The Errors of Assembly Theory

University press offices these days are notorious for their shameless hype, exaggerations and misstatements in announcing new research. A recent example of their work is a press release entitled "Assembly theory unifies physics and biology to explain evolution and complexity," one grandly announcing that "an international team of researchers has developed a new theoretical framework that bridges physics and biology to provide a unified approach for understanding how complexity and evolution emerge in nature." We read in the press release that "this new work on ‘Assembly Theory’, published today (Wednesday October 4) in Nature, represents a major advance in our fundamental comprehension of biological evolution and how it is governed by the physical laws of the universe." We hear a lead author Sara Walker crowing that "with this theory, we can start to close the gap between reductionist physics and Darwinian evolution – it's a major step toward a fundamental theory unifying inert and living matter." The claim of a "new theoretical framework" is incorrect, as the underlying "assembly theory" of Walker and Cronin was introduced three years ago, as proven by the paper here (from November 2020). 

Co-author Leroy Cronin has recently written an article claiming that this "assembly theory" is some grand insight that may "help explain life." A November 1 article by him is entitled "A new theory of matter may help explain life."  Again, the theory that is at least three years old is referred to incorrectly as something "new." 

Below are some of the mistakes I can find in the writings of Cronin and Walker on this topic:

Error #1: Claiming something's assembly history is one of its properties

Very quickly in Cronin's IAI article  we hear something that sounds very wrong: the claim that the "the assembly history of material objects, how they came to have the complexity they do, is an essential property of all matter." A property of a material thing is a single attribute that can be numerically measured, and expressed as a single number. Properties of material things include height, depth, width, volume,  weight, and mass.  The assembly history of some complex object is not one of its properties. 

Error #2: Abusing the word "selection," apparently using it to refer to any addition of a new part when something useful or organized assembles. 

In a paper with the grand title " Assembly Theory Explains and Quantifies the Emergence of Selection and Evolution," Walker, Cronin and other authors use the word "selection" 82 times. You may be very  confused, because it is clear that the word "selection" is being used in a way unlike the dictionary definition (which means a choice made by a conscious agent), and also unlike when biologists use the not-literally-correct term "natural selection," not referring to a choice made by a conscious agent. What's going on is that Cronin and his co-authors seem to be most confusingly using the word "selection" to mean any kind of addition of a new part to anything useful or organized. That isn't one of the dictionary definitions of selection, and the word should not be used in so confusing and misleading a way. Walker, Cronin and the others authors simply start using the word "selection" in this novel way, without ever defining what they mean by "selection," and without ever announcing that they will be using the word "selection" in a new way. 

We can understand why chemists such as Cronin would want to start abusing the word "selection" in such a way. A great longstanding problem is that Darwinian theory is worthless in explaining the origin of life. Darwinian appeals to a so-called "natural selection" which requires life for it to happen, so it can't explain the origin of life. One sneaky and misleading way to try to get that around that is to stretch the word "selection" so that it applies to any kind of combination or joining or assembly.  Then you can kind of cover-up the total absence of natural selection before the origin of life by trying to say that there was some selection, using your strange new definition of selection. But we should not abuse language in that way.  There are already perfectly good words in the English language to refer to things getting more complicated when parts join together or bind. Such words include the words "accumulation," "concatenation," "bonding," and "binding," as well as the phrases "component addition" or "part addition."  

Error #3: Selling as something scientific the imprecise, unscientific idea of "the minimal number of steps necessary to produce the object." 

Walker and Cronin's "assembly theory" includes something they call the assembly index, which they define as "the minimal number of steps necessary to produce the object (its size)."  This is very strange language. Since when is an object its size?  Maybe this is just very clumsy wording in which "its size" refers to "the minimal number of steps." 

There's nothing particularly scientific about a concept of a minimal number of steps needed to produce an object.  That's because the term "step" is a vague, imprecise term. Here is an example showing what I mean. For a woman to produce a newly born child could be considered a single step. Or, if we consider the creation of each of the child's organs, we could think of constructing a new child as requiring about twenty steps. Or if we consider each new cell needed to make the new child, then we might consider the creation of a new child as involving many, many billions of steps. Or if we consider each new chemical reaction or each new molecule needed to make the new child, then we might think it requires trillions of steps.  Similarly, if we consider how the United States separated from the British empire, we can consider that as one step (the American Revolutionary war), or as about twenty steps (each battle in the war and each major event like the signing of the Declaration of Independence), or we can consider it as occurring by  many thousands of events (each important pen stroke or firing of a bullet being considered a separate step). 

"Steps" is a vague, imprecise word, so there's nothing scientific in the concept of "the minimal number of steps needed to produce an object."  It seems futile to try and unravel exactly what Cronin and Walker are talking about in their paper here, because it all hinges on frequent repetitions of the word "step," and the paper is never clear about what it means by a step. I looked through all 33 uses of the word "step" in that paper, and found that the paper never defines what it means by a step. It's the same thing in Walker and Cronin's paper "Quantifying the pathways to life using assembly spaces." That one has 17 uses of the word "step" without ever defining what it means by "step." 

In another paper Walker and Cronin say, "The assembly index of an object is the length of the shortest pathway to construct the object starting from its basic building blocks." That's also unprecise language, because "basic building blocks" is not a precise concept in talking about the origin of things such as life, and "shortest pathway" is also imprecise. What should we consider as building blocks of one-celled life? Is it the organelles that make up the cell? Is it protein complexes used to make up such organelles? Is it the proteins themselves? Is it the amino acids that make up the proteins? Or is it atoms that make up such amino acids? For any very complex object, there is a "combinatorial explosion" involving possible assembly pathways, meaning that the number of potential pathways to create that object is almost infinite, and we can neither innumerate all those pathways nor calculate which one is shortest. Under the assumption that the addition of each nucleotide base pair is a step, you could calculate the shortest pathway to get a DNA molecule. But the number of pathways by which a cell could be constructed from scratch is almost infinite, meaning the idea of trying to calculate a shortest pathway becomes for all practical purposes impossible once you get up to the complexity of a self-reproducing cell. 

Error #4: The incorrect idea that duplicating any previously reached object or sequence requires only one step.

In the paper here, Walker and Cronin state this:

"The ordering is important since we start from the atoms, and add bonds, in sequence. Once we have generated a given motif on the path, this motif remains available for reuse."

Later they make this strange claim: "The process of constructing new objects retains the memory of the past formation of objects." What this amounts to is the extremely erroneous principle that in calculating the steps needed to make something, you can count a duplication of any previously reached object or sequence as requiring only one step. 

In Figure 1 of the paper above, we have a little diagram giving a rather trivial example of how Walker and Cronin calculate the number of steps needed to make something, using this erroneous idea. They consider a sequence of blue squares and white squares which is the equivalent of BWBWBWBWBWBWB, where B is a blue square and W is a white square. Walker and Cronin calculate that constructing this sequence requires only four steps:

Step 1: BW

Step 2: BWBW

Step 3: BWBWBWBW

Step 4:  BWBWBWBWBWBWBWBW

Even though this is an extremely simple example, Walker and Cronin have got things very wrong. The string BWBWBWBW BWBWBWBW should not be considered as something requiring only four steps. Instead, it requires 16 steps. Each addition of a new character requires a separate step. 

It is true that if you are writing with a word processor, you can sometimes save yourself some time by copying a block of text. But when we are considering something such as the origin of life, such a power is irrelevant. Before the invention of computers, there did not exist any "copy and paste" feature. I may also note that even when people write original emails, original articles and original books, they almost never use copy and paste. For example, when I type the common word "where," I do not search for the word "where" in my previous written text, copy that word, and then paste it, using only 3 steps. Instead, I use five steps, typing five different characters.  

