The Watchmaker: my fav argument

[John 6IX Breezy]

Yes, and something may be incapable of being reduced along certain lines and not be irreducible.  Irreducibility is all or nothing.  It is only irreducible if it is not reducible given all methods.

I agree irreducible implies something wholistic. But how many partial failures does it take for it to be significant? The paper I referenced overviews about a dozen disorders. And yet one dysfunction alone creates a wholistic obstruction to reduction. Perhaps a solution to each obstruction exists, and if it's presented I'll be open to it.

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

Thus, according to you, two particles of hydrogen in an otherwise empty universe is complex. 

Yes. Even one particle of hydrogen is complex. It took hundreds of years before some very smart people discovered it, and more time to understand its properties. I don't know how good you are -or can be- at chemistry, but there is nothing about the hydrogen or any other chemical element that you can call simple.

‘Simple’ is a relative term. Hydrogen atoms are complex compared to their constituent parts, but are simple relative to uranium atoms.

Boru

[Angrboda]

Thus, according to you, two particles of hydrogen in an otherwise empty universe is complex. 

Yes. Even one particle of hydrogen is complex. It took hundreds of years before some very smart people discovered it, and more time to understand its properties. I don't know how good you are -or can be- at chemistry, but there is nothing about the hydrogen or any other chemical element that you can call simple.

None of that makes a particle of hydrogen complex. According to your definition, a particle is elementary or simple if it has no sub-structure. If you don't like hydrogen as an elementary particle, then substitute "two elementary particles" under any definition. As with John, your response is simply ignoratio elenchi -- even if true, it doesn't answer the point. The point is that two particles as an example of complexity is absurd. Your argument reduces to a bunch of equivocations.

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Yes, and something may be incapable of being reduced along certain lines and not be irreducible.  Irreducibility is all or nothing.  It is only irreducible if it is not reducible given all methods.

I agree irreducible implies something wholistic. But how many partial failures does it take for it to be significant? The paper I referenced overviews about a dozen disorders. And yet one dysfunction alone creates a wholistic obstruction to reduction. Perhaps a solution to each obstruction exists, and if it's presented I'll be open to it.

I wasn't, and am not debating your argument. I am simply defending mine. I have no interest in the debate other than the aforementioned points.

[John 6IX Breezy]

I found a copy of Neurophilosophy. Seems interesting.

[R00tKiT]

None of that makes a particle of hydrogen complex.  According to your definition, a particle is elementary or simple if it has no sub-structure.

That's not "my" definition. Pick some textbook on particle physics and read what an elementary particle means, I'm not going to repeat definitions again.

  If you don't like hydrogen as an elementary particle

The Standard Model of particle physics summarizes all kinds of elementary particles, which don't include hydrogen. When you use the terms "like", "your" you really leave a bad impression about how much you know about physics.

   The point is that two particles as an example of complexity is absurd.

Hydrogen is not a particle, do you understand? It's a chemical element which contains elementary particles, therefore, it's not an elementary particle i.e. not simple, as defined before.

[Fake Messiah]

Yeah, no better way to prove intelligent design than with the flaw in the design.

Believe it or not, you got a point. Flaws in design directly prove design, because without them we wouldn't know what the "right" design is supposed to look like. It's because there are flaws in software that programmers figure out there is better possible software, and manage to improve it/update it or create a superior version altogether.

It's precisely because there are, for example, birth defects or congenital deformities, that the human body is a designed machine. Think about it, if all the combined brainpower of these biologists and medical researchers couldn't adjust the microscopic-scale genetic deformities responsible for most incurable diseases, then clearly the absence of these genetic deformities in healthy individuals indicates a superbly skilled designer, who crafted a world with such a configuration that permits gradual self-improvement through natural selection. In a world without birth defects and disease, medicine wouldn't exist, we probably wouldn't have discovered cells or DNA and, more importantly, no one would have mentioned the word fine tuning or design.

Wow! I do read a lot of stupid posts on this forum by religiously zealous people, but sometimes I read such insanity that it scares me.

Using this kind of insanity you can make anything look like evidence of an intelligent design by a perfect being: "a perfect being designed humans by giving them unnecessary flaws (like children being born without heart) because it's like a carpenter taking acid and making a table that falls apart."

[Angrboda]

None of that makes a particle of hydrogen complex.  According to your definition, a particle is elementary or simple if it has no sub-structure.

