[extropy-chat] Intelligent Design and Irriducible Complexity

[The Avantguardian]

--- Kurt Schoedel <kurt at metatechnica.com> wrote:

> The amusing thing about the "Intelligent Design"
> croud is that their 
> arguments can be used against them. 
> 
> The creationists argue that biological systems so
> complex, irriducibly 
> complex that they simply cannot have evolved through
> natural processes. 
> So they say, biology had to have been designed. The
> problem, of course, 
> is that the designer itself is an example of an
> irriducibly complex 
> system that the designer itself had to have been
> designed by another 
> designer, and so on. this is an example of an
> infinite recursion. When 
> you point this out to creationists, they tend to go
> bananas on you. 

     Actually this argument over ultimate cause also
plagues evolutionary theory. Natural selection and
mutation are obviously the forces that allow life
forms to diverge and adapt to changing environments
but they give no explanation for the origin of the
"progenote" - the first life-form. Evolution shows how
over time, one life-form can transform into another,
it does not show how non-life can become life.
     The infinite-recursion potential of ID is
actually a possible way around this problem. The
hypothesized existense of such a potential recursive
process makes life far more likely to occur than
otherwise. This is because of the anti-entropic
(extropic?) nature of the will of intelligent beings. 
     The alternative hypothesis to ID I call
"will-independent stochastic process" (WISP) assumes
that life on Earth is the result of a spontaneous
random process with no aid from any intelligence that
"willed" life to be here, which is what the
evolutionists would have one believe. There are
several lines of evidence that such an occurance would
be a very rare event.

     1. It has not been witnessed by anyone in nature
or in the laboratory.

     2. Louis Pasteur performed a series of
experiments in the 19th century demonstrating that it
does not occur at even the microbial level in anything
close to modern earth conditions.

     3. Considering our solar system as a statistical
sample, a rough guess at the upper bound of the
frequency of WISP-born life is about 1 planet with
life in 9 or 1/9. 
  
     Now assuming we have 2 alternative hypothesis to
explain life on Earth, ID = intelligent design and
WISP = will independent stochastic process, then we
can assign a prior probability P(WISP) to liklihood
that that WISP was the ultimate cause of life on
earth.
Having defined P(WISP), we can define the probability
of the the competing hypothesis as P(ID). 
     Now we merely have to solve an equation stemming
from Bayes Law. That is to say that the conditional
probabilities of life existing on Earth can set
boundaries on the probabilities that life on Earth was
the result of ID or WISP as follows:

1. P(ID|L) =         P(L|ID)P(ID)
             -----------------------------
              P(L|ID)P(ID) + P(L|WISP)P(WISP) 

Where P(ID|L) is the poterior probability that, given
our observation that there is life on earth,
intelligent design was the cause of it. 
P(L|ID) is the probability of life on Earth given
intelligent design. 
P(ID) is the prior probability we assign to
intelligent design being the cause of life.
P(L|WISP) is the probability that life would have
spontaneously evolved on an earth-like planet given
WISP as the cause of life in general.
P(WISP) is the prior probability that WISP is the
cause of life on earth.

     Now, let us assume complete ignorance on the
matter. That is to say that we set the prior
probabilities equal to one another 

2. P(ID) = P(WISP) = 0.5

This says that we don't know one way or another and
that there is an equal chance that one hypothesis or
the other is correct. Next we plug this into equation
#1 and we get:

3. P(ID|L) =         P(L|ID)*0.5
             -----------------------------
              P(L|ID)*0.5 + P(L|WISP)*0.5

Since ID states that life on Earth was the purposeful
premeditated act of an intelligent being, the
probability that life would be created on Earth given
ID is 1 just as the probability that you would be
wearing socks if you willed yourself to put them on
would be 1. The mathematical equivalent is
P(L|ID) = 1. Substituting this into equation #3 gives
us:

 P(ID|L) =         1*0.5
             -----------------------------
                  1*0.5 + P(L|WISP)*0.5

4. P(ID|L) =         1
              -------------------
                  1 + P(L|WISP)

     We can now use our dataset of a solar system of
nine planets only one of which harbors life that we
know of to estimate our posterior probability that
life on Earth was intelligently designed. Since WISP
would be a physical process it should operate anywhere
the conditions are correct. Because of this
probability of life on a planet in our solar system
has is approximately 1/9. That is P(L|WISP) ~ 1/9. 

     Substituting this into equation #4 gives us:

 P(ID|L) =     1       =     1       = 0.9
           -----------     --------
             1 + 1/9         10/9

Therefore by Bayesian analysis, the posterior
probability of intelligent design being the cause of
life on Earth is .9 or 90%. Note that ID does not
nessarily indicate God. It could also indicate aliens
or even Bostrom's simulation type scenario all of
which fall under ID. So put that into your skeptic
pipe and smoke it.

  

=====
The Avantguardian 


"He stands like some sort of pagan god or deposed tyrant. Staring out over the city he's sworn to . . .to stare out over and it's evident just by looking at him that he's got some pretty heavy things on his mind."


		
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