It would be a grave mistake to consider the difficulty of getting a multicellular organism, and to think that each cell can be duplicated in a single step. A cell is a fine-tuned arrangement of billions of atoms, and the reproduction of a cell requires billions of tiny chemical steps. Similarly, if you are considering the difficulty of building a brick house, it would be stupid to say that once you have taken hundreds of brick-laying steps to build a brick wall, that the brick wall can then be duplicated in a single step. The construction of each brick wall requires the individual placement of hundreds of bricks. Each one of those brick placements is its own separate step. 

In the paper here Walker and Cronin calculate that constructing the word "ABRACADABRA" requires only 9 steps:

Step 1: A

Step 2: B

Step 3: AB

Step 4: ABR

Step 5: ABRA

Step 6: ABRAC

Step 7: ABRACA

Step 8: ABRACAD

Step 9: ABRACADABRA

This is not correct. Constructing the word ABRACADABRA requires 11 steps, the length of the sequence. The fact that ABRA already existed in Step 5 at the beginning does not entitle you to think that the same sequence can be added at the end as a single step. 

I suspect that there is a strategic rationale in Error #4.  The authors are probably hoping later to introduce some calculation under which the origin of life will be calculated as being very much easier, under some calculation method assuming that anything that already has been constructed can be added in a single step.  But such an assumption is incorrect. 

We can get an idea of how badly things go wrong under Error #4 if you try to calculate how many steps are needed to make a square brick house in which each side is 7 meters.   The correct calculation would go like this:

Number of bricks in a row of 7 meters: About 30

Number of brick rows needed to make a one-story wall: About 30

Number of bricks needed for a 7-meter-long wall: about 900

Number of bricks need for a house in which each side is 7 meters: about 3600

Number of steps needed to make a brick house in which each side is 7 meters: more than 3600

But under the faulty method of Walker and Cronin, and their incorrect idea that anything already built can be duplicated with a single step, you would drastically under-estimate the number of steps needed to build such a house, doing some calculation like this (in which each B stands for a brick):

Step 1: B

Step 2: BB

Step 3: BBBB

Step 4: BBBBBBBB

Step 5: BBBBBBBBBBBBBBBB

Step 6: BBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBB

Step 7: BBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBB

            BBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBB

Step 8: BBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBB

            BBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBB

            BBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBB

            BBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBB

You can see where this ends up, with the calculation telling us that the four brick walls can be constructed in only maybe twenty steps, rather than the actual number of steps needed, about 3600. Error #4 therefore can lead to vast underestimations of the difficulty of constructing things, which is just the kind of thing origin-of-life researchers like to get, allowing them to make groundless "it's not so hard" claims about an accidental origin of life. 

In the paper here Walker and Cronin use their faulty methodology (include Error #4) to get some ridiculously wrong calculations, such as one seemingly calculating that E. coli can be produced in only about 32 steps (Figure 4).  This is nonsense. Besides thousands of different protein types, each its own distinct complex invention requiring very many well-arranged parts, E. coli has more than 4 million base pairs in its genome, with very little sequence duplication.  It would require millions of steps to produce E. coli from scratch. Walker and Cronin have got their wrong-as-wrong-can-be number by using the goofy methodology described in the ludicrous-looking byzantine flowcharts of Supplemental Figure 2, Supplemental Figure 3 and Supplemental Figure 4 of the paper's supplemental information, a methodology including many arbitrary and seemingly senseless or unjustifiable steps such as "Remove sets of duplicates where all substructures share one or more bonds."  Study those three figures and you'll get a depiction of about as unnatural and unjustifiable a calculation method as you could hope to find in a scientific paper.  What we have here is what goes on so often in scientific papers: the embarrassing "dirty linen" is buried in the supplemental information document that almost no one reads, as if the authors wanted to hide such things.  Having worked as a software developer for decades, I know bad spaghetti code "Rube Goldberg" calculation algorithms when I see them, and such scrambled logic is what is I see in the three flowcharts mentioned above. 

Part of the shenanigans here seems to have involved analyzing mere "E. coli lysates," which seem to be mere fragments or remnants or products of E. coli. But Figure 4 of the paper here by Walker and Cronin simply lists these "E. coli lysates" as "E. coli," helping to give readers the crazy idea that E. coli can be produced in 32 steps.

This seems to have been the trail of error:

(1) An unjustifiable algorithm containing quite a few weird arbitrary steps and a silly "complex things can be duplicated in only one step" idea was created. 

(2) Such an algorithm was applied to "E. coli lysates" which are apparently mere fragments or remnants or products of the complex microbe E. coli. (The bottom of page 23 of the Supplemental Information document describes some complex process by which E. coli was destructively manipulated with centrifuges and bead heating to produce such lysates.) 

(3) A misguided calculation was then made that such  "E. coli lysates" can be produced in only 32 steps.

(4) A chart was produced in a little-read scientific paper (Figure 4 of the paper here), labeling the mere "E. coli lysates" as simply E. coli, thereby suggesting to the very small number of readers who studied the chart that  E. coli (something which would require millions of steps to make from scratch) can be produced in only about 32 steps. 

(5) Quanta magazine then produced an article  with an easier-to-read chart, based on the paper's chart, giving its very many readers the false-as-false-can-be idea that the E. coli microbe can be produced from scratch in only about 32 steps, an idea as false as the claim that you can walk from Moscow to Shanghai by taking only 32 steps.  Very many readers were thereby grossly misinformed about the important matter of the complexity of the simplest types of living thing, and led to think the vastly erroneous idea that living microbes are easy to construct from scratch. 

For an antidote to such baloney, one giving a little glimpse of the enormous functional complexity of E. coli, take a peek at this extremely complicated diagram labeled "The extreme complexity of the E. coli transcriptional regulatory network." 

Error #5: The incorrect idea that the complexity of something very complex can be accurately quantified by calculating a number of steps to make that thing.

We cannot reasonably calculate the difficulty of assembling something complex by calculating some mere number of assembly steps.  One reason is that the difficulty of correctly accomplishing some step can vary by many orders of magnitude, with some later step being a thousand or a millions times harder than an early step. Once you get into constructing large three-dimensional objects, a new part can be placed in any of innumerable different places. The greater the number of parts in the thing, the greater the difficulty in correctly placing a new part.  If my new book manuscript has only the word  "now," there are only four different places I can put a new letter. But once my book manuscript gets to be 100,000 characters, then there are 100,000 different places I can add a new letter. Similarly, if I am building some hand-sized gizmo, there are only a few places I can drive a nail. But if I am hammering a nail in a house, there are 10,000 places I can hammer that nail, and perhaps in only 1 in a thousand of those places will it make any sense to hammer that nail.  My point is that the complexity of something increases exponentially as it grows, and the difficulty of getting each new step right changes very dramatically; so you can't calculate the complexity or difficulty of constructing something by just tallying up a number of steps taken in construction. 

Here's an example of why the number of steps needed to make something is a very poor measure of the difficulty of making something. Below are how many steps are needed to make two sequences:

101101101011010101000110001101011101011000:  about 42 steps

To be or not to be -- that is the question :  about 42 steps

Both of these require about 42 steps to make. But the first sequence is radically easier to make than the first. The first sequence can easily be made by some random mindless process, for example a sequence of days where each 1 is a day with rain, and each 0 is a day without rain (or an ink splash in which each 1 is an area hundredth with a little bit of the ink splash, and each  0 is an area hundredth without any bit of the ink splash).  But the second sequence is so hard to make by any random process that it requires an intelligent agent to make it.  We shed no real light on the difficulties here by saying both sequences require 42 steps. 

The only reason I can think of why someone would want to try to quantify the complexity of something by using a "number of construction steps" method (one including Error #4) is that the person might be trying to pick a method that would make feats that are vastly difficult (with prohibitive odds against them) look like they are relatively easy. That has been a long-standing tendency of chemists dealing with the origin-of-life: a tendency to use various tricks and sleazy strategies to make the accidental origin of life look trillions of times easier than it would have been. Rather than shedding light on the origin of life, such tricks merely mislead. 

