E. Coli vs. Linux (Humans)
by xeno6696 
, Sonoran Desert, Monday, May 10, 2010, 22:44 (5119 days ago)
http://opa.yale.edu/news/article.aspx?id=7508
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\"Why is it, Master, that ascetics fight with ascetics?\"
\"It is, brahmin, because of attachment to views, adherence to views, fixation on views, addiction to views, obsession with views, holding firmly to views that ascetics fight with ascetics.\"
E. Coli vs. Linux
by David Turell , Tuesday, May 11, 2010, 13:40 (5118 days ago) @ xeno6696
http://opa.yale.edu/news/article.aspx?id=7508-Great article, and great contribution to this site. I propose E. Coli appeared full-blown with this backup DNA/RNA protection from the beginning of their existence, or else how did they have a beginning and survive to this point? Layers of protection by hunt and peck evolution or complex specification at the start? Only one choice is logical.
E. Coli vs. Linux
by xeno6696 , Sonoran Desert, Tuesday, May 11, 2010, 22:11 (5118 days ago) @ David Turell
http://opa.yale.edu/news/article.aspx?id=7508 > > Great article, and great contribution to this site. I propose E. Coli appeared full-blown with this backup DNA/RNA protection from the beginning of their existence, or else how did they have a beginning and survive to this point? Layers of protection by hunt and peck evolution or complex specification at the start? Only one choice is logical.-I've been crafting a large response dealing with epistemology (our unassailed demon) and how as I see it--suppositions such as this that can never be supported by empirical evidence just shouldn't be taken. (You have justification, but justification isn't enough.) But, I knew you would say something like this--I'm surprised that you didn't attack the line that said "We can optimize for generic components because we can design intelligently." THAT's what I figured you'd jump on.
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\"Why is it, Master, that ascetics fight with ascetics?\"
\"It is, brahmin, because of attachment to views, adherence to views, fixation on views, addiction to views, obsession with views, holding firmly to views that ascetics fight with ascetics.\"
E. Coli vs. Linux
by David Turell , Tuesday, May 11, 2010, 22:36 (5118 days ago) @ xeno6696
http://opa.yale.edu/news/article.aspx?id=7508 > &g... surprised that you didn't attack the line that said "We can optimize for generic components because we can design intelligently." THAT's what I figured you'd jump on.-This is a better one to jump on: "But it also means the operating system is more vulnerable to breakdowns because even simple updates to a generic routine can be very disruptive," Gerstein said. To compensate, these generic components have to be continually fine-tuned by designers.""-But not the designed living brain. It takes care of itself without disruption.Do you ever suppose we will ever catch up?
E. Coli vs. Linux
by xeno6696 , Sonoran Desert, Tuesday, May 11, 2010, 23:16 (5118 days ago) @ David Turell
http://opa.yale.edu/news/article.aspx?id=7508 > > > >I'm surprised that you didn't attack the line that said "We can optimize for generic components because we can design intelligently." THAT's what I figured you'd jump on. > > This is a better one to jump on: > "But it also means the operating system is more vulnerable to breakdowns because even simple updates to a generic routine can be very disruptive," Gerstein said. To compensate, these generic components have to be continually fine-tuned by designers."" > > But not the designed living brain. It takes care of itself without disruption.Do you ever suppose we will ever catch up?-Maybe you just got a little lazy in language here, but AFAIK there's no conclusive evidence that the brain was designed... complexity doesn't automatically guarantee that something was designed. -I haven't had a good round in awhile, so lets have some fun...-When we look at something like the economy, what we see is a massive collection of individual transactions that can easily be compared to a biological system. (Biologists borrow all the time from economists and vice versa.) However, no one can really say much about the economy outside of the fact that:-1. It trends upwards in time. This is analogous to evolution: no one can deny that there's been a trend towards more complex organisms. And everyone knows that life suffers from "recessions" from time to time. -2. Each of the individual actions in an economy are typically taken for an individual's personal gain. Each action within an organism and in an environment are also modeled in that way. -However, there is no *goal* of the economy. No one started out 10k years ago and said, "I want this to trend upwards." It just happened that way. It was undirected towards its upward trend--and for the most part it remains so.-Similarly in this analogy--there's no goal for life. At its lowest level it has been and will remain to be--an amorphous series of actions that individual cells carry out to maintain their existence. The collective actions of each cell contributes to the overall complexity we see manifested, i.e. our "butterfly effect" that we've touched on a couple of times. -More or less what I'm getting at is that both life and an economy have immense complexity that arose from the actions of many individuals--and in the case of the economy we have no discrete beginning: and by that I mean no teleological cause. Each transaction was (and is) a means to its own end.-Does this make more sense on why I state that I see no teleology to life, no empirical claim to a creator, or why I'm willing to accept the answer "That there is no answer?"
