Michael J. Behe's Blog, page 132

Mars and the “false fossils” problem

No, no, this is NOT a broadcast from Moonbat Central! “False” fossils are objects that look like fossils
but aren’t:

A group of astrobiologists from the Universities of Edinburgh and Oxford have identified dozens of processes that “can produce structures that mimic those of microscopic, simple lifeforms that may once have existed on Mars.”

News, “Will the fossils we find on Mars be fakes?” at Mind Matters News (December 4, 2021)

Dr Sean McMahon, Chancellor’s Fellow in Astrobiology at the University of Edinburgh’s School of Physic and Astronomy, said: “At some stage a Mars rover will almost certainly find something that looks a lot like a fossil, so being able to confidently distinguish these from structures and substances made by chemical reactions is vital. For every type of fossil out there, there is at least one non-biological process that creates very similar things, so there is a real need to improve our understanding of how these form.”

University of Edinburgh, “Life on Mars search could be misled by false fossils, study says” at ScienceDaily (November 16, 2021) The paper is open access.

It won’t be surprising if we hear heated controversies about whether new finds on Mars are really fossils but that’s a step in the right direction.

Takehome: It happens on Earth too. The trouble is, simple life forms leave only evidence, not messages and the evidence can be hard to identify.

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Sabine Hossenfelder asks, why do we think antimatter asymmetry is a problem?

Hossenfelder thinks that the difference between matter and antimatter that enables the universe to be more than just radiation is made-up problem:

Because physicists make a living from solving problems, so they have an incentive to create problems where there aren’t any. For anti-matter this works as follows. You can calculate that to correctly obtain the amount of radiation and matter we see today, the early universe must have contained just a tiny little bit more matter than anti-matter. A tiny little bit means a ratio of about 1.0000000001.

If it had been exactly one, there’d be only radiation left. But it wasn’t exactly one, so today there’s us.

Particle physicists now claim that the ratio should have been 1 exactly. That’s because for some reason they believe that this number is somehow better than the number which actually describes our observations. Why? I don’t know. Remember that none of our theories can actually predict this number one way or another. But once you insist that the ratio was actually one, you have to come up with a mechanism for how it ended up not being one. And then you can publish papers with all kinds of complicated solutions to the problem which you just created.

Sabine Hossenfelder, “Where is the anti-matter?” at BackRe(Action) (December 4, 2021)

Isn’t she overlooking something? Why shouldn’t it have been one exactly? Are we trying to avoid something here? Why do so many asymmetries lead to our existence?

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France’s Biology Year: Reimagining evolution as horizontal gene transfer

Catherine Jessus, former director of the French CNRS’s Institute of Biological Sciences, anticipating the launch of France’s Biology Year, has some interesting (non-flapdoodle) things to say about biology, answering questions:

Why do you think we should focus on the drivers of evolution in the coming decades?

C. J.: It was long thought that new species were created through point mutations in genes. But in fact, this is just one of many ways in which new organisms can come about. The main source of innovation lies in the modification of large sections of genomes, which happens, for example, via the exchange and fusion of genomes between species. For instance, we now know that the first eukaryotic cell emerged through the combination of an archaeon and a bacterium. The bacterium that had entered the archaeon gradually lost its autonomy, allowing the formation of the membrane compartments, especially the mitochondria, that characterise eukaryotes. The same thing applies to the emergence of plants: a eukaryote entered into symbiosis with a bacterium that was able to use light to produce energy, giving rise to the first microalgae. And it was this same mechanism that explains why mammals have a placenta that enables the embryo to develop within the mother’s body.

You mean mammals are also the result of gene exchange?

C. J.: Exactly. The placenta developed thanks to the transfer of genes from a retrovirus to an animal that laid eggs. This particular retrovirus was able to produce proteins causing cell fusions, and it was these proteins that gave rise to the placenta. Without this little retrovirus, we’d still be laying eggs! Examples like these demonstrate the importance of the exchange of genetic material between living beings, something that was long neglected.

