Order vs. Randomness

[Angrboda]

Thus you need to support it with something, and saying that it's based on a subjective criterion doesn't make it any more coherent as an empirical concept, and likely less so.

Ideas on simplicity and complexity (and the qualities that are attached to them) cannot be proven empirically because they are analytic concepts; they are in the realm of induction.

The idea that elegance is an aspect of simplicity/compressibility is indeed subjective but not irrational, even from mathematicians' point of view. I said that something is considered to be "elegant" in mathematics if it maximizes some measure of utility while minimizing the information content. If you think that this is something absurd, then go ahead and explain why you think so instead of telling me that I need to "support it with something" ...

Sorry for not following your links. I'm not interested in an in-depth debate on the subject. You suggest that you can increase utility while minimizing the information content. While there is a seeming elasticity between information content and compressed representations, according to Kolmogorov-Chaitin, that is an illusion. The minimum size of the smallest representation of a given amount of information is a fixed, though incomputable quantity. If you're accepting Kolmogorov-Chaitin, arguing that specific types of information content have better compressibility than others, you're simply confusing computability with actual quantification. In that case, you are in conflict with Kolmogorov-Chaitin. I really don't care all that much other than to suggest that you're appealing to information theoretic concepts in a way that is unsound. Design arguments have a much more substantial Waterloo when you get to the key inference. (I'd also suggest you don't understand the meaning of the term 'induction', as the way you've used it doesn't appear to conform to either the mathematical or philosophical meaning.)

If your whole point is that, subjectively, the elegance of order arising from simplicity is great enough to warrant an inference to design, then that's not an empirical argument, but another argument from incredulity.

Oh, and since you're a theist (assuming you're not lying), what do you think would count as a "empirical argument" for design? Do you even know of any?

By empirical I mean one in which you can provide robustly quantifiable probabilities under some form of Bayesian or other probability framework. Obviously, subjectively based arguments are hard to describe with any metric.

My background is in mathematics, so while I appreciate the notion of elegance, I view that as more a property existing in a strange and disordered pattern throughout mathematical space.

But to my knowledge, that particular view is clearly in conflict with Taoist philosophy as you claim to believe in. Taoism teaches quite the opposite (see below).

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Trust in Nature as an Organic Pattern

The Chinese yin-yang conception of nature is an organic reproduction pattern of nature and the cosmos. Nature exists outside of and beyond human control. Taoists regard this human embedding in larger universal processes with wonder, awe, and deep appreciation.

In nature, there is an ordering - dizzying and exquisite in its variety - that exists endlessly. (Think of the infinitely proportioned, kaleidoscopic images of fractal geometry, and you'll begin to get a sense of the intricacy, beauty, and endless "scalability" of natural patterns in the Taoist view.)

This order, this series of resonances, is both indescribably vast and intricately interdependent. It is an order that includes other "makers' of order - like bees and humans. The associated notion from the poem "Desiderata" - that we are all children of the universe, on a par with the planets and the stars, and that the universe unfolds in the proper way whether or not we recognize it as doing so - comes close to providing a parallel with the Taoist reverence of nature and its patterns.

- The Complete Idiot's Guide to Taoism (p. 33)

And this:

Dao can be roughly thought of as the flow of the universe, or as some essence or pattern behind the natural world that keeps the universe balanced and ordered.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tao#Descrip...he_concept

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... and yet here you are (a Taoist) ironically telling me that you view elegance in the universe as more a property existing in a "disordered pattern" throughout mathematical space.

Or maybe I didn't understand something?

I'd say you don't understand either Taoism or mathematics sufficiently well.