You should read John Allen Paulos’s latest column on complexity — it’s a central concept in the various debates that go on around here, and no one on the other side evinces any sign of actually understanding the subject. It’s always “complexity implies design” this, and “complexity only arises by intent” that. I’ll also second his recommendation of Stuart Kauffman’s At Home in the Universe: The Search for the Laws of Self-Organization and Complexity(amzn/b&n/abe/pwll) — it’s a very good book full of interesting ideas and empirical demonstrations of order arising out of randomness.
Another reason to read the column: the ABC news site gets a more diverse mix of commenters than we do here, and if you want to get a wider sample of the American mindset, they’re much more representative. And far more terrifying.
I would think simplicity implied a grand designer. The fact that the structure of bodies and universes is so complicated seems to me evidence that no one is watching over things.
Or that Microsoft designed it all.
Wait: you said that already.
Look, I sat through the whole of Baby Bible Bashers when it screened here in the UK. I have had I think my full quota of US stupidity for this month, thankyou for the invitation though.
Look, I sat through the whole of Baby Bible Bashers when it screened here in the UK. I have had I think my full quota of US stupidity for this month, thankyou for the invitation though.
Ya gotta be immersed in it, man.
Hey, to be fair, 1/3 of those baby Jebus freaks is from Brazil.
I haven’t read the bit you linked to yet, but isn’t complexity simply a matter of perception, and what might be considered complex for some is actually quite easily understood by others?
That’s why when you ask 10 different IDers how to define complexity, you get 10 different answers. Hell, if you ask Dembski how to define complexity, you’ll get a different answer depending on the day of the week, the outside temperature and the position of the stars.
I was hoping for a discussion of tornadoes, or planetary orbits…
…or at least self-organizing yogurt lids!
Then again, it’s still not certain why the universe began with low entropy. If you’re going to ask about the source of order, that’s a fairly open question as yet.
In biology, though, it’s not a problem, because we simply have a reasonably low-entropy universe as yet, and that can drive the self-ordering of molecules, etc.
There are two problems with the creationists. One is that they confuse the questions of low entropy and biological evolution, and the other is, as we well know, their tendency to see order as purpose, and to confuse human purpose with universal purpose (we tend view the fortuitous rain in the desert when you’re dying of thirst as something existing “for us”, when it’s merely part of geological self-ordering).
It’s so easy and lazy to say that “the Great Mind” did it all, and to disparage the lack of faith (or surfeit of faith, for the more indoctrinated) of the scientists. And once they’ve decided that the reason we accept evolution is that we’re just horrid atheists who hate God, the marked lack of design elements in the world, coupled with the distinct marks of undirected evolution, are already discounted and virtually ignored.
Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/2kxyc7
This is a new one: the argument from a desire to be spoon-fed.
With so many starving zombies in the world and so many others merely wasting their tasty, tasty brains, how can anyone believe in a just god?
My favorite question for those who claim order cannot come from complexity:
So, does God build every snowflake by hand?
Watch out, Ahcuah, the answer from an awful lot of them will be “Yes”.
Uh oh, that isn’t the whole story behind order in natural processes. But I find that the linked column and its review of Kaufmann’s book is aware of that and discusses that “phenomenon of this sort supplements or accentuates the effects of natural selection”.
A simplistic but fun just so story can be based on Paulos’ description of Ramsey theory. Assuming the weak anthropic principle that is behind his observation of “island of order” and the physical laws that implies one can go further. A modicum of laws seems to imply that only fairly ordered regions of a universe grows large, as they do in eternal inflation. Disorder decides over order, and order decides over disorder, in a see-saw fashion.
But I fail to see why one should be excited at the time one gets down to evolution, which has selection among function as a characteristic mechanism. That means tending to move toward order right there.
Uh oh, that isn’t the whole story behind order in natural processes. But I find that the linked column and its review of Kaufmann’s book is aware of that and discusses that “phenomenon of this sort supplements or accentuates the effects of natural selection”.
