Regulation - Complexity sidebar

[Randomizer]

In order to keep the main topic on track, I'm copying Khoth's question on complexity to a new topic.

 

Quote:

Originally written by Khoth:

Another specified complexity one. Which has more specified complexity, this:

3.141592653589793238462643383279502884197 16939937510582097494459230781640628620899862 803482534211706798214808651328230664709384 4609550582231725359408128481117450284102701 93852110555964462294895493038196442881097566 593344 612847564823378678316527120190914564856692346 03486104543266482133936072602491412737245870 0660631558817488152092096282925409171536436789 259036001133053054882046652138414695194151160 943305727036575959195309218611738193261179310 511854807446237996274956735188575272489122793 8183011949129833673362440656643086021394946395 224737190702179860943702770539217176293176752 38467481846766940513200056812714526356082778 57713427577896091736371787214684409012249534 301465495853710507922796892589235420199561121 2902196086403441815981362977477130996051870721 134999999837297804995105973173281609631859502 445945534690830264252230825334468503526193118 817101000313783875288658753320838142061717766 914730359825349042875546873115956286388235378 7593751957781857780532171226806613001927876611 19590921642019893809525720106548586327886593 6153381827968230301952035301852968995773622599 4138912497217752834791315155748572424541506959 50829533116861727855889075098381754637464939 319255060400927701671139009848824012858361603 563707660104710181942955596198946767837449448 2553797747268471040475346462080466842590694912

 

or this:

 

7179374994471968932899819554816509347394525412 7897953005543093323663420161354191224618245794 5007991881043142450052843980321551253470997289 08337787822 1452634601919553992833499234084118015045566334 7207398264725493323946042572726841525706874767 1480326433365462983652496104220542264765816 9930380986367279584737729158237504445599549967 3935890135441162676036522462453471222180512823 8030944572838229345710519033708369430073078 2957596813133954163355769893310165170024984599 9926008776073157327085886645037337014916101092 6685051032677031341935263881271161550994185 5132916732729597370580376499918629949769488217 9136093728937310110004152065233725898040520753 7917909073806182959359004022851842383812350 854901155321642848267232175037499812455181836 687209045641934788441288081790681649882294777 082853137133428565003710783670455167198091980 198024025183023450260794069430642445176697756 856066414749642060384938271218294804580887536 731538047282043934810459189799440255089320969 830516511303719972227279758102078724051956161 435739055431526483390933577220630487436045775 906953809191043509754455794535903587883653103 354336369471326087739253186376399712366710503 334367975814439373214539827385171822754427590 771117545492900959901649804179655816938459085 943008059569590382707234252538409682144688133 876300718646507084898432449192042888276258976 2781037270784587859497626087194

 

(To give you a clue, the first one is the first few digits of pi, and the second one is random.)

If memory serves me, the first million digits of pi have a completely uniform distribution of the numbers 0 to 9. So both strings of numbers should appear to be almost completely random. I'm not in the mood to count to verify for these strings, but they seem to have a fairly uniform distribution.

 

So if you don't know the significance of the first string, they would appear to have the same complexity of information.

[Student of Trinity]

Maybe this sidebar is also a good place for my little disquisition on entropy, which is in some ways related to complexity, but not really.

 

There are two basic definitions of entropy: thermodynamic entropy and statistical mechanical entropy. They are supposed to be the same, but as you will see this is not obvious.

 

Thermodynamic entropy:

Put some number of Joules of heat into some object, while keeping its temperature constant. The ratio of heat to absolute temperature (i.e. temperature measured in a scale where zero is absolute zero), in Joules per Kelvin, is the amount by which you have raised the object's entropy. If you can't manage to heat the object without changing its temperature (sometimes you can), just compute the entropy change for a very short time, over which the temperature changes negligibly. Then add up the entropy changes over a succession of these short stages, each with a slightly different temperature. The result is an integral of heat over temperature, and that gives the entropy change for the general case of varying temperature.

 

Only changes in entropy are defined in this way, not absolute entropy. So we fix absolute entropy by the convention that a perfect crystal at absolute zero should have zero entropy.

 

This is the entropy of thermodynamics. Exhaustive experience over the past two centuries has been formalized in the empirical law that it will never decrease in any closed system. It does not obviously have anything to do with complexity or disorder or anything like that. It's about heat and temperature, as empirically measurable.

 

Statistical mechanical entropy:

This is a purely theoretical concept of entropy, as a property of probability distributions. If I have N equally likely states, the entropy of this probability distribution is log(N) (the logarithm of N -- in physics, usually to base e). This can be generalized nicely to the case with arbitrary unequal probabilities, but this is not necessary for qualitative understanding.

 

The statistical mechanical entropy is naturally a pure number; when we want to relate it to thermodynamic entropy, we multiply it by a univeral constant which has units of Joules per Kelvin (Boltzmann's constant).

 

One might well ask, How on earth do probability distributions ever enter physics, in which everything is deterministic? Well, physics deals with large systems, for instance samples of gas containing zillions of molecules. And if even a small system is followed over a period of time, the sequence of its instantaneous states makes up a very large and possibly complicated set. Precise description of such large systems or histories would take too much work, so we use probability concepts as a way of crudely characterizing some of their large scale properties.

 

We look at a history as a set of instantaneous states, or at the instantaneous state of a large system as the set of all the states of the parts of the large system. We then try to infer a probability distribution that might yield this set as a typical sample. We compute the entropy of this distribution, multiply by Boltzmann's constant, and hope the result matches the thermodynamic entropy of the system.

