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Topic: Specified complexity

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	Explaining Specified Complexity
		Now the problem with invoking evolutionary algorithms to explain specified complexity at the origin of life is absence of any identifiable evolutionary algorithm that might account for it.
		Complexity and probability therefore vary inversely: the greater the complexity, the smaller the probability.
		Even so, in arguing that evolutionary algorithms cannot generate specified complexity and in noting that specified complexity is reliably correlated with intelligence, I have not refuted Darwinism or denied the capacity of evolutionary algorithms to solve interesting problems.
	www.leaderu.com /offices/dembski/docs/bd-specified.html (1509 words)

	Specified Complexity
		Specified complexity is William Dembski's dual-pronged criterion for objectively detecting the effects of certain types of intelligent activity without first hand evidence of the cause of the event in question.
		Specified complexity consists of two important components, both of which are essential for making reliable design inferences.
		The second component in the notion of specified complexity is the criterion of specificity.
	www.iscid.org /encyclopedia/Specified_Complexity (286 words)

	Another Way to Detect Design, Response to review of "The Design Inference":Dembski, William A.
		To say that specified complexity lies beyond the remit of nature to generate it is not to say that naturally occurring systems cannot exhibit specified complexity or that natural processes cannot serve as a conduit for specified complexity.
		The "complexity" in "specified complexity" is a measure of improbability.
		For the McGrews specified complexity is disallowed because it is a statistical property that depends on Fisher's approach to hypothesis testing, and they regard this approach as not rationally justified (which in The Design Inference I argue it is once one introduces the notion of a probabilistic resource).
	www.arn.org /docs/dembski/wd_anotherwaytodetectdesign.htm (8091 words)

	DOES EVOLUTION HAVE A MECHANISM
		The actual term specified complexity is not original with me. It first occurs in the origin-of-life literature, where Leslie Orgel used it to describe what he regards as the essence of life.
		Specified complexity, by being defined relative to known material mechanisms operating in known ways, might always be defeated by showing that some relevant mechanism was omitted.
		In fact, that is how Darwinists, complexity theorists, and anyone intent on defeating specified complexity as a marker of intelligence usually attempts it, namely, by showing that it dissolves once we have a better understanding of the underlying material mechanisms that render the object in question reasonably probable.
	www.designinference.com /documents/04.02.AMNH_debate.htm (2595 words)

	Complexity - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
		Complex systems tend to be high-dimensional, non-linear, and hard to the modelling, though in specific circumstances they may exhibit low dimensional behaviour.
		In computational complexity theory, the time complexity of a problem is the number of steps that it takes to solve an instance of the problem as a function of the size of the input (usually measured in bits), using the most efficient algorithm.
		Specified complexity is a term used in intelligent design theory, first coined by William Dembski.
	en.wikipedia.org /wiki/Complexity (1139 words)

	Response to "Dissecting Dembski's 'Complex Specified Information'"
		Dembski points out in his book that Schneider smuggles in "specified complexity" just by having a fitness function, but its not a weighty argument in my opinion because you essentially get that for free with any organism that replicates where there are scarce resources.
		Complexity should not be defined as something that is achievable linearly in time by an unintelligent computer.
		In other words, you can never prove that something has "specified complexity" because you may not have found the individual with the right knowledge, or that knowledge may not yet exist.
	www.godandscience.org /evolution/specifiedcomplexity.html (1250 words)

	When is Something Designed?
		For this reason, quantitative assessments of cellular complexity have simply reinforced an opinion that has prevailed since the mid-1960s within origin-of-life biology: chance is not an adequate explanation for the origin of biological complexity and specificity.
		Systems that are characterized by both specificity and complexity (what information theorists call "specified complexity") have "information content." Since such systems have the qualitative feature of aperiodicity or complexity, they are qualitatively distinguishable from systems characterized by simple periodic order.
		Complex sequences are those that exhibit an irregular and improbable arrangement that defies expression by a simple rule or algorithm.
	www.evidencepress.com /id.htm (6132 words)

	Specified complexity - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
		Dembski claims that specified complexity is a reliable marker of design by an intelligent agent, a central tenet to intelligent design and which Dembski argues for in opposition to modern evolutionary theory.
		Specified complexity is fundamental to his approach to intelligent design, and each of his subsequent books has also dealt significantly with the concept.
		Dembski asserts that specified complexity is present in a configuration when it can be described by a pattern that displays a large amount of independently specified information and is also complex, which he defines as having a low probability of occurrence.
	en.wikipedia.org /wiki/Specified_complexity (3078 words)

