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Dave W.
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USA
26021 Posts

Posted - 12/17/2012 :  17:36:17   [Permalink]  Show Profile  Visit Dave W.'s Homepage Send Dave W. a Private Message  Reply with Quote
Originally posted by JerryB

No, I'm saying that scientific theories must be falsifiable in order to hold credibility.....You are trying to falsify chemistry and plumbing which don't have a dang thing to do with the discussion....Now, if you can tell me the theory of plumbing that applies to the scientific method, we'll talk further.....Otherwise, your musings are so far from Karl Popper's work that we are not even on the same subject.
You claimed that ID is not a scientific theory, so therefore your insistence upon talking about Popperian falsifiability is irrelevant to the discussion of ID. You can't have it both ways: you can't claim that ID isn't a theory and also insist that the philosophy of science applies to ID.
Great. If the entire universe is designed, as you have suggested, then it should be impossible to fail to detect design if we had a method to do so.
Let's stop right here for a moment because even your paramount underlying precept is false.

As example, physicians miss the correct diagnosis quite often. That does NOT then extrapolate into: therefore medicine is not a science. So, your logic is faulty from the git-go. Now we can go on.
How is that even an apt analogy? Doctors do not design human beings.

My first premise (whoops, "paramount underlying precept") is that if the entire universe is designed, then we should detect design in everything we look at. How does your medical analogy map to that at all?
Unfortunately, any proposed method to detect design cannot be tested empirically, because it should never (inside this universe) result in "not design." So even if some method could distinguish between "design" and "not design," we'd never know if it were working, because "design" will always be the answer.
This could not be further from the truth. You are screwing up the system you are studying which is a no-no in science. This will just confuse you. Are we studying the universe as a whole, a planet within it, a goose on the planet or a bug on the goose on the planet in the universe? You have to define your system or you will just be confused.
The entire universe. How was that ill-defined?
And look at what you just wrote: any proposed method to detect design cannot be tested empirically, because it should never (inside this universe) result in "not design."

This means that dust can settle randomly in a house and I MUST attribute that dust to have settled in patterns caused by an intelligent designer just because I know that the architect who built the house was one. You can't see how silly this is?
Yes, your straw-men are very silly, indeed. If the entire universe is designed, then it follows the designer designed gravity, fluid dynamics and dust in such a way that dust will settle however the designer wanted it to settle. How could you ever claim it was due to chance? The designer designed "chance."
Yes, it is. Why include only the baryons in the observable universe? Why mention Planck time when a not-inconsequential number of scientists think that space/time isn't quantized but continuous? Why didn't Dembski include the price of tea in his calculations?
This is all irrelevant.....You claimed that Dembski just pulled a number out of the air. He did not and you stand refuted on that accusation.
Fine, I'll modify my criticism: Dembski chose three numbers out of a very many he could have chosen, multiplied them together and declared that to be a universal limit. The logic behind his choices was arbitrary.
The very fact that you are now trying to attack his reasoning shows that there IS reasoning to attack and therefore no numbers just 'made up' from nothing as you implied...
So all you have is a semantic refutation of my glib remark? Brilliant.
...You fail on this debate point as well, my friend.
It's a "debate point," now? Dembski's UPB has been refuted for years, already.

Also:
I'm afraid that STILL requires genetic material to mutate...*wink*
So what? Is it your contention that all possible types of genetic material are intelligently designed?

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Dave W.
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26021 Posts

Posted - 12/17/2012 :  18:02:04   [Permalink]  Show Profile  Visit Dave W.'s Homepage Send Dave W. a Private Message  Reply with Quote
Originally posted by Valiant Dancer

Thats unmitigated bullshit. He wants to call a bit (a known entity of computer science as a single base 2 digit) as a standard base 10 entity. You cannot subdivide an on/off condition. While strings of bits can express a maximum number (1,3,7,15), the individual bits may not be subdivided. You would still need to express 10 as a four bit number. The fact that there are combinations that express higher numbers is immaterial. It is still 4 bits. And the basis for hexidecimal expressions of bytes/nibbles.