Postscript: The recent paper "Design Patterns of Biological Cells" is a paper clarifying how cells and molecular machines implement a wide variety of design patterns, some very complex. Although the authors draw no implications from their analysis, a straightforward implication analysis leads one to think their results are more nails in the coffin of attempts to mechanistically explain cells.  In Figure 4 of the paper we have an extremely complex diagram showing the metabolism of E. coli, one that helps to show how nonsensical are any insinuations that it could be assembled through a small number of steps. 

A March 2024 paper is entitled "Assembly Theory is a weak version of algorithmic complexity based on LZ compression that does not explain or quantify selection or evolution." The blog post here by a PhD is entitled "The 8 Fallacies of Assembly Theory." 

Where His "Techno-Optimist Manifesto" Goes Wrong

High-tech legend Marc Andreessen has recently published an article entitled "The Techno-Optimist Manifesto," which can be read here. Let's look at some of the more erring parts of this manifesto, one that is characterized by bombast and hubris. 

Very strangely the manifesto starts out with a quote by someone saying that "man has not the faintest idea of who he is or what he is doing." Besides being untrue, this claim clashes very much with the triumphalist claims in the manifesto, which have a "we are gods in the making" ring to it. The first section is entitled "Lies" and lists some things we are supposedly being told, without giving any specific quotes, things that sound pessimistic or anti-technology. The next section is entitled "Truth," and ends with the claim "It is time to be Techno-Optimists." The statements in this section aren't very noteworthy.

The next section is entitled "Technology." We hear a quote of someone saying, "Lack of growth is a kill-all." That isn't true. Once humans reach adulthood, they do not physically grow, and manage to do fine with no further growth. Most people don't grow much mentally after the age of 25, but the lack of intellectual growth does not kill them. And a nation can do fine with a stable population, without growing. We are told that "the total human population may already be shrinking." It's actually growing at a rate of about 1% per year.  We have the bungling statement, "We believe this is why our descendants will live in the stars."  You cannot live inside a star, and nothing preceding the statement has justified a claim of the feasibility of interstellar colonization. 

We then have the statement, "Give us a real world problem, and we can invent technology that will solve it." That's a silly thing to say.  There are  real world problems that humans hate and fight other humans, and that many humans are too greedy and selfish and biased. There is no technology that will solve such problems. 

In a section called "Markets" we have this silly statement: "We believe the ultimate moral defense of markets is that they divert people who otherwise would raise armies and start religions into peacefully productive pursuits." No, markets don't stop people from starting religions, and there's nothing wrong with starting a religion as long as you teach something reasonable and moral.  We have this equally silly statement: "We believe markets, to quote Nicholas Stern, are how we take care of people we don’t know."  We then have this equally senseless statement: "We believe in Milton Friedman’s observation that human wants and needs are infinite." No, actually, they are finite. 

After a rather bombastic section entitled "The Techno-Capital Machine," we have a section entitled "Intelligence," which quickly states, "Intelligence makes everything better." That isn't always true. It took intelligence to build A-bombs and H-bombs, but the world was made much worse after they were introduced, with half of the world's population fearing a nuclear holocaust. We then have some lines singing the praise of so-called Artificial Intelligence. "Artificial Intelligence" is just a misleading term for computer programming and data processing.  We have this silly claim: "Deaths that were preventable by the AI that was prevented from existing is a form of murder." 

Then there is a section called "Energy" which begins with the very ignorant statement that "Energy is life." No, energy is not life. Life is an information-rich physical state of very high hierarchical organization, and energy such as sunlight is neither information-rich nor organized.  We have this bizarre recommendation: "We should raise everyone to the energy consumption level we have, then increase our energy 1,000x, then raise everyone else’s energy 1,000x as well." The life of people would not be improved if they started using a thousand times more energy.  We are told, "We have the silver bullet for virtually unlimited zero-emissions energy today – nuclear fission." I guess the techno-optimist author forgot about Three Mile Island, Chernobyl and Fukushima, the latter two being the most horrible environmental disasters caused by malfunctions at nuclear fission plants.  

A section called "Abundance" starts out with the loopy statement, "We believe we should place intelligence and energy in a positive feedback loop, and drive them both to infinity." Humans actually know of no way of substantially increasing intelligence to achieve a mind smarter than any man who has lived. Faster and more powerful computers do not have intelligence. Humans have no credible theory of how intelligence arises.  We do not have any credible theory by which the human mind arises from the human brain. As shown in the many posts of my blog here, scientists are unable to give any credible neural explanations for such basic mental phenomena  as memory formation, instant memory recall, life-long preservation of memories, imagination, self-hood, or abstract thinking. There is no hope that we will be be able to greatly increase human intelligence by genetic engineering or by giving people bigger brains.  Lacking any understanding of a neural basis for intelligence, it will be impossible to build machines smarter than humans by leveraging some neuroscience discoveries.  Just as goofy is the writer's claim that "the ultimate result will be that all physical goods become as cheap as pencils." 

What follows is a shallow "pie in the sky" vision of material abundance that seems to be based on a hollow "all you need is more and more stuff" outlook. Ignoring how unneeded material consumption worsens global warming, Andreessen seems to think that some glorious climax of humanity will be reached if the world is loaded up with 50 billion people who all have lots and lots of material possessions. It's a fundamentally misguided philosophy. After their basic material needs are met, humans do not need more and more material possessions. The things that mostly drive human happiness are immaterial things such as self-fulfillment, love, personal relationships, friendships, good family relations, esthetic appreciation, personal growth, intellectual and spiritual enrichment and mental outlook. A man with access to good public transportation does not need a car, and will not be made much happier once he gets two cars and a garage to park them in.  

Here are some examples of how technology has failed to make man happier. When I was a boy my family had bookcases filled with books, and people would take out many books from libraries. I could find out what was happening in the world and my city very well by reading the morning newspaper and my weekly copy of Time magazine and Life magazine. Now people tend not to have bookshelves, and tend not to get magazine deliveries. We get our information by the Internet. Has this made us any happier? I doubt it. Turning the pages of a book was just as convenient a way of reading as swiping your fingers across a screen.  And today we can play games with Playstations and X-boxes. But when I was a kid it seemed I had just as much fun playing board games with my siblings. Nowadays, I can shop using Amazon.com, and I haven't been to a mall in a long time. But it seemed like just as much fun (or even more fun) to shop in a big shopping mall. People used to ride bicycles to get around in Beijing. Now a large fraction ride cars, but in 2018 the air in Beijing was terrible because of all the pollution from cars. 

So much of what technology has given us consists of things we don't need. You don't need for your friends to know within 5 minutes your thoughts about some thing a politician or celebrity said 10 minutes ago.  Nor does the average person even really need some site on which to post his photos. People were able to share photos before the Internet by putting physical photos in photo albums, and showing the albums to visitors to their residence. It used to be people would watch movies on huge screens. Now people mainly watch movies on hand-sized smartphones, with sound not-as-good as what you had in movie theaters. I remember listening to operas using stereo headphones, getting the tenor singing in my left ear, and the soprano in my right ear. Audio-wise it was an experience better than the average smartphone user gets. In many cases such as these technology has mainly made things different rather than very obviously better.

Technology has given us a hundred forms of glitzy distraction, and thousands of entertainment options, but maybe that makes it less likely you'll spend an afternoon absorbed in deep thoughts while reading a long book of intellectual depth. Nowadays someone may say, "I don't need to invite people for dinner, because I already keep up with them by getting their posts in my Facebook feed." Maybe you would be a little happier if you instead had dinner with such people, and were able to laugh with them face-to-face. Decades ago, people would write their friends and family members long handwritten letters.  A person could save those letters, and have wonderful easy-to-access snapshots of what someone was thinking years ago.  Now, you might instant message someone, writing "How r yu?" But it might be too hard for you to retrieve what the person thought years ago, as that might involve too much finger-swiping through spam in your text messages. People used to have old photos in photo albums that might last a lifetime. Now accessing your old photos may depend on whether you remember some user id and password and URL of some system where you posted the photos, and whether some web site is still operational and allowing free access.  We may ask: have such technology changes made us any happier? 

