Astute readers will remember a couple of encounters I had with Sal Cordova from Uncommon Descent a few months ago (here, in the comments, and here). Not too long after that, Sal made a fairly big deal about the fact that he was returning to grad school, and had to stop blogging at UD because the dastardly darwinists would damage his academic prospects if he continued. He played the standard creationist-martyr role, poor guy, persecuted by
all the horrible non-believers. Naturally, it didn’t last long. He’s got his own blog now, called “Young Cosmos”, where he writes his usually pathetic quote-mining, plus what he calls “Advanced creation science”. Naturally, advanced creation science involves doing very, very bad math. In fact, so far, he’s doing the worst math – which, as you’ll of course recall, is no math. To be specific, he’s spouting off about math, without actually doing any.
Sal is shocked – shocked to discover that Fourier transforms are used in both
quantum mechanics (particularly Schrodingers equation) and in electrical engineering. Naturally, being
a brainless creationist, the fact that Fourier transformations are used in the design of electrical circuits and also in the analysis of physical phenomena must mean that the physical phenomena
are designed just like the circuits! It’s obvious, isn’t it?
He claims it’s going to take him a year of posts to explain this brilliant insight of his. Frankly, I’ve never seen a topic which makes sense to write about as a year of blog posts – blogs really aren’t good for that kind of extended explanation. I think that I sometimes push the limit of how long you can keep a topic coherent here with some of my series. But a whole year? It’s an interesting challenge, but to be able to write about a single specific topic for a whole year, while keeping each post independently engaging is a feat beyond the skills of all but the very best writers. And that is something that Sal is most definitely not.
He starts off his blogging adventure with what he calls “The Fundamental Theorems of Intelligent Design”.
It’s a bloody awful start. He gives two things which he says are theorems. Alas, Sal doesn’t seem to understand the difference between a theorem and an equation. First, he gives an
equation which he claims is derived from Shrodingers equation:
ψ = ΠnΣi,kψikOink
That’s all he says about it. Literally. He gives that equation – but instead of doing it with an HTML
rendering like I just did, or with MathML, he just clips a bitmap of a scanned image of it. And that
clipped image of the equation is all he says. He doesn’t say what the equation is supposed to
mean. He doesn’t even define the symbols! He seems to think that it’s enough to post an impressive-looking
equation, without even telling you what the symbols mean, is enough to make his point. (Like I said – the very worst math: this isn’t math at all. This is just notation.)
For the second glorious fundamental theorem of ID, he tells us even less. What he
says is “It’s on page 25 of Dembski’s “Exploring Large Spaces” paper”. He doesn’t even bother to tell us what it is!
The only thing that he actually says anything in detail about is some of Tipler’s babbling about his book “The Physics of Immortality”, which as far as I can tell says absolutely nothing, zip, zero, nada about “the fundamental theorems” that the post is about.
He does go on to make a second post about his discovery of the fourier transforms… But all it contains is two equations defining the Fourier transform… Once again without bothering to explain
just what any of the symbols mean. He really doesn’t get this math thing at all.
Anyway – his point, such as it is, is that he finds it astonishing that Fourier transforms have applications in both quantum mechanics and circuit design, and that this must be indicative of some deep connection between the two. To anyone with a clue, this isn’t suprising. Fourier transforms
are incredibly common in all sorts of fields – not just quantum physics, but sound analysis, speech analysis, fluid dynamics, differential equations, and tons of other things. Fourier transforms are a fundamental tool of analysis. Anyone with a clue would not be the least bit surprised at seeing
Fourier transforms showing up in lots of different places, without inferring any relationship
between them.
With respect to Sal’s two specific examples: one particular canonical way of using fourier transforms are widely used in any kind of analysis that includes something that can be described as a wave. In electronics, think of things like AC current, signal transmissions, etc. In quantum mechanics, think of the wave-behavior of particles. There’s the connection for you – the Fourier transform is used for doing a mathematical analysis of wave-like behaviors. It can applied to analyzing electronic circuits which have a wave-like component in their behavior, and it can be applied to analysis quantum phenomena which have a wave-like component in their behavior. To quote Pee Wee Herman: “Big Fat Hairy Deal.”
Blake over at Science Before Sunclipse has his take on this, as does Tyler di Pietro.
And it’s quite clear he doesn’t really understand the Fourier transform by the way he’s copied the definiton from Wikipedia without noticing that they use x as the function, not f.
Here is my equation describing Cordova’s “work”:
ThIs = BuL^2sHiT
Token:
I didn’t even notice that :-). He stole a definition of the FT that used the symbol “f” and the symbol “x”, and since he didn’t bother to define what any of it meant, it’s easy to not be able to tell that he’s not using the symbols right. Now that you mention it, it is the exact same form as wikipedia, which does define things, and he blew it.
Is there deep significance to the fact that the last factor in Sal’s equation reads as “Oink”? Sal is just hamming it up? Or maybe that he’s pig-ignorant?
I like the fact that his equation ends with “Oink”. Seems oddly appropriate.
Whoa — I had some server downtime there. (Turns out a traffic-watching program filled up a partition with log files and crashed MySQL.) We’re up and running again, so thanks for the link!
(It’s Science After Sunclipse, by the way — my hifalutin way of saying that it’s a blog full of stuff I write late at night.)
He had to go to grad school to learn this???
I mean, after earlier helping to overturn 150 years of evolutionary biology and all that?
My mind boggles.
Wait untill Sal discovers articles that describe the use of Fourier transforms for sequence analysis. E.g.:
and
This is silly. The sin/cos functions, correctly normalised, form a set of linearly-independent unit vectors that span the space. The Fourier transform is the limit as the end points are allowed to move to infinity, but it’s still just a spanning set. Like I,J,K spans three-space. Or any of the other multitude of functions such that the inner product of F_i and F_j is 0 for unlike i,j, and 1 for equal i,j. Orthonormal basis sets that span a vector space are fabulously useful, and the same ones will tend to show up wherever the boundary conditions are compatible.