A simplistic but fun just so story can be based on Paulos’ description of Ramsey theory. Assuming the weak anthropic principle that is behind his observation of “island of order” and the physical laws that implies one can go further. A modicum of laws seems to imply that only fairly ordered regions of a universe grows large, as they do in eternal inflation. Disorder decides over order, and order decides over disorder, in a see-saw fashion.
But I fail to see why one should be excited at the time one gets down to evolution, which has selection among function as a characteristic mechanism. That means tending to move toward order right there.
Did the universe being with particularly low entropy? I would have thought the CMB indicates that it was pretty hot and isotropic, back in the day. Since then, it’s expanded a lot, and matter and radiation behave differently on expansion; I think we’re just living on the entropy difference.
No evidence of god, or inadequate tracks should not be proof that god does not exist. The Bohr model of hydrogen looked good for hydrogen, but only for hydrogen. I think quantum theorists might look at the Bohr model as something more like astrology than science because they have the benefit of looking back…
I have to laugh at that one. For the rest, it’s true that they are far more terrifying than comments here.
I have in mind a simple demonstration for how order can arise from chaos due to the input of energy and the fundamental qualities of a system. Mix up red and blue marbles in a coffee can. Have the red marbles be larger than the blue marbles. Shake it so that the marbles are free to move and redistribute and voila you have an ordered system with red marbles forming a layer on top of blue. Order from chaos.
“inadequate tracks should not be proof that god does not exist”
What kind of tracks does god leave? Is he a plantigrade?
Each now and then, it’s fun to ask
“What did The Maker have in Mind
When first He set about the task
And started making humankind?”
We know, of course, that God Above,
Not evolution, deaf and blind,
Created us to show his love
As clear as if The Artist signed.
We know because we’re more complex
Than any watch you have to wind;
The parts all mesh, and during sex
There’s even stuff that’s intertwined!
Ok, the lower back needs work,
At least mine does, I often find;
And, being male, another quirk–
My prostate’s often in a bind
I cannot make ascorbic acid–
Genes for that got left behind;
Spirit willing, flesh too flaccid,
Leaves my sex life undermined
So many problems on my list–
The limbs that ache, the joints that grind
The memories that fade to mist
Forever to the past confined
I guess a life of aches and pains
Is one to which I’m now resigned;
But still one shining fact remains:
It’s crystal clear, that Man’s designed.
http://digitalcuttlefish.blogspot.com/2008/03/complexity-of-design.html
Actually complexity is fairly well defined in information theory. Simply put, it’s related to the ratio of the size of what you’re describing and the simplest description of that thing. For example, a 1MB bitmap image which can be compressed into a 200KB jpeg is not as complex as one that can only be compressed into an 850KB jpg.
You forget cuttlefish that all of those problems came about as a result of the fall. Adam and Eve could make all the VitC they needed endogenously before they ate that apple.
Actually complexity is fairly well defined in information theory.
it is indeed, but I think the person you were responding to was speaking of how creobots utilize the concept, and in that sense, they are correct.
the idea of “irreducible complexity” is one based entirely on perception, and this becomes ever more obvious the more one probes into the usage.
However, as a tool for misinformation, it is exactly why the people who want to sell books to rubes (read: Dembski, Behe), find it such a useful construct. They can simply change what it means on the fly as necessary in order to defend it, and the people who serve as their primary audience will hardly question them for doing so.
We should not forget that Dembski tries to redefine “complexity” in order to obscure the rather considerable differences between life and designed objects. He “redefines” everything that is unlikely as being “complex,” because, of course, many designed objects are not complex at all, while life is more complex than anything humans have ever made.
Complexity is something we find in life. That is what we know first of all. Then we notice something else, which is that complexity is also common outside of life, and often it is ordered. However, human design is not especially complex, not like turbulence, or life.
Those are just first observations, however. After that we notice that life’s complex order is not like the complex structures that we make–and this is not simply because the former is more complex. Life is complex in an ordered fashion, however just what differences occur after the cladistic branching is not predictable (aspects are predictable, but the whole effect is not). Furthermore, what is predictable about evolution is what conflicts with all known design, in that vertebrates will be limited to modifying what their ancestors have, and will not have novel complex traits, nor will they “borrow ideas” from other designs, quite unlike what real designers produce. Nor does the complexity serve any purpose (only the function to successfully reproduce), nor is biology the result of rational planning or rational design.
