I thought about it. But decided not to.
First, as I have said, I think the boycott of UD is irrational. So why should I respond by doing something equally irrational? I shouldn’t.
Second, I think debate should be encouraged not discouraged. Boycotting the main site for the oppositon is hardly conducive to that end. To borrow a phrase from Elizabeth, there’s something asymmetrical here.
And third, I’m the real skeptic here. Unlike you poseurs.
Lots of interesting subjects raised in the UD is Dead Thread.
What is a body plan?
the capacity of the human mind to see what it wants to see
Is biology even science?
Is fantasy better than real life?
Where does the energy come from to move the goalposts?
If everyone accepts ID, why can’t it be science?
Materialism is dead matter
Is the flagellum manufactured or replicated?
is a self-replicating automaton even possible?
If not then entire machine metaphor needs to go. Or is it dead too?
In what sense are physical laws materialist?
Are crop circles made of crops?
Can you spell epistemological verificationism?
What is a genome?
The Multiple Designer Hypothesis
Don’t feel slighted Tom, I figure you’ll start your own thread when you get to it. 🙂
Unlike Gregory. Is there anything that is NOT designed?
Oh Mung, you’re so edgy with your goat-getting turnabouts.
Don’t feel slighted Tom, I figure you’ll start your own thread when you get to it.
I can be pretty damned substantive, any damned time I please. I discarded a technical response I had written to Dr. Ewert, which everyone was going to ignore, and started writing this at the high-school level: “How Dembski misrepresents his research, and why it matters.” Unlike Dr. Ewert, I’ll stick around to discuss it with anyone who converses at the high-school level or higher. Will you join in, or will you quote-mine, sass, and mung?
Tom, I’ve long wondered why the ID mathemagicians don’t remake their papers in plain English for the common folk [or have someone else do it for them]. I’m looking forward to the second edition of No Free Lunch. (Hope springs eternal.)
I actually do look forward to your post. Show the math. Explain the math. I am all for it. I graduated high school after my junior year so I may need some remedial help. 🙂
Honestly, I think you would be performing a useful service in taking the indicated approach.
Whew! We sure dodged a bullet on that one! Having a world class expert on ID like mung here threatening to leave us high and dry! Then we’d never learn the answers to all those questions IDiots have been running from for a decade. 😀
Richardthughes, it does take a certain skill, doesn’t it?
I’ve managed to adapt myself to the environment here at TSZ. I’ve probably even adapted to the environment at UD. I have to admit that I’m a bit puzzled why you folks cannot manage to do the same over at UD. Adapt and survive. Or not. 😉
Sorry Alan, I didn’t mean to exclude you.
what is the quantity of that quality?
Yes, you probably will. We’ve been giving you remedial math help for years, Mung.
We corrected you when you claimed that a two-dimensional fitness landscape couldn’t possibly have a vertical dimension:
That one still makes me laugh.
We also corrected your mangling of a basic statistical concept:
ETA: Then there was the time you thought the T|H in P(T|H) was a quotient and that I was somehow dividing by zero.
So yes, you’ll probably need more remedial math help, but we’ll continue to provide it.
Mung
I gave up UD after many years because it is not worth the effort of making comments when they may be deleted without reason. What is irrational about that?
(I also got fed up with responding to arguments on the lines of “it is obvious therefore I am right” – but those can be ignored.)
,
I agree with Mung:
Let’s move on.
If only TSZers were as ‘intelligent’ as Mung to be capable of identifying the real ‘interesting subjects’ raised in threads, which Mung alone here is able to discern as worthy of discourse? What a laugh! This OP should be called: ‘Questions Mung thinks are important so everybody else should think so too’.
Yet, folks, Mung has not the personal integrity to answer simple questions, nay, those specific simple questions that actually bury the IDM if faced. Let Mung continue to think UD is wonderful, genius, innocent of all charges and that anti-IDists (of ALL stripes, including theists) are simply by definition ‘stupid.’ It just shows the hubris of the defeated – it just hasn’t been the same since Dover.
Gregory, I have moved your recent post to Guano, and redacted personally identifying info.
It is against TSZ rules to post potentially personally identifying info about people known to us solely by their internet names.
I have told you this many times, and if you cannot learn this rule, I will, unfortunately, have to ban you.