 

In all known cases in which the statistical mechanical entropy can be unambiguously computed, it does. But as you might imagine from the above explanation, the step of inferring a distribution from a sample may be problematic; and even before this step, there is in general a lot of room for ambiguity in simply deciding how to relate histories to sets of instants, or large systems to sets of subsystems. In reality the successive instants of a history are not uncorrelated samples from a distribution, but are all determined strictly from the first instant, through the laws of physics. And the subsystems of a larger system interact with each other, so they are not independent either. Justifying the statistical approach in spite of these basic facts is a tricky business, and a subject of active (though not very productive) research.

 

So that's the state of the science of entropy. What does it mean for applying entropy beyond physics, say in evolutionary biology? Mostly, it means that it's very hard.

 

The Second Law really applies to thermodynamic entropy. There are no known valid proofs of it for statistical mechanical entropy. And since an encyclopedia and a book of random characters will clearly burn pretty much the same, it is hard to claim that anything like 'meaning' or 'complexity' can have any real significance for thermodynamic entropy. From the statistical mechanical point of view, both books are made of bazillions of molecules, which can be arranged in many more ways. The range of different states of printed characters, although huge, is comparatively tiny. Similar considerations will make it very difficult to draw any conclusions from entropy about biochemical evolution.

[Kelandon]

Quote:

Originally written by Randomizer:
So if you don't know the significance of the first string, they would appear to have the same complexity of information.

I think the point that both Stareye and Khoth were making in the other thread is that this makes "complexity" ill-defined. The second string of numbers might be my favorite 1350-number string, in which case the seemingly random set is no longer random to me, but it's random to everyone who doesn't know that.

This makes something "complex" if some importance can be assigned to its order, but "some importance" is completely arbitrary and does not make for a good mathematical principle.

Quote:

Originally written by Student of Trinity:
How on earth do probability distributions ever enter physics, in which everything is deterministic?

This at first sounds a little funny, because so much of modern physics is probabilistic, not deterministic, but I suppose you're talking about a classical description as much as anything, and in classical physics, everything is deterministic.

[Student of Trinity]

Quantum mechanics is also deterministic, in the sense that the quantum state evolves deterministically under the Schrödinger equation. Some element of randomness certainly seems to enter in quantum measurement, but it is pretty clear that nobody is doing any measurements on atom positions inside a steam engine, or anything like that. So the quantum version of entropy, the von Neumann entropy, is zero for any single quantum state (no matter how elaborate a superposition it may be in any particular basis).

 

Only when one considers probability distributions over quantum states, which is by no means required by quantum mechanics per se, does one find non-zero entropy. Probability distributions over quantum states arise in the same ways I described above: we consider a historical sequence of states as a sample set, or consider the set of parts of a larger system as a sample.

 

Quantum mechanics adds two things to the classical picture of entropy. Firstly, it means that in any finite system one has only a countable number of distinct states to consider. This means that when computing entropy we can use true probabilities, rather than probability densities. (When Boltzmann created statistical mechanics, in the late 19th century, he arbitrarily introduced finite-volume 'cells' in phase space, and considered the probability that the system should be anywhere within a given cell. In effect, quantum mechanics gives us natural phase space cells, instead of arbitrary ones.)

 

Secondly, quantum mechanics includes the peculiar, non-classical kind of correlation known as 'entanglement'. This means that even when a large system is in a single specific quantum state, to describe any of its subsystems alone may require a probabilistic distribution (not a superposition) of states. This is a source of probability with no classical counterpart; but it has not yet to my knowledge been used to add anything to the foundations of statistical mechanics. That's one of the things I'm supposed to be doing, in fact.

[Khoth]

Where I was heading with the complexity of the two numbers waas that pi has much less complexity than the random number. Stillness brought in the idea of the complexity of something being roughly the length of a program which generates it. A pretty small program can generate a huge amount of pi, but there isn't a way to generate my random number that's much better than "print 71793...". Sure, a short program can generate some random number, but such a program isn't any more likely to generate that than it is to generate the same number of digits of pi.

[Stillness]

Your number is complex but what specific information does it convey? It's just random. I really think you missed the point. Living things have high information content beyond encyclopedic scale. I'll repost and see if you get the difference.

 

Quote:

Originally quoted by Stillness:

For my sake please think of [specified complexity] as qualitative instead of quantitative. It is actually a term coined by evolutionary origin of life reasearcher Leslie Orgel and hijacked by the good guys.

 

“Living things are distinguished by their specified complexity. Crystals such as granite fail to qualify as living because they lack complexity; mixtures of random polymers fail to qualify because they lack specificity.” L. Orgel, The Origins of Life (New York: John Wiley, 1973), p. 189

 

It can be quantitative and is measured based on [high] information content. Here is an explanation that makes me understand it: View it as the shortest algorithm you’d have to write to get generate a particular arrangement.

Italics mine. I really don't have much more to say on this.

[Khoth]

Quote:

Originally written by Stillness, in the other thread:
It can be quantitative and is measured based on information content. Here is an explanation that makes me understand it: View it as the shortest algorithm you’d have to write to get generate a particular arrangement.

All I was doing was talking about the term you introduced, using the method of calculation that you said was the correct one. Now, apparently, that's not how you calculate it. So how should I be calculate it (note 'calculate', not 'make assertions about')?

[*i]

Stillness, science doesn't work on quotes. So what a scientist said it? It's irrelevant unless a quantitative and hence useful definition is given.

 

Again, what are the units of complexity? How do we calculate/measure it?

[Stillness]

Since you insist the same question was asked at How Is Information Content Measured

[Khoth]

I notice that although equations are provided, they aren't actually used to calculate anything for a specific example. This doesn't surprise me, because the equations don't, fundamentally, make sense.

 

Basically, for enzyme specificity, he imagines that there are n possible things the enzyme could act on, does some kind of relative strength-of-action thing that looks like entropy, and then subtracts that from the 'entropy' of the input of all n equally likely things at the beginning.

