Daily Archives: October 5, 2005

Meet the Designer

In the latest newsletter of the Accelerating Studies Foundation, John Smart offers up not so much a defense of Intelligent Design as a critique of the reductionist approach that many strict evolutionists take to the argument. Smart writes:

While a significant fraction of ID is unfortunately driven by religious rather than scientific motives, painting all of these meta-Darwinian models as creationist just isn’t credible. ID contains a wide spectrum of perspectives, and the best of these elegantly expose the limitations of conventional Darwinism as a theory of all macroscopic biological change. The better theories can’t be mislabeled as arguments for an intelligent designer, but instead provide powerful evidence for developmental processes of change where evolution provides only the dominant mechanism, while the “genes” (starting conditions) of our universe, and the environment in which it is embedded, including its unique physical laws, also determine long range outcomes…

In the simplest and most biological of these cosmological models, our universe’s genes self-organized, through many successive cycles in the multiverse, to produce the life-friendly and intelligence-friendly universe we live in today. This theory of intelligent self-organized design proposes that, analogous to living ecosystems, our universe’s “genes, organisms, and environment” encode deep developmental intelligence on a macroscopic scale, while they use primarily evolutionary and chaotic mechanisms to unfold that intelligence on the scale that we normally observe it. Evo-devo, whether applied to biology or the universe, makes clear the shortcomings of evolution-only models of change and does so without the need to posit any self-aware, embodied designer that is distinct from the universe itself. Truth is often stranger than we imagine.”

Meanwhile, blogger Micah Glasser of the new and very interesting Event Horizon directs us towards this paper by William Dembski which offers up an argument for Intelligent Design based on information theory. Dembski describes something called “complex specified information” which he asserts can only be the result of intelligence. The arguments he offers that this must be the case strike me as being pretty weak (or maybe I’m not following them); to me it seems that Dembski presents nothing more than a rehash of the watchmaker analogy dressed up in information theory language.

But setting that objection aside, Dembski’s complex specified information might provide an interesting synthesis of information theory and the theory that Smart outlines above. From an evo-devo standpoint we could assert that complex specified information at one level must (may?) be a reflection of complex specified information at a higher level. So the CSI* inherent in biology is accounted for not by an intelligent creator but rather by the CSI found in the developmental pattern encoded at the level of the universe.

This leaves only one question: where is the developmental pattern that the universe is following encoded? Obviously, that CSI is encoded somewhere in Smart’s “multiverse,” which would then also be following a developmental pattern encoded at an even higher level.

So this obviously raises a problem. It may be turtles all the way down, but it looks like it’s CSI all the way up: an infinite progression of levels for the encoding of information. Failing that, at some point we will have to come face to face either with an intelligent designer requiring no pre-encoded developmental pattern (let’s call him “God” for short) or a developmental pattern which exists independently of any higher encoding level or that is somehow taking it’s cues from one of the lower levels.

Like the man said, truth is often stranger than we imagine. If the pattern of encoding that allows everything to exist somehow turns back on itself, that could potentially mean that even we — or our descendants — are the ultimate source of encoding the universe/multiverse/CSI-all-the-way-up-structure-of-reality.

To paraphrase Pogo: perhaps we have met the intelligent designer, and it is us.

* Sorry, I had to give in and start using Dembski’s abbreviation; if anybody from CBS is reading this, I have an idea for you — CSI: Cosmology. Maybe you could get, say, Jimmy Smits in a Carl Sagan kind of a role.

UPDATE FROM STEPHEN:

Tech Central Station has two new articles on ID this week:

  • Descent of Man in Dover

    Sallie Baliunas argues that either ID proponents are talking about space aliens (and there’s no evidence that aliens planted life on Earth) or, more likely, they are talking about a Supernatural Designer. If so, that by definition is beyond the bounds of science and has no place in the science classroom.

  • Why Intelligent Design Is Going to Win

    Douglas Kern reminds us that those who reproduce (fertile Red Staters) also get to say what ideas are passed on to the next generation. And if a spoon fulla’ ID helps the Darwin go down, who’s hurt?

Kentucky Fried Jeepin'

In the interests of fuel economy, I’ve been thinking about trading in my 2002 Jeep Liberty for one of the new diesel models. But now this article in The Smithsonian (via SciTech Daily) really has me thinking. Consider these two use-cases:

Every few weeks, Etta Kantor goes to a Chinese restaurant and fills a couple of five-gallon pails with used cooking oil. Back in her garage, the 59-year-old philanthropist and grandmother strains it through a cloth filter and then pours it into a custom-made second fuel tank in her 2003 Volkswagen Jetta diesel station wagon. Once the car is warmed up, she flips a fuel toggle on the dashboard to switch to the vegetable oil. Wherever she drives, she’s trailed by the appetizing odor of egg rolls.

Sean Parks of Davis, California, collects his cooking oil from a fish-and-chips restaurant and a corn-dog shop. He purifies it chemically in a 40-gallon reactor that he built himself for about $200. The processed oil can be used even when his car’s engine is cold, at a cost of about 70 cents a gallon. Parks, 30, a geographer for the U.S. Forest Service, makes enough processed oil to fuel his family’s two cars.

The article goes on to point out that the grease running through all the deep fryers in all the restaurants and fast food joints in the US could be used to make about 100 million gallons of biodiesel fuel annually, which could meet about 5% of our national fuel consumption needs.

kfcjeep.jpg

What’s most impressive to me about the adoption of this energy source is that apparently some folks don’t feel the need to wait for biodiesel to be offered at their neighborhood Shell station before they start using it. They’re adjusting their vehicles and finding the fuel themselves.

