(April 4, 2014 at 12:34 pm)rasetsu Wrote:

(April 4, 2014 at 10:18 am)Heywood Wrote: If A and B both have a 50% probability of being true then the probability of the existence of a creating intellect goes above 50%.

The reason this would be the case is because 50% of the time A is true and by necessity of it being true a creating intellect exists.

However if B is true the multiverse itself could still have been created by an intellect. Unless you can show the existence of a multiverse positively excludes the existence of a creating intellect, you have to acknowledge there is some probability, call it X, that a creating intellect exists. X might be exceedingly small...but it is not 0.

If A and B are equally likely, the probability of the existence of a creating intellect is 50% + X.

Wikipedia Wrote:The principle of indifference states that if the n possibilities are indistinguishable except for their names, then each possibility should be assigned a probability equal to 1/n.

Since you're now claiming we have additional information (that B could be caused by an intellect), then the Principle of Indifference no longer applies (indeed, never applied, as we have many ways of distinguishing these alternatives). So you've just eliminated the Principle of Indifference as a valid rule for applying probabilities, so you cannot any longer say that the probabilities should be assigned 50 / 50 on that basis. You never could. You've misapplied the Principle of Indifference.

The two possibilities are indistinguishable in objective ways to determine their probability. And keep in mind we aren't talking about exact probabilities...it would be enough to simply have an objective means of showing the probability of A is greater than B or the probability of B is greater than A. We don't have that here.

Now you are claiming we do have it here because possibility A requires something extra....the existence of an intellect. Well possibility B requires something extra too...the existence of a mechanism for generating the sub universes.

I'm glad to see you did some homework but you really haven't shown I have misapplied the principle of indifference. To do that you have to somehow show that the probabilities of A and B are different from each other...that they can be distinguished in some objective way.

(April 4, 2014 at 4:45 pm)Heywood Wrote: The two possibilities are indistinguishable in objective ways to determine their probability. And keep in mind we aren't talking about exact probabilities...it would be enough to simply have an objective means of showing the probability of A is greater than B or the probability of B is greater than A. We don't have that here.

That's bullshit. Besides which, if you don't have any way of determining probabilities, my first argument (here) that you are either a) making an argument from ignorance, or b) arguing on the basis of the most plausible hypothesis with a hypothesis whose plausibility is unknown, holds, and your argument fails, as neither argument can be successfully completed ('a' is fallacious, and 'b' argued using the principle of indifference yields no winner, even if accepted as an argument). [In arguing to the most plausible hypothesis, if there is no "most plausible" hypothesis, the entire argument fails as there is no reason to prefer one hypothesis to the other. If you say that there is a reason to prefer one hypothesis to the other, you've abandoned the principle of indifference. Either way, you lose.]

Besides, you gave four possibilities, so the odds of a designer are 25%, not 50%.

(April 4, 2014 at 7:18 pm)rasetsu Wrote: That's bullshit. Besides which, if you don't have any way of determining probabilities, my first argument (here) that you are either a) making an argument from ignorance, or b) arguing on the basis of the most plausible hypothesis with a hypothesis whose plausibility is unknown, holds, and your argument fails, as neither argument can be successfully completed ('a' is fallacious, and 'b' argued using the principle of indifference yields no winner, even if accepted as an argument). [In arguing to the most plausible hypothesis, if there is no "most plausible" hypothesis, the entire argument fails as there is no reason to prefer one hypothesis to the other. If you say that there is a reason to prefer one hypothesis to the other, you've abandoned the principle of indifference. Either way, you lose.]

Besides, you gave four possibilities, so the odds of a designer are 25%, not 50%.

We started with 4 possibilities and found objective reasons to dismiss 2 of them. That left us two remaining possibilities to consider. I will concede that if Alex K is correct about the cosmological constant, I may have to heavily discount possibility D instead of outright dismissing it. That being said, nothing Alex has said leads me to believe that D would ever have a substantial probability of being true....and by substantial I mean greater than 1%. Its probably much less than that but perhaps not beyond the realm of imagination. I still toss it out, but I'm not as comfortable as I was before about tossing it out.

Your claim that this is an argument from ignorance is rubbish. An argument from ignorance is made when a proposition is said to be true because it hasn't been proven false. Please show how I argued something was true because it hasn't been proven false instead of just saying I did. I would like to see you come up with a quote where I make that error.