 

This gets, for an enzyme that acts on only one substance, log n.

 

However, n is not defined. Given that there are a infinite number of things the enzyme might work on but doesn't, the "specified complexity" of any enzyme (or other catalyst) is is infinite. That's not useful.

 

Sorry, try again.

[Student of Trinity]

I think I can flesh out Khoth's objection a bit.

 

The quoted formula is part of a discussion of experiments in which bacteria evolved the ability to live on an artificial sugar. It is presented as important, that the new enzymatic activity appears not as a shifting from specificity for natural sugar to specificity for the new sugar, but as a general broadening of the range of sugars on which the enzyme acts.

 

(Aside: This seems rather banal to me. Switching over while keeping an enzyme highly specific would be the very kind of 'magic' that evolution does not do. Broadening it, and then later narrowing it further — a loss of capability, like cave fish losing eyes — if narrowness ever became advantageous, is the obvious gradual track that could be followed.)

 

But here is the problem I see with that analysis. It certainly seems to me that the bacteria have done something remarkable. A strain has emerged that can live exclusively on a sugar that the original population could not survive on. And the criticism mounted by the ID advocates is something like, 'This seemingly clear example of evolution does not actually break our rule about specified complexity decrease, because these new bacteria could also live on several other things as well.'

 

But now consider: birds can fly in air. They can also fly in helium, pure carbon dioxide, neon, and many other gaseous mixtures. A land-based animal cannot fly in any of these atmospheres. Evolving the capability of flight is thus not an increase in specified complexity, but a decrease.

 

I think maybe Thuryl made this point also, some time ago in the late lamented thread. Any change can be counted as a gain or as a loss, of something, depending on how you look at it. Losing sight is gaining specificity in adaptation to a lightless environment.

 

In other words, it seems to me that if you look at the 'range of possibilities' in the right way, any change whatever could be presented as having decreased specified complexity. Specified complexity decrease thus does not seem itself to be adequately specified.

[Stillness]

Calculating information is not a creationist idea. On the last thread Schrodinger, an origin of life researcher, did it. If you like, use your own means of calculating information, because that's what it's based off of.

 

It's clear to me from a qualitative perspective though that changes that if continued would result in a bacteria that has no response in any substrate or a fish that has no functionality can't be qualified as anything but loss. It makes it better in some environments, but it's not the kind of change in complexity that gets one from bacteria to biologist.

 

I don't see how gaining the ability to fly would be a decrease. That is exactly the opposite kind of change to loss of eyes. Successive changes of that sort would seem to get us to where we are given enough time. Even if your flying organism lost something like the capability to run well, it'd still be good. We can't do everything bacteria can do, but we're definitely more complex.

[*i]

No one is arguing that information/entropy can be calculated, that is a concept from statistical mechanics. The controversial part is the claims the author makes using the equations. The definition of "specified complexity" is still quite vague and not quantified.

[Student of Trinity]

Stillness, you speak as though specified complexity were obviously a meaningful concept, and so we information theory professionals ought to be able to quantify it well enough if we just tried for ourselves. But what we are telling you is that it really does not look like a meaningful concept, and so we do not know how to quantify it. The proposed quantification you cited is clearly inadequate.

 

Quote:

Originally written by Stillness:

[C]hanges that if continued would result in a bacteria that has no response in any substrate ... can't be qualified as anything but loss.

These bacteria have somehow learned to live on artificial sugar, and you call it a loss because it is a change which 'if continued' would leave them unable to eat anything? This sure seems like taking the specified complexity theory over common sense. But then when I push the complexity picture for birds, you revert to common sense in assessing gain and loss. Doesn't this suggest that the specified complexity idea is kind of flawed?

[Stillness]

If you don't get it I'm not of much help quantitatively. My original quote was meant as I understand it - qualitatively. Life has a quality that distinguishes it from simply random or ordered phenomena. I imagine this is how Leslie Orgel meant it. You all are the ones that brought up quantitative measure when it really is not necessary for the point.

 

And explicit all-inclusive concise definitions are notoriously difficult. (Try defining "life," "science," or "species" in such a way that includes everything belonging to those categories, but does not include things that do not). When I try to give them they are never satisfactory for you. The concept is clear though for anybody that wants to see it, though. Whether you agree with it or not is entirely up to you.

 

I know I joke around a lot, but I'm dead serious here. I can’t remember who was saying that this discussion was pointless, but I thoroughly disagree. I’m glad I didn’t quit sooner. The last page of the other thread was especially educational for me. I got some very honest and refreshing responses from Kel and SoT, in particular. To hear and read and come to conclusions is one thing, but to actually be part of the experience is another. I'm sad it got lost, but what needed to be said was said in my eyes.

 

Since you all were honest with me I'll be honest as well. My religious beliefs are not subject to scientific reasoning or observable reality either. They can be enhanced or accented by them, but not torn down. So, if mutations somehow caused "irreducibly complex" systems to arise I'd be shocked, but I would accept it. It's not really a religious belief. It would change my view of creation, but never of the Creator. That is latter is beyond science.

[Stillness]

Sot, your bird analogy is flawed. Animals can run in all of those environments as well. In what way does that fit?

[Stillness]

Quote:

Originally written by Student of Trinity:
These bacteria have somehow learned to live on artificial sugar, and you call it a loss because it is a change which 'if continued' would leave them unable to eat anything? This sure seems like taking the specified complexity theory over common sense.

My original use of specified complexity had nothing to do with camparisons of living things. This is why I hate posting links. I was originally comparing living things to non-living things that occur in nature. This sidetracked us to a discussion we already had on the other thread.

