Intelligent Design-Whodunnit?

In My Humble Opinion
101

Judges are not qualified to determine what is or isn’t science. They dont have the scientific training and this only applies to the district of Dover and not on a National level.
One of the reasons why Jones concluded that ID was not a science was because he denied that ID was published in peer review even though he was given at least two examples he refused to admit them as evidence. Since then many more articles on ID have been published in respected peer review journals. Jones makes a lot of money on speaking engagements, books based on this trial, and I believe even a movie deal was talked about.

Its interesting to note that Kenneth Miller who was one of the advisors for the plaintiff still believes in the junk science of junk DNA, and just a few short years ago he said…“Intelligent design cannot explain the presence of a nonfunctional pseudogene, unless it is willing to allow that the designer made serious errors, wasting millions of bases of DNA on a blueprint full of junk and scribbles. Evolution, however, can explain them easily. Pseudogenes are nothing more than chance experiments in gene duplication that have failed, and they persist in the genome as evolutionary remnants of the past history"…
PUBMED Pseudogenes: are they “junk” or functional DNA?
Balakirev ES, Ayala FJ.
Source
Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of California, Irvine, California 92697-2525, USA.
Abstract
Pseudogenes have been defined as nonfunctional sequences of genomic DNA originally derived from functional genes. It is therefore assumed that all pseudogene mutations are selectively neutral and have equal probability to become fixed in the population. Rather, pseudogenes that have been suitably investigated often exhibit functional roles, such as gene expression, gene regulation, generation of genetic (antibody, antigenic, and other) diversity. Pseudogenes are involved in gene conversion or recombination with functional genes.

Junk DNA’ Can Sense Viral Infection: Promising Tool in the Battle Between Pathogen and Host
ScienceDaily (Apr. 24, 2012) — Once considered unimportant “junk DNA,” scientists have learned that non-coding RNA (ncRNA) – RNA molecules that do not translate into proteins – play a crucial role in cellular function. Mutations in ncRNA

Citation:Pray,L.(2008)Transposons, or jumping genes: Not junk DNA?Nature Education1(1)
For decades, scientists dismissed transposable elements, also known as transposons or “jumping genes”, as useless “junk DNA”. But are they really?

Junk’ DNA Has Important Role, Researchers Find
ScienceDaily (May 21, 2009) — Scientists have

Indeed, researchers like John Mattick of Queensland University, Australia think that the idea of junk DNA is junk science:
Researchers the world over are confirming that non-coding DNA holds critical clues to a vast range of diseases; breast cancer, HIV, Crohn’s disease, Alzheimer’s, heart disease, ovarian and skin cancer … the list is growing daily. A leading figure in world genetics, Prof. John Mattick, recently claimed that, ‘the failure to recognise the implications of the non-coding DNA will go down as the biggest mistake in the history of molecular biology’ [Genius of Junk (DNA), Catalyst, Thursday, 10 July 2003].

102

Yep. Science corrects itself. Scientists figured out an answer.

Creationists DIDN’T! No creationist ever came forward and showed the function of inter-gene DNA as gene-regulating “switches.” Never. Not a single one.

Scientists have. Science works.

Creationists haven’t. It doesn’t work. It isn’t a science. It provides no answers, shows us no discoveries, opens no doors.

It’s as if you were crowing that Newton was wrong. Yeah…and it was Einstein who showed exactly how. It wasn’t Henry Morris or Duane Gish!

103

Ever hear of Francis Collins? He may not be a YEC but he believes God created the universe, and how do you know what the personnel beliefs of everyone who worked on this? We are all creationist. The only difference is that some like me believe that we have a teleological origin based on the observable data, and others have faith that blind and unguided processes created everything based on faith. Again as for creationism, as in origins, Neo Darwinism cant, nor does it even try explain OOL/ the origin of life. This is a concept completely based on faith since we have no empirical evidence that physics and chemistry alone can account for life. And contrary to popular belief, Einstein did believe in a creator, a universal architect and refers to this creator as him or he, and as a spirit. He was not a Christian or a practicing Jew nor did he believe in God who intervened in the personal lives of men, but nonetheless he believed in a creator…
1. “I want to know how God created this world. I am not interested in this or that phenomenon, in the spectrum of this or that element. I want to know His thoughts; the rest are details”
2. “Science without religion is lame. Religion without science is blind”
3. “My religion consists of a humble admiration of the illimitable superior spirit who reveals himself in the slight details we are able to perceive with our frail and feeble mind”
"
4. Every one who is seriously involved in the pursuit of science becomes convinced that a spirit is manifest in the laws of the Universe-a spirit vastly superior to that of man, and one in the face of which we with our modest powers must feel humble"
Hoyle also later became convinced in a designer creator. “A common sense interpretation of the facts suggests that a superintellect has monkeyed with physics, as well as with chemistry and biology, and that there are no blind forces worth speaking about in nature. The numbers one calculates from the facts seem to me so overwhelming as to put this conclusion almost beyond question.”
Newton was not wrong, and we still use his theories on the macroscopic level. When we build airplanes, buildings, bridges, roller coasters etc., it is Newtons theory we use, not Einstein’s, which is only slightly more precise when used on a non macroscopic level. Again Newtons universal law of gravity and Newtonian mechanics are is still taught and applied till this day.

