Of MathGrrl, CSI and Being Purposely Obtuse

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Over on Uncommon Descent MathGrrl had a guest post on Calculating CSI. She said:

In the abstract of Specification: The Pattern That Signifies Intelligence, William Demski asks “Can objects, even if nothing is known about how they arose, exhibit features that reliably signal the action of an intelligent cause?” Many ID proponents answer this question emphatically in the affirmative, claiming that Complex Specified Information is a metric that clearly indicates intelligent agency.

As someone with a strong interest in computational biology, evolutionary algorithms, and genetic programming, this strikes me as the most readily testable claim made by ID proponents. For some time I’ve been trying to learn enough about CSI to be able to measure it objectively and to determine whether or not known evolutionary mechanisms are capable of generating it. Unfortunately, what I’ve found is quite a bit of confusion about the details of CSI, even among its strongest advocates.

My first detailed discussion was with UD regular gpuccio, in a series of four threads hosted by Mark Frank. While we didn’t come to any resolution, we did cover a number of details that might be of interest to others following the topic.

CSI came up again in a recent thread here on UD. I asked the participants there to assist me in better understanding CSI by providing a rigorous mathematical definition and showing how to calculate it for four scenarios:

1.A simple gene duplication, without subsequent modification, that increases production of a particular protein from less than X to greater than X. The specification of this scenario is “Produces at least X amount of protein Y.”

2.Tom Schneider’s ev evolves genomes using only simplified forms of known, observed evolutionary mechanisms, that meet the specification of “A nucleotide that binds to exactly N sites within the genome.” The length of the genome required to meet this specification can be quite long, depending on the value of N. (ev is particularly interesting because it is based directly on Schneider’s PhD work with real biological organisms.)

3.Tom Ray’s Tierra routinely results in digital organisms with a number of specifications. One I find interesting is “Acts as a parasite on other digital organisms in the simulation.” The length of the shortest parasite is at least 22 bytes, but takes thousands of generations to evolve.

4.The various Steiner Problem solutions from a programming challenge a few years ago have genomes that can easily be hundreds of bits. The specification for these genomes is “Computes a close approximation to the shortest connected path between a set of points.”

There is more but I will focus on that part.

In the abstract of Specification: The Pattern That Signifies Intelligence, William Demski asks “Can objects, even if nothing is known about how they arose, exhibit features that reliably signal the action of an intelligent cause?” Many ID proponents answer this question emphatically in the affirmative, claiming that Complex Specified Information is a metric that clearly indicates intelligent agency.

Archaeologists, forensic scientists and SETI researchers agree with what Dembski said. Their jobs depend on it.

The point of CSI as an indicator is that every time we have observed CSI and knew the cause it has always been via some designing agency. And we have never observed Mother Nature producing CSI.

Next MathGrrl wants a "rigorous mathematical definition of CSI". I am not sure what she is looking for- an equation? Computer programs contain CSI, is there a mathematically rigorous definition for computer programs?

But anyway- Claude Shannon provided the math for information. Specification is Shannon information with meaning/ function (in biology specified information is cashed out as biological function). And Complex means it is specified information of 500 bits or more- that math being taken care of in "No Free Lunch".

That is it- specified information of 500 bits or more is Complex Specified Information. It is that simple.

Another confusion for MathGrrl is her refusal to understand that CSI pertains to ORIGINS. I provided the quotes from Dembski and Meyer but she refuses to accept it. Willful ignorance is not a good way to try to learn about something.

Why is this important? She brings up gene duplications. Gene duplications in already existing organisms. That is cheating as gene duplications can only be called blind watchmaker processes if living organisms arose from non-living matter via blind watchmaker processes- all about origins.

The point being is a gene duplication in a design scenario would not increase the existing CSI as it would be part of it. And if the blind watchmaker produced living organisms from non-living matter then you don't need gene duplications, ID is already falsified.

Which brings us to her equivocal use of "evolutionary mechanisms". The point of CSI is that blind watchmaker processes cannot generate it it from scratch and "evolutionary" mechanisms can, for all she knows, be design mechanisms.

She thinks that just because we understand the process it means it is a blind watchmaker process. She also thinks that ID requires a designer to come in and physically change the DNA. I'm telling you this person is fried. To wit- we understand the process of executing computer programs- the paths the signals take to produce a result. Yet no one would say computers run via blind watchmaker processes. And I don't need a computer programmer here to make the decisions the program can make without intervention. IOW she doesn't even understand the first thing about Intelligent Design.

OK, moving on. In her point 3 she has a digital organism of 22 bytes. 22 bytes = 176 bits. That is 176 bits of information carrying capacity so depending on the specificity that will determine the amount of specified information.

So that is how you do it- count the bits and check on the variability. If you have 500 bits but any arrangement can cause the same effect then it ain't specified.