	Intelligent Design as a Theory of Information: Dembski, William A.
		For instance, computational complexity is always measured in terms of either time (i.e., number of computational steps) or space (i.e., size of memory, usually measured in bits or bytes) or some combination of the two.
		The distinction between specified and unspecified information may now be defined as follows: the actualization of a possibility (i.e., information) is specified if independently of the possibility's actualization, the possibility is identifiable by means of a pattern.
		Although complexity is essential to CSI (corresponding to the first letter of the acronym), its role in this general scheme for recognizing intelligent causation is not immediately evident.
	www.arn.org /docs/dembski/wd_idtheory.htm (7622 words)

	Not a Free Lunch
		For example, he inserts a middleman called specified complexity: after rejecting all the non-design hypotheses we can think of, he tells us to infer that the object in question exhibits specified complexity, and then claims that specified complexity is a reliable indicator of design.
		Complex specified information (CSI) is a concept of Dembski's own invention which is quite different from any form of information used by information theorists.
		So, to say that irreducible complexity is a case of specified complexity is just another way to repeat the claim that we have no natural explanation for the origin of the bacterial flagellum (which is the only biological system Dembski has shown to be IC in his sense).
	www.talkorigins.org /design/faqs/nfl (19787 words)

	Metanexus Institute
		The DNA sequence of organisms is "specified", because it is a member of that special set of sequences which code for a living organism.
		It becomes clear that Dembski is not only defining "complexity" as improbability in a loose sense, but that he defines it precisely as -log_2(p), where log_2 represents a base 2 logarithm and p represents a probability.
		Contrary to Dembski's assertion, this is not complexity "in the information-theoretic or Shannon sense".
	www.metanexus.net /metanexus_online/show_article.asp?7114 (2729 words)

	Good Math, Bad Math : ISCID and the Definition of Specified Complexity
		A while ago, I wrote about Dembski's definition of specified complexity, arguing that it was a non-sensical pile of rubbish, because of the fact that "specified complexity" likes to present itself as being a combination of two distinct concepts: specification...
		A while ago, I wrote about Dembski's definition of specified complexity, arguing that it was a non-sensical pile of rubbish, because of the fact that "specified complexity" likes to present itself as being a combination of two distinct concepts: specification and complexity.
		The problem with specified complexity is that Dembski claims that you can precisely identify certain designed entities by the fact that they have this property of specified complexity.
	scienceblogs.com /goodmath/2006/11/iscid_and_the_definition_of_sp.php (2330 words)

	A response to Dembski's "Specified Complexity"
		Essentially, what Dembski proves with his analysis of evolutionary computation is not that it cannot produce actual specified complexity, but rather that the bounded complexity measure discussed on page 144 of TDI will show that a problem is solvable by evolutionary computation given a certain limited m steps.
		Remember that we are interested in the generation of specified complexity and not in its reshuffling.
		Dembski offers specified complexity and his design inference as a means of getting to a reliable indication of the action of an intelligent agent.
	www.antievolution.org /people/dembski_wa/sc_resp_wre.html (1856 words)

	Dissecting Dembski's "Complex Specified Information"
		A test showed that in the standard Ev model the gain of 4 bits is 12 standard deviations away from what one would expect by chance.
		I think that 'complexity' is a vague term with multiple conflicting definitions from many authors.
		What turns specified information into complex specified information is that the quantity of information in the conceptual component is large.
	www.lecb.ncifcrf.gov /~toms/paper/ev/dembski/specified.complexity.html (2185 words)

	STL Complexity Specifications
		Second, the algorithm is, of course, unlikely to satisfy its specified complexity constraint.
		The complexity specifications in STL are, of necessity, an oversimplification.
		Container) specify complexity requirements that should be met by all instances of the concept.
	www.sgi.com /tech/stl/complexity.html (856 words)

	FAQ: Is it appropriate to justify intelligent design theory via analogies?
		Similarly, determine that archaeological artifacts, such as the heads on Easter Island, were intelligently designed because of their specified complexity.
		The stones are shaped in a complex and specific way such that we recognize that they are supposed to be faces.
		This analogy works because there is complex and specified information (CSI) in the heads of easter island, just like there is CSI in irreducible complex structures found in biology.
	www.ideacenter.org /contentmgr/showdetails.php/id/1151 (1368 words)

	OpinionEditorials.com — Is Intelligent Design Science? Part 1 - Bendewald
		Dembski describes “specified” as exhibiting an independently given pattern--a pattern that is recognizable.
		To a small degree it is complex, but one could imagine it easily having been formed by wind and shadows.
		Therefore, specified complexity suggests that the face on Mars, with a small amount specificity and complexity, was not designed, but was formed by natural causes.
	www.opinioneditorials.com /freedomwriters/jbendewald_20051017.html (1197 words)

