Page 1 of 1

The Intelligent Design Forum Game

Posted: Sat Nov 12, 2005 4:36 pm
by Drakona
Most people agree that design can be detected in some circumstances and not in others... but which circumstances? And what are the prerequisites? This thread is to intuitively explore those questions.

This thread is a philosophical forum game.

I will start by giving a hypothetical object or occurance in a real-life context. The next poster will give an opinion on whether the caused the object or occurance was designed, and then give his own hypothetical scenario.

If you think something is the result of intelligent action, tell me how you know and what you can deduce about the intelligence. If you think it isn't the result of intelligent action, tell me why and what you think caused it.

You can comment on prior ones or give related multiples if you want to. The point is to explore the limits on design inferences from an intuitive point of view; the forum game is just the method.

You may visit this thread if you need some inspiration.

I'll start.

P.S. -- I pity the mod that has to figure out what forum this thread belongs in. :twisted:

Posted: Sat Nov 12, 2005 4:38 pm
by Drakona
Four related scenarios.

(A) You are reading a novel and you see the following text:
after the loss of the fairy princess. Rodrigo worked hard to
1102 5564 9873 6048 9873 5468 8138 7315 5049 8738
find her, but the trail was cold. He grew up haunted by the knowledge
What conclusion can you draw about the origin of the bold text?




(B) You are reading a novel and you see the following text:
opened the message he had taken off the spy's body. It contained
a string of numbers which didn't mean anything to him, but which could
be some sort of code:

1102 5564 9873 6048 9873 5468 8138 7315 5049 8738

Killory stowed the note and and headed back to base.
What conclusion can you draw about the origin of the bold text?




(C) You are reading a history book and you see the following text:
During the 1940's, Soviet spies transmitted messages in blocks of numbers, using theoretically unbreakable One Time Pad encryption. This resulted in the transmission of messages such as the following: 1102 5564 9873 6048 9873 5468 8138 7315 5049 8738. Despite the theoretically secure nature of the code, a flaw in their execution allowed some of the messages to be decoded. Others, like the example given here, are theoretically impossible to solve.
What conclusion can you draw about the origin of the bold text?



(D) You are reading a children's instruction book, and you see the following text:
A simple code you can try is to put 1 for A, 2 for B, and so on. What does this say? 2 1 14 1 14 1. Try it!
What conclusion can you draw about the origin of the bold text?

Posted: Sat Nov 12, 2005 7:49 pm
by Top Gun
Well, since it doesn't look like anyone else is biting, I'll give it a shot. :P
Drakona wrote:Four related scenarios.

(A) You are reading a novel and you see the following text:
after the loss of the fairy princess. Rodrigo worked hard to
1102 5564 9873 6048 9873 5468 8138 7315 5049 8738
find her, but the trail was cold. He grew up haunted by the knowledge
What conclusion can you draw about the origin of the bold text?
If I had to hypothesize, I'd say that this was most likely some sort of error code produced by a computer/printer. It doesn't make any sense in the context of the surrounding lines, and in and of itself, there's no discernible pattern (unless it represents some higher mathematics to which I'm not privy ;)). If it isn't a printer error, then I'd have to say that someone of unknown origin is trying to send the intended reader a very cryptic message.
Drakona wrote:(B) You are reading a novel and you see the following text:
opened the message he had taken off the spy's body. It contained
a string of numbers which didn't mean anything to him, but which could
be some sort of code:

1102 5564 9873 6048 9873 5468 8138 7315 5049 8738

Killory stowed the note and and headed back to base.
What conclusion can you draw about the origin of the bold text?
Since this string of numbers was taken off the body of a spy, I feel it would be a reasonable assumption that it was some type of code. Then again, it could just be nothing more complex than a printout from an ATM. This would be a lot more unlikely if the note were handwritten rather than printed out. Another possibility might be that the spy was out looking for CD keys for a pirated copy of a game. :P
Drakona wrote:(C) You are reading a history book and you see the following text:
During the 1940's, Soviet spies transmitted messages in blocks of numbers, using theoretically unbreakable One Time Pad encryption. This resulted in the transmission of messages such as the following: 1102 5564 9873 6048 9873 5468 8138 7315 5049 8738. Despite the theoretically secure nature of the code, a flaw in their execution allowed some of the messages to be decoded. Others, like the example given here, are theoretically impossible to solve.
What conclusion can you draw about the origin of the bold text?
Since this book specifically identifies that Soviet spies used codes made up of blocks of numbers, the fact that it then lists a string of numbers means that this was most likely a real-world example of one of these codes. It could also be a more modern example of this same type of code structure. Given the fact that this code is said to be theoretically impossible to break, I wouldn't discount the option that it was a "dummy" string, intended to throw off enemy codebreakers.
Drakona wrote:(D) You are reading a children's instruction book, and you see the following text:
A simple code you can try is to put 1 for A, 2 for B, and so on. What does this say? 2 1 14 1 14 1. Try it!
What conclusion can you draw about the origin of the bold text?
This one's pretty obviously intentionally designed, given that it's the focus of the entire passage. It's also a code that just about everyone of a reasonable age has heard of and can solve; the solution, "banana," just about guarantees that someone wrote this intentionally.

