1 00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,570 2 00:00:00,570 --> 00:00:03,580 There's been a lot of talk very recently, or definitely 3 00:00:03,580 --> 00:00:05,940 over the last several years, about the idea of intelligent 4 00:00:05,940 --> 00:00:10,970 design and how it compares to evolution. 5 00:00:10,970 --> 00:00:14,580 And my goal in this video isn't to enter into that 6 00:00:14,580 --> 00:00:17,950 discussion, or it's actually turned into an argument in 7 00:00:17,950 --> 00:00:21,505 most circles, but really to make my best attempt to kind 8 00:00:21,505 --> 00:00:25,710 of reconcile the notions. 9 00:00:25,710 --> 00:00:28,110 So the idea behind intelligent design is really that there 10 00:00:28,110 --> 00:00:31,250 are some things that we see in our world that are just so 11 00:00:31,250 --> 00:00:35,560 amazing that it seems hard to believe that it could be the 12 00:00:35,560 --> 00:00:39,390 product of a set of random processes. 13 00:00:39,390 --> 00:00:42,130 And the example that tends to be given is the human eye, 14 00:00:42,130 --> 00:00:45,630 which truly is an awe-inspiring device. 15 00:00:45,630 --> 00:00:47,200 You can call it an organ or a machine. 16 00:00:47,200 --> 00:00:48,820 Whatever you want to call it, it does all of 17 00:00:48,820 --> 00:00:49,680 these amazing things. 18 00:00:49,680 --> 00:00:51,900 It can focus at different lengths. 19 00:00:51,900 --> 00:00:55,740 It brings the light into focus at just the right spot, and 20 00:00:55,740 --> 00:00:59,420 then you have your retinal nerves and you have two eyes 21 00:00:59,420 --> 00:01:01,260 so can see in stereoscopic vision. 22 00:01:01,260 --> 00:01:03,850 You can see in colors, and then you can adjust to light 23 00:01:03,850 --> 00:01:06,500 and dark, so the human eye truly is awe inspiring. 24 00:01:06,500 --> 00:01:09,020 And the argument tends to go that, look, how can this be 25 00:01:09,020 --> 00:01:10,460 created from random processes? 26 00:01:10,460 --> 00:01:13,510 And the goal of this isn't to trace the evolution of the 27 00:01:13,510 --> 00:01:17,050 eye, but I'll do a little side note here that evolution is-- 28 00:01:17,050 --> 00:01:19,140 and natural selection, and I like the word natural 29 00:01:19,140 --> 00:01:20,680 selection more because it's not talking 30 00:01:20,680 --> 00:01:22,920 about an active process. 31 00:01:22,920 --> 00:01:26,710 Natural selection is acting over eons and eons of time, 32 00:01:26,710 --> 00:01:31,370 and we do see evidence in our world of a progression of 33 00:01:31,370 --> 00:01:32,460 different types of eyes. 34 00:01:32,460 --> 00:01:36,940 In fact, all evidence shows that the human eye is not 35 00:01:36,940 --> 00:01:42,970 perfect, and that there is variation. 36 00:01:42,970 --> 00:01:45,230 I mean, we all know some of us are nearsighted, some are 37 00:01:45,230 --> 00:01:45,900 farsighted. 38 00:01:45,900 --> 00:01:48,620 We have astigmatisms. It degenerates over time. 39 00:01:48,620 --> 00:01:51,750 People generate cataracts, so there's a whole set of things 40 00:01:51,750 --> 00:01:53,480 that can go wrong with the human eye. 41 00:01:53,480 --> 00:01:56,070 I'm not using that as a rebuttal, but I'm just showing 42 00:01:56,070 --> 00:02:00,850 you that there is variation, even in what I believe is 43 00:02:00,850 --> 00:02:04,320 truly an amazing piece of biology. 