Reality Cheque

Is Dr. Dembski's Work "Written in Jell-o?"

2008-02-26T09:06:00.000-08:00

From here.CA: interviewerWD: Dr. DembskiCA: Your critics (such as Wein, Perakh, Shallit, Elsberry, Wolpert and others) seem unsatisfied with your work. They charge your work as being somewhat esoteric and lacking intellectual rigor. What do you say to that charge?WD: Most of these critics are responding to my book No Free Lunch. As I explained in the preface of that book, its aim was to provide

Published Method of Measuring Specificity (Function)

2008-02-23T09:53:00.000-08:00

It looks like a PNAS article has finally caught up with and refined some of the work of Dr. Dembski. Here is the PNAS article that discusses measuring for functional information, and upon first read through seems to measure functional information in an extremely similar manner as Dr. Dembski measures for specificity as it relates to function in "Specification: the Pattern that Signifies

Thoughts on God (Part 1)

2008-02-20T12:32:00.000-08:00

As a Christian, Naturalistic Intelligent Design Advocate , and Panentheist (the most logical conclusion of course, IMO) I see God as perfectly personal, even though He "merely" engineered the universe to such fine tuned precision that it unfolded according to his plan. It seems rather obvious to me, that God operates through the creation of laws -- both spiritual and natural. Those laws, once

What Does a Specification Tell Us?

2008-02-20T11:36:00.000-08:00

A specification technically only measures what chance and law on its own will not do. The reason that we *infer* intelligence, is for 4 reasons (in fact some are very similar to how past evolution is inferred):1. Intelligence is another causal factor aside from chance and law because intelligence can control law and chance to produce a future target, however law and chance are blind.2.

New Moderation Policy

2008-02-12T10:33:00.000-08:00

This is just a heads up to let anyone with a comment know that I have removed comment moderation from this blog.I kindly request that you first read through my Case for a Naturalistic Hypothesis of Intelligent Design (at the top of the left sidebar) before posting any comments, constructive or negative. It's just that I don't have all the time in the world to be responding to comments which I

Design Detection before Method Detection

2008-02-11T14:40:00.000-08:00

Blipey (a contributor to this debate on JoeG's blog):"If they find something that they can't explain using the lexicon of known methods of design, they don't assume that it was designed."You are partially on to something here, blipey. However, Stonehenge was known to be designed long before it was even remotely discovered how it might have possibly been designed. First the design detection, then

Sum It All Up

2008-02-11T00:50:00.000-08:00

To sum up, in light of my case for naturalistic Intelligent Design, there are three options from which we can chose an overall hypothesis (overarching paradigm) for the cause of life in our universe: 1. It is the result of an infinite regress of problem specific information. This suffers from philosophical

NFL Theorems (Part III) ... So, What's the Point?

2008-02-11T00:41:00.000-08:00

Now, apply all that to an evolutionary optimization program operating on a chemical information processing system [within life -- as explained and published by Hubert Yockey] searching a space within a quantum computer system [of our universe -- as hypothesized by Seth Lloyd]. Here [link: http://www.aics-research.com/research/notes.html] also, are some published notes [from IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON

NFL Theorems (Part II)

2008-02-11T00:36:00.000-08:00

Now, I will show what Dr. Dembski and Marks state. If you don’t agree with what they write, you’ll have to show me that their conclusions are inconsistent with and/or not built upon the NFL Theorems. Here’s what they say in a nutshell: “active information ... measures the contribution of problem-specific information for successfully finding a target. This paper develops a

No Free Lunch Theorems (Part I)

2008-02-11T00:21:00.000-08:00

When discussing the NFL Theorems I do not have the expertise to evaluate the math and its actual relevance to the real world. At the moment, I must take for granted that the authors of the NFL Theorem know what they are talking about. So, taking the NFL Theorems and the authors description of them as granted, I am merely re-stating what the authors already stated about the NFLT.The quotes from

Specifications (Part II) ... Problems with CSI

2008-02-11T00:19:00.000-08:00

Now, I would like to address some critical remarks pertaining to CSI. Some people have suggested that the calculation doesn’t really work for the following reasons:Let’s say that you have a door that opens and closes with random gusts of wind. The open door is marked “state 1" and the closed door is marked “state 0.” After a very long while of marking these states down, you realize that you

Specifications (Part I) ... What Exactly are They?