As for the poll, I went with the second option. I do think it's very possible to detect intelligence, but I think there are many situations, like in the case of that dead spy, where there just isn't enough information to go on. A good deal of seemingly random patterns could possibly have some interpretation that would suggest intelligence, but they could also be the result of chance. I think that one has to have a good deal of evidence and some very solid reasoning before declaring something to be the result of some intelligent process.

As for a hypothetical scenario, try this one on for size: :P

A) You walk into a large auditorium and see a bunch of chairs arranged in clusters. When you count them, you find that each group consists of an odd number of chairs.

B) You walk into the same auditorium. When you take a look at the chairs, you notice that their arrangement spells out the word "Hello!"

C) Same auditorium. This time, the chairs' arrangement spells out a passage from the soliloquy of Hamlet, Act III, Scene i.

Posted: Sat Nov 12, 2005 7:52 pm
by Bet51987
I voted, but I'm not biting.

Bettina

Posted: Sat Nov 12, 2005 11:24 pm
by Drakona
Thank you, Top Gun. Bettina, I promise not to bite. ;) Obviously, if you believe it's all bunk, you can just answer "can't conclude design" to each one. These things are good exercises to see what you, personally, really think the limits are.
Top Gun wrote: A) You walk into a large auditorium and see a bunch of chairs arranged in clusters. When you count them, you find that each group consists of an odd number of chairs.
I conclude unconsciously, without question, that the chairs themselves and the auditorium are products of design... ;)

Chairs are generally put in place by people, so the conclusion that people put them there seems pretty reasonable. This is not a design inference, but what I call a "pattern inference." I would have concluded rabbits had set up the chairs if rabbits were known to set up chairs.

For the arrangement, there isn't really enough detail to say. If the clusters are numerous (7+) or geometrically very well-defined, they're probably intentional. Could be arbitrary, though--any number of things can cause clustering (different groups of people helping, for example) that may not be intentional.

The parity, while it may be intentional, is not sufficiently improbable to warrant a design inference. I wouldn't set the bar very high, though--since I already know people are moving the chairs, an improbability around 1 in 300 is enough for me to tentatively say they were arranged that way on purpose. So, if we have clusters of 5, 7, 11, 15, 3, 3, 17, 9, and 5 chairs, I'd start beginning to suspect the odd numbers were intentional. An order of probabilistic magnitude later (15 groups or so) I'd think it pretty likely, and a couple orders after that (22+) I'd consider it fairly sure.
B) You walk into the same auditorium. When you take a look at the chairs, you notice that their arrangement spells out the word "Hello!"
Since people are known to set up chairs, this is well past my probability requirement for a design inference here. Shoot, "H" probably would have been sufficient, since it is almost impossible to *not* arrange chairs intentionally. Obviously whoever set them up arranged them this way.
C) Same auditorium. This time, the chairs' arrangement spells out a passage from the soliloquy of Hamlet, Act III, Scene i.
That's a lot of chairs. I would conclude one of the English majors had way too much time on their hands. ;)


----------------

You see the following pattern (the imprecision is intentional):

Image

The dots represent...

(A) Raisins on top of a salad.

(B) Fallen leaves on a driveway.

(C) Cows in a pasture.

(D) Red cars in a full parking-lot, as seen from overhead.

(E) Craters on the moon.

(F) Stars in the night sky.

Posted: Sun Nov 13, 2005 2:44 am
by Tetrad
Very complicated ant colony.

1) Design
2) Intelligent
3) Intelligent Design
4) None of the above

Posted: Sun Nov 13, 2005 7:17 pm
by snoopy
Right..... after the thread has been thoroughly derailed, I'll make a feeble attempt at getting it back on track.
Drakona wrote:You see the following pattern (the imprecision is intentional):

Image

The dots represent...

(A) Raisins on top of a salad.

(B) Fallen leaves on a driveway.

(C) Cows in a pasture.

(D) Red cars in a full parking-lot, as seen from overhead.

(E) Craters on the moon.

(F) Stars in the night sky.
Well, I see a pattern. I don't really have a number for the probability of the pattern occuring, but I'd say it's pretty low.

I'd say it could very well be ID in A. The cook might be a fan of geometry, or something, and decided to be artistic.

B: If those where the only leaves on the driveway, I'd say that someone put them there like that- I don't think it's statistically possible to have happened just by some sort of a fluke. If there are a bunch of leaves on the driveway, and you pick the pattern out in, say, the red leaves, I'd say it happened randomly, and you just found the pattern because of our tendancy to see patterns in random things. (Just like seeing things in ink blots.)