44 00:02:04,320 --> 00:02:07,490 And even if you go outside of the human world, there's 45 00:02:07,490 --> 00:02:09,139 obviously a huge spectrum of eyes. 46 00:02:09,139 --> 00:02:13,570 You have fish at the bottom of the ocean that have eyes that 47 00:02:13,570 --> 00:02:16,410 are really just light sensors, that barely can maybe tell 48 00:02:16,410 --> 00:02:18,780 you-- and some insects are like this-- whether there's 49 00:02:18,780 --> 00:02:20,760 some light or some heat around, nothing 50 00:02:20,760 --> 00:02:21,950 really more than that. 51 00:02:21,950 --> 00:02:23,850 And at the other end of the spectrum, far better than 52 00:02:23,850 --> 00:02:26,930 humans, you have certain birds and a certain type of 53 00:02:26,930 --> 00:02:29,650 nocturnal creatures where they can see in the dark. 54 00:02:29,650 --> 00:02:34,330 You know, maybe you have a certain-- actually, all cats 55 00:02:34,330 --> 00:02:37,080 have this reflective material in their eye that allows them 56 00:02:37,080 --> 00:02:39,570 much better night vision, so in that way they're superior 57 00:02:39,570 --> 00:02:41,710 to humans, and they can see just as good as humans during 58 00:02:41,710 --> 00:02:43,090 the daytime. 59 00:02:43,090 --> 00:02:47,070 You have certain birds who can see with far more visual 60 00:02:47,070 --> 00:02:49,750 clarity at far better distances than humans can, so 61 00:02:49,750 --> 00:02:51,490 there is no perfect eye. 62 00:02:51,490 --> 00:02:53,750 So I'll go into a little bit of a theological argument 63 00:02:53,750 --> 00:02:55,800 here, and for those of you who watch my videos, you know that 64 00:02:55,800 --> 00:02:58,380 I'm one to stray away from theological arguments, 65 00:02:58,380 --> 00:03:01,640 although I might eventually do a whole philosophy playlist, 66 00:03:01,640 --> 00:03:05,520 but I want to be very careful not to offend anyone's 67 00:03:05,520 --> 00:03:07,330 sensibilities, because that truly, truly, 68 00:03:07,330 --> 00:03:10,100 truly is not my intention. 69 00:03:10,100 --> 00:03:13,440 But the whole point I want to make is that, look, if you 70 00:03:13,440 --> 00:03:16,310 believe in a God, and I won't take sides on that argument in 71 00:03:16,310 --> 00:03:23,030 this video right here, it's to some degree, I would say, 72 00:03:23,030 --> 00:03:26,640 almost disparaging of an all-powerful being to say that 73 00:03:26,640 --> 00:03:30,850 this human eye, it kind of gives too much importance to 74 00:03:30,850 --> 00:03:32,100 us as individuals. 75 00:03:32,100 --> 00:03:37,430 I always think that religion-- and actually science. 76 00:03:37,430 --> 00:03:38,530 Or actually everything. 77 00:03:38,530 --> 00:03:41,480 I mean, we should be humble in our lives, and there should be 78 00:03:41,480 --> 00:03:44,950 the realization that we, as humans, really-- this isn't 79 00:03:44,950 --> 00:03:51,050 perfection, and to imply that this is the best that a 80 00:03:51,050 --> 00:03:54,220 perfect entity or an all-powerful entity could 81 00:03:54,220 --> 00:03:57,330 produce I think is a little actually disparaging of it. 82 00:03:57,330 --> 00:03:58,960 I'll give you another example. 83 00:03:58,960 --> 00:04:01,600 I give you another example, and I'll put my engineering 84 00:04:01,600 --> 00:04:02,460 hat on here. 85 00:04:02,460 --> 00:04:03,670 And once again, I want to be very clear. 86 00:04:03,670 --> 00:04:07,950 My goal isn't in this video to say, oh, you know, look, hey, 87 00:04:07,950 --> 00:04:11,130 evolution, random processes, that by itself, there is no 88 00:04:11,130 --> 00:04:12,850 God, and you just have to live with it. 89 00:04:12,850 --> 00:04:13,820 No, that's not my point. 