And Again: Where North American ID goes wrong

                    Time for another critique of North American ID

North American ID tends to veer toward political partisanship
Picture from: https://www.discovery.org/

On several counts I can give a cautious endorsement to the North American Intelligent Design (NAID) movement. But this is a very qualified endorsement as I have criticisms of both their intellectual position and their cultural & political posturing (*3). See for example my criticism of Casey Luskin in this series. Moreover, my acceptance of the intelligent design argument for God is very cautious compared to NAID culture; for given that we are extrapolating from our experience with the works of human and animals (& aliens?) who act within the created context, to the works of a very Alien Totalizing Being who is postulated to be The Context of creation, it seems a bit of a stretch to claim that we can uncritically use what we observe of human and animal intelligence as a model for the intelligence of God. However, I would certainly concede that given the remarkable and irreducible organization of our cosmos, which for me most forcibly emerges in the descriptive effectiveness of the elegant algorithms of physics, there is a compelling intuition that by analogy the cosmos itself has its origins in an all embracing intelligence. This feeling is further reinforced when set against the arguments of arrogant atheist blowhard Richard Carrier who deludes himself with his misconceptions about probability theory as he attempts to account for physics as an aspect of randomness. 

However, as I have suggested in this short paper, I nevertheless take a rather reserved attitude toward the simple extrapolation of design arguments for God using Bayesian ideas. For me a faithful & personal God is an a-priori feature of my world view (Hebs 11:6), a feature which not only promotes a successful epistemology but also makes ultimate sense of a seemingly senseless world, a world whose irreducibly contingent organization is otherwise destined to remain an enigma. On this account God is not a simple inductive extrapolation from observation but rather the initial step in an abductive approach which gives anthropic meaning and purpose to the world (*1). Without this sense making world view one is left with little but a bleak absurdity where nothing makes sense (see Brian Cox). So, whilst I'm in sympathy with the general thrust of the NAID movement (but not their politics) I would nevertheless want to point out that they have over invested in the following points of view.....

1. The so called explanatory filter: When applied to human, animal and even alien activity, activity which takes place within the creation this filter works. But it all too easily leads to naive "God of the Gaps" thinking when applied to divine activity. This has mislead NAIDs to commit to needless subliminal "God-of-the-gaps" thinking as evidenced by their total commitment to anti-evolutionism.

3. Anti-evolutionism: OK, I can accept that some theists, from a theological point of view, might find evolution difficult to stomach. But we cannot rule out evolution on the basis of the category mistake that it classifies as a "blind natural force". If the Divine is as totalizing as Christian theology suggests then there is no such thing as "blind natural forces" incapable of filling explanatory gaps which according to NAID otherwise need filling with the interventions of divine design. If the process of evolution as commonly conceived has taken place in relatively short cosmic times then it is itself a remarkable work of creation. If you are going to argue against evolution it must be from empirical grounds not on the basis of God-of-the-gaps intuitions about the inability of "blind natural forces" (sic) to fill a gap that can only be filled with divine hocus-pocus. 

2. Anti-Junk DNA: There is no obliging need for theists to commit themselves one way or the other on this question; again, it must be on empirical grounds that this dispute is settled. Who can tell just what a contextually totalizing Being would or would not want to do with redundant/random coding in his DNA. My own uncompiled computer code is usually littered with the developmental legacy of historical but now redundant coding, so who knows what the Great Unknown of the Divine Mind might do. 

4. Information can't be created by "blind natural forces"? This is false: See here. Grumpy atheist PZMyers has recently & rightly taken NAID Stephen Myer to task on this one - see here: I have to roll my eyes when a creationist says information! Behind the NAID view on information generation is their subliminal "God-of-the-gaps" mentality; for them any sophisticated information becomes a "gap" incapable of being filled with "blind natural forces" and therefore demands deity intelligence to fill it. (*2)

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The notion that only enigmatic intelligence can create information may be based on the idea that somehow human intelligence should be categorized as a mysterious incomprehensible and transcendent process. To support this NAIDs may point to Roger Penrose's ideas about intelligence making use of non-computable processes.

I have critiqued Penrose's work here.  This work appears to have its origin in the fact that no finite system can fully be "self-aware". Full "self-awareness", for finite systems, opens up the potential for self-referencing contradictions. However, an outside perspective of an ontology external to a subject intelligence can be fully aware of the processes of that subject intelligence. 

Apart from my criticisms above, the following post on Science and Culture is much more to my liking than NAID knee-jerk anti-evolutionism....

Inscrutable Dice, Hitchcock’s Beans, and Cosmological Fine-Tuning | Science and Culture Today

However. I suspect some of the issues this writer raises can be short cut once we get a handle on the concept if randomness.  Theorems around randomness have no bounds as to the sizes of the sets to which they apply. 

Footnotes
*1 Christianity has a strong existential component in its evidences; that is, Christianity is partly dependent on the testimony of personal experiences. This slant toward anecdotal evidence, of course, cannot qualify as being on the same footing as the formal and sharable evidences of our science which depends on an a-priori high organization. 

*2 What I would concede however is that there is a cosmic sized "gap" everywhere and everywhen in as much as the descriptive nature of science is incapable of furnishing logical closure on the ultimate question of existence. 

