Springtime is approaching. The 2LoT truthers are flocking at Uncommon Descent, hoping to find mates so that they can pass their second law inanity on to the next generation. Until yesterday, I was observing their bizarre mating rituals up close. Now I have been banned (again) from the nesting site, for pointing out a particularly ugly and infertile egg laid by kairosfocus.
Many others have been banned from the site as well, but we can still observe the spectacle through our high-powered binoculars. At this distance, our laughter will not disturb the awkward courtship rituals, as the participants preen and flaunt their ignorance in front of potential mates.
Hence this thread. Feel free to post your observations regarding the current 2LoT goings-on at UD and the perennial misuse of the 2LoT by IDers in general.
Keith, your comments don’t require any rebuttal because the truth of the matter is so easily discernible through a good-faith reading of Sewell’s article and what I said about it. My point should have been clear at UD, but if it wasn’t then my different adjustment to the quote in my comment here, which made precisely the same point, should have resolved any confusion. Instead you just continue to misconstrue and misrepresent everything you read. As I said at UD:
And as for Diogenes, his response to me was not remotely on point. I made a comment about context and he made a response about a mismatch in tense between Sewell’s original sentence and my reference to the ultimate context, as though the fact that I didn’t try to match Sewell’s tense proved that the context in Sewell’s article that I was addressing could be ignored.
HeKS,
You already got caught misrepresenting Diogenes. Why dig the hole deeper by doing it again?
And do you really think that falsely accusing others of dishonesty will deflect attention from your own?
You wrote:
You just made that up. Here’s what Diogenes actually wrote:
Your accusation is false. Diogenes said nothing about Sewell’s sentence being incomplete.
Now you backpedal without acknowledging your fabrication:
Another fabrication. Diogenes pointed out the tense mismatch not to show that the context could be ignored — why would he want that, when the context supports our interpretation of what Sewell said? — but to show that Sewell was not speaking hypothetically or counterfactually.
When Sewell wrote about “what has happened on our planet”, he was talking about what has happened on our planet — not what might have happened, or would have happened, if things had been different.
And for the third time, even if your strained rewrite were correct, and Sewell didn’t mean what he wrote, he would still be claiming that the second law was violated here on earth.
Please read this next paragraph carefully:
Second law violations are second law violations whether intelligence is involved or not. There is no “if unguided” clause. The second law doesn’t mention intelligence or guidance, and it doesn’t need to, because we never see intelligence violating the second law. Why add an ‘except’ clause when there are no exceptions?
Now please read that paragraph again.
The upshot? Your rewrite of Sewell, even if it were legitimate, wouldn’t change anything. Sewell is claiming that the second law was violated on earth.
Good Lord, Keith.
Look. Here’s me:
And here’s Diogenes’ response:
Diogenes’ response only makes any sense at all if he’s claiming that my position is that Sewell’s sentence is essentially incomplete as written and that I’m trying to pretend he meant to write the sentence exactly as it appears with my addition, making it a ‘bastard sentence’ with different tenses. But that, of course, was not what I was saying. I simply used a quick and (grammatically) dirty way to tack the contextual meaning derived from the rest of the article on at the end of the sentence.
You then claimed that I went on to backpedal from my criticism of Diogenes’ response without acknowledging my supposed fabrication, but I did no such thing. I didn’t fabricate anything and I didn’t backpedal. I actually just reiterated the same basic criticism in different words.
You’re just not getting it, Keith. Certain events certainly did happen on our planet. Life started, and its forms changed over time, making use of incredibly sophisticated molecular machinery and multi-part interdependent systems. The question is how these things happened. Sewell thinks that if they happened without intelligent guidance, purely as the fortuitous result of unguided chance and necessity acting in concert, then this would seem to violate the more general or extended formulation of the second law in the same way that a tornado turning rubble into houses and cars would violate the generalized formulation of the second law. So Sewell is essentially asking, “If you think that a tornado turning rubble into houses and cars would be a violation of the generalized formulation of the second law but you think the sophisticated machinery of life on this earth came about purely through the combination of chance and necessity, what could possibly be more of a violation of the generalized formulation of the second law than that?”