The computers aren't the problem. Shannon's assumption is.
No, Shannon was right in what he was saying. Shannon was bright enough to know that to transmit seven decimal digits (for example) would require 24 full bits (not 7×3.333=23.331), because bits aren't subdividable. He was just making a statement about the approximate conversion of decimal digits to bits for those not in the know. He wasn't a crank.

Besides which, Shannon worked in information theory. In that field, the information content of a decimal digit really is only about 3.33 bits, since six of the sixteen microstates possible with four bits would go unused, and thus never contain information. Basically Shannon was saying that the information content of any message, measured in bits, is the base-two log of the total number of possible microstates (if all microstates are equally probable) of the message. If you want to measure it in digits, you take the base-10 log. And the two measurements are equivalent given a transforming factor of about three and a third.

JerryB introduced the "one decimal digit equals 3.3 bits" thing for no good reason at all other than to show off that he knows a little something about bits and digits, but still he fucked up in the details. And he's trying to mock you because he's not interested in teaching anyone here anything about what he knows, he's only interested in arrogantly asserting his (not) superior knowledge to strangers on the Internet. His life must be pretty dull if this gets him off.

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Machi4velli
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USA
854 Posts

Posted - 12/17/2012 :  21:39:51   [Permalink]  Show Profile Send Machi4velli a Private Message  Reply with Quote
I want to talk about "Borel's law" some more, because, well, it's not a real thing in probability. Its very statement is self-contradictory:

"Any event whose odds are worse than 1 to 10^150 has probability zero."

This means for 0 < x < 10^-150

P(event with probability x) = 0

But, by definition

P(event with probability x) = x > 0

It's logically false, and so impossible to argue otherwise.

"Borel's law" is merely a rule of thumb for within a particular context.

"Truth does not change because it is, or is not, believed by a majority of the people."
-Giordano Bruno

"The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, but the illusion of knowledge."
-Stephen Hawking

"Seeking what is true is not seeking what is desirable"
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Edited by - Machi4velli on 12/17/2012 21:42:28
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Machi4velli
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USA
854 Posts

Posted - 12/17/2012 :  22:01:07   [Permalink]  Show Profile Send Machi4velli a Private Message  Reply with Quote
Originally posted by JerryB
Dembski is a mathematician who took Borel's law and mathematically expanded it accordingly: Dembski defines a universal probability bound of 10^-150, based on an estimate of the total number of processes that could have occurred in the universe since its beginning. Estimating the total number of particles in the universe at 10^80, the number of physical state transitions a particle can make at 10^45 per second (Planck time, the smallest physically meaningful unit of time) and the age of the universe at 10^25 seconds, thus the total number of processes involving at least one elementary particle is at most 1:10^150.


That's the number of possible state changes since the hypothesized beginning of the universe times a billion, where he got a billion, I have no idea. (10^25 is supposed to be the age of the universe times a billion).

I can construct an event of probability less than that in not many steps at all that certainly can occur randomly.

Take a very simple random process -- suppose each step is independent of the previous step and at each Planck time increment where the highest probability single step is 1/2 -- go 500 steps and any trajectory that could have possibly happened has probability at most (1/2)^500 < 10^-150, so there, a < 10^-150 probability event that must occur in 500 Planck times (it could have been a different trajectory, but this is the maximum probability one possible).

Single trajectories of any number of random processes will invariably have astronomically low probabilities in relatively very few steps. A trajectory is no less an event than a single thing occurring.

"Truth does not change because it is, or is not, believed by a majority of the people."
-Giordano Bruno

"The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, but the illusion of knowledge."
-Stephen Hawking

"Seeking what is true is not seeking what is desirable"
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Hawks
SFN Regular

Canada
1383 Posts

Posted - 12/17/2012 :  22:30:53   [Permalink]  Show Profile  Visit Hawks's Homepage Send Hawks a Private Message  Reply with Quote
Originally posted by JerryB
So: "Some things are best explained as the result of intelligence" is known as the theory of ID? Some reference to that, please.

From the Discovery Institute:
1. What is the theory of intelligent design?

Click here for video
The theory of intelligent design holds that certain features of the universe and of living things are best explained by an intelligent cause, not an undirected process such as natural selection. For more information see Center Director Stephen Meyer's article "Not By Chance" from the National Post of Canada or his appearance on PBS's "Tavis Smiley Show (Windows Media).