C: I would suspect intellegent design. It could be that there are six low spots around the edges, and a general low spot in the middle, where the grass was growing better, or something like that. I would conclude that something caused the cows to be in that pattern- the question is, was the something naturally occuring, (The grass happened to grow better in those select spots.) or did someone engineer it such that the cows would be motivated to form that pattern? I don't think I could conclude which without further investigation.

D: Random. More ink-blot pictures.

E: I'd handle this about the same as the leaves, only I'd be a little more exotic with who/what I thought was causing the pattern.

F: Again, similar to the leaves. Trying to explain intelligent design into it would get really philosophical really fast, so I might revert to random chance, simply to avoid having to theorize what there could be out there that's powerful enough to arrange stars. Note that the tendancy here to name it random chance here over ID, even if it is statistically equally as likely to happen as the leaf pattern that I attributed to a person, is my way of avoiding having to face the possibility of something really freaking powerful that I have no clue about existing.

My scenerio:

A: You see a round shaped area in the grass where the grass is shorter than the rest of the grass.
B: You notice that the grass type in the shorter area is different from the grass surrounding it.
C: You notice that there are several areas devoid of grass, consisting of sand in the longer grass, surrounding the shorter grass.
D: You notice a square pattern in the shorter grass.
E: You see a small, perfectly cylindrical hole in the shorter grass, with a flag sticking out of the hole.

Posted: Sun Nov 13, 2005 8:45 pm
by Sarge
I'll clear this all up...

Are we here by intellegent design? Yes

Are we here by natural selection? Yes

Natural Selection IS Intelligent Design! Jeez, I don't get why it's so hard to understand.

Posted: Mon Nov 14, 2005 11:16 am
by Lothar
moderator note

All off-topic comments (er, I guess I missed one... sorry) not relating directly to the ID game have been split off into this thread.

Further comments not following the initial rules of this thread ("[each] poster will give an opinion on whether the caused the object or occurance was designed, and then give his own hypothetical scenario.") should be posted in the other thread.

Posted: Mon Nov 14, 2005 11:23 am
by WarAdvocat
This was accidentally removed:
WarAdvocat wrote:"Only in special cases"
that's a poll option from this post.

[edit:sarcasm removed]

Posted: Mon Nov 14, 2005 11:47 am
by Lothar
Whoops, sorry... I should have left your post and moved Sarge's. My bad...

[Insert witty comment about my (lack of) intelligence here.]

Posted: Fri Nov 18, 2005 12:30 pm
by Foil
(Sorry about the slight bump. Haven't been here in a while.)

Drakona, you had to make this one difficult for me by the use of that little word... "rigorously". :P

If your poll had been, "Can Design be consistently detected?", I would probably have voted differently.

You should know better! :wink: I know there are other students of higher mathematics here that would balk at saying something is "rigorous" if there was even one example where it failed.

Okay, back on track. The last scenario was:
snoopy wrote:My scenerio:

A: You see a round shaped area in the grass where the grass is shorter than the rest of the grass.
B: You notice that the grass type in the shorter area is different from the grass surrounding it.
C: You notice that there are several areas devoid of grass, consisting of sand in the longer grass, surrounding the shorter grass.
D: You notice a square pattern in the shorter grass.
E: You see a small, perfectly cylindrical hole in the shorter grass, with a flag sticking out of the hole.
A. Something (maybe a chemical) caused the grass not to grow as well there?
B. Maybe some grass seed was spilled there, and that type of grass just grows shorter?
C. Maybe some sand was dumped in those areas, keeping the grass from growing?
D. Maybe the short grass was mowed in that pattern?
E. Oh! It's a golf course, of course! :roll:

And here's mine (you know I've gotta come up with at least one counter-example... the word "rigorous" demands it!):

In an otherwise empty room, you see a lone typewriter in the center of the room with a single sheet inserted, only the single letter "A" typed on it.

That's it. Regarding the 'typed message', can you rigorously make a design inference? :wink: Or what inference(s) can you make?

Posted: Fri Nov 18, 2005 4:27 pm
by Ferno
Drakona wrote:Four related scenarios.

(A) You are reading a novel and you see the following text:
after the loss of the fairy princess. Rodrigo worked hard to
1102 5564 9873 6048 9873 5468 8138 7315 5049 8738
find her, but the trail was cold. He grew up haunted by the knowledge
What conclusion can you draw about the origin of the bold text?
WTF? did someone get fired and in a disgruntled act put this in the master copy? Because this to me looks intentional, and therefore designed.



(B) You are reading a novel and you see the following text:
opened the message he had taken off the spy's body. It contained
a string of numbers which didn't mean anything to him, but which could
be some sort of code:

1102 5564 9873 6048 9873 5468 8138 7315 5049 8738

Killory stowed the note and and headed back to base.
What conclusion can you draw about the origin of the bold text?
hm, looks like some kinda coded message to me aswell. Did he figure it out? Definitely designed by people.