Ironic that this should happen in this, of all threads, but my rules are clear: TSZ is not an entirely free-speech zone and, apart from porn and malware, the one thing you are not allowed to post is material that personally identifies people who have chosen to be anonymous in these discussions.
Don’t do it.
At some point, Lizzie, you may need to Moderate threads. Both Mung and stcordova are just at TSZ to play IDist games. stcordova has more integrity than Mung, but their goals here are the same.
You say “Let’s move on?” Then why allow the OP in the first place? Why not send the whole thread to Sandbox?
There’s nothing against site rules in the post you just guano’d. What’s with the heavy hand?
Yes, I think this is an interesting and important point. While on the one hand, the official position of the Discovery Institute is that intelligent design is a strictly empirical theory, it is striking that the most philosophically sophisticated contributors to Uncommon Descent all rely on a priori, philosophical and theological arguments. In fact, all three — StephenB, Timaeus, and Vincent Torley — are Aristotelian/Thomists, so far as I know. (The incoherence of intelligent design and Aristotelianism is not actually addressed by any of them, but there are excellent reasons why most Thomists are skeptical of intelligent design.)
What Mung failed to mention were any reasons why TSZ should be boycotted. After all, we know the reasons to boycott UD.
Presumably deleting comments wholesale is considered to be encouraging debate by Mung.
Mung, what were the reasons that led you to consider boycotting TSZ? You forgot to mention those in the OP.
I like what you write, but this obsession…
I have banned Gregory. If he can assure me that he will keep to the rules in future, I may consider reinstating him. Can I remind everyone that one of the rules is:
It is perfectly clear, and applies to any post that makes it easier for people to find out the true identity of someone known to us by a pseudonym and who wishes to remain anonymous, even if it is to information they have posted themselves.
I have said this before, so it’s no mystery.
I have reinstated Gregory, having been given appropriate assurances from him. I have also edited the rules to make the principle regarding “outing” more apparent.
People choosing not to participate at UD is completely rational. 1) Because UD is driven by censorship of views. Barry Arrington bans anyone who criticises and rejects ID too clearly or directly & who seems to know either too much science or has experienced IDist equivocation, and 2) Because one can actually receive a real human answer at TSZ sometimes, that is not simply about ‘protect & promote IDism’, where skepticism is not the final goal, but simply a process of exploration.
Nota bene: I am not an ideological ‘skeptic’ (there is no common term ‘skepticist’). But like everyone, in some cases and at some times I am skeptical, and certainly (which is not a ‘skeptically’ intoned word) I have grown skeptical enough of IDism to take a stand against it and to become a theist opponent of IDism (one of the rare ones who take the time), the Discovery Institute and the IDM. Their double-talk, equivocation, deception and fear-mongering simply went too far.
Sure, TSZ was started and is run by an atheist and a vast majority of its posters (minus stcordova, Mung, WJM & Robert Byers – the 4 IDists/creationists, then big gap to the non-IDists/non-YECs, Steven Schaffner, perhaps BruceS and a small few others, along with myself who are theists), are atheists or agnostics. That alone doesn’t sway me from posting here. A small few TSZers, perhaps 3 or 4 are angry, haughty, cynical, vindictive, etc., not only about IDism and YECism, but about theism in general. That’s their problem, and it leaves a bad taste of TSZ (medicine?), but it has nevertheless done a marvelous job in taking the air out of the UD windbags! And if you don’t think Denyse O’Leary is a bimbo news wind bag…
TSZ is not a fantasy land that ‘serves the ID community’ like a proud martyrs party for the self-expelled by double-talking, as has become the norm at the UD blog that Mung is attempting to defend here. If you want to discuss something scientific, you’ll likely find a PhD in the field or in a nearly-related field who can engage you (unlike at the DI’s official ENV, which allows no comments).
At UD, it’s a bunch of low-level culture warriors, with occasional stir-ups by ID-friendly fundies. They have a Rottweiler in ‘Timaeus’. Timaeus will ‘save’ UD because at the end of the day, just as with StephenB and VJTorley, he doesn’t think that in its final examination ‘ID’ is a ‘strictly scientific’ concept, i.e. unlike the Discovery Institute leaders. They feign to suggest this disconnect doesn’t destroy the IDM, and so far it hasn’t…that is, until William Lane Craig came along and saved the day.
It’s just like your complete and stubborn failure to answer the simple question I’ve repeatedly asked you, Mung, about why the IDM ignores non-IDist design theorists and disrespects (and largely ignores) theists who reject IDism.