Laure Cailloce, “The new frontiers of the living world” at CNRS News (November 7, 2021)

It’s probably not anywhere near as simple and certain as Catherine Jessus is making out. Viruses don’t likely do enough to create placentas. But the main point is, this definitely isn’t yer old biology teacher’s Split-the-Desk Rant for Darwin!!! Stay tuned.

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Reflections on the original Sokal hoax

There are apt to be more of these hoaxes, whether or not they’ll make any difference, so we might as well recall the details:

Some 25 years ago, consider the Sokal Affair, also called the Sokal Hoax. It was a scholarly hoax performed by Alan Sokal, a physics professor at New York University and University College London. In 1996, he submitted an article to Social Text, a ‘revered’ journal of postmodern/cultural studies. The submission was an experiment to test the journal’s standards of rigorously analysing text for original, authentic material. However, the paper was a spoof, riddled with nonsense. It was called, Transgressing the Boundaries: Towards a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity, and was published in the journal’s spring/summer 1996 “Science Wars” issue. It was alleged at the time that leftist, anti-intellectual sentiment in liberal arts departments (especially English departments) caused the increase of deconstructionist thought, which eventually resulted in a deconstructionist critique of science. So much for deconstructionism.

So, to repeat, how did we get to this bleak situation? Dwight Longenecker, recently wrote in The Stream (Nov 17): “It’s not too hard to figure out what has gone wrong. It’s called relativism. Relativism is the idea that there is no such thing as truth, or if there is, it is impossible to state the truth accurately and authoritatively. In other words, dogma—the definite expression of truth—is impossible. Relativism has been creeping into our society like an insidious cancer for the last 70 years.”

Kenneth Francis, “Ever Since Derrida” at New English Review (December 20, 2021)

It’s one thing for scientists to want to go Woke, if they do. It’s another thing to expect the same status when facts, as well as truth, are forever negotiable.

You may also wish to read: Jonathan Bartlett: Are Sokal hoaxes really helping reform science? In Bartlett’s view, serious problems exist in today’s journals but the hoaxers seem so certain of their view that they don’t approach demonstrating it in a scientific way.

Hat tip: Ken Francis, co-author with Theodore Dalrymple of The Terror of Existence: From Ecclesiastes to Theatre of the Absurd

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L&FP, 48: [Former?] New Atheist Stefan Molyneaux and his “Universally Preferable Behavior” (2007) illustrate inescapably binding, intelligible and identifiable first duties of reason

I ran across this work, and find an interesting discussion, starting with a fairly roundabout way to show what a first, undeniable principle or truth — branch on which we all must sit stuff — is like::

Given that every human action – including making philosophical statements – is chosen in preference to every other possible action, arguing that preferences do not exist requires a preference for arguing that preferences do not exist, which is a self-contradictory statement. [p. 33]

So, next, we have another roundabout way of summarising duties/oughts as universally prefer-ABLE behaviour:

The proposition before us is thus: can some preferences be objective, i.e. universal?

When I say that some preferences may be objective, I do not mean that all people follow these preferences at all times. If I were to argue that breathing is an objective preference, I could be easily countered by the example of those who commit suicide by hanging themselves. If I were to argue that eating is an objective preference, my argument could be countered with examples of hunger strikes and anorexia.

Thus when I talk about universal preferences, I am talking about what people should prefer, not what they always do prefer. [p. 33]

The is-ought gap emerges, and we see that a property of the objective is its universal force.

Given a known issue or two likely to come up as a premise of objections, let’s note from the next page:

Since human beings cannot communicate psychically, all debates necessarily involve the evidence of the senses. Writing presupposes sight; talking requires hearing; Braille requires touch. Thus any proposition that depends upon the invalidity of the senses automatically self-destructs. [p. 34, thus, self-referential incoherence and grand delusion exhibit absurdities and found argument by reducing a key alternative to absurdity. Those who wish to deny that our senses can and often do credibly access a world independent of our individual perceptions, opinions etc, should take due note.]