90 00:04:13,820 --> 00:04:18,160 I'm actually making the opposite argument, that a 91 00:04:18,160 --> 00:04:23,370 belief in God would not point to a God who-- a belief in a 92 00:04:23,370 --> 00:04:27,300 universal, all-powerful God would not point to a God who 93 00:04:27,300 --> 00:04:31,510 designs the particular, who designs each particular. 94 00:04:31,510 --> 00:04:33,640 And even more, the imperfections that we see 95 00:04:33,640 --> 00:04:36,790 around us would-- and especially because we see 96 00:04:36,790 --> 00:04:38,420 variation and they're being selected for it. 97 00:04:38,420 --> 00:04:39,950 I mean, we can't just focus on the eye. 98 00:04:39,950 --> 00:04:42,160 We would have to focus on viruses and cancers, and it 99 00:04:42,160 --> 00:04:46,460 would have to speak to a God that is designing one off 100 00:04:46,460 --> 00:04:50,990 every version of every sequence of DNA that we see, 101 00:04:50,990 --> 00:04:54,790 because if someone talks about designing an eye, we know that 102 00:04:54,790 --> 00:04:59,220 the eye is the byproduct of DNA, and we know the DNA is a 103 00:04:59,220 --> 00:05:04,950 sequence of base pairs, you know, ATG, C, A, and, you 104 00:05:04,950 --> 00:05:07,240 know, billions and billions of them. 105 00:05:07,240 --> 00:05:09,970 And so when we talk about design, we would be talking 106 00:05:09,970 --> 00:05:12,550 literally about designing the sequence. 107 00:05:12,550 --> 00:05:14,490 And we even know that a lot of the sequence, there's some 108 00:05:14,490 --> 00:05:15,230 noise in there. 109 00:05:15,230 --> 00:05:18,210 We know that a lot of it comes from primitive viruses deep in 110 00:05:18,210 --> 00:05:18,890 our past. 111 00:05:18,890 --> 00:05:22,800 So the argument I'm making here is that in order to give 112 00:05:22,800 --> 00:05:30,380 credit to the all powerful, at least to my mind, a system 113 00:05:30,380 --> 00:05:44,410 that comes from very simple and elegant basic ideas like 114 00:05:44,410 --> 00:05:50,050 natural selection and variations, that in our DNA, 115 00:05:50,050 --> 00:05:53,350 we call those mutations, in the laws of physics and 116 00:05:53,350 --> 00:05:58,090 chemistry, and those, from that simple and elegant basic 117 00:05:58,090 --> 00:06:03,350 ideas, for complexity to emerge. 118 00:06:03,350 --> 00:06:05,540 So this is one idea and this is what really evolution 119 00:06:05,540 --> 00:06:10,700 speaks to, that, look, our universe is this profound 120 00:06:10,700 --> 00:06:14,560 world, this profound environment, where from these 121 00:06:14,560 --> 00:06:18,750 very basic, simple, beautiful ideas, we have this complexity 122 00:06:18,750 --> 00:06:20,730 in the structure that is truly, 123 00:06:20,730 --> 00:06:23,060 truly, truly awe inspiring. 124 00:06:23,060 --> 00:06:26,030 This is, in my mind, what evolution speaks to. 125 00:06:26,030 --> 00:06:30,070 And in my mind, even as an engineer, this speaks to a 126 00:06:30,070 --> 00:06:31,930 higher form of design. 127 00:06:31,930 --> 00:06:34,165 This speak to a more profound design. 128 00:06:34,165 --> 00:06:37,620 129 00:06:37,620 --> 00:06:43,330 So this whole video, the whole argument, is that if one does 130 00:06:43,330 --> 00:06:46,210 believe in a God, and, you know, I'm not going to take 131 00:06:46,210 --> 00:06:51,860 sides in that in this video, and a God that speaks to 132 00:06:51,860 --> 00:06:58,060 beauty and elegance and is infinitely powerful, then this 133 00:06:58,060 --> 00:07:01,670 idea of the laws of physics and chemistry and natural 134 00:07:01,670 --> 00:07:03,910 selection, which is really-- I mean, you know, when I talked 135 00:07:03,910 --> 00:07:05,800 about natural selection in the last video, it was really-- I 136 00:07:05,800 --> 00:07:08,900 think you would find it was a bit of common sense. 