Darwin Unhinged: The Bugs in Evolution

Isn't the very use of the term "tuning" suggestive of an active agent?

I realize there are physicists in materialist evangelical camp trying to figure out a way around this, but given the number of times the Multiverse has been raised [as] an excuse I get the feeling the public is less & less convinced by the claim "Nothing to see here folks!".

MWI is pretty cogent at the level of the math.  IR (informational realism), in the version I support, is a firm answer to the issues.  Simulation and the many versions of MWI of physics are research into trying to integrate discoveries from information science.  These explorations will be valuable as background going forward.  While being wrong as analytic models for natural interactions, in my estimation.

Tuning can happen with out purpose or with.  Tuning that contributes to ordered plans is intentional and matches information objects into goals and plans.  Usually the matching is from observation and feedback.  Intentional "tuning" to a goal state is a subset of selection.

MWI is pretty cogent at the level of the math.  IR (informational realism), in the version I support, is a firm answer to the issues.  Simulation and the many versions of MWI of physics are research into trying to integrate discoveries from information science.  These explorations will be valuable as background going forward.  While being wrong as analytic models for natural interactions, in my estimation.

Tuning can happen with out purpose or with.  Tuning that contributes to ordered plans is intentional and matches information objects into goals and plans.  Usually the matching is from observation and feedback.  Intentional "tuning" to a goal state is a subset of selection.

Apologies but I don't really understand the first paragraph. Information, which again I think you're saying is an actual kind of substance or process that is not physical, is an answer to the issues of MWI or the issues of a designer?

What discoveries of information science are Simulation Hypothesis and MWI trying too integrate?

What's an example of purposeless tuning?

"Tuning". "Design". Whichever we use we are saying the same thing: from the largest to the microscopic there is evidence of intelligence at work. No surprise to me that the fine tuning of the cosmos can be seen reflected in biology. It can also be seen in the ecosystem of this planet. The way the weather systems, the geological movements, the water cycle and the land/water distribution are all essential (and tuned) to promoting biological life. 

My argument throughout is that the obvious is ignored, nay actively condemned because of the imperative, since Darwin, to expunge God from the equation. But this God is the God of Bible, the wrathful old man in the clouds. A God that frankly needs to be expunged but, in my view, to be replaced by a more comprehensive and universal concept reaching towards a universal intelligence that pervades all things. That constitutes all things. Perhaps the mistake is in the continued use of the word God but from the very start of the evolution debate it has been a battle between science and the dogma of religion and, for those on the side of science, the dogma became materialism.

Whether we use the word God or some other term that does not evoke the Old Testament figure, that entity is not part of the equation, it is the equation.

I think the challenge is Cosmological Fine Tuning and what IDers take as weighting the dice of evolution point to two different levels of design.

Fine Tuning points to a being, or group of beings, that have thought out the constants of the universe such that they'd bring about life.

Biological dice weighting, done across generations of life & death, seems more like tweaks in variables by beings that don't have the same level of control. 

Now it could be akin to someone starting a simulation, then realizing it needs some course correction while running, in which case it is just a single designer. But nothing about biological dice weighting seems beyond the power of aliens.

My understanding of the ID position on biological life is that mere weighting of the dice would not be sufficient. Even to arrive at a simple functioning single cell requires the coming together of multiple features, all at once. It can't be approached by gradual tiny increments. At least that's what I've heard.

Recent attempts at conventional scientific explanations try to use the probablistic arguments, but even if the lottery is won, repeatedly, time after time, there are gaps which can't be bridged.

I don't really see how introducing aliens helps matters, it merely pushes the problem back one step - so that the origin of the aliens would face similar issues - presumably - though since these are hypothetical aliens it becomes impossible to evaluate, beyond the recognition that it just postpones rather than solves.

I don't really see how introducing aliens helps matters, it merely pushes the problem back one step - so that the origin of the aliens would face similar issues - presumably - though since these are hypothetical aliens it becomes impossible to evaluate, beyond the recognition that it just postpones rather than solves.

Well aliens is a broad category, I was thinking of the kind that Vallee talks about which seem capable of altering reality. Perhaps spirits rather than aliens, though I don't think there's always a hard distinction between the two.

IDers do talk about irreducible complexity, but it isn't clear how that aligns with evolution through successive mutations. Does the Creator of Everything allow evolution to proceed but then tack on a flagellum onto a micro-organism? Why would the Fine Tuner(s) decide the Cambrian is just the right time to throw in some extra organisms into the mix?