*3 I also look askance at the mutual backslapping tribal culture that is the NAID community. This culture is not conducive to independent interest-free thinking;  it creates conflicts of interest.  It is probably true to say however that the gelling of their tribal culture has been encouraged by the vociferous and unfair opposition they have received from some quarters. See here

Bill Dembski's Information Conservation Thesis Falls Over

NAID's Stephen Meyer interviewed by Unwoke Right Wing Republican Dan Crenshaw. 
Evidence that NAID has become part of the  politicized culture war

I see that William "Bill" Dembski has done a post on Evolution News on the subject of the "Conservation of Information". The article is for the most part an interesting history of that phrase and goes to show that "information" has a number of meanings dependent on the discipline where it is being used, with Bill Dembski having his own proprietary concerns tied up with his support of the North American Intelligent Design (NAID) community.  See here for the article:

Conservation of Information: History of an Idea | Evolution News

Bill's particular information interest seems to lie with the so called "No Free Lunch Theorems". These theorems were about the mathematical limits on computer algorithms purposed to search for (and/or generate) configurations with properties of particular interest. Bill's focus on the "No Free Lunch Theorems" is bound up with the NAID community's challenge to standard evolution, a process which they see as a threat to their self-inflicted XOR creation dichotomy; viz: either "God Intelligence did it" XOR "Blind unguided natural forces did it" . 

But Bill gets full marks for spotting the relevance of these theorems to evolutionary theory: Evolution does have at least some features isomorphic with computer searches; in particular these theorems do throw some light on evolution's "search", reject and select mechanism which locks in organic configurations. So, the least I can say is that Bill's interest in the "No free lunch theorems" is based on what looks to be a potentially fruitful avenue of study. However, although it is true that the "No free lunch theorems" reveal interesting mathematical limits on computer searches, as we will see Bill has gone too far in trying co-opt these theorems for his concept of information conservation; in fact, to the contrary I would say that these theorems prove that Bill is wrong about the conservation of information.

                                                                                             ***

We can get a gut feeling for the No free lunch theorems with the impressionistic & informal mathematical analysis in this post. 

(Note: I arrived at similar conclusions in these two essays...

GeneratingComplexity2c.pdf - Google Drive

CreatingInformation.pdf - Google Drive 

These essays are more formal and cover the subject in more detail)

***

We imagine that we have a set of computer programs executing in parallel with the intention of finding out if at some point in their computations they generate examples of a particular class of configuration. These configurations are to be found somewhere in an absolutely huge domain of possible configurations that I shall call D and which numbers D members, where D is extremely large.  It is a well known fact that most of the members of D will likely be highly disordered. 

A computer "search" starts with its initial algorithmic information  usually coded in the form of a character string or configuration S of length S. This configurational string contains the information informing the computing machinery how to generate a sequence of configurations C1, C2,.....,C_n,.... etc. The software creates this sequence by modifying the current configuration C_n in order to create the next configuration C_n+1. A crucial operational characteristic of algorithms is that they are capable of making if-then-else type decisions which means that the modifications leading to C_n+1 will be dependent on configurational features found in C_n. It is this decisional feature of executed algorithms which gives them their search, reject and select character, not unlike evolution. This means that their trajectory through configuration space is often very difficult to predict without actually executing the algorithm. This is because the conditional decision-making of algorithms means that we can't predict what direction an algorithm will take at any one point in the computation until the conditions it is responding to have actually been generated by the algorithm. The concept of computational irreducibility is relevant here. 

In his article Bill is careful to describe the components of search algorithms, components which give them their search, reject & select character. But for my purposes we can simplify things by ignoring these components and only give cognizance to the fact that an algorithm takes its computer along what is possibly a non-linear trajectory in configuration space. We can also drop Bill's talk of the algorithm aiming for a specified target and then stopping since in general an algorithm can go on indefinitely moving through configuration space endlessly generating configurations as does conventional evolution. All we need to be concerned about here is the potentiality for algorithms to generate a class of configs of interest in a  "time" T where T is measured in algorithmic steps. 

                                                ***

If we have an algorithm with a string length of S then the maximum number of possible algorithms that can be constructed given this string length is A^s where A is the number of characters in the character set used to write the algorithm.

We now imagine that we have these possible A^s algorithms all executing in parallel for T steps. It then follows that the maximum number of configurations C which potentially can be generated by these possible algorithms of length S will be no greater than the limits set by the following relationship....

C <= A^s x  T

 Relation 1.0

...where C is the number of configurations that can be created in time T if the set of algorithms are run in parallel and assuming that a) T is measured in algorithmic steps and that b) the computing machinery is only capable of one step at a time and generates one configuration per step per algorithm.  

If the class of configurations we are interested in exist somewhere in a huge domain D consisting of D configurations and where for practically realistic execution times T:

                                     D >>> C

Relation 2.0

...then the relatively meager number of configurations our algorithm set can generate in realistic times like T are a drop in the ocean when compared to the size of the set of configurational possibilities that comprise D.  If relationship 2.0 holds then it is clear that given realistic times T, our "searches" will be unable to access the vast majority of configurations in D. 

With the above relationships in mind no free lunch starts to make some sense: If we are looking for algorithms which generate members of a particular class of configuration of interest (e.g. organic-like configurations) then for the algorithmic search to have a chance of succeeding in a reasonable time we require one of the following two conditions to be true...

1. Assuming that such exists then an algorithm of reasonable length S has to be found which is able to generate the targeted class of configurations within a reasonable time T.  However, if relationship 2.0 holds then it is clear that this option will not work for the vast majority of configurations in D.

2.  The alternative is that we invalidate relationship 2.0 by either a) allowing the algorithms of length S to be large enough so that A^s ~ D, or b) allowing the execution time T of these algorithms to be sufficiently large so that T ~ D,  or c) allowing that T and A^s when combined invalidate relationship  2.0. 

***

So, with the foregoing in mind we can see that if an algorithm is to generate a stipulated class of solution in domain D in a reasonable time T it either a) has to be logically possible to code the algorithmic solution in a starting string S of reasonable length S or b) we have to code the required information into a long string S of length S such that A^s ~ D. 

In case a) both S and T are of a practically reasonable magnitude from which it follows that given relationship 1.0 then little of the domain D  can be generated by such algorithms and therefore the majority of configurations that could possibly be designated as of interest in D (especially if they are complex disordered configurations) can not be found by these case-a algorithms. In case b) the starting string S, in terms of the number of possible algorithms that can be constructed, is commensurate with the size of D and therefore could possibly generate configurations of stipulated interest in a reasonable time. 