Next, the duty to truth appears:

If you correct me on an error that I have made, you are implicitly accepting the fact that it would be better for me to correct my error. Your preference for me to correct my error is not subjective, but objective, and universal. You don’t say to me: “You should change your opinion to mine because I would prefer it,” but rather: “You should correct your opinion because it is objectively incorrect.” My error does not arise from merely disagreeing with you, but as a result of my deviance from an objective standard of truth. Your argument that I should correct my false opinion rests on the objective value of truth – i.e. that truth is universally preferable to error, and that truth is universally objective. [p. 35]

Going on, we come to:

Simply put, morals are a set of rules claiming to accurately and consistently identify universally preferable human behaviours, just as physics is a set of rules claiming to accurately and consistently identify the universal behaviour of matter . . . .

if I argue against the proposition that universally preferable behaviour is valid, I have already shown my preference for truth over falsehood – as well as a preference for correcting those who speak falsely. Saying that there is no such thing as universally preferable behaviour is like shouting in someone’s ear that sound does not exist – it is innately self-contradictory. In other words, if there is no such thing as universally preferable behaviour, then one should oppose anyone who claims that there is such a thing as universally preferable behaviour. However, if one “should” do something, then one has just created universally preferable behaviour. Thus universally preferable behaviour – or moral rules – must be valid.

Syllogistically, this is:

1] The proposition [being challenged] is: the concept “universally preferable behaviour” must be valid.

2] Arguing against the validity of universally preferable behaviour [however, inadvertently] demonstrates [so, acknowledges] universally preferable behaviour.
[____________________________________________________ ]

3] Therefore no argument against the validity of universally preferable behaviour can be valid.

We see here how first duties are baked into arguments, and so are inescapable, intelligible and identifiable. Even, the would be objector appeals to such.

However, this is not a demonstration of why as a matter of logic of being, we are morally governed. It simply shows that we cannot escape such and so we see the chain, inescapable as part of reason, so inescapably true, so too first principles.

We cannot but be absurd if we are found sawing off the branch on which we must all sit just to argue. From duties to truth we readily find a duty to right reason as the means to truth and a recognition that our rational, cognitive faculties have a naturally evident baked in end, to move toward truth, accurate description of reality. This leads to the duty to warrant claims of known truth, i.e. to see to it that they are well founded as reliable and credibly true as we need to rely on them. Here, this is clearly part of wider duty to prudence. Then, we recognise conscience and duty to sound conscience rightly guided as described. onward, we observe neighbours who are as we are and so the mutual duties of fairness, justice etc. All of which can be drawn out in detail. In short, we may list, Ciceronian first duties,

1: to truth,
2: to right reason,
3: to warrant and wider prudence,
4: to sound conscience,
5: to neighbour,
6: so too to fairness, and
7: to justice,
. . . ,
x: etc.

Ciceronian? Yes, try De Legibus:

—Marcus [in de Legibus, introductory remarks,. C1 BC, being Cicero himself]: . . . we shall have to explain the true nature of moral justice, which is congenial and correspondent [36]with the true nature of man [–> we are seeing the root vision of natural law, coeval with our humanity] . . . . With respect to the true principle of justice, many learned men have maintained that it springs from Law. I hardly know if their opinion be not correct, at least, according to their own definition; for . “Law (say they) is the highest reason, implanted in nature, which prescribes those things which ought to be done, and forbids the contrary” . . . . They therefore conceive that the voice of conscience is a law, that moral prudence is a law [–> a key remark] , whose operation is to urge us to good actions, and restrain us from evil ones . . . . According to the Greeks, therefore, the name of law implies an equitable distribution of goods: according to the Romans [–> esp. Cicero, speaking as a leading statesman], an equitable discrimination between good and evil. The true definition of law should, however, include both these characteristics. And this being granted as an almost self–evident proposition, the origin of justice is to be sought in the divine law of eternal and immutable morality. This indeed is the true energy of nature, the very soul and essence of wisdom, the test of virtue and vice.