I'd also consider that no ancient scripture, from anywhere in the world, makes proper mention of these "hints" showing the Hand of God. As the Catholic Theologian Feser aptly notes:

What is at issue is the context in which such events could be known to be divine revelations -- and, in particular, whether such events could by themselves constitute evidence for the existence of God for someone who didn’t already know that God exists.  For there are different sorts of miracles, and different sorts of context in which they might be interpreted.  Suppose God miraculously caused the English words “I, God, exist” to be written in the dust on a certain car’s windshield -- but that the car was parked on a small side street in a neighborhood where most people spoke Mandarin, nobody was particularly religious, and the words appeared in the middle of the night when no one was around to see them.  This would, needless to say, be a pretty ineffective way of revealing himself.  There would be nothing about the evidence that those who come across it would be at all likely to see as miraculous.  It would just seem to be a silly prank, unworthy of a moment’s attention.

All that said I do agree that life's origins as well as the body's relationship to consciousness are not things that can be explained via a materialist view of evolution. And I would think it plausible that the being(s) who set the constants to the universe to allow for the presence of life also introduced some initial spark of life.

OTOH the beings that tweaked our world's evolution don't seem to be at the same level of power nor wisdom. Whether it was entities in the subtle realms ("ultra-terrestrials") or visitors from other planets, the evidence IDers note seems like something we will ourselves one day be able to accomplish. Maybe I'm missing something though?

I will admit I am more skeptical of arguments relating to evolution than I am fine tuning, mostly because the latter seems far more accepted and far more clear in what the issue is. You can find an easy to comprehend argument about fine tuning in Forbes Magazine, whereas the very idea of irreducible complexity seems more up for debate.

Feser again:

The trouble is this. The problem information poses for naturalism has nothing at all to do with complexity, probability, etc. All that stuff just completely muddies the waters and gives the naturalist an occasion to dismiss the real problem. Indeed, it makes it harder for the naturalist even to see what the real problem is. So when ID people go on about this stuff and throw in all this mathematical hoo-hah, that might impress the rubes, but it allows the naturalist wrongly to pretend that the issue has crucially to do with whether Dembski (say) has got his probability theory straight. It's just a gigantic dust cloud and time waster.

Or take Behe's idea of "irreducible complexity." Insofar as he's talking about the idea that there can be certain properties of a whole that cannot be accounted for in terms of an aggregation of the parts, I have no problem with that much. Indeed, that's just part of what the notion of substantial form is about. However, the Scholastic analysis of such "irreducibility" -- hammered out over the course of centuries -- is far more nuanced than anything you'll find in an ID writer. Furthermore, what this tells us about the origin of an "irreducible" feature is a more complicated matter than ID people suppose, because the principle of proportionate causality allows what is in an effect to have been in its total cause in ways that are not always straightforward. So, while the general idea Behe is pointing at has some value, it doesn't go very far, and it doesn't necessarily have the implications for specific cases that he thinks it does.

In effect, even at its best ID is like a guy who's reinventing the wheel and so far has been able to reconstruct a single spoke. At it's worst, it's like a guy who's trying to reinvent the wheel and so far has decided that a square shape for it would be good.

To be clear I'm not a Scholastic, and I do think Feser understates the issues people have with the complexity of philosophical arguments for God, but I think his criticisms of ID as a field does have some merit.

Apologies but I don't really understand the first paragraph. Information, which again I think you're saying is an actual kind of substance or process that is not physical, is an answer to the issues of MWI or the issues of a designer?

What discoveries of information science are Simulation Hypothesis and MWI trying too integrate?

What's an example of purposeless tuning?

A solar system would be an example of a finely tuned system.  Years of feedback from forces and materials bring order and stability.  Ecology describes balanced biological niches in a cybernetic manner.  Teleonomic purpose vs teleological.

Teleological reception of purpose can be nested in the level of physical and information in a teleonomic way, but broadcast from a source on a third (or more) generative level.

The thesis is simple - physical objects and information objects* evolve separately, while still being correlated via a universal wave function.  Information objects have structure and obey logical rules, in their transformative processes, just as do physical objects.

 A surprise awaits the reader who opens Everett’s thesis for the first time after having heard a lot about it. This one is not called "Many worlds theory" but "The theory of the universal wave function". 

Using at the time the recent von Neumann terminology (see [von Neumann 55]), Everett begins by distinguishing two very different processes in quantum mechanics, the two fundamentally different ways in which the state function can change: 

Process 1: The discontinuous change brought about by the observation of a quantity with eigenstates φ1, φ2, ..., in which the state ψ will be changed to the state φj with probability |ψ, φj | 2 ; 

Process 2: The continuous, deterministic change of state of the (isolated) system with time according to a wave equation ∂ψ ∂t = Uψ where U is a linear operator.»([Everett 55], 4). 

