WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:00.570 00:00:00.570 --> 00:00:03.580 There's been a lot of talk very recently, or definitely 00:00:03.580 --> 00:00:05.940 over the last several years, about the idea of intelligent 00:00:05.940 --> 00:00:10.970 design and how it compares to evolution. 00:00:10.970 --> 00:00:14.580 And my goal in this video isn't to enter into that 00:00:14.580 --> 00:00:17.950 discussion, or it's actually turned into an argument in 00:00:17.950 --> 00:00:21.505 most circles, but really to make my best attempt to kind 00:00:21.505 --> 00:00:25.710 of reconcile the notions. 00:00:25.710 --> 00:00:28.110 So the idea behind intelligent design is really that there 00:00:28.110 --> 00:00:31.250 are some things that we see in our world that are just so 00:00:31.250 --> 00:00:35.560 amazing that it seems hard to believe that it could be the 00:00:35.560 --> 00:00:39.390 product of a set of random processes. 00:00:39.390 --> 00:00:42.130 And the example that tends to be given is the human eye, 00:00:42.130 --> 00:00:45.630 which truly is an awe-inspiring device. 00:00:45.630 --> 00:00:47.200 You can call it an organ or a machine. 00:00:47.200 --> 00:00:48.820 Whatever you want to call it, it does all of 00:00:48.820 --> 00:00:49.680 these amazing things. 00:00:49.680 --> 00:00:51.900 It can focus at different lengths. 00:00:51.900 --> 00:00:55.740 It brings the light into focus at just the right spot, and 00:00:55.740 --> 00:00:59.420 then you have your retinal nerves and you have two eyes 00:00:59.420 --> 00:01:01.260 so can see in stereoscopic vision. 00:01:01.260 --> 00:01:03.850 You can see in colors, and then you can adjust to light 00:01:03.850 --> 00:01:06.500 and dark, so the human eye truly is awe inspiring. 00:01:06.500 --> 00:01:09.020 And the argument tends to go that, look, how can this be 00:01:09.020 --> 00:01:10.460 created from random processes? 00:01:10.460 --> 00:01:13.510 And the goal of this isn't to trace the evolution of the 00:01:13.510 --> 00:01:17.050 eye, but I'll do a little side note here that evolution is-- 00:01:17.050 --> 00:01:19.140 and natural selection, and I like the word natural 00:01:19.140 --> 00:01:20.680 selection more because it's not talking 00:01:20.680 --> 00:01:22.920 about an active process. 00:01:22.920 --> 00:01:26.710 Natural selection is acting over eons and eons of time, 00:01:26.710 --> 00:01:31.370 and we do see evidence in our world of a progression of 00:01:31.370 --> 00:01:32.460 different types of eyes. 00:01:32.460 --> 00:01:36.940 In fact, all evidence shows that the human eye is not 00:01:36.940 --> 00:01:42.970 perfect, and that there is variation. 00:01:42.970 --> 00:01:45.230 I mean, we all know some of us are nearsighted, some are 00:01:45.230 --> 00:01:45.900 farsighted. 00:01:45.900 --> 00:01:48.620 We have astigmatisms. It degenerates over time. 00:01:48.620 --> 00:01:51.750 People generate cataracts, so there's a whole set of things 00:01:51.750 --> 00:01:53.480 that can go wrong with the human eye. 00:01:53.480 --> 00:01:56.070 I'm not using that as a rebuttal, but I'm just showing 00:01:56.070 --> 00:02:00.850 you that there is variation, even in what I believe is 00:02:00.850 --> 00:02:04.320 truly an amazing piece of biology. 00:02:04.320 --> 00:02:07.490 And even if you go outside of the human world, there's 00:02:07.490 --> 00:02:09.139 obviously a huge spectrum of eyes. 00:02:09.139 --> 00:02:13.570 You have fish at the bottom of the ocean that have eyes that 00:02:13.570 --> 00:02:16.410 are really just light sensors, that barely can maybe tell 00:02:16.410 --> 00:02:18.780 you-- and some insects are like this-- whether there's 00:02:18.780 --> 00:02:20.760 some light or some heat around, nothing 00:02:20.760 --> 00:02:21.950 really more than that. 00:02:21.950 --> 00:02:23.850 And at the other end of the spectrum, far better than 00:02:23.850 --> 00:02:26.930 humans, you have certain birds and a certain type of 00:02:26.930 --> 00:02:29.650 nocturnal creatures where they can see in the dark. 00:02:29.650 --> 00:02:34.330 You know, maybe you have a certain-- actually, all cats 00:02:34.330 --> 00:02:37.080 have this reflective material in their eye that allows them 00:02:37.080 --> 00:02:39.570 much better night vision, so in that way they're superior 00:02:39.570 --> 00:02:41.710 to humans, and they can see just as good as humans during 00:02:41.710 --> 00:02:43.090 the daytime. 