What I’m saying is that complexity is common. Ordered complexity is common, both in life and outside of it. Rationality, however, is highly distinctive, on earth being only the product of life or of machines (computers) that life has made. Rationality thus indicates–at the least powerfully suggests–that intelligence is behind whatever was rationally planned or produced. Our complexity is marked by rationality–that complexity may thus be considered to be likely to have been produced by humans. However, simple rationality can as easily be recognized as a product of humans, so long as we can rule out simple ordering processes (like crystallization) producing these.
This is all to point out that complexity is easily produced, and ordered complexity is also easily produced, so long as an ordered force is driving the production of ordered complexity (geological forms like watersheds and the like). The only distinctive mark of “design” has always been rationality, while issues like purpose, novelty, and “borrowing” may also have roles to play in identifying design.
The IDists chose to see “complexity” as the mark of design–and Dembski deliberately redefined it to obscure the differences between life and design–because the primary marker for identifying design–rationality–is missing from the ordering of life. They had to define “complexity” as being the result of design simply because they wanted to define life as being designed, regardless of the lack of any recognizable rational actions being behind life (aside from mate choice in bigger brained animals, and similar matters).
Rational processes are needed to be found prior to ever deciding that either complexity or simplicity is the result of intelligence. Dembski knew that on some level (quite possibly not in his rational mind), which is why he tried to turn rational simplicity into “complexity” in order to hide the fact that complexity by no means indicates intelligence being behind it. Complexity is, ultimately, merely a product of increasing disorder, which by some processes (natural selection, artificial selection) can yield complex order.
Only by discovering rational order behind any complex structures, including life, could intelligence be fingered as producing life. It’s because the IDists know that this rationality cannot be identified in genomes and the rest of life that they decided on a false marker for “intelligent design,” the ubiquitous complexity which arises without intelligence and without end. After all, if one can redefine a universal trait of life, complexity, as being “intelligently designed,” you’ve already won the debate, no matter how dishonestly.
Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/2kxyc7
I was just thinking about that the other day.
So let’s see if I have this right: Because our ancestor ate a fresh fruit (and the original punishment for eating the fruit being death) … God punished us so that we have to eat fresh fruit¹ in order to not die.
Wait, what?
(And that’s not even getting into the fact that anthropoid apes and other primates have the same problem…)
_________________________
1: OK, or vegetables.²
2: Or, to be honest, seal liver. Or beluga whale skin (!). Really, I looked it up.
What’s that, Owlmirror? As primates, we have to eat beluga whale skin to stay alive?
But won’t that have the opposite effect in that it’ll invoke the melancholy wrath of Morrissey?
Did it even?
Some wonder if it began with infinite entropy, even though it’s increasing nevertheless.
Any fresh meat works.
Did it even?
Some wonder if it began with infinite entropy, even though it’s increasing nevertheless.
Any fresh meat works.
I like this chemistry site I found awhile back (or did someone give me the link? I forget heh):
http://www.meta-synthesis.com/webbook/50_why/reactions.html
http://www.meta-synthesis.com/webbook/30_timeline/timeline.html
The ‘realist vs. anti-realist’ section I found interesting, since I’ve never heard of ‘anti-realism’ before. All this time I thought I was a realist ;).
Perhaps. But the above sources have 35 and 38 mg/100g of ascorbic acid respectively, which is more than a grapefruit.
Wikipedia (insert disclaimer here) lists other organ meats that have close to that range. But I get the impression that the Vitamin C content of most meat is much lower, approximately between 1-6 mg/100g.
One commenter says:
“God is more than capable of rescuing me from an oncoming truck, but He might also allow my stupidity to teach me a valuable lesson. Either way, He still loves me and you.”
