can only hope he is somewhat competent in the mathematics he was educated in - perhaps he can find a suitable job there, if his current employer finds out his incompetences.

Meanwhile a discussion about simulating universes broke out. "Therefore, we are either living in our universe or a simulation of our universe. How do we know which we are living in?"

Some answers deal with the nature of the universe - is it a computable structure, for example like Wolfram's cellular automata? One prominent answer from theoretical physiscists, displayed here, is that it isn't due to QM stochastic nature or its prohibition of local hidden variable descriptions. But the jury is still out.

Other answers deal with the possibility of describing nature with formal and/or computable theories. While chaos shows exponential divergencies that fundamentally restricts the mapping from description to nature, there seems to be no restriction to come as close as desired.

But the question was really if we live in a simulation, not if the simulation was close to fundamental nature. Even in the absence of further information that answer is formally and easily answered to as similar ideas of solipsism, zombies, and last thursdayism - all alternatives to observed reality are more complicated. (And some requires treating 'self' different from the rest.) Ockham shaves these hairy questions easily.