This is truly stupid. Fourier Transforms are just a tool to analyze wave like behaviour. We used them in mechanical engineering to analyze springs and other mechanical devices.
I thought that Sal’s misunderstanding of Genetic programs was bad, but this is shameful for an electrical engineer.
I find it intersting this hack says “Darwinism vs. Electrical Engineering.” Well, one could put artifical intelligence under electrical engineering, and artifical intelligence uses evolutionary algorithms. If you read or have read the book _Who is Fourier?_ you’ll see that there exist ELEMENTARY school aged children who know that Fourier analysis and waves go together. This hack FINALLY learns thist sort of thing in grad school???
And he doesn’t know the difference between a Fourier series and a Fourier transform – as he gives a (wrong) link to the Dirichlet conditions>…
I’m a little disappointed you’re not using rel=”nofollow” to link to this guy, thus adding a little bit more perceived importance to his blog.
That formula has a message that is very clear: Fourier transforms can be used to speed up multiplication of large numbers; therefore anything that uses multiplication has been intelligently designed by Oink.
I used Fourier analysis once to look at acoustic waveforms of oscillating bubble plumes both from natural plunging waves and using artificial breakers back in the early 90’s. Who knew that I had my chance to become the Isaac Newton of information theory right there.
Um… right…
Saying that you can do a Fourier transform in both engineering and biology is like saying that there are applications for doing a first derivative in both.
Anyways, I don’t see how drawing parallels between biology and engineering is proof of a designer. Engineering draws its principles from the laws of nature; the same laws which resulted in life. I can draw a circuit diagram which electrically mimics a neuron. This is cool, but not exactly an earth-shattering. Most materials have some resistance and capacitance, and it’s no wonder that if electrical signals are used in biology, electrical engineering will rely on the same physical properties.
Of course what Sal meant to say was that since complex exponentials (re: sine waves) are the eigenfunctions of LTI systems, Fourier analysis pops up everywhere. Thus, YEC.
Is Sal saying that frequency domain is evidence of a designer? Does he worship his spectrum analyzer?
I’ve always found fourier transforms a little bit mystical . . . you apply this equation to your system, and suddenly you’re in a whole other world that’s dual to this one.
Does group theory say anything about Fourier transforms? I guess the continuous differentiable functions are the objects, F and F^-1 are the group operations, and the gaussian is the identity. So then you could swap frequency and time-domain functions and nobody would ever know the difference. I’ve always thought that’s really cool.
And on the mystical side, if anyone’s ever read Spinoza, he said that the divine world, of god and the angels, does not exist separately from our world, it IS our world, simply looked at from a different point of view. And then I thought, maybe if he lived today, he would say that it’s the Fourier transform of the universe. I know that’s silly, but it’s not more silly than most sci-fi fantasy perversions.
Sal’s equation doesn’t just read “Oink” at the end — it reads “Kwik Oink”. I marvel at the depth of the mysteries embodied in that equation.
ME,
“Does group theory say anything about Fourier transforms?”
Definitely. See here for an example.
-ψ*Σ± Sqrt(Σ2 – 4ac)
ψ = ——————-
2Q
Therefore:
God doesn’t exist, therefore creationism is false.
“anything that uses multiplication has been intelligently designed”
And God blessed them, saying, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the waters in the seas, and let birds multiply on the earth.”
[Genesis 1:22]
QED
We all know that multiplication is surely of God: Jesus used it on loaves and fishes!
Not certain how you would use a Fourier transform on a fish, though.
If there was an Intelligent Designer, wouldn’t have have used a transform, such that, in its discrete form, it has a commonly agreed upon and simple decomposition?
Just askin’….
If I recall correctly, the appearance of Fourier transforms in quantum mechanics is explained to teenagers early in their sophomore years of any decent college physics program.
What are these ID guys doing for schooling?
Zeno said,
We can reduce this to the earlier joke by treating the fish as a cat.
The FT is passe. It’s all wavelets now anyway.
Mark,
Are you sure you didn’t invent this Sal Cordova character, in order to get more material for the “bad” part of your blog? Nobody can be that stupid! Nobody! Uh, can they?
Harald:
(1) As much as I like to pride myself on having a good imagination, I am nowhere near creative enough to invent a character like Sal.
(2) You should see the stuff I don’t post about. For every bad-math post that I’ve written about, there are at least 10 of them that are so stupid or so incoherent that I can’t possibly write an interesting post mocking them. Sal is, scary to say, on the higher-intelligence end of the bad-math IQ bell curve.
What about this guy?
Mark,
I wouldn’t call this Sal character “creative”. His ideas may qualify as ‘lateral thinking’, but they lack value.
ME,
[And on the mystical side, if anyone’s ever read Spinoza, he said that the divine world, of god and the angels, does not exist separately from our world, it IS our world, simply looked at from a different point of view. And then I thought, maybe if he lived today, he would say that it’s the Fourier transform of the universe.]
Having read Spinoza’s main works fully in translation and partially in Latin, and having read commentary on Spinoza, I will say that Spinoza would say that the world of “God” (by what he means by such… which comes as VERY different than the monotheistic conception) and the world of Nature come as one and the same under different points of view. But, since Spinoza has an impersonal, naturalisitc “God” he simply wouldn’t speak about “God and the angels”. I don’t think he would claim the divine world as the Fourier transform of the universe either. Spinoza would also have a categorical opposition to ID and Creationism perhaps more so than any of us here.
“However, I will add a few remarks, in order to overthrow this doctrine of a final cause utterly. That which is really a cause it considers as an effect, and vice versa: it makes that which is by nature first to be last, and that which is highest and most perfect to be most imperfect. Passing over the questions of cause and priority as self-evident, it is plain from Props. xxi., xxii., xxiii. that that effect, is most perfect which is produced immediately by God; the effect which requires for its production several intermediate causes is, in that respect, more imperfect. But if those things which were made immediately by God were made to enable him to attain his end, then the things which come after, for the sake of which the first were made, are necessarily the most excellent of all.