[–> this points to the wellsprings of reality, the only place where is and ought can be bridged; bridged, through the inherently good utterly wise, maximally great necessary being, the creator God, which adequately answers the Euthyphro dilemma and Hume’s guillotine argument surprise on seeing reasoning is-is then suddenly a leap to ought-ought. IS and OUGHT are fused from the root]

This indeed is the true energy of nature, the very soul and essence of wisdom, the test of virtue and vice

Where do the roots of such moral government come from?

The answer is, the root of reality, the only level where is and ought can be bridged without gaps. Reality’s root must be a necessary being of finite remove with causal capability to be a well-spring of worlds, including worlds with morally governed creatures. So too, to adequately found such government (given the longstanding gap and the Euthyphro debates), inherently good and utterly wise, i.e. maximally great person emerges.

Altogether, a familiar figure, the God of ethical theism. (Cf. No. 47.) But if one objects, one needs to provide a comparatively powerful candidate root without opening up gaps or absurdities: _________ . Harder to do than may be at first imagined.

Now, too, these explorations were sparked by noticing News’ clip from a recent Salon Article denouncing the New Atheists who have gone all libertarian or the like:

New Atheism appeared to offer moral clarity, it emphasized intellectual honesty and it embraced scientific truths about the nature and workings of reality. It gave me immense hope to know that in a world overflowing with irrationality, there were clear-thinking individuals with sizable public platforms willing to stand up for what’s right and true — to stand up for sanity in the face of stupidity.

Fast-forward to the present: What a grift that was! Many of the most prominent New Atheists turned out to be nothing more than self-aggrandizing, dogmatic, irascible, censorious, morally compromised people who, at every opportunity, have propped up the powerful over the powerless, the privileged over the marginalized. This may sound hyperbolic, but it’s not when, well, you look at the evidence. So I thought it might be illuminating to take a look at where some of the heavy hitters in the atheist and “skeptic” communities are today. What do their legacies look like? In what direction have they taken their cultural quest to secularize the world?

Phil Torres, “Godless grifters: How the New Atheists merged with the far right” at Salon (June 5, 2021)

See the import of the bolded points, illustrating the first duties in action on the part of one who, presumably, has no way to bridge IS-OUGHT within his apparent evolutionary materialistic scientism?

So, the issue of inescapable, self evidently true first duties of reason is not as easily brushed aside as some may imagine. END

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Computer engineers look at design tradeoffs in the human body

Navigating the knowns and the unknowns, computer engineers must choose between levels of cost and risk against a background with some uncertainty:

Robert J. Marks: … I’m thinking of the design of human beings. We’re still not perfect. I don’t know if there are unintended contingencies or not, but things like COVID, for example., We weren’t designed to handle COVID, especially old people like me, or even something similar, like eating hemlock, the way that Socrates was killed. We also see defects like ibirth defects, diseases such as cancer and things of that sort. Isn’t this an example of contingencies which we would prefer not to see in the design of humans?

Note: The great philosopher Socrates (470–399 BC) drank hemlock after being condemned for corrupting young people by encouraging them to ask too many questions.

Sam Haug: The way I like to think about how human beings fail in certain circumstances falls into two categories. The first category is that our creator intentionally did not design us to withstand this particular contingency. When designing a human being or any incredibly complex system, there are some design trade-offs. You can design a human being to be able to resist the effects of eating hemlock, for example, but the cost for doing that may be large.

For example, you would need to include an entirely new metabolic pathway to account for that particular poison. And doing that for any number of poisons may just not be feasible in the size of the human body. I don’t claim to know about all the design implications of making a human being, but I’m sure that there was some level of intentionally in not designing human being to withstand some things for trade-off reasons…

News, “The Pareto tradeoff — choosing the best of a mixed lot” at Mind Matters News (December 3, 2021)

Takehome: Computer engineers Robert J. Marks, Sam Haug, and Justin Bui look at the constraints that underlie any engineering design — even the human body.

