Re: topmind: ID is potentially testable


topmind wrote:
neverbetter wrote:
topmind wrote:
neverbetter wrote:
topmind wrote:
neverbetter wrote:
topmind wrote:
neverbetter wrote:
topmind wrote:
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topmind wrote:
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topmind wrote:
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topmind wrote:
neverbetter wrote:

[.....]
we do have the analogy with humans. Plenty of humans have worn a white
beard, driven vehicles drawn by reindeer, made toys and given them as
Christmas presents and even gotten shorter people to help out in their
tasks.


Oh great, fist the extremist evo nazi's are on my tail, and now the
Santa Nazi's also :-)

Actually it is similar to the definition of God issue. If you define
Santa as a guy capable of delivering 4 billion gifts in one night
without detection, then it is a long-shot. If you define him as a nice
guy in old Norway (where they actually dress sorta like Santa out of
culture) who gives a few dozen gifts to the local children, then the
probability estimation goes up.

Similary, "God" may simply be a dude(s) with a spaceship who tweaked
Ape DNA to produce humans. He/she/it could rightfully claim to have
"created man".

Yes. If you define "God", "Santa Claus" or "Intelligent Designer" so
that he's possible and testable, you'll find that he is possible and
testable. However, it doesn't mean that God/Santa/ID of any of the
other definitions people are more interested in are testable. It's just
a case of if you define a carrot as a potato, then carrots are
potatoes. If you define things very wide and broad, eventually concepts
become meaningless. The God who is worshipped by Christianity, Jews,
Islam gets his divine status from the idea that He's the sovereign over
everything, the creator of the whole universe, the Supreme Being who
defines the boundaries of good and evil and oversees everything, sees
your every secret thought and heart's desire, an eternal existence that
decides our ultimate fate. Those who worship this God would most likely
think that it's meaningless to call some dude with a spaceship God, if
he may be dead already and has no say about our morality or our
salvation, no power over us, doesn't answer or hear prayers and whose
only common feature with God-as-usually-defined is that he did some
experiments with primate DNA.

Well, we are talking about derivations of ID, not Creationism. ID does
not declare up front the "type" of intelligence that is being tested
for.

ID would have a better shot at being science if it was somewhat more
specific and told us its hypothesis: What is it that we're supposed to
be looking for?

How is SETI allegedly specific? It makes *no* claims about the aliens
other than that they use radio. DNA-ID (or IF where F=fiddle) makes no
assumptions about the nature of the intelligence other than being able
to manipulate DNA enough to leave patterns/messages that we may detect.
Humans have both used radio and have put messages in DNA.

We were talking about ID in general, not about SETI. Something that
does not declare what it's testing for is not scientific.

Suggestions were already given: images, pi, primes, that "language"
algorithm, etc.

I was talking about ID in general, not about DNA-ID. I thought you
agreed with me that they're separate concepts and that ID in general
does not predict images in DNA. In fact, it does not predict anything
else either. This makes it untestable and not scientific. As for
DNA-ID, it is still somewhat unclear to me what's the rationale behind
the prediction that there are prime numbers encoded in our DNA is. Is
there one or are they just what-if or why-not possibilities you made
up? I've missed or forgotten the discussions of language algorithm,
what is it and how do we tell if it's encoded in DNA or not?

SETI is
testing for narrowband patterns, ID is not currently testing for
anything as far as I'm aware, it's just making some vague claims.

When you say "vague" are you talking about the sender, or the thing
being detected (messages, etc.)?

I'm talking about ID in general, not messages in DNA. ID is vague
because it does not predict anything (including messages in DNA) and
fails to even specify its scientific hypothesis so that testing could
be done.

Narrowband *is* a pattern. Further, narrow-band may not be sufficient
such that content analysis is needed, and nobody here is claiming SETI
would no longer be science if they had to turn to content analysis to
make better judgements.

I don't understand what that had to do with anything I said but never
mind, I'm not saying that SETI shouldn't try to do content analysis if
they found something they felt like content analysing.

Well, you complained that Zachriel used wrong specifics but haven't
been willing to say what should have been used instead.

I did give specifics regarding searching the already-presented lists of
studies. I thought it was pretty clear that making your own tests up to
find mona was not allowed. Perhaps it was not clear and I misworded it.
If so, that was unintentional. He went outside of the challenge as
originally stated.

Not allowed?!? So, in fact you don't actually want to have DNA-ID
tested; you just want to make claims about its testability and leave it
at that, because tests could turn out to bring results you don't like?

