Michael J. Behe's Blog, page 55

July 10, 2022

At Mind Matters News: Dartmouth physicist slams the Matrix idea that life is an aliens’ sim

A number of prominent people have taken philosopher Nick Bostrom’s idea that our universe is a computer sim seriously. But he says, among other things:

For Bostrom’s argument to work, a key assumption is that advanced intelligences will have an interest in simulating their ancestors — in this case, us. Why would they, exactly? Would they expect to gain some new information about their reality by looking at their evolutionary past? It seems to me that being so advanced, they would have collected enough knowledge about their past to leave them with little interest in this kind of simulation. Looking forward will interest them much more. They may have virtual reality museums, where they could go and experience the lives and tribulations of their ancestors. But a full-fledged, resource-consuming simulation of an entire Universe? This sounds like a colossal waste of time and energy. – Marcelo Gleiser, “The Simulation Hypothesis Is a Dangerous Illusion” at Big Think (July 6, 2022)

News, “Dartmouth physicist slams Matrix idea that life is an aliens’ sim” at Mind Matters News (July 10, 2022)

Takehome: Marcelo Gleiser dismisses the notion for physics reasons but he also objects to the way it casts doubt on free will, which we need to tackle our problems.

You may also wish to read:

Theoretical physicist shows why the sim universe is pseudoscience It’s a lot of fun in science fiction and some scitech celebs buy in. But Sabine Hossenfelder and others explain why it’s fiction. One problem is, computers can’t simulate human thought because it is often non-computational, which means it is something computers can’t do, by definition.

and

How can we be sure we are not just an ET’s simulation? A number of books and films are based on the idea. Should we believe it? We make a faith-based decision that logic and evidence together are reasonable guides to what is true. Logical possibility alone does not make an idea true.

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Published on July 10, 2022 20:01

Just for fun: Tree climbing toads surprise scientists in Britain

Toads aren’t supposed to be like this:

Volunteers surveying dormice and bats in trees have made the unexpected discovery of over fifty common toads in nest boxes and tree cavities at least 1.5 metres high.

Until now, common toads were thought to be terrestrial. The highest toad in this study was found three metres up a tree — and scientists say there is a chance the toads might be venturing even higher.

This is the first time that the tree climbing potential of amphibians has been investigated at a national scale.

The surprising discovery was made during a survey to search for hazel dormice and bats as part of the National Dormouse Monitoring Programme and the Bat Tree Habitat Key project…

Nida Al-Fulaij, Conservation Research Manager at PTES said: “We couldn’t believe what we found. We’re used to discovering woodland birds and other small mammals in nest boxes but we hadn’t considered finding amphibians in them.”

University of Cambridge, “Toads surprise scientists by climbing trees in UK woodlands” at ScienceDaily (July 7, 2022) The paper is open access.

Why? Researchers suggested avoiding predators, looking for food, and avoidance of parasites.

This one is an American toad but it is climbing a tree so we can get some sense of how the toad does that:

Oh, and — as we’re here for fun anyway — from The Babylon Bee, Mattel’s latest … pregnant Ken:

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Published on July 10, 2022 19:44

At Mind Matters News: Is information physical? It depends on what you mean by physical…

David Snoke

University of Pittsburgh physicist David Snoke: You’ve read a book in order but can’t know if it was written in that order. Maybe the author started with pivotal Chapter 5, then wrote Chapter 1:

Essentially by definition, good information-carrying systems are intrinsically history-erasing systems. Let me expand on this. Deterministic processes favor one state over another and remove contingency. Deterministic processes say only this outcome is possible, and the other ones are not. So a deterministic process forces things into a certain state.

[Dr. Snoke goes on to talk about the difficulty that information systems create when we infer design in a system. Information erases its history so if you don’t know the history, you can only infer the design. But that doesn’t show that there is no design.]

For example, if you are given a book and you read the book, you will not be able to deduce what order the chapters are written in. You might assume the author wrote them in order. But they might not have. They might have started out with a really good idea for Chapter 5, then gone back and said, “I need to write Chapter 1 to introduce this.” I write papers like this all the time. I write the conclusion first, then I go back and write other parts and so on. Or I’ll describe the figures, then I’ll generate the figures.