Here’s are Parts 1 and 2 of Episode 159, featuring Robert J. Marks and Justin Bui

If not Hal or Skynet, what’s really happening in AI today? Justin Bui talks with Robert J. Marks about the remarkable AI software resources that are free to download and use. Free AI software means that much more innovation now depends on who gets to the finish line first. Marks and Bui think that will spark creative competition.

Have a software design idea? Kaggle could help it happen for free. Okay, not exactly. You have to do the work. But maybe you don’t have to invent the software. Computer engineer Justin Bui discourages “keyboard engineering” (trying to do it all yourself). Chances are, many solutions already exist at open source venues.

In Episode 160, Sam Haug joined Dr. Marks and Dr. Bui for a look at what happens when AI fails. Sometimes the results are sometimes amusing. Sometimes not. They look at five instances, from famous but trivial right up to one that nearly ended the world as we know it. As AI grows more complex, risks grow too.

In Episode 161, Part 1, Marks, Haug, and Bui discuss the Iron Law of Complexity: Complexity adds but its problems multiply. That’s why more complexity doesn’t mean more things will go right; without planning, it means the exact opposite. They discuss how programmers can use domain expertise to reduce the numbers of errors and false starts.

In Part 2 of Episode 161, they look at the Pareto tradeoff and the knowns and unknowns:
Navigating the knowns and the unknowns, computer engineers must choose between levels of cost and risk against a background with some uncertainty. Constraints underlie any engineering design — even the human body.

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Canadian journal pleads: Make science skepticism great again

As the cultural edifices of western civilization are torn down one by one, there’s one institution whose prestige and authority continues to grow – science. Respect for scientists has, in many quarters, been transformed into a form of worship. And questioning their authority akin to heresy. Yet this confidence is often misplaced. A disturbing number of scientists have been proven to be charlatans, their methods slipshod and their results bogus. Surveying numerous disciplines, Peter Shawn Taylor explains the implications of what’s known as the “replication crisis” and reveals how science is trying to fix itself. Even non-scientists should be paying attention.

Peter Shawn Taylor, “Make Skepticism Great Again: The Replication Crisis in Science and What it Means for the Rest of Us” at C2C Journal (December 2, 2021)

Actually, non-scientists should be paying even more attention:

Take the claim that climate change will alter the behavior of tropical fish in troubling ways: Catnip to people whose air fare to conferences is paid, but…

But despite repeated attempts at replicating Munday and Dixson’s work, the team produced only null results. “We couldn’t find any evidence of behavioural effects of ocean acidification,” Raby says in an interview. Another team member, Dominique Roche, a researcher based at Carleton University in Ottawa and Université de Neuchâtel in Switzerland, notes that in hindsight the entire thesis never even made much sense. That’s because at night coral reefs already emit levels of CO2 similar to what Munday and Dixson were warning about far into the future. “And the fish sleep inside the reefs,” observes Roche. If rising levels of CO2 were going to change the behaviour of fish, it should already be evident.

After several years of meticulously documented research, in 2020 the seven-member team, including Raby and Roche, published a comprehensive refutation of the “Crazy Nemo” thesis in the prestigious science journal Nature. Some of the team went further and requested various international funding bodies investigate Munday and Dixson for academic misconduct since their work contained statistical anomalies generally associated with data fraud. “There are irregularities in the data that need to be investigated,” states Roche firmly.

The failed replication effort and calls for an investigation led to an explosion of controversy within the former clubby confines of marine biology. Munday and Dixson issued an angry refutation, declaring the replication study itself to be hopelessly flawed. An ally of the pair tweeted the accusation that “cruelty is the driving force of the work” of the replicators. Raby accepts this animosity as part of the process. “It’s pretty common for the person whose work has been refuted to attack the replication effort,” he shrugs.