I mean, for goodness sake, the fact that this is what Sewell means is obvious even just from the paragraph that you quoted:
Throughout the entire article he makes it clear that he’s arguing it is the spontaneous creation of organization from the combination of chance and law that seems to violate the generalized formulation of the second law. For you to take his last sentence, divorce it from this clear context that permeates the entire article and even the very sentences that precede it, and then claim that Sewell is saying that the origin and development of life on this planet actually did violate the second law, regardless of the method by which it came about, is spectacularly disingenuous.
That you would then turn around and accuse me of being dishonest for pointing this out is just sad.
Keith,
I’ve pointed you to this link before and I’m going to do it again now:
The Principle of Charity
Read it and absorb it, Keith. If you’re determined to go on flouting this principle as you have then you have no business partaking in serious discussion.
There’s a nice parallel between this thread and the Genesis thread.
Here, HeKS is desperately trying to avoid taking Sewell, Sheldon, and Diogenes at their word. There, he is desperately trying to avoid taking the author(s) of Genesis at their word.
And trying to get the rest of us to follow his lead, using a set of bizarre and strained rationalizations.
I’m getting tired for the moment of shoveling HeKS’s manure, so let me just point to a particular turd.
HeKS writes:
Let’s see about that. Here’s the first fabrication:
And here’s the second fabrication:
Are those “the same basic criticism in different words” to any sane, competent speaker of the English language?
Are you sure you want us to talk about dishonesty, HeKS? That could backfire pretty badly on you.
Criticism 1:
Criticism 2:
My given explanation as to why both statements are correct and related to the same essential problem so people like yourself could actually understand:
Allow me to try to make the connection even clearer to you, Keith, by combining this all into one criticism.
I used a quick and grammatically dirty way to tack the contextual meaning of Sewell’s statement on to the end of the sentence. Instead of addressing the contextual issue, Diogenes’ response focused on a mismatch in tenses between Sewell’s original sentence and my quick-and-dirty contextual clarification tacked to the end that would only have had any relevance at all if he was trying to claim that my argument was that Sewell was really intending to write one long sentence that looked precisely like the ‘bastard sentence’ that included our mismatched tenses, which is quite obviously not what I was arguing. Furthermore, Diogenes used this obtuse objection in place of any response that actually addressed my point about the context of the statement, as though the presence of a mismatch in the tenses proved my point could be ignored. Perhaps Diogenes has been taking lessons from you.
The dishonesty here is not coming from me, Keith. Of course, whether you are being dishonest or just remarkably obtuse in any given case is somewhat difficult to determine, but the more dealings I have with you the more I lean to the former.
Cutting to the chase, there is no sane way to read Sewell except as saying that evolution is a natural process running backward, like a tornado creating a house. It’s what he says. He says it’s a clear violation of 2LOT. There’s no ambiguity. No contextual escape.
HeKS,
You’ve painted a pretty appalling picture of yourself in this thread and elsewhere, but I think you can sink even lower. Want to give it a try?
Here’s another quote from Sewell:
Spin away, Sunbeam.
And do you agree with that or not?
Sewell: 2LOT. and if not 2LOT, then CLOT.
It’s an interesting attempt to disguise an assumed conclusion. Wrap your little turd of an argument in an established physical law and call it a greater principle.
HeKS,
Rumraket asked Phoodoo several times how Phoodoo would design a simulation of evolution but Phoodoo has thus far failed to answer substantively. I, for one, would be interested in your input into the discussion, coming as you do from the ID proponent view.
HeKS,
There is no such “generalized formulation.” The second law of thermodynamics is what it is. Sewell’s “generalized formulation” is simply an argument from incredulity.
Hi Patrick,
And yet, Sewell argues that there is such a generalization that is rather widely recognized and that A) the spontaneous increase in organisation postulated under materialist OOL and evolutionary theories would seem to violate it, and B) that open system / compensation arguments based on the sun’s energy and an increase in entropy elsewhere are untenable, as the sun’s energy does not make the macro-scale results more probable.