Therefore it follows that if we are restricted to relatively short algorithm strings of length S then these algorithms will only have a chance of reaching the overwhelming majority of configurations in D after very long execution times. If our configurations of designated interest are in this long execution time region in D these configurations will demand large values of T to generate. Long execution time algorithms, absent of any helpful starting strings which provide "short cut" information are I think what Bill calls "blind search algorithms". That emphasis on the word "blind" is a loaded misnomer which appeals to the NAID community for reasons which I hope will become clear. 

***

For Bill this what no free lunch means to him...

Because no-free-lunch theorems assert that average performance of certain classes of search algorithms remain constant at the level of blind search, these theorems have very much a conservation of information feel in the sense that conservation is strictly maintained and not merely that conservation is the best that can be achieved, with loss of conservation also a possibility

It's true that unless primed with the right initial information by far and away the majority of algorithms will reach most targets of an arbitrarily designated interest only after very long execution times involving laborious searching.....ergo, upfront information that lengthens S is needed to shorten the search; in fact this is always true by definition if we are wanting to generate configurations of interest that are also random configurations. 

So, the following is my interpretation of what Bill means by the conservation of information; namely, that to get the stipulated class of garbage out in reasonable time you have to put the right garbage in from the outset. The "garbage in" is a starting string S of sufficient length to tip the algorithm off as to where to look. The alternative is to go for searches with very long execution times T. So, paraphrasing Bill, we might say that his conservation of information can be expressed by this caricatured equation:

G_in = G_out

Relation 3.0

....where G_in represents some kind of informational measure of the "garbage" going in and G_out is the informational measure of the garbage coming out of the computation. But the following is the crucial point which as we will see invalidates Bill's conservation of information: Although relationship 3.0 gives Bill his conservation of information feel, it is an approximation which only applies to reasonable execution times.....it neglects the fact that the execution of an algorithm does create information if only slowly. That Bill has overlooked the fact that what he calls "blind searches" nevertheless slowly generate information becomes apparent from the following analysis.

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If we take the log of relation 1.0 we get:

                                                         Log (C) <= S Log (A) + Log(T)

relation 4.0

The value C is the number of configurations that A^s algorithms will generate in time T and this will be less than or equal to the righthand side of the above relation. The probability of one these C configurations being chosen at random will be 1/C. Converting this probability to a Shannon information value, I, gives:

I = - Log (1/C) = Log (C)

relation 5.0

Therefore substituting I into 4.0 gives:

I <= S Log (A) + Log(T)

relation 6.0

Incorporating Log (A) into a generalized measure of string length, S gives....

I <= S + Log(T)

relation 7.0

From this relationship we can see that parallel algorithms do have the potential to generate Shannon Information with time T, and the information is not just incorporated from the outset in a string of length S. However, we do notice that because the information generated by execution time is the log function of T, that information is generated very slowly. This is what Bill has overlooked: What he derisively refers to as a "blind search" (sic) actually has the potential to generate information, if slowly. Bill's view is expressed further in the following quote from his article (With my emphases and with my insertions in red).....

With the no-free-lunch theorems, something is clearly being conserved [No, wrong] in that performance of different search algorithms, when averaged across the range of feedback information, is constant and equivalent to performance of blind search.[Log(T) is the "blind search" component] The question then arises how no free lunch relates to the consistent claim in the earlier conservation-of-information literature about output information not exceeding input information. In fact, the connection is straightforward. The only reason to average performance of algorithms across feedback information is if we don’t have any domain-specific information to help us find the target in question.[The "domain-specific" information is implicit in the string S of length S in relation 7.0] 

Consequently, no free lunch tells us that without such domain-specific information, we have no special input information to improve the search, and thus no way to achieve output information that exceeds the capacities of blind search. When it comes to search, blind search is always the lowest common denominator — any search under consideration must always be able to do at least as good as blind search because we can always execute a blind search.[Oh no we can't Bill, at least not practically quickly enough under the current technology; we still await the technological sophistication to implement the expanding parallelism needed for "blind search" to be effective, the holy grail of computing. "Blind search" is a much more sophisticated idea than our Bill and his NAID mates are making out!] With no free lunch, it is blind search as input and blind search as output. The averaging of feedback information treated as input acts as a leveler, ensuring parity between information input and output. No free lunch preserves strict conservation [Tough, not true!] precisely because it sets the bar so low at blind search.

By distilling its findings into a single fundamental relation of probability theory, this work provides a definitive, fully developed, general formulation of the Law of Conservation of Information, showing that information that facilitates search cannot magically materialize out of nothing but instead must be derived from pre-existing sources.[False; information derives not just from S, but can also creep in from an algorithm's  execution time T ]

Blind search, blind search, blind search, blind, blind, blind,...... the repeated mantra of NAID culture which with its subliminal gnosto-dualism repeatedly refers to the resources of God's creation as a place of "blind natural forces". Sometimes you will also hear them talk about "unguided natural forces". But in one sense I would maintain the cosmos is far from "natural", and this is evidenced by the  sense of wonder its highly contingent form engenders among theists and atheists alike, all of whom can advance no logically obliging reason as to its highly organised configuration (accept perhaps Richard Carrier whose arrogance on this score would do Zaphod Beeblebrox  proud)

Bill's last sentence above is clearly false, as false can be; he's overlooked the slowly growing information term in relation 7.0. Information is not conserved during a search because the so-called "blind search" (sic) term is slowly, almost undetectably creating information. There is therefore no "strict conservation of information" (sic). That the so-called "blind search" (sic) is being understated by Bill and the NAID culture he represents becomes very apparent as soon as we realize that equation 7.0 has been derived on the assumption that we are using parallel processing; that is, a processing paradigm where the number of processors doing the computation is constant. But if we start thinking about the exponentials of a process which utilizes expanding parallelism the second term on the righthand side of 7.0 has the potential to become linear in T and therefore highly significant. This is why so much effort and cash is being put into quantum computing; Quantum computers clearly create information at a much more rapid rate and it is the monumental resources being invested in this line of cutting edge research which gives the lie to Bill's contention that information is conserved during computation and that somehow "blind search" rates as a primitive last resort. 