Peter Shawn Taylor, “Make Skepticism Great Again: The Replication Crisis in Science and What it Means for the Rest of Us” at C2C Journal (December 2, 2021)

Fish then, the rest of us today. It’s getting to seem like a bad religion.

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Evolution and the Second Law

Note: The video Why Evolution is Different (below) further expands on the ideas in this article.

The Underlying Principle behind the Second Law

In a 2000 Mathematical Intelligencer article [1] I claimed that:

The second law of thermodynamics–at least the underlying principle behind this law–simply says that natural forces do not cause extremely improbable things to happen, and it is absurd to argue that because the Earth receives energy from the Sun, this principle was not violated here when the original rearrangement of atoms into encyclopedias and computers occurred.

One reader noted in a published reply [2] to my article that any particular long string of coin tosses is extremely improbable, so my statement that “natural forces do not cause extremely improbable things to happen” is not correct.   This critic was right, and I have since been careful to state (for example in a 2013 Biocomplexity article [3]) that the underlying principle behind the second law is that

Natural (unintelligent) forces do not do macroscopically describable things that are extremely improbable from the microscopic point of view. 

Extremely improbable events must be macroscopically (simply) describable to be forbidden; if we include extremely improbable events which can only be described by an atom-by-atom (or coin-by-coin) accounting, there are so many of these that some are sure to happen.  But if we define an event to be “macroscopically describable” when it can be described in m or fewer bits, there are at most 2m macroscopically describable events.  Then if we repeat an experiment 2k times and define an event to be “extremely improbable” if it has probability less than 1/2n, we can set the probability threshold for an event to be considered “extremely improbable” so low (n >> k+m) that we can be confident that no extremely improbable, macroscopically describable events will ever occur.  And with 1023 molecules in a mole, most anything that is extremely improbable from the microscopic point of view will be impossibly improbable.  If we flip a billion fair coins, any particular outcome we get can be said to be extremely improbable, but we are only astonished if something extremely improbable and simply (macroscopically) describable happens, such as “only prime number tosses are heads” or “the last million coins are tails.”

Temperature and diffusing carbon distribute themselves more and more randomly (more uniformly) in an isolated piece of steel because that is what the laws of probability at the microscopic level predict:  it would be extremely improbable for either to distribute itself less randomly, assuming nothing is going on but heat conduction and diffusion.  The laws of probability dictate that a digital computer, left to the forces of nature, will eventually degrade into scrap metal and it is extremely improbable that the reverse process would occur, because of all the arrangements atoms could take, only a very few would be able to do logical and arithmetic operations.

This principle is very similar to William Dembski’s observation [4], widely used by intelligent design proponents, that you can identify intelligent agents because they are the only ones that can do things that are “specified” (simply or macroscopically describable) and “complex” (extremely improbable).   Any box full of wires and  electronic components could be said to be complex, but we only suspect intelligence has organized them if  the box also performs a specifiable function, such as “receiving TV signals and displaying the pictures on a screen.”

2. Extension to Open Systems

So does the origin and evolution of life, and the development of civilization, on a previously barren planet violate the more general statements of the second law of thermodynamics?   It is (literally) hard to imagine anything which more obviously and spectacularly violates the underlying principle behind the second law than the idea that four fundamental, unintelligent, forces of physics alone could rearrange the fundamental particles of physics into computers, science texts, nuclear power plants and Apple iPhones.  But of course materialists point out that all current statements of the second law apply only to isolated systems, for example, “In an isolated system, the direction of spontaneous change is from an arrangement of lesser probability to an arrangement of greater probability” and “In an isolated system, the direction of spontaneous change is from order to disorder” [5]. 