That is the short of it. Click the link if you want more, but it really doesn't say anything that can't be summed up in one sentence. How come you don't know this?

I see...so since the above theory of ID is pretty much exactly as you describe here...

I didn't formulate the theory. Don't blame me.

..., not falsifiable BUT it cannot be rejected no matter how unlikely or stupid it sounds (according to you) you are positing that this should STAND as the theory of ID?

It's not according to me. Sober wrote the paper (the very paper you can't understand).

What Sober would also say (but doesn't in this paper) is that one can't talk about anything being more likely than anything else under ID. And I seriously doubt he would say that rejecting ID has anything to do with it sounding stupid. Neither would I. That's another thing you didn't understand. But I'll give you extra credits for creating that straw-man.

Would you class this with perhaps Newton's laws or Einstein's theories of relativity?


Obviously not. Can't you even understand that?

BTW, Sounds like you are arguing the creationist side now... <:0)

You really have comprehension problems if you think so...


***Edited to add paragraph starting with "What Sober would also say".

METHINKS IT IS LIKE A WEASEL
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Edited by - Hawks on 12/17/2012 22:40:55
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Dave W.
Info Junkie

USA
26021 Posts

Posted - 12/18/2012 :  04:06:01   [Permalink]  Show Profile  Visit Dave W.'s Homepage Send Dave W. a Private Message  Reply with Quote
Originally posted by Machi4velli

I can construct an event of probability less than that in not many steps at all that certainly can occur randomly.

Take a very simple random process -- suppose each step is independent of the previous step and at each Planck time increment where the highest probability single step is 1/2 -- go 500 steps and any trajectory that could have possibly happened has probability at most (1/2)^500 < 10^-150, so there, a < 10^-150 probability event that must occur in 500 Planck times (it could have been a different trajectory, but this is the maximum probability one possible).

Single trajectories of any number of random processes will invariably have astronomically low probabilities in relatively very few steps. A trajectory is no less an event than a single thing occurring.
Make a deck of 100 cards, numbered 1 to 100, shuffle them and deal them all out. The order in which the whole deck comes up each time will have a probability of just 1.07×10-158 (1/100!), and so is "impossible" according to the UPB idea.

If the deck has 10,000 cards in it, one can create events with probability of just 3.5×10-35,660. Might take a few hours, each, but it's certainly doable. Write a quick computer script and one can create such events all day long...

Edited to add: or maybe because of the contrived (designed) system, it would be said that all such events require "intelligence"? In which case, it could be concluded that no human-generated control could ever be used in an experiment to test an ID method. And if that's true, we can conclude that no beings with intelligence could ever empirically determine if any ID methods ever detect design.

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Valiant Dancer
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USA
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Posted - 12/18/2012 :  06:59:43   [Permalink]  Show Profile  Visit Valiant Dancer's Homepage Send Valiant Dancer a Private Message  Reply with Quote
Originally posted by Dave W.

Originally posted by Valiant Dancer

Thats unmitigated bullshit. He wants to call a bit (a known entity of computer science as a single base 2 digit) as a standard base 10 entity. You cannot subdivide an on/off condition. While strings of bits can express a maximum number (1,3,7,15), the individual bits may not be subdivided. You would still need to express 10 as a four bit number. The fact that there are combinations that express higher numbers is immaterial. It is still 4 bits. And the basis for hexidecimal expressions of bytes/nibbles.

The computers aren't the problem. Shannon's assumption is.
No, Shannon was right in what he was saying. Shannon was bright enough to know that to transmit seven decimal digits (for example) would require 24 full bits (not 7×3.333=23.331), because bits aren't subdividable. He was just making a statement about the approximate conversion of decimal digits to bits for those not in the know. He wasn't a crank.

Besides which, Shannon worked in information theory. In that field, the information content of a decimal digit really is only about 3.33 bits, since six of the sixteen microstates possible with four bits would go unused, and thus never contain information. Basically Shannon was saying that the information content of any message, measured in bits, is the base-two log of the total number of possible microstates (if all microstates are equally probable) of the message. If you want to measure it in digits, you take the base-10 log. And the two measurements are equivalent given a transforming factor of about three and a third.