Further, this doctrine does away with the perfection of God: for, if God acts for an object, he necessarily desires something which he lacks. Certainly, theologians and metaphysicians draw a distinction between the object of want and the object of assimilation; still they confess that God made all things for the sake of himself, not for the sake of creation. They are unable to point to anything prior to creation, except God himself, as an object for which God should act, and are therefore driven to admit (as they clearly must), that God lacked those things for whose attainment he created means, and further that he desired them.
We must not omit to notice that the followers of this doctrine, anxious to display their talent in assigning final causes, have imported a new method of argument in proof of their theory–namely, a reduction, not to the impossible, but to ignorance; thus showing that they have no other method of exhibiting their doctrine. For example, if a stone falls from a roof on to some one’s head and kills him, they will demonstrate by their new method, that the stone fell in order to kill the man; for, if it had not by God’s will fallen with that object, how could so many circumstances (and there are often many concurrent circumstances) have all happened together by chance? Perhaps you will answer that the event is due to the facts that the wind was blowing, and the man was walking that way. “But why,” they will insist, “was the wind blowing, and why was the man at that very time walking that way?” If you again answer, that the wind had then sprung up because the sea had begun to be agitated the day before, the weather being previously calm, and that the man had been invited by a friend, they will again insist: “But why was the sea agitated, and why was the man invited at that time?” So they will pursue their questions from cause to cause, till at last you take refuge in the will of God–in other words, the sanctuary of ignorance. So, again, when they survey the frame of the human body, they are amazed; and being ignorant of the causes of so great a work of art conclude that it has been fashioned, not mechanically, but by divine and supernatural skill, and has been so put together that one part shall not hurt another.
Hence any one who seeks for the true causes of miracles, and strives to understand natural phenomena as an intelligent being, and not to gaze at them like a fool, is set down and denounced as an impious heretic by those, whom the masses adore as the interpreters of nature and the gods. Such persons know that, with the removal of ignorance, the wonder which forms their only available means for proving and preserving their authority would vanish also. But I now quit this subject, and pass on to my third point.”
http://www.mtsu.edu/~rbombard/RB/Spinoza/ethica1.html#Appendix.
Doug:
I did *not* say that Sal is creative. I said that *I* would have to be creative to invent a character like Sal. That’s a different thing entirely :-).
Doug:
I did *not* say that Sal is creative. I said that *I* would have to be creative to invent a character like Sal. That’s a different thing entirely :-).
Mark,
Sorry, I simply misread.
Doug: thus leading me to again conclude that Spinoza was the only one of the early philosophers who had the courage to follow where his ideas led him. Except that it sort of makes the whole idea of God seem redundant, but I guess that might have been too radical even for the big S.
Well, MarkCC, your comment #33 was creative, but #34 was just the same old stuff.
(-;
Sal also doesn’t know the difference between analysis and design. He might as well claim that since we use math when we analyze nature, and also when we design all kinds of engineering products, that nature must have been designed.
I didn’t even have to copy and (incorrectly) paste any formulas. Look ma, no oink.
Re #22: See Euler’s proof of the existence of God (which is supposed to have stumped Diderot, but I have my doubts). Wait till Advanced Creation Science gets hold of this!
I’ve just noticed that if I take the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter, let’s call it pi, and multiply it by a number which, when multiplied by itself, gives us -1, let’s call it i, and I feed it into this nifty function which is its own derivative (I call it the exponential function), I get -1!
Therefore, Noah had dinosaurs on the ark.
To be fair, a weak kind of “intelligent design” is not uncommon in mathematics. Anybody who studies math is working with the assumption that the basic mathematical structure of the universe is orderly. Viewed from a certain perspective, this can be construed as “design”, though I think it is still a reach to infer a designer. In any case, this kind of design has nothing to do with any Biblical god. (Indeed, Erdos used the phrase “the supreme Fascist” to describe this concept of God.)
As I said, this is a weak concept of intelligent design in that it doesn’t actually contradict any other theory in science. And it is openly a philosophical argument, as opposed to “argument by low likelihood and my limited imagination”, which is all that ID is.
Perhaps the RHS of the Oink equation is meant to be (a finite approximation to) a QFT-style path integral? That would fit with what Sal says about Schroedinger’s equation, kinda.
Wait, I thought that Sal Cordova announced that he was going to stop blogging about ID now that he got into school again? Am I missing something here?
Rick: You do realise that people have tried to claim that e^(i*Pi) +1 = 0 is proof of God, right?
This is kind of in the same ballpark, I guess.
I understand the ID-ists frustration with the entrenched scientific community. I myself have invented (discovered?) what I call “Miraculous Mathematics” (MM), an enormously powerful approach to math that solicits only fear and rejection by the entrenched mathematics community.
The basic idea of MM is that when you get stuck proving a theorem, you just say “and then a miracle happens!” and voila, the proof is done! Using MM I was recently able to come up with a very elegant proof of the Riemann Hypothesis, but no mainstream math journal seems interested. (I also proved the negation of the R.H., but I prefer the positive proof, how about you?)
I’m still waiting for Cordova to administer the coup de gras to Abby.
http://www.uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/ervs-challenge-to-michael-behe/#comment-134816
Maybe now that he’s blogging again he can follow up. We’re still waiting for him to prove Abby wrong now that Behe has conceded, grudgingly, ungraciously and unclearly she was right .
Joe Bob,
Clearly, the rejection of your work is due to a vast Provist and Anti-Handwavist conspiracy. Your career will be destroyed if you keep up talk like that.
Using Scordova logic I make the following argument –
“Hammers are used throughout many different fields of endeavour. Therefore anything that a hammer can be used on is, by definition, a nail. Eureka!”
I can’t wait until he butcher the NFL theorems worse than Dembski.
Dembski, who inflated a whole paper to figure out in Sal’s second fundamental theorem that if you continuously smear a finite (probability) mass over an infinite domain you will get 0 density. That alone render the epithet Dumbski well deserved.
In other words Sal’s Fundamental Babble says that if you search randomly over a large enough space you are screwed. Any application to real situations, such as shown by evolutionary processes to take a random result ;-), is of course nada, zip, 0.
Which is just as well as the later are know to work well in their constrained space. We wouldn’t want a scientist to be sidetracked by a non-existent problem. But Dumbski are welcome to waste his, Sal’s and his funding fathers time.
I suspect he doesn’t know that Dirichlet gives boundary conditions, on top of the more fundamental confusion.
Fish, Fourier transform of: after poaching the fish in white wine with herbs, remove the fish carefully to a warm platter, raise the heat and reduce the poaching liquid, whisk in room temperature unsalted butter, strain into a sauce boat and serve.
For the record, “Big Fat Hairy Deal” is a Garfield quote.
Fourier transform of a fish would show peaks at spacial frequencies characteristic of scales, the spacing between gill-slits, the spacing between vertebrae, the spacing between rib bones, maybe some high resolution peaks for the size of some cells, and then molecular spectra.
I did once post the text of my spurious paper of the spectrum of a human being, didn’t I?
So they cross a whitefish with a jellyfish, hoping to get a boneless whitefish. But they make a mistake with noncommutative operators and get a jellyfish with bones.
That’s your misrepresentation of what I said, not what I actually said. Is that the best you can do Chu, attribute arguments to me which I didn’t even make?
That’s your own fabrication Chu, that is NOT my argument. Is that the best you can do Chu? The argument was laid out in two books, one by Barrow and Tipler’s Anthropic Cosmological Princiiple and the other by Belinfante in a book on objective quantum theory. You might read up on them and then set the story straight on one those authors argue. I was merely presenting the ideas they put forward.
What you claim I’m arguing is your own fabrication, not what I really said or will say in the coming months.
Any way, have your fun. You’ve yet to accurately represent the majority of what I have to say. I don’t expect you to do any different now or in the future. You’re a Darwinist through and through….
Sal:
First of all, my name is not “Chu”. I don’t understand what is *so* bloody difficult about looking at a name and copying it! Why do you see a name like “Chu-Carroll”, and then just arbitrarily pick half of it?
Second: it’s particularly funny to see *you* of all people accusing other people of not accurately representing someone else’s argument. You’ve got a long history of being one of the most dishonest, sleazy quote-mining liars on the entire internet.
Third: it’s hard to misrepresent what you said, since in fact, you said *nothing*. You copied an equation; you defined only one term in the entire equation (f), and *that* definition didn’t match your equation! In fact, the equation you copied isn’t even the correct equation for what you claimed to be talking about. You babbled a little bit about how profound your discovery of the Fourier transform was in studying electrical engineering, pasted copied a bitmap of an equation, and claimed that it demostrates something profound about ID. Seems like a valid inference on my part. If you don’t want people inferring what you mean, then perhaps you might want to actually try saying what you mean, instead of acting like an idiotic buffoon, which is pretty much the only way to characterize someone who think posting an equation like that is *ever* a reasonable thing to do. No one with *any* credibility, any brains, or any clue would post an equation without defining the variables.
“That’s your misrepresentation of what I said, not what I actually said. Is that the best you can do Chu, attribute arguments to me which I didn’t even make?”
To keep the facts on the table, which is something we can obviously not rely on Sal to do, here is what he said in his post.
“To my surprise, I discovered there is a relationship of Schrodinger’s equation in physics to the Fourier Transform of math and Electrical Engineering.”
To which we are all replying “no shit, sherlock!” in unision.
On the other hand, though God commands multiplication, he doesn’t seem to want any addition or subtraction, nor should any time derivatives be other than zero:
“I know that, whatsoever God doeth, it shall be for ever: nothing can be put to it, nor any thing taken from it…. That which hath been is now; and that which is to be hath already been; and God requireth that which is past.”
[Ecclesiastes 3:14-15]
Doesn’t that make Fourier analysis harder?
I dunno Jonathon. It sounds to me like God is only saying that functions shouldn’t have Fourier transforms that vanish outside of finite intervals (or be “band-limited”). That’s my theology and I’m sticking to it.
Before or after he was assassinated?
Oh dear… first you point out that multiplication is reserved for birds, and I had to burn my slide rule. Then you tell that addition and subtraction are banned, and I lost my abacus. I’m still pondering what to do with my marbles…
[Except that it sort of makes the whole idea of God seem redundant, but I guess that might have been too radical even for the big S.]
I don’t think so. Spinoza just thought the common idea of God got everything ever-so-wrong. I think one of his letters actually claims that some of the Jewish people originally had a view like his.
RickD,
[To be fair, a weak kind of “intelligent design” is not uncommon in mathematics. Anybody who studies math is working with the assumption that the basic mathematical structure of the universe is orderly.]
No… a “postmodernist” can study math as a logically consistent created system of humans. Also Spinoza might ask, mathematics doesn’t have an end. There exists no telology to mathematical questions. How can you *really* call something “intelligently designed” without telology coming into play?
One this whole “ID” thing, I actually consulted with the intelligent desinger once. He told me that all of normal arithmetic was useless… that 2+2=4 comes as either useless or entirely wrong, and that the only True forms of arithmetic were fuzzy arithmetic and interval arithmetic. I pointed out to him that one needed regular arithmetic to do fuzzy, as well as, interval arithmetic. I then pointed out that one needed regular arithmetic also to do modular arithmetic, analysis arithmetic (infinite products and summations), vector arithmetic, and matrix arithmetic if not much, much more. The “Intelligent Designer” then sneezed. Since I believed in brains, not souls, I responded “MAKE MORE ANTI-BODIES.” To which the “Intelligent Designer” disappeared in a poof of Foolean… err Boolean… arithmetic.
…because electrical circuits have nothing to do with physics, oh no.
From Sal’s new entry, regarding Schrödinger and Darwin:
Dear Sal, do you realize that you’re standing on the shoulders of giants – with your eyes shut?
In 1828, algebra was something different, that’s pre-Galois, pre-Abel, pre-Grassmann, pre-Artin… Linear Algebra wasn’t thought of, yet. And Abstact Algebra?
I’d answered on your own blog, Sal, but you seem to dislike comments, so I couldn’ t register…
ME,
The Fourier transform equation looks exciting, but it’s actually just a dot (inner) product. An integral is involved because the two vectors are continuous functions.
I feel that it incumbent upon me to inform everyone that I am an electrical engineer, that I use Fourier transforms, and that I have a couple spectrum analyzers around the corner in lab. I have also designed (intelligently, I might add), software algorithms which make use of the DFT in order to perform spectral analysis and signal processing of digital signals.
Therefore, I am god.
As further proof, as god does not lie, my statement concerning my education and skills must be true, and therefore, I must be god.
Excuse me, I have to call a news conference as there are a few things on which I need to correct Mr. Huckabee.
Good Sal now lost it completely: Dembski, Wells, Cordova more brilliant than Darwin:
That’s nonsense… And, this kind of manipulating terms is high-school algebra today, just try the tripos of the 19’th century – even G.H. Hardy wasn’t perfect there…
Good Sal now lost it completely: Dembski, Wells, Cordova more brilliant than Darwin:
Lol, those guys are always picking on Darwin all the time. That’s hilarious. 😀
I think my Fruity Loops has some of them Fourier thingies in there somewhere. Therefore God was designed by monkeys. Thanks!!
BTW, I think I found the source for the picture of the derived Schrodinger’s equation: God in the Equations
The book the equation was scanned from appears to be The Cosmological Anthropic Principle by Barrow and Tipler.
“All things are subject to interpretation whichever interpretation prevails at a given time is a function of power and not truth”
( Nietzsche ).
Would not the developmental course of Mankind follow the same matrix characteristic pattern as that of a progeny’s relationship to its progenitor and primogenitor (Lamarckism). Therefore just like the children’s placebo myth of Santa Claus, and that being, a temporal belief dispelled by the natural course of intellectual development. Then too, couldn’t man’s belief in an overseeing governance authority of justice, forgiveness, provider of hope and direction, and a defender of the innocent, also be a placebo myth designed by general consensus to provide man’s moral compass and a wellspring of fellowship and goodwill to counteract the brutally barbaric cultural epoch of man’s evolution.
Was God around for the caveman, or did his presences conveniently appear as mankind’s cultural necessity dictated. A necessity born of the uncontrolled “dog eat dog” solipsistic mindset and the barbaric brutality of early man, and/or as conjoined with the intellectual awareness of man’s own fragile mortality also came into being? Could not the invention of an all seeing and omnipresent, powerful mythical authority, be a manifestation of man’s desire for a fluid while simultaneously nested hierarchal justice as something solid to anchor and hold onto against an unrelenting oscillating tide of universal change, and isn’t this why God appeared differently, while conveying the same message, simultaneously in differing cultures.
The Intelligent design facet of heuristic evolution can be seen demonstrated by the visceral and elective ongoing organism inter – action/reaction, a transformational adaptation of a holotype genus and/or species in relationship to it’s organismal environment, where extinction is the ultimate dysfunctional incompatibility. Remember in the caveman’s era, science was liken to man’s collective, olfactory sense of smell distinguishing the aromatic patterns of rancid meat. This is to say, evolutions adapt change is a mechanism instituted by consensus magnitude, as an orchestrated, and collective direction of the masses. Therefore hypothetically could one lifestyle, of and by itself, effectuate global warming? But what about when developing consistency through the lifestyles of billions and billions?
Therefore, liken by the interaction between the principles in stereopsis, which then create a visual perception of depth of field as effectually a third dimension. Where 3-dimensional vision is an organism interaction created modality. Just as sound is a modality created by the interaction of an antithetical organism duality, one designed to send and one designed to receive.
Then too, couldn’t the feared “Armageddon” / “Revelation” represent an intellectual awakening and the end of a people’s need for overt religious dominance with leaders like CUFI founder John Hagee, who themselves represent a dichotomy by prospering off the indecisive chaos of growing public fear as the misery of the innocent.
Because of a connate sense of belonging, when asked, individuals will always describe their political, as well as religious secular affiliations (personas) as that which is reflective of their broader mindset of humanity, while not necessarily referencing their individual allegiance to follow and abide to monastic restrictions and responsibilities.
Therefore, referring to America’s religious community as being in and of itself, an indication of a growing American religious predominance, is disingenuous. When the fact is America’s overall religious domination and devotion is in decline, as with time’s passage (heuristic evolution) God’s influence is transformed from an overt (conscience) influence to that of an instinctual (subliminal) influential guidance. The conjugation of a posteriori conditional with a priori unconditional, (phenomenon/noumenon) or (physical/metaphysical).
Therein itself demonstrating the globally inclusive purpose of inculcating various consensual religious doctrines, which were naturally designed to create a collective instinctual psychological human mindset, with an overriding sense of morality. Therefore a (modality/moral compass) as the advantage of leverage, and man’s subsequent instinctual belief, that in good’s struggle versus evil, good has the overriding advantage, (right then makes might).
This is also, evidence that Darwin’s natural selection also pertains to, and encompasses the advancement of a collective ameliorating knowledge versus the individual’s archaic and antiquated solipsistic beliefs. Holism, where the “whole” has a greater reality (mathematical value) then the sum of its comprising component parts. (mathematical value, the “whole’ of 9 versus it’s fractionalized equivalence 8.9999… And again, providing the advantage of leverage),
Take string theory’s predominate conjoined number 01, plus it’s sequenced converse (mirrored image) number 10 where symmetrically inverse (01+10) = 11. 11 being yet another predominate string theory number and the conjugated, (non-robust IC), symmetrically inverse number (09+90) = 99.
Therefore 99 divided by 11 equals the “whole” of 9, while individually 09 divided by 11 equals 0.8181… Plus 90 divided by 11 equals 8.1818… And therefore, (0.8181… + 8.1818…) = 8.9999… As the fractional equivalence of the “whole” of 9.
Try (045+450) + 495, divided by 11 equals the “whole” of 45 while individually 045 plus 450 divided by 11 equals 44.9999… As the fractional equivalence of the “whole” of 45.
Two methods of approaching the same problems of life; One…. the bifurcated (binary odd and even), symmetrical harmony of the “whole” and the other One…. the chaos and anfractuous discord of fractionalization and therefore the adage, “united we stand, divided we fall”.
Come on people get real, God is in the process and not sitting on high orchestrating and adjudicating the every aspect of life. Sooner or later you’re going to have to realize that; God, Santa Claus, The Lone Ranger and Nietzsche’s Superman etc… are all one in the same and they represent bombastic figments (placebos) of our imagination, and as such, are just epochal facets along the road of man’s evolutionary development.
“I had therefore to remove knowledge, in order to make room for belief”
(Kant).
Ray Burchard,
I think you might have some interesting ideas. But, I think you need your own site to express them. Please give me the link to your blog (when you get one if you don’t have one yet). I also suggest that your try and limit your points to a smaller, more concentrated focus, as this will enhance the readability of your essays.
Mark et alia,
Did you (the ‘royal’ you… meaning Mark or anyone else) write an artifical intelligence program named Ray Burchard which writes in your comment section now?
Ray Burchard,
If you actually wrote what you did as a person, then try and simplify your writing. Slash out commas… keep sentences down to one line long… stick to one topic… connect your ideas together much more… DO SOMETHING to improve your writing. I don’t think many people can see the points you drive at from your writing *so far*.
Cordova: Your readers must be stunningly easy to impress.
I’d just like to remind you that the same is not necessarily true for the rest of the world.
In what field is Cordova going to grad school? Presumably not math.
In what field is Cordova going to grad school? Presumably not math.
IIRC, it’s this:
http://www.epp.jhu.edu/graduate-degree-programs/applied-physics
And speaking of biologists who can do the math, let’s see how you and William “the Isaac Newton of information theory” Dembski stack up to these two brains:
Martin Novak
Franziska Michor
No. A myth-addled fantasy sprung from the Copenhagen Interpretation of quantum mechanics “implies” that such an observer exists. We’ve learned a great deal more about the so-called “collapse of the wave function” in the past thirty-odd years, and nowadays, serious physics folk don’t fret over “consciousness” having to be involved somehow.
Oh, and even in the old-school style of doing quantum physics, the Schrödinger Equation itself didn’t say anything about “collapsing the wave function”. That was the whole puzzle: the Schrödinger Equation described the time evolution of systems in between “observations”, but when an “observation” happened, a whole ‘nother physical process kicked in, and the system “collapsed” to a single eigenstate.
The six properties ascribed to the “Ultimate Observer” are also wishful fantasy, through and through.
Alas, Sal doesn’t seem to understand the difference between a theorem and an equation.
I’m hip. But Sal’s “Oink” at the end seems to render his scribble both an appropriate theorem and an appropriate equation for intelligent design in my opinion! 😉 (Now how’s that for populist, naïve, pseudo-clever ignoramity? Ben Stein hasn’t cornered that market. Back at ya, Sal!)
I think that I sometimes push the limit of how long you can keep a topic coherent here with some of my series.
Push that limit.
I don’t understand what is *so* bloody difficult about looking at a name and copying it! Why do you see a name like “Chu-Carroll”, and then just arbitrarily pick half of it?
I’m pretty sure he’s only doing it because you asked him not to. Haven’t you noticed?
I thought a Fourier transform was just a nifty tool to solve partial differential equations and do wave analysis.
*shrug*
(BTW, does anyone know about the history of Fourier transforms? I know they were named in Joseph Fourier’s honor, but I thought he was only better known for his development of Fourier analysis via Fourier series, particularly applications in heat flow. In other words…who named them?)
The story continues. . . .
For the second glorious fundamental theorem of ID, he tells us even less. What he says is “It’s on page 25 of Dembski’s “Exploring Large Spaces” paper”. He doesn’t even bother to tell us what it is!
Um, that’s the “Searching Large Spaces” paper, Sal. But let’s just toss natural language around, no big diff, right? (Searching, exploring, finding, faking…kind of like complexity, information, improbability – let’s use them interchangeably, and maybe no one will notice!) :-O
Page 25 just gives us Dembski’s “Displacement Theorem.” No, I haven’t gotten around to examining that yet. Yes, I finally looked at Dembski’s calculation of “Specified Complexity.” Goodness me! Who is he trying to kid?
Where in blazes is Sal going to grad school? He should shut up about this crap entirely if he’s worried about (confirming) his rep!
Anyway, Dembski has argued (for no reason that I can see) that English can express at most 100,000 basic concepts. If Sal doesn’t shut up, he’s going to destroy with his verbosity yet another of Dembski’s creations. *eyeroll*
If Dembski has argued that English can express at most 100,000 basic concepts, then how does he deal with the experimental evidence published as the OED? Are all these other words some sort of quantum superposition of his hypothesized 100,000? Does the dictionary fail to exist until he reads it? How many of those 100,000 does he claim to understand?
Oxford English Dictionary
Facts and Figures
Number of headwords: over 300,000
Number of words and phrases covered: 640,000
Number of quotations: almost 2.5 million
Number of words of text: 60 million
Most-quoted male author: William Shakespeare
Most-quoted female author: George Eliot
Most-quoted work: the Bible
Most-quoted twentieth-century author: James Joyce
Longest word: ‘pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis’, a factitious word alleged to mean ‘a lung disease caused by the inhalation of very fine silica dust’ (but occurring chiefly as an instance of a very long word!)
Longest entry: the verb ‘set’ (60,000 words)
Shortest entry: ‘m. Var. MA’AM’
Letter containing the largest number of headwords: S
Letter containing the smallest number of headwords: X
For more facts and figures visit the OED Online site: Dictionary Facts
Maybe I should not have said argued – he assumes it, rather, in his paper “Specification: The Pattern that Signifies Intelligence.” (Then he can presumably back off of it when challenged.)