(C) You are reading a history book and you see the following text:
During the 1940's, Soviet spies transmitted messages in blocks of numbers, using theoretically unbreakable One Time Pad encryption. This resulted in the transmission of messages such as the following: 1102 5564 9873 6048 9873 5468 8138 7315 5049 8738. Despite the theoretically secure nature of the code, a flaw in their execution allowed some of the messages to be decoded. Others, like the example given here, are theoretically impossible to solve.
What conclusion can you draw about the origin of the bold text?
try the same kind of decoding method that was used to decipher the soviet messages and see what happens. I'd say this falls under intelligent design.


(D) You are reading a children's instruction book, and you see the following text:
A simple code you can try is to put 1 for A, 2 for B, and so on. What does this say? 2 1 14 1 14 1. Try it!
What conclusion can you draw about the origin of the bold text?
ok let's see.. b, a, n.. aha! a pattern! Not very intelligent, but designed none the less. Since the last four numbers repeat and the letter sequence matches a word, i can deduce what the word says with a high percentage of certanty.

Posted: Sat Nov 19, 2005 9:44 pm
by Lothar
Foil wrote:Drakona, you had to make this one difficult for me by the use of that little word... "rigorously".
I can safely infer that the use of the word "rigorously" was intentional, because I happen to know Drakona has been studying Dembski's attempt to define a rigorous method for making design inferences. Personally, I think design can't be rigorously detected, because detecting design implies detecting purpose, and as we've all seen from the way people misread the purpose of others' posts, detecting purpose is inexact at best. But we can all detect design intuitively within fields where we have adequate experience, and I think we can do so with a high degree of accuracy.

---

I'm going to try my hand at all the examples presented so far:

after the loss of the fairy princess. Rodrigo worked hard to
1102 5564 9873 6048 9873 5468 8138 7315 5049 8738
find her, but the trail was cold. He grew up haunted by the knowledge
Even if the text appears right at a page break, it's not likely the book has 11.02 hajillion pages. The text serves no discernable purpose, and in fact detracts from the purpose served by the surrounding text. I infer that the author of the surrounding text did not intend for the number sequence to be there. It's too complex to be a simple typo, though. It may have been inserted in a number of ways, from a printer malfunction to a malicious/disgruntled employee, but I have insufficient evidence to determine the specifics.
opened the message he had taken off the spy's body. It contained
a string of numbers which didn't mean anything to him, but which could
be some sort of code:

1102 5564 9873 6048 9873 5468 8138 7315 5049 8738

Killory stowed the note and and headed back to base.
In this case, the string of numbers is referenced elsewhere in the sentence. It serves an obvious purpose -- it's a description of the message taken off the spy's body. Obviously, the author intended for the text to be present in the novel.

What's less clear is whether the specific numbers have actual meaning, or whether the author simply banged on the keyboard. Perhaps the rest of the novel will shed some light on that -- if the message is eventually decoded, then the specific number sequence was clearly designed; if not, we can't really say.
During the 1940's, Soviet spies transmitted messages in blocks of numbers, using theoretically unbreakable One Time Pad encryption. This resulted in the transmission of messages such as the following: 1102 5564 9873 6048 9873 5468 8138 7315 5049 8738. Despite the theoretically secure nature of the code, a flaw in their execution allowed some of the messages to be decoded. Others, like the example given here, are theoretically impossible to solve.
As before, the string of numbers serves an obvious purpose -- it's an example of the sort of messages being spoken about. Based on the description in the last sentence, I infer the string of numbers has an actual meaning, since the author says the specific example is theoretically impossible to break. What we don't know is whether the message is a real Soviet message or one the author created.
A simple code you can try is to put 1 for A, 2 for B, and so on. What does this say? 2 1 14 1 14 1. Try it!
While the pattern is not at all complex, it has an obvious purpose: it's meant to be decoded using the method described.

Overall, when looking for design in text, the key thing to look for is purpose or meaning. If the text serves some purpose (however obscure it might be) or conveys some information, then it's designed by some intelligent (or semi-intelligent) being. On the other hand, the sort of text that shows up in spam (like "Of take be emporium dune evil tidings", which just came into my inbox) contains no discernable meaning. It is at least being created by an algorithm that uses whole words and attempts to form something resembling sentences, but the text itself is undesigned.
A) You walk into a large auditorium and see a bunch of chairs arranged in clusters. When you count them, you find that each group consists of an odd number of chairs.
If it's less than about ten clusters and this is the only pattern (that is, it's not the stronger pattern "all 5's" or "all 5's and 7's"), the pattern isn't strong enough for me to try to conclude anything. I've walked into enough auditoriums in my life that it shouldn't be surprising to occasionally find 5 or 6 clusters of odd numbers of chairs just because the groups using the auditorium happened to break up that way on accident. But if it's 10 clusters, I'll at least be suspicious that maybe whoever was running the show asked people to make groups with an odd number. If it's 20 clusters, I'll be fairly certain it was intentional. And, of course, if it's 6 clusters of exactly 7 chairs, or 4 clusters of 5 and 4 clusters of 7, the pattern is more impressive and therefore I'm more likely to infer design.
B) You walk into the same auditorium. When you take a look at the chairs, you notice that their arrangement spells out the word "Hello!"
C) Same auditorium. This time, the chairs' arrangement spells out a passage from the soliloquy of Hamlet, Act III, Scene i.
It takes enough chairs to spell out "hello" that I infer design. The longer passage makes me more certain, but even the word "hello" should be enough to override any reasonable skepticism. Anyone claiming the word "hello" was acciental will be ridiculed heavily.
[pattern of dots...]
(A) Raisins on top of a salad.
We already know there's an intelligence involved in making the salad, because salads don't make themselves. I infer that the aforementioned intelligence arranged the raisins in a decorative manner.
(B) Fallen leaves on a driveway.
Definitely weird. The pattern, while somewhat imprecise, is too "cool" to happen just from leaves falling on to the driveway randomly. I infer the presence of an intelligence somewhere along the line, but not necessarily in the actual placement of the leaves.