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\"Why is it, Master, that ascetics fight with ascetics?\"
\"It is, brahmin, because of attachment to views, adherence to views, fixation on views, addiction to views, obsession with views, holding firmly to views that ascetics fight with ascetics.\"
E. Coli vs. Linux
by David Turell , Thursday, May 13, 2010, 00:33 (5117 days ago) @ xeno6696
> I haven't had a good round in awhile, so lets have some fun...-> > 1. It trends upwards in time. This is analogous to evolution: no one can deny that there's been a trend towards more complex organisms. And everyone knows that life suffers from "recessions" from time to time. > > 2. Each of the individual actions in an economy are typically taken for an individual's personal gain. Each action within an organism and in an environment are also modeled in that way. > > However, there is no *goal* of the economy. No one started out 10k years ago and said, "I want this to trend upwards." It just happened that way. It was undirected towards its upward trend--and for the most part it remains so. > > Similarly in this analogy--there's no goal for life. -Your's is Gould's reasoning. Bacteria started life and they are still here and very successful. But the reason everything else is so complex is there is no way to simplify bacteria. If anything developed, by necessity it had to be more complex. The same applies to caveman economics. It just had to get more complex if it changed at all. The view has no teleology, I agree, BUT, under the rules of natural selection the very successful bacteria had no reason to get more complicated. Their success for 3.5 byrs does not demand any complexification. Did it just happen or was it designed to happen? This is where you take your choice, since evidence is sparse.
E. Coli vs. Linux
by xeno6696 , Sonoran Desert, Thursday, May 13, 2010, 03:49 (5117 days ago) @ David Turell
> Your's is Gould's reasoning. Bacteria started life and they are still here and very successful. But the reason everything else is so complex is there is no way to simplify bacteria. If anything developed, by necessity it had to be more complex. > The same applies to caveman economics. It just had to get more complex if it changed at all. The view has no teleology, I agree, BUT, under the rules of natural selection the very successful bacteria had no reason to get more complicated. Their success for 3.5 byrs does not demand any complexification. Did it just happen or was it designed to happen? This is where you take your choice, since evidence is sparse.-Having not read Gould (Sin, I know!) I don't know how much of his thinking has indirectly influenced my own--but on economic lines, there's always a set of a population that never chooses to change/alter markets. Think of farmers. Some of them don't want to change. (My family.) Some of them can't. (Farmers in Ethiopia.) This of course depends on the level of intelligence one is willing to attribute to bacteria, but as a comparative model I think its an incredibly strong one. Eliminating intelligence, you simply have some bacteria that have no capability to change, which in an environment where there is no environmental stress--there's your link to natural selection, as well as your explanation of why some bacteria has been (largely?) unchanged. -The more I compare economics to biology, the more it simply makes sense of the whole mess. No teleology. (None needed. It just is.)
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\"Why is it, Master, that ascetics fight with ascetics?\"
\"It is, brahmin, because of attachment to views, adherence to views, fixation on views, addiction to views, obsession with views, holding firmly to views that ascetics fight with ascetics.\"
E. Coli vs. Linux
Matt ("let's have some fun") has drawn an interesting parallel between evolution and the economy. He sees both as "an amorphous series of actions that individual cells carry out to maintain their existence." The complexity of both systems "arose from the actions of many individuals", with each transaction being "a means to its own end". He therefore sees "no teleology to life, no empirical claim to a creator..."-Let me join in the fun. I think your analogy stands up very well in the context of teleology. If there's no God, then clearly there's no goal, but even if there is a creator, the coming and going of species, the apparent randomness of Life on Earth, the delayed arrival of human consciousness ... all of these suggest to me, as they do to you, that there's no overriding purpose. I would go even further. It seems to me that if there is a creator, there would be no fun at all in the game if he already knew the outcome. It makes far more sense to me that he should chuck the ingredients in the pot and see what emerges.-Out, then, with teleology (unless you want to take God's entertainment as an ultimate goal). But for me the analogy doesn't stand up in the context of design. I agree that "there's no conclusive evidence that the brain was designed...complexity doesn't automatically guarantee that something was designed", but I don't think anyone on this forum would dream of using terms like "conclusive" or "guarantee". The most anyone can hope for is a greater or lesser degree of likelihood, and that is where I think your analogy becomes problematical. Every single individual action in the history of economics, every addition to the complexity of the mechanism, has come about as the result of a conscious decision. The only way your analogy could therefore stand up to scrutiny would be if you believed that individual cells also took conscious decisions, so that at some stage you had them saying to one another: "Right, guys, let's make a leg, an eye, a backbone, a penis, a conscious brain...." Now crudely speaking, this is precisely what happened ... but the great question is where did the inventive intelligence come from to MAKE it happen? In the case of the economy, we know: it came from humans. In the case of evolution, you seem to be arguing that no intelligence was required. You would laugh to scorn anyone who claimed that the complex mechanisms of money, banks, debits and credits, stocks and shares came into being without intelligent guidance, but if it's suggested that the even more complex mechanisms of reproduction, heredity and adaptability (the essential bases of evolution), not to mention consciousness and all its ramifications, came into being without intelligent guidance, you don't laugh. Could this be a case of familiarity breeding blinkers?-But of course there's nothing conclusive, and there's no guarantee. And your analogy is fun.