‘Please don’t ask me questions I can’t answer in my own threads! It makes me look bad.’
Why would anyone want to be in ‘conversation’ with a person who obviously doesn’t respect them or want to play fair in dialogue? Pouting about this in public just makes you look foolish, Mung. Oh, but wait, since it is Discovery Institute policy, yes policy (I was there if you doubt it), to suggest its followers use pseudonyms, all Mung has to do when reading this is think “Hmm, this has nothing to do with the integrity of the actual human being behind the pseudonym ‘Mung’,” and he can feel absolved of any wrongdoing.
A person like Mung makes me think that a nation-wide “Boycott the IDM!” movement should be started that particularly targets evangelical Protestant churches. If they can’t respectfully face those 2 simple categories of people – non-IDist design theorists and theists who reject IDism – head-on, then what does that say about their integrity as people of faith? Faith in hiding from reality?
Then again, it would be conceding too much importance to IDism to imagine it even needs to be boycotted. Can’t the USA public be trusted to reject an ideology that obviously thrives on pity and fear-mongering, that depends on tithes and donations from right wing evangelical churches and rich benefactors above all, and that is really, only, surely, truly, faithfully suggesting that we ‘teach the controversy’ and promote ‘academic freedom’ in the end?
“Why are those people so mean to us? We’ve done nothing wrong (except directly banning them, and sometime erasing things they wrote from the public record). We’re nice people (except when we tolerate for years people like ‘Joe’ who are simply a&%holes). We tell the truth (except when we double talk and equivocate). We give clear definitions (except when we flip-flop between terms even on our own definitions page). Why don’t they like us?! Sob.”
Thanks for clarifying the intent of the rules, Elizabeth. The part about “even if it is to information they have posted themselves” was not previously made clear and I have agreed to the correction.
Apologies for not making it clear. We had a discussion about it a while back, but I think it took place on “moderation continued”, not on the page now renamed “Rules”. I have now remedied that.
I don’t boycott UD, but I do limit my reading to op-ed commenters. Of the regular IDists, only gpuccio has an informed position. When I read an opposition comment, I go back to the original and read forward.
I am not boycotting UD. I rarely comment, but commenting only rarely has been my practice all along. I still follow the blog (the main posts — I don’t try to read all of the comments).
Mung, you should know that Joe G was banned from UD and last night returned as the sock puppet “Virgil Cain”.
Please run straight to Barry and be sure Virgil Cain is banned and all his posts deleted.
After all UD has one set of rules that apply equally to everyone, right? 😀
If they did that, it would be easy to evaluate what they are claiming. Not waht they want. They want to snow the sheeple.
I don’t think VJT is an A-T.
I’ve been working up on OP on this very thing. Hadn’t decided whether to post it. Now I think I probably will. But it’s not that intelligent design is incoherent, that’s not the issue.
I don’t think TSZ ought to be boycotted. But then I also don’t think UD ought to be boycotted. Make of it what you will.
Right. Because I thought it irrational. You boycott UD I boycott TSZ. Tit for tat. That sort of childish nonsense.
Mung boycotts TSZ.
Many TSZ regulars cheer.
Well, my “boycott” of UD has the same rationale of any boycott – to put some pressure on the owner to make a change: in this case, to make a change to his policy of deleting entire users together with all their posts.
Practically, it makes it not really worth spending effort posting there, but that doesn’t really bother me that much. What does bother me is knowing that entire parts of a discussion may be deleted from the record. So Barry will have to do without a few ad clicks until he changes that.
Nah. I like having Mung here. I’m not sure s/he’s the same Mung as at UD though.
It’s pretty hard to boycott a place like UD where virtually all of the scientifically literate posters once there have already been banned.
Unlike other boycotts, I don’t think it has a chance in hell of being successful.
That’s one reason why I think it’s irrational. 🙂
Thank you. He. And I am the same as Mung at UD. Though I hear someone has attempted to impersonate me elsewhere. It would be a shame if it was someone from here. [Not saying I have any specific evidence it was.]
You make an excellent point 🙂
Mung,
Anyone who values open discussion is quite rational to boycott UD.
TSZ promotes open discussion and UD suppresses it. Obvious, no?
No, keiths, it is just not so obvious as you’d like to pretend. If it were obviously [self-evidently] true then everyone at UD would agree with you. 🙂
But they don’t.