There is no way to deduce from a set of information, how it was generated, almost by definition, because the information-carrying medium erases all history. Because it’s non-deterministic. Because it allows for contingency. So the very fact that allows many states as possibilities means that it doesn’t carry a history of how that was generated. In general, it’s not something you get just from the physical aspects of the novel itself.

News, “Is information physical? It depends on what you mean by physical…” at Mind Matters News (July 10, 2022)

Takehome: Information makes things happen but, curiously, it erases its own history. You’ve read a book in order but can’t know if it was written in that order. Maybe the author started with pivotal Chapter 5, then wrote Chapter 1. Design of any kind does not come with a history included.

You may also wish to read: Information theory: Evolution as the transfer of information Information follows different rules from matter and energy, which might change the way we see evolution. A pair of researchers have introduced an Information Continuum Model of Evolution (ICM) which takes into account that information is immaterial.

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Published on July 10, 2022 19:19

Bari Weiss addresses the University of Austin about the need for new “Founders” for the United States

As she hopes the students will become. Her talk tackles many issues but here’s what she has to say about free speech:

3. To be a founder means to defend freedom of speech.

“Free speech” is not just a slogan. It is a tool that is essential for the free exercise of the mind, for the ability to search for truth. The only way to get to the truth is to have the freedom to think freely and to speak clearly. Without free speech, there is no truth. No innovation. No ability to persuade or take risks or to make new things. Free speech—allowing horrible things or shocking things to be argued—is a radical value and one that has been the foundation for American success.

Free speech also means refusing compelled speech. It means refusing to speak untruths, either about yourself or anyone else, no matter the comfort offered by the mob.

So do not genially accept the lies told to you.

For example: that Abraham Lincoln’s name on a public school or his likeness on a statue is white supremacy. (It is not; he is a hero.) Or that looting has no victims (untrue) and that small-business owners can cope anyway because they have insurance (nonsense). Or that America is evil. (No, it is the last hope on Earth.)

If possible, be public and vocal in rejecting claims you know to be false.

Cowardice is contagious—but so is courage. And your singular example may serve as a means of transmission.

Bari Weiss, “The New Founders America Needs” at Common Sense (July 10, 2022)

Note: Weiss was hired by the New York Times to broaden its perspective a bit but ended up getting driven out when she tried. The Woke very much need an echo chamber, not a debate.

You may also wish to read: New university in Texas, aiming to restore scholarly debate, surviving so far As a counter to Woke Uniquack.

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Published on July 10, 2022 19:10

Robert J. Marks: Artificial intelligence, worshipped as God, is no ordinary deity!

( Non-Computable You (Discovery Institute Press, 2022) by Robert J. Marks is available here.)

Robert J. Marks: Not only will we be reborn into new, immortal silicon bodies but rules regarding theft don’t seem to apply anymore…

This is not your everyday deity! Unlike the uncreated Creator of Judeo-Christian belief, Levandowski’s god is not eternal. The AI church requires “funding research to help create the divine AI itself.”

And apparently the AI church has no equivalent of the ten commandments. Especially the commandment about stealing. In his day job, Levandowski developed self-driving cars. He moved from Google’s self-driving car company, Waymo, to Uber’s research team. Then, in 2019, Levandowski was indicted for stealing trade secrets from Google. Before leaving Google in 2016, he copied 14,000 files onto his laptop. Uber fired him in 2017 when they found out.

In 2020, Levandowski pled guilty and was sentenced to eighteen months in prison. He was also ordered to pay a $95,000 fine and $756,499.22 to Google. (One wonders where the 22 cents came from.) The judge in the case, William Alsup, observed that “this is the biggest trade secret crime I have ever seen. This was not small. This was massive in scale.” Levandowski later declared bankruptcy because he owed Google an additional $179 million for his crime. His church folded.

Levandowski was granted a full pardon by Donald Trump on Trump’s last day in office. In Christianity, forgiveness involves repentance and accepting the sacrifice of Jesus Christ on the cross as payment. In the AI church, forgiveness apparently comes from Donald Trump.

Robert J. Marks, “Artificial intelligence, worshipped as God, is no ordinary deity!” at Mind Matters News (July 10, 2022)

Takehome: The AI church folded in a scandal. But the dream that AI will write better AI, achieve superintelligence, and turn us all into gods, lives. It can’t die. Call it the Silicon Apple if you want.