Just as an example, one alternative explanation is that someone placed a sticky substance on the driveway in that particular pattern (perhaps they were painting a large sculpture or something) and the leaves stuck at a later time. The intelligence was involved in creating the sticky conditions, and the leaves just happened to get caught in them.
(C) Cows in a pasture.
How long has the pattern been there? Were the cows all walking around and they just happened, for one brief moment, to be spaced like that? Have they been spaced like that for hours? (You could ask the same question about the leaves being blown around above.) If the pattern is persistant, there's an intelligence at play -- creating low spots in the field in that arrangement, or tying the cows in certain spots, or something. If it's a transient pattern, I file it under "really weird things I've seen that I don't understand."
(D) Red cars in a full parking-lot, as seen from overhead.
There are a lot of parking lots in the world, and they tend to impose a pattern on the cars parked therein (people usually attempt to park between the lines, with marginal success.) Wouldn't surprise me to see a pattern like this happen completely randomly as people drive in and out of a parking lot.
(E) Craters on the moon.
Craters all of approximately the same size and shape laid out in this pattern? Sixfold symmetry doesn't happen on that scale at random. If the craters are small, I'd guess they were left by a single ship that had several landing points. If the craters are large, I'd guess maybe several probes (or rocks) were aimed at those spots in order to test... something. Don't know what though.
(F) Stars in the night sky.
How large is this pattern? Are the stars all equal brightness? Are there other, dimmer stars interspersed within this constellation / asterism?

This Hubble Deep Field picture shows about 1500 different galaxies. There are a LOT of stars there. It wouldn't surprise me if a pattern like thiat showed up somewhere in this picture (zoomed way, way in).

But, if this particular pattern was visible with the naked eye from earth, without any other significant stars in between, I'd have to wonder pretty seriously where it came from, and I'd guess it was either God or some very powerful aliens trying to make a cool pattern for some reason.
Very complicated ant colony.
Ants.

They have limited intelligence and limited ability to design, even communally, but both come into play somewhat. They're intelligent enough to dig in such a way that the colony doesn't collapse in on itself, and that requires them to make design decisions like "don't dig right next to where you've already dug".
A: You see a round shaped area in the grass where the grass is shorter than the rest of the grass.
Not enough information to say much... I've seen areas of grass like that due to basketballs being left in the grass, dogs being tied up where they can only dig up/tread on circular area, and so on.
B: You notice that the grass type in the shorter area is different from the grass surrounding it.
Could be planted, or could just be an invading grass type that has only been around long enough to spread a small distance.
C: You notice that there are several areas devoid of grass, consisting of sand in the longer grass, surrounding the shorter grass.
Doesn't change anything. Areas devoid of grass and filled with sand aren't terribly uncommon.
D: You notice a square pattern in the shorter grass.
Grass doesn't grow in square patterns by itself. Up until this point, you could have been describing a wilderness area that had different types of grass and patches of sand, but now it's clear design is in play.
E: You see a small, perfectly cylindrical hole in the shorter grass, with a flag sticking out of the hole.
Now we know what the purpose of the design was.
In an otherwise empty room, you see a lone typewriter in the center of the room with a single sheet inserted, only the single letter "A" typed on it.
We know (from history and common sense) that the room, typewriter, and sheet of paper were designed. The single character "A", though, could have been created by any number of forces -- a piece of tile falling from the ceiling, a janitor bumping the typewriter while dusting, someone attempting to send a secret message ("if I ever type a single 'a' on the typewriter, it means I'm in trouble!"), and so on. The pattern is simply too small to draw inferences from.


-----

Overall, through answering these questions, I think I've identified four things to look at when trying to discover design:
- the complexity of the pattern (especially in comparison to the size of the data from which the pattern was drawn -- the characters I LOVE YOU, alone on a page, imply design, but if they appear once within a billion pages of text, they're not so impressive.)
- the presence or absence of laws or mechanisms that tend to create similar patterns
- the presence or absence of an apparent purpose for the pattern. (I include information transfer and information storage here.)
- candidate intelligences for the creation of the pattern

Can anybody think of others?