[Kelandon]

Quote:

Originally written by Stillness:
If you don't get it I'm not of much help quantitatively. My original quote was meant as I understand it - qualitatively. Life has a quality that distinguishes it from simply random or ordered phenomena. I imagine this is how Leslie Orgel meant it. You all are the ones that brought up quantitative measure when it really is not necessary for the point.

Saying that life has specified complexity and other things don't is completely meaningless unless you can give a good definition of specified complexity. I suppose a qualitative definition would be sorta okay, as long as it didn't contradict itself, but your examples seem to contradict themselves.

Quote:

And explicit all-inclusive concise definitions are notoriously difficult.

True, but that doesn't make it any less important. Scientists do give good definitions of things in real science.

[Slawbug]

"How do you measure specified complexity?"

 

I think it would help, Stillness, if you just explained in your own words. You don't need to give lots of details, and it's totally OK if you want to measure it qualitatively rather than quantitatively. But "qualitative" is a quality of measurement, it doesn't actually explain how it is measured. That's what needs explaining.

 

If you mean to define it the way the Supreme Court defined indecency -- "I know it when I see it" (but can't explain how I make that distinction) -- then just come out and say so.

[Kelandon]

To be fair, it was a concurring opinion, and Potter Stewart was failing to define "hard-core pornography," and the court came up with a better definition less than a decade later (as is detailed in the relevant article ). So even the Supreme Court can define things, given enough time.

[Alorael at Large]

I think the last paragraph of the link you posted is the most telling. Increases of "specified complexity" are possible in principle but infrequent in practice. This is absolutely true and nobody, IDer or neo-Darwinist, disagrees. The leap to "unlikely means it didn't happen" is where we disagree.

 

—Alorael, who thinks that the qualitative definition of specified complexity that seems to be coming up is utility. Doing something is more useful than doing nothing. Doing something poorly is less useful than doing it well. Argument again comes up in border cases: is doing ten things poorly better or worse than doing only one thing extremely well?

[Stillness]

Alo, I have stated and restated for so long that my argument is that purposeful action is a better explanation for what we see. I have constantly used observable reality as a basis for determining what happened in the past. If I have used terms like "impossible" and "never" it certainly wasn't intended to be the strength of my argument.

 

Specified complexity is self-defining. It describes patterns that are specified and complex. If you want different words call it the quality or state of having aperiodic and nonrandom form.

[Kelandon]

I'm confused. What on earth is your actual argument? You've conceded that forward evolution can and does occur, you've conceded that evolution can and does account for at least some of the variation in life that we see, and now you've conceded that irreducible complexity is not actually irreducible?

 

What is left of the claims you've been making for twenty pages? If I ask you why you think design is a better explanation than evolution, what possible evidence can you have left?

 

And your first definition is the most shamelessly circular I have ever seen. Your second is fine, I guess, but non-periodic and non-random forms can arise without the intervention of an intelligence, as we've discussed over and over again.

[Stillness]

Now I see the problem! My arguement has never changed (except for me dropping the thermodynamic part). An irreducibly complex system has several well matched parts to function such that if any are removed it fails. In living things the parts offer no value by themselves, but only as part of the whole. This says nothing of impossibility. My argument is that we don't see nature make systems like this, but we do see purposeful action create them. Mechanisms of this sort are indicative of planning. Therefore purposeful action is a better explanation.

[*i]

We don't see nature make systems like this (as you define them above) because our observation time is dramatically limited. The only real conclusion we can draw is that nature does not do this on the time scales we observe. This does not, however, preclude significantly longer time scales.

 

Is design better? Well, that is difficult because our experience with design is with things that were rapidly on a human time scale occur. A way to show design is to be able to show very rapid changes (on the order of decades, although I'll even take centuries or a few millennia) occurring early on in the history of Earth and you would have a stronger case.

[Kelandon]

Stillness, that's still asserting impossibility. If any pathway at all is found in which your (as yet unproven) assertion is not true — that the parts are only useful after fully formed as a whole — then the structure is no longer irreducible.

 

You have to show that it is impossible to construct an evolutionary pathway to create blood clotting, eyes, etc. All evolutionists have to do is show that it is possible to construct one.

 

In other words, I'm calling you on your description of eyes as irreducible. Demonstrate that no proto-parts of eyes could have any value on their own without the full structure of an eye. If you can't do that, you can't prove that eyes are irreducible.

[Stillness]

Quote:

Originally written by Kelandon:
Your second is fine, I guess, but non-periodic and non-random forms can arise without the intervention of an intelligence, as we've discussed over and over again.

By all means, speak up man! Give us the examples. I can't think of one.

[Stillness]

Quote:

Originally written by *i:
We don't see nature make systems like this (as you define them above) because our observation time is dramatically limited. The only real conclusion we can draw is that nature does not do this on the time scales we observe. This does not, however, preclude significantly longer time scales.

I think the real concern is generations, not time, right? With things like flies and bacteria this becomes observable in our lifetimes, yet I don’t know of any such case where such a system has evolved.

Quote:

Originally written by *i:
A way to show design is to be able to show very rapid changes (on the order of decades, although I'll even take centuries or a few millennia) occurring early on in the history of Earth and you would have a stronger case.

The fossil record shows this very thing! That is why you all like punctuated equilibrium. I’ve been yelling this all along, that complex structures spring up suddenly in the record. There’s no sex, then sex; no feathers, then feathers; no insects, then insects; etc.

[Stillness]

Quote:

Originally written by Kelandon:
In other words, I'm calling you on your description of eyes as irreducible. Demonstrate that no proto-parts of eyes could have any value on their own without the full structure of an eye. If you can't do that, you can't prove that eyes are irreducible.

Kelandon, we can’t progress because you still don’t understand the definition and it’s usefulness. You think it it has something to do with common descent, creation, or impossibility and it absolutely does not.

