I agree that if arithmetic is a human invention, then my counterexample goes away.
Then you agree that your "counterexample" amounts to an assumption. If a Platonic realm exists (in some appropriate sense), and if Dawkins was haphazardly including that sense in the universe he is talking about when he describes complexity arising, then he wrong that complexity always comes from simplicity.
If you assume Dawkins is wrong, he's wrong. Was that supposed to be insightful?
On that reading, a key locus of our disagreement is whether arithmetic is a human invention. I think the answer is clearly no, for reasons I've written about so extensively that I'd rather not rehash them here.
It's a false dispute, though. When you clarify the substance of what these terms mean, there are meanings for which we agree, and meanings for which we don't. The only error is to refuse to "cash out" the meaning of "arithmetic" into well-defined predictions, but instead keep it boxed up into one ambiguous term, which you do here, and which you did for complexity. (And it's kind of strange to speak for hundreds of pages about complexity, and then claim insights on it, without stating your definition anywhere.)
One way we'd agree, for example, is if we take your statements about the Platonic realm to be counterfactual claims about phenomena isomorphic to certain mathematic formalisms (as I said at the beginning of the thread).
[Incidentally, it occurs to me that perhaps you are misreading my use of the word "model". I am using this word in the technical sense that it's used by logicians, not in any of its everyday senses.]
The definitions aren't incredibly different, which is why we have the same term for both of them. If you spell out that definition more explicitly, the same problems arise, or different ones will pop up.
(By the way, this doesn't surprise me. This is the fourth time you've had to define a term within a definition you gave in order to avoid being wrong. It doesn't mean you changed that "subdefinition". But genuine insights about the world don't look this contorted, where you have to keep saying, "No, I really meant this when I was saying what I meant by that.")
The only error is to refuse to "cash out" the meaning of "arithmetic" into well-defined >predictions, but instead keep it boxed up into one ambiguous term,
Silas: This is really quite frustrating. I keep telling you exactly what I mean by arithmetic (the standard model of the natural numbers); I keep using the word to mean this and only this, and you keep claiming that my use of the word is either ambiguous or inconsistent. It makes it hard to imagine that you're actually reading before you're responding, and it makes it very difficult to carry on a dialogue. So for that reason, I think I'll stop here.
A monthly thread for posting rationality-related quotes you've seen recently (or had stored in your quotesfile for ages).
ETA: It would seem that rationality quotes are no longer desired. After several days this thread stands voted into the negatives. Wolud whoever chose to to downvote this below 0 would care to express their disapproval of the regular quotes tradition more explicitly? Or perhaps they may like to browse around for some alternative posts that they could downvote instead of this one? Or, since we're in the business of quotation, they could "come on if they think they're hard enough!"