There is no evidence that people in the US are happier than they were fifty years ago. As for Andreessen's enthusiasm about going out and conquering space, that won't make mankind any happier.  You won't get happier or wiser people by putting people on the moon or Mars, to live underground.  The suicide rate in the US has risen by more than 30% since the year 2000, despite all of the marvelous increases in technology during that period. 

Andreessen seems to pay no attention to the extremely large potential for technology to have disastrous effects on human happiness.  One example is how automobile use and jet travel and heavy computer use have worsened global warming. It has been estimated that computer use and electronic gadget use accounts for 4% of global warming, with another 4% caused by air travel. Another example is the risk of nuclear war. Another example is the risk of runaway AI. Another example is the very substantial possibility that gene splicing may lead to some pandemic far worse than COVID-19. It is claimed by one US intelligence agency with medium confidence that COVID-19 itself arose because of bungled technological fiddling. 

Some of the vast increase in material abundance Andreessen forecasts would need to come from asteroid mining, but asteroid mining would be a risk to mankind as great as nuclear warfare, because ships with the power to move around asteroids would have the power to launch them towards Earth as super-weapons.  A relatively small asteroid manipulated to hit Earth would have such kinetic energy that it would be more destructive than a hydrogen bomb. Once you have spaceships going to asteroids, the task of re-routing the path of an asteroid so that it hits Earth is a technological feat much simpler than creating a hydrogen bomb. 

While Andreessen gives away animosity towards religion (with the comment quoted above), what he is actually preaching seems almost like a kind of religion in itself. As I have argued at length elsewhere, religions have extremely diverse forms, and do not always involve a belief in a deity. A good definition of a religion (one I previously used) was this: "A set of beliefs about the fundamental nature of reality and life, or a recommended way of living, typically stemming from the teachings of an authority, along with norms, ethics, rituals, roles or social organizations that may arise from such beliefs." Centered around a recommended way of living in which consumption and material possession acquisition seem to be the chief virtues, Andreessen's techno-materialism seems rather like a kind of religion in which people such as him, Elon Musk and Ray Kurzweil are the high priests, asking us to believe in some looming transformative Singularity that serves like the Second Coming.  It is interesting that Andreessen ends his piece with a list of what he calls "Patron Saints of Techno-Optimism," a list that includes Friedrich Nietzsche (who was also a favorite of some well-known bad guys). I fail to recognize any morally-noteworthy figure on this list of so-called "saints." 

That wealth worship thing was tried before...

Another essay by Andreessen has the laughable title "Why AI Will Save the World." With the "save the world" theme, we have another sign a kind of stealth religion is being peddled. The essay starts out with the misstatement below: "First, a short description of what AI is: The application of mathematics and software code to teach computers how to understand, synthesize, and generate knowledge in ways similar to how people do it." That's dead wrong, because computers don't have the slightest understanding of anything. Understanding is what goes on in human minds, not in computers. You can program a computer to respond differently to different stimuli, but that does not involve any understanding. For example:

if (string == "cat")

   puts("You chose a cat!");

else if  (string == "dog")

   puts("You chose a dog!");

There is not the slightest bit of understanding going on when a computer processes the code above. Similarly, your gas stove will respond in a different way when you turn a burner knob some particular way, but your stove has not the slightest understanding of anything. 

You may chuckle when you read the essay make claims like this one: "Every child will have an AI tutor that is infinitely patient, infinitely compassionate, infinitely knowledgeable, infinitely helpful." How could humans who have such gigantic shortfalls in their knowledge ever build something "infinitely knowledgeable"?  The mystery of how a speck-sized zygote is able to progress to become the vast state of hierarchical organization that is the human body is a mystery 100 miles over the heads of our scientists, who try to cover up their ignorance on this with lies such as the lie that your DNA is a blueprint for building humans.  We don't even understand the origin of any adult human body or any adult mind, so the idea of us building some machines "infinitely knowledgeable" is nonsensical. 

Spookiest Years, Part 5: The Year 1853

In previous posts in the intermittently appearing "Spookiest Years" series on this blog (here, here, here and here), I had looked at some very spooky events reported between 1848 and 1852. Let me pick up the thread and report some spooky events reported in 1853. 

In 1853 we saw the publication of "A discussion of the facts and philosophy of ancient and modern spiritualism" by S. B. Brittan and B. W. Richmond. Samuel Byron Brittan MD was much later the writer of a work I called a classic of parapsychology,  the work Man and His Relations, which I review here.  The book is a back-and-forth dialog between Richmond and Brittan, with Richmond often making skeptical speculations trying to minimize spiritual manifestations like the ones mentioned in the quote below, speculations that Brittan tries to rebut. The book shows a very healthy tendency of thinkers such as Brittan to study and respond at great length to objections by skeptics. 

On page 14 of the book we have some remarkable testimony by nine named witnesses, four of them medical doctors. In the middle of their testimony, quoted by Brittan, they state the following:

"Persons at the circle have been unexpectedly turned round with the chairs in which they were sitting, and moved to and -from the table ; chairs and sofas have suddenly started, from their positions against the wall, and moved forward to the center of the room, when they were required in the formation of the circle ; the persons in the circle have each successively lifted his own side of the table, and the invisible power has raised the opposite side correspondingly ; occasionally the spirits have raised the table entirely, and sustained in air, at a distance of from one to three feet from the floor, so that all could satisfy themselves that no person in the flesh was touching it ; lights of various colors have been produced in dark rooms ; the table has often been rocked with great violence, and suddenly — and unexpectedly to the whole company — it has been instantly arrested and held firm and immovable, with the upper surface inclined to an angle of some forty-five degrees, when the lamp, pencils and other objects on the table, would slide or roll to the very edge, and there remain fixed as if riveted to the table ; a man has been suspended in, and conveyed through, the air, in all a distance of fifty feet or more. The communications have been given in various ways, but chiefly in writings and by the rappings, after the ordinary alphabetical mode."

Page 16 of the book lists the following people as asserting the claim above: R. T. Hallock, M. D. , A. G. Hull, M. D.,  John F. Gray, M.D., L. T. Warner, M.D., W. J. Baner,  Samuel T. Fowler, Almira L. Fowler, and Mr. and Mrs. Charles Partridge. 

In the book here (pages 101 to 102)  we have an account claiming a miraculous healing. We are told that a medium identified only as Mrs. French was strangely compelled to go to a place where a blind boy was found, and strangely found her self unable to leave. We are told that after some vaguely described manipulations there soon occurred a healing of the boy's blindness.  

An 1853 book quotes an account submitted to a Philadelphia newspaper:

"Visiting at the house of a friend when a medium was present, I heard, for the second time, the 'rappings ;'  but, such is the uncertainty in locating sound, and the many ways of producing it, that these were, to me, not convincing proofs of either spiritual or electrical agency. I was induced to form one of a circle; and the table we surrounded soon began to oscillate rapidly. My right arm was seized with a convulsive tremor, and though then in a ‘positive condition,' it refused obedience to my will. I looked upon it with the same surprise that I would have regarded the arm of another, subject to the same wild and wondrous spell. A pencil and paper were lying on the table. The pencil came into my hand; my fingers were clenched on it! An unseen iron-grasp compressed the tendons of my arm—my hand was flung violently forward on the paper, and I wrote meaning sentences, without any intention, or knowing what they were to be. Such messages were thus addressed to me, and through others in the circle, so unexpected, and bearing strong interior evidence in structure of thought and language of having come from the loved and gone from whom they purported to come, that I yielded to the gush of bewildering emotion, as I would have done had I found myself suddenly in the society of all most dear to me."