Please read and think carefully. Human vision is irreducible because it has many parts that have no function without multiple parts in place. If one of the parts that form the irreducible system is removed, it is rendered completely useless. The same can be said of many nonbiological systems. My truck does not run without the pistons, wheels, and sparkplugs. Those parts, along with many others form part of in irreducibly complex system. If you take the passengers seat, the air conditioner, or the speedometer out the truck can still run. Those are nice to have, but not part of the irreducible system. If you take out the retina (supposedly made of some of the most complicated tissue in the human body), optic nerve, or visual cortex humans cannot see. This has nothing to do with your beliefs or mine - it is a fact.

Here is where my understanding comes in. I believe that our creator not only created life, but also created with great variety. These initial acts do not account for all the variety though. Ability to adapt was placed into all life. If I want to try to get a feel for what was originally created and what evolved from that creation, irreducible structures serve me as a guide because they are only seen to arise from purpose driven action. Why should I think any differently?

Enter the misguided nonbeliever (e.g. Kelandon, SoT, *i, Thuryl, Alo, and friends), raining on my parade. They make wild claims such as irreducible structures not being a reliable guide for me to discover the creator’s works. They say that observable reality is not a good guide, because these structures could evolve slowly so that they would be invisible to us. Good ol’, faithful, salt-of-the-Earth folks (like me) are shocked by this affront to the Creator. But since we are patient and understanding, we proceed to listen at the description of how this is claimed to be possible.

Only in some kind of bizzaro world is the ownness on me to develop infinite numbers of paths to support a theory I don’t believe to show how it doesn’t work. The owness is on you to develop your theory! As I said on the previous thread, I recognize that this is difficult. You’d have to show the starting state (including related systems); describe the initial regulatory mechanisms; have a stepwise route to the new state; a description of how regulatory mechanisms adapted to the new state; and more. It would have to be very explicit and detailed. And after all this work you’d have me picking apart every detail. Either that or show how evolution has made an equally complex system. The latter is preferable (probably for both of us).

(Interestingly I heard a story on NPR today of a man who could see just fine, but as he got older his mind had more and more difficulty distinguishing objects. All his equipment worked, but his perception was off. It started with faces, but got worse. He though his wife was a hat for example. And he was perfectly sane. So, even having the right hardware and software might not be enough).

[Lilith]

I'm now convinced that you're trolling. I'm not sure that you're even a creationist at all.

[*i]

Quote:

The fossil record shows this very thing! That is why you all like punctuated equilibrium. I’ve been yelling this all along, that complex structures spring up suddenly in the record. There’s no sex, then sex; no feathers, then feathers; no insects, then insects; etc.

Within a span of a decades to a few centuries? Source. Remember, quick on these time scales is tens of thousands of years.

[Alorael at Large]

Why does this look familiar?

 

Yes, the eyeball is incredibly complicated. It did not evolve one piece at a time, though! Eyes didn't start with just a retina, then develop a lens, then the optic nerve, and then some humors. That's ridiculous and nobody has made such a proposal.

 

In other words, it doesn't go like this:

 

One complex component -> Two complex components -> ... -> Complex structure assembled from complex components.

 

It does go like this:

 

A small number of primitive structure -> a small number of less primitive structures -> a larger number of less primitive structures -> ... -> a complex structure assembled from a large number of complex structures.

 

I'm honestly not sure if you've noticed the difference yet. You've certainly never acknowledged it.

 

—Alorael, who actually thinks irreducible complexity in man-made items is an interesting problem. The components of cars weren't invented all together to make a car. They were invented one by one, often for different uses. They didn't come into existence at the same time and they never existed uselessly.

[Alorael at Large]

Why does this look familiar?

 

Yes, the eyeball is incredibly complicated. It did not evolve one piece at a time, though! Eyes didn't start with just a retina, then develop a lens, then the optic nerve, and then some humors. That's ridiculous and nobody has made such a proposal.

 

In other words, it doesn't go like this:

 

One complex component -> Two complex components -> ... -> Complex structure assembled from complex components.

 

It does go like this:

 

A small number of primitive structure -> a small number of less primitive structures -> a larger number of less primitive structures -> ... -> a complex structure assembled from a large number of complex structures.

 

I'm honestly not sure if you've noticed the difference yet. You've certainly never acknowledged it.

 

—Alorael, who actually thinks irreducible complexity in man-made items is an interesting problem. The components of cars weren't invented all together to make a car. They were invented one by one, often for different uses. They didn't come into existence at the same time and they never existed uselessly.

[I Am Damo Suzuki]

Stillness:

 

Even if your god created everything according to some unknown design, it doesn't matter.

 

The Saint of Killers laid him low long ago.

[Student of Trinity]

Quote:

Originally written by Stillness:
Human vision is irreducible because it has many parts that have no function without multiple parts in place. If one of the parts that form the irreducible system is removed, it is rendered completely useless. ... If you take out the retina ..., optic nerve, or visual cortex humans cannot see. This has nothing to do with your beliefs or mine - it is a fact.

You do not seem to be thinking through your own arguments, Stillness. Removing a retina from a human eye no doubt renders it useless. But removing a retina is a huge, abrupt change, like the ones you postulate and attribute to design. It is nothing like the tiny, gradual changes that evolution involves. So unless you can identify structures that are irreducible by tiny changes, you are not criticizing evolution: you are criticizing unintelligent design.

A brief point about numbers: a fruit fly generation is some number of days, where that of a large animal is some number of years. So to see something that took a million years of historical evolution in a larger species, you would still have to run your fruit fly experiment for a millennium. And that's if you used as many flies as there were in the global population of the evolving species.