Now, if you want to disagree with him, that’s perfectly fine. But disagreeing with his actual argument is obviously different than isolating statements that are obviously intended to be part of a conditional argument and pretending they proclaim something other than the author intends, as Keith has been doing on a remarkable scale.
No one doing OOL research believe in the tornado in a junkyard scenario, so either Sewell is being disingenuous, or he is abysmally ignorant of both OOL and evolution.
So which is it? He does not understand biology and chemistry, or he consciously lies?
Wow. HeKS actually has sunk lower.
He’s staring right at a quote that shows he’s been wrong about Sewell the entire time, and that his accusations against me are false, so what does he do?
He doubles down:
HeKS,
By what convoluted, HeKSish interpretation can the following sentence not mean what it plainly says?
Sewell is not willing to argue that the influx of solar energy into the Earth makes the appearance of spaceships, computers and the Internet not extremely improbable. Therefore, according to Sewell, he has to conclude that the second law has in fact been violated here. Not hypothetically, but in fact.
HeKS,
I’ve read Sewell’s paper and he doesn’t argue that. He certainly doesn’t define “organization” with any mathematical rigor, nor does he demonstrate that whatever he means by “organization” cannot occur by natural means.
As Mike Elzinga demonstrated in an earlier thread, Sewell’s “x-entropies” fail a simple dimensional analysis that any undergraduate engineering student is able to perform. While Sewell might be a decent mathematician, his thermodynamics knowledge is demonstrably lacking.
You are repeated Sewell’s non sequitur. No one is claiming that energy from the Sun makes certain results more likely. The only argument being addressed is the creationist assertion that evolution violates the second law of thermodynamics. No known evolutionary mechanisms do so.
When I was taking high school algebra, being a “decent mathematician” implied being able to solve word problems.
Hi Patrick,
I said:
And you said:
This is the type of thing I’m referring to (taken from his ENV article on the subject):
As you can see, Sewell has indeed argued that there is a more generalized formulation/application of the second law that is otherwise pretty widely recognized.
You said:
That may or may not be true, but it’s not the topic of discussion here. The question is whether or not Sewell has claimed that the origin and development of life on this planet has actually constituted a violation of the second law even if it came about by means of the intentional infusion of information and order into the system. Keith has been swearing up and down that Sewell has claimed this, but he has continued to produce isolated sentences from Sewell that quite obviously don’t mean that in their proper context. For example, in his latest attempt he has reproduced this snippet from the abstract of Sewell’s paper:
It should be obvious to any person reading in good faith (not to mention context) that this statement is to be understood in the context of a conditional claim relating to the means by which someone thinks things happened, and in the specific context of the compensation argument at that. Thus, if one were to argue (as in the examples Sewell provides) that the spontaneous assemblage and appearance of these things doesn’t violate the second law because the earth is an open system that receives energy from the sun and because a compensatory increase in entropy occurs elsewhere but they were not willing to argue that the sun’s energy makes the appearance of these things more probable, then we would, in that case, have to conclude that the second law actually had been violated and that the open system / compensation argument is wrong. There is simply no question here that Sewell is to be understood as referring to a scenario in which these kinds of things assemble and appear spontaneously, as a result of natural forces, as opposed to through the infusion of ordering information. In fact, we can look at the intro to his ENV article and notice the similarity between this intro and the snippet quoted by Keith from his abstract:
And if we return to the abstract itself to include the sentences leading up to Keith’s isolated sentence we see this:
Sewell ultimately thinks that X-order and information were imported through the boundary, which did make the outcomes “not extremely improbable”, and that is why the second law was not actually violated on his view.
