Tag Archives: Intelligence

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Paul Nelson: the most interesting and significant paper we’ve read in years

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Wow, check out this post by Paul Nelson over at Evolution News.

Excerpt:

Now, the paper I retrieved for my co-worker, entitled “The Levinthal paradox of the interactome,” Protein Science 20 (2011):2074-79, explains why the space of “being alive” is so much vastly smaller, and harder to find, than the space of being “not alive.” The paper is short (only six pages) and was written by two structural biologists, Peter Tompa of Vrije Universiteit in Brussels and George Rose of Johns Hopkins University, neither of whom is an intelligent-design advocate. But the paper’s arguments bear so strongly on the design debate, and represent so remarkable a challenge to widely held assumptions about (for instance) the origin of cells, that its effect promises to be far-reaching. As in, revolutionary.

[…]Tompa and Rose draw a number of lessons from their calculations. They argue, first, that any increase in biological realism will only make the Levinthal interactome paradox worse:

Of course, there are additional complicating factors such as alternative splicing, post-translational modifications, non-pairwise macromolecular interactions, incorrect complex formation that is adventitiously stable, and so forth. However, even neglecting such complications, the numbers preclude formation of a functional interactome by trial and error complex formation within any meaningful span of time. This numerical exercise…is tantamount to a proof that the cell does not organize by random collisions of its interacting constituents.But secondly, what they call “the most profound conclusion” from their analysis bears directly on widely held assumptions about the origin of life.

A highly enriched soup of proteins and nucleic acids will never form a functional cell, even if lipid bilayer membranes were provided to help these materials become organized. Indeed, the fully functional contents of a living cell, once the wall or membrane enclosing them has been breached (thus, killing the cell), move irreversibly in the direction of non-living chemistry. Humpty Dumpty, once he cracks, does not reconstitute, but enters what Tompa and Rose call the “zone of chaos,” never to return.

Tompa and Rose have sketched the theoretical basis for why this happens:

[O]ur calculations of combinatorial complexity [show] that the emergent interactome could not have self-organized spontaneously from its isolated protein components. Rather, it attains its functional state by templating the interactome of a mother cell and maintains that state by a continuous expenditure of energy. In the absence of a prior framework of existing interactions, it is far more likely that combined cellular constituents would end up in a non-functional, aggregated state, one incompatible with life…The spontaneous origination of a de novo cell has yet to be observed; all extant cells are generated by the division of pre-existing cells that provide the necessary template for perpetuation of the interactome.

Tompa and Rose spell out other implications of their analysis (e.g., for medicine and synthetic biology), but maybe we’ve piqued your curiosity enough already. This paper deserves your attention. As noted, for a close circle of us at Discovery and Biologic, it’s the most interesting and significant paper we’ve read in years.

Dr. Nelson’s post explains a bit more with pictures.

Mentoring

A parent’s guide to intelligent design and science education

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An excellent PDF report prepared by the Discovery Institute’s Center for Science and Culture.

Here are the contents:

Introduction

  • Part 1: What Is Intelligent Design?
  • Part 2: What Is Evolution?
  • Part 3: What are the Scientific Problems with Neo-Darwinian Evolution?
  • Part 4: How Can Parents Influence Evolution-Education in Local Schools?
  • Part 5: What is Theistic Evolution?
  • Part 6: What Can Parents do to Support Intelligent Design?
  • Part 7: Basic Tips for Parents and Students
  • Part 8: Recommended Resources

First, there’s a definition of intelligent design: (the thing that people in the news media never define correctly!)

Intelligent design (“ID”) is a scientific theory which holds that some features of the universe and living things are best explained by an intelligent cause rather than an undirected process such as natural selection. ID theorists argue that design can be inferred by studying the informational properties of natural objects to determine if they bear the type of information that, in our experience, arises from an intelligent cause.

Proponents of neo-Darwinian evolution contend that the information in life arose via purposeless, blind, and unguided processes. ID proponents contend that the information in life arose via purposeful, intelligently guided processes. Both claims are scientifically testable using scientific methods employed by standard historical sciences. ID is based upon the claim that there are “telltale features of living systems and the universe which are best explained by an intelligent cause.”

Scientists investigating ID compare observations of how intelligent agents design things to observations of phenomena whose origin is unknown. Human intelligent agents provide a large dataset for studying the products of the action of intelligent agents. Mathematician and philosopher William Dembski observes that “[t]he principal characteristic of intelligent agency is directed contingency, or what we call choice.” When “an intelligent agent acts, it chooses from a range of competing possibilities” to create some complex and specified event. Dembski calls ID “a theory of information” where “information becomes a reliable indicator of design as well as as a proper object for scientific investigation.” ID seeks to find in nature the types of information which are known to be produced by intelligent agents, thus inferring a prior action of intelligence.

The type of information which indicates design is generally called “specified complexity” or “complex and specified information” (CSI). Dembski suggests that design can be detected when one finds a rare or highly unlikely event (making it complex) that conforms to an independently derived pattern (making it specified).