In the April 2, 1853 edition of The Spiritual Telegraph, we have an account claiming spiritual manifestations at the house of Mrs. Brown at #78 West 26th Street, occurring a week previously. The listed witnesses were J. F. Gray, George Willets, E. F. Capron, Mrs. Brown and the medium Catherine Fox (the same as Kate Fox, one of the famed Fox sisters).  We read of mysterious events in a well-lit room. We are told that first the handle of a bell mysterious disappeared, and was just as mysteriously restored. We are told that a pocket knife, a set of keys and a quarter coin were placed under a table, and that all disappeared. We are told that a search could not produce them, but that the keys and knife suddenly reappeared as if thrown. 

The same edition gives this account of clairvoyance from the Cleveland Plain Dealer:

"A Mr. Jackson, of Ohio City, came into our office yesterday with his little daughter, a fine, rosy girl about seven years of age. It surprised us to learn that so young a person should be a clairvoyant. Mr. Jackson states that she has possessed such powers of vision for about seven weeks—that she received intimations one evening from the Spirit-world that she would be magnetized [hypnotized] and receive the the gift next day. Such accordingly was the case. She also became a medium, produced the rappings, and has frequent intercourse with the spirits of the departed inhabiting other spheres. In the experiments performed in our office, the most doubting skeptic admitted that there was no collusion, and that her mortal vision was completely obstructed.  A kid glove, filled with cotton, was placed upon each eye, a bandage applied over them , and securely tied around her head, A Spanish quarter of a dollar was then thrown upon the table and she was requested to tell the date. She took it up, and instantly rend—'1700.'  A bank bill was next presented, and she  read it off promptly, ' That's one dollar. State Bank of Ohio.'  On one bill a steam ­ boat and sail vessel were engraved in the vignette so minutely as to be just discernible by the naked eye. She described them exactly. In fact, anything that was placed before her was read or described just as correctly as if she were examining it with the natural eye. She has the power of putting herself into the clairvoyant state, as also of throwing it off."

Similar powers were previously demonstrated innumerable times in public exhibitions by the clairvoyant Alexis Didier. 

In the July 2, 1853 Spiritual Telegraph we have evidence of the utter obstinance of mainstream scientific authorities in encountering paranormal phenomena. We read a long newspaper account of a public investigation of the phenomenon called table tipping or table turning, conducted before a large audience at a public hall in Liverpool, England, one called the Atheneum. On a stage before many public spectators, various tests were done. Some of them clearly produced inexplicable phenomena. We read this: 

"The experiments commenced at eight o’clock. The first table which moved was a round one, about three feet in diameter, standing upon three legs, without castors, and having a leather top. At this table four ladies took their places, and in five minutes it began to turn rapidly, the ladies running round with it. After several stoppages, for which the experimenters could not account, the table moved round so rapidly that several of the ladies appeared to be getting giddy, until two of them became so much alarmed that they discontinued the experiment. These ladies had simply placed their hands upon the table, without touching those of each other....After each successful experiment, a member of the committee, or the chairman, inquired of each of the operators whether he or she had abstained from muscular action upon the table, and in every instance a decided assurance was given in the affirmative.”

We hear mention of a Dr. Braid giving a nonsensical claim that such effects were produced by unconscious muscle action.  A table of the described size with no castors (no wheels) could not be spun rapidly by four people merely touching it, no matter how much they pressed it. In the same edition we read this:

"The great table-moving question, which has excited such an extraordinary degree of interest in this city [Paris] as to be the universal topic of conversation for a period much longer than the nine days’ life generally enjoyed by a wonder, has at length forced itself on the attention of the Academy of Sciences. Among the vast mass of letters and reports detailing experiments, which have been sent to the Academy, the presiding authorities selected one by M. Scguin, a distinguished savant, to be read at its last public sitting. The statements made in this document were of the most extraordinary kind, one of them being, that a table when acted on was made to move to the notes of a piano."

In the July 9, 1853 Spiritual Telegraph we have a report from the Paris correspondent of the New York Times:

"It seems to me that I have said enough about table turning in France, and that l am becoming repetitious, if not tedious. I must say, however, that such is the fever, that there is hardly a house in Paris that the phenomenon has not invaded.  Experiments are daily made at the Observatory, at the Hotel Dion, at the Institute, at the Eeole Poly technique...The American savans [experts] have kept aloof, and, in the space of two years— three years, perhaps—no explanation has been offered of a fact which has stared then in the face the whole time...All the professors, the instructors, those who study far those who have not the time to study for themselves, have kept clear of a matter which they did not discover, and which they consequently can not recognise. ...The Feuilleton of Jules Jan in this morning, treats of nothing but table turning ; and that of Auguste Lireux, in the Constitutionnel, contains an account of a series of extremely successful experiments, in which he, Emile Angier, Baroche, Ferrien, of the Academy of Sciences, and others, all skeptics when they began, wore convicted believers when they finished." 

In the August 6, 1853 Spiritual Telegraph we have a comment on the attempt of Michael Faraday to explain the table turning phenomena as mere unconscious action by the muscles: "As for the Professor’s conclusion which resolves the wonders of table-moving to mere muscular and quasi voluntary action, we are willing to leave it in the hands of the thousands who have repeatedly seen heavy tables, and other articles of furniture, move with great freedom and power when no living being or other visible agency was in contact with them, and who have witnessed many other phenomena to which his tests fail to apply." In the same edition a J. C. Hall gives this testimony:

"I refer to instances of table moving, in my presence, without any hands touching them. Chairs have been upset in the room, and made to revolve faster than the persons present could possibly move. I have seen with my own eyes a common wooden table, while standing on the floor, made to tremble and quiver every fiber of the wood, as if it was live flesh—effects which all the men in the world could not produce, and the aid of all the sciences could not effect. I have also seen the same table move in different directions around the room with no one near it, and on stepping back, as if to leave the room, the table followed with no one near it, until it struck the door-casing, and, turning upside down, and from that lip edgewise, seemed not to be contented till it had chased me completely out of the room, coming quite through the door into an adjoining hall."

The legend that Michael Faraday explained the phenomenon of table turning is one of the most groundless legends of the many groundless legends told by science professors.  It is an example of what goes on very often when skeptics try to explain things: what we may call "weakest examples" explanation. It works like this: you claim that you can explain some baffling phenomenon beyond your explanation, by the method of ignoring all of the stronger examples of the phenomenon, and offering something that might explain only the weakest examples. So, for example, a skeptic might try to explain UFO sightings by saying they are caused by misidentifications of the planet Venus. Such an explanation only handles the weakest examples of UFO sightings, not the strongest examples in which people reported seeing something very large in the sky or something moving incredibly fast. 

Faraday's explanation was a similar example of "weakest examples" explanation. His "ideomotor effect" explanation of unconscious muscle action could only explain the weakest examples of the table turning phenomenon, cases in which lots of people put their hands on a table, and the table slightly moved. His explanation completely failed to explain all of the stronger examples of the phenomenon, which included:

(1) Very many reports of tables levitating in the air when no person touched the table.

(2) Very many reports of tables standing on two legs, with the other end rising high in the air, or a table standing up on only single leg. 

(3) Very many reports of tables violently moving about suddenly, often when no one was touching the table. 

(4) Very many reports of tables spinning around rapidly, with or without someone touching the table. 

Whenever any mainstream source attempts to repeat the groundless legend that Michael Faraday explained table turning, the source will inevitably describe table turning by only citing the weakest examples of its occurrence, never the stronger examples, even though thousands of witnesses (many very reliable professionals) in many different countries reported the stronger varieties of the phenomena.  As an 1855 book states, "Next comes the theory of Professor Faraday of world-renowned fame, that the moving of the table is by the unconscious force of the medium, when there are thousands of witnesses to the fact of the movement of tables, where neither a medium nor any other person was near them !"

