Re: topmind: ID is potentially testable

neverbetter wrote:
topmind wrote:

[.....too deep to include handles]

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.

I don't think that they are that separate. Finding a strong message in
DNA would certainly boost even Behe's version of ID. I mostly separate
them to avoid mixing up Behe's issues into the more general version
that I am using.

We'll have to agree to disagree on that. I don't think that finding
messages would be conclusive enough to resolve the question of the
origins of the complexity of life.


Are you suggesting that all versions of ID must focus primarily on
*original* origin to be called "ID"? Perhaps we are getting into a
definition issue. I think most would agree that aliens fiddling with
*ape* DNA to result in humans would qualify as "intelligent design" in
a broader sense of the concept even if the ape fiddlers didn't invent
the cell.

Perhaps "liberal creationism" is a better term because many
non-conservative Christians are not concerned with the origin of cells
nearly as much as the origin of man. It is the more extreme ones that
insist on a start-to-finish agent of life. (However, "liberal
creationism" implies a God rather than aliens, so this needs work also.
But liberal christians may be less likely to insist on the supernatural
being a strong boundary from high-end technology.) One's definition may
reflect what their religion hopes to find.

Anyhow, I won't claim my version of ID is a good test of original
origin. It is a better test of Intelligent Tinkering.

(Seems your chart got mis-formatted by my newsreader. Ascii Art is as
much as a longshot as SETI and DNA-ID at times :-)



In fact, it does not predict anything
else either. This makes it untestable and not scientific.


If messages in DNA boosts it, then it is testable. Thus, Behe's ID is
still testable. It may not be the test they hope for, but if reality
dissapoints, so be it. We can't judge an idea by who it makes happy.

I still hold that finding prime numbers in bacteria says nothing about
the origins of the alleged irreducibly complex biological functions.
Like the human analogy, we may have put messages in some DNA or altered
some genes, but we had nothing to do with how that DNA and all the
complex biochemical mechanisms the creature has came to be originally.

(Actually, Behe's version is falsifible by busting "irreducable". In
other words, reducing falsifies it.)

If it's shown how one thing could have evolved, they'll just shift the
goal posts and claim that some other feature or combination of features
is too complex to evolve.


But each example of IC that gets solved reduces the strength of the
claim. Perhaps they will go down with the ship, but so be it.



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?

It is one of many messages that a DNA engineer/fiddler might include.
Primes have been proposed by many scientists as a way to get cosmic
attention if we broadcast signals for aliens. It is a "universal
language" if you will.

So, it's just another case of "aliens must do it because humans could
do it"? How do we know that primes are a universal language?
How can we
be sure that aliens or gods conceptualize maths the same way we do or
that they think in terms of numbers at all?

Those are very interesting questions. Things like Pi are almost
necessary to work our physical world. I am sure at some stage
intelligent aliens have to deal with the math of circles. As far as
primes, perhaps you should ask a math forum. Primes are a natural
property of integer analysis. If somebody claims that integers may be a
human-centric idea, that is a bit hard for me to swallow. It may be
interesting to ask the math forums that question. It is hard to do data
processing without integers. It is hard to run an economy without
counting things as descrete units. Nobody has proposed an alternative
that aliens may adapt that I know of. In other words, integers seem
necessary for any kind of practical modeling of everyday life and
living.


Aliens may not really recognize Mona as
something interesting or intelligent because they are probably not
human and Mona could resemble their own gal bladder to them.

Well, I don't know, I think it would be fascinating to find a picture
of a human gall bladder in a bacterial genome. How on earth did *that*
end up *there*?


But it is hard to tell a gall bladder from a booger or poop without a
scale.


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.

Perhaps I did. However, that by itself does not make it relavant to the
key issues here. I may have ran off at the mouth, getting off to a
tangent. Every now and then I do that.

So, if the topic is testability, actual tests are off topic. Got it.


I am not sure what his Mona of Means implies about the testability of
it. It seems to confirm that testing is possible (which i never
disputed), but I don't know if his claim that past tests were "thorough
enough" mean much. Isn't that what he is implying? That we are done
testing?

Some here claim it undertested, some claim it not testable, and some
are claiming it OVER tested. I feel like Goldilocks here (even though I
look much more like the bears).




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.

Both SETI and DNA-ID are based on the assumption that aliens may do
similar things to what we do or are capable of doing. They don't have
much beyond that to really go on. We have no idea what aliens or
intelligent fiddlers would actually do or look like. Human behavior as
a model would imply that we could not predict their behavior. We cannot
assume they are always rational, purposeful, and economical if we
assume they may have traits similar to ours.

For SETI aliens, it may be safest to keep their mouth (antennas) shut.
Who knows what kind of cosmic riff-raff may come along if you broadcast
your presence. Preventing loneliness may get them all killed......or
worse: flooded with inter-galactic spam.

Still don't see the connection to what was said before but never mind.
Currently we haven't got very much to go on if we want to ponder about
aliens so it's more or less pure guesswork. Either they are similar to
humans or they aren't. That's not very much to base well-grounded
scientific hypotheses on or to make predictions.

We tend to test versions of speculation/ideas/theories that resemble
what we are familiar with because that is the low-hanging fruit of
detection.

People complain about Mars life experiments assuming earth-like life in
science press conferences. The researcher simply replied that this is
because we know best how to detect earth-like life. More
general-purpose life experiments would be much more expensive and
bulkier.


"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.

Make up a hypothetical best-guess one and tell me at each stage whether
it is "scientific" or not and exactly why. I have not been able to
dissect the reasoning processes in your guy's heads as far as what you
call science and don't call science and where the boundary lays.
Everytime you propose something, comparing it to SETI seems to pop it.

I've already told you my views on science. I've got no stake on SETI
and if SETI should turn out not to fulfill my criteria and to be
unscientific, it wouldn't rock my world but I'm quite sure that DNA-ID
in its current vague incarnation ("there might be something in some DNA
because someone put it there, but all the actual tests someone might do
to detect something in some DNA are definitely off topic") does not
quite cut it. Let's formulate some precise predictions and ways to test
them and we'll see.

Are you implying that you won't defend SETI as being "scientific" or
"scientifically testable" either? I suppose that would boost my claims
that DNA-ID is SETI-like as far as testability and science.


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.

How is SETI more specific? As described above, we know jack sh8t about
aliens. We are only testing the idea that some may be using radio.
Using radio that leaks into space is the ONLY link to testability at
this point for SETI (other than sci-fi-pie-in-sky speculation).

Well, that is all they claim to be able to test, isn't it? You claimed
that messages in DNA are a test for intelligent design.

Look at this way:

SETI tests for something non-human capable of building radio wave
generators.

DNA-ID tests for something non-human capable of manipulating DNA.

One uses radio as the medium, the other uses DNA as the medium. In this
sense they are nearly identical. The only real diff is the medium used.
Some ET's phone home, some write home, some graffity home, some
postcard home, and some text-message.

(By the way, wouldn't a god qualilfy as an ET?)

As far as extrapolating DNA fiddling to original origin, see above.

-T-

.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: topmind: ID is potentially testable
    ... DNA would certainly boost even Behe's version of ID. ... Primes have been proposed by many scientists as a way to get cosmic ... attention if we broadcast signals for aliens. ... But was SETI "not science" ...
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  • Re: topmind: ID is potentially testable
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