E. Coli vs. Linux
by xeno6696 , Sonoran Desert, Monday, May 17, 2010, 00:47 (5113 days ago) @ dhw
dhw, > Out, then, with teleology (unless you want to take God's entertainment as an ultimate goal). But for me the analogy doesn't stand up in the context of design. I agree that "there's no conclusive evidence that the brain was designed...complexity doesn't automatically guarantee that something was designed", but I don't think anyone on this forum would dream of using terms like "conclusive" or "guarantee". The most anyone can hope for is a greater or lesser degree of likelihood, and that is where I think your analogy becomes problematical. Every single individual action in the history of economics, every addition to the complexity of the mechanism, has come about as the result of a conscious decision. The only way your analogy could therefore stand up to scrutiny would be if you believed that individual cells also took conscious decisions, so that at some stage you had them saying to one another: "Right, guys, let's make a leg, an eye, a backbone, a penis, a conscious brain...." Now crudely speaking, this is precisely what happened ... but the great question is where did the inventive intelligence come from to MAKE it happen? In the case of the economy, we know: it came from humans. In the case of evolution, you seem to be arguing that no intelligence was required. You would laugh to scorn anyone who claimed that the complex mechanisms of money, banks, debits and credits, stocks and shares came into being without intelligent guidance, but if it's suggested that the even more complex mechanisms of reproduction, heredity and adaptability (the essential bases of evolution), not to mention consciousness and all its ramifications, came into being without intelligent guidance, you don't laugh. Could this be a case of familiarity breeding blinkers? > > But of course there's nothing conclusive, and there's no guarantee. And your analogy is fun.-I need to stretch the analogy a bit further: The last class I took while still an environmental studies major was Ecology. Probably the most important aspect of this is the discussion of trophic levels. (Hierarchy of energy.) You can easily take the human economy and use its laws to describe how energy travels up the chain, and how individual cells up to fully-fledged organism use it as essentially--a currency. We can abandon the human-generated concept of money for ATP. (Base molecule for energy.) A study of the interactions of organisms and their environment resembles that of macroeconomics. -Forget financial instruments and derivatives: Think only of the abstract nature of a human transaction and apply it to cells. The modern economy as we know it today is quite complex. I want you to abandon the notion of human interference and simply go back to when governments didn't exist and it was just people trading things. There was no "invention" of the economy. It is a word that is simply applied to describe what it is that people do to get what they need; It seems that you let some more modern thinking creep in and it destroyed the notion I was trying to convey. -What I'm attempting here... is to cast doubt on the idea that life *had* to have been designed. Our economy wasn't designed: in fact, direct design tends to destroy it. (This goes for both governments, uncouth businessmen, and cartels.) Generally: a nation prospers the more it allows individual actors free reign to use its resources. -Think of why Communism failed as a government: You can't dictate supply and demand. This too means that since life so readily responds to economic principles, that we should consider the consequences if there's direct interference, and what patterns those would reflect on life itself.
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\"Why is it, Master, that ascetics fight with ascetics?\"
\"It is, brahmin, because of attachment to views, adherence to views, fixation on views, addiction to views, obsession with views, holding firmly to views that ascetics fight with ascetics.\"
E. Coli vs. Linux
by BBella , Monday, May 17, 2010, 04:46 (5113 days ago) @ xeno6696
What I'm attempting here... is to cast doubt on the idea that life *had* to have been designed. Our economy wasn't designed: in fact, direct design tends to destroy it. (This goes for both governments, uncouth businessmen, and cartels.) Generally: a nation prospers the more it allows individual actors free reign to use its resources. -This last sentence above ties in and reminds me of the duality within the one fabric of what is. All parts of the One fabric freely using all aspects of the fabric as a resource while working independently toward one goal - to be. And I can see what Matt is saying above and below - "direct design tends to destroy it" when one aspect of the fabric wants to rule other parts of the fabric it goes down hill from there. In a sense this is a good argument against design. > > Think of why Communism failed as a government: You can't dictate supply and demand. This too means that since life so readily responds to economic principles, that we should consider the consequences if there's direct interference, and what patterns those would reflect on life itself.
