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Universal Probability Bound
A universal probability bound is a probabilistic threshold whose existence is asserted by William A. Dembski and is used by him in his works promoting intelligent design. It is defined as Dembski asserts that one can effectively estimate a positive value which is a universal probability bound. The existence of such a bound would imply that certain kinds of random events whose probability lies below this value can be assumed not to have occurred in the observable universe, given the resources available in the entire history of the observable universe. Contrapositively, Dembski uses the threshold to argue that the occurrence of certain events cannot be attributed to chance alone. Universal probability bound is then used to argue against random evolution. However evolution is not based on random events only (genetic drift), but also on natural selection. The idea that events with fantastically small, but positive probabilities, are ''effectively'' negligible was discussed by the Fr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
William A
William is a male given name of Germanic origin.Hanks, Hardcastle and Hodges, ''Oxford Dictionary of First Names'', Oxford University Press, 2nd edition, , p. 276. It became very popular in the English language after the Norman conquest of England in 1066,All Things William"Meaning & Origin of the Name"/ref> and remained so throughout the Middle Ages and into the modern era. It is sometimes abbreviated "Wm." Shortened familiar versions in English include Will, Wills, Willy, Willie, Bill, and Billy. A common Irish form is Liam. Scottish diminutives include Wull, Willie or Wullie (as in Oor Wullie or the play ''Douglas''). Female forms are Willa, Willemina, Wilma and Wilhelmina. Etymology William is related to the given name ''Wilhelm'' (cf. Proto-Germanic ᚹᛁᛚᛃᚨᚺᛖᛚᛗᚨᛉ, ''*Wiljahelmaz'' > German ''Wilhelm'' and Old Norse ᚢᛁᛚᛋᛅᚼᛅᛚᛘᛅᛋ, ''Vilhjálmr''). By regular sound changes, the native, inherited English form of the name shoul ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Work Factor
Work may refer to: * Work (human activity), intentional activity people perform to support themselves, others, or the community ** Manual labour, physical work done by humans ** House work, housework, or homemaking ** Working animal, an animal trained by humans to perform tasks * Work (physics), the product of force and displacement ** Work (electric field), the work done on a charged particle by an electric field ** Work (thermodynamics), energy transferred by the system to its surroundings * Creative work, a manifestation of creative effort ** Work of art, an artistic creation of aesthetic value * Career, an individual's journey through learning, work and other aspects of life * Employment, a relationship between two parties where work is paid for Broadcast call signs * WORK (FM), now WRFK (FM), an American radio station in Vermont * WORK-LP, an American low-power TV station in New Hampshire * WOYK, an American AM radio station in Pennsylvania, known as WORK 1932–197 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Junkyard Tornado
The junkyard tornado, also known as Hoyle's fallacy, is an argument used to deride the probability of abiogenesis as comparable to "the chance that a tornado sweeping through a junkyard might assemble a Boeing 747." It was used originally by English astronomer Fred Hoyle (1915–2001), who applied statistical analysis to the origin of life, but similar observations predate Hoyle and have been found all the way back to Darwin's time, and indeed to Cicero in classical times. While Hoyle himself was an atheist, the argument has since become a mainstay in the rejection of evolution by religious groups. This argument is rejected by the vast majority of biologists. From the modern evolutionary standpoint, while the odds of the sudden construction of higher lifeforms are indeed improbably remote, evolution proceeds in many smaller stages, each driven by natural selection rather than by chance, over a long period of time. The transition as a whole is plausible, as each step improves s ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Infinite Monkey Theorem
The infinite monkey theorem states that a monkey hitting keys at random on a typewriter keyboard for an infinite amount of time will almost surely type any given text, such as the complete works of William Shakespeare. In fact, the monkey would almost surely type every possible finite text an infinite number of times. However, the probability that monkeys filling the entire observable universe would type a single complete work, such as Shakespeare's ''Hamlet'', is so tiny that the chance of it occurring during a period of time hundreds of thousands of orders of magnitude longer than the age of the universe is ''extremely'' low (but technically not zero). The theorem can be generalized to state that any sequence of events which has a non-zero probability of happening will almost certainly eventually occur, given enough time. In this context, "almost surely" is a mathematical term meaning the event happens with probability 1, and the "monkey" is not an actual monkey, but a metaphor ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Specified Complexity
Specified complexity is a creationist argument introduced by William Dembski, used by advocates to promote the pseudoscience of intelligent design. According to Dembski, the concept can formalize a property that singles out patterns that are both ''specified'' and ''complex'', where in Dembski's terminology, a ''specified'' pattern is one that admits short descriptions, whereas a ''complex'' pattern is one that is unlikely to occur by chance. Proponents of intelligent design use specified complexity as one of their two main arguments, alongside irreducible complexity. Dembski argues that it is impossible for specified complexity to exist in patterns displayed by configurations formed by unguided processes. Therefore, Dembski argues, the fact that specified complex patterns can be found in living things indicates some kind of guidance in their formation, which is indicative of intelligence. Dembski further argues that one can rigorously show by applying no-free-lunch theorems the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Kolmogorov Complexity