The article concludes:

Grass-roots fans aren’t waiting. Kantor, who paid $1,400 to outfit her VW diesel with a second fuel tank, says she gets nearly 200 miles per petrodiesel gallon. “This is not about money,” says Kantor, who speaks at schools about protecting the environment. “I’m doing this to set an example.”

Well, 200 MPG sounds pretty darn good. I doubt a modified Jeep would be quite as fuel efficient as a modified Jetta, but still.
Even at 150 miles per gallon, that would be 8-9 times better than the mileage I’m currently getting. And there’s a hot wings place just right up the street (with a McDonald’s and a Popeye’s along the way.)

Hmmmm…….

UPDATE: Well, our friends J Random American and Engineer Poet didn’t waste much time in totally raining on my hot-wings-Jeep parade (see comments, below.) However, J’s cat diesel idea has me thinking that maybe we shouldn’t just be thinking of running the Jeep on chicken grease. The chickens themselves would appear to be a good option. Of course, if we really want to get a meme going, maybe we should crunch the numbers on how much fuel we could get from puppies. I can think of at least one prominent blogger who might be intrigued.

On a more serious note, J points out some very real economy of scale objections to these gimmicky fuel sources. Read the whole thing.

Kentucky Fried Jeepin’

In the interests of fuel economy, I’ve been thinking about trading in my 2002 Jeep Liberty for one of the new diesel models. But now this article in The Smithsonian (via SciTech Daily) really has me thinking. Consider these two use-cases:

Every few weeks, Etta Kantor goes to a Chinese restaurant and fills a couple of five-gallon pails with used cooking oil. Back in her garage, the 59-year-old philanthropist and grandmother strains it through a cloth filter and then pours it into a custom-made second fuel tank in her 2003 Volkswagen Jetta diesel station wagon. Once the car is warmed up, she flips a fuel toggle on the dashboard to switch to the vegetable oil. Wherever she drives, she’s trailed by the appetizing odor of egg rolls.

Sean Parks of Davis, California, collects his cooking oil from a fish-and-chips restaurant and a corn-dog shop. He purifies it chemically in a 40-gallon reactor that he built himself for about $200. The processed oil can be used even when his car’s engine is cold, at a cost of about 70 cents a gallon. Parks, 30, a geographer for the U.S. Forest Service, makes enough processed oil to fuel his family’s two cars.

The article goes on to point out that the grease running through all the deep fryers in all the restaurants and fast food joints in the US could be used to make about 100 million gallons of biodiesel fuel annually, which could meet about 5% of our national fuel consumption needs.

kfcjeep.jpg

What’s most impressive to me about the adoption of this energy source is that apparently some folks don’t feel the need to wait for biodiesel to be offered at their neighborhood Shell station before they start using it. They’re adjusting their vehicles and finding the fuel themselves.

The article concludes:

Grass-roots fans aren’t waiting. Kantor, who paid $1,400 to outfit her VW diesel with a second fuel tank, says she gets nearly 200 miles per petrodiesel gallon. “This is not about money,” says Kantor, who speaks at schools about protecting the environment. “I’m doing this to set an example.”

Well, 200 MPG sounds pretty darn good. I doubt a modified Jeep would be quite as fuel efficient as a modified Jetta, but still.
Even at 150 miles per gallon, that would be 8-9 times better than the mileage I’m currently getting. And there’s a hot wings place just right up the street (with a McDonald’s and a Popeye’s along the way.)

Hmmmm…….

UPDATE: Well, our friends J Random American and Engineer Poet didn’t waste much time in totally raining on my hot-wings-Jeep parade (see comments, below.) However, J’s cat diesel idea has me thinking that maybe we shouldn’t just be thinking of running the Jeep on chicken grease. The chickens themselves would appear to be a good option. Of course, if we really want to get a meme going, maybe we should crunch the numbers on how much fuel we could get from puppies. I can think of at least one prominent blogger who might be intrigued.

On a more serious note, J points out some very real economy of scale objections to these gimmicky fuel sources. Read the whole thing.

Roomba to Rambo to Mike Brady

Via GeekPress, the company that brought us Roomba — the cute, almost cuddly household cleaning robot — is moving into some surprising new territory:

IRobot Corp. of Burlington, famous for its robotic vacuum cleaners, has teamed up with researchers at Boston University to develop a military robot capable of spotting enemy snipers.IRobot demonstrated the system, called REDOWL (for Robot Enhanced Detection Outpost with Lasers), at the Association of the United States Army convention in Washington yesterday. Testers struck pieces of metal to simulate gunshots. REDOWL quickly aimed its infrared camera and laser rangefinder at the source of the noise, just as it did in tests at a Medfield gun range.

REDOWL is based on PackBot, which was the first IRobot unit to be drafted into military service. PackBot is the Ensign Redshirt of the military robot world, scouting out dangerous terrain and being the first to enter buildings that may be booby trapped.

If this REDOWL business starts to sound a little too much like the Terminator, fear not. At least not yet:

In theory, a REDOWL system could fire back at an enemy, but [deputy director of the Boston University Photonics Center Glenn] Thoren said the hardware isn’t strong enough to support the weight of a gun. Besides, he said, it would be dangerous to have a weapon-toting robot that could open fire on its own.

“You need to have a man in the loop,” he said.

I just wonder whether IRobot realizes what they’re potentially sitting on, should they start to combine some of these functions. Say you had a robot that would be the first in for any dangerous situation, that warded off bad guys, and that vacuumed. Shucks, throw in a tolerance for chick flicks and some basic childrearing skills — as well as a good-providing career like, say, architecture — and we’re well on our way to the world’s first robotic husband.

We need to watch out, fellas. It isn’t just factory jobs that can be replaced by automation.