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Detecting intelligence via algorithm

Somehow I believe that search if this turns up nothing, very few (if any) believers in intelligent design will have their beliefs shaken. (Plus how do you prove the negative? No matter how long the search has gone, they've never proven that they won't succeed someday...) Including the poster PaV on that site who will have long since forgotten that comment.

Conversely if that analysis turns something up, it is very likely that there will be a materialistic explanation of the result. Therefore it will not convince anyone who doesn't believe in intelligent design that intelligent design is correct.

Therefore this does not lead to any useful test of intelligent design.

Incidentally about intelligent design, I think that Terry Pratchett said it best with, Or, to put it another way the existence of a badly put-together watch proved the existence of a blind watchmaker. I want the octopus' eyes!

Cheers,
Ben
 
Sounds like the algorithm is merely taking a different approach to analyzing DNA: The strands evolved in such a messy way, it may not be easy for creatures such as us (even as intelligent as we are) to do the job ourselves. We might need computer algorithms to help us. And I doubt any algorithm is going to do a perfect job. Unlike language, DNA is not "required" to be structured in any delineable way.

The bottom line: This algorithm is not proving Intelligent Design nor Irreducible Complexity. It could just as easily demonstrate that DNA evolved in a very messy manner.

If we were to find a clearly detectable message, such as "Hecho in Heaven", in our DNA (and I mean not a "make your own rules" Bible-Code-style type of message), then that could possibly indicate evidence of an intelligent designer. But, we would also need further collaborative evidence before we can make the Designer a scientific fact.

(Fortunately, everywhere scientists (and I mean real scientists, not people who glance at something and without investigating it, give up the ship) have looked to find evolution, they eventually found it. So, it is a safe bet that DNA is the product of evolution, itself.)
 
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Ben Tilly said:
Somehow I believe that search if this turns up nothing, very few (if any) believers in intelligent design will have their beliefs shaken.
...
Conversely if that analysis turns something up, it is very likely that there will be a materialistic explanation of the result. Therefore it will not convince anyone who doesn't believe in intelligent design that intelligent design is correct.

Therefore this does not lead to any useful test of intelligent design.
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All you've offered is your opinions ("I believe", "it is very likely") and haven't addressed the science.

Why not comment on what you believe the materialistic explanation should be, and give some scientific detail.
 
I can't figure out what this algorithm has to do with ID at all. What does an algorithm for finding patterns in sequences of symbols have to do with Itelligent Design?

Am I missing something obvious here?

Dr. Stupid
 
"Despite having no knowledge of the English vocabulary or syntax, the programme managed to identify 80 per cent of the words and separate them back into sentences."

That is, it was able to detect design.
 
T'ai Chi said:
"Despite having no knowledge of the English vocabulary or syntax, the programme managed to identify 80 per cent of the words and separate them back into sentences."

That is, it was able to detect design.
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It was able to detect structure in the sequence of characters.

In the case of DNA, is there any reason to believe that such structure must arise from intelligent design rather than evolution by natural selection?
 
T'ai Chi said:
"Despite having no knowledge of the English vocabulary or syntax, the programme managed to identify 80 per cent of the words and separate them back into sentences."

That is, it was able to detect design.
Click to expand...

....because the program was designed to do so?
 
JamesM said:
It was able to detect structure in the sequence of characters.
Click to expand...

Yes, structure of the English language.

In the case of DNA, is there any reason to believe that such structure must arise from intelligent design rather than evolution by natural selection?
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No one is saying it "must". What one is saying is that it is an interesting area of study.
 
There are certain things we know, by observation. Things like: A muskrat guards his musk (couldn't resist, because I watched some of the Wizard of Oz 3 nights in a row on TBS earlier this week. :) ), or that electrons fly around a nucleus, or that a directional energy field is created by magnetism, and other such basic tenants. But is there any mystery really as to how these things came into being? By 'mystery', I mean, would any logic dictate that first there was one actual physical cause that then led automatically to the other happening, without any intelligence having to dictate it? Or, do we simply (under)THINK that no intelligence was necessary... when in fact perhaps every single thing... every manipulation of change or addition, required some intelligence before it (whatever it is), occurs(ed)?

This is something I wrestle with (what I just said). I wonder if this gets glossed over to where we believe stuff occuring just has to occur the way it does, just because. And maybe a retort like "just because..." is not really intellectually true.

We have to ask ourselves if we think that everything indeed does, or will, someday, be able to be explained in the way that we are currently able to explain that which we DO know. Or, instead, if indeed, when you go all the way back to the beginning of time, that there was some intelligent force out there that first had to set a plan in action, only for one time in history, so as to be able to create a reality which then this intelligent force allowed to grow and expand in certain engineered ways which led to where we are now.
 
T'ai Chi said:
"Despite having no knowledge of the English vocabulary or syntax, the programme managed to identify 80 per cent of the words and separate them back into sentences."

That is, it was able to detect design.
Click to expand...

But what has this got to do with detecting God aka ID?
 
Originally Posted by Darat
But what has this got to do with detecting God aka ID?

Response by T'ai Chi:
Well, design anyway.

The story it analyzed
Click to expand...

I am open to this (argument) going either way. It is intriguing.

T'ai,
It is interesting that it (the program?) had no knowledge of the English vocabulary? Yet it organized the words into a structured English sentence? If so, just what WAS the program programmed to do, or to be capable of? It MUST have been capable, in the program, to be able to do it. But how could it if it didn't know the English language? Are you getting this story right?
 
Darat said:
Well I knew he was an Englishman but.... ;)
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and God is displeased with America for they bastardised his language verily with false spellings and wicked pronunciations

:D
 
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