JerryB introduced the "one decimal digit equals 3.3 bits" thing for no good reason at all other than to show off that he knows a little something about bits and digits, but still he fucked up in the details. And he's trying to mock you because he's not interested in teaching anyone here anything about what he knows, he's only interested in arrogantly asserting his (not) superior knowledge to strangers on the Internet. His life must be pretty dull if this gets him off.


Except he conflates a computer bit with an informational bit (as proposed by Shannon here). While the only possible states does not use up the entire 0-F range of 4 bits, (using instead the range 0-9) a positional bit can either be on or off. In the case of 9, the bitstream looks like 1001. Under concepts discussed in James Kowal's "Structured Systems Development and Design", the length is still 4 bits and a bit is not subdividable into fractional bits.

Under computer science, the proposal of a fractional bit is absurd on it's face. The fact that Jerry here claims we should throw away our computers if Shannon is wrong (and from a computer science perspective, he is) shows ignorance in that area. Now, if he wants to identify a computer science source that claims the use of fractional bits, I'll be more than happy to take a look at it. However, I have extensive acedemic and practical experience with the concept of computer science bits, and this kind of informational "we don't count the parts we don't use" crap doesn't fly. In information systems, if we store a bit, it takes up the same space if it's a one or a zero.

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Dave W.
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USA
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Posted - 12/18/2012 :  08:49:00   [Permalink]  Show Profile  Visit Dave W.'s Homepage Send Dave W. a Private Message  Reply with Quote
Originally posted by Valiant Dancer

Except he conflates a computer bit with an informational bit (as proposed by Shannon here).
Ah, I didn't see where Jerry had done that, until in a re-read I found the "we can take all these computers to the dumpster" comment.

Yeah, the 3.3 factor is for translating base-2 logarithms into base-10 and vice versa (like how 10150 is about 2500). But the same conversion does say that to store a 150-digit decimal number, we'd need about 500 bits of physical memory.

By the way, to the limits of Windows calculator, the factor is 3.3219280948873623478703194294894.
Under computer science, the proposal of a fractional bit is absurd on it's face. The fact that Jerry here claims we should throw away our computers if Shannon is wrong (and from a computer science perspective, he is) shows ignorance in that area. Now, if he wants to identify a computer science source that claims the use of fractional bits, I'll be more than happy to take a look at it. However, I have extensive acedemic and practical experience with the concept of computer science bits, and this kind of informational "we don't count the parts we don't use" crap doesn't fly. In information systems, if we store a bit, it takes up the same space if it's a one or a zero.
Yeah, but as an approximation, you take the fractional answer and round up:

Base-10 | Digits | Approx | Bits | Range     
--------+--------+--------+------+-----------
9       |    1   |    3.3 |    4 | 0-15      
99      |    2   |    6.6 |    7 | 0-127     
999     |    3   |    9.9 |   10 | 0-1023    
9999    |    4   |   13.2 |   14 | 0-16383   
99999   |    5   |   16.5 |   17 | 0-131071  
999999  |    6   |   19.8 |   20 | 0-1048575 
9999999 |    7   |   23.1 |   24 | 0-16777215
Etc. The method works (until you get to larger numbers, then you need to add a few more bits), and that's what Shannon was talking about.

Jerry's dump-the-computers comment is just arrogant nonsense, daring you to argue with a dead guy, instead of arguing with Jerry's interpretation of what the dead guy said. In other words, Jerry is a coward.

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JerryB
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279 Posts

Posted - 12/18/2012 :  10:14:32   [Permalink]  Show Profile Send JerryB a Private Message  Reply with Quote
You claimed that ID is not a scientific theory,


Correct.

so therefore your insistence upon talking about Popperian falsifiability is irrelevant to the discussion of ID. You can't have it both ways: you can't claim that ID isn't a theory and also insist that the philosophy of science applies to ID.


LOL...you guys brought it up. I'm just responding to a paper that claimed the 'theory of ID' cannot be falsified according to the philosophy of Karl Popper. The entire musing is just dumb since there is NO SUCH THING.....as a theory of ID. What, do you expect me to do....I'm just going to agree and not point out the blatantly obvious?