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As far as the big evolution question is concerned I regard this matter with studied detachment. God as the sovereign author of the cosmic story could introduce information into the cosmic configuration generator using either or both terms in relation 7.0; in particular if unlike primitive humanity at our current technological juncture God has at his finger tips the power of expanding parallelism to crack the so called blind search problem the second term on the righthand side of 7.0 has the potential to become significant. Accordingly, I reject NAID's wrongly identified "blind natural forces" category when those forces are in fact highly sophisticated because they are in the hands of Omniscient Omnipotence. The trouble is that the NAID community have heavily invested in an anti-evolution culture and it looks like they've past the point of no return, such is their huge social and tribal identification with anti-evolutionism. Ironically, even if bog-standard evolution is true (along with features like junk DNA) we are still faced with the Intelligent Design question. As for myself I have no indispensable intellectual investment in either the evolutionist or anti-evolutionist positions.

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As I have remarked so many times before, what motivates NAID (& YEC) culture's aversion to the idea that information can be created by so-called "blind natural forces" is this culture's a priori anti-evolution stance. Underlying this stance, I propose, is a subliminal gnosto-dualist mindset, and this mindset in this subliminal form afflicts Western societies across the board, from atheism to authoritarian & touchy feely expressions of Christianity; in fact Western religious expression in general. But that's another story. (See for example my series on atheist Don Cupitt - a series yet to be completed)

What's compounded my problem with NAID & YEC nowadays is their embrace of unwoke political culture, a culture which automatically puts them at odds with the academic establishment. I'll grant that that establishment and its supporters have often (or at least sometimes) subjected outsiders (like Bill for example) to verbal abuse and cancellation (e.g. consider Richard Dawkins & the Four Horseman, RationalWiki etc.). This has help urge them to find friends among the North American far-right academia hating tribes and embrace some of their political attitudes (See here). As I personally by and large support academia (but see here) it is therefore likely that I too would be lumped together by the NAID & YEC communities as a "woke" sympathizer, even though I reject any idea that the problems of society can be finally fixed by social engineering initiated centrally, least of all by Marxist social engineering. But then I'm also a strong objector to far-right libertarian social engineering which seeks a society regulated purely by a community's use of their purses (and then be pray to the chaotic non-linearities of market economics and power grabbing by plutocratic crony capitalists). In today's panicked and polarized milieu the far-right would see even a constitutional Royalist like myself who is also in favour of a regulated market economy, as at best a diluted "socialist" and at worst a far-left extremist, ripe for the woke-sin-bin!

NOTE: An article on "Conservation of Information" has recently popped up on Panda's Thumb. See here: Conservation of arguments

NAID Part V: Politics and North American Intelligent Design

 See here for the previous parts of this series: Quantum Non-Linearity: NAID Part IV: Evolution: Creation on Steriods (quantumnonlinearity.blogspot.com)

Wesley J Smith channels the primordial 
fears fueling conspiracy theorism and by 
default furthers the cause of a certain
D J Trump and his demagoguery

I don't like politics. It is a messy business bound up with the complexities and foibles of a human nature, impossible to fully understand and render in neat formulaic expressions. Well, I suppose I was being naive when I thought the Evolution/Intelligent Design question could be approached from a purely mathematical angle and that politics wouldn't figure; in actual fact the subject is shot through with group identification, group think, and group camaraderie; how silly I was; what did I expect of a highly gregarious human animal? Moreover, since the appearance of a certain Mr. D J Trump and the far-right the question has become even more politised and like covid-mask wearing it has become a predictor of one's woke or unwoke status.

In this connection I was piqued by the following article on the North American ID website Evolution News written by a Wesley J Smith a man who I would place as part of the religio-political wing of the North American Intelligent Design community:  See here:

Beware of the “Right to Health” | Evolution News

Wesley, it seems, is a specialist in human exceptionalism. I'd not disagree with him on human exceptionalism, but although not necessarily disagreeing with his conclusions I can almost guarantee that I'd disagree with the cultural route to those conclusions. Actually, come to think of it, I can bet that I'd also disagree with just what he means by "exceptionalism". But all that is another story, so back to his article. I reproduce the article below, but before I do some general comments.....

Since I wrote a series of posts in 2007 that I called "Mathematical Politics" my suspicions of both the collectivism of Maxism and the libertarian individualism of the far-right has only increased. In fact, I would go as far as to say that both, when pushed hard enough, are the gateways to dictatorships. Both try to sow distrust in the cut & thrust of democratic politics and its established institutions, e.g. democratic forums, the civil service, the police, the army, the judiciary, the media, academia, big tech, big pharma etc, which they believe to be harbouring malign highly self-interested parties.  Both Marxists and libertarians have visions of doing away with "big government" which they will tell us is serving a quasi-anonymous elite. This sense of alienation and suspicion is what I refer to as proto-conspiracy theorism, a precursor which provides fertile ground for the more specific & detailed nonsense of conspiracy theorism such as QAnon and 5G-vaccine theories etc. The political fantasy goal of both Marxists and extreme libertarians is of a folksy decentralization, either in the form of communism or a thoroughly decentralized market.  Both visions see government as part of the problem and therefore both seek the dismantling of the ramifying democratic state which they will portray as the enemy of the people. Much as the romantic idea of a decentralized society sounds attractive, just and fair, it would leave a dangerous power vacuum up for grabs by the demagogues who would emerge out of Marxism and libertarianism.  