[Stillness]

Quote:

Originally written by Student of Trinity:
You do not seem to be thinking through your own arguments, Stillness. Removing a retina from a human eye no doubt renders it useless.

Not just the eye, but also the lateral geniculate nucleus and the optic chiasm become useless. That is what makes it part of an irreducibly complex system. Until I see how small stepwise changes can make a system like this from scratch (organism that can’t sense visible light at all to human vision) while at the same time giving advantages that surpass disadvantages I have no reason to think life is different from non-life in that systems with such complexity are made with intelligence. I can’t imagine it and I have never seen a model that explicitly and quantitatively details such changes.

Quote:

you are not criticizing evolution: you are criticizing unintelligent design.

Evolution is real. Common descent is weak. There’s no continuum in the historical record and changes of the type it requires are unseen. It requires faith to accept them. Creation by a purposeful agent explains systems like DNA/RNA protein production; avian flight; sexual reproduction and is supported by the sudden appearance of organisms in the record. If identifying intelligent cause over unintelligent cause was impossible or pointless, then we could never convict an unwitnessed murderer or determine that an arrowhead was made. Only when it’s convenient does “science” want to exclude an intelligent cause.

[Stillness]

Quote:

Originally written by Kirby had never eaten toes before.:
Why does this look familiar?

Déjà vu?

Quote:

A small number of primitive structure -> a small number of less primitive structures -> a larger number of less primitive structures -> ... -> a complex structure assembled from a large number of complex structures.

I'm honestly not sure if you've noticed the difference yet. You've certainly never acknowledged it.

—Alorael, who actually thinks irreducible complexity in man-made items is an interesting problem. The components of cars weren't invented all together to make a car. They were invented one by one, often for different uses. They didn't come into existence at the same time and they never existed uselessly.

I see the difference, but as of yet have seen no detailed theory as to how such a thing could occur. Simply saying, “structure x was once used in a more primitive organism for some other purpose” glosses over much. In the teachings of common descent, organisms don’t have an intelligent agent that can move structures about, plan, and adapt them for sophisticated new purposes like a car does. Not only do they have to be functioning through the whole theoretical process, but also there has to be some advantage so that these genes are passed.

[Stillness]

Quote:

Originally written by *i:

Quote:

…complex structures spring up suddenly in the record. There’s no sex, then sex; no feathers, then feathers; no insects, then insects; etc.

Within a span of a decades to a few centuries? Source. Remember, quick on these time scales is tens of thousands of years.

First of all the break between inanimate and animate is extremely sharp. I know that some may not view this as relevant, but it is nonetheless as the first life is said to be simple. It is not, at least not compared to lifeless chemicals, which lack extraordinarily complex mechanisms such as protein production.
http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/bacteria/cyanointro.html

“The overriding question is when (and then how) sexual reproduction itself evolved. Despite decades of speculation, we do not know. The difficulty is that sexual reproduction creates complexity of the genome and the need for a separate mechanism for producing gametes. The metabolic cost of maintaining this system is huge, as is that of providing the organs specialized for sexual reproduction (the uterus of mammalian females, for example). What are the offsetting benefits? The advantages of sexual reproduction are not obvious” Maddox, John, What Remains to be Discovered, The Free Press, New York, p. 252, 1998.

“Unlike many other transitions in evolution, there are no intermediates between eukaryotes and prokaryotes. It is as if honeybees mutated into humans without any evidence of rats, cats, or chimpanzees in between. The evolutionary processes behind this great revolution have had to be discerned without the help of one of the evolutionist’s most trusted sources of evidence—the fossil record” Wakeford, Tom (2001), Liaisons of Life (New York: John Wiley & Sons) pp.147-148

“Fossil remains of the skin of reptiles are rare and tell us little to nothing about the morphology of scales in possible avian ancestors among the reptiles…. We lack completely fossils of all intermediate stages between reptilian scales and the most primitive feather ” Bock, Walter J. (2000), “Explanatory History of the Origin of Feathers,” American Zoologist , pp. 480.

“The oldest known feathers from the Late Jurassic are already modern in form and microscopic detail” Martin, Larry D. and Stephen A. Czerkas (2000), “The Fossil Record of Feather Evolution in the Mesozoic,” American Zoologist pp. 687

“The most primitive insects known are found as fossils in rocks of the Middle Devonian Period and lived about 350,000,000 years ago. The bodies of those insects were divided then, as now, into a head bearing one pair of antennae, a thorax with three pairs of legs, and a segmented abdomen.”
http://www.britannica.com/eb/article-41296/insect

“…insects first appear suddenly in the fossil record at the very beginning of the Late Carboniferous period, Early Bashkirian age , about 318 million years ago. Insect species were already diverse and highly specialized by this time, with fossil evidence reflecting the presence of more than half a dozen different orders .”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insect_evolution

The fossil record does not support common descent. Anyone who thinks it does has been fooled.

[Stillness]

Thuryl,

 

I believe everything I’ve said on this forum. I’m not trolling. Unless 20+ pages of discussion can be considered trolling.

[Slawbug]

Quote:

Originally written by Stillness:
I see the difference, but as of yet have seen no detailed theory as to how such a thing could occur.

The problem is that you haven't been saying "This is conceivable in theory, but I haven't seen a detailed theory as to how it could occur." You've been saying "This is impossible. It just can't happen."

[Kelandon]

Quote:

Originally written by Stillness:
I can’t imagine it and I have never seen a model that explicitly and quantitatively details such changes.

As Slarty has already objected, you're going from "I can't imagine it and haven't seen it" to "It can't exist." Irreducibly complexity says that such a model can't exist, not that it doesn't exist right now.

[Student of Trinity]

Quote:

Originally written by Stillness:
Not just the eye, but also the lateral geniculate nucleus and the optic chiasm become useless. That is what makes it part of an irreducibly complex system.