00:02:43.090 --> 00:02:47.070 You have certain birds who can see with far more visual 00:02:47.070 --> 00:02:49.750 clarity at far better distances than humans can, so 00:02:49.750 --> 00:02:51.490 there is no perfect eye. 00:02:51.490 --> 00:02:53.750 So I'll go into a little bit of a theological argument 00:02:53.750 --> 00:02:55.800 here, and for those of you who watch my videos, you know that 00:02:55.800 --> 00:02:58.380 I'm one to stray away from theological arguments, 00:02:58.380 --> 00:03:01.640 although I might eventually do a whole philosophy playlist, 00:03:01.640 --> 00:03:05.520 but I want to be very careful not to offend anyone's 00:03:05.520 --> 00:03:07.330 sensibilities, because that truly, truly, 00:03:07.330 --> 00:03:10.100 truly is not my intention. 00:03:10.100 --> 00:03:13.440 But the whole point I want to make is that, look, if you 00:03:13.440 --> 00:03:16.310 believe in a God, and I won't take sides on that argument in 00:03:16.310 --> 00:03:23.030 this video right here, it's to some degree, I would say, 00:03:23.030 --> 00:03:26.640 almost disparaging of an all-powerful being to say that 00:03:26.640 --> 00:03:30.850 this human eye, it kind of gives too much importance to 00:03:30.850 --> 00:03:32.100 us as individuals. 00:03:32.100 --> 00:03:37.430 I always think that religion-- and actually science. 00:03:37.430 --> 00:03:38.530 Or actually everything. 00:03:38.530 --> 00:03:41.480 I mean, we should be humble in our lives, and there should be 00:03:41.480 --> 00:03:44.950 the realization that we, as humans, really-- this isn't 00:03:44.950 --> 00:03:51.050 perfection, and to imply that this is the best that a 00:03:51.050 --> 00:03:54.220 perfect entity or an all-powerful entity could 00:03:54.220 --> 00:03:57.330 produce I think is a little actually disparaging of it. 00:03:57.330 --> 00:03:58.960 I'll give you another example. 00:03:58.960 --> 00:04:01.600 I give you another example, and I'll put my engineering 00:04:01.600 --> 00:04:02.460 hat on here. 00:04:02.460 --> 00:04:03.670 And once again, I want to be very clear. 00:04:03.670 --> 00:04:07.950 My goal isn't in this video to say, oh, you know, look, hey, 00:04:07.950 --> 00:04:11.130 evolution, random processes, that by itself, there is no 00:04:11.130 --> 00:04:12.850 God, and you just have to live with it. 00:04:12.850 --> 00:04:13.820 No, that's not my point. 00:04:13.820 --> 00:04:18.160 I'm actually making the opposite argument, that a 00:04:18.160 --> 00:04:23.370 belief in God would not point to a God who-- a belief in a 00:04:23.370 --> 00:04:27.300 universal, all-powerful God would not point to a God who 00:04:27.300 --> 00:04:31.510 designs the particular, who designs each particular. 00:04:31.510 --> 00:04:33.640 And even more, the imperfections that we see 00:04:33.640 --> 00:04:36.790 around us would-- and especially because we see 00:04:36.790 --> 00:04:38.420 variation and they're being selected for it. 00:04:38.420 --> 00:04:39.950 I mean, we can't just focus on the eye. 00:04:39.950 --> 00:04:42.160 We would have to focus on viruses and cancers, and it 00:04:42.160 --> 00:04:46.460 would have to speak to a God that is designing one off 00:04:46.460 --> 00:04:50.990 every version of every sequence of DNA that we see, 00:04:50.990 --> 00:04:54.790 because if someone talks about designing an eye, we know that 00:04:54.790 --> 00:04:59.220 the eye is the byproduct of DNA, and we know the DNA is a 00:04:59.220 --> 00:05:04.950 sequence of base pairs, you know, ATG, C, A, and, you 00:05:04.950 --> 00:05:07.240 know, billions and billions of them. 00:05:07.240 --> 00:05:09.970 And so when we talk about design, we would be talking 00:05:09.970 --> 00:05:12.550 literally about designing the sequence. 00:05:12.550 --> 00:05:14.490 And we even know that a lot of the sequence, there's some 00:05:14.490 --> 00:05:15.230 noise in there. 00:05:15.230 --> 00:05:18.210 We know that a lot of it comes from primitive viruses deep in 00:05:18.210 --> 00:05:18.890 our past. 00:05:18.890 --> 00:05:22.800 So the argument I'm making here is that in order to give 00:05:22.800 --> 00:05:30.380 credit to the all powerful, at least to my mind, a system 00:05:30.380 --> 00:05:44.410 that comes from very simple and elegant basic ideas like 00:05:44.410 --> 00:05:50.050 natural selection and variations, that in our DNA, 00:05:50.050 --> 00:05:53.350 we call those mutations, in the laws of physics and 00:05:53.350 --> 00:05:58.090 chemistry, and those, from that simple and elegant basic 00:05:58.090 --> 00:06:03.350 ideas, for complexity to emerge. 00:06:03.350 --> 00:06:05.540 So this is one idea and this is what really evolution 00:06:05.540 --> 00:06:10.700 speaks to, that, look, our universe is this profound 00:06:10.700 --> 00:06:14.560 world, this profound environment, where from these 00:06:14.560 --> 00:06:18.750 very basic, simple, beautiful ideas, we have this complexity 00:06:18.750 --> 00:06:20.730 in the structure that is truly, 00:06:20.730 --> 00:06:23.060 truly, truly awe inspiring. 00:06:23.060 --> 00:06:26.030 This is, in my mind, what evolution speaks to. 00:06:26.030 --> 00:06:30.070 And in my mind, even as an engineer, this speaks to a 00:06:30.070 --> 00:06:31.930 higher form of design. 00:06:31.930 --> 00:06:34.165 This speak to a more profound design. 00:06:34.165 --> 00:06:37.620 00:06:37.620 --> 00:06:43.330 So this whole video, the whole argument, is that if one does 00:06:43.330 --> 00:06:46.210 believe in a God, and, you know, I'm not going to take 00:06:46.210 --> 00:06:51.860 sides in that in this video, and a God that speaks to 00:06:51.860 --> 00:06:58.060 beauty and elegance and is infinitely powerful, then this 00:06:58.060 --> 00:07:01.670 idea of the laws of physics and chemistry and natural 00:07:01.670 --> 00:07:03.910 selection, which is really-- I mean, you know, when I talked 00:07:03.910 --> 00:07:05.800 about natural selection in the last video, it was really-- I 00:07:05.800 --> 00:07:08.900 think you would find it was a bit of common sense. 00:07:08.900 --> 00:07:14.290 That this is a very profound design and it speaks to the 00:07:14.290 --> 00:07:19.160 art of the designer as opposed to designing each of these 00:07:19.160 --> 00:07:20.150 entities one off. 00:07:20.150 --> 00:07:22.100 And what's even more profound about the design 00:07:22.100 --> 00:07:24.970 is that it's adaptive. 00:07:24.970 --> 00:07:29.070 If there's environmental stress, then the other 00:07:29.070 --> 00:07:32.420 variations survive more frequently. 00:07:32.420 --> 00:07:35.930 And so it's never changing, that perfection, that no 00:07:35.930 --> 00:07:40.140 instance can ever be pointed to and say this is the highest 00:07:40.140 --> 00:07:41.830 point that this design can reach. 00:07:41.830 --> 00:07:44.480 That is always-- I don't want to say getting better. 00:07:44.480 --> 00:07:47.650 It's always getting more suited to its environment as 00:07:47.650 --> 00:07:50.840 it changes, and that to me is a better design. 00:07:50.840 --> 00:07:53.250 Now, just following up on that, and I 00:07:53.250 --> 00:07:53.970 want to be very clear. 00:07:53.970 --> 00:07:57.460 This whole idea is to kind of raise the standard of what we 00:07:57.460 --> 00:07:59.230 expect out of design. 00:07:59.230 --> 00:08:02.290 It's to kind of show other points or other places in the 00:08:02.290 --> 00:08:05.310 scientific or mathematical world where this does emerge. 00:08:05.310 --> 00:08:08.900 And the best example I see of that is with fractals. 00:08:08.900 --> 00:08:11.850 A lot of you-all might have seen-- this is the Mandelbrot 00:08:11.850 --> 00:08:14.610 set, a very famous set of fractals. 00:08:14.610 --> 00:08:16.230 It's immensely complex. 00:08:16.230 --> 00:08:20.580 In fact, you can keep zooming in on the Mandelbrot set at 00:08:20.580 --> 00:08:23.370 any point, and when you zoom it out, it becomes infinitely 00:08:23.370 --> 00:08:26.940 complex, and you can explore it indefinitely. 00:08:26.940 --> 00:08:30.870 But the beauty of it, the true beauty of it, is all of this 00:08:30.870 --> 00:08:34.360 can be described by one equation, one almost 00:08:34.360 --> 00:08:40.409 shockingly simple equation, and that's this: The next z is 00:08:40.409 --> 00:08:45.340 equal to the z before it squared plus 1. 00:08:45.340 --> 00:08:47.080 And you're like you know, Sal, you started talking about 00:08:47.080 --> 00:08:50.070 intelligent design and evolution and all of that. 00:08:50.070 --> 00:08:52.500 Why are you all of a sudden breaking into fractals? 