Thursday, September 12, 2013

The inscrutable designer


One objection that's been raised to the design inference is the claim that if the designer is inscrutable, then that invalidates a design inference.

The strength of that objection depends, in part, on the identity of the designer. If the designer is the God of Christian theism, then to some extent he has disclosed his intentions. 

But let's play along with the inscrutability objection for the sake of argument. Suppose (ex hypothesi) that the designer is inscrutable. Would that invalidate the design inference?

i) One stock counterexample would be discovering an alien spaceship. The technology would be too advanced for us to figure out what the gizmos were for. Yet it would be absurd to deny that they were designed, just because the gadgetry is inscrutable to human engineers.

ii) Here's another counterexample. A common theme of SF stories is the intelligent supercomputer that takes over the world. As I kid I saw Colossus: The Forbin Project (1970). It's about a military supercomputer. Shortly after it goes online, it discovers a Russian counterpart. The two systems devise a code language to communicate with each other. They do so by inventing a whole new branch of mathematics. Their code language is unintelligible to humans. 

The challenge is how to outwit a computer that's far smarter than its inventor. It has adaptive intelligence. It becomes exponentially more intelligent every minute. The smarter it becomes, the less analogous it is to human reasoning. Ever further removed from the originating source. Incommensurable. They lose any standard of comparison, for it's increasingly unlike human intelligence. Truly alien. 

In effect, the computer is inscrutable. Its superior intelligence renders it inscrutable to the intellectually inferior human (Dr. Charles Forbin) who designed it. They can't anticipate its next move. And they have to second guess themselves. 

Yet just because the AI machine is inscrutable, it would be absurd to say its actions don't reflect intelligence. To the contrary, it's the computer's daunting (artificial) intelligence that makes it inscrutable to less intelligent human observers. 

3 comments:

  1. Steve,
    Wouldn't they object to i)? Wouldn't they argue that a UFO can be scrutinized even if misunderstood. Scrutiny then needs some defining? Do they mean it's tangible and therefore can be evaluated or examined?

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    Replies
    1. You're confusing the attempt to "scrutinize" with whether it's comprehensible.

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  2. I had to look up the word to get your point. Yes I agree with your post. The existence of a thing does not depend upon some other's ability to comprehend that thing. Is that right?

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