You seem to have missed the point. Yes, there are several large modules in the visual system, and abruptly removing any one of them makes it all useless. But this is absolutely not irreducibility in any sense relevant to evolution, because evolution is about changes far more gradual than anything as gross as abruptly removing an entire module.

Harping on about how removing nerves or lenses or retinas makes eyes fail, and calling that irreducible complexity, is sheer dodge. It has nothing to do with the actual issue at hand. I mean, congratulations: you've proven that eyes can't evolve by having modern lenses suddenly pop into modern eyes that were only missing lenses. If you can possibly find anyone who thinks eyes could develop that way, you can really set them straight. But if you imagined that scenario had anything to do with evolution, you were really out of touch.

[Stillness]

Quote:

Originally written by Kelandon:
As Slarty has already objected, you're going from "I can't imagine it and haven't seen it" to "It can't exist." Irreducibly complexity says that such a model can't exist, not that it doesn't exist right now.

You and slarty are wrong. I'm not going to spend anymore time trying to explain this. I honestly don't know how to make it clearer. You don't know the definition of irreducible complexity and apparently don't want to know.

Edit: By the way, I'm still waiting with baited breath for your examples of things that have specified complexity. You claimed you had some.

[Stillness]

Quote:

Originally written by Student of Trinity:
You seem to have missed the point. Yes, there are several large modules in the visual system, and abruptly removing any one of them makes it all useless. But this is absolutely not irreducibility in any sense relevant to evolution, because evolution is about changes far more gradual than anything as gross as abruptly removing an entire module.

Finally somebody seems to understand that irreducibilty has nothing to do with evolution! Now if you can understand that it doesn't have anything to do with impossibility you will have truly outshone your peers. It seems that you're still unsure about that. I'll give you time to work it out.

The issue with irreducibly complex systems is the lack of models or the lack of detail in the models that show how they can arise in a Darwinian framework. Of course you think they can evolve - you think anything can evolve. Can you show how though?

[Alorael at Large]

Quote:

Originally written by Stillness:
I see the difference, but as of yet have seen no detailed theory as to how such a thing could occur. Simply saying, “structure x was once used in a more primitive organism for some other purpose” glosses over much. In the teachings of common descent, organisms don’t have an intelligent agent that can move structures about, plan, and adapt them for sophisticated new purposes like a car does. Not only do they have to be functioning through the whole theoretical process, but also there has to be some advantage so that these genes are passed.

Quote:

A copied and pasted answer:
Here's how some scientists think some eyes may have evolved: The simple light-sensitive spot on the skin of some ancestral creature gave it some tiny survival advantage, perhaps allowing it to evade a predator. Random changes then created a depression in the light-sensitive patch, a deepening pit that made "vision" a little sharper. At the same time, the pit's opening gradually narrowed, so light entered through a small aperture, like a pinhole camera.

Every change had to confer a survival advantage, no matter how slight. Eventually, the light-sensitive spot evolved into a retina, the layer of cells and pigment at the back of the human eye. Over time a lens formed at the front of the eye. It could have arisen as a double-layered transparent tissue containing increasing amounts of liquid that gave it the convex curvature of the human eye.

In fact, eyes corresponding to every stage in this sequence have been found in existing living species. The existence of this range of less complex light-sensitive structures supports scientists' hypotheses about how complex eyes like ours could evolve. The first animals with anything resembling an eye lived about 550 million years ago. And, according to one scientist's calculations, only 364,000 years would have been needed for a camera-like eye to evolve from a light-sensitive patch.

Note that one sentence is untrue: "Every change had to confer a survival advantage, no matter how slight." Actually, every change has to confer no disadvantage strong enough to cause the mutation to breed out before some advantage accrues. A few generations of slight disadvantage are perfectly fine.

Your fossil examples are very nice, but we've already explained that the absence of evidence doesn't mean that the intermediates never existed.

—Alorael, who now doesn't understand your irreducible complexity anymore. If it has nothing to do with evolution, why are you talking about it in a discussion of evolution? Not all evolution is common descent, but common descent is evolution. If it's not impossible, what's the point? Any mechanism with no steps that could be impossible is preferable to one with steps that might be impossible. A creator falls into the latter category: there is no evidence for the existence of a creator except the creation, and that logic is obviously circular.

[Alorael at Large]

Quote:

Originally written by Stillness:
I see the difference, but as of yet have seen no detailed theory as to how such a thing could occur. Simply saying, “structure x was once used in a more primitive organism for some other purpose” glosses over much. In the teachings of common descent, organisms don’t have an intelligent agent that can move structures about, plan, and adapt them for sophisticated new purposes like a car does. Not only do they have to be functioning through the whole theoretical process, but also there has to be some advantage so that these genes are passed.

Quote:

A copied and pasted answer:
Here's how some scientists think some eyes may have evolved: The simple light-sensitive spot on the skin of some ancestral creature gave it some tiny survival advantage, perhaps allowing it to evade a predator. Random changes then created a depression in the light-sensitive patch, a deepening pit that made "vision" a little sharper. At the same time, the pit's opening gradually narrowed, so light entered through a small aperture, like a pinhole camera.

Every change had to confer a survival advantage, no matter how slight. Eventually, the light-sensitive spot evolved into a retina, the layer of cells and pigment at the back of the human eye. Over time a lens formed at the front of the eye. It could have arisen as a double-layered transparent tissue containing increasing amounts of liquid that gave it the convex curvature of the human eye.

In fact, eyes corresponding to every stage in this sequence have been found in existing living species. The existence of this range of less complex light-sensitive structures supports scientists' hypotheses about how complex eyes like ours could evolve. The first animals with anything resembling an eye lived about 550 million years ago. And, according to one scientist's calculations, only 364,000 years would have been needed for a camera-like eye to evolve from a light-sensitive patch.