E. Coli vs. Linux
by xeno6696 , Sonoran Desert, Wednesday, May 19, 2010, 04:09 (5111 days ago) @ BBella
What I'm attempting here... is to cast doubt on the idea that life *had* to have been designed. Our economy wasn't designed: in fact, direct design tends to destroy it. (This goes for both governments, uncouth businessmen, and cartels.) Generally: a nation prospers the more it allows individual actors free reign to use its resources. > > This last sentence above ties in and reminds me of the duality within the one fabric of what is. All parts of the One fabric freely using all aspects of the fabric as a resource while working independently toward one goal - to be. And I can see what Matt is saying above and below - "direct design tends to destroy it" when one aspect of the fabric wants to rule other parts of the fabric it goes down hill from there. In a sense this is a good argument against design. > -What if, the best design is no design at all?-> > > > Think of why Communism failed as a government: You can't dictate supply and demand. This too means that since life so readily responds to economic principles, that we should consider the consequences if there's direct interference, and what patterns those would reflect on life itself.
--
\"Why is it, Master, that ascetics fight with ascetics?\"
\"It is, brahmin, because of attachment to views, adherence to views, fixation on views, addiction to views, obsession with views, holding firmly to views that ascetics fight with ascetics.\"
E. Coli vs. Linux
MATT: What I'm attempting here...is to cast doubt on the idea that life *had* to have been designed. Our economy wasn't designed: in fact, direct design tends to destroy it. (This goes for both governments, uncouth businessmen, and cartels.) Generally: a nation prospers the more it allows individual actors free rein to use its resources.-I think any disagreement here is due to a different view of what constitutes design. Perhaps we need to distinguish more clearly between design and teleology.-You want me to "abandon the notion of human interference and simply go back to when governments didn't exist and it was just people trading things. There was no "invention" of the economy. It is a word that is simply applied to describe what it is that people do to get what they need." But people doing something = human interference. Every single transaction is the result of a conscious decision. When a human first offered to give another human a chunk of meat in exchange for a fur coat, he did so with full knowledge of what he was doing. What follows is a process of evolution, leading eventually to the complexities of whole economic systems ... but every single stage of that evolution has been the result of conscious decisions, although the overall systems were not planned. Each decision, then, is a design, but beyond each individual goal there is no teleology leading to a system. That's why I said your analogy would only hold up if you believed that individual cells also took conscious decisions to make a leg, eye, backbone, penis, brain etc. My personal interpretation of evolution is the same as yours: no teleology ... which means that life was not "designed" in the sense of it being orientated towards a particular system or goal. But the first transaction was designed by its participants (i.e. it happened because two men deliberately chose to perform an action), and all subsequent transactions have been the result of intelligent "interference", so I would argue that while there is no "direct" design of the overall economy/evolution, your analogy strengthens the case for "direct" design of the original mechanisms that gave rise to them. Perhaps BBella's post makes the distinction clearer. She agrees with your argument that direct design tends to destroy society, and so do I. Given the choice between totalitarianism and democracy, I'll go for democracy every time! I also agree that "in a sense this is a good argument against design", but in what sense? If we are the product of a deity's inventiveness (= design), he may well have given us free rein to follow our own paths (= non-design). He may have created the mechanisms for evolution in general (= design), and then sat back to watch what they came up with (= non-design). "Design" depends on your starting-point. David's argument has always been that the complexity of the mechanisms that have given rise to life and evolution is so great that he can't believe they came about by accident. Nor can I. David goes a lot further than that, because he actively believes in a designer, whereas I am stuck with my negative non-belief. However, the argument ... with which I agree ... that the course of life (and of economics) is not designed has nothing to do with the argument that the original, astoundingly complex mechanisms that gave rise to it all are the product of some kind of intelligence. In other words, let me repeat, your analogy in my view works on the level of teleology, but not on that of design.
E. Coli vs. Linux
by David Turell , Tuesday, May 18, 2010, 18:19 (5111 days ago) @ dhw
> David's argument has always been that the complexity of the mechanisms that have given rise to life and evolution is so great that he can't believe they came about by accident. Nor can I. David goes a lot further than that, because he actively believes in a designer, whereas I am stuck with my negative non-belief. -Why so negative? If life appeared, not be accident, then, believing as I do, why can't you take the next step. The intelligence is a 'force' of some sort. How do you view it?