	LiveScience.com - Intelligent Design: 'The Death of Science'
		To answer this, it is necessary to examine the two main arguments—irreducible complexity and specified complexity—that ID proponents use to support their claim that a Supreme Being is responsible for many or all aspects of life.
		Irreducible complexity's main proponent is Michael Behe, a biochemist at Lehigh University in Pennsylvania.
		Among the systems that Behe claims are irreducibly complex are the bacterial flagellum, a microscopic whip-like structure that some bacteria use to swim, and the cascade of proteins that make up the human blood-clotting system.
	www.livescience.com /othernews/050923_ID_science.html (1514 words)

	Second Law of Thermodynamics: Answers to Critics (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-02)
		The other case is programmed machinery, that directs energy into maintaining and increasing complexity, at the expense of increased disorder elsewhere.
		An energy source is not enough to produce the specified complexity of life.
		Living things are distinguished by their specified complexity.
	www.answersingenesis.org /docs/370.asp (1716 words)

	Christian Apologetics pg. 3
		They are unable to explain the specified complexity at the origin of life, as well as in the history of life.
		Indeed, evolutionary algorithms are inherently incapable of generating specified complexity” (ibid., 95).
		Meanwhile, specified complexity points unequivocally to design, and to the intelligence of the One in whom all have being.
	www.angelfire.com /ego2/kitoriangrey/apologetics3.html (2383 words)

	Is the Design Explanation Legitimate?
		The final section discusses whether design is a legitimate explanation for life’s complexity or whether naturalistic causes should be invoked a priori.
		So evolutionists (as are nearly all SETI proponents) are prepared to use high specified complexity as proof of intelligence, when it suits their ideology.
		The complex compound eyes of some types of trilobites (extinct and supposedly ‘primitive’ invertebrates) were amazingly designed.
	www.trueorigin.org /design01.asp (3858 words)

	The Panda's Thumb: Unanswered Criticism of Dembski's Specified Complexity
		To check if the definition is satisfied, one must specify a sample space, the set of hypotheses to be eliminated, the event under study, the specification, the value of the rejection function everywhere on the sample space, and background knowledge which “explicitly and univocally” identifies the rejection function.
		C11 [Erik]: The term “specified complexity” is a redundant, obfuscatory middle-man that serves no non-rhetorical purpose (it is apparently the name of the state of affairs that someone has sucessfully eliminated a set of non-ID hypotheses using the Explanatory Filter).
		You’d have to specify in which way “flat earth theory” is supposedly better than ID in order to demonstrate it to be so.
	www.pandasthumb.org /archives/2006/05/unanswered_crit.html (4300 words)

	The Panda's Thumb: Specified Complexity: Darwin's Panic?
		Despite claims that intelligent design is religion in disguise, Darwinists are nervously shuttling around, trying to avoid confronting the scientific impediments "specified complexity" presents to evolutionary theory.
		I find Wiker's arguments somewhat interesting in the light of the vast amounts of scientific criticisms of specified complexity and other scientific ID 'fables'.
		No matter how many examples of apparent design and biological complexity are explained by natural processes, ID advocates will simply retreat to systems slightly more complex and declare those the systems that evolution cannot produce.
	www.pandasthumb.org /archives/2004/03/specified_compl.html (1626 words)

	Amazon.com: From Complexity to Life: On The Emergence of Life and Meaning: Books: Niels Henrik Gregersen (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-02)
		It takes only a casual observation of the physical universe to reveal that it is awesomely complex.
		generated specified complexity, emergentist worldview, generating specified complexity, generate specified complexity, entropy gap, original phase space, algorithmic entropy, informational context, open thermodynamic systems, evolutionary algorithm, displacement problem, blind search, logical depth, fitness function, divine designer, theistic interpretation, gravitating systems, minimal program, anthropic principle, fourth law
		This book is a set of 10 essays (plus introduction by Paul Davies) on the "emergence" of complexity from simpler consituents, and on the significatnce of "emergence" for the relationship between science and religion.
	www.amazon.com /Complexity-Life-Emergence-Meaning/dp/0195150708 (1535 words)

	Table of contents for Library of Congress control number 2003020589
		10 Specified Complexity What is specified complexity, and how does one determine whether something exhibits specified complexity?
		13 Objectivity and Subjectivity Does specified complexity describe an objective feature of the world or merely a subjective state of ignorance about the functioning of the world?
		14 Assertibility Even if specified complexity is a well-defined, objective, and reliable criterion for detecting design, why should we think that we could ever be justified in asserting that some natural object exhibits specified complexity?
	www.loc.gov /catdir/toc/ecip049/2003020589.html (1089 words)

	Uncommon Descent: The Intelligent Design Weblog of William Dembski, Denyse O'Leary and Friends
		In information science, it is empirically and theoretically shown that noise destroys specified complexity, but cannot create it.
		Natural selection acting on noise cannot create specified complexity.
		The following is a great article that illustrates the insufficiency of natural selection to create design.
	www.uncommondescent.com (1314 words)

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