Discussion of "intelligent design" (uncapitalized, AlanF)

by AuldSoul 153 Replies latest members adult

• 

  funkyderek

  AuldSoul:

  It has always been odd to me that earliest life on this planet just happened to generate an atmosphere hospitable to larger carbon-based lifeforms.

  The life-forms that evolved were those that could best survive in such an atmosphere. The atmosphere wasn't generated to suit them. They adapted to suit the atmosphere.

  Because it certainly can't be said that carbon-based life is the form most likely to survive earth's early conditions.

  And yet it did survive. Normally, those organisms most likely to survive are the ones that do survive. (Such is the central tenet of Darwinisim.) On what basis do you say it was unlikely to survive?

  The designer you seem to be arguing for doesn't seem very intelligent. He (forgive the chauvinism) seems to be a fairly stupid tinkerer with almost infinite resources. He basically tries a lot of things and keeps what works, even if it doesn't work as well as what a genuinely intelligent designer might come up with. This is only a step away from pure Darwinism. Instead of an incompetent designer, there is no designer at all. Everything possible (or at least everything probable) is tried. The things that work are kept simply because they are better at surviving and therefore more likely to survive, and hence to reproduce. The wasteful designer you seem to be hypothesising is unnecessary and would himself require explaining.
• 

  hillary_step

  Auld Soul,

  The life-forms that evolved were those that could best survive in such an atmosphere. The atmosphere wasn't generated to suit them. They adapted to suit the atmosphere.

  Exactly. An obvious example of this are the marine creatures, shrimps, crabs and some fishes who have evolved to survive living in the undersea volcano vents on the floor of the South Antarctic. Their bodies have adapted systems allowing them to tolerate, breed and live within a funnel of water heated to almost boiling point, and these bodies differ in important ways from similar creatures living in more tolerable temperatures. If they stray just a few feet from this tunnel of heat, they die almost immediately in the frigid waters.

  This process has been going on for many thousands of years, but not *millions* of years. In millions of years, if such an environment still existed, their bodies would bear no resemblence both within and without, to the evolutionary string they developed from. No 'intelligence' has been neccessary for this to happen.

  HS

  PS - By the way, thank you for opening this thread up to more minds than two. Not that we ever took that request seriously.
• 

  SPAZnik

  : I now return you to your normal programmng haha - i like that
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  Qcmbr

  With evolutionary processes well defined it seems that the debate has moved to whether these processes are planned or are themselves self-creating by the external stimuli that drive them. I cannot think of any designed system that approaches the brilliance and adaptability of life. The peak of design excellence is to write self-adapting design. I think we would have a strong argument for design if it can be proved that random mutation is woefully inadequate as the change mechanism. If we find that life adapts incredibly quickly (Pre-Cambrian explosion?) then we have an active component within our ‘code’ that is not random at all. That would be one argument for ID in my mind.
• 

  Abaddon

  AuldSoul

  I have to ask; what if early life didn't develop in the atmosphere? They are finding deep-earth bacteria living in ecospheres totally removed from solar radiation, and due to the problems of explaining abio in postulated early Earth atmospheres, now we know there's life down there some are asking whether it's possible the deep-earth was where abio happened and that eventually the descendants of the life originating there colonised the surface.

  Once again this seems to be a far simpler explanation than one which hypothesizes 'abio must have happened elsewhere', as this hypothesis requires abio to happen elsewhere ANYWAY and for this life to develop interstellar travel and the inclination to be a Universal gardner of sorts without any tangible benefit coming to them (unless that's the harvesting ship coming just now...).

  Your theory has the same level of probability of abio (two uncalculable unknowns can be treated as identical in value), unless you can argue otherwise with evidences.

  From there it's less likely than the assumption abio took place here.

  What of parsimoniousness and Occam's Razor?

  Or does the IDEA there is something out there still hold enough attraction to you to make you overlook the statistical weakness of your hypothesis?
• 

  Qcmbr

  I was watching an interesting TV programme last night reahrding life extension science and it was interesting to find that they had found that by playing with genes they could extend life in nematodes considerably. I think all the code is there rather than it mutated there by happy accident. The pressures applied to life doesn't seem enough to create the rapid responses but adaptation seems to me to presuppose an adaptation mechanism. So hopefully we could 'easily' live to biblical ages with a little more research. Maybe even immortality is possible? But that would make us all gods and that would screw most christian religions!
• 

  press any key

  sorry this took so long but has been a beauty sunny day here, been soaking up the rays

  Show me the maths, SHOW ME THE MATHS, SHOW ME THE MATHS!

