Comments on: The sneaky deck-shuffler http://www.sellingwaves.com/2006/09/05/483/ A graduate student in mathematics and a modern languages major take on politics and culture with the following aspirational motto: ‘Deregulate your mind.’ Mon, 01 Dec 2008 19:35:54 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.2.1 By: Curt http://www.sellingwaves.com/2006/09/05/483/#comment-22037 Curt Wed, 06 Sep 2006 10:11:33 +0000 http://www.sellingwaves.com/2006/09/05/483/#comment-22037 <p>Right, that's sort of related to the point I was trying to make, perhaps somewhat unclearly, towards the end, where I tried to suggest that because of the nature of evolution the human brain would probably be predisposed to recognize patterns in living systems even if they were the product of a purely random conglomeration, both because the perceiving brain would itself be another product of that agglomeration and because living systems represent an important element of its environment, the recognition and comprehension of which are vital to its survival and reproduction. So perhaps the question is moot for practical purposes, as we might expect a similar "comprehensibility" of living things whether or not they were randomly created. It might even be argued that the complexity of living systems as we perceive them consists precisely of their comprehensibility, though I'm not sure I would go that far.  And yes, I'm sure that it would be premature to expect any answers on the source of variation and change in living things, but I was responding simply to the seeming complacency of scientists who appear to regard "random variation" as a wholly satisfactory answer to these questions, which more or less ensures that that will continue to be the case.</p> Right, that’s sort of related to the point I was trying to make, perhaps somewhat unclearly, towards the end, where I tried to suggest that because of the nature of evolution the human brain would probably be predisposed to recognize patterns in living systems even if they were the product of a purely random conglomeration, both because the perceiving brain would itself be another product of that agglomeration and because living systems represent an important element of its environment, the recognition and comprehension of which are vital to its survival and reproduction. So perhaps the question is moot for practical purposes, as we might expect a similar “comprehensibility” of living things whether or not they were randomly created. It might even be argued that the complexity of living systems as we perceive them consists precisely of their comprehensibility, though I’m not sure I would go that far.  And yes, I’m sure that it would be premature to expect any answers on the source of variation and change in living things, but I was responding simply to the seeming complacency of scientists who appear to regard “random variation” as a wholly satisfactory answer to these questions, which more or less ensures that that will continue to be the case.

]]> By: shonk http://www.sellingwaves.com/2006/09/05/483/#comment-21979 shonk Wed, 06 Sep 2006 04:38:42 +0000 http://www.sellingwaves.com/2006/09/05/483/#comment-21979 <p>By the way, with regard to the argument in the first paragraph, I think you make a good point about perceived meaningful order being an intuitively reasonable cause for suspecting conscious design, but I think the key issue in this particular case is to quantify how meaningful the order we perceive really is.</p> <p>To illustrate this point by analogy with the deck of cards example, is the order we perceive in living organisms the equivalent of cards arranged in straight suits ordered from lowest to highest, or is it more equivalent to the order that an experienced card shark might detect in a skillfully manipulated deck? For example, a deck which is more or less randomly ordered except for the presence of aces in the 3rd, 15th and 29th positions might seem relatively innocuous to an ordinary observer, but a card shark might suspect that the deck was manipulated to favor the third hand in a 6-handed Omaha game.</p> <p>I don't know the answer to this question (though I know people who would give completely different answers), but it's obvious why it's important: any given shuffle of a 52 card deck is likely to appear to overwhelmingly favor a particular player in <em>some</em> card game, so a knowledgeable enough card shark will, provided he is predisposed to suspect that someone's trying to cheat, likely detect nefarious intent in virtually any completely random shuffle. Whether one believes that the human brain is designed or evolved, it's not hard to imagine that the human brain is probably several orders of magnitude better at detecting apparently meaningful patterns in the sea of biological data than a card shark is at detecting apparently meaningful patterns in a deck of cards. In other words, when we see a biological structure like an eye (examine a deck of cards), we immediately recognize in which situations it would be incredibly useful (we "know" what game the deck was prepared for) and therefore conclude that the development of the eye couldn't have been random (that the deck wasn't, in fact, randomly shuffled in preparation for an entirely different card game).</p> <p>I don't know if the above makes sense, but hopefully you see what I'm trying to get at. Of course, I don't think I or anybody else has the faintest idea how to quantify just how orderly the apparent order we see in organisms really is, but thinking about it in this way provides some useful perspective.</p> By the way, with regard to the argument in the first paragraph, I think you make a good point about perceived meaningful order being an intuitively reasonable cause for suspecting conscious design, but I think the key issue in this particular case is to quantify how meaningful the order we perceive really is.

To illustrate this point by analogy with the deck of cards example, is the order we perceive in living organisms the equivalent of cards arranged in straight suits ordered from lowest to highest, or is it more equivalent to the order that an experienced card shark might detect in a skillfully manipulated deck? For example, a deck which is more or less randomly ordered except for the presence of aces in the 3rd, 15th and 29th positions might seem relatively innocuous to an ordinary observer, but a card shark might suspect that the deck was manipulated to favor the third hand in a 6-handed Omaha game.

I don’t know the answer to this question (though I know people who would give completely different answers), but it’s obvious why it’s important: any given shuffle of a 52 card deck is likely to appear to overwhelmingly favor a particular player in some card game, so a knowledgeable enough card shark will, provided he is predisposed to suspect that someone’s trying to cheat, likely detect nefarious intent in virtually any completely random shuffle. Whether one believes that the human brain is designed or evolved, it’s not hard to imagine that the human brain is probably several orders of magnitude better at detecting apparently meaningful patterns in the sea of biological data than a card shark is at detecting apparently meaningful patterns in a deck of cards. In other words, when we see a biological structure like an eye (examine a deck of cards), we immediately recognize in which situations it would be incredibly useful (we “know” what game the deck was prepared for) and therefore conclude that the development of the eye couldn’t have been random (that the deck wasn’t, in fact, randomly shuffled in preparation for an entirely different card game).

I don’t know if the above makes sense, but hopefully you see what I’m trying to get at. Of course, I don’t think I or anybody else has the faintest idea how to quantify just how orderly the apparent order we see in organisms really is, but thinking about it in this way provides some useful perspective.

]]> By: shonk http://www.sellingwaves.com/2006/09/05/483/#comment-21967 shonk Wed, 06 Sep 2006 03:57:40 +0000 http://www.sellingwaves.com/2006/09/05/483/#comment-21967 <blockquote>I’m no creationist, but from what I know it seems to me that evolutionists pay much too little attention to the source of variation and change in living things, as opposed to how traits are selected among competing alternatives.</blockquote> <p>In their defense, it's not really reasonable to expect a sophisticated understanding of "the source of variation and change in living things" when we still don't <i>really</i> understand the physical structure of DNA and proteins, even 50 years on from Watson and Crick.</p> I’m no creationist, but from what I know it seems to me that evolutionists pay much too little attention to the source of variation and change in living things, as opposed to how traits are selected among competing alternatives.

In their defense, it’s not really reasonable to expect a sophisticated understanding of “the source of variation and change in living things” when we still don’t really understand the physical structure of DNA and proteins, even 50 years on from Watson and Crick.

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