iDesign @ UCI

Welcome Message To New Students

Interested in Origins?
Join the club.


Mission Statement

FAQ

Organization


MISSION STATEMENT:

iDesign Club at UCI seeks to foster scientific discussions regarding the origins of life and the universe. Theories such as Darwinian evolution, intelligent design, and creationism will be critically analyzed.


FAQ:

Q: WHAT IS THIS CLUB ABOUT?

Origins! We are interested in discussing alternative theories to the origins of biological structures. While the current mainstream theory in academia is Darwinian evolution, we would also like to discuss other viable ideas, such as intelligent design.

Q: WHO CAN BE A MEMBER OF THIS CLUB?

Anybody! Students of Biology, Chemistry, Physics, Mathematics, Computer Science, Engineering, Anthropology, and Philosophy may especially find this club intriguing. However, you do not need to have a science background to be an effective member of this club.

Q: WHEN AND WHERE ARE CLUB MEETINGS?

Please check blog entries for time and place.

Q: WHAT IS THE MEMBERSHIP FEE?

Nothing! There are no membership dues.

Q: IS THIS CLUB BIASED TOWARDS ONE SPECIFIC THEORY OF ORIGINS?

Perhaps. Ponder the name of this club. This club is ideologically the mirror of another club at UCI, the Students for Science and Skepticism. However, our main goal is to give a balanced view of the controversy regarding the origins of life so that students can come to an informed conclusion themselves.

Q: WHAT DOES THE LETTER "i" STAND FOR IN iDESIGN?

Good question -- the answer is intelligent.

Q: WHERE IS THE CLUB CONSTITUTION?

We adhere to the minimum constitution that was provided by the Dean of Students. In the future, we plan to draft a comprehensive constitution and bylaws.

Q: IS iDESIGN AFFILIATED WITH ANY ORGANIZATION?

No. However, we are friends with the IDEA Center


ORGANIZATION:

PRESIDENT:
Arthur
Information and Computer Science

VICE PRESIDENT:
Brian
Biology / English

DIRECTOR:
Andrew
English / Economics



Wednesday, June 15, 2005

TCS Makes Case For Design, Indirectly

As I noted in a previous post, Tech Central Station has an interesting article which is critical of intelligent design. The author recycles some standard evolutionist points (like ID == religion, ID's simplicity would stifle the scientific quest, etc.) and then presents what he calls "Scientific Intelligent Design," which he defines as the process of intelligently creating artificial life (using robotics, AI, etc) or augmenting existing life (transhumanism). The article concludes by saying that humans are really the intelligent designers. Let me point out a few things I liked and disliked.

No serious scientist believes the literal Biblical creation account, but many earnest and well-credentialed scientists do believe in Intelligent Design (ID), as a perspective on evolution. And ID, of course, is religiously inspired.

The author begins with an inaccurate overgeneralization of all those who believe in Genesis (for counterexamples, see people like Damadian, Carson, or the late Wilder-Smith). However, the author makes up lost ground with his honest acknowledgement that many scientists hold to ID. There are probably more ID sympathizers in the universities than we will ever know about. If we took a random poll of university professors, I estimate that 20% would at least give ID a fair hearing. The article then makes the inaccurate mapping of evolution => science and ID => religion. Actually, evolutionism (more broadly, naturalism) and ID are two interpretations of the same scientific evidence and both have metaphysical implications. It is simply not good science to automatically rule out design as a possible explanation for life's origin and diversity.

But it's a fallacy to argue that just because one person -- or even all the people of an era -- can't figure out how something works, therefore such mysterious workings are beyond any human comprehension, ever.

So the author is arguing that just because we can't figure out how some evolutionary processes work, that doesn't mean that we will never figure it out; thus, we should never resort to design as an explanation. However, this is a non-sequitur, since design is automatically ruled out from the beginning. An analogy might help. Right next to my computer is a TI-89 calculator. The TI-89 is probably one of the most useful computational tools that a student can have. Suppose I tried to detail the very origin of this calculator, and I constrained myself to non-design explanations. Is it a fallacy to state that a non-design explanation for the origin of a TI-89 is beyond human comprehension, ever? No. Now think of all the biological structures that are more complex and more elegant than a calculator. If after millions of dollars of research money and thousands of GSMM (graduate student man-months), we still cannot figure out the evolutionary pathway to complex biological structures, maybe we should reconsider the framework altogether. By the way, a "man-month" is the amount of work done by one person in one month.

And that's the problem with ID: it's simplistic. To argue that complex biological phenomena are "irreducibly complex" is to abandon the scientific quest.

Actually, many fields implicitly assume design without giving attribution. For example, artificial neural networks are based on a biological proof-of-concept: the brain. One of my professors, who is a evolutionist, once commented about how God must know linear algebra, since the networks in the brain can be modeled with matrix calculations. If some part of a biological structure is mysterious, an implicit assumption in biology is that there is some hidden purpose or functionality in that biological part that is waiting to be discovered. Design assumptions are implicitly made on a daily basis in biology. Thus, design actually furthers the scientific quest.