Although the second law is really all about probability, materialists avoid the issue of probability by saying that evolution does not technically violate the above statements of the second law because the Earth receives energy from the sun, so it is not an isolated system.   But in [3] and again in a 2017 Physics Essays article [6] I pointed out that the basic principle underlying the second law does apply to open systems, you just have to take into account what is crossing the boundary of an open system in deciding what is extremely improbable and what is not.   In both I generalized the second statement cited from [5] above to:

If an increase in order is extremely improbable when a system is isolated, it is still extremely improbable when the system is open, unless something is entering which makes it not extremely improbable.

Then in [6] I illustrated this tautology by showing that the entropy associated with any diffusing component X (if X is heat this is just thermal entropy) can decrease in an open system, but no faster than it is exported through the boundary.   In other words, the “X-order” can increase in an open system, but no faster than X-order is imported through the boundary. I had first published this analysis in my reply “Can ANYTHING Happen in an Open System?” [7] to critics of the Mathematical Intelligencer article and again in an Appendix of a 2005 John Wiley text, The Numerical Solution of Ordinary and Partial Differential Equations [8] and again in [9].

3. Application to Our Open System

In “Can ANYTHING Happen in an Open System?” [7] I applied this more general principle to our open system and concluded:

If we found evidence that DNA, auto parts, computer chips and books entered through the Earth’s atmosphere at some time in the past, then perhaps the appearance of humans, cars, computers and encyclopedias on a previously barren planet could be explained without postulating a violation of the second law here… But if all we see entering is radiation and meteorite fragments, it seems clear that what is entering through the boundary cannot explain the increase in order observed here.

Now let’s consider just one specific event that has occurred on Earth that seems to be extremely improbable: “From a rocky, lifeless planet, there arose over time a spaceship capable of carrying passengers safely to the moon and back.”   This is certainly macroscopically describable, but is it extremely improbable from the microscopic point of view?  A materialist would have to argue that it only seems extremely improbable, but it really isn’t.   He could argue that a few billion years ago a simple self-replicator formed by natural chemical processes, and that over millions of years natural selection was able to organize the duplication errors made by these self-replicators into intelligent, conscious, humans, who were able to build rockets that could reach the moon and return safely. 

I would counter that we with all our advanced technology are still not close to designing any “simple” self-replicator, that is still pure science fiction.   When you add technology to such a machine, to bring it closer to the goal of reproduction, you only move the goal posts, as now you have a more complicated machine to reproduce.  So how could we believe that such a machine could have arisen by pure chance?  And suppose we did somehow manage to design, say, a fleet of cars with fully automated car building factories inside, able to produce new cars, and not just normal new cars, but new cars with fully automated car-building factories inside them.   Who could seriously believe that if we left these cars alone for a long time, the accumulation of duplication errors made as they reproduced themselves would result in anything other than devolution, and eventually could even be organized by selective forces into more advanced automobile models?  (Maybe after a few billion years, even into intelligent, conscious cars??)   So we really have no idea how living species are able to pass their complex structures on to their descendants without significant degradation, generation after generation, much less how they evolve even more complex structures.

4. Conclusions

Materialists have developed various ways—most notably the absurd “compensation” argument [6]—to argue that evolution does not violate the more general statements of the second law as found in physics texts.   All attempt to avoid the issue of probability altogether and, as the video Why Evolution is Different  brings out, could equally well be used to argue that a tornado running backward, turning rubble into houses and cars, would not violate it either.   But there is only one way to argue that what has happened on Earth does not violate the fundamental principle underlying the second law—the principle behind every other application of this law.   And that is to say what they really believe, but do not want to say:  that it only seems impossibly improbable, but it really is not, that, under the right conditions, the influx of stellar energy into a planet could cause atoms there to rearrange themselves into nuclear power plants and digital computers and encyclopedias and science texts, and spaceships that could travel to other planets and back safely. 