E. Coli vs. Linux
by BBella , Tuesday, May 18, 2010, 21:48 (5111 days ago) @ David Turell
edited by unknown, Tuesday, May 18, 2010, 22:24
> >[dhw] David's argument has always been that the complexity of the mechanisms that have given rise to life and evolution is so great that he can't believe they came about by accident. Nor can I. David goes a lot further than that, because he actively believes in a designer, whereas I am stuck with my negative non-belief. > > Why so negative? If life appeared, not be accident, then, believing as I do, why can't you take the next step. The intelligence is a 'force' of some sort. How do you view it?-I stand (a long moment) at this same precifice (dhw's intersection) as well, David, viewing all possibilities (witin my radar) of just what IS the fabric? Whether it be one eternal designer with intelligent personality or one eternal resource? My faith can take me from this intersection at any moment, when needs be, but in-between, I fall right back to this intersection (fence) of unknowing. -I'm sure you have studied and searched to know what you know, and all of it together with experience helped in bringing you to your conclusion of a designer, with faith allowing you that infintesimal quantum leap you are asking dhw to take. But with all that said, what would you say is the one thing that brought you assurance that this "force" (fabric/resource) is more than just quantum ingredients of an eternal soup used by it's own ingredients to create what IS? Why can't the nature of the soup/fabric itself (seen and unseen) be all that it IS? To your mind, why is 'it' a "He?"-bb
E. Coli vs. Linux
DAVID: Why so negative? If life appeared, not by accident, then, believing as I do, why can't you take the next step? The intelligence is a 'force' of some sort. How do you view it?-The short answer is that I can't view it. This is the perennial problem of the agnostic. Our neutrality is incomprehensible to both theist and atheist, as each of you expects us to believe in something that is basically unbelievable. The explanation HAS to be negative. I can't believe in a mind-bogglingly improbable accident capable of producing mind-bogglingly complex organisms and systems, including life out of non-life and consciousness out of unconsciousness. Nor can I believe in a mind-bogglingly improbable, inconceivable, immaterial, unknowable, birthless, deathless universal intelligence. I acknowledge the possibility of a world beyond the one I know, as suggested by all forms of "spiritual" experiences, and some of these experiences are integral to my own way of life, but I also acknowledge the possibility that they may derive from the physical world we know, in ways which we do not yet understand. Non-belief in the one is no reason for believing in the other, because to believe in either you have to exclude reason and give yourself over to faith. Very few atheists accept that, whereas most theists do. And so the answer to your question why I can't take the next step (in either of these two directions) is simply that I lack faith.-*** I have just read BBella's response. The question, as always, is whether the force/fabric/soup/resource is conscious of itself or not. If you think it is, you're on the side of the theists, and if you think it isn't, you're with the atheists. If you can't make up your mind, you're on the fence with me!
E. Coli vs. Linux
by David Turell , Wednesday, May 19, 2010, 17:39 (5110 days ago) @ dhw
> Non-belief in the one is no reason for believing in the other, because to believe in either you have to exclude reason and give yourself over to faith. Very few atheists accept that, whereas most theists do. And so the answer to your question why I can't take the next step (in either of these two directions) is simply that I lack faith.-I don't think you have to give up reason. Adler and Flew, as two examples did not do that. Neither did I. The first issue is recognizing that whatever is God is unknowable, and unimanginable. Religions try to fill in the blanks but they are guessing just as much as the rest of us. God is not going to be revealed to you, or anyone, in any way. You and I agree that the accidental origin of life is an impossible concept to accept. The only logical next step that it was caused by something. Now you are stuck; you don't want to accept the unimaginable, but what else can you do? The pickets on the fence, irritating your rump should make you want to do something. Perhaps you don't like answers, unless they are satisfying. I don't like the pickets, and I do feel satisfied. I have no real idea of what I am accepting, but it makes me feel good, like the love of my wife does, or when I think aobut my guardian angel, my first wife's Mother. I 'know' she is watching over me; the tingle inside tells me. I have gone to faith, because it feels good, not because I have forced myself to faith. And it feels good, because it does give me an answer. There has GOT to be an intelligent cause for all the computer-like layers in the genetic reproductive mechanism. Nothing else fits, despite Matt's and George's wishful faith in chance.