-----

My scenario:
You read the text "harm no one"
(A) as part of an e-mail that reads "donkey make profound on harm no one cheese. Teacup be of cheerful. She"
(B) as part of a forum post that reads "I harm no one by smoking weed, so it should be legal."
(C) handwritten in the middle of an otherwise blank piece of paper left on your desk
(D) written on a tiny fragment of parchment a thousand years old (in a language appropriate for the time)
(E) as part of a larger piece of parchment a thousand years old, which reads "...should be restricted by past decrees of kings and prophets. But I say to you, harm no one, but do as you will."

Can you detect intelligence? What about purpose or original thought? What are other things you can or can't say about the text in different scenarios?

Posted: Sat Nov 19, 2005 9:54 pm
by Vertigo 99
Now take all of these situations and include the possibility that they can happen an infinite amount of times and you wouldn't know what the other occurances were.

IE, in the chair auditorium, there is an infinite number of other auditoriums you could walk into, but you can only walk into one auditorium and can never ever see the other auditoriums...

Posted: Sun Nov 20, 2005 12:07 pm
by El Ka Bong
My example of design appearing from basic elements;

This really happened, many times too: I used to sit sit by a canal of water, 4 feet deep with a cement bottom. It was summer the water was flowing at about 1 foot per second, and the sun was shining at an angle. Here's the amazing part:

Sunlight was being refracted by small whirlpools on the surface. These whirlpools were only a few inches accross, a few inches deep, and moved down stream on the surface as they formed.

The sunlight that shone into and was refracted by the small whirlpools, shone onto the bottom of the 4 foot deep canal and made patterns that seemed inexplicably 'complex'. These were rolling images of balls clumped together, golf-balls or profitto-rol balls (pastry) clumped like models of molecules in 3 dimensions. These images moved down stream with their respective whirlpool.

These images were so 3 dimensional I was startled and at first I couldn't prove where they originated. Their amazing transparent 3D shape and motions defied how simple the 'source' of their projection was; sunlight passing from air to a denser medium that is flowing and being moved in circles.

These images of translucent clumped balls or molecules was so magnificently rendered in 3D ! They had many axes of rotation and they 'tumbled' like they really were there on the canal bottom.. ! They were 10 times larger than the small whirlpool they were 'started by'.

This sunlight and whirlpool trick made patterns I had only previously seen as the models we in organic chemistry, those molecular models that use 'balls' to represent atomic radii of each element. Or imagine a profitto-rol cake broken up with chunks rolling by on the canal bottom; just transparent with shadows and light, not solid opaque 'balls'.

So I mused that maybe this optical trick had a paralel in how enegry becomes matter; something like, through the refraction of energy in a spinning whirlpool of 'matter' the emergent energy becomes projected into 'clumps' that look like atoms, or becomes mass. Are there any physicists or optical science students here that can explain this trick better ? ... Maybe this is just an example of the amazing complexity of the universe, never mind notoins of "design", but the discovery of those tumbling, translucent molecular forms projected on the canal bottom had me thrilled, baffled... and inspired.

Posted: Sun Nov 20, 2005 2:31 pm
by Lothar
Vertigo 99 wrote:Now take all of these situations and include the possibility that they can happen an infinite amount of times and you wouldn't know what the other occurances were.

IE, in the chair auditorium, there is an infinite number of other auditoriums you could walk into, but you can only walk into one auditorium and can never ever see the other auditoriums...
Statistically speaking, the number of other trials only matters in the case where seeing the phenomenon (like, the auditorium full of chairs spelling out a passage from Hamlet) is necessary for the existance of observers. If observers can only exist in universes where chairs randomly spell out passages from Hamlet, then it's sensible to believe the arrangement of chairs is random. But if the random arrangement of chairs into text doesn't relate to the existance of observers, then regardless of the number of universes that exist (even if it's infinite), it's irrational to attribute the chair arrangement to anything but intelligence.

"Infinite number of universes" is a good response to the argument that this universe had to be finely tuned to allow for life to exist. Life exists, so we must be in a universe of that type.

But it's a useless response to the argument that a bunch of chairs won't accidentally end up spelling out a passage from Hamlet. It's just as unlikely that we're in the universe where that would happen as it is that, if there's only one universe, that will happen in it. The event is still so unlikely that the only rational conclusion is to assume the involvement of an intelligence. (One person in 10^-big_number might be in a universe where the rational conclusion is actually wrong, but it's still the rational conclusion.)

----

Ka Bong, your example is of a complex pattern appearing as a result of basic law. What's being discussed here is how to identify design from certain patterns or observations. As I mentioned in my last post, mere complexity of a pattern is not evidence for design.