I agree science corrects itself, and has shown that people like Miller and others were not only wrong, but that they were lying because we have had evidence for function in this so called junk for years and long before Miller, Dawkins, Coyne and PZ Myers ever spoke of it. In fact PZ Myers still clings to this theory and Miller has never retracted his statements that was once used as a poster child for bad design, and one that was claimed to be a prediction of evolutionary biology.

Yes your right, current science does correct itself and in doing so, has proved yet another one of many false predictions associated with the theory. It was you who mentioned creationism. I spoke of intelligent design, and science is in the process of correcting the once held and now known to be false notion that ID theory was not suitable for legitimate peer review publication. Yes science corrects itself indeed, and I say bravo.

104

You’re asking the wrong question. You cant falsify a negative or an unobservable hypothetical. The real question you should be asking yourself is what evidence is there to support it?

The word “possibility” can itself be used as a non falsifiable wild card.

105

What is the difference?

106

QF is more than a concept, it explains the observed [uyrl=Casimir effect - Wikipedia]Casimir effect. I did not claim that quantum foam as we see it existed before the Big Bang. What I did say was that just as no physical laws are broken by particles arising from nothing in our universe, it is unclear what laws would be broken if particles arose in whatever there is in the meta-universe. Does Heisenberg hold there? Who knows,

Well, thee kind of is, because Heisenberg is violated if nothing can pop into being from nothing.

You seem to be saying that zero point energy violates conservation laws, which it does not. A high energy particle and anti-particle don’t either. If the net energy of the universe is zero, it clearly does not mean that the energy of a given particle is also zero.
But this is all besides the point, I’m clearly not giving a theory of everything here. What I am saying is that “commonsense” rules are violated all the time, and to say that the universe could not arise from nothing “before” the Big Bang you need to give me a law which would be violated.

No, this gives the opportunity for many universes with many laws to arise. If an infinite number do (since no-time is infinite) a universe that is “fine tuned” is inevitable - and only that universe has intelligence to wonder about why their universe arose with such useful laws.

107

Do you have a link to a list of peer reviewed ID articles published in real biology journals? The one I know of was finagled by the editor of a small journal which did not usually publish papers on evolution - they guy got fired. Anyone can establish a journal, solicit whatever papers they want, and send them out for peer review, and claim success. But publication in such a journal would only get someone tenure in a Bible college.

I’ve edited journals and program chaired conferences (not in biology) and I could easily cook the books and get a submission accepted or rejected by judicious selection of reviewers. I never would, of course. When an ID paper gets published in Science or Nature then you’d be talking, “Moronic Transactions in ID,” not so much.

I trust you are aware that Miller is a devout Catholic, and almost certainly believes that God created the universe. In any case, that not all pseudogenes are junk is different from saying that no sequence of DNA is junk.

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Two words versus one. And ID only implies God, it doesn’t push him in our faces. IDers were dumb enough to think no one would notice.

That is ID as used by the creationists, of course. The Raelians had a different designer in mind.

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That
A. The finely tuned universe exists and
B. There is no sign of any designer

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Or, of course, the compromise position, “cdesign proponentsists.”

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As for Miller, a lie is a lie. Lying is not exclusive to any religious or non religious belief. Humans are humans. He knew there was evidence for function years before he made this and many other staments.

And no, you cannot easily cook the books in peer review journals and it would be even harder to do so with multiple journals in a harsh and ultra critical environment concerning this subject, and especially with independent juges which is a pretty standard. In fact in order for ID theorist to get published, they better make sure they have all their stuff in order.

It also seems you didn’t even know enough about the subject to name person or journal & didn’t even have the facts straight. You simply read it somewhere and accepted it as the gospel truth. The case in question was Meyer, Stephen. 2004. (The origin of biological information and the higher taxonomic categories. Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington.

As for Richard Sternberg, he didn’t get fired, because he wasn’t even an official employee, as many who judge the merits of paper are not always official employees. However there was retaliation and people started treating him like trash and created a hostile working environment, but he did nothing wrong. In fact no one was ever able to refute anything Meyer’s wrote since he largely relied on information that was already published in peer review. The reason given for dispute was that the journal did not have a history of publishing that kind of content (what ever that means.

In fact "Dr. Roy McDiarmid, the President of the Biological Society of Washington and a scientist at the Smithsonian, later admitted that “there was no wrong doing regarding the peer-review process of Meyer’s paper” and went on to say… “I have seen the review file and comments from 3 reviewers on the Meyer paper. All three with some differences among the comments recommended or suggested publication. I was surprised but concluded that there was not inappropriate behavior in the review process.”

It turns out Sternberg was right, even though many accused him of lying about the two other juges involved in the initial review process, and when they asked him not to reveal their names to the public after they saw the way he had been treated.
This is a partial list of other publications by ID theorist or those who mention and cite ID favorably in their own peer review papers include…
Axe, D. D., 2000. Extreme functional sensitivity to conservative amino acid changes on enzyme exteriors. Journal of Molecular Biology 301: 585-595.

Lönnig, W.-E. 2004. Dynamic genomes, morphological stasis and the origin of irreducible complexity. In: V. Parisi, V. de Fonzo and F. Aluffi-Pentini, eds. Dynamical Genetics, 101-119. Research Signpost.
•
Lönnig, W.-E. and H. Saedler. 2002. Chromosome rearrangements and transposable elements. Annual Review of Genetics 36: 389-410.
• •
Wells, Jonathan. 2005. Do centrioles generate a polar ejection force? Rivista di Biologia/Biology Forum 98: 37-62.

Denton, M. J. and J. C. Marshall. 2001. The laws of form revisited. Nature 410: 417
M.J. Denton & J.C. Marshall, “The Laws of Form Revisited,” Nature, 410 (22 March 2001): 417; M.J. Denton, J.C. Marshall & M. Legge, (2002)

“The Protein Folds as Platonic Forms: New Support for the pre-Darwinian Conception of Evolution by Natural Law,” Journal of Theoretical Biology 219 (2002): 325–342

The Journal Life Is Life Unique? David Abel

W.A. Dembski, The Design Inference: Eliminating Chance through Small Probabilities (Cambridge: Cambridge University Pres, 1998)
Cambridge University Press and peer-reviewed as part of a distinguished monograph series,

• D.K.Y. Chiu & T.H. Lui, “Integrated Use of Multiple Interdependent Patterns for Biomolecular Sequence Analysis,” International Journal of Fuzzy Systems, 4(3) (September 2002): 766–775.
A.C. McIntosh, “Evidence of design in bird feathers and avian respiration,”International Journal of Design & Nature and Ecodynamics, Vol. 4(2):154–169 (2009).
David L. Abel, “The Universal Plausibility Metric (UPM) & Principle (UPP),”Theoretical Biology and Medical Modelling, Vol. 6(27) (2009).
D. Halsmer, J. Asper, N. Roman, and T. Todd, “The Coherence of an Engineered World,” International Journal of Design & Nature and Ecodynamics, Vol. 4(1):47–65 (2009).

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There was evidence for no function also. There is usually evidence on both sides, coming down one way or another is far from being a liar. That this is big news now indicates that the previous evidence was far from convincing. I don’t know how Miller will react, but I wouldn’t be surprised if he agreed.

Please tell me how you conclude this. I’ve been the program chair of one major conference and several minor ones, am assistant editor of a major journal, been on the editorial board of several journals, and edited several special issues of journals. I’ve also been on more program committees than I can remember. I assure you, this could be done, though the person doing it would probably be caught. Anyone who has actually read the reviews of a paper will find them on both sides of the issue. I’ve read thousands.
Reviewers nap. Someone published a paper with an obviously wrong conclusion in the field I did my PhD in. There were letters saying it was incorrect (including one from the author) two issues later. Peer review is a gate, but reproducing important results is the real way science corrects itself.