But whatever the motivations, from all directions, SID ["Scientific Intelligent Design"] is coming. In hardware, it's coming. In software, it's coming. And in wetware -- including the hot-button issue of stem cells from -- it's coming.

So he states that a revolution is coming in areas like AI and cloning. Here is where this article makes an unintended argument for intelligent design. The article acknowledges that human intelligence is used to design artificial life. But artificial life, a term that I am using loosely, is nowhere close to the complexity, power, and efficiency of real life. Robots cannot match the dexterity of your hands or your eyes or your feet.

Recently, I finished a small Matlab project on face recognition for one of my classes. I tried to get Matlab to classify different facial expressions. The project caused me to realize that humans have the innate ability to pick up the slightest facial cues to detect emotions. To test this out, go to a mirror and make a sad face. Then make a neutral face. There is very little difference in those two expressions, yet most humans can discriminate between the two. It is very hard for a computer to have this sort of discriminatory power.

So in remarkably similar fashion to my duck argument, I present another intuitive argument:
1. Actual life (including bugs, ducks, and humans) is currently more efficient, powerful, and complex than artificial life (robots, AI, etc).
2. If X is more efficient, powerful, and complex than Y,then probably more intelligent input went into the formation of X than Y.
3. A significant amount of intelligent input is needed to make artificial life.
4. A more significant amount of intelligent input is needed to make actual life.

Posted by Art at 11:53 PM

4 Comments:

Blogger wickenden said...
http://www.mwscomp.com/movies/grail/g-logic.htm
6/23/2005 9:24 AM
Blogger eeen said...
tragic
6/23/2005 10:03 AM
Blogger Art said...
Hi Paul,

Your probably right that "powerful" is not the best word to use (although I do refer to "discriminatory power" in the previous paragraph). As for efficiency, I think that the claim is correct -- that actual life curently uses less resources to accomplish a greater variety of tasks. Of course there may be some exceptions, but this seems to be the general case for now (until the field of robotics becomes more advanced).
6/28/2005 11:42 PM
Blogger Art said...
Hi Yanqui,

Thanks for giving a thorough feedback to this post! You make some good points here.

What math are you using to measure efficant/powerful/complex etc..? What science is this based on? I'd like to see your evidence that proves this because as far as I can tell this is an assumption, and a misguided one at that.

Yeah, it could be difficult to quantify and compare the 'efficiency' of actual life vs. artificial life. For instance, you make a good point in saying that a person cannot calculate PI as fast as a computer. True. But a calculator is very specialized, while a human can perform many different tasks. Thus, we need to turn to a more objective measure.

I quickly googled brain computation and I found an interesting, although dated, article. The article does propose one metric: MIPS (Millions of Instructions Per Second). The article estimates the human brain to operate at 100 million MIPS, which currently far exceeds the power of technology today. Another example is the bacterial flagellum, which some label as the "most efficient machine in the universe."

In a deductive argument it is ABSOLUTELY NECESSARY that the conclusion be impossible to escape if the premises are correct.

Yeah, it is better to make a probabilistic argument. As long as my first 3 points have a high probability of being true, point #4 would also be more likely to be true than false (we could use Bayes).

1. A rock uses less energy to hold down paper than does a person (a person uses energy even while resting).
2. if X is less efficant, poweful, and complex than Y, then probabbly less intelligent input went into the formation of X than Y.
3. No intelligence went in to making a rock.
Therefore (4) less than no intelligence went into making humanity.


I like your argument, but there is one minor flaw -- you did not constrain the boundary correctly. Let me summarize your argument:

1) rock < person
2) if X < Y, then i(X) < i(Y) where "i" is a measure of intelligent input.
3) i(rock) = 0
4) Therefore, i(person) = 0

Your conclusion (#4) does not follow since you are lower-bounding i(person) instead of upper-bounding it. This is because i(rock) < i(person).

Anyways, I hope you continue to contribute your thoughts to this blog, and I hope this blog has caused you to think more deeply about the issue of origins.
7/22/2005 9:35 PM

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iDESIGN BLOGROLL:

The Design Paradigm
Design Watch
Creation-Evolution Headlines
Telic Thoughts
Uncommon Descent
ID the Future
ID Plus
CreationEvolutionDesign
Evolution News
Dualistic Dissension
ID in the UK
ID Update
Intelligently Sequenced


PRO-DESIGN SITES:

Access Research Network
IDEA Center
UCSD IDEA Club
ISCID


PRO-EVOLUTION SITES:

Panda's Thumb
Talk Origins
Students for Science and Skepticism at UCI
NAS: Science and Creationism


PRO-CREATION SITES:

Answers in Genesis
Institute for Creation Research
A.E. Wilder Smith
Reasons to Believe
Baraminology News
CreationWiki


OTHER INTERESTING SITES:

American Scientific Affiliation
Richard Sternberg


ANTEATER LINKS:

University of California, Irvine
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Irvine Review
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Donald Bren School of Information and Computer Science
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