In his article Wesley takes the view that those ostensively good causes promoted by governments, quangos and technocratic elites in actual fact favor authoritarian control or may even be a cover story for those whose ambitions are power & social control. Let's recall that Marxism makes a similar claim: Viz: Government, whether we call it democracy or not along with its associated institutions, is there to support the interests of the propertied classes.  But for those who see social reality through the spectacles of proto-conspiracy theorism, no obvious dictators pulling the strings are named; instead they lump people into malign classes and nefarious hidden actors who are identified as the cause of our problems with perhaps some individuals (like Bill Gates or Anthony Fauci) singled out as especially evil. In the malaise of a troubled democracy folk discontent readily latches onto these casts of hidden actors who are blamed for social woes and become a target popularists love to hate. This "who-can-we-blame" effect is readily exploited by demagogues who are looking to displace the complexities, contentions and cut-and-thrust of democratic & accountable government with the great simplifications of dictatorial and quasi-monarchical rule. 

Wesley's article speaks for itself. As we see below it is full of how apparently good causes are being used as a cover story to influence the populace to accept the covert goal of authoritarian rule. In his article he names all the hot topics which make the blood of far-right pundits boil: Viz: Gun control, vaccinations, confiscation of intellectual property rights, rule by experts, the international technocracy, the WHO, the UN, Anthony Fauci, limiting fossil fuel use, climate change, human rights, "woke" philosophy, racism, welfare state, public health care, gender transitions, abortion, and more...  These are all bad, bad, bad and set the pulses racing of those who have been baited by the idea that they are all pretexts for ultimate authoritarian control, just as Marxists will claim that government, the legal system, the police, the army and private property rights of the ruling class are a way of keeping the working classes in their place.  

In Wesley's article below I've highlighted the inflammatory & emotive phrases:

Wesley J Smith: Wealth and wellness are becoming the primary justifications for international technocracy, or “rule by experts.” Indeed, we are told that preventing the next pandemic will require that the World Health Organization be given the power to declare pandemics and impose emergency policies internationally. Anthony Fauci went even further, arguing that that the UN and the WHO must be given greater powers to “rebuild the infrastructures of human existence.” Imagine the authoritarian potential.

We have been told, also, that climate change is a health emergency that justifies greater technocratic control. So is racism. Ditto, gun proliferation in the U.S. And we can’t forget the threats to biodiversity. On and on the proposed policy imperialism goes. This is why the seemingly good-sounding proposal for an international “right to health” is such a trap.

A Purported Right: As an illustration, the Lancet just published an article seeking to push this purported right into international law. Note the expansive scope of the proposal. From “Revitalising the right to health is essential to securing better health for all” (my emphasis):

The right to health is a duty held by all states under international human rights law and covers a range of entitlements, including available, accessible, acceptable, and good quality health care for mental and physical health, along with freedoms such as bodily autonomy. The right to health also extends to the underlying determinants of health — those factors, such as the rights to safe drinking water and to adequate food, which are integral to human dignity. Health is a fundamental human right that is indispensable for the exercise of other human rights and essential to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

That covers just about the entire range of contemporary international technocratic ambition, including the desire to do away with fossil fuels, establish worldwide abortion absolutism and a right to access “gender transitions,” attack the ability of meat and dairy producers to remain in business and family farmers to properly fertilize their fields (as we have seen in Europe, lately), etc. Indeed, the advocacy is steeped with a voracious technocratic grasping for power. To wit:

The report of the International AIDS Society–Lancet Commission underscores the centrality of human rights to achieving better health for all, discussing many of the key issues that require urgent attention. Newer challenges include the worsening impacts of the climate crisis and the potential harms emanating from digital technologies, especially generative artificial intelligence, which continue to advance in a regulatory vacuum.

Efforts to advance the right to health must also involve consideration of the impacts of commercial companies, given their practices that are too often inconsistent with their responsibility to respect human rights — for example, on pricing and distribution of medicines and vaccines.

Good Grief: Under this guise, almost everything becomes about “health,” and authoritarian powers — such as the ability to suspend intellectual-property rights during a health “emergency,” as is already proposed — are justified under a so-called human-rights economy.

At the national level, embracing the Human Rights Economy approach — a concept that places people and the planet at the core of economic policy making — can promote investment in health care and other social goods.

A Human Rights Economy can also drive effective action to end power disparities — often the painful legacy of slavery, colonialism, and racist and patriarchal structures — that perpetuate discrimination and marginalisation, entrenching inequalities and inequities.

 You get the drill.

Yes, I do get the drill Wesley! You are a proto-conspiracy theorist and all this plays into the hands of far-right demagogues and conspiracy theorists. Well, OK those government institutions & quangos are composed of flawed human beings and therefore self-interest and error always lurks in the background; cockups and cover-ups are frequent. But when these failings are exposed, fearful and imaginative conspiracy theorists all too easily weave them into the fabric of their paranoid and highly organized macro-conspiracy fantasies; this appears to be a coping strategy in the face of the chaos and randomness of the human condition. But I would maintain there is no organized macro-conspiracy needed to explain this condition; common-or-garden human sin and epistemic limitations are enough. 

Wesley is adding fuel to the fires of fear, discontent and alienation. What is notable is that he names no authoritarian leader who is behind the plot striving to get into the cockpit of society; instead, he just stokes up resentment, blame and above all fear. He fails to see that the real dangers come from identifiable autocrats & potential autocrats who when their guile fails will use threat and coercion to impose their will. It is also notable such authoritarian leaders stoke up popularist fears and have a history of exploiting conspiracy theories and lies to apportion blame on covert actors that the popularists believe have got-it-in-for-them. See here for more on why I believe conspiracy theory to be a false theory society. (See also here)

I would challenge Wesley's understanding of how a society works and in particular the dynamic of societal authoritarianism; the means of authoritarianism is, as always, the good old fashioned overt dictator working through a brutal secret police. So, look out for the up and coming "strong-men" and not those ostensively good international causes no matter how misguided they might be; whilst accountable democracy still exists these causes can be openly argued over. 