You may also wish to read: The President pardons the founder of a church that worships AI. On his last day in office, departing President Trump pardoned Anthony Levandowski. Who is Levandowski? He started a church that worships AI. He explained it to the IRS. But that wasn’t all.

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Published on July 10, 2022 18:52

July 9, 2022

Letter at The Guardian: Darwin got sexual selection wrong

The Guardian doesn’t seem to be letting up: Having already published a critique of Darwinism, they continue question Darwin. Here’s a letter they published, critiquing his sexual selection theory:

The question isn’t whether or not we need a new theory of evolution (The long read, 28 June); it’s why it has taken so long to bring the old one into the 21st century. Anchor bias, the difficulty of dislodging the first thing we learn about a topic, makes it challenging for biologists to accept and evaluate experimental data that doesn’t play by Darwin’s rules.

Natural selection had many fathers, including Darwin’s own grandfather, Erasmus. But sexual selection is exclusively Darwin’s, and is the theory most in need of a second look. The failure to update the theory of sexual selection by incorporating recent genetic breakthroughs and viewing the process through a female lens has left us with a seriously flawed theory of human evolution.

Heather Remoff, “How Charles Darwin got sexual selection wrong” at The Guardian (July 8, 2022)

Heather Remoff is the author of What’s Sex Got To Do With It? (2022).

She seems like another witness to the fact that one can question Darwin today without getting cancelled.

Darwinian evolutionary biologist Jerry Coyne is, of course, not pleased: In the end, Remoff is tilting at two windmills that have already fallen. Her attack on Darwin is wrongheaded since Darwin’s correctness is not the issue in Buranyi’s piece and because female preference was already a crucial part of Darwin’s theory. And her claim that it was only the “female lens”, used recently, that helped us understand sexual selection, is also misleading. Female preference has been considered by evolutionists since 1871.Her attack on Darwin is wrongheaded since Darwin’s correctness is not the issue in Buranyi’s piece and because female preference was already a crucial part of Darwin’s theory. And her claim that it was only the “female lens”, used recently, that helped us understand sexual selection, is also misleading. Female preference has been considered by evolutionists since 1871.”

The ground is shifting under his feet.

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Published on July 09, 2022 19:10

Robert J. Marks: Some infinities are bigger than others but there’s no biggest one

Marks: Georg Cantor came up with an ingenious proof that infinities can differ in size
even though both remain infinite:

Cantor called the countable infinite, the infinity of all counting numbers, ℵ0. ℵ is the Hebrew letter aleph. The number of points on a line segment, a bigger infinity, is denoted by ℵ1. We are immediately prompted to ask if there is an even bigger infinity? The answer is yes. ℵ2 can be thought of as all of the set of points, squiggles, clumps of points, and combinations thereof that can be written in a square.

Cantor showed that a bigger infinity can always be constructed by taking the set of all subsets of a lower infinity. In general, there are 2M subsets of a set with M elements. If there are 3 elements in a set, there should be 23 =2×2×2=8 subsets. The eight subsets are A, B, C, AB, AC, BC, ABC and the null set. So a higher infinity than ℵn is the set of all subsets of ℵn . ℵn+1 is equal to 2 raised to the power of ℵn.

So there is no biggest infinity! A larger infinity can always be constructed.

Robert J. Marks, “Some infinities are bigger than others but there’s no biggest one” at Mind Matters News (July 8, 2022)

Takehome: In Marks’s view, infinity is a beautiful — and provable — theory in math that can’t exist in reality without ludicrous consequences. (Thus the immaterial human mind is capable of creating things that don’t exist in material reality.)

( Non-Computable You (Discovery Institute Press,
2022) by Robert J. Marks is available here.)

Here are all five parts — and a bonus:

Part 1: Why infinity does not exist in reality. A few examples will show the absurd results that come from assuming that infinity exists in the world around us as it does in math. In a series of five posts, I explain the difference between what infinity means — and doesn’t mean — as a concept.

Part 2. Infinity illustrates that the universe has a beginning. The logical consequences of a literally infinite past are absurd, as a simple illustration will show. The absurdities that an infinite past time would create, while not a definitive mathematical proof, are solid evidence that our universe had a beginning.

