Tag: Computational Sciences
Massimo Pigliucci Ignores ID Research, Claims “Random Alteration” of DNA Creates New Information
Discovery Institute senior fellow William Dembski is apparently living inside the heads of intelligent design critics. A recent opinion article by Massimo Pigliucci in EMBO Reports, published by the European Molecular Biology Organization, states, “In some quarters, ‘information’ seems to be a magical word: Intelligent Design proponent Bill Dembski, for example, keeps repeating that evolutionary theory cannot explain the production of new information…” Aside from the “magical” slur, Pigliucci’s description of Dembski’s view is reasonably accurate. Pigliucci, who apparently knows Dembski well-enough to call him “Bill” in one of the world’s most prestigious science journals, attempts an explanation of the talk about the origin of information: As for the claims that Dembski and others make about information and evolutionary theory, Read More ›
Scientific Paper Reviews Dembski and Behe’s Methods of Detecting Intelligent Design
In a prior post I noted that a recent paper in International Journal of Design & Nature and Ecodynamics, co-authored by Dissent from Darwinism list signer Dominic Halsmer, cited to the work of Guillermo Gonzalez as evidence for cosmic design. However, the paper also looks at design in the biological realm, citing the work of a variety of noteworthy proponents of intelligent design, including Walter Bradley, Michael Behe, Jonathan Wells, and William Dembski. The paper examines to the engineering of life, noting that “[b]iological systems are constantly undergoing processes that exhibit modularity, specificity, adaptability, durability, and many other aspects of engineered systems.” It quotes from William Dembski and Jonathan Wells’ book The Design of Life, stating: “Many of the systems Read More ›
William Dembski and Robert Marks Publish (Another) Peer-Reviewed Scientific Paper Supporting No Free Lunch Theorems
A peer-reviewed scientific paper published in 2010 by William Dembski and Robert Marks of the Evolutionary Informatics Lab supports no free lunch theorems. Published in Journal of Advanced Computational Intelligence and Intelligent Informatics and titled “The Search for a Search: Measuring the Information Cost of Higher Level Search,” the paper’s abstract states that unless one has information about a target, search engines often fail: “Needle-in-the-haystack problems look for small targets in large spaces. In such cases, blind search stands no hope of success.” Their principle of Conservation of Information holds that “any search technique will work, on average, as well as blind search.” However, in such a case “[s]uccess requires an assisted search. But whence the assistance required for a Read More ›
BIO-Complexity Publishes Article Answering Critics Who Promote Tom Schneider’s “ev” Simulation
Over the years William Dembski’s critics have accused him of allegedly not doing research. A few years back, Wesley Elsberry and Jeff Shallit published a response to Dembski which charged that “intelligent design advocates have produced many popular books, but essentially no scientific research.” Given how much peer-reviewed research Dembski himself has published in the field of evolutionary computation, these criticisms are not credible and hardly worth mentioning. On the other hand, some of Dembski’s harshest critics, such as Jeffrey Shallit, are smart guys that have published extensively in mathematics journals but have not cracked into the literature relevant to this field of evolutionary computation. Is it appropriate for Shallit to posture himself as a prestigious academic critic of Dembski when he has not published in the relevant scientific literature?
William Dembski, Robert Marks, and the Evolutionary Informatics Lab Take on Dawkins’ “WEASEL” Simulation in New Peer-Reviewed Paper
A new peer-reviewed paper continues the work published by William Dembski, Robert Marks, and others affiliated with the Evolutionary Informatics Lab. (Check out their new revamped website at EvoInfo.org.) The authors argue that Richard Dawkins’ “METHINKSITISLIKEAWEASEL” evolutionary algorithm starts off with large amounts of active information–information intelligently inserted by the programmer to aid the search. This paper covers all of the known claims of operation of the WEASEL algorithm and shows that in all cases, active information is used. Dawkins’ algorithm can best be understood as using a “Hamming Oracle” as follows: “When a sequence of letters is presented to a Hamming oracle, the oracle responds with the Hamming distance equal to the number of letter mismatches in the sequence.” Read More ›