Nevertheless, I have some sympathy with the reaction of the NAID community of which Welsey is part. They have been rejected by a highly secularized academic community, a community who have lost their way in regard to the meaning of life; they can only offer emptiness when in fact human instincts about ultimate purpose & meaning actually point elsewhere.  But the NAID community, as I have tried to show in this series, haven't helped themselves with the kind of nonsense they have served up and things have only got worse with them as they have accepted the welcoming embrace of the far-right. But they do have fragments of a case at least worth considering. Writing-off that case wholesale as pseudo-science has only help fuel the grievance politics that motivates Trumpite popularism and blights the academic community in the popularist imagination. 

I'm pretty sure Wesley, like Ken Ham, will be voting Trump, and in doing so he'll be voting for authoritarian control with knobs on.

Relevant Links:

1. Libertarians boo & heckle Trump!

See the links below for the complex pattern of divisions in the ranks of the far right, probably down to the inner contradictions of libertarianism: Try and reduce society to a folksy decentralized level and the demagogues of would-be authoritarian government rush into the power vacuum. These libertarians are finding out what "draining the swamp" means and are in collision with the unintended consequences of their views.

Trump suffered a 'stunning rebuke' in disastrous Saturday night speech: analyst (msn.com)

‘No wannabe dictators!’: Donald Trump booed at Libertarian convention | US elections 2024 | The Guardian

2. Evidence that the Trumpism is an entryist party and not Republican or conservative.

If Trump becomes dictator, pro-Putin Steve Bannon could jostle to be the next in line. He's a lot brighter than Trump and he's riding on Trump's back. Notice that he uses pseudo-Marxist terminology at one point.  If my guess at the long term is correct, then if the Trump/Bannon party get into power they'll form an alliance with Russia against China. So, if you are listening China, there's something there for you to think about. 

Trump's nomination could be 'stolen' by establishment conservatives, warns Steve Bannon (msn.com)

Some Quotes:

Donald Trump’s nomination as Republican candidate for President could be stolen by establishment conservatives, a close Trump advisor has warned.

Speaking exclusively to GB News, Stephen Bannon said that supporters of Nikki Haley, a previous opponent of President Trump, could attempt to “steal the nomination from Trump”.

“They think they have a plan like Cruz had in 2016 to actually try to steal the nomination from Trump at the convention which he should win overwhelmingly.”

“And the reason is they're conservatives, they only mouthed the principles of conservatism. They don't realise you also have to fight for those values"

In his exclusive hour-long sit down with GB News America, Bannon also warned of a potential third world war and slammed the (UK) Conservative Party as Left-wing “liars”.

The former Trump advisor and current radio host said if Britain continued down its current path, “You're going to have a revolution, and that revolution is going to be a violent revolution.”.

He described the current system as “late-stage finance capitalism in the City of London, late-stage capitalism and now becoming techno feudalism”.

Galen Strawson on "Why is there something?"

Picture from: Why? The Purpose of the Universe by Philip Goff review – a real poser (msn.com)

"W

hy is there something rather than nothing? It’s meant to be the great unanswerable question. It’s certainly a poser. It would have been simpler if there’d been nothing: there wouldn’t be anything to explain".

So starts a Guardian article written by Galen Strawson* where he reviews a book by Philip Goff titled Why? The Purpose of the Universe. 

Usually, the word "Aseity" is only applied to God: The phrase "The Aseity of God" is intended to convey that in some way we don't understand God's existence is a self-explaining logical truism and therefore, the idea that God doesn't exist is a contradiction. For those who are uncomfortable with the kind of theism which posits an all-embracing totalizing sentience called "God" I suppose it is possible to attempt to apply the notion of Aseity to the secular cosmos; Viz: that the existence of the cosmos itself has some inherent logical necessity that we've yet to understand, if indeed "Aseity" can ever be humanly comprehended as it may involve infinities.

But as I have expressed many times before, whether the source of Aseity is sentient or not, that source isn't going to be found in conventional physics & science. This is because the laws of science as "explanations" merely describe. That is, they do not "explain" in a sense which addresses any inclination we may have toward believing that our perceived reality has its foundation in some kind of Aseity. Conventional science and physics work because the high organization and high registration in the patterns of our experiences makes it possible to describe those patterns in the succinct and compressed forms we call the "laws of physics/science".  No matter how compressed these forms are - and they can never compress to nothing - they will always leave us with a hard kernel of incompressible contingent information which has no further "explanation" than "It just is". As I wrote in this blog post: 

I favour the view that mathematics betrays the a-priori and primary place of mind; chiefly God’s mind. The alternative view is that gritty material elementals are the primary a-priori ontology and constitute the foundation of the cosmos and mathematics. But elementalism has no chance of satisfying the requirement of self-explanation as the following consideration suggests: what is the most elementary elemental we can imagine? It would be an entity that could be described with a single bit of information. But a single bit of information has no degree of freedom and no chance that it could contain computations complex enough to be construed as self-explanation. A single bit of information would simply have to be accepted as a brute fact. Aseity is therefore not to be found in an elemental ontology; elementals are just too simple.