My first premise (whoops, "paramount underlying precept") is that if the entire universe is designed, then we should detect design in everything we look at. How does your medical analogy map to that at all?


No, that's just silly, Dave. In fact, this is really just some weird version of the fallacy of composition: "The fallacy of composition arises when one infers that something is true of the whole from the fact that it is true of some part of the whole (or even of every proper part). For example: "This fragment of metal cannot be fractured with a hammer, therefore the machine of which it is a part cannot be fractured with a hammer." This is clearly fallacious, because many machines can be broken-apart, without any of those parts being fracturable."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fallacy_of_composition

You are saying that the universe was designed, therefore any PART of that universe is designed. It's like stating that a car is designed, therefore the bug splattered on the windshield is too.....

If the entire universe is designed, then it follows the designer designed gravity, fluid dynamics and dust in such a way that dust will settle however the designer wanted it to settle. How could you ever claim it was due to chance? The designer designed "chance."


No, that doesn't follow at all because the entire universe is NOT designed by intelligence. This is nothing more than the strawman fallacy that you accuse me of in the same post. Do you really believe (or think I believe) that the Grand Canyon is designed by intelligence rather than water erosion? Please refrain from putting words in my mouth.

BTW, THIS is how you so easily DISPROVE ID? <:0)

Fine, I'll modify my criticism: Dembski chose three numbers out of a very many he could have chosen, multiplied them together and declared that to be a universal limit. The logic behind his choices was arbitrary.


That is simply your opinion, and not one based on science or math. His reasoning makes perfect sense if one thinks it through deeply.
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JerryB
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279 Posts

Posted - 12/18/2012 :  10:24:25   [Permalink]  Show Profile Send JerryB a Private Message  Reply with Quote
JerryB introduced the "one decimal digit equals 3.3 bits" thing for no good reason at all other than to show off that he knows a little something about bits and digits, but still he fucked up in the details. And he's trying to mock you because he's not interested in teaching anyone here anything about what he knows, he's only interested in arrogantly asserting his (not) superior knowledge to strangers on the Internet. His life must be pretty dull if this gets him off.


This isn't true....I was just trying to HELP a couple of guys who seemed to be struggling with the math transposing decimals into binary (bits)......I quoted the entire part of that paper that was relevant and linked to it.....What more can I do?
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Dave W.
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Posted - 12/18/2012 :  10:46:32   [Permalink]  Show Profile  Visit Dave W.'s Homepage Send Dave W. a Private Message  Reply with Quote
Originally posted by JerryB

LOL...you guys brought it up. I'm just responding to a paper that claimed the 'theory of ID' cannot be falsified according to the philosophy of Karl Popper. The entire musing is just dumb since there is NO SUCH THING.....as a theory of ID. What, do you expect me to do....I'm just going to agree and not point out the blatantly obvious?
Well, you've been arguing with me as if that somehow means that ID isn't falsifiable because it isn't a theory.
My first premise (whoops, "paramount underlying precept") is that if the entire universe is designed, then we should detect design in everything we look at. How does your medical analogy map to that at all?
No, that's just silly, Dave.
But you refuse to answer the question.
In fact, this is really just some weird version of the fallacy of composition: "The fallacy of composition arises when one infers that something is true of the whole from the fact that it is true of some part of the whole (or even of every proper part).
No, that's the opposite of what I'm saying.
You are saying that the universe was designed, therefore any PART of that universe is designed.
How could it be otherwise? How could a universe in which every interaction is governed by designed laws not be full of evidence of that design in every part of it?

Which parts of the universe, in your mind, have not been designed?
It's like stating that a car is designed, therefore the bug splattered on the windshield is too.....
No, that's the opposite of what I'm saying. I'm saying that the entire universe is designed, therefore both cars and bugs and splatters should show evidence of design. It's the opposite of the fallacy of composition.
No, that doesn't follow at all because the entire universe is NOT designed by intelligence.
Okay, then I have misunderstood you. Why don't you clarify? Which parts of the universe do you think were designed and which parts were not? My argument clearly falsifies the whole-universe-is-designed idea that some IDists claim is true.
This is nothing more than the strawman fallacy that you accuse me of in the same post. Do you really believe (or think I believe) that the Grand Canyon is designed by intelligence rather than water erosion?
Some IDists do believe that the Grand Canyon is the result of design. You're not one of them. My mistake. Please clarify your position.
Fine, I'll modify my criticism: Dembski chose three numbers out of a very many he could have chosen, multiplied them together and declared that to be a universal limit. The logic behind his choices was arbitrary.
That is simply your opinion, and not one based on science or math. His reasoning makes perfect sense if one thinks it through deeply.
And if I just think about God correctly, I will gain faith in Jesus, right?

