Re: topmind: ID is potentially testable

neverbetter wrote:
topmind wrote:
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.

Intelligent design eventually means whatever people use it to refer to
so it could also mean aliens fiddling with ape DNA although that's not
the usual thing we think of. But this shows how the broadness of the
concept and allowing for nearly everything makes its testing pretty
damn hard. Tests looking for evidence of aliens in faraway galaxies
sending us probes filled with bacteria which populate Earth via
panspermia a long time ago would not find any evidence of aliens coming
here and fiddling with ape DNA. Tests looking for evidence of alien
tinkering with apes couldn't find any evidence that God interfered with
evolution to produce the octopi. And so on.

That depends on how you define "god".

Anyhow, artificts left in DNA by intelligent beings is testable. At
this point we can't say any more about such beings than SETI could
about theirs.

Suppose the Heaven's Gate cult hoped dearly that SETI would find a
certain kind of alien. Would such a cult suddenly make SETI less
scientific?

There seems to be an implied "fanatic pollution rule" whereby as soon
as a religious group is interested in the results being a certain way,
the whole thing is suddenly non-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?

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.

Maybe they are for technological aliens but somehow the concept of God
needing integers for any kind of practical modeling of everyday life
and living seems so mundane. ;) Why would an omniscient one need to
bother with counting and doing divisions, when he knew our number even
before there was anything to be counted.

There are various reasons why such beings may leave various messages.
That is why the wider the variety of messages searched, the better.

For a SETI comparison, inadvertant signals leaked into space, like "I
Love Lucy" broadcasts, are not likely to carry prime numbers. Primes
would more likely be used by those intentionally sending signals to be
intercepted. Thus, if SETI received an unintentional message, they
still might still test it for primes because they wouldn't know either
way early in the test.

In other words, no one kind of messages is meant for a test of all
possible kinds of aliens/ID'ers.


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.

For whatever it's worth, IMO it would be pretty weird to find pictures
of poop in bacterial genomes too. Them intelligent designers sure are
some strange aliens...be afraid.

Almost as weird as cutting off your ear and mailing it to your
girlfriend on a starry night.


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).

One reason for the confusion may be that "it" refers to different
things at different times. The idea of "a bitmap encoded like this
(description) which we could find via this statistical procedure
(description)" is testable. Some variants of that may be already tested
and done with in some genomes (although not all), if the particular
statistical procedure has been in use in genetics. The idea "there may
be some messages in some DNA" is untestable since even after we've
spent millions of years trying every encoding we can think of on every
single creature's genome, it's always possible that there is some
encrypted message we just can't decode. Millions of years of testing
might reduce the likelihood but can't falsify it conclusively, and
we're not anywhere near that, DNA was only discovered in the fifties.

Same could happen with SETI. There could be actual signals we may never
detect.


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.

There's nothing wrong with looking if low-hanging fruit exists but just
because humanlike aliens could be low-hanging fruit in some respects
doesn't give us logical justification to presume that aliens are
necessarily humanlike, that's all. Either they are or they aren't. We
don't know.

I am just saying it may be cheaper to search for human-like traits.
Yes, that is not as thorough as looking for non-human trains as well,
but a budget is a budget. SETI would like to search for laser signals
also, but currently don't have the budget for wide-scale laser
searches.


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.

I don't know much about SETI beyond what everybody knows so I'm not the
best judge but here's something I've thought:

Some of this debate ultimately comes down to conflating two levels of
'scientificity' (is there such a word?). There is the scientificness of
a theory or underlying explanation of the world, and the scientificness
of the research that are done. They are interrelated but not the same
thing, and it seems to me the levels get mixed up all the time in this
thread. A proper scientific theory takes into account existing
knowledge, attempts to explain further evidence and makes predictions.
Proper scientific research uses certain rigorous methodology to test
some prediction. Science usually takes a scientific theory and does
research in order to test that theory, but it is possible to do
scientific testing of claims that do not really qualify as scientific
theories or even scientific hypotheses. As A. Carlson pointed out in
another thread, we can test dowsing or ESP, etc. scientifically but it
doesn't mean that dowsing or ESP are therefore automatically
legitimized as viable scientific hypotheses or theories.

And those fail the tests.


When it comes to SETI I don't have any reason to suppose that their
research project, trying to locate narrowband patterns, isn't done in a
scientific manner. Presumably people who are brighter than me have gone
over the methodology and pointed out problems. It is a perfectly
legitimate scientific research question to try to find out whether
there are narrowband patterns coming in from the direction of Proxima
Centauri or not, just as it is okay to try to find out if there are
quasars thereabouts. Whether they are right in what they assume about
the intelligent origin of narrowband patterns is not for me to say, and
whether SETi has a well-founded scientific theory that explains about
extraterrestrial intelligence is another matter altogether. I'm not
aware of one but have they even claimed to have one? There is currently
so little data about extraterrestrial intelligence to be explained that
there is nothing much to base theories on, and given that, going on and
on about one's favourite scifi story in the name of science would be
suspect anyway. There's no use trying to climb up a tree asbackwards.

Some suggest that is what SETI is doing, wasting money chasing a sci-fi
dream.


As for DNA-ID, there seems to be no scientific research program,
methodologically rigorous or otherwise, unless you count the tests done
in this thread and genome research done for other purposes.

Again, I am currently addressing "testable" at this point, not
"tested".

-T-

.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: topmind: ID is potentially testable
    ... messages/logos in DNA is not solid proof of actual DNA alteration from ... this point we can't say any more about such beings than SETI could ... claim it will find any aliens actually nearby, ... a theory or underlying explanation of the world, and the scientificness ...
    (talk.origins)
  • Re: topmind: ID is potentially testable
    ... I was talking about ID in general, not about DNA-ID. ... DNA would certainly boost even Behe's version of ID. ... so it could also mean aliens fiddling with ape DNA although that's not ... a theory or underlying explanation of the world, and the scientificness ...
    (talk.origins)
  • Re: topmind: ID is potentially testable
    ... images, pi, primes, that "language" ... so it could also mean aliens fiddling with ape DNA although that's not ... this point we can't say any more about such beings than SETI could ... a theory or underlying explanation of the world, and the scientificness ...
    (talk.origins)
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