E. Coli vs. Linux
DAVID: I don't think you have to give up reason. Adler and Flew, as two examples did not do that. Neither did I. The first issue is recognizing that whatever is God is unknowable, and unimaginable. Religions try to fill in the blanks but they are guessing just as much as the rest of us. God is not going to be revealed to you, or anyone, in any way. You and I agree that the accidental origin of life is an impossible concept to accept. The only logical next step is that it was caused by something. Now you are stuck; you don't want to accept the unimaginable, but what else can you do? The pickets on the fence, irritating your rump should make you want to do something. Perhaps you don't like answers, unless they are satisfying. I don't like the pickets, and I do feel satisfied. I have no real idea of what I am accepting, but it makes me feel good, like the love of my wife does, or when I think about my guardian angel, my first wife's Mother. I 'know' she is watching over me; the tingle inside tells me. I have gone to faith, because it feels good, not because I have forced myself to faith. I don't think it's possible to believe something BECAUSE it makes you feel good. If it were, I could believe I was a reincarnation of Shakespeare, had scored a hundred centuries for England, and was heading for BBella's "ideal ultimate truth". One believes something because one has an inner conviction that it's true. You have told us that you abandoned agnosticism because your scientific studies convinced you that life had been designed, and so there had to be a designer. However, your scientific studies and your powers of reason could not have taught you that the designer was still there, cared for us, and had provided us with an afterlife and guardian angels. These convictions come from some kind of intuition, mingled with personal experience: i.e. what you have graphically described as "the tingle inside". My own "spiritual" experiences (such as are engendered by emotion, music and literature, and those occasional, indescribable moments of one-ness with Nature) are integral to my life, and I remain open-minded about other people's experiences, but I simply don't have that tingle.-As far as "the only logical next step" is concerned, the argument is just as applicable in reverse: namely, that the concept of your unknowable, unimaginable, hidden intelligence is impossible to accept. The only logical next step is to embrace the concept of life originating by accident. But I can't embrace that either. The pickets, however, are not so irritating to my rump that I need to jump off. I am cushioned by the realization that in due course I shall either find out some of the answers ... and these might present me with lots of Turelly tingles ... or I shall go to sleep forever, grateful for the unique experience of having lived a life. Either way, I'm in no hurry!
E. Coli vs. Linux
by David Turell , Friday, May 21, 2010, 00:36 (5109 days ago) @ dhw
>You have told us that you abandoned agnosticism because your scientific studies convinced you that life had been designed, and so there had to be a designer. However, your scientific studies and your powers of reason could not have taught you that the designer was still there, cared for us, and had provided us with an afterlife and guardian angels.-The afterlife expectation or conviction is based on the same kind of reasoning as the UI. How do all those NDEer's find out the info they reciece when there was no direct reality-based communication avaiable. And, remember, I don't know the designer 'cares' for us. That is religions' point of view. Guardian angel is intuition. -> > As far as "the only logical next step" is concerned, the argument is just as applicable in reverse: namely, that the concept of your unknowable, unimaginable, hidden intelligence is impossible to accept. The only logical next step is to embrace the concept of life originating by accident. But I can't embrace that either. The pickets, however, are not so irritating to my rump that I need to jump off. -This compllicated genetic code with all its layers and the difffering codes, even the molecules that make judgments, the almost instantaneous (in Darwin terms)epigenetic modifications, seemingly Lamarkian, literally require software writing intelligence. Try this commentary on for size:-http://www.uncommondescent.com/biology/darwinism-from-an-informatics-point-of-view/#more-13409
E. Coli vs. Linux
David is gallantly trying to push me off my picket fence.-DAVID: The afterlife expectation or conviction is based on the same kind of reasoning as the UI. How do all those NDEers find out the info they receive when there is no direct reality-based communication available?-I have used the same argument myself against those who have closed their minds. (Please remember that mine remains open.) However, if human consciousness is independent of the physical brain and survives its death, why is it that 82% of the 344 patients studied by Pim van Lommel had no NDE at all? Variations on a theme of Calvin?-DAVID: I don't know the designer 'cares' for us. That is religions' point of view.-My apologies. You have indeed made that clear before. I do, however, find it difficult to dissociate the concept of a guardian angel from that of a caring God, and I would find it even more difficult to care about a God who didn't care for me. -You have referred us to a website commentary that emphasizes the "software writing intelligence" required for the genetic code. This is an argument I already accept, but the article is well worth studying. Thank you. I was struck by the comment: "Data is passive, while the program is active. What is passive cannot create what is active." It occurred to me that one could rewrite that, substituting "natural selection" for "data", and "evolution" for "program". It's a constant source of irritation that experts like Dawkins so often use the two terms as if they were synonymous. However, in fairness to Darwin I do wish the author had not insisted that "Darwinian theory is incapable in principle of explaining the mystery of the origin of life and of species, as it claims to do." To a degree he's right about species, since the title does specify "by means of natural selection", but that doesn't invalidate the general principle of evolution through adaptation and mutation followed by natural selection. Furthermore, although Darwin speculated elsewhere on the origin of life, he went out of his way to emphasize that his theory did NOT claim to explain it.