This clinches it. God is mentally ill. He’s willing to let this woman be mowed down by a truck to teach her a valuable lesson? What lesson would that be? “Look both ways before you cross the street”? Thanks for the tip, God!
Yes, Judge, I ran her over, but God still loves her… and she learned a valuable lesson…
Kind of makes you wonder just how valuable that lesson is that god had to kill her in order to teach it to her. I mean, are there trucks in heaven or something?
It is often thought that it’s a deepening well which maintains a differential between areas of high concentration of energy and those of low concentrations of energy (that is, there’s increasing low concentrations as the universe expands). Indeed, the universe seems to have been quite isotropic for a while.
The initial expansion, however, seems to have been driven by initial low entropy, or so I gather. Deepening well or no, our universe “needs” the order coming from the Big Bang in order to have, say, hydrogen for fusion.
Anyhow, that’s what I understand from the journals, which I have to take largely on their word. I’m no expert on it at all, it’s just that my reading leads me to believe that low entropy in the beginning is an issue (with candidate ideas for resolution, such as that high entropy universes give rise to low entropy universes, simply because the latter come from a very small region within the former–which appears to relate to the “deepening well” that took us out of relative isotropy soon after the beginning).
If anyone knows that entropy is not a problem for the initial conditions of our universe, I’d be happy to know it. I don’t know it now, however, I just know that it’s not a problem for biological evolution.
Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/2kxyc7
The funniest thing about the whole VitaminC defiency to me is that God was apparently like, “alright f***ers, you eat my fruit I’m gonna break psiGULO so you can’t finish the biosynthesis of vitamin C” instead of just removing the remnants of the pathway entirely. (He also broke the VitC pathway in monkeys and apes, too. Guilty by relation. Oh wait…)
“Another reason to read the column: the ABC news site gets a more diverse mix of commenters than we do here, and if you want to get a wider sample of the American mindset, they’re much more representative. And far more terrifying.”
Ah, yes… the same ‘ol “something cannot come from nothing,” “it takes more faith to not believe in God,” bullshit with healthy doses of muddying the epistemic waters with postmodernist gobbledegook.
The fall has nothing to do with our vitamin C deficiency. God is just pre-emptively punishing sixteenth century sailors for causing genocides against the Native Americans, for being greedy enough to search for El Dorado and cinnamon, and for benefitting from advances in science and engineering.
The fall has nothing to do with our vitamin C deficiency. God is just pre-emptively punishing sixteenth century sailors for causing genocides against the Native Americans, for being greedy enough to search for El Dorado and cinnamon, and for benefitting from advances in science and engineering.
I always found the eden story rather disturbing.
1. Limbic lobe fairy creates man and woman in a garden, but does not give them knowledge of good and evil (so much for religion being the source of moral sense, btw)
2. LL fairy puts tree with fruit that grants knowledge of good and evil in the garden, but forbids man and woman from eating it. Except he also makes a serpent that will tempt them to eat it
3. Man and woman, created without knowledge of right and wrong, can’t know that it is wrong to eat the fruit, so they listen to the serpent and eat the fruit
4. LL fairy is mighty pissed, kicks them out of paradise and curses them with all kinds of ills
5. And why is LL fairy so pissed? Because now man and woman also know about another fruit, which gives eternal life, and LL fairy doesn’t want man and woman to eat that fruit, because it would make them too much like him
6. And where did LL fairy put this fruit which he didn’t want man and woman to eat so badly? Right in the middle of the same garden where he put man and woman in the first place
From this one can draw the following conclusions:
According to the bible:
1. God is unjust. He punishes people who do not have the capacity to distinguish right and wrong
2. God is irresponsible. He puts things he doesn’t want people to take in places where people can get them easily, kind of like putting and open can of lysol on a low shelf where a toddler can easily get it
3. Humans obtained knowledge of good/evil, right/wrong only by DISOBEYING god
Or maybe god planned it all out from the beginning. He wanted humans to learn about good and evil, so he created the fruit and serpent in full knowledge that they would eat it. In which case, why didn’t he just make them with the knowledge of good and evil in the first place? And what’s with this multiplying pain in childbirth, serpent striking your heel, laboring in the fields stuff?