This phenomenon of table turning was also scientifically investigated at length by Count Agenor de Gasparin, who published in 1857 a two-volume scientific book describing countless paranormal effects (such as table levitation and mysterious rappings) observed under controlled conditions. Gasparin's research is well-summarized in Chapter VI of the book Mysterious Psychic Forces by the astronomer Camille Flammarion.  For example, Gasparin described this happening on September 20, 1853:

“Some one proposed the experiment which consists in causing a table to rotate and give raps while it has on it a man weighing say a hundred and ninety pounds. We accordingly placed such a man on the table, and the twelve experimenters, in chain, applied their fingers to it. The success was complete: the table turned, and rapped several strokes. Then it rose up entirely off the floor in such a way as to upset the person who was upon it.”

Such a result is inexplicable through any result of subconscious muscle movement. Gasparin reported the following occurring on October 7, 1853:

“Let us turn again to the finest of all demonstrations, that of levitation without contact. We began by performing it three times. Then, since it was thought by some that the inspection of the witnesses could be carried on in a surer way in the case of a small table than in that of a large one, and with five operators more certainly than with ten, we had a plain deal centre-table brought which the chain, reduced by half, sufficed to put in rotation. Then the hands were lifted, and, contact with the table being entirely broken, it rose seven times into the air at our command.”

The original text of this report (in French) is contained here. I used Google Translate to verify that the translation above is accurate. 

Here is what Gasparin reported occurring on November 9, 1853:

"Our first care was to renew the experiment of the levitation of an inert weight. It was agreed among us this time that we would always start from the state of absolute immobility in the object: we wanted to produce movement, not to continue it.

The centre of the table, then, having been fixed with nice precision, a first tub of sand, weighing 46 pounds, was placed upon it. The legs easily rose from the floor when they got the order.

[Pg 241]A second tub, weighing 42 pounds, was next placed in the middle of the other. They were both lifted—less easily, but very neatly and clearly.

Then a third tub, smaller, and weighing 28⅗ pounds, was placed on top of the two others. The levitations took place.

We had still further got ready enormous stones weighing altogether 48½ pounds. They were placed on the third tub. After rather long hesitation, the table lifted several times in succession each of its three legs. It lifted them with a force, a decision, an élan, which surprised us. But its strength, already put to so many proofs, could not resist this last one. Bending under the powerful swaying motion imparted by the total mass of 165 pounds, it suddenly broke down, and its massive centre-post was split from top to bottom—to the great peril of the operators on the side of whom the entire load rolled off."

The original text of this report (in French) is contained here. I used Google Translate to verify that the translation above is accurate. 

Since the reports above were of levitations of a table without contact by humans, they obviously cannot be explained through Faraday's “ideomotor effect” of subconscious muscle movement. Shockingly, the phenomenon of table turning had stood up well to rigorous scientific experiments, with the investigators finding it to be a mysterious paranormal reality rather than something they could debunk.

In his 1859 book Mystic Hours, or Spiritual Experiences, George A. Redman describes having some astounding experiences at a time that seemed to be 1853 (since he says they occurred at about the time of Faraday's hypothesis appeared, which was in 1853).  He reports this example of the table phenomenon (using the term pirouetting to refer to spinning around in a circle):

"Simultaneously with the sound of his skillfully wielded bow, the table commenced pirouetting like some votary of Terpsichore. It would balance itself, first on one of its legs, then on one of its leaves, then wheel round again, till it ultimately reached the parlor door, against which it then began thumping as if to say, 'Let me out.' "

This is a reference to a table standing up on only one of its legs. Redman elsewhere says that around the same time he saw "the table slowly tipped to an angle of 45 degrees."  On another page he says a table mysteriously rose so that the "table was next lifted to a level with our heads." On another page he says, "Soon after taking my seat in our friend's comfortable parlor, the old table, as if conscious of our needs, came sliding into the room, no one touching it, and all present, nothing loath, assembled round it." On another page we read this: "Mrs. Green being lifted by the spirits from the floor, and placed on the bed-piece of the table,  it started down stairs, not stopping till it regained the lower hall, when Mrs. G-. stepped off, to the no small amusement of those who had thus had an opportunity of testing the reliability of Professor Faraday's expositions." On another page Redman reports a table levitating into the air and then mysteriously shattering into pieces. On another page Redman says, ""The table rose and came down on the floor with a tremendous thump; it danced to and fro without human contact, at each of its movements making the

very house shake."

Redman also reports being mysteriously levitated with two other people:

"I was raised in a half stupified state from the chair, conveyed to the ceiling of the room, which was some ten feet from the floor, and I floated alone in the air for a few moments. I was then joined by Mrs. Shepherd, and soon after by her daughter. Here were three of us, all suspended in the atmosphere, in no contact with any material object, but upheld by an unseen power, and wafted by it over the heads of some dozen individuals all wide awake, and in the perfect possession of their reasoning faculties."

In an 1853 work John Edmonds (a judge of the New York State Supreme Court) listed some of the paranormal manifestations he had seen that involved tables:

"Thus, I have known a pine table with four legs lifted bodily up from the floor, in the center of a circle of six or eight persons, turned upside down and laid upon its top at our feet, then lifted up over our heads, and put leaning against the back of the sofa on which we sat. I have known that same table to be tilted up on two legs, its top at an angle with the floor of forty-five degrees, when it neither fell over of itself, nor could any person present put it back on its four legs. I have seen a mahogany table, having only a center leg, and with a lamp burning upon it, lifted from the floor at least a foot, in spite of the efforts of those present, and shaken backward and forward as one would shake a goblet in his hand, and the lamp retain its place, though its glass pendants rang again. 1 have seen the same table tipped up with the lamp upon it, so far that the lamp must have fallen off unless retained there by something else than its own gravity, yet it fell not, moved not."

On another page of his 1853 work, Edmonds quotes a letter from N. P. Tallamadge who discussed seeing something else involving a table, something that could never be explained by any theory of unconscious "ideomotor force" as advanced by Faraday:

"The table moved occasionally, perhaps a foot, first one way and then the other. After the communication closed, we all moved back from the table, from two to four feet — so that no one touched it. Suddenly it moved from the position it occupied some three or four feet — rested a few moments — and then moved back again to its original position. Then it again moved as far the other way, and returned to the place it started from. One side of it was then raised, and stood for a few moments at an angle of about thirty-five degrees, and then again rested on the floor as usual.

The table was a large, heavy, round one, at which ten or a dozen persons might be seated at dinner. During all these movements no person touched it, nor was any one near it. After seeing it raised in the manner above mentioned, I had the curiosity to test its weight by raising it myself. I accordingly took my seat by it — placed my hands under the leaf, and exerted as much force as I was capable of in that sitting posture, and could not raise it a particle from the floor. I then stood up, in the best possible position to exert the greatest force — took hold of the leaf, and still could not raise it with all the strength I could apply. I then requested the three ladies to take hold around the table, and try altogether to lift it. We lifted upon it until the leaf and top began to crack, and did not raise it a particle. We then desisted, fearing we should break it. I then said, 'Will the spirits permit me to raise the table?' I took hold alone, and raised it without difficulty !"

On the same page and the next page of his 1853 work, Tallamadge  describes sitting on a table while the entire table (with him sitting on it) levitated six inches above the floor. 

The 1853 book "Sights and sounds: the mystery of the day: comprising an entire history of the American 'spirit' manifestations" by lawyer Henry Spicer is a long and balanced look at the reports of inexplicable phenomena between 1848 and 1853. Constantly addressing an imagined skeptical reader, the book "bends over backwards" to consider every possible natural explanation for the reported phenomena, finding none of them satisfactory.  The author sounds like someone who would have been much happier dismissing all the reports as fraud, but who finds himself unable to do that. Near the end of the book (page 461-462) he states that the extraordinary character of the manifestations have been proven, that all attempts to explain them have failed, and that what remains is an important mystery that is unsolved. 

Most professors fail to seriously study the paranormal

Biology Origin Claimants Ignore Functional Thresholds and Interdependent Components

Charles Darwin's famous book The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or The Preservation of Favored Races in the Struggle for Life can be considered a book about biology, but it can also be considered a book about engineering.  This is because the book claimed to explain how random natural events involving blind chance produced some of the world's most astonishing works of engineering: the very well-engineered structures of organisms such as lions, whales, eagles and humans. Darwin knew a lot about biology, but he didn't know a thing about engineering, just as he knew very little about probability mathematics. 