UD does not suppress all discussion. That’s simply false, and demonstrably so.
If you want to assert a rational reason for the boycott you’ll need to do better than that.
keiths:
Mung:
Um, no. Many of the UD regulars don’t want open discussion. We’ve seen what happens to folks like Barry, KF, and Eric Anderson when open discussion is (temporarily) permitted. They don’t want to endure that humiliation again. That’s why they stick to UD, where they feel relatively safe.
I said that UD suppresses open discussion. That’s simply true, and demonstrably so.
Mung: UD does not suppress all discussion. That’s simply false, and demonstrably so.
keiths: I said that UD suppresses open discussion. That’s simply true, and demonstrably so.
UD does not suppress all open discussion. That’s simply false, and demonstrably so.
Mung,
Can you spot the difference between these two sentences?
1. Texas executes prisoners.
2. Texas executes all prisoners.
Well, if it suppresses some people from all discussion, then none of the discussion is open, right?
Which is true of most places, actually. There are two people (or possibly one, I can’t remember) banned from here, and there are rules as well, so some content from threads here is disbarred.
The rules are probably more severe here actually. In TSZ’s favour, though, they are more transparent than at UD.
On a scale of 1-10, 1 being highly suppressive, 10 being free expression, I’d rank UncommonDescent a 2 and TheSkepticalZone a 9.
There’s something broken at UD wrt to freedom of speech & banning people. Will Mung at least acknowledge that?
Then again, when I see UD, I see a pumpkin, while when IDism-infatuated Mung sees UD, he likely sees a chariot with wings. ‘It’s a Revolution, baby!’ 😉
But the only way to survive at UD is to adopt their religious belief in a creator. And to not disagree with Barry, or KF, or anyone of the ID persuasion. That is not adapting.
Someone may have already mentioned this, but there has been a recent example of someone posting quite happily at Uncommon Descent for several months (albeit as a critic of “Intelligent Design” and albeit under a pseudonym) whose entire posting record was expunged at a stroke, and without any public acknowledgement or explanation, other than a reply to an email by a third party, where the full explanation amounted to “…for being an asshole”.
That sends a powerful message that the “powers-that-be” who run UD are not to be trusted to safeguard the material that people invest time and effort in preparing and posting to that site. They do not deserve our comments.
Mung:
It’s not a matter of irrationality, or adaptation – I’ve posted episodically at UD, under the same name, for more than 2 1/2 years. (Perhaps THAT is irrational).
Even more irrational would be to invest significant effort into discussion in a venue from which one’s entire output may disappear at the unpredictable, and unexplained, whims of the blog owner. It’s not that complicated.
(Tweaking “News” is effortless, however, and I sometimes can’t resist.)
What keiths ought to have written is that UD suppresses some discussion and in that sense it is not open, but he didn’t.
Funny thing. I’ve been pointing out the need for that distinction and he tries to make it look like just the opposite, as if I am the one who can’t tell the difference.
But to answer your question, no, the one does not follow from the other.
Also, the number of moderators at UD who can actually shut down discussion are probably few in number, and I find it unlikely that they are watching all threads at all times. That leaves plenty of room for open discussion.
Until some un-named power-that-be decides to delete or edit a comment.
Beautiful.
What changes did you have to make to adapt? Please, be as specific as you are able.
Mung,
Make no mistake: Big Brother is watching you. Barry may not take part in every discussion, but he will pop up from time to time to remind everyone of his lurking presence and to say something rude, like here in the discussion under VJT’s “open letter to the Catholic clergy” on global warming.
Mung,
You’re a hoot.
You’re telling us that since the moderators can’t censor and ban on all threads, all the time, that means that UD doesn’t suppress open discussion.
You’re secretly on our side and trying to make UD look bad, aren’t you?
For example, if a new poster asked a very poignant and specific question to UD regulars, such as “why doesn’t the IDM acknowledge the many non-IDist ‘design theorists’ (and thus, stop their attempt at monopolising that term) or treat theists who reject IDism with respect and fairness?” that person would be banned/expelled immediately and the post would be erased.
So, the fickle ‘freedom of speech’ being promoted at UD is quite obviously highly biased ideologically in its ‘service’ to the ‘Intelligent Design Community’. Anything that seriously threatens the coherence and existence of their ideological community is rejected without thought or appeal.