From this remark, Everett questions the consistency of this scheme where the observer and his object-system form a single (composite) physical system S. Indeed, the situation becomes quite paradoxical if one allows for the existence of more than one observer A ([Everett 55], 4-6).....

All that constitutes the introduction (Chapter 1) of Everett’s thesis. The rest of the dissertation develops his theory in about 80 pages and 4 essential points: 

1) The introduction of some quantitative definitions applying to the attitude of the operators or the degree of correlation of the subsystems of the global composite system; 

2) The mathematical formalization of these notions through the theory of information (Chapter 2: "probability, information and correlation"); 

3) The application of all this to the quantum mechanics of composite systems (the concept of relative state functions, and the meaning of the representation of subsystems by non-interfering mixtures of states characterized by density matrices)

4) The notions of information and correlation are then applied to quantum mechanics

  https://arxiv.org/pdf/2001.03771.pdf

*

 The outcome is informational structural realism, a version of OSR supporting the ontological commitment to a view of the world as the totality of informational objects dynamically interacting with each other. - Floridi

My beef with Everret's worldview (and its derivations as MWI) is simply there are two systems of objects (or more) not just one.

I think the challenge is Cosmological Fine Tuning and what IDers take as weighting the dice of evolution point to two different levels of design.

Fine Tuning points to a being, or group of beings, that have thought out the constants of the universe such that they'd bring about life.

Biological dice weighting, done across generations of life & death, seems more like tweaks in variables by beings that don't have the same level of control. 

Now it could be akin to someone starting a simulation, then realizing it needs some course correction while running, in which case it is just a single designer. But nothing about biological dice weighting seems beyond the power of aliens.

Cosmological fine tuning ensures that there is a universe in which life can exist. We might say the same about ecological fine tuning on this planet. At some point, evolution takes over and evolution seems to include at least some weighting and some intelligent action according to gathered information. Tweaks in variables, as you say. Epigenetics seems to point to this from my limited understanding.

So is the fine tuning evidence of design? I don't see another explanation although I am not in favour of the omniscient designer at His drawing board - just too simplistic and fantastical for my sensibilities. I am more in favour of an evolved group consciousness working towards a goal - a goal perhaps determined by the ultimate source but an evolutionary scenario set in motion by some advanced group entity. I see no reason why self-organisation and information feedback shouldn't be incorporated to ensure teleological evolution.

As for MWI, I am willing to entertain the idea of multiple universes but I am not comfortable with the Everett version.

I think it highly probable that different versions of the physical universe exist simultaneously, perhaps across many dimensions. However, I think that they are all initiated by some creative intelligence and evolving along different probable paths. In other words, I don't have any time for the argument from multiplicity and fluke. The has to be some intelligent direction and teleology for it to make sense to me. Call it creationism if you like but my version of creationism is a far cry from the biblical version.

Lastly, to the alien theory.

You might point out that my version outlined in my previous posts could just as well be describing some alien intelligence but there is a difference - at least from my point of view.

The alien proposal seems to have been put forward as yet another way of constraining the creation and evolution of life within a materialistic worldview. As such, it just kicks the can down the road. In my view, the creative entities are spiritual and, while being creatively independent and possessing free will, are nevertheless part of the spiritual whole that we call God. Creation happens within, not without. The stuff of creation is the same stuff as the intelligence that gives form.

Cosmological fine tuning ensures that there is a universe in which life can exist. We might say the same about ecological fine tuning on this planet. At some point, evolution takes over and evolution seems to include at least some weighting and some intelligent action according to gathered information. Tweaks in variables, as you say. Epigenetics seems to point to this from my limited understanding.

So is the fine tuning evidence of design? I don't see another explanation although I am not in favour of the omniscient designer at His drawing board - just too simplistic and fantastical for my sensibilities. I am more in favour of an evolved group consciousness working towards a goal - a goal perhaps determined by the ultimate source but an evolutionary scenario set in motion by some advanced group entity. I see no reason why self-organisation and information feedback shouldn't be incorporated to ensure teleological evolution.

Well I'd say there's some group of entities that designed the cosmos, finely tuning the variables at the outset. "Gods" perhaps.

And then some other entities with much less vision/power who mucked about with evolution, given there's nothing "fine" IMO about the abundance of death and suffering it takes to move along the evolutionary ladder.

I think the challenge with the latter is that it is very hard, IMO, to exactly explain & defend stuff like protein folding times and even irreducible complexity. That being said subjectiveness isn't going to be explained via materialist evolution, nor will the grasping of mathematical/logical universals. So at least there we can say there was either an intervention or these aspects of mind were always there but evolution was directed to manifest them.