  IV. THE CORE OF THE SIMULATION ARGUMENT

  The basic idea of this paper can be expressed roughly as follows: If there were a substantial chance that our civilization will ever get to the posthuman stage and run many ancestor-simulations, then how come you are not living in such a simulation?

  We shall develop this idea into a rigorous argument. Let us introduce the following notation:

  : Fraction of all human-level technological civilizations that survive to reach a posthuman stage : Average number of ancestor-simulations run by a posthuman civilization : Average number of individuals that have lived in a civilization before it reaches a posthuman stage

  The actual fraction of all observers with human-type experiences that live in simulations is then

  

  Writing for the fraction of posthuman civilizations that are interested in running ancestor-simulations (or that contain at least some individuals who are interested in that and have sufficient resources to run a significant number of such simulations), and for the average number of ancestor-simulations run by such interested civilizations, we have

  

  and thus:

  (*)

  Because of the immense computing power of posthuman civilizations, is extremely large, as we saw in the previous section. By inspecting (*) we can then see that at least one of the following three propositions must be true:

  (1) (2) (3)

  taken from http://www.simulation-argument.com/simulation.html

  also some interesting comments on there about the computer power required to simulate human history. And in

  VII. CONCLUSION

  A technologically mature “posthuman” civilization would have enormous computing power. Based on this empirical fact, the simulation argument shows that at least one of the following propositions is true: (1) The fraction of human-level civilizations that reach a posthuman stage is very close to zero; (2) The fraction of posthuman civilizations that are interested in running ancestor-simulations is very close to zero; (3) The fraction of all people with our kind of experiences that are living in a simulation is very close to one.

  If (1) is true, then we will almost certainly go extinct before reaching posthumanity. If (2) is true, then there must be a strong convergence among the courses of advanced civilizations so that virtually none contains any relatively wealthy individuals who desire to run ancestor-simulations and are free to do so. If (3) is true, then we almost certainly live in a simulation. In the dark forest of our current ignorance, it seems sensible to apportion one’s credence roughly evenly between (1), (2), and (3).

  On a side note, if you were writing a simulation you could possibly take shortcuts on the very small scale and the very large. Thus the mysteries of quantum mechanics, string theory and celesial vagaries such as dark matter can be laid at the feet of sloppy programming.

  I guess from an ID/evo point of view this doesnt really help.

  cheers

  pak
• 

  frankiespeakin

  Qcmbr,

  I think gene manipulation by humans is fraught with danger. For billions of years the natural process has worked just fine. When we start to manipulate the genes and splicing this gene into the dna of this and that species we run the risk of upseting a delicate balance, and cause many repercusions we never even thought about.

  Think how it would be if you could genetically alter your children at conception? We would product a superior race that only the rich could afford, sinse they would be the first ones to use it, they slpit the human spieces in 2 or more groups and some may overrun the less genetically endowed and could start to treat them the same way we treat cattle, and other species we concider inferior to us now. It is really scarey when you think of it and what could be the repercussion.
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  Qcmbr

  Frankie - I agree it is dangerous but ever so exciting as well. Almost all endeavours within our human condition are inherantly dangerous and knowing how we are pre-disposed to seek out change and explore the unknown its going to happen no matter what laws are passed. We must be careful not to stifle the debate now and force the science underground where it will be unregulated and will certainly become a preserve of the rich. As for gentic engineering of children - why not? I already tried to load the dice by choosing who I married - I'd love to endow my children with freedom from disability, high natural intelligence, strong immune systems and good eyesight. Unfortunately I can only guarantee high natural intelligence:)
• 

  Qcmbr

  Funny thing is - as soon as we started tinkering with genes the discussion of intelligent design becomes a bit moot since we are now intelligently designing. It must be taught in schools now under the topic of biology with no need to worry about the problem of God. If the past wasn't intelligently engineered the future certainly will be. Some future species previously engineered by ourselves and with enough intelligence to debate and reason will probably start some debate on whether they were created or not and will use all the same arguments that get batted aound here.