----

Let's get back to the game... I posted a scenario at the end of my last post, and others have posted theirs as well. Please respond to a scenario with answers (or relevant observations) of your own, and post your own scenario.

Posted: Sun Nov 20, 2005 6:19 pm
by Jeff250
My scenario:
Imagine a person that has been born in isolation on a remote tropical island where he has no contact with any human or any design of a human. Because he thus didn't spend his early childhood absorbing radiation from a PC monitor, he is quite the rational thinker. He speculates that other rational thinkers such as himself might exist, but, even if they do, he also doesn't know what their nature might be--whether or not they look like him, think like him, and act like him, or that perhaps he is truly a unique being.

Because of the nature of this small island, even though he has complete access to it, he has experienced very few things. Things bizarre and completely foreign to him regularly wash up on his island. Normally, these include but are not limited to exotic fruits, bizarre ocean dwellers, and strange plants.

Suppose that the currents permanently change one day and junk items begin washing up, such as perhaps broken electronics. At first glance, these items seem no more foreign to the island dweller than the other things that ordinarilly wash up. Generally, how might the island dweller detect intelligent design and prove that other rational beings exist on the planet?

Posted: Sun Nov 20, 2005 6:33 pm
by Jeff250
You read the text "harm no one"
(A) as part of an e-mail that reads "donkey make profound on harm no one cheese. Teacup be of cheerful. She"

-- I would suspect that it was a randomly generated message attempting to evade spam filters. Although the program that was used to generate the messages was intelligently designed, the message was not designed by an intelligent agent (?). Even though it has no ID, its purpose would be to trick spam filters.

(B) as part of a forum post that reads "I harm no one by smoking weed, so it should be legal."

-- I would suspect intelligent design in the message. His purpose then would be to demonstrate that smoking weed is a victimless crime in favor of its legalization.

(C) handwritten in the middle of an otherwise blank piece of paper left on your desk

-- I would still suspect intelligent design (because of meaningful language), but its purpose would be unknown, nor even if there was a purpose. It could have been misplaced trash.

(D) written on a tiny fragment of parchment a thousand years old (in a language appropriate for the time)

-- Same as above. I would still suspect design, but its purpose would be unknown, that is if it has a purpose.

(E) as part of a larger piece of parchment a thousand years old, which reads "...should be restricted by past decrees of kings and prophets. But I say to you, harm no one, but do as you will."

-- I would suspect intelligent design, and I would have a hazey view of the purpose. I might suspect that it is a political or philosophical commentary or decree.

Posted: Wed Nov 23, 2005 4:47 pm
by Lothar
Lothar wrote:moderator note

All off-topic comments (er, I guess I missed one... sorry) not relating directly to the ID game have been split off into this thread.

Further comments not following the initial rules of this thread ("[each] poster will give an opinion on whether the caused the object or occurance was designed, and then give his own hypothetical scenario.") should be posted in the other thread.

Posted: Thu Dec 01, 2005 12:29 am
by Drakona
Jeff250 wrote:My scenario:
Imagine a person that has been born in isolation on a remote tropical island where he has no contact with any human or any design of a human. Because he thus didn't spend his early childhood absorbing radiation from a PC monitor, he is quite the rational thinker. He speculates that other rational thinkers such as himself might exist, but, even if they do, he also doesn't know what their nature might be--whether or not they look like him, think like him, and act like him, or that perhaps he is truly a unique being.

Because of the nature of this small island, even though he has complete access to it, he has experienced very few things. Things bizarre and completely foreign to him regularly wash up on his island. Normally, these include but are not limited to exotic fruits, bizarre ocean dwellers, and strange plants.

Suppose that the currents permanently change one day and junk items begin washing up, such as perhaps broken electronics. At first glance, these items seem no more foreign to the island dweller than the other things that ordinarilly wash up. Generally, how might the island dweller detect intelligent design and prove that other rational beings exist on the planet?
That's a pretty broad question. Your post is the same as asking "by what principles can you make a design inference in a context-free environment"? Well if I knew that, I'd be famous and infamous by now. ;) But I'll take a stab at some possibilities.

Your island-dweller is forced to make inferences without a known context--he has no way to distinguish which things are sensible from which are strange except by analogy with his surroundings.

If, for example, a bowling ball washes up on his shore, I don't think he has any way to distinguish this as artificial--not if his island has coconuts and rocks. A bowling ball has no obvious purpose to him, nor does it seem a priori like something nature couldn't make (the material is a bit odd, but that's about it).

If a hemp bracelet washes up on his shore, he can identify this as artifical by analogy with his own activities. No doubt he himself has had practice using fibers or ropes of some sort on this island, so he knows that people tie knots. Nature, as far as he knows, doesn't really, or at least it doesn't do it a lot. Of course, most of the things that wash up on his island, he has no reason to think nature doesn't do... but this one at least he has reason to think people do do.