We can use the term "no-nothing" (preceded by a subject name) to refer to people who know basically nothing about a topic. So, for example, we can call a person who knows nothing about quantum mechanics a "quantum mechanics no-nothing." And you can call me a skiing no-nothing, because I know basically nothing about how to ski. Darwin was an engineering know-nothing. His works show no understanding of the most basic ideas or principles of engineering.  But that didn't stop him from making many mountain-sized claims about feats of accidental engineering that he believed had occurred. 

The devotees of Darwin frequently speak like engineering know-nothings, like people who don't understand the most elementary principles of engineering. Since Darwinism can be considered an engineering theory (the theory that  millions of great feats of biological engineering occurred by accidental processes), and since Darwinists tell us to make Darwinism the center of our world views, we now have an extremely absurd situation in which a group of people who are engineering know-nothings are asking us to base our worldviews on their opinions about engineering. 

Let us take a close look at one of the most elementary ideas of engineering, an idea that seems to be very poorly understood by Darwinism devotees.  The idea I refer to is the idea of a functional threshold.  A functional threshold can be defined as the minimum number of parts that must be arranged in the right way for something to have some particular function. Until such a threshold is met, no such function can occur. 

I can kind of pave the way for the idea of a functional threshold by considering physical thresholds in nature.  In nature we see very often that some particular effect will not at all occur unless some level is reached. For example, consider the case of making a little spear out of ice. You can only get this functionality once the temperature drops to the freezing point of water.  When temperature drops to 32F, you can start to get ice spears or icicles, perhaps large ones. But you don't get ice spears when the temperature is above 32 F. It is not at all true that you can get little tiny ice spears forming when the temperature is 33F or 34F. It's the same thing for many types of chemical reactions. Once you have the minimum materials and temperature for the reaction, it can start to occur. If you have less than that temperature or less than the required materials, the reaction will not at all occur.

Just as there are such thresholds in nature, there are countless thresholds in the world of engineering. A functional threshold is a certain number of parts that must exist and be arranged in a particular way for some function to occur. If the threshold is not met, no such function occurs. 

I can give some simple examples of functional thresholds. Consider the case of a bridge built across a wide river. In this case there is a very big functional threshold that must be met in order for you to have the function of motor vehicle river-crossing. Many parts must be arranged in the right way before the function can occur. Building 50% of a bridge that leads halfway across the river does not result in something 50% useful that transports half as many drivers across rivers. Building 50% of a bridge that leads halfway across the river results in a suicide machine suitable only for leading drivers to their deaths at the bottom of the river. It's the same thing for building 70% or 80% or 90% of a river bridge: that merely gives you suicide machines that will dump drivers at the bottom of rivers. But if you have a bridge that goes across an entire wide river, the function of motor vehicle river-crossing is met. 

Consider another example of a functional threshold: the threshold that must be met for ping-pong balls to be useful as life preservers that will allow non-swimming people to stay in water over their heads without drowning. The table below explains how ping-pong balls are useless for preventing drowning until a particular threshold is met.

Parts list	Benefit related to drowning prevention
1 ping pong ball	Useless for helping non-swimmers stay afloat
2 ping-pong balls	Useless for helping non-swimmers stay afloat
5 ping-pong balls	Useless for helping non-swimmers stay afloat
10 ping-pong balls	Useless for helping non-swimmers stay afloat
20 ping-pong balls	Useless for helping non-swimmers stay afloat
80 ping-bong balls inside a tied plastic bag holding them all	Useful for helping non-swimmers stay afloat

When you have a level of parts and organization about like that of the last row, then suddenly a functional threshold is met, and the parts are for the first time useful for a particular function.  

With the origin of flight, we have a classic case of a functional threshold, a minimum level of parts and organization of such parts that must be achieved before something is useful. Consider an airplane. There is a certain number of parts that must exist and be arranged in a suitable manner for the airplane to reach the requirements threshold of being able to take off and land without killing people. Meeting only 60% or 70% or 80% of such a requirements threshold results in an aircraft that is useless but harmless (incapable of lifting off), or worse than useless (being something so unsafe it will tend to kill people riding in it). Below is a table with some rough estimates regarding levels of completion in meeting a requirements threshold for a flying animal: 

Level of completion	Effect
10% of flying requirements threshold	Useless
30% of flying requirements threshold	Useless
50% of flying requirements threshold	Useless
70% of flying requirements threshold	Worse than useless. An animal trying to fly will tend to fall and kill itself, or have useless wings that will make it easier for predators to bite it.
90% of flying requirements threshold	Worse than useless. An animal trying to fly will tend to fall and kill itself,  or have useless wings that will make it easier for predators to bite it.
100% of flying requirements threshold	Useful. Animal can fly, and escape predators.

The idea of a functional threshold is implicit in a principle I call the principle of preliminary implementations, which is illustrated below:

The diagram shows a case of a functional threshold. In order to get something functioning as a chair,  a certain number of parts must exist and be arranged in the right way. If we define the function of a chair as a function of allowing you to rest at least an arm's length above the ground, then we can say that the functional threshold is not met if you have only 10% or 20% or 40% of the chair.

Now, after explaining this simple concept of a functional threshold, you may be thinking to yourself, "Why of course Darwinism advocates understand such a concept -- it's so simple." But in the literature of Darwinism we frequently read people writing just exactly as if they had no understanding of this crucial idea of a functional threshold. I will give some examples.

Example 1: In his scientific paper “Evolution and Probability,” a paper which I debunk here,  professor Luca Peliti asks us to accept this principle: " Let us suppose instead that each step made in the good direction provides a small advantage in terms of survival or fecundity to the being that makes it." Here we have a statement that sounds just like its author had zero understanding of the concept of functional thresholds. The author naively asks us to assume that every step in the right direction produces a benefit. Life and reality have never worked that way.  For example, you don't get a survival benefit from building yourself 5% of a rifle; and if you move that completion percentage from 5% to 10% there is still no survival benefit. If you finally reach the functional threshold of building a working gun, then you may have some survival benefit. "Every step in the right direction gives a benefit" is a nonsense principle spoken by people who failed to understand the crucial concept of functional thresholds. 

Example 2: On page 196 of Darwin's The Origin of Species he advances the same nonsensical principle advanced above by Peliti. Just after referring to natural selection, Darwin states, " All spontaneous variations in the right direction will thus be preserved." Apparently Darwin failed to understand the idea of a requirements threshold, and thought that you would get a survival benefit from any variation "in the right direction." So apparently according to Darwin, if some animal gets some random variation that gives only 5% of some new function such as flight or vision or sexual reproduction, that will be preserved because it is "in the right direction." This is the glaring ignorance of an engineering know-nothing.  No functional benefit occurs until a functional threshold is met, a certain number of parts and arrangement of parts needed to produce the function.  No benefit comes from a mere step "in the right direction." The talk here of things being "in the right direction" is very ironic, since according to Darwinists there never is a "right direction," as evolution is a goal-less, purposeless effect. 

Example 3: In an article filled with bad reasoning, mathematician Jason Rosenhouse attempts to foist on us a triple-bad analogy for the origin of new types of proteins. He  compares the origin of a new type of protein molecule to getting a series of 100 "heads" coins when coin flipping. It's a case of vastly underestimating the improbability.  The average protein molecule in a mammal has an amino acid length of not merely 100, but about 400, as discussed below. And instead of there being only 2 possible states in each position of a protein, there are 20 possible states (there being twenty amino acids used by living things). Flipping 100 coins and getting all heads has a likelihood of 1 in 10 to the 30th power,  but getting a random arrangement of 400 amino acids to make a functional protein molecule has a likelihood of about 1 in 10 to the 520th power. Rosenhouse tries to suggest that natural selection can easily do something like getting 100 coins that are all heads, on the grounds that it saves the successful fragments on each try, like someone who tosses 100 coins and then saves each "heads" coin, then flipping again only the coins that landed "tails." Based on his use of such an analogy, it seems like Rosenhouse has no understanding of the crucial idea of a functional threshold, and is making the same nonsensical "each step made in the good direction provides a small advantage in terms of survival or fecundity" assumption made by Peliti.  The assumption could not be more false.  For example, if a protein molecule has a random mutation that adds a new amino acid, and that causes it to go from having 23.2% of what it needs to reach a functional threshold,  to having 23.5% of what it needs to reach a functional threshold, that will not produce any benefit in survival or fecundity, so there will be no tendency for natural selection to preserve such a mutation. 