Dembski says: “Imagine a dictionary of 100,000 basic concepts. There are then 100,000 1-level concepts, 10 to the 10th power 2-level concepts, 10 to the 15th power 3-level concepts, and so on. If ‘bidirectional,’ ‘rotary,’ ‘motor-driven,’ and ‘propeller’ are basic concepts, then the molecular machine known as the bacterial flagellum can be characterized as a 4-level concept of the form ‘bidirectional rotary motor-driven propeller.’ Oh, come on.
What is a “basic concept”? What is a 3-level concept? Whatever Dembski says it is. This English nerd not aware of any formal and inflexible absolute definition of concept in this manner (although I understand that there are “3-level” concepts in football). But apparently whatever it is it’s “irreducible,” like these modules in the flagella, which are “irreducible” like these “basic concepts.” Got that? Dembski’s an etymological and literary genius, too. Must be nice to build one’s house on sand so that when it’s swept away Dembski can claim it was a surfboard all along (until he needs to collect insurance, in which case it’s a house again). Arg!
Ignoring syntax, maybe. Is “rotary rotary rotary rotary” a concept? Are “motor-driven propeller” and “propeller motor-driven” two different concepts?
Which has jack relevance to biology.
There are interesting questions about the topology of the ideocosm — the space of all possible ideas — and how best to systematically search that space. Fritz Zwicky’s book comes to mind, and its use by the later Herman Kahn’s assistants at the Hudson Institute.
There are, as I say, interesting questions about the topology of the ideocosm. Stephen Wolfram has asked some. Blake Stacey knows people at NECSI (the New England Complex Systems Institute) who asks them. But Dembski has not asked them, does not know the history of the concept, and might not be happy with Genetic Algorithms used to “mine” the ideocosm. Do ideas evolve, or are they all intelligently created?
I don’t get Sal’s math:
This poor guy surely wanted to multiply with y!
Michael
King James Bible, Exodus 21:35
“And if one man’s ox hurt another’s, that he die; then they shall sell the live ox, and divide the money of it; and the dead ox also they shall divide.”
So shouldn’t it be:
1 = 2 ox y / (y ox + y ox)
and anyway, the bible also deals with division by a prime number:
Joshua 18:5
“And they shall divide it into seven parts: Judah shall abide in their coast on the south, and the house of Joseph shall abide in their coasts on the north.”
Theomathematics. Love it or leave it.
Since jpeg and mp3 also use the fourier transform (OK, it’s a DCT, but a lot of implementations derive it via the FFT) to compress images and audio, respectively, I posit that quantum physics implies some sort of lossy compression. This would definitely reduce the universe’s load on the Intelligent Designer’s servers. Hell, I’ll bet it can even explain the Heisenberg uncertainty principle!
Just look at this awesome theorem:
A'(x) = W*x + Sum(i=0,N, A(x_i) + 7/N) + pi
I mean *look* at that frickin’ sweet theorem!
Maybe I can convince Sal to help me find the Cosmic Compression Artifacts!
@ RickD #40;
——————-
Anybody who studies math is working with the assumption that the basic mathematical structure of the universe is orderly. Viewed from a certain perspective, this can be construed as “design”, though I think it is still a reach to infer a designer.
——————-
Doesn’t this imply that Godel’s incompleteness disproves the Designer hypothesis?
Let me politely disagree with “eddie.”
“Anybody who studies math is working with the assumption that the basic mathematical structure of the universe is orderly.”
I disagree. Math makes no assumptions about the universe (in the sense of Physical Universe). Math is an axiomatic approach to Truth, not an empirical (scientific method) approach as is Science.
“orderly” — means what, exactly? Neither the Platonic ideals of axiomatic math nor the distribution of galaxies in the physical cosmos are completely noisy and random (else we would not exist). But there are significant random, chaotic, and stochastic aspects of physical reality. And Gregory Chaitin contends that axiomatic math is filled with mere coincidences; things that are true “for no reason.”
I don’t see how your sketchy notions reach to Godel’s incompleteness, let alone using that to (as you wish) disprove the Designer hypothesis.
If we are created in the image of God, and we are somewhat chaotic, does that mean that God is chaotic? If more of the cosmos is Dark Matter than visible matter, does that make God primarily interested in Dark Matter, as He seems (biologically) to be inordinately fond of beetles?
I enjoy discussing Theomathematics and Theophysics, and so (at times) does Mark Chu-Carroll, but this is thin gruel so far, eddie.
Wrong, and that is a fabrication as I know the difference between the a Fourier Tranform (which is defined by an Integral symbol, upper case “S”), and an Fourier Series (represented by uppercase Sigma for Summation)
Further more consider this:
http://tinyurl.com/2ytoep
Note: Fejer in 1904 published two theorems giving conditions for the convergence of Fourier Seres that are less restrictive than the Dirichlet conditions. I can’t speek for Fejer criteria regaring Fourier Transforms, but it would seem extensible with some qualificaiton to Fourier Transforms where the period is kluged to be infinity, thus one essentially kluges a non-periodic signal to be a periodic one by making the period infinity….as the period is made larger and larger, the summation becomes an integral one has a Fourier Integral, which motivates the notion of a Fourier Transform.
I also pointed out Torbjorn’s faulty understanding of Dirichlet conditions and functions with a complex range mapped from a real domain by the counter example I provided at YoungCosmos.
At Uncommon Descent, Sal wrote:
DiEb,
Look at the very end of that blog at Mark Chu’s Log. I posted right there in hostile territory on April 2, 2008. Did you notice no one offered a rebuttal?
I answered him here & at UD…
Sal,
I’m offering a rebuttal 🙂
It was pure chance that I found your recent post at Chu-Carroll’s blog – and you can’t expect a quick answer to your post as the thread is dormant since Mar 1st.