Suppose a Barbie doll washes up on his shore. He can identify this as artificial by its form and meaning. Nature doesn't generally take pictures or craft statues, and he knows this--and furthermore he recognizes the shape as um... okay, let's say it's a Ken doll. ;) He doesn't know a lot about nature, but given his limited knowledge, I think he's justified in thinking that someone else made this.

Suppose a (miraculously still-working) musicbox washes up on his shore. When he opens it, it plays music. To most people, this would trigger a design inference by the mechanicity of the device and its evident purpose. Unfortunately, our island-dweller is used to singing birds, regular stars and tides and sunsets, and so forth. Presuming that he hasn't already made a design inference about nature as a whole and begun praying to God, he has no particular reason to do so with the musicbox.

I note that in all of this he is severely constrained by the information available to him, and might as easily conclude that birds are designed as conclude that a piano wasn't. Alas, intricate nature--the world is just too big for him to comprehend. Almost certainly he's going to conclude everything is designed, as most primitive people did.



------------------------------------




Here's a hard one. Music is one of the areas of ID where it's clear to me that ID works, but it's absolutely impossible to articulate why.

You have never heard any of the following four midis before, unless you have the same very strange and obscure taste in music that I do. Suppose you download one from the internet. What can you say about evident design in the composition?

(For the curious, I'll post the actual origins of these, but in spoiler tags. On your honor not to peek until you have made an assessment.)



Song 1


Music algorithmically created based on the Julia fractal set. No intelligent action involved (that I know of) beyond the selection of instruments and algorithms and, of course, publishing this midi. From /www.hiddendimension.com/ .


---


Song 2

Song generated based on the digits of pi, though the author did some tweaking with harmonies and instruments to make it sound a little cooler. From my hard drive (original location lost).


---



Song 3

Just a weird composer. As far as I know, no randomness was involved in the production of this song beyond the composer's personality. I think this song is interesting because I find a design inference forceful despite the fact that I have a hard time "getting" the music. What in the world is the difference between this and the last one?


---



Song 4

"Primal Prayer" -- an old favorite from a midi composition competition site. Unfortunately the site and author are lost to me, but this song is fascinating (especially in this context) because despite its highly repetitive and unconventional nature... it makes sense.

Posted: Thu Dec 01, 2005 2:37 am
by Lothar
Here are the notes I took when listening. I took them as the songs played, so they're initial impressions followed by revised ideas. Comments in brackets were added at the time of this post. Everything is black so you won't read it until you've had a chance to form your own opinions.

song 1: initially seems designed. Repeats a particular line quite a few times. Only, the structure seems to fall apart as it goes along... and it's wacky. Listening through the whole thing, I wonder if it's algorithmic. [I was trying to figure out how to say the music sounded "fractal" without using the word fractal... and then it turned out the music really was fractal! Man, did I call that one!]

song 2: definitely designed. Strong counterpoint, harmonies seem to be on the right beats and right intensities. Not quite sure where the melody comes from though. It's almost like someone came up with a cool melody and then just stuck it on 3 instruments. [Apparently I caught exactly what part of the song was designed... since the melody really came from a natural source, and then harmonies and different instruments were carefully designed.]

song 3: had a real intro, and fits a style I already know. Sounds like jazz-reggae of some sort. Designed because it sounds like other stuff. Very relaxing. [A+ for me!]

song 4: harder to tell because there's rhythm but not melody. [written during the first 15 seconds of the song.] Still, the rhythm seems intentional... things build on each other. [written after perhaps 45 seconds to a minute.] Once the bass comes in, definitely good mood music. I could play DooM to this!


Overall, looks like I'm 4 for 4, with bonus points on the pi song for nailing the specifics. Looks like you *can* do ID on music, anyway (though I'm really glad she didn't put any Acid Bach into the mix!)

Posted: Thu Dec 01, 2005 8:47 am
by Pandora
hmmm... each of them sounded designed to me (and quite interesting as well). But my tastes in music might even be more whacky than yours...

Posted: Sun Dec 04, 2005 4:00 pm
by Foil
I had a similar reaction to the first two MIDIs as Lothar (maybe due to my background in math?).

In the first two, one can make a fairly confident guess that the selection of instruments/samples is intentional, since they fit well together.

Listening to the notes, however, there's definitely something about the first two that doesn't quite "fit" what we know as human music. There are some recognizable patterns which create a sense of rhythm, but they seem too "algorithmic", whereas the note variations don't seem to have the flow we're used to when listening to our favorite radio stations.


On a secondary note, it seems the "comment on the last scenario / create a new scenario" pattern has broken (I don't see any new scenarios since the last commentary), so here's a new one:

You're standing in the woods, waiting for a signal from your friend that all is clear to come out. You vaguely hear a high-pitched whistle, followed by a lower-pitched whistle. Is this:
(1) your friend, whistling to signal you? (intelligently designed)
(2) a bird, or some other animal?
(3) the wind whistling through the trees?
And how do you make this determination?
:wink: