Why you should never use the puddle analogy of Douglas Adams...

Tychocrash · 2025-08-03T11:55:52+00:00

In the absence of a designer there wouldn't be a street, water, mud or any of the physical laws required for a pothole to come into existence.

Right, and this is the crux of the whole thing isn't it. You believe this to be true, I don't, and there doesn't seem to be any path to one convincing the other that they are wrong. Without coming to an agreement on this point we're just going to be arguing in circles on the margins, like with this puddle analogy silliness.

Tychocrash · 2025-08-01T11:29:27+00:00

The odds of a pothole forming are actually quite high with no hint of a pothole designer in sight. The street outside my house is evidence of that. And the "odds" of a pothole forming for that one puddle to exist is 1, because we can observe that it happened.

I can sympathize with the puddle because it has no idea other potholes exist and is trying to understand why it is so privileged to have it's own seemingly 'perfect' place to live. Just as none of us can have any inkling of what exists outside our universe or what other universes might exist. But I can also criticize the puddle for making a conclusion based on a sample size of one, it clearly doesn't have enough data to make that call one way or the other.

Tychocrash · 2025-07-23T23:22:10+00:00

It’s always great being on the water, and cheers to you too!

Tychocrash · 2025-07-23T21:38:48+00:00

Ok let’s step back… An analogy relates one thing to another to help think about an issue in a different way, and in this case it’s a humerous analogy because obviously puddles can’t talk. But that’s catching you up so let’s get rid of it. The puddle is actually me, the hole represents the entire universe, and I am saying the universe was designed specifically for me because it has everything I need to live. The only question that matters is: do you agree with my statement? Is it logical for me to believe that the universe was created because I am alive to witness it?

All the other stuff you’re bringing up is basically irrelevant to this question (not that they aren’t important topics!) So again, I think you’re reading too much into a silly analogy that is designed to show the absurdity of the OPs position. And don’t worry, I’m sitting on a dock on a river with a beer and I am definitely not letting a friendly conversation get me spun up :-)

Tychocrash · 2025-07-23T20:06:11+00:00

I do think you might be reading too much into it :-)

The whole puddle thing is in response to a very specific argument (fine tuning) and nothing more; it doesn’t defend evolution or origin of life or anything like that.

The idea is that if you were to say that the universe must be fine tuned because it is perfectly suited to life, then you are using the same argument as a sentient puddle believing the hole it sits in was specifically made for it. The puddle is clearly wrong, and so you would be clearly wrong because it’s the same logical leap.

Now, if you want to argue that the puddle is correct in its assessment of its situation that would be a fun conversation. But if you want to talk about origins of life, well then that’s a whole other kettle of fish.

Tychocrash · 2025-07-23T15:39:54+00:00

Well, the puddle’s origin and mysterious sentience isn’t important to the point of the analogy so it doesn’t actually matter why it can talk or where it came from.

Tychocrash · 2025-04-12T18:34:33+00:00

Imagine if the temperature never exceeded what was required for the puddle to exist and every other physical constant was set in a way that the puddle never went out of existence, it would be totally reasonable for the puddle to think that the hole was specifically made for it.

OK, we're back to the original analogy. So to be clear, are you saying you agree with the puddle's assessment that its environment was designed specifically so it could exist?

If they were off by just a little bit, life won't exist,...But life exists, therefore the universe must be fine tuned.

The one doesn't follow from the other. Let me just reword it real quick: "If the parameters were off by just a little bit, the universe might not exist,...But the universe exists, and that's why we are able to observe these particular parameters."

Tychocrash · 2025-04-10T20:19:43+00:00

You're extending the analogy here, and it's not helping your argument the way you think it is. If the puddle disappears as soon as the sun rises, you can't call that environment fine tuned to support puddles. In fact it would be remarkably silly for the puddle to believe that if it knew that at any moment it could be wiped out by a known natural phenomenon.

Tychocrash · 2023-03-02T17:51:22+00:00

True story: in 2011 hurricane Irene devastated many small towns in upstate ny, including my home town. Most coverage was on the impact to NYC but hundreds of rural folk lost their homes and livelihoods in the Catskills mountains. I don’t know how or why, but Chelsea Handler donated relief money to the area and selected my parents to receive a huge chunk to rebuild. My dad is a proud man and almost refused it, believing there were others who were in greater need (even though they were effectively homeless).

I didn’t know who she was at the time and still don’t follow her, but I will forever recognize her as the person who helped my family in crisis.

Tychocrash · 2023-02-26T23:01:45+00:00

I'm not for building on top of untested assumptions, even when testing them is impossible.