Part 3. In infinity, lines and squares have an equal number of points Robert J. Marks: We can demonstrate this fact with simple diagram. This counterintuitive result, driven by Cantor’s theory of infinities is strange. Nevertheless, it is a valid property of the infinite.

Part 4. How almost any numbers can encode the Library of Congress. Robert J. Marks: That’s a weird, counterintuitive — but quite real — consequence of the concept of infinity in math. Math: Almost every number between zero and one, randomly chosen by coin flipping, will at some point contain the binary encoding of the Library of Congress.

and

Part 5: Some infinities are bigger than others but there’s no biggest one Georg Cantor came up with an ingenious proof that infinities can differ in size even though both remain infinite. In this short five-part series, we show that infinity is a beautiful — and provable — theory in math that can’t exist in reality without ludicrous consequences.

You may also wish to read: Yes, you can manipulate infinity in math. The hyperreals are bigger (and smaller) than your average number — and better! (Jonathan Bartlett)

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Published on July 09, 2022 18:44

At Evolution News: The Problem of Phosphorus

David Coppedge extends extends Michael Denton’s illumination of the prior fitness characteristics of Earth to sustain life as we know it.

Michael Denton’s series of books about our Privileged Species, culminating with The Miracle of Man, brings together an astonishing collection of natural “coincidences” that make human life possible. These finely tuned parameters, from the nature of water to the composition of earth’s atmosphere and crust, to the metals that inhabit key enzymes, and many more, leave readers with little choice but to conclude with Denton that the scientific evidence converges on a prior fitness for life on earth. Unlike astrobiologists who are content to discuss mere habitability, Denton proposes that these details appear designed beforehand for complex beings like us, with bodies and brains equipped to invent and use technology.

Yet among the chemical elements he considers in detail in his books, there is one he passed over comparatively lightly: the element phosphorus (P).

Taurus.AgAn Essential Element

Phosphorus, element 15 in the periodic table, is essential for energy (ATP, adenosine triphosphate), the genetic code with its sugar-phosphate backbone, cell membranes, hormones, bones and teeth, and much more. After describing the exquisite fitness of phosphates for energy in cells in The Miracle of the Cell, Denton quotes Edward O’Farrell Walsh who summed up this element’s importance: “It is no exaggeration to say ‘without phosphorus: no life.’”

And yet the bioavailability of P sets up a problem. While it is the 11th most abundant element in the crust, it tends to be concentrated in certain isolated places, far from the plants and animals that need it. This is obvious from the fact that we need to buy fertilizers for our gardens and farms. Phosphate is the middle number in the familiar triad of elemental ratios in store-bought fertilizers such as “21-10-3” which stands for amounts of N, P, and K in the product. Nitrogen can be obtained from the atmosphere, and potassium (K), while also not ubiquitous, is more abundant than phosphorus.

Worse, most inorganic phosphorus (Pi) is locked up in insoluble rocks like apatite and phosphorite. (Elemental P is highly reactive; Pi is almost always found in phosphates, PO4, which are what life uses.) Although small concentrations can be found globally, 70 percent of the commercially available phosphate deposits are in Morocco and China. Readers may recall hearing at the outset of Russia’s invasion of the Ukraine that 28 percent of the world’s fertilizer is exported by those two countries, threatening global food shortages.

Humans have known for millennia that fertilizing plants increases their yield. Once phosphorus was identified as an essential element in fertilizer, people went looking for it. Bat guano served the purpose in the 19th and 20th centuries, but demand for phosphorus has risen sharply since the mid 1950s, and guano is not sufficiently abundant for the global demand. The world has 8 billion hungry people to feed, not counting all the other species in the biosphere needing phosphate.

An Instructive Primer

Last month, Current Biology published an instructive primer by Yves Poirier, Aime Jaskolowski, and Joaquín Clúa on “Phosphate acquisition and metabolism in plants.”

Current economically exploitable P-rich deposits could be exhausted within 50–100 years, with the mining of sub-optimal phosphate rock potentially extending production for an additional 200–300 years. Regardless of the various estimates, P-rich deposits are finite resources, and their limited availability will eventually become a key issue for long-term food security. [Emphasis added.]