I mean, seriously, grasping this aspect of Sewell’s argument is not at all difficult. It is absurdly easy to understand what he’s saying on this point, and the discussion with Keith about Sewell’s meaning has become utterly ridiculous. The entire article that Keith has quoted from (“A second look at the second law”) deals with the context of highly improbable but simply/macroscopically describable events and arrangements ultimately coming about as a result of only the interaction of the four forces of physics. In it Sewell says:
It simply couldn’t be more obvious that Keith is wrong here, and yet, he’s spent so much time ridiculing me and accusing me of being dishonest for not sharing his silly error of reading comprehension that he can’t just admit the obvious fact that Sewell isn’t saying what he claims in these isolated quotes. Personally, I find it odd that nobody else here will tell him so. Instead, other people are chiming in that they think Sewell is wrong on this or that other point, but nobody will tell Keith that when it comes to the main issue under dispute here, his prooftexts simply don’t show what he says they do. I’m trying – somewhat imperfectly – to be as civil with him as I can, which is far, far more than he deserves in light of my overall experience with him here and at UD, but everyone seems content to sit by and watch him blatantly misrepresent the meaning of these quotes while he hurls his attacks at me for disagreeing with his obvious misreadings.
Finally, I said:
And you responsed:
Sewell is acknowledging that people are not specifically arguing that the sun’s energy makes the outcomes more probable. That is part of his point, because in spite of that fact, they are still arguing that the ability of the sun’s energy to enter the system is the reason that the decrease in x-entropy and increase in order by means of purely natural forces is not a violation of the second law. Sewell cites Asimov, Peter Urone, Dawkins, and “many others” as examples, providing quotes from the first two. For a more recent example see Bill Nye in the Q&A portion of his debate with Ken Ham (2:14:50 into the video). What Sewell is here pointing out is simply that the open system / compensation argument is itself illogical, unless someone wants to try to argue that the sun’s energy does make these outcomes more probable, which nobody really wants to attempt. But through all of this, Sewell is only ever suggesting that the second law (in its generalized form) seems to have been violated if we take the position that certain things were happening purely as a result of the interaction of chance and natural forces rather than by means of order and information being intentionally imported into the system across the boundary. If Keith wants to find some other quote from some other source that shows Sewell thinks the second law has been violated, period, regardless of the method by which the x-entropy has decreased, he is free to do so, but the fact remains that his reading of Sewell’s meaning is not a reasonable interpretation of any of the sources he’s provided up to this point.
HeKS,
You’re trying to tell us that when Sewell wrote this:
…he actually meant this:
Do you really believe that anyone reading this thread is stupid enough to buy that?
Or that you can spin your egregious mistake away if you just produce enough 1500-word comments?
Yes. The sun’s energy makes these events more probable.
Let me restate the obvious.
Sewell:
The form of this sentence is:
Where
A = “We are willing to argue that the influx of solar energy into the Earth makes the appearance of spaceships, computers and the Internet not extremely improbable.”
and
B = “we have to conclude that the second law has in fact been violated here.”
Sewell rejects A. He is not willing to make that argument. Therefore he affirms B. Unless A, then B.
Therefore, according to Sewell, “we have to conclude that the second law has in fact been violated here.”
HeKS is denying the obvious and dishonestly smearing other people in the process.
But Sewell is also just wrong. The temperature and energy gradient produced by the sun make life chemistry on the surface of the earth. Possible is more probable than impossible. The implied denia of evolution is just incredulity.
Keith,
You don’t seem to understand that it doesn’t matter how many different ways you try to rationalize your interpretation of these isolated sentences, because even a cursory consideration of the immediate context in which they’re found – not to mention a non-cursory consideration of the articles in their totality – show that your interpretation is not just wrong, but obviously wrong.
petrushka,
Look at Sewell’s actual wording that I quoted, as opposed to my rough paraphrase (which was intended to convey the same meaning as Sewell’s more specific claim):
To say that the presence of energy from the sun makes the mere existence of life possible instead of impossible does nothing to argue that the energy from the sun makes extremely improbable increases in order not extremely improbable. As Patrick pointed out, nobody argues this, because it is obviously not true. In order for the presence of energy to make otherwise extremely improbable outcomes not extremely improbable, there must be some kind of device, machine, mechanism, etc. (which would include agency) present that can use the available energy to do work that is relevant to making the outcome not extremely improbable, which requires a correspondingly suitable amount of preexisting information.