137 00:07:08,900 --> 00:07:14,290 That this is a very profound design and it speaks to the 138 00:07:14,290 --> 00:07:19,160 art of the designer as opposed to designing each of these 139 00:07:19,160 --> 00:07:20,150 entities one off. 140 00:07:20,150 --> 00:07:22,100 And what's even more profound about the design 141 00:07:22,100 --> 00:07:24,970 is that it's adaptive. 142 00:07:24,970 --> 00:07:29,070 If there's environmental stress, then the other 143 00:07:29,070 --> 00:07:32,420 variations survive more frequently. 144 00:07:32,420 --> 00:07:35,930 And so it's never changing, that perfection, that no 145 00:07:35,930 --> 00:07:40,140 instance can ever be pointed to and say this is the highest 146 00:07:40,140 --> 00:07:41,830 point that this design can reach. 147 00:07:41,830 --> 00:07:44,480 That is always-- I don't want to say getting better. 148 00:07:44,480 --> 00:07:47,650 It's always getting more suited to its environment as 149 00:07:47,650 --> 00:07:50,840 it changes, and that to me is a better design. 150 00:07:50,840 --> 00:07:53,250 Now, just following up on that, and I 151 00:07:53,250 --> 00:07:53,970 want to be very clear. 152 00:07:53,970 --> 00:07:57,460 This whole idea is to kind of raise the standard of what we 153 00:07:57,460 --> 00:07:59,230 expect out of design. 154 00:07:59,230 --> 00:08:02,290 It's to kind of show other points or other places in the 155 00:08:02,290 --> 00:08:05,310 scientific or mathematical world where this does emerge. 156 00:08:05,310 --> 00:08:08,900 And the best example I see of that is with fractals. 157 00:08:08,900 --> 00:08:11,850 A lot of you-all might have seen-- this is the Mandelbrot 158 00:08:11,850 --> 00:08:14,610 set, a very famous set of fractals. 159 00:08:14,610 --> 00:08:16,230 It's immensely complex. 160 00:08:16,230 --> 00:08:20,580 In fact, you can keep zooming in on the Mandelbrot set at 161 00:08:20,580 --> 00:08:23,370 any point, and when you zoom it out, it becomes infinitely 162 00:08:23,370 --> 00:08:26,940 complex, and you can explore it indefinitely. 163 00:08:26,940 --> 00:08:30,870 But the beauty of it, the true beauty of it, is all of this 164 00:08:30,870 --> 00:08:34,360 can be described by one equation, one almost 165 00:08:34,360 --> 00:08:40,409 shockingly simple equation, and that's this: The next z is 166 00:08:40,409 --> 00:08:45,340 equal to the z before it squared plus 1. 167 00:08:45,340 --> 00:08:47,080 And you're like you know, Sal, you started talking about 168 00:08:47,080 --> 00:08:50,070 intelligent design and evolution and all of that. 169 00:08:50,070 --> 00:08:52,500 Why are you all of a sudden breaking into fractals? 170 00:08:52,500 --> 00:08:57,340 And the point I'm trying to make here is that if I had two 171 00:08:57,340 --> 00:09:01,280 designers and one set out to go and paint this exact 172 00:09:01,280 --> 00:09:03,710 particular fractal and say, oh, you know, I'm going to 173 00:09:03,710 --> 00:09:05,620 make this brown and I'm going to make this blue and I'm 174 00:09:05,620 --> 00:09:07,950 going to make this a circle with other circles, you'd 175 00:09:07,950 --> 00:09:10,430 think this is an amazing painter. 176 00:09:10,430 --> 00:09:15,590 For example, if you were to go to someone 300 years ago and 177 00:09:15,590 --> 00:09:17,920 you were to show them this, they would say that this is 178 00:09:17,920 --> 00:09:21,380 the finest design that anyone might have ever been able to 179 00:09:21,380 --> 00:09:23,780 devise, because it's so infinitely complex. 