Incidentally, just how does learning from a fruit work? Did it hold ventriloquist lessons, or what?
I couldn’t read too many of the commentors on ABC without starting to get a headache.
I just watched this video clip that is an interesting demonstration of order from chaos. Wonder how many people would claim it is a result of supernatural influence?
http://www.break.com/index/moving-ring-of-fire.html
I’ve been ploughing through Kauffman’s Origins of Order for the last few months. A fantastic book, with more than enough in it to keep you busy for a while. I think it was the precursor to At Home in the Universe. It’s one of those books that every few pages you could easily go off on a year-long tangent looking things up and reading supporting material. He certainly seems to be a prodigious intellect.
Wow. PZ, how can you read things like this everyday (the comments, not the article) and still have some semblance of sanity? I read ONE PAGE of comments and closed the window. It just makes me too sad. Sometimes I think you’re joking when you make comments about what creationists and IDers and the like say, and then I read something like this and realize you are _understating_ their ignorance.
You get a virtual hi-five from me for the crazy BS you regularly bring to our attention.
I found myself arguing with someone who kept spouting that evolution predicts DNA is “random” Why do I even bother?
Dear Science Pundit,
I am going to assume that this part of the definition you linked to is a joke:
“The first string admits a short English language description, namely “32 repetitions of ’01′”, which consists of 20 characters. The second one has no obvious simple description other than writing down the string itself, which has 64 characters.”
Funny stuff. Terrible linguistics, but very funny. The conflation of orthographic conventions with the English language is truly funny. The floating decontextualized sentence is even funnier. Thanks.
Is this – can it be? A new creationist argument?
There’s a debate going on at these two blogs:
http://thelockeronline.blogspot.com/2008/01/more-about-scienceatheism.html
http://rhoblogy.blogspot.com/2008/01/naturalism-as-alchemy.html
Part of the argument goes like this (G-man in italics, Rhoblogy underlined):
I pointed out that the process of microevolution is an accumulatory process.
And it’s never been observed to turn one kind of organism into another kind.
Oh, but it will!!!! I’m sure of it. Otherwise the Darwinian Bible would be wrong, but we all know that’s impossible!
No mechanism exists to halt or reverse the changes
None that you know of. But you can’t prove such a negative statement. And it’s far more reasonable to assume one is since such changes have never been observed.
A mechanism to reverse the changes of evolution! It’s almost like he’s admitting that microevolution inevitably leads to macroevolution without interference – but obviously it can’t be THAT, not from someone who seems to be arguing for YEC.
It is my, definitely not very informed, understanding that if you try to estimate the entropy in the observable universe (i.e. in the “coexpanding” frame) it is initially low and then increasing. This is consistent with inflationary scenarios (has low initial entropy), eternal inflation scenarios (demands low initial entropy) and the holographic principle (puts a limit on total entropy).
AFAIU we are living on the expansion – it ensures there will always be an entropy sink. (And so a thermodynamical arrow of time.)
I get the feeling that perhaps there is more exciting speculation than a serious problem as such. For example, eternal inflation can start where a fluctuation gives enough low entropy by chance.
But there are then problems verging on the philosophical. If eternal inflation isn’t eternal backwards in time, which many believes, which was the initial condition? Sean Carrol on Cosmic Variance discuss this a lot, as he proposes a symmetrical process with time flowing in separate directions. We see only one due to the necessary symmetry breaking. [Personally, I don’t see why one can’t push the lower bound indefinitely back. But I’m not a cosmologist.]
Other problems is that the above fluctuations will more often result in different variants of Boltzmann’s Brains, i.e. quantum states that believes there is a universe instead of there really being one. (Though I believe the later type of rather philosophical problems is starting to be taken care of, as cosmologists starts to see problems that such scenarios face. Um, I have no handy reference right now.)
It is my, definitely not very informed, understanding that if you try to estimate the entropy in the observable universe (i.e. in the “coexpanding” frame) it is initially low and then increasing. This is consistent with inflationary scenarios (has low initial entropy), eternal inflation scenarios (demands low initial entropy) and the holographic principle (puts a limit on total entropy).