Those who find the notion of God unacceptable nevertheless often betray an instinctual intellectual need for at least a non-sentient form of Aseity: We see hints of this instinct in the expression of puzzlement at the "unexplained" contingencies that science can only ever deliver (But see my quote from Bertrand Russell below). It seems that human intuition is confounded by brute-fact and yearns for deeper explanation, reason or cause (call it what you like) for the apparently arbitrary state of affairs the cosmos presents us with. Given the state of human knowledge then as the above quote from Strawson suggests, "nothingness" is actually the most reasonable state of affairs we can think of as it wouldn't demand any explanation at all. But in discussing these questions we really need to define just what we mean with words like "explanation", "reason" and "cause"; for as we have seen "scientific explanation" is in the final analysis mere description and in a deeply intuitive satisfying way is no explanation at all (But see Russell!) 

Anyway, continuing with Strawson's article...

STRAWSON: Some people think that if we knew more, we’d see that there couldn’t have been nothing. That wouldn’t surprise me. Others go further: they think we’d see that there couldn’t have been anything other than just what there is: this very universe, containing just the kind of stuff and laws of nature it does contain. That wouldn’t surprise me either, nor – I suspect – Einstein: “What really interests me,” he said, “is whether God had any choice in the creation of the world.” (Einstein’s God is a metaphorical device: “The word God is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weaknesses.”)

MY COMMENT: Once again, we see the same intellectual hankering expressing itself here; namely, that the very existence of the cosmos is founded in some kind of logical necessity or has a profound "reason", "explanation" or "cause" - whatever those terms mean. Not only that, but some wonder if the very form and configuration of the cosmos (as described by its laws) is underwritten by logical necessities we have yet to comprehend. 

STRAWSON: Most people who ponder these things take a different view. They think the universe could in fact have been different. They think it’s puzzling that it turned out the way it did, with creatures like us in it. They are tempted by the idea that the universe has some point, some goal or meaning. In Why?, Philip Goff, professor of philosophy at Durham, argues for “cosmic purpose, the idea that the universe is directed towards certain goals, such as the emergence of life” and the existence of value.

I’m not convinced, but I’m impressed. Why? is direct, clear, open, acute, honest, companionable. It manages to stay down to earth even in its most abstract passages. I’m tempted to say, by way of praise, that it’s Liverpudlian, like its author.

MY COMMENT: OK, so assuming the very existence of the cosmos is a necessity (even if we are unclear about the logic of that) the next question is why is the cosmos the way that it is? According to Strawson most people don't see logical necessity in the form of the cosmos even if its existence is a necessity; that is, it seems logically possible the cosmos could have had a different form altogether with different laws. So, according to Strawson, in response to this Philip Goff addresses the question of why the universe is as it is by proposing that the cosmos has goals and purpose, and these goals and purposes bring configuration & form. Goff is therefore implying that the cosmos is subject to teleological constraints. Or as I have put it many times in this blog using an algorithmic metaphor, the cosmos works like a declarative computation: that is, it is searching for declared goals: The cosmos has a declared computational purpose. 

But Strawson is not convinced ...too right he's not convinced: Teleology fits rather too well with an a priori sentient creator! Talk of "cosmic purpose" makes most paid up atheists feel very uncomfortable indeed. 

STRAWSON:The book has a double beat, like a heart: each chapter begins with a diastole, an admirably accessible section on its subject – consciousness, the point of life, the purpose of the universe (if any), the existence (or non-existence) of God – and closes with a systole, a more taxing “Digging Deeper” section.

Goff rules firmly against the traditional Christian God, omnipotent, omniscient and omnibenevolent – while backing the notorious “fine-tuning argument”, which goes roughly as follows: it’s so incredibly unlikely that a universe such as ours, containing life, consciousness and value, should have come into existence at all that we must suppose that some purpose has been at work, tuning things to come out as they have. It’s extremely hard to do this well, and Goff provides an intellectually aerobic primer on the logic of probability, and in particular the Bayes’ theorem, one of the core ideas of our day. His conclusion is as advertised in his title: nothing is certain, but the balance of evidence favours belief in cosmic purpose.

MY COMMENT: As I am unlikely to read Goff's book I can't challenge him on the specifics of his rejection of the Christain God; however, I assume that Goff has in his mind some sort of overarching sentience working out its will in the cosmos because only in the presence of sentience does the purpose, goal and meaning have any intelligibility. I personally have gone down the (Christian) theism route as the only way I can think of satisfying our need for Aseity, epistemic security, a sense of anthropic purpose and an account of human social & political failure in one swoop (Not to mention the need for human salvation). So for me the traditional Christain God is my way of trying to make sense of the human predicament and circumstances; if indeed the need to make ultimate sense of things has meaning beyond human strivings; after all it seems unlikely animals are plagued with the enduring curiosity which drives a lifetime of existential yearning for ultimate explanation and purpose. Animals appear to be satisfied to simply accept the earthly status quo, as long as it provides food and safety (Although there is evidence that at least some animals also prefer an interesting, varied & social environment. Although it is not clear that they are plagued by the existential angst over meaning and purpose)

I guess that Goff's Bayesian arguments are along the lines I've described in this document. However, I think I'd agree with the last sentence above: Viz: that according to Goff  nothing is certain, but the balance of evidence favours belief in cosmic purpose.

STRAWSON: The question is genuinely difficult. I’m bothered by the fact that many of the arguments for fine-tuning depend on varying the fundamental physical constants (eg the charge on electrons) while holding the existing laws of nature fixed. I can’t see why engaging in this curious activity could ever be thought to explain anything, or support any interesting conclusion. And if – as Einstein and I suspect – nothing could possibly have been different, the fine-tuning arguments collapse, as Goff acknowledges. But his discussion is ingenious and illuminating.

MY COMMENT: I think Strawson has a point here; that is that fine tuning cannot be coherently separated from the other aspects of the laws of physics. Using the algorithmic metaphor: It is clear that both initial conditions and the information inherent in the laws of physics form one package of curiously contingent fine tuning. Moreover, there is no known logical obligation which tells us why the cosmos should sustain itself moment by moment and place by place. Ergo, the so-called fine tuning of the fundamental constants is not the only enigma but so is also the maintenance of the known form of the laws of physics everywhere and everywhen. 