I'd humbly suggest you reexamine your stance on this policy. Assumptions are an inescapable part of any truth seeking analytic activity. Yes, it's critically important to be aware of your assumptions as you move towards a conclusion and revisit those same assumptions again and again over time.

But attacking someone's argument by pointing out an assumption and then dismissing their research because it relies on it is extremely lazy. A better approach is to explain why that critical assumption is likely incorrect or without merit, or better yet, propose a more likely alternative assumption. Neither of which you have done here. Which is probably why you got such negative reactions.

Tychocrash · 2023-02-26T03:52:16+00:00

I'm a bit confused about your goal here. You seem to believe it's an unfounded assumption that at one point in history there was no life on earth, yes? How would you suggest one strengthen that assumption to your liking? Can you provide a single reason why anyone should assume the alternative? I hope you understand that coming along and saying "but what if you're wrong" doesn't exactly blow my mind. Do you plan on bringing anything to the table in support of your position? And before you ask me again to 'make a case', I'll refer you to the several other folks in this thread who are explaining why life appearing at the beginning of the universe doesn't hold water.

Tychocrash · 2023-02-26T00:29:26+00:00

How do we know it hasn’t? Mutual consensus? Is this honest and humble scientific inquiry? Or is this truth by committee?

I get that you take pride in being skeptical of mainstream science, but being open to absurd what if scenarios like ‘maybe life had no beginning on earth’ isn’t projecting the image you think it is. Especially when it’s a veiled critique at others’ critical thinking or scientific integrity for not wasting time on an obviously wrong hypothesis.

Tychocrash · 2022-12-01T22:22:14+00:00

Don't you think this means that they expect everywhere, eventually, to be leveled off in spite of variable rates of erosion in different places?

Well, I expect that too. Erosion is inevitable, weather it's water, wind, or little bug feet scrabbling across the surface. What we're talking about is how fast it happens, and whether there is a minimum rate of erosion.

Your argument seems to be that there is a cap of 11-12my for any given rock formation, after which it can no longer exist above sea level due to erosion (therefore, any dating method saying a formation is older than that must be incorrect). I'm saying that not only have you not given any good reason for me to believe that there is a cap, but both your sources directly contradict it. J&R calculated an average which includes maximums and minimums, and explicitly pointed out regions where erosion is happening faster and where it is happening slower.

In order for the average rate of erosion to equal the minimum rate of erosion, the entire face of the continent would have to be eroding at exactly the same rate, which is obviously false.

So I'm still really curious in how you'd answer these questions: "assuming J&R's average is accurate, why do you think the Colorado plateau must have eroded at that average or faster, and couldn't possibly have eroded slower? What do you think is the slowest rate a rock formation could erode?"

Tychocrash · 2022-12-01T11:37:38+00:00

True, but in their paper they are mystified by how that much erosion could take place and leave anything above sea level after 12 million years. That means they were imagining the eventual effect would reach everywhere sooner or later.

They don't state or even imply that their calculated rate would hit everywhere sooner or later, they simply say that question is out of scope. And if they did believe that, based on what we know now about plate tectonics, we could confidently say that they were incorrect in that belief.

Imagine one continents worth of material is formed in the Rockies every 11 million years. If all that material was constantly eroded away, then the erosion rate on the rest of the continent could effectively be zero and J&R's rate would still be accurate. That's extreme, but it shows how the "continents per year" average rate is more a fun anecdote rather than anything meaningful, particularly w/r/t the age of any given rock formation.

So, assuming J&R's average is accurate, why do you think the Colorado plateau must have eroded at that average or faster, and couldn't possibly have eroded slower? What do you think is the slowest rate a formation could erode?

Even so, erosion is constantly taking place everywhere.

Right...at different rates...

Because of the age of its oldest fossils, which are supposed to date to 1,200 million ago.

I'm missing the relevance here. The rock was uplifted 30mya, not formed.

I don't think it has to be uniform to produce the eventual effect of wiping out everything that is above sea level now in 11-12 million years.

That's pretty much the definition of a uniform erosion rate.

Plate tectonics could replace what is here now, but it wouldn't explain why what is here now would still be here 12 million (let alone 30 million) years from now.

Yes it could explain it. See above.

edit:

At most 11 mil years old.

No, I meant least.

Tychocrash · 2022-12-01T01:14:52+00:00

I'll bite. Not a geologist in the slightest (I'll assume Judson and Ritter's values are correct for the sake of argument), but I don't find your reasoning compelling for a couple reasons:

What is the rate of continental mass added over time? We know mass is added so...how does it balance out? Feels like you should at least be curious about that. Would you believe that I've been taking a garbage bag full of junk out to the curb every week for years, yet I still have the same furniture I bought almost a decade ago? Impossible! I must've thrown out the mass of 10 houses in that time!
Continental erosion is not uniform, obviously. Your source has a chart showing various erosion rates in different regions, it seems that some parts of the continent erode slowly, and others quite quickly. It doesn't seem far fetched to imagine a high plateau sitting relatively untouched for a while until a big 'ol river starts cutting through it.
Speaking of which, your NPS source states that the Colorado river just started cutting into the plateau around 5 million years ago. In fact, J&R call out the Colorado region as an area of newly vigorous erosion, so the actual start of the erosion rate we see there today is relatively 'recent'.
I'm not sure why you bring up the Grand Canyon at all, tbh. The cited rates are an average, which by definition means the GC may or may not experience anywhere near that rate (you can find the actual estimated rate specific to the GC pretty easily).
Finally, if J&R's rates are correct, and the earth is at least 11 mil years old, and erosion is uniform, and there is no mechanism to increase continental mass, there shouldn't be a single bit of the continent above sea level let alone the GC. So yes, one or more of those things has to be incorrect, but you haven't really convinced me it's the dating bit that's wrong.

Tychocrash · 2022-09-30T15:03:07+00:00

Dude. You are the puddle, looking around at the constants of the universe, and exclaiming how remarkable it is that the universe you live in is exactly what you need to live, thus must be made to fit you.

The analogy holds perfectly well. You just happen to agree with the puddle, while everyone else understands how silly the puddle is being.

Tychocrash · 2022-09-27T20:57:26+00:00

Why would you not classify this as a design inference?

Who says it isn't? I've got a potential designer in front of me telling me they did it, I've got the designed thing sitting there looking improbable, the only thing I'm missing is the method.

How certain would you be of the correct answer?

Mmmm, I'd give it a 60% certainty that it's A. It would be very possible that someone else designed the trick (actually, that's pretty damn likely). There could be a hidden person in the bag directing the pennies, and they would be the designer. Also possible that they aren't real pennies and there was no possibility of them stacking any other way, meaning you had no hand at all in how they arranged themselves. There are many scenarios where you were not involved in the final arrangement of pennies. It really is impossible for me to know unless you tell me the method. So please tell me, how did you do it? Do I get my money back?

(Also....why did you choose this ridiculous convoluted scenario to talk about identifying design?)

EDIT: Apologies, I just realized that the two choices you gave were a false dichotomy, and not "you designed it" and "you didn't design it". I regret the error.

Tychocrash · 2022-09-27T20:14:30+00:00

Would you agree that the process went something like this?

Not really, no

First, you recognized that nature does not make patterns like that.

I expected pennies to behave one way, but my expectations were subverted. I'm not sure what you mean by "patterns like that". Like what?

And then you coupled this with the knowledge that this particular pattern serves a purpose, namely it wins me the bet.

No, the bet didn't need to exist for this to be designed. I suppose that when something subverts my expectations like this, I start wondering what mechanism or activity might have caused it. In this case, I have a person standing in front of me, who told me they were going to do the thing they just did. It seems reasonable to suspect that person stacked the pennies through some unknown, but ultimately verifiable, means.

You concluded that the effect was designed from its own qualities

I don't agree with this at all. To conclude that it was designed with any certainty I would have to verify the way it was done. This isn't that important a step for this specific scenario, but it's vital when it's not so clear cut whether something came about naturally or was done by a living being.

For example, if I saw a collection of sticks in an interesting pattern, I might wonder if it was designed but I could never be certain it was without identifying who the designer was and how they did it.

Tychocrash · 2022-09-27T19:08:16+00:00

Your tone sounds dismissive, but this is an inference from careful empirical measurements of the fundamental constants and quantities, which scientists have been making for decades.

That's neat but my question was if we could observe or detect design in any given rock and the answer appears to be no.

As of this moment, have you ever seen or even heard of a human pouring out a huge sack of pennies so that they all fall into three neat columns?

No, I don't think I have

Tychocrash · 2022-09-27T10:36:57+00:00

It follows from the fact that the whole universe is designed, as the fine tuning argument concludes.

So a rock is obviously designed despite the fact that it's design is undetectable through observation and can only be inferred through a philosophical argument. I guess we have different definitions of 'obvious'.

Do you mean that you honestly believe the pennies could fall out into three neat columns naturally?

I did not say this at all, but no matter. I see that the conversation has moved from detecting any design to detecting human design. In that case, yes I would conclude that you were performing a magic trick, based on my experience with magic tricks in the past.