With these disturbing facts in mind, how can we fit the phosphorus problem into Denton’s hypothesis of prior fitness for complex life?

Design to the Rescue

PAE (Pi Acquisition Efficiency) refers to the suite of strategies plants use for acquiring inorganic phosphate. Once they have it, they also optimize its use in cells.

The authors describe sets of design principles (they call them adaptations) for optimizing phosphate.

These strategies are all mediated by molecular machines arranged in cooperative systems that monitor and regulate P levels.

Animals possess numerous strategies to maintain optimal phosphorus levels as well. They, too, have organs and systems highly dependent on P for their genetic code, energy, membranes, signaling — the whole toolkit plants have, and more. Vertebrates need P for bones and teeth (hydroxyapatite). Animals return the favor to plants through their urine and manure — recycling phosphorus naturally long before humans invented agriculture. Leaf litter and decay of plant material also recycles P to the soil. It doesn’t all have to come from Morocco and China.

For humans, the richest sources of bioavailable Po are dairy, red meat, poultry, seafood, legumes, and nuts (Harvard Nutrition Source). In modern times, additives of inorganic phosphorus, used for preservatives, contribute a non-trivial amount of Pi to the human diet, which is readily absorbed. P toxicity is rare because the body is very effective at removing excess P through the kidneys. 85 percent of our phosphorus is stored in bones and teeth. These stores serve as a backup reservoir for P in times of phosphorus deficiency.

Scientific materialists who deny any prior fitness of the planet for life must surely wonder how earth got its original supply of phosphorus and the other requisite elements. They must believe that the solar nebula had the right concentration of each element, and that they all ended up in the shallow crust to be available for land organisms. The evolutionary timeline, with its rapid colonization of the oceans and rich biomes like tropical rainforests, coral reefs, and montane forests, does not picture a biosphere starved for phosphorus.

The success of the biosphere through time provides ample circumstantial evidence of adequate availability of phosphorus from the beginning, despite P’s uniqueness as a limiting factor for life in solid form. Studying the phosphorus cycle in detail — from astronomy through geology through biology — would be a good research project for design-favoring scientists. It would eliminate a potential exception to Denton’s “prior fitness” argument. Most likely, with the circumstantial evidence at hand, it could become one of its strongest examples.

The analysis of the essential role of phosphorus in living systems highlights a feature of design that can be simply stated, namely, having something go right, when there are so many more ways for it to go wrong.

See the complete article at Evolution News.

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Published on July 09, 2022 08:59

July 8, 2022

Do Natural Explanations Rule Out the Universe’s Fine-Tuning?

Astrophysicist Jeff Zweerink writes some thoughts on cosmological fine-tuning:

For many years, mowing my yard required a high degree of fine-tuning. My mower required gasoline and the gas can usually sloshed the fuel all over the mower, concrete, and surrounding grass. Unless I tuned the position of the can, the rate of flow, distance from the tank opening, and numerous muscle movements, the gas would not make it into the tank so that the lawn mower would start. A few years ago when I finally started using the funnel that came with the gas can, the fuel reliably made it into the tank regardless of how fast I poured (and most of the other parameters that appeared finely tuned). Consequently, I recognized that all the fine-tuning required for my mower to work was not real, it just appeared fine-tuned. That conclusion might seem odd, but it parallels how some scientists seek to explain the fine-tuning observed in the universe.

Examples of Fine-Tuning
As scientists gain increasing knowledge of the beginning and history of the universe, they continue to discover aspects of the universe that must take exacting values for life to exist. Stars’ interior furnaces produce the carbon and oxygen that all life requires. Three finely tuned “coincidences” (a meta-stable beryllium-8 nucleus, a specific nuclear energy level in carbon, and no similar nuclear energy level for oxygen) ensure that stars produce the proper abundance of carbon and oxygen. The form and strengths of the four fundamental forces govern these coincidences and, without fine-tuning, the coincidences don’t occur. Incidentally, the finely tuned values of those forces also ensure that our universe keeps sufficient hydrogen—another element critical for life.

For stars to exist (at least those capable of producing carbon and oxygen), the geometry of the universe must match a specific value to incredible precision. If larger or smaller by a small fraction, the universe either forms no stars or only massive stars that quickly turn into black holes. For more fine-tuning examples, see the extensive catalog of various aspects of the universe that appear fine-tuned for life compiled by my colleague Hugh Ross.