In his last sentence in the foregoing quote Strawson displays the same intuitive intellectual instinct which seeks some kind of Aseity "explaining" why the cosmos is as it is. Although I guess that in Strawson's case he would likely posit that that Aseity is to be found in a non-sentient object, rather than in the conventional notion of God. 

STRAWSON:  In the chapter on consciousness, Goff brings up the standard view that there’s a radical difficulty in explaining its existence. I think that those who believe this have gone wrong right at the start: they think – quite wrongly – that they know something about the nature of matter that makes it mysterious that consciousness exists. Wrong. There’s no good reason to think this, as Goff agrees. The solution is to suppose (along with a good number of winners of the Nobel prize for physics) that consciousness in some form is built into the nature of matter from the start. This view is known as panpsychism, and Goff ends his discussion with “a prediction: panpsychism will, over time, come to seem just obviously correct”.

MY COMMENT: I sort of agree with Strawson and Goff here: That is, that matter, if rightly configured has built into it the ability to generate conscious cognition. I stress rightly configured because I don't think our current AI simulations, no matter how good, are conscious; they are just simulations and don't use matter in a way which generates conscious thought. My long shot guesses at the way matter must be used to generate consciousness can be found in this paper.  See also my footnote below on idealism*

.

STRAWSON: Why? is a rich book. It aims high and ends with some good political reflections. It’ll turn quite a few heads. It should get the discussion it deserves. I don’t for all that think the universe has a purpose. I think it just is.

It does, though, seem to have a taste for complication. The balance of evidence is a delicate thing, but it seems at present to favour the view that something is going on that isn’t fully accountable for by the laws of physics. It’s nothing to do with “Nobodaddy” (William Blake’s name for the nonexistent Christian God), or any sort of goal, but Wittgenstein seems to be on the right track when he tries to express his sense of absolute or ethical value and finds it crystallised in one particular experience: “I wonder at the existence of the world”.

MY COMMENT: So, Strawson thinks the cosmos "just is" and without purpose. Bertrand Russell said something similar in his debate with Father Copleston:  

I should say that the universe is just there, and that's all [there is to it!]

Strawson's notion of a "just there" cosmos is consistent with what we understand about so-called "scientific explanation" which because in the final analysis is fundamentally just a form of description can only ever leave us at the contingent edge of a "just there" kernel of information. So it is no surprise that Strawson can only say “I wonder at the existence of the world”. Well, so do I but for me I have the urge to seek beyond the absurdity of a "just is" contingency to a deeper concept of explanation which satisfies the human yearning for purpose. Aseity based on a Christian concept of God and an account of human Sin are concepts I find no more absurd than a  "just is" cosmos and the moral, social and political perplexities it leaves us with. 

***

Strawson's reference to God as "Nobodadday" is a pointer to the attitude of many in the hyper-secularized atmosphere of elite intellectual culture; these communities look askance at theists and religionists and may even treat them with a mocking disrespect. Although hyper-secularized culture dominates academia and intellectual elite communities these groups are in many respects an anomaly in the sea of faith which is broad and full in the wider world. Billions of the world's population are religiously motivated and in notable cases those religionists of (authoritarian) faith dominate politics. If the hyper-secularized intellectual community think of those of faith as deplorables with absurd views it will only help polarize the religious populares against them and provide fertile ground for demagogues who will tell those religionists what they want to hear. The populares will turn to these demagogues for guidance rather than academia who they may perceive as part of a conspiracy to defraud them of their traditional values. In spite of their sneers, I personally support academia although I would criticize those like Strawson who hold a hyper-secular message of a "just is" cosmos, a paradigm which I find just as absurd as they might find my theism.  Moreover, as we know from the French revolution and various attempts to establish Marxism, hyper-secularism is also a high road to authoritarian traditionalist values, the re-emergence of a paradoxical secularized religion and the return of ruling demagogues. The political world of left and right isn't a flat space but is curved into a sphere where the extremes of left and right meet at the same authoritarian place. 

* Footnote on Idealism

I hold the view that conscious cognition exists because without it reality is an unintelligible notion: If reality doesn't deliver patterns of conscious experience and, at that, sufficiently organized experience for conscious cognition to be able to construct a rational ordered reality, then the meaning of reality is lost in the nebulous notion of "gritty matter" having an existence independent of sentient perception. So, reality is the conjunction of organized conscious experience, and this organization facilitates the construction of a rational world which conscious thought builds around organized experience. The Matrix teaches us that reality is the logic of experience. 

But if conscious thought is itself to classify as real it too must deliver a rational account of itself. It follows then that reality has a self-affirming, self-referencing character: Viz: Conscious perception of the cosmos gives the cosmos intelligibility and coherence; but if reality exists only if conscious thought delivers a rational account of it, then for conscious thought to classify as real it too must have a rational account of itself. So, as conscious thought gives coherence and substance to the concept of a highly organized material cosmos then the cosmos in turn accords reality to conscious cognition by returning a rational account of conscious thought. (See the introduction of this book where I first mooted this self-referencing account of reality). However, there is one big problem with this form of idealism: Human beings come in and out of existence and therefore cannot be the primary reality. This is why it becomes necessary to posit a primary overarching sentience which gives meaning and reality to the cosmos. 

* Guardian Footnote: 

Galen Strawson is a philosopher and author of Freedom and Belief (Oxford). Why? The Purpose of the Universe by Philip Goff is published by Oxford (£14.99). To support the Guardian and Observer buy your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply. From Friday 8 December 2023 to Wednesday 10 January 2024, 20p from every Guardian Bookshop order will support the Guardian and Observer’s charity appeal 2023.