Heywood, can you tell us what are the exact conditions required for life? If you can't, then you are making an unjustified assumption in believing life could never have come about if conditions were drastically different. The fact is, the fundamental laws are pretty simple. You don't gain anything by positing an additional mystery. Why does God have the Universe-making conditions he supposedly has? That's far a more mysterious and irreproachably uninteresting question.

(April 4, 2014 at 11:08 pm)Pickup_shonuff Wrote: Heywood, can you tell us what are the exact conditions required for life? If you can't, then you are making an unjustified assumption in believing life could never have come about if conditions were drastically different. The fact is, the fundamental laws are pretty simple. You don't gain anything by positing an additional mystery. Why does God have the Universe-making conditions he supposedly has? That's far a more mysterious and irreproachably uninteresting question.

I'm arguing about emergent complexity....not life. I don't know how to quantify emergent complexity....although I think about the problem a lot. I know that in general random conditions do not lead to emergent complexity.

If you or others are not familiar with emergent complexity the following is a good introductory video. It has Neil Degrass Tyson in it.

(April 4, 2014 at 11:43 pm)Heywood Wrote:

(April 4, 2014 at 11:08 pm)Pickup_shonuff Wrote: Heywood, can you tell us what are the exact conditions required for life? If you can't, then you are making an unjustified assumption in believing life could never have come about if conditions were drastically different. The fact is, the fundamental laws are pretty simple. You don't gain anything by positing an additional mystery. Why does God have the Universe-making conditions he supposedly has? That's far a more mysterious and irreproachably uninteresting question.

I'm arguing about emergent complexity....not life. I don't know how to quantify emergent complexity....although I think about the problem a lot. I know that in general random conditions do not lead to emergent complexity.

If you or others are not familiar with emergent complexity the following is a good introductory video. It has Neil Degrass Tyson in it.

It sounds like you're wondering why there is chance and necessity. There's probably an answer, or some good theories, in research of entropy and statistics. As to why, it's just pointless fun speculation until further understanding of how the brute laws came to be and why/how their evolution occurred the way it did. Why is there any change in the Universe, much less an almost infinite constant influx of it?

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Also, you can rule out an intelligent designer, though maybe not a clumsy and highly-restrained one.. ya know, since the existence of emergence sits on a knife's edge as you point out. Presumably, an intelligent creator could have designed it however preferred but the way it apparently decided reflects a lot of pointless stupidity.

(April 4, 2014 at 11:47 pm)Pickup_shonuff Wrote: Also, you can rule out an intelligent designer, though maybe not a clumsy and highly-restrained one.. ya know, since the existence of emergence sits on a knife's edge as you point out. Presumably, an intelligent creator could have designed it however preferred but the way it apparently decided reflects a lot of pointless stupidity.

I don't see any pointless stupidity in emergent complexity. I think you are confused about what emergent complexity is. Can you give an example of the pointless stupidity you are thinking about?

(April 5, 2014 at 12:52 am)Heywood Wrote:

(April 4, 2014 at 11:47 pm)Pickup_shonuff Wrote: Also, you can rule out an intelligent designer, though maybe not a clumsy and highly-restrained one.. ya know, since the existence of emergence sits on a knife's edge as you point out. Presumably, an intelligent creator could have designed it however preferred but the way it apparently decided reflects a lot of pointless stupidity.

I don't see any pointless stupidity in emergent complexity. I think you are confused about what emergent complexity is. Can you give an example of the pointless stupidity you are thinking about?

http://csep10.phys.utk.edu/astr162/lect/...iding.html

http://www.mnn.com/earth-matters/animals...it-suicide

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/...asite.html

http://www.eonline.com/shows/kardashians

What fine-tuned the fine-tuner? You still have much to account for, Heywood.

(April 5, 2014 at 1:29 am)Pickup_shonuff Wrote:

(April 5, 2014 at 12:52 am)Heywood Wrote: I don't see any pointless stupidity in emergent complexity. I think you are confused about what emergent complexity is. Can you give an example of the pointless stupidity you are thinking about?

http://csep10.phys.utk.edu/astr162/lect/...iding.html

http://www.mnn.com/earth-matters/animals...it-suicide

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/...asite.html

http://www.eonline.com/shows/kardashians

You're confusing the products of the process with the process itself. Its like saying evolution is pointless and stupid and then giving us the example of the laryngeal nerve.