Re: [asa] ID without specifying the intelligence?

On 9/15/07, Keith Miller <kbmill@ksu.edu> wrote:
>
>
> What if one eliminates all known natural causes for a highly organized and
> information rich phenomenon - nonrandom and nonrepetative complexity. Is it
> OK intelligence if the intelligence is an alien race? We are looking for
> complex nonrandom signal in out space as evidence of intelligence beyond
> earth: SETI. Is SETI science? If ID is doing the same thing with regard to
> DNA and biologic structures, why is that not science?
>
>
> What is missing here is the absolutely critical distinction between a
> natural and supernatural agents. The potential capacities and limitations
> of ETs are simply modeled on humans. Humans, and other volitional animals,
> are natural agents with a known range of limited capacities. As such the
> effects of their actions can be potentially recognized. But God is not so
> limited. And it is God that is the agent in ID. God can do anything, and
> thus provides no additional explanatory power from a scientific
> perspective. I already fully accept that all natural processes are upheld
> by God's providential action. "God did it", is not scientifically
> informative.
>

Keith,

While I agree with much of what you have said here, I'd have to say that I
disagree here. I don't think, in the case of "explaining our origins",
there is a distinction to be made between natural and supernatural. While
an ET would be of limited (ie finite) intelligence, all one has to do is to
invoke the idea of an ET that is of sufficient intelligence to design us.
We are not intelligent enough to design us for sure - maybe Mr. Spock's race
from Star Trek would be. But if not, one only has to imagine an even more
highly developed alien race.

Because no limit is placed on the assumed, but finite intelligence of the
supposed ET that designed us, then equally to invoke such an unknown ET as
an explanation of our apparent design fails as well to qualify as science
because it has no explanatory power. We just say "a sufficiently complex ET
could have designed us".

For the same reason, atheists like to invoke the Multiverse as an
explanation of the apparent improbability of our existence. I think that
the reason this might appeal to an atheist is that it replaces a
supernatural explanation with a natural one. Again, the multiverse is
finite, but if there are sufficiently many, then you have again, something
that is capable of explaining anything.

I recently introduced the idea of a Universal Explanatory Mechanism (UEM) in
saying that to invoke a "sufficiently complex" model to explain something
away is likewise not scientific because a UEM can explain anything. I've
previously talked about curve-fitting with polynomials (in my work I do it
with neural networks, but the principles are the same). Since a picture is
worth a thousand words, I've put up an explanatory picture on my Google
account at:

http://picasaweb.google.com/IGD.Strachan/Overfitting

You need to click on the thumbnail to see the full image.

In the picture, the red dots are ten data points that I picked arbitrarily
(actually using a random number generator). I then used curve-fitting to
fit a 9th degree polynomial function to the data ( ie of the form a +
bx + cx^2 + ..... jx^9), computing the coefficients a..j by least squares
fitting. I then plotted the resultant function at the data points (x =
1,2,..10) and also at increments of 0.1 in x, giving the blue curve. You
note that the curve passes EXACTLY through the red data points, but in
between there are wild swings of the value, and some of the maxima and
minima are at points where you would be very unlikely to interpolate if you
were doing it by eye.

The reason is that the entire class of ninth-degree polynomials is a UEM for
datasets of 10 points. To any set of 10 data points there corresponds a
ninth-degree polynomial that will exactly match the data.

Therefore to say that we've "explained" the pattern in the set of 10 points
because a sufficiently high order polynomial can fit them exactly proves
nothing. I maintain that this, too is as unscientific as invoking an
intelligent designer (be it smart ET or God), or a multiverse.

So I don't think the distinction between natural and supernatural actually
is crucial here. If one insists that this is so, then one gives scientific
credibility to multiverse explanations of our existence, IMO.

I want to stress before PvM starts complaining (as he has before) that
multiverse theories are interesting science, that I'm NOT saying that the
study of multiverse theories per se is unscientific. The distinction I'm
making is invoking them to explain the hitherto unexplained.

Best,
Iain

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Received on Sat Sep 15 08:05:35 2007