Intelligent design looks at features of nature, like cosmic fine-tuning and DNA, and infers an intelligent cause because of the nature of the effect. Information is best explained by an intelligence. Computer programs are best explained by an intelligence. Blog posts are best explained by an intelligence. Cross stitched art is best explained by an intelligence. Intelligence can create complex things that are composed of simple parts that are sequenced together in such a way that they have meaning and purpose that is independent of the properties of the components themselves.

Here’s a good video explaining intelligent design applied to biological information in proteins and DNA: (suitable for complete beginners)

For anyone who is looking for a good basic book on intelligent design, I recommend “The Politically Incorrect Guide to Darwinism and Intelligent Design” by Johnathan Wells. He holds a Ph.D in biology from the University of California at Berkeley. The best intermediate book on intelligent design is Stephen Meyer’s “Signature in the Cell“. He has a Ph.D in the philosophy of science from Cambridge University. The best advanced book is Michael Behe’s “The Edge of Evolution“. He has a Ph.D in biochemistry from the University of Pennsylvania. For Christians looking to understand the relationship between science, evolution and monotheism, I recommend “God and Evolution” edited by Jay Richards. He has a Ph.D in philosophy and theology from Princeton University.

News

Obama is skipping over half of his daily intelligence briefings (PDBs)

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From the liberal Washington Post:

President Obama is touting his foreign policy experience on the campaign trail, but startling new statistics suggest that national security has not necessarily been the personal priority the president makes it out to be. It turns out that more than half the time, the commander in chief does not attend his daily intelligence meeting.

The Government Accountability Institute, a new conservative investigative research organization, examined President Obama’s schedule from the day he took office until mid-June 2012, to see how often he attended his Presidential Daily Brief (PDB) — the meeting at which he is briefed on the most critical intelligence threats to the country. During his first 1,225 days in office, Obama attended his PDB just 536 times — or 43.8 percent of the time. During 2011 and the first half of 2012, his attendance became even less frequent — falling to just over 38 percent. By contrast, Obama’s predecessor, George W. Bush almost never missed his daily intelligence meeting.

I asked National Security Council spokesman Tommy Vietor about the findings, and whether there were any instances where the president attended the intelligence meeting that were not on his public schedule. Vietor did not dispute the numbers, but said the fact that the president, during a time of war, does not attend his daily intelligence meeting on a daily basis is “not particularly interesting or useful.”

Please see my previous post on Obama’s top 10 foreign policy failures.

Let’s review the most important one:

Failure #1: No Results In Slowing Or Stopping Iran’s Nuclear Weapons Program

Today, Iran is on the cusp of nuclear weapons capability. Such a capability in the hands of the world’s top terrorist sponsoring state poses the greatest threat facing the United States and our friends and allies, and it risks sparking a nuclear arms race across the Middle East.

Despite promising to “do everything in his power” to stop Iran, four years of President Obama’s irresolute policies have failed to slow the progress of Iran’s program. In fact, that progress has sped up:

  • Fastest Rate Of Enrichment Ever. In 2009, Iran’s enrichment rate of low-enriched uranium was 56 kilograms per month.  That jumped to 116 kilograms per month from November 2011 to February 2012. The enrichment rate now stands at 158 kilograms per month, the fastest rate ever.[1]
  • More Spinning Centrifuges. The total number of spinning centrifuges has gone from 3,936 to 10,477 during Obama’s term. The growth rate of spinning centrifuges went from 112 centrifuges per month before Obama came into office to 152 centrifuges per month during his term.[2]
  • Fordow Underground Enrichment Facility Nearing Completion. The fortified underground facility is 70 percent complete. The number of centrifuges installed has gone from 1,064 in May to 2,140 today. The facility’s limit is 3,000 centrifuges.[3]

The Iranian program has gotten to this point because President Obama has squandered all credibility with the ayatollahs:

  • A Failed Engagement Policy. President Obama offered the ayatollahs “no preconditions” talks, which were rebuffed. The latest round of multilateral talks has produced no results.
  • Refrained From Supporting The Green Movement. When asked during a press conference, President Obama shamefully refused to voice support for Iranian dissidents in 2009 as they were being killed in the streets, saying he did not want to “meddle” in Iran’s affairs.
  • A Weak Sanctions Policy. President Obama opposed and sought to water down crippling sanctions on Iran’s Central Bank until he was forced into them by Congress and our European partners.[4] He then undermined those sanctions by issuing waivers to 20 of the top importers of Iranian oil, including China.[5]
  • Abandoned Missile Defense. He abandoned a European missile defense system meant to protect against Iranian missiles.
  • Undermined The Credibility Of The Military Option. His administration has given the Iranians no reason to believe it is serious about a military option. The administration has repeatedly talked down the effectiveness and advisability of the military option, and seems to have devoted more energy toward preventing an Israeli strike on Iran than toward preventing an Iranian nuclear weapons capability. Obama officials leaked that the administration has focused its efforts on explaining to Israel “the dangers of an Israeli attack” on Iran and has attempted to “make the decision to attack as hard as possible for Israel.”[6] And the President himself, after boldly stating to AIPAC that the United States “has Israel’s back,” changed his tune two days later by saying his statement was “not a military doctrine.”

In the face of such irresolution, the ayatollahs are pressing forward toward nuclear weapons capability without fear of repercussion because they do not believe we are serious.

And now we know why. He’s played golf over a 100 times. He’s in over his head.