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Leaving evidence of intelligent design to complex conscious species we create

rousseau said:
I guess it's not the point you were going for, but I just find the concept of 'intelligent design' non-sensical.
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Many humans find cars indicate intelligent design.
rousseau said:
That's probably obvious to you and assumed in this thread, but once you get past that there's nothing at all intelligent or rational about life, there's no need for an intelligent designer, and asking how one theoretical 'designer' would leave clues is like .... well I don't know what it's like, but it's probably just not a very useful discussion.
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Say that natural laws, including social forces among the intelligences that evolve, will naturally cause evolution in the system we develop.

Say that certain beings that evolve in the system will be curious about whether or not the system we developed was developed by intelligent beings. Do we leave hints or not?
 
Tom Sawyer said:
It would be nice to have. That way, if we develop interstellar transport we could come to a new place, stick a probe up one of their butts to get a DNA sample and be able to say "Oh crap, this is another one of those species that was designed by Steve" and then just leave without making contact because Steve is an incompetent dipshit in regards to designing species. We don't need to deal with that kind of bullshit.
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What if Frank, in his attempt to experiment without getting Steve's reputation, includes Steve's rectal DNA in all of Frank's creations?
 
Ultimately 'intelligent design' is a non answer to the question, which is "How did life arise?"

Any intelligence is a living thing - a definition of 'living thing' that excludes an intelligent entity would be deeply flawed - so either intelligent life has always existed, and the question is moot; or something intelligent arose without the intervention of intelligence, in which case, we have shown the hypothesis to be needless.

Not only can 'intelligent design' not be the answer; it isn't even AN answer. Just a way of kicking the can down the road.
 
bilby said:
Ultimately 'intelligent design' is a non answer to the question, which is "How did life arise?"
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If we design a system in which intelligent life arose using the knowledge at our disposal, intelligent design is not an answer to how that life arose?

bilby said:
Any intelligence is a living thing - a definition of 'living thing' that excludes an intelligent entity would be deeply flawed - so either intelligent life has always existed, and the question is moot; or something intelligent arose without the intervention of intelligence, in which case, we have shown the hypothesis to be needless.
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What? Any life we design will be intelligently designed.. well, ok, there is probably an appropriate response for that.
 
Kharakov said:
If we design a system in which intelligent life arose using the knowledge at our disposal, intelligent design is not an answer to how that life arose?

bilby said:
Any intelligence is a living thing - a definition of 'living thing' that excludes an intelligent entity would be deeply flawed - so either intelligent life has always existed, and the question is moot; or something intelligent arose without the intervention of intelligence, in which case, we have shown the hypothesis to be needless.
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What? Any life we design will be intelligently designed.. well, ok, there is probably an appropriate response for that.
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From the point of view of the inhabitants of the designed environment, the answer to "How did our immediate environment arise" is "it was designed by an intelligence"; but that is NOT a complete solution - it immediately raises the question "How did the wider environment that includes the designers of our environment arise?". Ultimately the question boils down to how did the universe arise - and THAT question cannot be answered by reference to something outside the universe, because there isn't anything outside the universe, by definition.

Your thought experiment contains limitations that render it inapplicable to the wider question of origins. The existence of an intelligently designed environment (even if it is a closed environment the inhabitants of which cannot detect their designers) does not eliminate the inevitable conclusion that the wider universe cannot have been designed - it either must be eternal, or have arisen spontaneously. No other possibility is logically possible.

Even if some intelligence, or some life, is designed, it remains inevitable that some intelligence and some life is not.
 
bilby said:
Your thought experiment contains limitations that render it inapplicable to the wider question of origins.
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Well, yeah. Humans creating a universe doesn't touch on the "wider questions of origins".
bilby said:
The existence of an intelligently designed environment (even if it is a closed environment the inhabitants of which cannot detect their designers) does not eliminate the inevitable conclusion that the wider universe cannot have been designed - it either must be eternal, or have arisen spontaneously. No other possibility is logically possible.
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When did blue arise?
 
Kharakov said:
Well, yeah. Humans creating a universe doesn't touch on the "wider questions of origins".
bilby said:
The existence of an intelligently designed environment (even if it is a closed environment the inhabitants of which cannot detect their designers) does not eliminate the inevitable conclusion that the wider universe cannot have been designed - it either must be eternal, or have arisen spontaneously. No other possibility is logically possible.
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When did blue arise?
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I don't know; Perhaps it arose at some point in the past, or perhaps it didn't arise, and is eternal.
 
Intelligent design implies magic. It implies a willful, purposive suspension or alteration of the laws of physics and chemistry by an unseen personage, to create something impossible through natural physical interactions.
 
seyorni said:
Intelligent design implies magic. It implies a willful, purposive suspension or alteration of the laws of physics and chemistry by an unseen personage, to create something impossible through natural physical interactions.
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I'm sure many engineers would disagree with you.
 
LOL -- OK Kharakov. Let it be understand I'm referring to Intelligent Design as the doctrine of divine intervention being propounded by Theists.
;)
 
Kharakov said:
Tom Sawyer said:
It would be nice to have. That way, if we develop interstellar transport we could come to a new place, stick a probe up one of their butts to get a DNA sample and be able to say "Oh crap, this is another one of those species that was designed by Steve" and then just leave without making contact because Steve is an incompetent dipshit in regards to designing species. We don't need to deal with that kind of bullshit.
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What if Frank, in his attempt to experiment without getting Steve's reputation, includes Steve's rectal DNA in all of Frank's creations?
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Then it's a beta test species and we lose nothing by ignoring it. If it turns out they don't suck because (and let's face it) Frank has some really good ideas at times, then once they develop to a point where they've built an infrastructure capable of moving resources out of the planet's gravity well, we can vapourize them and be able to mine the planet without the need for so much of an initial capital investment.
 
seyorni said:
LOL -- OK Kharakov. Let it be understand I'm referring to Intelligent Design as the doctrine of divine intervention being propounded by Theists.
;)
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Dude... you're switching definitions like Ughaibu equivocating free will!
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I'll get con-fused!
 
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rousseau said:
Doesn't intelligent design presume that there's something rational and intelligent about life? A little anthropocentric, don't you think?
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That's why we are always in the upper right hand corner of the page and white, too.
 
seyorni said:
LOL -- OK Kharakov. Let it be understand I'm referring to Intelligent Design as the doctrine of divine intervention being propounded by Theists.
;)
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More seriously though:

I tend to think they go a bit far with that. I'm curious how God would design the qualia blue and red, or the consequences of 1+1=2? Mathematics are pure natural law that cannot be circumvented (although one can decide to be kind or cruel about a debt).

You can design mathematical coincidences into the system that you create. Pentadactyly is a nice thing to build into a species that might eventually understand mathematics, for various reasons (base 10 is host to some nice mathematical coincidences). However, assume that this can evolve naturally (almost all species are pentadactyl). So go another route.

What about prime numbers in nature? Well, there are cyclical advantages to using primes to avoid predators (cicadas being the prime example of this). Perhaps at the bacterial scale, there are much greater advantages to using prime dormancy periods to avoid opportunistic predators. Anyways, primes pop up naturally.

I think that we'd look for something in nature that resembled mathematical objects that are likely to be discovered as the logical consequence of beings with a certain mathematical proficiency.
 
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