E. Coli vs. Linux
by David Turell , Friday, May 21, 2010, 14:41 (5108 days ago) @ dhw
> DAVID: The afterlife expectation or conviction is based on the same kind of reasoning as the UI. How do all those NDEers find out the info they receive when there is no direct reality-based communication available? > > I have used the same argument myself against those who have closed their minds. (Please remember that mine remains open.) However, if human consciousness is independent of the physical brain and survives its death, why is it that 82% of the 344 patients studied by Pim van Lommel had no NDE at all? Variations on a theme of Calvin?- Humans vary, as certainly do our brains. Using the disputed IQ as an example, it has a huge range. Some folks are psychic, as my wife. Some are privilaged to be able to have NDe's. Nothing else makes sense.
E. Coli vs. Linux
by xeno6696 , Sonoran Desert, Monday, May 24, 2010, 00:57 (5106 days ago) @ dhw
dhw, This is a really great post, and actually, you mirror me very closely here. -My only difference with you here is that in the grand scheme of things, I embrace the fence-sitting with a great passion: Because at least in my world, only *knowledge* counts. And while I intend on getting into the debate this summer about epistemology, I know that stating that "God exists" or "does not exist" are both statements that are made in pure ignorance. Statements based on inference without outside corroboration fall into Plato's category of opinion--even if the opinion happens to be true. -While you might think I'm being logically obtuse by saying that, this entire debate rotates around the question of epistemology. The differences in opinion are purely due to subjectivity; and we each accept or reject certain levels of this.-Faith plays a role too. In my case, it is fairly well expunged from my entire framework of thought. I only take things on faith that I know I can verify, or for incredibly short-term decisions where a decision must be made NOW. -And just like you, I'm perfectly satisfied knowing that there are unanswerable questions, and perfectly happy not filling in the gaps of the unanswered with anything less than knowledge. Though you might differ with me a bit on the preceding. -I will be starting my epistemology thread soon, it will be structured from the book I've been reading.
--
\"Why is it, Master, that ascetics fight with ascetics?\"
\"It is, brahmin, because of attachment to views, adherence to views, fixation on views, addiction to views, obsession with views, holding firmly to views that ascetics fight with ascetics.\"
E. Coli vs. Linux
by David Turell , Monday, May 24, 2010, 02:23 (5106 days ago) @ xeno6696
> I will be starting my epistemology thread soon, it will be structured from the book I've been reading.-Very frankly I can't wait. This is going to be fascinating.
E. Coli vs. Linux
by xeno6696 , Sonoran Desert, Monday, May 24, 2010, 00:23 (5106 days ago) @ dhw
MATT: What I'm attempting here...is to cast doubt on the idea that life *had* to have been designed. Our economy wasn't designed: in fact, direct design tends to destroy it. (This goes for both governments, uncouth businessmen, and cartels.) Generally: a nation prospers the more it allows individual actors free rein to use its resources. > > I think any disagreement here is due to a different view of what constitutes design. Perhaps we need to distinguish more clearly between design and teleology. > -I don't think this is possible. The word "design" connotes if not denotes a teleology. You don't design something to have no purpose. While it is true that the object may have no idea that it has a purpose, the designer still had a goal in mind: a word that is interchangeable with teleology. -> You want me to "abandon the notion of human interference and simply go back to when governments didn't exist and it was just people trading things. There was no "invention" of the economy. It is a word that is simply applied to describe what it is that people do to get what they need." But people doing something = human interference. Every single transaction is the result of a conscious decision. When a human first offered to give another human a chunk of meat in exchange for a fur coat, he did so with full knowledge of what he was doing. What follows is a process of evolution, leading eventually to the complexities of whole economic systems ... but every single stage of that evolution has been the result of conscious decisions, although the overall systems were not planned. Each decision, then, is a design, but beyond each individual goal there is no teleology leading to a system. That's why I said your analogy would only hold up if you believed that individual cells also took conscious decisions to make a leg, eye, backbone, penis, brain etc. My personal interpretation of evolution is the same as yours: no teleology ... which means that life was not "designed" in the sense of it being orientated towards a particular system or goal. But the first transaction was designed by its participants (i.e. it happened because two men deliberately chose to perform an action), and all subsequent transactions have been the result of intelligent "interference", so I would argue that while there is no "direct" design of the overall economy/evolution, your analogy strengthens the case for "direct" design of the original mechanisms that gave rise to them. > -I wasn't being abstract enough. Though I disagree that each of these transactions you discuss here are a "design," perhaps this should be better. -Economic ideas play in ecological systems anytime even molecules interact. (depending on the system of course) It's not limited to human transactions... I was trying to suggest this when I discussed ecology. -Unless you're ascribing deeper intelligence or decision-making skills to to molecules. -As for the rest, I still can't get past the point that a design has a purpose. If we have no purpose (as it is strongly suggested) I have a difficult time de-linking teleology from design. I don't get it.