References:

1.  Sewell, Granville. “A Mathematician’s View of Evolution,” The Mathematical Intelligencer, Vol 22, No. 4, 5-7, 2000. (available at https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/BF03026759)

2.  Davis, Tom. “The Credibility of Evolution,” The Mathematical Intelligencer, Vol 23, No. 3, 2001.

3.  Sewell, Granville. “Entropy and Evolution,” Biocomplexity, Vol 2013, No. 3, 2013.  (available at http://dx.doi.org/10.5048/BIO-C.2013.2)

4.  Dembski, William. The Design Inference, Cambridge University Press, 2006.

5.  Ford, Kenneth.  Classical and Modern Physics, Xerox College Publishing, 1973.

6.  Sewell, Granville.  “On ‘Compensating’ Entropy Decreases,” Physics Essays, Vol 30, 70-74, 2017.  (available at https://dx.doi.org/10.4006/0836-1398-30.1.70)

7.  Sewell, Granville.  “Can ANYTHING Happen in an Open System?” The Mathematical Intelligencer, Vol 23, No. 4, 8-10, 2001.

8.  Sewell, Granville.  The Numerical Solution of Ordinary and Partial Differential Equations, second edition, John Wiley and Sons, 2005.

9.   Sewell, Granville.  “Entropy, Evolution and Open Systems,” in Biological Information: New Perspectives, Robert Marks, editor, World Scientific Publishing Company, 2013 (available at https://dx.doi.org/10.1142/9789814508728_0007)

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Jonathan Bartlett: Are Sokal hoaxes really helping reform science?

The evidence is mixed. The current prank on Higher Education Quarterly prompts some questions:

… a proper hoax must illustrate more than just acceptance of falsified data. It has to illustrate acceptance of wrong reasoning about that data. Or, at minimum, the data must be so obviously wrong that any worthwhile reviewer would be able to spot it.

However, there are other requirements of a proper experiment that the “Sokal squared” hoaxers seem to have left out. In order to show that the social science journals they targeted are more problematic than science journals, they would have needed a control group. Note that none of the Sokal hoaxers tried submitting nonsense to a science journal.

Even other Darwinists often complain about “just-so” stories in evolutionary biology, and especially in evolutionary psychology. So why did the hoaxers not dream up an equivalently outrageous just-so biology story to see if it would pass peer review? Were they afraid to know the results? History says that, as long as you are proposing an evolutionary “just so” story, there is almost no idea that is too absurd to be published in even the topmost journals.

News, “Are Sokal hoaxes really helping reform science?” at Mind Matters News (December 2, 2021)

Takehome: In Bartlett’s view, serious problems exist in today’s journals but the hoaxers seem so certain of their view that they don’t approach demonstrating it in a scientific way.

You may also wish to read: Twenty years on, aliens still “cause global warming” Over the years, the Jurassic Park creator observed, science has drifted from its foundation as an objective search for truth toward political power games. Michael Crichton’s 2003 warning about corrupt peer review in science has proved true during the COVID-19 crisis. (Jonathan Bartlett)

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Why is the omicron COVID-19 virus so weird?

Experts disagree. Here’s why:

Some think the virus might have hidden in rodents or other animals, rather than people, and therefore experienced different evolutionary pressures that selected for novel mutations. “The genome is just so weird,” says Kristian Andersen, an infectious disease researcher at Scripps Research, pointing to its medley of mutations, many of which have not been seen before in other variants.

“It is interesting, just how crazily different it is,” says evolutionary biologist Mike Worobey of the University of Arizona, Tucson. Although he favors an immunosuppressed person as the source of Omicron, Worobey notes that 80% of white-tailed deer sampled in Iowa between late November 2020 and early January 2021 carried SARS-CoV-2, according to a recent preprint. “It does make me wonder if other species out there can become chronically infected, which would potentially provide this sort of selective pressure over time.”

Kai Kupferschmidt, “Where did ‘weird’ Omicron come from?” at Science (Where did ‘weird’ Omicron come from?)

It’s too early, we are told, to rule anything out.

Thought: Maybe lots of viruses are weird but we don’t pay much attention to most of them.

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