I read extensively about this some years ago. Of course the reviewers’ comments were positive - that was the point I made. You can get positive comments by farming a paper out to the right reviewers. IIRC this journal mostly did cell stuff, and the paper in question was out of its normal range. Which is not necessarily bad, but dangerous, since reviewers who don’t really understand a subject tend to give better reviews. Our review forms have a place where you can rate your confidence in your review. This is an important factor in the decision.
As for “fired” I’m involved with plenty of technical volunteer organizations, and we speak of “firing” someone who isn’t worked out despite the fact that they get no money are aren’t employees.

I don’t understand. Reviewers names are never disclosed in public. The last I read about this, he wasn’t “right”. Though I’m sure he claims he is, and creationist publications say he is. And I’ve never seen anything accusing the reviewers of acting unethically.

This is a partial list of other publications by ID theorist or those who mention and cite ID favorably in their own peer review papers include…
Axe, D. D., 2000. Extreme functional sensitivity to conservative amino acid changes on enzyme exteriors. Journal of Molecular Biology 301: 585-595.

Lönnig, W.-E. 2004. Dynamic genomes, morphological stasis and the origin of irreducible complexity. In: V. Parisi, V. de Fonzo and F. Aluffi-Pentini, eds. Dynamical Genetics, 101-119. Research Signpost.

[/quote]

I’ve read this one. It appears to be an opinion piece (perfectly reasonable) saying what happens if Behe and Dembski are correct. However Behe isn’t. Non ID mechanisms have been found for cilia, for example. Behe at least knows what he is talking about (which is not the same thing as being right.)
Dawkins’ book “Climbing Mount Improbable” directly addresses the probabilistic arguments. Yes, if any of this were truly that improbable, we’d have something to worry about. It isn’t. Here is the analogy I’ve come up for the lock example. Say you have a combination lock consisting of a thousand individual dials of ten numbers each. To open the lock you need to get each number correct. There are 10 ** 1000 possible combinations, so the lock is basically unopenable if you don’t have the combination. Anyone who can open it quickly must have psychic powers, at least.
But there is one thing I didn’t mention. Each dial makes a small click when the right number is positioned. Now the lock is obviously trivial to open. If you can find stable intermediate states low probability events become high probability events. My example had a goal, in real life evolution has no goal so there are lots of legal combinations. So Dembski I dismiss.

I’m familiar with Abel. The prevalence of life is an interesting open question. As I understand his work, he looks at the factors influencing the development of life (such as the tides) and concludes that without these life could not have developed. Most people aren’t convinced. And it has nothing to do with evolution on earth. He wrote before we discovered how many planets (and thus opportunities for life) there are out there. I’ll have to check on how dependent his argument is on this factor.

I don’t have time to look at the rest right now. BTW, opinion pieces are usually not peer reviewed. I know - I’ve edited a column of opinion pieces for over 15 years, Such opinion pieces are good, and I commend Dynamical Genetics for giving space to an IDer to express his opinion. But it doesn’t count as support for ID.

113

THEMAYAN, if you found yourself lost in the middle of a vast jungle; desperate for shelter and resources, you realize all hope is lost and figure you have a day, tops, before you sucumb to exposure and die, until you stumble across by chance:

Freshly fallen branches and foliage that just happened to crush a boar, and formed a perfect shelter as a lean-to. Beside this natural lean-to, are rocks with flint, and dry brush that would act a perfect tinder. You decide, with your last remaining strength to build a spit, using the flint for fire, roast the boar, and feast, then rest regaining you strength, when all the sudden, the clouds darken, and provide water that finds a channel down your lean-to, and into your empty canteen.

This gives you just enough strength to finally keep heading in a straight line for another three days until you break out onto a road, and are saved by a passing truck.

Despite the incredible odds, would you attribute it to a great blind happenstance of an indifferent jungle that due to the nature of the circumstance, turned to your favor saving your life?

Or…

…Would you calculate the odds of the tree that grew in that very place, decades before you were even born, providing you shelter; whose branches had fallen at just the right minute to break the back of a passing wild boar, providing you food; around which flint and stone had been forged millions of years ago due to eons of geologic activity, providing fire; the dry tinder, the the rain, etc, as all these added miracles proves the divine manifest—for had not these impossible odds happened when they did, as they did, you’d now be a dead man, unable to share the alternate story of the miracle granted to you, as it so happened?

114

I was with you, all the way up to those last five words… Once I saw that last little bit, the hair on my scalp would rise, I’d get all goose-pimply, a chill would race down my spine, and I’d find myself thinking some very “woo!” thoughts.

At very least, I wouldn’t blame someone who had experience all of that for believing in providence.