00:08:52.500 --> 00:08:57.340 And the point I'm trying to make here is that if I had two 00:08:57.340 --> 00:09:01.280 designers and one set out to go and paint this exact 00:09:01.280 --> 00:09:03.710 particular fractal and say, oh, you know, I'm going to 00:09:03.710 --> 00:09:05.620 make this brown and I'm going to make this blue and I'm 00:09:05.620 --> 00:09:07.950 going to make this a circle with other circles, you'd 00:09:07.950 --> 00:09:10.430 think this is an amazing painter. 00:09:10.430 --> 00:09:15.590 For example, if you were to go to someone 300 years ago and 00:09:15.590 --> 00:09:17.920 you were to show them this, they would say that this is 00:09:17.920 --> 00:09:21.380 the finest design that anyone might have ever been able to 00:09:21.380 --> 00:09:23.780 devise, because it's so infinitely complex. 00:09:23.780 --> 00:09:27.150 But now we know that this can be completely described by 00:09:27.150 --> 00:09:29.880 this simple equation, literally. 00:09:29.880 --> 00:09:32.020 For those of you are interested, all they're doing, 00:09:32.020 --> 00:09:37.170 this is a complex plane, and they're starting at zero-- 00:09:37.170 --> 00:09:39.890 excuse me, not plus 1, plus c. 00:09:39.890 --> 00:09:41.020 Let me make that very clear. 00:09:41.020 --> 00:09:43.170 This is the equation plus c. 00:09:43.170 --> 00:09:45.990 So for every point on the complex plane, you put that 00:09:45.990 --> 00:09:50.850 point in for c, and then you start with zero, and you keep 00:09:50.850 --> 00:09:51.360 doing this. 00:09:51.360 --> 00:09:53.860 So you say zero squared plus that number, that complex 00:09:53.860 --> 00:09:55.100 number, is equal to that. 00:09:55.100 --> 00:09:57.230 Then you put that in here, and then you do that number 00:09:57.230 --> 00:09:59.290 squared plus that complex number, and you do it again. 00:09:59.290 --> 00:10:01.050 You do it over and over and over. 00:10:01.050 --> 00:10:05.110 So turns out that some numbers don't go to infinity and those 00:10:05.110 --> 00:10:06.520 numbers are in black. 00:10:06.520 --> 00:10:08.860 They're considered part of the Mandelbrot set. 00:10:08.860 --> 00:10:12.790 And then the numbers that do go to infinity, as you iterate 00:10:12.790 --> 00:10:16.130 on this formula, you color it based on how fast it goes to 00:10:16.130 --> 00:10:20.800 infinity, and it creates this infinitely beautiful and 00:10:20.800 --> 00:10:22.640 complex pattern. 00:10:22.640 --> 00:10:26.190 Now, if you were to say what is a more profound design, and 00:10:26.190 --> 00:10:29.640 you can ask any engineer this, in my mind, this is the most 00:10:29.640 --> 00:10:30.840 profound design. 00:10:30.840 --> 00:10:34.610 Because it's simple and elegant, but it describes 00:10:34.610 --> 00:10:38.100 something of infinite complexity. 00:10:38.100 --> 00:10:40.580 It's not just focused on the particular, it's focused on 00:10:40.580 --> 00:10:42.000 kind of the metalevel. 00:10:42.000 --> 00:10:47.280 It's focused on creating just the idea of which this is just 00:10:47.280 --> 00:10:48.270 an example. 00:10:48.270 --> 00:10:55.680 So anyway, this is probably my video where I steer most away 00:10:55.680 --> 00:10:59.690 from the science of it all and maybe I focus a little bit 00:10:59.690 --> 00:11:01.260 more on the slightly 00:11:01.260 --> 00:11:03.610 metaphysical or the awe inspiring. 00:11:03.610 --> 00:11:06.290 But my whole point here is to really throw out my little 00:11:06.290 --> 00:11:08.440 idea of how you can reconcile these notions. 00:11:08.440 --> 00:11:13.350 That evolution, the randomness of it, does not speak to a 00:11:13.350 --> 00:11:15.280 Godless universe, although I'm not going to 00:11:15.280 --> 00:11:16.290 take sides on that. 00:11:16.290 --> 00:11:20.930 It speaks to a more profound God, in my mind. 00:11:20.930 --> 00:11:27.170 So anyway, forgive me for taking my liberties, and I 00:11:27.170 --> 00:11:29.710 want to make it very clear, I don't want to offend anyone's 00:11:29.710 --> 00:11:31.910 sensibilities, but I really just wanted to throw 00:11:31.910 --> 00:11:33.700 this idea out there. 00:11:33.700 --> 00:11:35.440 See you in the next video.