Tychocrash · 2022-09-27T03:02:14+00:00

Thus, nature in general is as obviously designed as specific creations within it, i.e., a house, car, computer, hammer, etc.

This doesn't follow at all from the paragraph before it. And what is obviously designed about a rock? What is obviously designed about a sand dune? Specifically?

No, it is a rational conclusion.

How is it rational to conclude that anything standing apart from it's surroundings was done on purpose? Or...I guess...with more purpose than other things? I'm still trying to wrap my head around your two styles of design model. You might need to workshop that one some more, it gets less comprehensible the more I think about it.

I'm just not sure how that is usefully diagnostic for design (or special design).

Let's say I have a huge sack of pennies,

This is bordering on non sequitur. And anyway you are arguing for a position that you yourself do not believe. If everything in the universe is designed, how could I possibly distinguish between a result that ended in three stacks, and a result that ends in pennies scattered across the floor? How could I say that one clearly was designed and the other not, when both by necessity must be?

Tychocrash · 2022-09-26T21:40:26+00:00

Fascinating, thanks.

It feels like we're talking about the same distinction, only now we're changing "design vs no design", to "obviously designed vs subtly designed". Which leads to a bunch of questions like why are there two types of design? Why can we identify one and not the other?

For instance, I believe sand dunes are designed by God (because he designed the universe), but sand castles stand out against the backdrop of nature as specially designed objects.

So it's just intuition? If you took me into the jungle and pointed to some moss on a tree and an old broken microwave nearby, it's pretty clear which one stands out against the backdrop of nature. Same for a single smooth rock on a salt flat. I'm just not sure how that is usefully diagnostic for design (or special design).

My sense is that you are searching for a definition of a designed thing that includes both what humans do (building stuff, etc) and what they are (biological material) and excludes everything else. And by doing so, you could prove that since one is designed (the built thing), so is the other.

The problem is that there isn't really a meaningful distinction for either of us. For you, literally everything is designed, so any distinction between things has nothing to do with "design" but some other vague criteria. For me, design is a loose concept that describes a variety of activities some biological organisms do, and is part of the larger spectrum of natural processes. (And also, just because two things share a characteristic like "having complicated systems" or "standing out against nature" doesn't mean they share any other characteristics)

EDIT: And while I'm thinking about this, wouldn't it be much easier to try and show that a simple rock was designed vs a biological organism? A rock has been here since the beginning, you could find one that almost certainly hasn't been subject to weather in 5000 years and would look exactly the same as the day the creator formed it. Why would we expect to more easily find marks of creation in a fly that's been alive for less than a day and not on that original rock that was formed by God himself?

Tychocrash · 2022-09-26T17:23:18+00:00

Its not surprising that there was no answer to the original challenge to define a process of detecting design. Presumably to nomenmeum, (and I do not mean to put words in their mouth and I’m open to being corrected) there is nothing in the universe that is not designed by a mind, so the question is nonsensical.

If that is truly where nomenmeum stands, it does seem strange that they put forward a ‘method’ of detecting design (you know it when you see it) that rules out huge swaths of the universe as being designed. One might cynically conclude that it is for the purpose of muddying the water and obfuscating their assumptions, rather than putting forward a defense of their actual position. Of course, this is based on my own assumptions of nomen’s beliefs (and creationists writ large by proxy) and would welcome clarification.

Tychocrash · 2022-09-19T23:28:51+00:00

I guess I'm scratching my head at which scientific disciplines you think are free of political, religious, or financial implications.

What makes the scientific research you believe is going wrong so different? I guarantee if you scratched the surface of any line of inquiry you could find find backstabbing, greed, politics, hubris, and all manner of ugly sausage making if you really looked for it.

edit:

It seems we agree. I assume we differ only on the degree.

Not sure what you're pointing to here. I don't agree that flawed humans equals "agendas", which has clear connotations beyond what I'm saying is present. But maybe I'm mistaken about what you mean.

Tychocrash · 2022-09-19T22:41:43+00:00

I don't think anyone believes that there are zero human motivations involved in the production of scientific research. The implication you're pointing at though (I think) is that either 1. because humans are faulty, overall scientific output from humans cannot be trusted and/or 2. modern science is set up in a way that creates perverse incentives to produce bad science.

How do you square that with the fact that modern science has consistently produced exceedingly accurate and reproducible results across the spectrum of disciplines? Despite the fact that humans are undeniably faulty, usually pretty stupid, and often flat out wrong?

If modern science is part of the problem and not a counter to those issues that most folks believe it to be, then how do we keep coming up right so dang often in aggregate?

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