(Then, later, as I’m spitting out dry leaves, bits of bark, dead bugs, and mud that are mixed into the water in my bottle, my “woo” would mostly fade away. Some providence, that can’t even filter water!)

115

If you have to ask that question then maybe this is the wrong topic for you. When I want to learn about something I go straight to the source and not just the critics, but maybe you are truly ignorant on the subject. Maybe your sincere and really want to know, and not just being sarcastic. In that case I will give you the benefit of the doubt. As defined by the center for science and culture…

What is intelligent design?
Intelligent design refers to a scientific research program as well as a community of scientists, philosophers and other scholars who seek evidence of design in nature. The theory of intelligent design holds that certain features of the universe and of living things are best explained by an intelligent cause, not an undirected process such as natural selection. Through the study and analysis of a system’s components, a design theorist is able to determine whether various natural structures are the product of chance, natural law, intelligent design, or some combination thereof. Such research is conducted by observing the types of information produced when intelligent agents act. Scientists then seek to find objects which have those same types of informational properties which we commonly know come from intelligence. Intelligent design has applied these scientific methods to detect design in irreducibly complex biological structures, the complex and specified information content in DNA, the life-sustaining physical architecture of the universe, and the geologically rapid origin of biological diversity in the fossil record during the Cambrian explosion approximately 530 million years ago.

See New World Encyclopedia entry on intelligent design.

Is intelligent design the same as creationism?
No. The theory of intelligent design is simply an effort to empirically detect whether the “apparent design” in nature acknowledged by virtually all biologists is genuine design (the product of an intelligent cause) or is simply the product of an undirected process such as natural selection acting on random variations. Creationism typically starts with a religious text and tries to see how the findings of science can be reconciled to it. Intelligent design starts with the empirical evidence of nature and seeks to ascertain what inferences can be drawn from that evidence. Unlike creationism, the scientific theory of intelligent design does not claim that modern biology can identify whether the intelligent cause detected through science is supernatural.
Honest critics of intelligent design acknowledge the difference between intelligent design and creationism. University of Wisconsin historian of science Ronald Numbers is critical of intelligent design, yet according to the Associated Press, he “agrees the creationist label is inaccurate when it comes to the ID [intelligent design] movement.” Why, then, do some Darwinists keep trying to conflate intelligent design with creationism? According to Dr. Numbers, it is because they think such claims are “the easiest way to discredit intelligent design.” In other words, the charge that intelligent design is “creationism” is a rhetorical strategy on the part of Darwinists who wish to delegitimize design theory without actually addressing the merits of its case.
Is intelligent design a scientific theory? Yes. The scientific method is commonly described as a four-step process involving observations, hypothesis, experiments, and conclusion. Intelligent design begins with the observation that intelligent agents produce complex and specified information (CSI). Design theorists hypothesize that if a natural object was designed, it will contain high levels of CSI. Scientists then perform experimental tests upon natural objects to determine if they contain complex and specified information. One easily testable form of CSI is irreducible complexity, which can be discovered by experimentally reverse-engineering biological structures to see if they require all of their parts to function. When ID researchers find irreducible complexity in biology, they conclude that such structures were designed.

116

I’ve read this one. It appears to be an opinion piece (perfectly reasonable) saying what happens if Behe and Dembski are correct. However Behe isn’t. Non ID mechanisms have been found for cilia, for example. Behe at least knows what he is talking about (which is not the same thing as being right.)
Dawkins’ book “Climbing Mount Improbable” directly addresses the probabilistic arguments. Yes, if any of this were truly that improbable, we’d have something to worry about. It isn’t. Here is the analogy I’ve come up for the lock example. Say you have a combination lock consisting of a thousand individual dials of ten numbers each. To open the lock you need to get each number correct. There are 10 ** 1000 possible combinations, so the lock is basically unopenable if you don’t have the combination. Anyone who can open it quickly must have psychic powers, at least.
But there is one thing I didn’t mention. Each dial makes a small click when the right number is positioned. Now the lock is obviously trivial to open. If you can find stable intermediate states low probability events become high probability events. My example had a goal, in real life evolution has no goal so there are lots of legal combinations. So Dembski I dismiss.

I’m familiar with Abel. The prevalence of life is an interesting open question. As I understand his work, he looks at the factors influencing the development of life (such as the tides) and concludes that without these life could not have developed. Most people aren’t convinced. And it has nothing to do with evolution on earth. He wrote before we discovered how many planets (and thus opportunities for life) there are out there. I’ll have to check on how dependent his argument is on this factor.