--
\"Why is it, Master, that ascetics fight with ascetics?\"
\"It is, brahmin, because of attachment to views, adherence to views, fixation on views, addiction to views, obsession with views, holding firmly to views that ascetics fight with ascetics.\"
E. Coli vs. Linux
by David Turell , Monday, May 24, 2010, 02:21 (5106 days ago) @ xeno6696
> Unless you're ascribing deeper intelligence or decision-making skills to to molecules. > > As for the rest, I still can't get past the point that a design has a purpose. If we have no purpose (as it is strongly suggested) I have a difficult time de-linking teleology from design. I don't get it.-I agree: design=teleology. On the other hand, miRNA's and histones are making decisions, according to some sort of chemical algorithm they must be part of.
E. Coli vs. Linux
MATT: What I'm attempting here...is to cast doubt on the idea that life *had* to have been designed. Our economy wasn't designed: in fact, direct design tends to destroy it.-DHW: I think any disagreement here is due to a different view of what constitutes design. Perhaps we need to distinguish more clearly between design and teleology.-MATT: I don't think this is possible. The word "design" connotes if not denotes a teleology.-You are right, but if I've understood you correctly (always a big "if"!), you're trying to use the economics analogy as an argument against design, working back from the principle that no purpose means no design. I'm trying to work forwards from design to absence of purpose, as I'll try to explain. Just for the moment I'd like to abandon the economics analogy, because it's causing more confusion than clarification, and go back to the object of the analogy. -David's argument is that the mechanism of life and evolution is so complex that he believes it was designed. However, neither you nor I see life and evolution as having a goal (your post of 11 May at 23.16). My argument is that there is no discrepancy between these two theories, because they look at life from two different angles. Let's say, for argument's sake, that God designed life for his own entertainment. God's entertainment would then be the beginning and end of the teleological aspect. The avoidance of boredom, however, necessitates a completely random development of life, borne out by what you and I see as the higgledy-piggledy comings and goings of species, and the unpredictable course of the world's history. In other words, life itself is not directed. This leaves us with something deliberately designed (the mechanism) to develop without design (the history). The claim, then, that life and evolution from our perspective are undirected, are heading nowhere in particular, and have no goal has no connection with the claim that God designed the original mechanism. That's why I tried (rather unsuccessfully) to draw a distinction between teleology and design.-The other aspect of your economics analogy was that complexity need not point to design, but you have broadened this out to a far more abstract use of the word "economic", whereas originally you were using it to denote man-made economics. The latter of course cannot function without intelligence, which was why I argued that it supported rather than undermined the case for design. The more general, abstract sense in my view simply leads straight back to David's argument: the economic interactions of molecules which over time produce complex ecological (not to mention biological) systems are the result of original mechanisms so complex that it is difficult to believe they are not the result of design. And so round we go again. As you indicate elsewhere in your reference to your eagerly awaited epistemology thread, it boils down to our subjective levels of credulity. And I can assure you I don't regard that argument as "logically obtuse"!
E. Coli vs. Linux
by David Turell , Monday, May 24, 2010, 16:57 (5105 days ago) @ dhw
> David's argument is that the mechanism of life and evolution is so complex that he believes it was designed. However, neither you nor I see life and evolution as having a goal to develop without design (the history).-Gould referred to humans as a glorious accident based on an enormous series of chance contingencies. Running the tape of life again and we would certainly not appear. I can't believe any of that.- > >The claim, then, that life and evolution from our perspective are undirected, are heading nowhere in particular, and have no goal has no connection with the claim that God designed the original mechanism. -I can accept the idea that God (UI)set up the genetic mechanism to advance to complexity; that gives us some teleology and some initial design, if one designates that humans are not expected. This is probably where we will differ. I think humans were planned for.--> > The more general, abstract sense in my view simply leads straight back to David's argument: the economic interactions of molecules which over time produce complex ecological (not to mention biological) systems are the result of original mechanisms so complex that it is difficult to believe they are not the result of design. And so round we go again. -Very difficult, isn't it!