Re: topmind: ID is potentially testable


Roq wrote:
Perhaps I wasn't clear. SETI doesn't test for complex abstract patterns. It
doesn't test for patterns within radio signals at all. It looks for
artifice, by searching for a strong narrow-band radio transmission
regardless of any presumed data content.

Yes I read the faq, I get the point and it is interesting:- I
previously hadn't appreciated that as a first stage in the SETI
programme it would only be necessary to look for a narrow band
transmission. But I don't see that it makes a difference to the
argument I outlined (intended to be a summary of Topmind's position) -
I have to agree with Topmind in his message a bit earlier that
analyzing a stream for directional information is just another way of
looking for some kind of pattern. I don't feel it would be very hard to
come up with a pattern (not necessary for it to involve direction) that
if found in a sequence of DNA would indicate an intelligent designer -
*but* that says nothing about the probability of finding such a pattern
which no doubt would be very very close to zero.

I feel somewhat that you and Topmind are arguing past each other. You
are making the point that its more sensible to look for intelligent
life on other worlds than it is to look for intelligent design in DNA.
I agree with that and I suspect that Topmind does too. Topmind on the
other hand is just arguing about the philosophical point of whether ID
is testable or not and I think he has a valid point in that respect
although I'm not sure what if any further deductions he would want to
make from that position.

There are valid reasons (albeit tenuous) to suppose that ETI might exist and
that they might transmit radio signals and that these radio signals might be
detectable. There is no reason to suppose that ETI traveled across the
galaxy millions of years ago to leave abstract messages in the human genome.
In fact, there is ample evidence that the human genome is the result of
terrestrial evolutionary processes.

Yes I fully agree with all that. What I was trying to say is only that
Topmind has made a good case that ID is "testable" - *but* again the
principle of testability is not sufficient to brand a theory as
scientific because it rests on induction and induction is seriously
flawed. In practice it's really difficult to define a set of criteria
to separate scientific theories from non scientific ones and noone can
really agree on what such criteria are. I think Popper's idea of
falsifiability that pops up throughout the thread is an important one
but it's certainly not sufficient criteria on its own.

But topmind is completely unconcerned with the actual evidence.

Yes but to be fair to him his argument is a philosophical one ie that
if theories such as SETI are testable and rely on abstraction from some
stream of data then so are theories such as ID if they can be made to
rely on some such stream of data.

One problem is that to test a theory you should really be testing some
prediction that the theory makes. Which version of ID are we testing?

SETI starts with the idea that if there are intelligent aliens somewhat
like us those might produce certain kinds of radio signals, based on
our own experience. It's a prediction that may not be true of all
intelligent aliens but it's a prediction. We can test the claim that
there are such-and-such observable radio signal patterns, although
testing the claim that they really are products of alien intelligence
might be harder. If SETI does not find any such signals, it doesn't
falsify the existence of aliens altogether but it falsifies the
hypothesis that there are intelligent aliens transmitting the expected
kind of radio signals within the observable distance and reaching us at
the time of observation, or supports the null hypothesis.

We can also test the claim that there are such-and-such specific DNA
patterns that we can find with such-and-such specific search
procedures. But is this testing ID? The ID theory is rather hard to
pin down but it seems to consist either of "things are so complex that
we don't believe they could have happened on their own, so somebody
must have done something for some reason at some unspecified time and
that's why we're here now" or "God did it as it says in the Bible but
we're not supposed to tell you that since ID is not religion". The
problem with the DNA pattern search as a test of ID is that DNA
patterns don't seem to be a prediction of either version of the ID.
Somebody-did-something doesn't really predict anything at all, and the
Bible version makes some predictions, depending on the preferred
interpretation of the Bible, but none that I'm aware of give any
justification to believing that God left Mona Lisa in our DNA.
Certainly the Somebody-left-Mona Lisa-in-our-DNA theory is a subset of
Somebody-did-something ID theory, but then so are the
Somebody-made-sure-not-to-leave-stupid-patterns-in-our-DNA theory and
the
Somebody-erased-the-picture-from-our-DNA-because-he-didn't-want-to-be-detected
theory.

If we're lucky we find the patterns that we're looking for and can
tentatively conclude that there's support for the Somebody-left-Mona
Lisa-in-our-DNA theory, but if not, the ID theory as it is currently
known is still as good as untested after all our hard work, because the
negative result fits ID and non-ID equally well, as neither makes the
prediction that somebody left Mona Lisa in our DNA. We may have
falsified the Somebody-left-Mona Lisa-in-our-DNA theory but have found
support for the Somebody-messed-with-DNA-to-make-it-look-evolved theory
and Somebody-created-us-and-left-us-to-evolve theory. ID can
accommodate any result and that's why it's hard to test. Only some
small subsets of ID can theoretically be tested, provided they make
explicit predictions, but the vaguely worded ID is too broad.


I'm having trouble parsing this last paragraph. It seems to be saying there
are valid reasons to justify a SETI search and no valid reason to search for
abstract patterns in DNA or the entrails of goats. That is correct. That
makes SETI a plausible scientific program, while GAPS (Genome Abstract
Pattern Search) is not.

Yes your interpretation is correct - someone else had the same problems
interpreting my rather dense prose here.

.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: topmind: ID is potentially testable
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    (talk.origins)
  • Re: topmind: ID is potentially testable
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    (talk.origins)
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