I don’t have time to look at the rest right now. BTW, opinion pieces are usually not peer reviewed. I know - I’ve edited a column of opinion pieces for over 15 years, Such opinion pieces are good, and I commend Dynamical Genetics for giving space to an IDer to express his opinion. But it doesn’t count as support for ID.
[/QUOTE]

I still disagree that cooking the books in peer review would be easy. As for your occupation, If you are telling me the truth, and I have no reason to accuse you of lying, then you would have to appreciate the amount, and not just of ultra skepticism, but visceral hatred that many in Academia have for ID. Your not going to find a lot of yes men. Lets be real man.

As for the message portrayed by other members and staff, was that Sternberg acted alone and was lying concerning the fact that other judges also recommended Meyers work for publication. Again even Dr. Roy McDiarmid President later admitted that these allegations were false, but unlike the initial allegations that made the front pages, his admittance got brushed under the table. These reviewers understood the subject extremely well and where the most qualified and they had PHD’s in the field, so this point of yours is moot. I also have to refute your assessment of Sternberg. There are blogs out there, and not just by lay people, but by other scientist including members the NSCE who have written or said things about him publicly that are akin to a hit piece. They tried to destroy this guys career and portray him as a quack, and to set an example to anyone else who dare OK a paper like this for publishing in the future.
As for Behe, again even the most critical of ID theory such as people like Eugenie Scott director of the NCSE has gone on to admit that IC/irreducible complexity is a valid construct, however she believes that neo Darwinian process are capable of producing an IC system. Unfortunately she nor anyone else can offer any empirical evidence to support this claim, although Nick Matzke’s and Ken Miller have tried. I especially love Millers tie clip analogy. Thats right, he even had a tie clip modeled after a mouse trap out of which he tries to use to refute Behe’s argument with. It is very silly and filled with holes but that never stopped Miller before. Like I said before the subject was one of getting published in peer review, and now that they are, the goal post will narrow and only some journals will count, and then the critic will find another goal post. etc etc etc.

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Ha, well, for the sake of brevity, I left out the whole, “you go scrambling for your canteen to blah blah blah.” I didn’t mean for that particular element to be so outstandly preposterous as far as the odds of occurring. But then again, even as it stands, let’s say that something so unlikely did happen, it still wouldn’t necessitate a divine hand, as much as it would feel like God, Himself, was setting up a whole picnic for you.

Actually, I think it underlines a fine point in human hardwiring: the more unlikely the odds of something happening in your favor, the more it would seem designed or divine.

So, when looking at the universe in such a backwards manner, in that the universe appears to be so incredibly fine-tuned to every aspect of intelligent life and civilization, it’s so much more simply explained in that intelligent life just so happened to be a random end result of countless random variables and occurrences from a near infinite set (if not actually infinite) of permutations of either multiple universes, baby universes, or one, eternal oscillating universe.

118

If you can’t answer that question, then maybe this is the wrong topic for you.

119

Grin! It’s actually even worse, as I never leave my canteen open! Always closed, except when I’m actually drinking from it.

Totally agree. As I said, even as a firm non-believer, such an experience would make me pause and think mystical thoughts. I’ve actually had near-miraculous events in my life (such as when I lost my car keys in the middle of the Yuha desert – and then found them again!) As you say, the human brain is made to think these thoughts.

Another thing our brains are made for is to emphasize our own experiences, without proper generalization. It’s always all about “me” to the human brain. If I win a slot machine at Las Vegas, it happened to “ME!” My brain isn’t properly built around the generalized knowledge that several million people play slot machines, and that someone winning is highly expected, not highly unusual.

Agreed; at least, that’s what I take away from the Anthropic Principle.

(I have a tendency to prefer “weak” principles. The Weak Anthropic Principle, the Weak Gaia Hypothesis, etc. The only one I’m really, really strong on is the Strong AI Hypothesis, where, in my opinion, “mind” and “consciousness” are merely information flows, and the material underpinning doesn’t matter. If we can ever build a C-3PO robot…he has consciousness.)

(Irritating consciousness…but consciousness.)

120

likewise on most philosophic things myself. However, I will say consciousness/sapience is one of those things that truly seems like a holistic phenomenon. However our brains store information, memories, interpret senses, to create an “I” is something I don’t know if I’ll ever wrap my brain around. Even after reading G.E.B. to the best of my abilities.

Seems our brain is the instrument, and our mind is the music… But the instrument seems to be playing itself.

Perhaps it’ll all play out like the last line in The Last Question.