That's not "my" definition. Pick some textbook on particle physics and read what an elementary particle means, I'm not going to repeat definitions again.

Yes, it is.

More about elementary particles: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elementary_particle

In particle physics, an elementary particle or fundamental particle is a subatomic particle with no substructure, i.e. it is not composed of other particles.

Wikipedia || Elementary particle

  If you don't like hydrogen as an elementary particle

The Standard Model of particle physics summarizes all kinds of elementary particles, which don't include hydrogen. When you use the terms "like", "your" you really leave a bad impression about how much you know about physics.

Only to you, which isn't any loss. I'm using the terms correctly. And this is entirely beside the point.

   The point is that two particles as an example of complexity is absurd.

Hydrogen is not a particle, do you understand? It's a chemical element which contains elementary particles, therefore, it's not an elementary particle i.e. not simple, as defined before.

Again, beside the point. You're just one big galloping case of ignoratio elenchi. In all your smart talk you haven't addressed what I was saying. You're just shitposting.

I'm guessing this gish gallop of irrelevancies is here because you cannot address the point. Pity.

You still haven't answered my earlier challenge to demonstrate the existence of elementary particles, either. Until you do, you got nothing.

(ps. If you're gonna talk shit about other people's language skills, don't go saying hydrogen isn't a particle. It just makes you look stupid.)

[R00tKiT]

You still haven't answered my earlier challenge to demonstrate the existence of elementary particles, either.  Until you do, you got nothing.

OMG. ?! The very objective of particle physics is to identify these elementary particles, did you even bother and look up any of these terms?

For fermions like quarks, which are elementary particles,  there are known experiments in the literature like "Deep inelastc scattering" which do provide empirical evidence for their existence
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_inelastic_scattering

More recently, you have the Higgs boson, the well-known fundamental particle, which was confirmed to exist in 2013
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Search_for...iggs_boson

Anything else?

[Angrboda]

You still haven't answered my earlier challenge to demonstrate the existence of elementary particles, either.  Until you do, you got nothing.

OMG. ?! The very objective of particle physics is to identify these elementary particles, did you even bother and look up any of these terms?

For fermions like quarks, which are elementary particles,  there are known experiments in the literature like "Deep inelastc scattering" which do provide empirical evidence for their existence
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_inelastic_scattering

More recently, you have the Higgs boson, the well-known fundamental particle, which was confirmed to exist in 2013
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Search_for...iggs_boson

Anything else?

I didn't need to look them up. Physics has demonstrated their existence. It hasn't demonstrated they have no structure. Until it does, you can't assert them as elementary particles.

Meanwhile, in all your shitposting, the point still has not been addressed. Let me remind you of what it is:

The point is that two particles as an example of complexity is absurd. Your argument reduces to a bunch of equivocations.

[R00tKiT]

I didn't need to look them up.  Physics has demonstrated their existence.  It hasn't demonstrated they have no structure.  Until it does, you can't assert them as elementary particles.  For someone who talks shit about other people's knowledge of physics, you seem to know dick about it.

Meanwhile, in all your shitposting, the point still has not been addressed.  Let me remind you of what it is:

The point is that two particles as an example of complexity is absurd.  Your argument reduces to a bunch of equivocations.

You are incredibly dishonest. You said, specifically, that two hydrogen atoms constituting complexity is absurd. I replied that hydrogen is demonstrably not simple because there are simpler components of it, namely the elementary particles, do you agree with this particular reply? No? Are they the simplest that we will ever discover ? we don't know, their very existence still proves, irrefutably, that hydrogen is complex, and thus your silly objection evaporates into thin air.

Once again, it's not I who asserted them as elementary particles. This is the term employed in modern physics, you can take it up with all these theoretical physicists who use the same terminology to describe the simplest known existent items, maybe you will be surprised when you realise they are a bit smarter than you thought when they picked the terminology. And Wtf does any of that require proving a negative assertion like "they have no structure" which is an infinite regress, because we can grasp the idea of the infinitesimal. we simply deal with we know. It's known that sand is really not a simple particle because it contains lots of molecules, which in turn contain these newly discovered elementary particles, THEREFORE sand is really incredibly complex, so much so that there is ongoing research to unravel more of the mysteries of subatomic particles.

That's all I need to reject OP's silly description of sand as simple, in comparison to watches. As if he is some omnipotent agent capable of grasping quantum field theory in the blink of an eye.