In the majority of cases, protein molecules have extremely high functional thresholds that must be met before any function is produced, thresholds involving the fine-tuned arrangement of hundreds of amino acid parts.  It is not at all true that with 5% of a protein molecule you get 5% of its function, and it is not true that with 10% of a protein molecule you get 10% of the function. Instead, it is generally true that until you have most of the parts of the protein molecule arranged in the right way, the protein molecule cannot perform its function. Part of the reason the functional thresholds of protein molecules are so high is that protein molecules require very special and hard-to-achieve three-dimensional folded shapes to function. 

Another crucial idea senselessly ignored by Darwinism theorists is the idea of interdependent components. When two components are interdependent, then both must exist for either component to function. In biological organisms, we find interdependent components to the most massive degree.  Innumerable times we encounter components that cannot function unless other components exist, with the dependence being mutual or reciprocal. 

The diagram below shows only the tiniest fraction of some of the interdependent components in the human body.  An important fact about hearts and lungs is that they do not operate independently.  They require signals from the brain that control the autonomic function required for hearts and lungs to keep working even when you are sleeping. Just as your lungs and hearts require your brain, your brain requires your lungs and heart. Without oxygen-rich blood from the heart (which requires both the lungs and the brain), the cells in the brain would soon die.  

As shown in the diagram, the number of interdependent components is far greater than just the heart, the brain and the lungs. All three also require arteries and veins, so that the blood can circulate. There is also a dependency on red blood cells needed to carry oxygen, and a hemoglobin molecule (consisting of hundreds of well-arranged amino acids parts) to carry oxygen in the red blood cells. Red blood cells are short-lived, lasting an average of only four months.  So red blood cells must be constantly manufactured, which occurs in the marrow of the bones.

All of the components are mutually interdependent. In each case we can give reasons why none of them would be useful unless all the other components existed.  For example, without hemoglobin and blood cells to carry oxygen around in the body, vital organs such as the brain requiring oxygen would die, and the whole body would die, preventing bone marrow from doing any more work.  And without the bone marrow, you would soon run out of run blood cells, causing the death of the organism. I won't bother justifying all of the arrows shown in the diagram below. But in each case where I show one of the double arrows (<----->) it is a case where some particular component could not be independently functional for a year without the component on the other side of the arrow existing. 

The diagram above shows only the tiniest fraction of the total amount of component interdependence in the human body. To diagram the totality of such component interdependence might require something like a ten-volume series of books of 1000 pages each, each such book showing 1000 such diagrams, many much complicated than the diagram above.  The series of very thick volumes might list all of the ways in which the protein molecules of protein complexes are interdependent on each other, with thousands of individual proteins being useless unless there exist other proteins to make up the "team members" of a protein complex requiring many different types of proteins.  The student of modern biochemistry will find component interdependence everywhere, in the most mountainous amounts.  Such a student will find a million problems reminding us of the old problem of "which came first, the chicken or the egg." 

Alas, Charles Darwin seemed to pay no attention at all to the gigantically important topic of interdependent components. His work "The Origin of Species" made no use of the word "interdependent" and no use of the word "interdependence." just as it makes no use of the word "threshold."  Searching the volume for the word "dependent" we find no sentences indicating that Darwin had any understanding of how individual biological parts are massively dependent on  countless other parts in the body, with the dependence being mutual.  There are eleven uses of the word "dependent" or "dependence" in "The Origin of Species," and not one of them refers to some body part being dependent on some other body part.  The references are mainly just references to one species being dependent on another. "The Origin of Species" also had no uses of the word "rely" or "reliance" referring to component interdependence. 

Darwin conveniently failed to pay any attention to one of the most central topics that any theorist should have paid the greatest attention to before claiming to have a credible theory of biological origins: the topic of the how gigantically interdependent are the components required to make biological systems. Darwin's fervent followers have been guilty of the same neglect. After you give proper consideration to the centrally important topic of component interdependence,  the major explanation attempts of Darwinists very quickly will start sounding like old wives' tales of academia.  In the vast majority of cases, major improvements in biological organisms can never occur because of some mere variation in a single component.  In general, substantial improvements in biological organisms require the introduction of many new parts that are all working together to achieve the same effect, with very many such parts being individually useless unless most of the other new parts of the system exist and are fine-tuned to achieve the same functional end.  

Under such conditions, the chance of getting major innovations by an accumulation of random mutations is essentially zero.  A few days ago there appeared a scientific paper stating this: "An analysis of 8,653 proteins based on single mutations (Xavier et al., 2021) shows the following results: ~68% are destabilizing, ~24% are stabilizing, and ~8,0% are neutral mutations...while a similar analysis from the observed free-energy distribution from 328,691 out of 341,860 mutations (Tsuboyama et al., 2023)...indicates that ~71% are destabilizing, ~16% are stabilizing, and ~13% are neutral mutations, respectively." 

It has been estimated that there are seven million animal species, and the total number of protein types in the animal kingdom can be roughly estimated as  about 10 billion. Using the term "the protein universe" to mean the total set of all protein types that exist on Earth, the paper here states, "The size of the protein universe is reduced from ≈10400 to ≈1010 different sequences if only those proteins currently in the biosphere are considered " The 10 billion number is a "lowball" estimate. The source here estimates the number as being between ten billion and ten trillion, saying this: "For example, assuming there is 107–108 species on Earth and the genome of each species consists of 103–105 genes, there are 1010–1013 unique protein sequences, a speck compared to the vast sequence space, but still several orders of magnitude more than contained in today's databases."

Being very conservative, let's go with the lowest estimate of 10 billion types of protein molecules. Each one of those 10 billions types of proteins is a separate complex invention.  According to this page, the average number of amino acids in a human protein is 480. The number of amino acids in a human protein varies from about 50 to more than 1000. The scientific paper here refers to "some 50,000 enzymes (of average length of 380 amino acids)." On the page here, we read that the median number of amino acids in a human protein is 375, according to a scientific paper. 

Here is a comparison between the amount of well-arranged letter parts in the New York Public Library system, and the  amount of well-arranged amino acid parts in the animal kingdom (not counting duplicates):

Number of volumes in a very large library building:  About 100,000.

Number of different protein types in the animal kingdom: roughly 10 billion (and possibly as high as 10 trillion).

Average number of well-arranged letters (characters) in a book: about 200,000

Average number of well-arranged amino acid parts in a protein molecule of an animal:  about 400

Total number of well-arranged letters (characters) in all the books in a very large library building:  about 20 billion (i.e. 20,000,000,000).

Total number of well-arranged amino acids in the animal kingdom (not counting duplicates):  about 4 trillion (i.e. 4,000,000,000,000), and possibly up to 1000 times more (up to 4 quadrillion). 

Because of the very high functional thresholds of most types of protein molecules (requiring a special arrangement of hundreds of amino acids before any function occurs), and because of the very high sensitivity of proteins to being destabilized by tiny random mutations, scientists lack any credible explanation for the natural origin of new types of protein molecules, which cannot be credibly explained by any "each little step in the right direction is preserved" idea.  Believing that most of 10 billion novel types of protein molecules in the animal kingdom arose by unguided processes is roughly as illogical as believing that most of the books in a very large public library building arose by accidental ink splashes.