No, your inability to present an argument as to why multiplying those numbers together instead of other numbers (photon count, 10-200-second intervals, whatever) just shows that you don't understand Dembski's choices, either. Instead, all you can do is blurt that [i]I am not doing science while criticizing Dembski's utter lack of science. Why hold me to a standard that Dembski cannot meet?

Also:
This isn't true....I was just trying to HELP a couple of guys who seemed to be struggling with the math transposing decimals into binary (bits)......I quoted the entire part of that paper that was relevant and linked to it.....What more can I do?
Nobody was struggling when you did your "aside."

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JerryB
Skeptic Friend

279 Posts

Posted - 12/18/2012 :  11:46:10   [Permalink]  Show Profile Send JerryB a Private Message  Reply with Quote
I want to talk about "Borel's law" some more, because, well, it's not a real thing in probability. Its very statement is self-contradictory:

"Any event whose odds are worse than 1 to 10^150 has probability zero."

This means for 0 < x < 10^-150

P(event with probability x) = 0

But, by definition

P(event with probability x) = x > 0

It's logically false, and so impossible to argue otherwise.

"Borel's law" is merely a rule of thumb for within a particular context.


I think you are wanting to go to this formula, if it helps:

Let p be the probability of Event E's occurrence during any one opportunity for it to occur. (1 - p) will, therefore, be the probability that Event E doesn't occur during any one opportunity for it to occur. So, given N different opportunities for Event E to occur, the probability that Event E will not occur during any of those N opportunities, is (1 - p)N. And therefore, the probability that Event E will occur at least once during those N opportunities for Event E to occur, is (1 - (1 - p)N)

I'm afraid you didn't really show anything, logically or mathematically as far as I can see. You might want to expand or clarify.....

We can further the discussion on Borel if you wish, however, I just touched on that to lead up to Dembski's work. It is the latter from which the upper probability bound is derived and used in ID today. I further clarified Dembski's reasoning on this in an above post.
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JerryB
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279 Posts

Posted - 12/18/2012 :  12:14:48   [Permalink]  Show Profile Send JerryB a Private Message  Reply with Quote
Originally posted by Machi4velli

Originally posted by JerryB
Dembski is a mathematician who took Borel's law and mathematically expanded it accordingly: Dembski defines a universal probability bound of 10^-150, based on an estimate of the total number of processes that could have occurred in the universe since its beginning. Estimating the total number of particles in the universe at 10^80, the number of physical state transitions a particle can make at 10^45 per second (Planck time, the smallest physically meaningful unit of time) and the age of the universe at 10^25 seconds, thus the total number of processes involving at least one elementary particle is at most 1:10^150.


That's the number of possible state changes since the hypothesized beginning of the universe times a billion, where he got a billion, I have no idea. (10^25 is supposed to be the age of the universe times a billion).

I can construct an event of probability less than that in not many steps at all that certainly can occur randomly.

Take a very simple random process -- suppose each step is independent of the previous step and at each Planck time increment where the highest probability single step is 1/2 -- go 500 steps and any trajectory that could have possibly happened has probability at most (1/2)^500 < 10^-150, so there, a < 10^-150 probability event that must occur in 500 Planck times (it could have been a different trajectory, but this is the maximum probability one possible).

Single trajectories of any number of random processes will invariably have astronomically low probabilities in relatively very few steps. A trajectory is no less an event than a single thing occurring.



He took the estimated number of the particles in the universe (that's the maximum number of 'things' possible to 'react' or go through any changes of state...) multiplied those total possible reacting particles by the maximum number of times they COULD have reacted, given that reactions must occur within time (that would be plank time (which can occur 10^45 times per second)--then multiplied THOSE numbers by the estimated age of the universe (10^25 seconds).