In algorithmic information theory (a subfield of computer science and mathematics), the Kolmogorov complexity of an object, such as a piece of text, is the length of a shortest computer program (in a predetermined programming language) that produces the object as output. It is a measure of the computational resources needed to specify the object, and is also known as algorithmic complexity, Solomonoff–Kolmogorov–Chaitin complexity, program-size complexity, descriptive complexity, or algorithmic entropy. It is named after Andrey Kolmogorov, who first published on the subject in 1963 and is a generalization of classical information theory. The notion of Kolmogorov complexity can be used to state and prove impossibility results akin to Cantor's diagonal argument, Gödel's incompleteness theorem, and Turing's halting problem. In particular, no program ''P'' computing a lower bound for each text's Kolmogorov complexity can return a value essentially larger than ''P'''s own leng ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Seth Lloyd
Seth Lloyd (born August 2, 1960) is a professor of mechanical engineering and physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His research area is the interplay of information with complex systems, especially quantum systems. He has performed seminal work in the fields of quantum computation, quantum communication and quantum biology, including proposing the first technologically feasible design for a quantum computer, demonstrating the viability of quantum analog computation, proving quantum analogs of Shannon's noisy channel theorem, and designing novel methods for quantum error correction and noise reduction. Biography Lloyd was born on August 2, 1960. He graduated from Phillips Academy in 1978 and received a bachelor of arts degree from Harvard College in 1982. He earned a certificate of advanced study in mathematics and a master of philosophy degree from Cambridge University in 1983 and 1984, while on a Marshall Scholarship. Lloyd was awarded a doctorate by Rockefeller ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Big Bang
The Big Bang event is a physical theory that describes how the universe expanded from an initial state of high density and temperature. Various cosmological models of the Big Bang explain the evolution of the observable universe from the earliest known periods through its subsequent large-scale form. These models offer a comprehensive explanation for a broad range of observed phenomena, including the abundance of light elements, the cosmic microwave background (CMB) radiation, and large-scale structure. The overall uniformity of the Universe, known as the flatness problem, is explained through cosmic inflation: a sudden and very rapid expansion of space during the earliest moments. However, physics currently lacks a widely accepted theory of quantum gravity that can successfully model the earliest conditions of the Big Bang. Crucially, these models are compatible with the Hubble–Lemaître law—the observation that the farther away a galaxy is, the faster it is mo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Billion (word)
The long and short scales are two of several naming systems for integer powers of ten which use some of the same terms for different magnitudes. For whole numbers smaller than 1,000,000,000 (109), such as one thousand or one million, the two scales are identical. For larger numbers, starting with 109, the two systems differ. For identical names, the long scale proceeds by powers of one million, whereas the short scale proceeds by powers of one thousand. For example, in the short scale, "one billion" means one thousand millions (1,000,000,000), whereas in the long scale, it means one million millions (1,000,000,000,000). For interleaved values, the long scale system employs additional terms, typically substituting the word ending -ion for -iard. Some languages, particularly in East Asia and South Asia, have large number naming systems that are different from both the long and short scales, such as Chinese, Japanese or Korean numerals, and the Indian numbering system. Much ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Observable Universe
The observable universe is a ball-shaped region of the universe comprising all matter that can be observed from Earth or its space-based telescopes and exploratory probes at the present time, because the electromagnetic radiation from these objects has had time to reach the Solar System and Earth since the beginning of the cosmological expansion. There may be 2 trillion galaxies in the observable universe, although that number was reduced in 2021 to only several hundred billion based on data from '' New Horizons''. Assuming the universe is isotropic, the distance to the edge of the observable universe is roughly the same in every direction. That is, the observable universe is a spherical region centered on the observer and is unique for every unique observational position. The word ''observable'' in this sense does not refer to the capability of modern technology to detect light or other information from an object, or whether there is anything to be detected. It refers to the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Answering The Toughest Questions About Intelligent Design
Answer commonly refers to response to a question. Answer may also refer to: * Answer (law), any reply to a question, counter-statement or defense in a legal procedure Music * Answer, an element of a fugue Albums * ''Answer'' (Angela Aki album), 2009 * ''Answer'' (Supercar album), 2004 * ''Answers'' (album), 1994 * '' The Answers'', an album by Blue October Songs * "Answer" (Tohoshinki song) * "Answer" (Flow song), 2007 *"Answer", by Tyler, the Creator from the album ''Wolf'' *"Answer", by Sarah McLachlan from her 2003 album '' Afterglow'' *"Answer", by Mayu Maeshima, opening song from the 2021 anime '' Full Dive'' Publications * ''Answers'' (periodical), British weekly paper founded in 1888, initially titled ''Answers to Correspondents'' *''Answer'', a very short science-fiction story published in 1954 by Fredric Brown. *''Answers'', an American magazine published by Answers in Genesis * ''The Questionnaire'' (Salomon novel), also published as "The Answers" Groups, org ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