180 00:09:23,780 --> 00:09:27,150 But now we know that this can be completely described by 181 00:09:27,150 --> 00:09:29,880 this simple equation, literally. 182 00:09:29,880 --> 00:09:32,020 For those of you are interested, all they're doing, 183 00:09:32,020 --> 00:09:37,170 this is a complex plane, and they're starting at zero-- 184 00:09:37,170 --> 00:09:39,890 excuse me, not plus 1, plus c. 185 00:09:39,890 --> 00:09:41,020 Let me make that very clear. 186 00:09:41,020 --> 00:09:43,170 This is the equation plus c. 187 00:09:43,170 --> 00:09:45,990 So for every point on the complex plane, you put that 188 00:09:45,990 --> 00:09:50,850 point in for c, and then you start with zero, and you keep 189 00:09:50,850 --> 00:09:51,360 doing this. 190 00:09:51,360 --> 00:09:53,860 So you say zero squared plus that number, that complex 191 00:09:53,860 --> 00:09:55,100 number, is equal to that. 192 00:09:55,100 --> 00:09:57,230 Then you put that in here, and then you do that number 193 00:09:57,230 --> 00:09:59,290 squared plus that complex number, and you do it again. 194 00:09:59,290 --> 00:10:01,050 You do it over and over and over. 195 00:10:01,050 --> 00:10:05,110 So turns out that some numbers don't go to infinity and those 196 00:10:05,110 --> 00:10:06,520 numbers are in black. 197 00:10:06,520 --> 00:10:08,860 They're considered part of the Mandelbrot set. 198 00:10:08,860 --> 00:10:12,790 And then the numbers that do go to infinity, as you iterate 199 00:10:12,790 --> 00:10:16,130 on this formula, you color it based on how fast it goes to 200 00:10:16,130 --> 00:10:20,800 infinity, and it creates this infinitely beautiful and 201 00:10:20,800 --> 00:10:22,640 complex pattern. 202 00:10:22,640 --> 00:10:26,190 Now, if you were to say what is a more profound design, and 203 00:10:26,190 --> 00:10:29,640 you can ask any engineer this, in my mind, this is the most 204 00:10:29,640 --> 00:10:30,840 profound design. 205 00:10:30,840 --> 00:10:34,610 Because it's simple and elegant, but it describes 206 00:10:34,610 --> 00:10:38,100 something of infinite complexity. 207 00:10:38,100 --> 00:10:40,580 It's not just focused on the particular, it's focused on 208 00:10:40,580 --> 00:10:42,000 kind of the metalevel. 209 00:10:42,000 --> 00:10:47,280 It's focused on creating just the idea of which this is just 210 00:10:47,280 --> 00:10:48,270 an example. 211 00:10:48,270 --> 00:10:55,680 So anyway, this is probably my video where I steer most away 212 00:10:55,680 --> 00:10:59,690 from the science of it all and maybe I focus a little bit 213 00:10:59,690 --> 00:11:01,260 more on the slightly 214 00:11:01,260 --> 00:11:03,610 metaphysical or the awe inspiring. 215 00:11:03,610 --> 00:11:06,290 But my whole point here is to really throw out my little 216 00:11:06,290 --> 00:11:08,440 idea of how you can reconcile these notions. 217 00:11:08,440 --> 00:11:13,350 That evolution, the randomness of it, does not speak to a 218 00:11:13,350 --> 00:11:15,280 Godless universe, although I'm not going to 219 00:11:15,280 --> 00:11:16,290 take sides on that. 220 00:11:16,290 --> 00:11:20,930 It speaks to a more profound God, in my mind. 221 00:11:20,930 --> 00:11:27,170 So anyway, forgive me for taking my liberties, and I 222 00:11:27,170 --> 00:11:29,710 want to make it very clear, I don't want to offend anyone's 223 00:11:29,710 --> 00:11:31,910 sensibilities, but I really just wanted to throw 224 00:11:31,910 --> 00:11:33,700 this idea out there. 225 00:11:33,700 --> 00:11:35,440 See you in the next video.