It was a specific challenge. If somebody wants to introduce something
outside that specific challenge, be my guest as long as it is clear
what you are testing and claiming.

Well, it was perfectly clear to me what Zachriel was claiming: that a
relatively simple and unspecific statistical test could detect a bitmap
inserted into DNA.

For what purpose would he want to demonstrate that?

Well, from what I gather it appears that you asked him to.

He can work his arse off to prove that frogs are green, but if nobody
cares, he has wasted time.

Haven't we all, haven't we all... :) I'm just a bit at a loss to
understand why you take part in these threads about testability of
messages such as pictures in DNA, if you don't care if pictures are
detectable in DNA or not. How do you suppose we test the idea of
messages in DNA if not by detecting different types of messages in DNA?



If you mean they wrote algorithms to detect candidates, I will
perfectly agree that they are further along. But was SETI "not science"
when they first proposed the idea? If not, at what point did it become
science? What is the threashold? Many here behave as if they have these
black-box threasholds in their heads here, but cannot seam to
articulate exactly what they are. It is almost, "I cannot define
science, but I know it when I see it because I am smarter than you".
That is not a usable/analyzable/testable claim. (I am not accusing you
of such, but it is diffucult to get specific threasholds here.)

Haven't we gone over this ground already in these threads? Creative
ideas are a splendid thing but if they are to become science someone
has to formulate them in a specific way that enables them to be tested.
Here's the idea. Here we explore the implications further and try to
make some predictions about things that might also be true if our
understanding is correct. Ok, so now we have a testable hypothesis.
Let's test it. Hmmm, here are the results, let's ponder about them for
a while and get feedback and constructive criticism to see if other
people think it's any good. Well then, now we need to think of further
tests and attempt to do them.

That is like trying to ponder what SETI's aliens are like.

That appears to be a complete non-sequitur. I was just describing the
process of getting from an idea to a scientific hypothesis,
predictions, tests and further tests. I expect that very few people who
have been pondering about what aliens look like have done it anything
like approaching the scientific method.


"If God gave us evidence that he did something, we'd have evidence that
he did something" does not constitute a testable hypothesis.

If we're honest about it I think we'd be forced to admit that we
wouldn't even be debating about whether SETI is science or not if SETI
had left it at the level of an idea. "Hey, I got this cool idea that
there might be aliens in the outer space and they might be using
technology, such as radio." However exciting it might be, science it
ain't, and I don't think that you'd easily find anybody who claimed
otherwise.


Okay, but what is the SPECIFIC point in time that it allegedly became
"science", and what is the criteria that made it such at this magic
juncture?

I don't know the history of SETI so I'm unable to point to a specific
point in time. If you're interested, maybe you can go look at their
site and find out when the hypotheses were developed and testable
predictions made.


DNA-ID resides currently at "Hey, I got this cool idea that
there might have been somebody somewhere who might have done something
that changed something in some DNA." If it's to become scientific we
need more specific hypotheses that may be tested.

So, is there anything more specific? Not that there's anything wrong
with this notion, it may be perfectly true, but it's not testable as
such.

(snip the rest)

.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: Non-God ID origin of Life?
    ... it is CRITICAL to your argument that we know enough about DNA ... SETI does not apply. ... so that we can rule out natural processes and sources for DNA. ... That's the nature of science. ...
    (talk.origins)
  • Re: Book-able view of ID as speculative science
    ... We could also speculate that a DNA ... > So, you aren't doing science, and given that you've rejected the arguments ... >> Does that limit make SETI non-science? ... If no possible signal can ever be evidence of intelligence regardless ...
    (talk.origins)
  • Re: Book-able view of ID as speculative science
    ... >>>SETI is not science because they don't know ahead of time what they are ... >> the next step and discuss the kinds of patterns that point to design. ... >can be used on DNA also. ...
    (talk.origins)
  • Re: topmind: ID is potentially testable
    ... "An alien left a message in DNA" ... understand if you want to practice science. ... SETI speculates that *if* aliens do things a certain way, ... Evolution cannot be falsified because it is a fact that it happens. ...
    (talk.origins)
  • Re: Book-able view of ID as speculative science
    ... But your DNA pattern search isn't exploration. ... If you don't have a testable hypothesis about patterns, ... > no court that definitively "defines" science. ... > that you can use as guidelines, like testability. ...
    (talk.origins)