Proposed Explanations of Fine-Tuning
How do scientists account for the fine-tuning? Sometimes, ongoing research appears to explain a fine-tuned aspect of the universe by natural means. One illustrative example relates to the geometry of the universe mentioned above. Back in the 1980s, the dominant quantity known to contribute to the energy budget of the universe was mass (the product of density and volume), and this posed a problem. Even without knowing much about dark matter or anything about dark energy, scientists knew the geometry of our universe is remarkably close to flat—not flat like a piece of paper, but flat in a geometry sense. However, flat is an unstable geometry for our universe such that any small deviations from flatness grow quickly and result in a closed or open universe. Measuring a flat geometry today required the mass density of the universe to vary by no more than one part in 1060 in the earliest moments of the universe. The discovery of dark matter and dark energy did not explain this fine-tuning. Eventually, scientists found a mechanism called inflation that ensures the flatness we see today.

Two relevant points about inflation warrant mention. First, getting inflation to work seems to require a high degree of fine-tuning (more on that in a future blog). Second, inflation does not remove the requirement of a precise density to get a flat geometry—it simply provides a mechanism to ensure that density happens. Inflation basically acts like the aforementioned funnel that produces universes with a flat geometry regardless of any deviations from flat that might have existed in the earliest moments of the universe.

Fine-Tuning Is Robust
As we continue to understand more about our universe, we often find fascinating explanations of how things work, and those explanations add to the evidence that our universe seems fine-tuned for our existence.

See the complete article at Reasons.org.

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Published on July 08, 2022 19:45

Life in Earth’s interior as productive as in some ocean waters

Researchers discover microbes in pitch-dark aquifers as important primary producers.

In summary: Microorganisms in aquifers deep below the earth’s surface produce similar amounts of biomass as those in some marine waters. Applying a unique, ultra-sensitive measurement method using radioactive carbon, they were able to demonstrate for the first time that these biotic communities in absolute darkness do not depend on sunlight. Instead, they can obtain energy autonomously from rock oxidation or from compounds transported into the deep.

Terrestrial and marine habitats have been considered the ecosystems with the highest primary production on earth by far, i.e., the conversion of inorganic to organic carbon. Microscopic algae in the upper layers of the oceans and plants on land bind atmospheric carbon (CO2) and produce plant material driven by photosynthesis, i.e. the sun provides energy. Since sunlight does not penetrate into the subsurface, hardly any such primary production is to be expected. So much for the theory.

However, genetic analyses of microorganisms in groundwater have indicated that even here many microorganisms are capable of primary production. In the absence of light, they must obtain the energy from oxidising inorganic compounds, like from reduced sulfur of the surrounding rocks. However, the role of primary producers in the subsurface had never been confirmed before.

Groundwater is one of our most important sources of clean drinking water. The groundwater environment of the carbonate aquifers alone, which is the focus of the study, provides about ten per cent of the world’s drinking water. With this in mind, the researchers carried out measurements of microbial microorganism carbon fixation in a subsurface aquifer, 5 to 90 metres underground.

Surprisingly high primary production rates in total darkness

“The rates we measured were much higher than we anticipated,” says the first author of the study Dr Will Overholt, Postdoctoral Researcher at Friedrich Schiller University Jena. “They equal carbon fixation rates measured in nutrient-poor marine surface waters and are up to six-fold greater than those observed in the lower zones of the sunlit open ocean, where there is just enough light for photosynthesis.”

Unique method to measure primary production of microorganisms in aquifers

Measuring carbon fixation can be done with radioactively labelled carbon dioxide. “In carbonate rock environments, there is abundant dissolved CO2, that can make it difficult to directly observe rates of carbon fixation,” says Prof Susan Trumbore from the Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry in Jena. The team, therefore, used a special method to trace a small amount of labelled CO2 using highly sensitive accelerator mass spectrometry. “It is exciting to see what new insights these methods can lead to,” she says.

“Our findings offer new insights into how these subsurface ecosystems function, giving clues on how to monitor or remediate groundwater sources,” says Kirsten Küsel.

Read the complete article at Science Daily.

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Published on July 08, 2022 08:52

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