2008-02-11T00:02:00.000-08:00

There seems to be much confusion as to what is a specification -- that is, what constitutes CSI? I am no expert on the subject, however, I would like to add my two “sense” based on my understanding of the math and concepts involved. I have started discussing complex specified information here [link]. This is merely an extended discussion, clarification, and a bit deeper of a probe.First, we

Intelligence Law and Chance Working Together

2008-02-10T23:55:00.000-08:00

This post is part II of the Philosophical Foundation for ID Theory.Someone posed the following questions to me:“"Dembski’s characterization of design as a third mode of explanation apart from chance and/or law is one of the most fundamental problems with his approach. How do you formally (i.e. mathematically) describe chance and law such that their disjunction doesn’t characterize all

Science Deals with Evidence

2008-02-10T23:50:00.000-08:00

I’ve heard some people make the outrageous claim that there isn’t any evidence of intelligent cause for life. Let’s examine this, and see if these people are merely being selective hyper- sceptics or if they really do have a point that there is no evidence of intelligent cause within life.First let’s briefly look at intelligence. What is intelligence? There are many ways to discuss

Philosophical Foundations of ID to Conservation of Information

2008-02-10T23:11:00.001-08:00

My understanding of the foundation of ID Theory. This could also be looked at as the philosophy of ID (upon which the SCIENCE OF ID [link] is founded). Disclaimer: This post is not philosophical in its entirety, as it does borrow from information theorems and scientific experiments with information and programming (evolutionary algorithms). However, this post and Part II [link] do

Quick Intro to the Science of Intelligent Design Theory

2008-02-10T22:40:00.000-08:00

First, Id like to include a comment from another blog, Telic Thoughts, to help somewhat clear the fog regarding ID misconceptions.The comment that I am replying to is centered and colored blue: I thought that ID ended with the inference that a particular biological structure was designed.MY understanding of the issue (how I view ID) is that ID is interested in discovering how to define the

Zachriel's EA and Dembski's quote

2007-11-20T16:08:00.000-08:00

Continuation from hereHello again Zachriel,Dr.s Dembski and Marks:“Such assumptions, however, are useless when searching to find a sequence of say, 7 letters from a 26-letter alphabet to form a word that will pass successfully through a spell checker, or choosing a sequence of commands from 26 available commands in an Avida type program to generate a logic operation such as XNOR [16]. With no

My understanding of the Universal Probability Bound

2007-09-24T16:52:00.000-07:00

RE: the Universal Probability Bound:-given the sequence of prime numbers: “12357 ..."According to probability theory, the first digit has a one in ten chance of matching up with the sequence of prime numbers, however the second digit has a one in 100 chance, and the third a one in 1000 chance, etc. So, how far up the pattern of prime numbers will chance take us before making a mistake? The

Where is the CSI necessary for evolution to occur?

2007-09-24T16:36:00.000-07:00

First, read through this extremely informative article and the abstracts to these three articles:herehereherethen continue ...According to Dr. Marks work with evolutionary algorithms and computing and intelligent systems, evolving functional information is always guided by previous functional information toward a solution within a search space to solve a previously known problem. [endogenous

Complex Specified Information ... Simplified with filter included

2007-09-24T16:25:00.001-07:00

The 6 levels for determining Complex Specified Information. Before I begin, the reason why CSI points to previous intelligence is because intelligence has been observed creating this type of information, and based on its pseudo-random properties CSI can not be described by law and is not reasonably attributed, nor has it been observed to have arisen, by random chance. CSI is primarily based on

Concept of CSI (part 2)

2007-09-15T10:45:00.000-07:00

Continuation from here.Zachriel:“You keep talking about CSI and complexity, but the only issue at this point is the definition of “specificity”. Your meandering answer is evidence of this extreme overloading of even basic terminology.”My example of defining “complexity” was to show that even in information theory, some concepts can and must be defined and quantified in different ways.... and I

Concept of Complex Specified Information

2007-08-29T11:56:00.000-07:00

Hello Zachriel,welcome back!Unfortunately, I do have much to say and am unversed in brevity. Moreover, because I do believe that there are some important issues which you brought up as a response to my last blog post, I have decided to create my response as another blog post -- this one.First, I will kick this off by letting you know that, while I do not understand all of the math that is

ID THEORY vs. PLANETARY ORBITS, CRYSTAL SPHERES, ANGELS, DEMONS, AND IGNORANCE?

2007-08-23T18:16:00.000-07:00

This is the beginning and continuation of a discussion I was having with Zachriel at Telic Thoughts in this huge thread on July 7, 2007 at 11:21 am.Hello Zachriel (if you do indeed decide to visit me here), welcome to my humble blog.My apologies that this is so long, however, I felt that I needed considerable room to describe coded information and what is meant by specificity, as well as

On prediction and testability

2007-06-17T10:40:00.000-07:00

It has been brought to my attention by smokey in the “5 point summary” thread, that my predictions regarding ID (in the thread "Science of ID") are nothing but restated hypothesis. While it is true that the first stated prediction does contain the hypothesis restated, it also contains more specifics as to which information system (life) and which possibly intelligent system (information

The Alpha and Omega, beginning and the end

2007-04-12T18:53:00.000-07:00

Wow, this is at the very least incredibly interesting. I wish I had the technical expertise to understand the equations.check this out