Specified complexity: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 23:09, 7 August 2023

Revision as of 20:15, 9 August 2023

Line 45:

</blockquote>

Dembski notes that the term "Law of Conservation of Information" was previously used by [[Peter Medawar]] in his book <cite>The Limits of Science</cite> (1984) "to describe the weaker claim that deterministic laws cannot produce novel information."<ref>[http://www.designinference.com/documents/2005.03.Searching_Large_Spaces.pdf "Searching Large Spaces: Displacement and the No Free Lunch Regress (356k PDF)] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150104032640/http://www.designinference.com/documents/2005.03.Searching_Large_Spaces.pdf |date=2015-01-04 }}", pp. 15-16, describing an argument made by [[Michael Shermer]] in ''How We Believe: Science, Skepticism, and the Search for God'', 2nd ed. (2003).</ref> The actual validity and utility of Dembski's proposed law are uncertain; it is neither widely used by the scientific community nor cited in mainstream scientific literature. A 2002 essay by Erik Tellgren provided a mathematical rebuttal of Dembski's law and concludes that it is "mathematically unsubstantiated."<ref>[http://www.talkreason.org/articles/dembski_LCI.pdf On Dembski's law of conservation of information] Erik Tellgren. talkreason.org, 2002. (PDF file)</ref>

==Specificity==

In a more recent paper,<ref>William A. Dembski (2005). [http://www.designinference.com/documents/2005.06.Specification.pdf ''Specification: The Pattern that Signifies intelligence''] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070728121523/http://www.designinference.com/documents/2005.06.Specification.pdf |date=2007-07-28 }}</ref> Dembski provides an account which he claims is simpler and adheres more closely to the theory of [[statistical hypothesis testing]] as formulated by [[Ronald Fisher]]. In general terms, Dembski proposes to view design inference as a statistical test to reject a chance hypothesis P on a space of outcomes Ω.

Dembski's proposed test is based on the [[Kolmogorov complexity]] of a pattern ''T'' that is exhibited by an event ''E'' that has occurred. Mathematically, ''E'' is a subset of Ω, the pattern ''T'' specifies a set of outcomes in Ω and ''E'' is a subset of ''T''. Quoting Dembski<ref>(loc. cit. p. 16)</ref>

Line 124:

| title = On Dembski's Law Of Conservation Of Information

| date = June 30, 2002

| author = Erik Tellgren}}</ref> Dembski responded in part that he is not "in the business of offering a strict [[mathematical proof]] for the inability of material mechanisms to generate specified complexity".<ref>William A. Dembski, (Aug 2002). [http://www.designinference.com/documents/2002.08.Erik_Response.htm ''If Only Darwinists Scrutinized Their Own Work as Closely: A Response to "Erik"''] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130226010345/http://designinference.com/documents/2002.08.Erik_Response.htm |date=2013-02-26 }}.</ref> [[Jeffrey Shallit]] states that Demski's mathematical argument has multiple problems, for example; a crucial calculation on page 297 of ''No Free Lunch'' is off by a factor of approximately 10⁶⁵.<ref name=shallit>[[Jeffrey Shallit]] (2002) [http://www.cs.uwaterloo.ca/~shallit/nflr3.txt A review of Dembski's ''No Free Lunch'']</ref>

Dembski's calculations show how a simple [[smooth function]] cannot gain information. He therefore concludes that there must be a designer to obtain CSI. However, natural selection has a branching mapping from one to many (replication) followed by pruning mapping of the many back down to a few (selection). When information is replicated, some copies can be differently modified while others remain the same, allowing information to increase. These increasing and reductional mappings were not modeled by Dembski. In other words, Dembski's calculations do not model birth and death. This basic flaw in his modeling renders all of Dembski's subsequent calculations and reasoning in ''No Free Lunch'' irrelevant because his basic model does not reflect reality. Since the basis of ''No Free Lunch'' relies on this flawed argument, the entire thesis of the book collapses.<ref>Thomas D. Schneider. (2002) [http://www.lecb.ncifcrf.gov/~toms/paper/ev/dembski/specified.complexity.html Dissecting Dembski's "Complex Specified Information"] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20051026135240/http://www.lecb.ncifcrf.gov/~toms/paper/ev/dembski/specified.complexity.html |date=2005-10-26 }}</ref>

Line 155:

* [http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/information/dembski.html Information Theory and Creationism William Dembski] by Rich Baldwin, from Information Theory and Creationism, compiled by Ian Musgrave and Rich Baldwin

* [http://www.bostonreview.net/BR27.3/orr.html Critique of ''No Free Lunch'' by H. Allen Orr] from the Boston Review

* [https://schneider.ncifcrf.gov/paper/ev/dembski/specified.complexity.html Dissecting Dembski's "Complex Specified Information"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170317075913/https://schneider.ncifcrf.gov/paper/ev/dembski/specified.complexity.html |date=2017-03-17 }} by Thomas D. Schneider.

* [http://www.talkreason.org/articles/jello.cfm William Dembski's treatment of the No Free Lunch theorems is written in jello] by No Free Lunch theorems co-founder, [[David Wolpert]]

* [http://evolutionlist.blogspot.com/2006/05/genetic-id-and-explanatory-filter.html The Evolution List - Genetic ID and the Explanatory Filter] by Allen MacNeill.