loose ends

From: Glenn Morton (glennmorton@entouch.net)
Date: Sat Aug 02 2003 - 21:13:39 EDT

  • Next message: George Murphy: "Re: loose ends"

    Josh wrote in answer to Brian's question about the Fibonacci series:

    >-----Original Message-----
    >From: asa-owner@lists.calvin.edu [mailto:asa-owner@lists.calvin.edu]On
    >Behalf Of Josh Bembenek
    >Sent: Friday, August 01, 2003 10:08 PM

    >Let me first state that I cannot speak for every last nuance of what the
    >word specification means to either ID or myself. However it appears to be
    >the case as some flowering plants and other biotic creatures display (if
    >this is where you are going...)
    >

    The Fibonacci sequence is really no different than primes. They are a subset
    of real numbers which match a recipe. Indeed all sequences like this match
    recipes of one sort or another. The primes match the recipe that they are
    only divisible evenly by one and by themselves. Fibonacci numbers match the
    recipe that they are the sum of the last two numbers in the series. But then
    the numbers:

    1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11....

    match the specification of the last number plus 1 or all positive numbers
    evenly divisible by 1. I might quote Dembski's quotation from the movie,
    Contact, but change the point from primes to the counting number sequence
    above:

    "This isn't noise; this has structure!"

    Yes, Virginia, arithmetical numbers have structure and are everybit as
    structured as are the primes.

    There is no more or less specification in any of these sequences. And this
    is why it is sleight of hand for Dembski to claim that primes somehow are
    different than other numbers. They aren't.

    Alas, since no one seems to be willing to actually take my test I will let
    people know what the answers were. The sequences were:

    woxianzhegetuyiyang--designed. It says I think it is like a rabbit, which,
    since I don't know chinese for weasel is my closest rendition there to.

    xianwotuyiyangzhege--Pinyin chines garbage--not designed

    amhuinnsuidhe---designed. Means (as near as I can translate from the Gaelidh
    (Gaelic), "sitting backs". It is the name of a castle

    dallenbaloch---not designed. A slighely different word, Ballindalloch means
    "city on the valley lake"--gaeligdh language.

    thaancumorachthaancatbeag---designed. The dog is small and the cat is
    big--Gaelidh

    ciamarathasibh---designed. Gaelic for "how are you?"

    Since I know a bit of Mandarin and a bit of Gaelic, I can whip up another
    test if anyone wants to take it. and if some Gaelic or Chinese speaker
    wants to take the test, I can use codes to encode them and see if they can
    detect the design. But alas, ID is not a 'scientific technique to detect
    design'. Why do I know? Because no one ever takes this test.

    Finally, I posted some odd homographs which illustrate very effectively that
    semantic information is not the same as Shannon's scientifically defined
    measure of information.

    The sequences were:

    godisnowhere--this sequence can be semantically interpreted eiether as "God
    is now here" or "God is no where". Different semantics but the same Shannon
    information.

    The second sequence:

    johninvigoratescraps--semantically either "John invigorates craps" as in the
    dice game, or "John, in vigor, ate scraps". Semantically something quite
    different. Yet the sequence which contains both semantic meanings has the
    same Shannon information content. I have several other similar homographic
    sequences.

    Finally, the sequence:

    anode

    could be "anode", "an ode" or, something I didn't see until later and thus
    didn't design, "a node". Same comment. 3 different semantical meanings but
    one Shannon information. Dembski, who thinks he can tell specification from
    sequences with structure, can't even tell which structure was the intended
    in these homographic sequences.

    If anyone gets the guts to show me how ID works in an objective blind test,
    I will whip out another set of tests. But since the entire epistemological
    structure of ID consists of "I can recognize a pattern I already know of,"
    it isn't very useful when it comes to recognizing unknown patterns.

    And finally, Josh and I agree on something:

    >By the way, I just watched the bizzarre movie "Pi: Faith in Chaos"
    >and it is
    >funny you asked that...

    That movie is really good, but really bizarre. Saw it about 10 years ago and
    loved it. I own a copy.



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