To summarize my view:
1. In your blog, you lifted a formula from the wikipedia entry about Fourier transforms. I say “lifted”, as you hyperlinked to the pic of the formula.
2. In the wikipedia entry, the formula is correctly stated for a “complex-valued Lebesgue-integrable function”.
3. In your entry, you change this to “obey[ing] the Dirichelet Condition”.
4. Therefore, I stated, that you are mixing up Fourier series and general Fourier transforms.
5. You then quote a lecture note of the Physics Department of the University of Hong-Kong, which introduces a Fourier transform for an aperiodic function by looking at this function having an infinite period.
6. The conditions for the function in this lecture notes are:
– being Lebesgue integrable
– satisfying the Dirichlet conditions on every finite interval.
7. These are still not the conditions you gave
and
8. the second condition is only necessary for this special approach – which is thought to motivate the students, I guess – while
9. being in L1 is the important one…
So, I get the impression that your knowledge of Fourier analysis is superficial.
I noticed this post earlier Sal, but, not knowing much about Fourier analysis, I kept my mouth shut. I do have to say, it seems unfair to give yourself three months to respond to criticism (Torbjörn Larsson, OM #48 Dec. 11th) and everyone else only two days.
@ SC:
Oh, you are here now, kvetching over the same points. As the Panda’s Thumb thread that activated you is now closed due to your ranting, I will post my belated answer here instead. (Isn’t the ability to google crosslinks to get to the full picture wonderful?)
On PT:
The URL DiEb looked at and when skewered you, sparing me the analysis?
Here:
The thread here answered that already, but more detail is provided in the link above.
The continuing misunderstanding of how to make proper limits is clearly exhibited, yet another demonstration of superficial knowledge.
So, I got an answer at UD:
So, I get the impression that your knowledge of Fourier analysis is superficial.
Whether superficial or not, I know the difference between a Fourier Series and a Fourier Transform. And it appears TorbTard had an even more superficial understanding than I. 🙂 I’m afraid he’ll have a hard time persuading the world otherwise in light of my most recent citations…
These are still not the conditions you gave
Perhaps. But I now have a better set of conditions. 🙂
But even conceding that point you cannot logically argue that I did not know the difference between a Fourier Series or a Fourier Transform. That is a falsehood.
Thanks anyway for explaining your line of reasoning. It’s understandable that you inferred from my initial treatment that my understanding was superficial, but it does not logically follow that I did not know the difference between Fourier transforms and Fourier series.
Furthermore, the notion of an infinite period for aperiodic functions holds even with my original posting if the condition of absolute integrability on that period also holds (which was in the Wiki link to Dirichlet my original posting). So your claim:
These are still not the conditions you gave
is a bit weak in light of the application of infinite period for aperiodic fuctions.
You’re of course welcome to keep promoting and believing that I have only superficial understanding, but you should not argue that I don’t know the difference between a Fourier Transform and a Fourier Series. That is a falsehood.
Most damaging to the argument that I could not distiguish between the two is the fact the Wiki Dirichlet link uses two separate phrases: “Fourier Transform” and “Fourier Series”. On those grounds alone, it is evident I had seen and was familiar with the fact that two separate concepts must surely exist.
I appreciate your courage in posting here at UD. For that you have my utmost respect.
regards,
Salvador
And I replied myself:
Dear Sal,
1. I don’t think that it takes courage to post on a message board.
2. I’d carry this discussion to your own blog – if it was possible
3. in your post, you repeated five times that you know the concepts of Fourier transforms, series etc. I presume that my next critique would provoke at least ten similar statements, which I want to spare us (here? [i.e.,UD])…
Hey guys; first ever comment in this blog. I’ve been lurking in here for some six months now, but I just couldn’t resist. Highlighted from Sal’s post for everyone’s amusement:
Right-on, Sal, and thanks for clearing this up to all of us. And, oh, on behalf of everyone here, I apologize. Now we know that you really know mathematics. 😉
The inimitable SC is quoted to say:
Apart from borrowing the common epithet of an infamous fellow creationist (DaveScot/DaveTard), this doesn’t stand up to the light.
SC has still not conceded his initial mistake in defining transforms, stating conditions for a series instead of a transform, or misstating limit conditions.
Nor did my hasty mistake in analyzing his claim on a physics application, now corrected, free him from the problem of misapplication as he made several mistakes.
Yes, SC will continue to claim that he is right in spite of the facts. Which is not even superficial.
PS. PT has a new, integrated Bathroom Wall, where I crossposted the previous comment. Let’s see if SC resumes the PT thread or has bailed out. I assume we will have to give him 4 months or so…
Of course God is the author of mathematics. I quote from the Holy Skripture:
And after forty days and nights, Noah sent the animals gathered into the Ark forthwith into the land.
And the Lord commanded them, “Go forth and multiply.”
And the animals proceeded two-by-two out of the Ark.
But two serpents proceeded not. Yea, they wept.
“Why weepest thou?” the Lord asked of them.
“Lord,” the serpents replied, “we are but adders and cannot multiply.”
And the Lord commanded Noah to cut down a tree, and commanded him that a section of the tree should be presented to the serpents, and that food should be prepared and given to the serpents on the section thus cut.
And the serpents rejoiced. Yea, they made a great noise in the land, and they were sore pleased. For the Lord hath given them the power to multiply, lo, with a log table.
And the serpents went forth and multiplied, yea they raised exponents in their labors. And it came in their dreams an wondrous entity, the like of which no man had never seen, and which taken together with itself decreased any amount added to it, lo, by one.
And the Lord saw this was good, and gave His blessings unto the serpents. And the serpents rejoiced greatly that they had pleased the Lord. And each take what he had done and lay with it, side-by-side, likeunto the letter S. And it came to pass that whatever deed satisfieth the Lord’s condition might be transformed, one to the other, by speaking in tongues with the serpents.
“For, yea,” saith the Lord, “mighty is that which the serpents have brought forth. Let no man be deceived in his heart that whatever I have created might be brought to these worthy beasts, that it might be transformed by their wisdom.”