Note that one sentence is untrue: "Every change had to confer a survival advantage, no matter how slight." Actually, every change has to confer no disadvantage strong enough to cause the mutation to breed out before some advantage accrues. A few generations of slight disadvantage are perfectly fine.

Your fossil examples are very nice, but we've already explained that the absence of evidence doesn't mean that the intermediates never existed.

—Alorael, who now doesn't understand your irreducible complexity anymore. If it has nothing to do with evolution, why are you talking about it in a discussion of evolution? Not all evolution is common descent, but common descent is evolution. If it's not impossible, what's the point? Any mechanism with no steps that could be impossible is preferable to one with steps that might be impossible. A creator falls into the latter category: there is no evidence for the existence of a creator except the creation, and that logic is obviously circular.

[Student of Trinity]

Quote:

Originally written by Stillness:
Finally somebody seems to understand that irreducibilty has nothing to do with evolution! Now if you can understand that it doesn't have anything to do with impossibility you will have truly outshone your peers.

Okay, now we're getting a serious disconnect. This makes no sense as a response to my post, and it doesn't even make sense as a continuation of your own statements. If 'irreducible' doesn't mean 'impossible to reduce', then you've been abusing language badly. If all it means is that things break if you suddenly tear big important chunks out of them, then why on earth have you been talking so much, in this discussion of evolution and design, about such an irrelevant banality?

[Kelandon]

Quote:

Originally written by Student of Trinity:
If 'irreducible' doesn't mean 'impossible to reduce', then you've been abusing language badly. If all it means is that things break if you suddenly tear big important chunks out of them, then why on earth have you been talking so much, in this discussion of evolution and design, about such an irrelevant banality?

Quoted for emphasis. This was exactly my reaction.

[Stillness]

Let’s try this again. When you all see the phrase “irreducible complexity” it seems you are interpreting that to mean “this system can’t develop by means of evolution” or maybe “this system is can only arise by means of intelligent design.” It says nothing of the sort. It means that the parts that make it up work together to perform a function in such a way that if one part is removed the others become useless and the system fails. Stop for a few moments before proceeding to digest this…

 

OK, here is the relevance to our discussion. We all know about beneficial mutations. We can see them occur. If a fish gets into a cave it loses its eyes. Now it can survive better. A bacteria gets into an environment with a substrance it can’t process well and mutates to survive off of it. No one can deny these sorts of things happen. What we don’t see evolution doing is creating irreducibly complex structures. We know that intelligent agents can though. So from observation it is reasonable to conclude that these structures were created purposefully. If you want to get around observable reality you need a strong theory as to why we should.

 

Quote:

Originally written by Kirby had never eaten toes before.:

Originally written by Stillness:

Simply saying, “structure x was once used in a more primitive organism for some other purpose” glosses over much.

Quote:

A copied and pasted answer:

The simple light-sensitive spot on the skin … Random changes then created a depression in the light-sensitive patch…At the same time, the pit's opening gradually narrowed… Eventually, the light-sensitive spot evolved into a retina…Over time a lens formed… It could have arisen ...

What do you think Alo, is this an explicit detailed description or does it gloss over details?

 

And notice how it starts with a “simple” light sensitive patch simple, when it is nothing of the sort. That is a major leap forward from no light perception. Do you all remember the description I pasted before of a light sensitive spot? It is far from simple. It’s probably irreducible as well.

 

And this only details changes in the receptor. The model would also have to account for concurrent changes in neural pathways and the brain. How do chance mutations write the software in the brain to makes use of the “depression?” Let’s say the creature can see. How does that give it an advantage? It has to be able to translate attenuation in photon intensity to “this is my prey” to “I should move towards it” and be able to act on this.

 

Quote:

Actually, every change has to confer no disadvantage strong enough to cause the mutation to breed out before some advantage accrues.

Are you aware that this works the other way? Let’s say your creature can see half as well as us. Now let’s say an offspring in the next generation gets 50.5% vision. Is it realistic to think such an advantage is enough to overcome the tendency for genetic drift to eliminate even beneficial mutations?

 

Quote:

In fact, eyes corresponding to every stage in this sequence have been found in existing living species. The existence of this range of less complex light-sensitive structures supports scientists' hypotheses about how complex eyes like ours could evolve.

What species are these? Eyes can’t simply descend from other eyes. To have any weight at all the species would have to line up according to this model in the supposed parent-daughter lines.

 

Quote:

according to one scientist's calculations, only 364,000 years would have been needed for a camera-like eye to evolve from a light-sensitive patch.

At that rate we should be able to get enough bacteria generations to see irreducible systems as complex as an eye spring up in a few years.

[Kelandon]

Quote:

Originally written by Stillness:
Let’s try this again. When you all see the phrase “irreducible complexity” it seems you are interpreting that to mean “this system can’t develop by means of evolution” or maybe “this system is can only arise by means of intelligent design.”

When I see "irreducible complexity," I think "complexity that cannot be reduced." It's hardly my fault if you're using words to mean things that they don't actually mean.

Quote:

It means that the parts that make it up work together to perform a function in such a way that if one part is removed the others become useless and the system fails.

You're talking about interdependent parts. That's related to irreducible complexity, but it's not the same thing. Please use words correctly.

Quote:

What we don’t see evolution doing is creating irreducibly complex structures. We know that intelligent agents can though. So from observation it is reasonable to conclude that these structures were created purposefully. If you want to get around observable reality you need a strong theory as to why we should.

You're again making the leap from "We haven't seen it in our lifetimes" to "It didn't ever happen" (or at the very least "It probably didn't ever happen"). That leap is, as we have said over and over again, unjustified.