AFAIU we are living on the expansion – it ensures there will always be an entropy sink. (And so a thermodynamical arrow of time.)
I get the feeling that perhaps there is more exciting speculation than a serious problem as such. For example, eternal inflation can start where a fluctuation gives enough low entropy by chance.
But there are then problems verging on the philosophical. If eternal inflation isn’t eternal backwards in time, which many believes, which was the initial condition? Sean Carrol on Cosmic Variance discuss this a lot, as he proposes a symmetrical process with time flowing in separate directions. We see only one due to the necessary symmetry breaking. [Personally, I don’t see why one can’t push the lower bound indefinitely back. But I’m not a cosmologist.]
Other problems is that the above fluctuations will more often result in different variants of Boltzmann’s Brains, i.e. quantum states that believes there is a universe instead of there really being one. (Though I believe the later type of rather philosophical problems is starting to be taken care of, as cosmologists starts to see problems that such scenarios face. Um, I have no handy reference right now.)
… or actual universes occurring by (very rare) fluctuation; sorry about the confusion.
… or actual universes occurring by (very rare) fluctuation; sorry about the confusion.
Keep in mind this is the segment of the population who understands at least enough to find the ABC news site and make a comment as well. The real bottom of the barrel is way below these folks.
“I am going to assume that this part of the definition you linked to is a joke…”
I doubt it. It illustrates what is typically meant by “descriptive complexity”, of which Kolmogorov complexity is technically a variant.
Dear Tyler DiPietro,
You realize that this statement is, in fact, wrong (or at least misguided):
“The first string admits a short English language description, namely “32 repetitions of ’01′”, which consists of 20 characters. The second one has no obvious simple description other than writing down the string itself, which has 64 characters.”
To get to the statement “32 repetitions of ’01′” requires a certain contexts to be created, namely, “the first string admits a short English language description, namely…”, so the idea of a decontextualized sentence “32 repetitions of ’01′” as meaningful is false. Second, there is the conflation of “characters” (or orthographic conventions) with the “English language.” If one was actually speaking, then one would, I imagine, want to use phonemes (and their allophonic relations), or perhaps morphemes, or perhaps words, or perhaps clauses, or perhaps prosodic units, or perhaps (you get the idea), and of course that begs the question of minimal units. Characters are not a minimal unit in a language (they are in a writing system, but a writing system is not a language). Of course the first string can be described as “a string” and the second string can be described as “b string”, given a shared understanding of what “a” and “b” strings mean–just like one has to have a certain tacit agreement about “32” or “01” or “thirty two” and “zero one” (note the switch in character assignments used in the example). That is, the example sentence presupposes a great deal, a great deal that must be pragmatically calibrated.
In other words, the example is terrible linguistics. It makes a number of naive (at best) assumptions about language, conflates language and writing systems, confuses minimal units, switches character conventions, and obscures contexts (of which it must at first posit) and presuppositions.
“It makes a number of naive (at best) assumptions about language, conflates language and writing systems, confuses minimal units, switches character conventions, and obscures contexts (of which it must at first posit) and presuppositions.”
You’re obviously the expert there. I was only pointing out the general statement as illustrating the concept of descriptive complexity. I’d add that Kolmogorov complexity, the most well developed definition under that particular umbrella, has little to do with the English language, but rather universal computing devices.
Tyler DiPietro,
My complaint, if it is a complaint, isn’t really with Kolmogorov complexity, but rather with the opening discussion at Wikipedia, which, as I have suggested, is misguided.
i dont quite understand this “complexity implied design” bit. i would like to see a creationist point to a vestigial chip on their computer, or maybe a part on their car that once did something in an earlier make but is useless now and just stays there for the hell of it.
now sure you could probably find thousands of vestigial remains in windows…but thats just poor design…
good design works to remove unnecesary things, to make it as simple as possible…evolution doesnt remove unnecesary things unless they are detrimental.