BillB
Posts: 388
Joined: Aug. 2009
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| Quote (keiths @ Sep. 02 2012,01:52) | | Quote (midwifetoad @ Sep. 01 2012,15:13) | OK. I've been hearing search for a search for years and just tuned it out as bullshit. Can someone play devil's advocate and put the best possible face on this? Explain how it could possibly be relevant?
I'm not joking. |
Okay, here's my best straight-faced attempt at presenting Dembski's argument:
| Quote | 1. A search is a process which attempts to find targets within a larger space of possibilities.
2. A search can be run over and over. Each time it is run, it "lands on" one point in the space of possibilities. If that point is one of the targets, then the search has succeeded. If the landing point is not a target, then the search has failed.
3. A blind search is one in which the "landing point" is chosen purely at random out of the space of possibilities, without favoring any points over others.
4. If the possibility space is huge and the target space is tiny, then a blind search will rarely succeed. The odds of hitting the target are just too low. In other words, the cost of finding the target is high with a blind search.
5. If we use a better search, we improve the odds of hitting the target. In other words, we can reduce the cost of finding the target by employing a better search.
6. However, finding a better search is itself a search ("the search for a search"). It has its own cost, which must be factored in.
7. The total cost of finding a target therefore includes both the cost of the search plus the cost of the "search for a search".
8. According to the Law of Conservation of Information, this total cost is always greater than or equal to the cost of finding the target through a blind search. One way or another, you have to pay the piper in order to find the target.
9. Evolution is a search: it looks for viable organisms (the targets) within the much larger space of possible organisms.
10. Evolution obviously cannot succeed as a blind search, because the target space is too small relative to the possibility space. However, evolution uses the fitness landscape as a source of information to zero in on the target space. (A designer may also inject information at crucial moments.)
11. The fitness landscape doesn't come for free. The total cost of the evolutionary search has to include the cost of the information contained in the fitness landscape.
12. The Law of Conservation of Information tells us that the total cost of the evolutionary search, including the cost of the information contained in the fitness landscape, equals or exceeds the cost of a blind search.
13. Purely material processes don't generate information. They merely rearrange information that was already there. Therefore, no material process can "buy" you a fitness landscape.
14. Thus, the information in the fitness landscape comes from an immaterial intelligence. (And so does any information that is injected along the way.)
15. Without this information, evolution could not succeed.
16. One way or another, then, evolution depends for its success on information generated by an immaterial intelligence.
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It's riddled with holes, but that, to the best of my knowledge, is the argument that Dembski is actually making. |
Of course if you have to search for a search then that search has a cost as well and you need to find the best way of searching for the search that you are going to use to find the search... It's searches all the way down.
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