For The Panda’s Thumb’s After the Bar Closes thread on Uncommon Descent, I created a graph of the number of unique commentators at UD:
Here, for each day from Apr 2005 until Nov 2019, I gave the number of different people who commented at UD at least once during the previous 365 days. The colors indicate the number of contributions such a commentator has made over this period of time.
Obviously, the same can be done for “The Skeptical Zone”:
Enjoy!
Here are the posts and comments which Uncommon Descent received for each month from Apr 2005 until Dec 2018. The area of the circles is proportional to the number of views those posts gathered until mid-February 2019 (and most probably starting sometimes in 2011…)
In February 2018, I wrote a comment at amazon for Dr. Robert J. Marks II’s, Dr. Dr. William A. Dembski’s, and Dr. Winston Ewert’s book Introduction to Evolutionary Informatics (1st Edition):
We are all waiting for the ultimate book on Intelligent Design, written by R. Marks and W. Dembski. Instead we get a “textbook”, another attempt to explain the concepts to laymen. I got the impression that the authors used this setting to avoid the necessary rigour: they just do not define terms like “search” which they use hundreds of times. This allows for a lot of hand-waving, like the following sentence on p. 174:
“We note, however, the choice of an algorithm along with its parameters and initialization imposes a probability distribution over the search space”
That unsubstantiated claim is essential for their following proofs on “The Search for a Search”!
And then there are details like this one:
p. 130: “For the Cracker Barrel puzzle [we got] an endogenous information of I = 7.15 bits”
p. 138: “We return now to the Cracker Barrel puzzle. We showed that the endogenous information […] is I = 7.4 bits”I tried to solve this conundrum, but I came up with I = 7.8 bits. I contacted the authors, but got no reply.
(Details about the Cracker Barrel puzzle – if you are interested)
I gave it a generous two stars. By chance, I looked up my link to my comment today, but I could not find my review – though it was up there for at least a couple of months. Does anyone know what has happened? Surely, The Three Doctores would not steep so low to eliminate unwanted critique!
Search is a central term in the work of Dr. Dr. William Dembski jr, Dr. Winston Ewert, and Dr. Robert Marks II (DEM): it appears in the title of a couple of papers written by at least two of the authors, and it is mentioned hundreds of times in their textbook “Introduction to Evolutionary Informatics“. Strangely – and in difference from the other central term information, it is not defined in this textbook, and neither is search problem or search algorithm. Luckily, dozens of examples of searches are given. I took a closer look to find out what DEM see as the search problem in the “Introduction to Evolutionary Informatics” and how their model differs from those used by other mathematicians and scientists.
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Here are some quantitative reflections on “Uncommon Descent” (UD) and “The Skeptical Zone” (TSZ) in 2017. I cannot stress enough the quantity bit, nothing is said about the quality of posts and comments.
Yesterday, I looked again through “Introduction to Evolutionary Informatics”, when I spotted the Cracker Barrel puzzle in section 5.4.1.2 Endogenous information of the Cracker Barrel puzzle (p. 128). The rules of this variant of a triangular peg-solitaire are described in the text (or can be found at wikipedia’s article on the subject).
The humble authors1 then describe a simulation of the game to calculate how probable it is to solve the puzzle using moves at random:
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Yes, Tom English was right to warn us not to buy the book until the authors establish that their mathematical analysis of search applies to models of evolution.
But some of us have bought (or borrowed) the book nevertheless. As Denyse O’Leary said: It is surprisingly easy to read. I suppose she is right, as long as you do not try to follow their conclusions, but accept it as Gospel truth.
In the thread Who thinks Introduction to Evolutionary Informatics should be on your summer reading list? at Uncommon Descent, there is a list of endorsements – and I have to wonder if everyone who endorsed the book actually read it. “Rigorous and humorous”? Really?
Dembski, Marks, and Ewert will never explain how their work applies to models of evolution. But why not create at list of things which are problematic (or at least strange) with the book itself? Here is a start (partly copied from UD):
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(For last year’s results, see “Uncommon Descent” and “The Skeptical Zone” in 2015)
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| Fig 1 |
In 2016, “The Skeptical Zone” (TSZ) overtook “Uncommon Descent” (UD) – at least with regard to the number of comments:
| year | 2011 | 2012 | 2013 | 2014 | 2015 | 2016 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| UD | 41,400 | 28,400 | 42,500 | 53,700 | 53,100 | 28,000 |
| TSZ | 2,200 | 15,100 | 16,900 | 20,400 | 45,200 | 54,200 |
(crossposted from here and here)
(Edited Feb 2, 2016 to add eight figures)
Since 2005, Uncommon Descent (UD) – founded by William Dembski – has been the place to discuss intelligent design. Unfortunately, the moderation policy has always been one-sided (and quite arbitrary at the same time!) Since 2011, the statement “You don’t have to participate in UD” is not longer answered with gritted teeth only, but with a real alternative: Elizabeth Liddle’s The Skeptical Zone (TSZ). So, how were these two sites doing in 2015?
| year | 2005 | 2006 | 2007 | 2008 | 2009 | 2010 | 2011 | 2012 | 2013 | 2014 | 2015 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| UD | 8,400 | 23,000 | 22,400 | 23,100 | 41,100 | 24,800 | 41,400 | 28,400 | 42,500 | 53,700 | 53,100 |
| TSZ | – | – | – | – | – | – | 2,200 | 15,100 | 16,900 | 20,400 | 45,200 |
In 2015, there were still 17% more comments at UD than at TSZ – 53,100 to 45,200.
Though UD is still going strong, there is a slight downwards trend (yellow line) in the daily number of comments.
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