(10^80)(10^45)(10^25) = 10^150


It's quite simple math and very elementary logic. IOW, how could something POSSIBLY occur over that number of 10^150.....there EXISTS no possible matter to do so, nor was there TIME in existence for anything to do so.

If I recall, he added seconds to the time factor to insure that an inaccurate estimate of the origin of the universe would be covered in his formula.

I'm afraid that your gedanken following this area of the discussion makes little sense to me...perhaps you can expand.
Edited by - JerryB on 12/18/2012 12:58:51
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JerryB
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Posted - 12/18/2012 :  13:29:44   [Permalink]  Show Profile Send JerryB a Private Message  Reply with Quote


That is the short of it. Click the link if you want more, but it really doesn't say anything that can't be summed up in one sentence. How come you don't know this?


Why is it you think I would know this or care about what one guy says on a PBS television show?

But this is what you THINK to be the theory of intelligent design? OK.....Go for it...

But what is it you want from me, to argue now that this is a theory of science based on the argument from authority fallacy or something?

Well, I don't agree with you that this is a theory of science at all...How was it taken through the scientific method from hypothesis to theory by scientific experimentation.

And quite frankly, I don't remember this forum being THIS illiterate in logical fallacy, but they keep coming post after post.....

This one is the Association Fallacy......: "An association fallacy is an inductive informal fallacy of the type hasty generalization or red herring which asserts that qualities of one thing are inherently qualities of another, merely by an irrelevant association. The two types are sometimes referred to as guilt by association and honor by association. Association fallacies are a special case of red herring, and can be based on an appeal to emotion."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Association_fallacy

I am not the guy that said this, I wasn't there to know what he meant when he said it, and if he meant what you THINK he meant when we said it, I don't agree. So please quit trying to associate that I said or believe this because I do not.

Now show me a "theory of ID" that someone I study has stated to be a theory of science and I might look at it seriously........Until you convince me that there IS such a critter, I will continue to reiterate that there is NO SUCH THING as the theory of ID.....Sheeze....most people on your side would just agree with me, but you fight it like a fundy creationist. *wink*





What Sober would also say (but doesn't in this paper) is that one can't talk about anything being more likely than anything else under ID.


What on earth does this mean???


Obviously not. Can't you even understand that?


Well, lol...you're fighting tooth and nail to convince me of something called a theory of ID, I just assumed you would place it somewhere with the other great theories of science........

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JerryB
Skeptic Friend

279 Posts

Posted - 12/18/2012 :  13:33:06   [Permalink]  Show Profile Send JerryB a Private Message  Reply with Quote
Originally posted by Dave W.

Originally posted by Machi4velli

I can construct an event of probability less than that in not many steps at all that certainly can occur randomly.

Take a very simple random process -- suppose each step is independent of the previous step and at each Planck time increment where the highest probability single step is 1/2 -- go 500 steps and any trajectory that could have possibly happened has probability at most (1/2)^500 < 10^-150, so there, a < 10^-150 probability event that must occur in 500 Planck times (it could have been a different trajectory, but this is the maximum probability one possible).

Single trajectories of any number of random processes will invariably have astronomically low probabilities in relatively very few steps. A trajectory is no less an event than a single thing occurring.
Make a deck of 100 cards, numbered 1 to 100, shuffle them and deal them all out. The order in which the whole deck comes up each time will have a probability of just 1.07×10-158 (1/100!), and so is "impossible" according to the UPB idea.

If the deck has 10,000 cards in it, one can create events with probability of just 3.5×10-35,660. Might take a few hours, each, but it's certainly doable. Write a quick computer script and one can create such events all day long...

Edited to add: or maybe because of the contrived (designed) system, it would be said that all such events require "intelligence"? In which case, it could be concluded that no human-generated control could ever be used in an experiment to test an ID method. And if that's true, we can conclude that no beings with intelligence could ever empirically determine if any ID methods ever detect design.


I don't know about you Dave.....<:0)

This is SOOooooo.... silly.

There are NO odds that a deck of cards will deal a sequence.....the odds are 100% that it will deal a sequence every time because you either deal the danged cards or you don't...LOL
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