Also, petrushka, even if you think Sewell is ultimately wrong about all this stuff, that doesn’t change the fact that he doesn’t make the claim that Keith says he does in any of the articles that Keith has cited.
HeKS,
You got your ass handed to you. Get over it.
Show a shred of integrity, admit your mistake, and retract your false accusations.
If Sewell is not making a 2LOT argument, he is being dishonest for associating established and rigorous science with his bullshit rsmblings. The fact that his argument can be read so many ways just means it is incoherent. Unless he has Gary Gaulin disease, I’m betting the incoherence is deliberate.
He wants it both ways. The prestige of a 2LOT argument, plus deniability. That’s really low. An honest perdon would not mention 2LOT, since it is irrelevant.
Keith, you must be living in a fantasy world. What has been shown is that you either have incredibly poor reading comprehension or you simply don’t care about the truth and will stop at nothing to push your agenda. You have no integrity, you don’t even understand your mistakes, and you contribute nothing to a discussion except for false accusations. I honestly don’t know why anybody here puts up with you. A few rounds of being subjected to your foolishness would cause just about anybody to write-off this site as a waste of time. And your compatriots should take that fact to heart.
petrushka,
Nobody said he’s not making a 2LOT argument, and that argument cannot be read in so many ways. It’s not even a particularly complicated argument. But the issue here is not whether or not Sewell or his argument is ultimately right, or even what the argument itself is, but whether Sewell’s conclusion is what Keith claims, namely, that the 2LOT has actually been violated on earth even under the view that the origin and development of life is the result of a designer intentionally importing information across the boundary to make the ordered outcome not extremely improbable. Any honest reading of the articles by someone with basic reading comprehension can see that this is not what Sewell is saying. Keith, on the other hand, cannot see this. Make of that what you will.
HeKS,
It’s all about protecting and advancing the narrative. I hope you realize that. Good job, btw. At least you cleared some things up for me about Sewell’s argument.
No argument or evidence can hope to change a mind where bare possibility is the only criteria required to maintain ones faith.
It’s been hilarious watching HeKS try to spin these Sewell quotes, so let’s give him another one to chew on:
I wish I could see HeKS’s face. 🙂
There is no logic and no theory behind 2LOT. It’s just a formula backed by observations.
Keith said:
Well, it’s pretty easy to imagine. Just picture me rolling my eyes.
After all this time you’ve managed to find …. a case where Sewell explicitly says what I’ve been telling you he means all along. Do you ever actually bother to read anything you quote, Keith? For example, did you bother to read, say, the abstract? Here it is:
Now, Keith, ask yourself this question: Does Sewell think that the origin and development of life came about purely by natural forces? Well, since you obviously can’t be trusted to understand even the simplest of things, let me just quote Sewell from the same paper:
Yet again, the entire article is predicated on the conditional that the second law seems to have been violated IF we accept that the origin and development of life came about purely by natural forces. The argument is the same across all these articles and the combination of your quote-mining and poor reading comprehension won’t change the argument or the meaning of Sewell’s conclusion no matter how much you want it to.
I’m done trying to help you with your reading deficiencies, Keith. All that really remains to be seen is whether any of your TSZ fellow travelers will speak up and acknowledge the painfully clear fact that you’ve been obviously wrong about this from the start and have been hurling baseless attacks at me for refusing to give in to your foolishness.
HeKS
Nothing in biology including evolution violates 2LOT. It’s really that simple. Sewell is either dishonest or or an idiot. Either way, his writing on the subject is rubbish.
Look at what you’ve written. If complex stuff comes about by natural means, 2LOT has been violated. That’s the argument, and it’s rubbish. It demonstrates an almost incomprehensible level of ignorance.
petrushka,
Nothing in biology has violated 2LOT. It does not logically follow, however, that no proposed explanation of what has happened in biology could require the violation of 2LOT (or some more generalized formulation of it that applies to “the distribution of any … diffusing component”) in order to be true.
Of course, whether or not any particular explanation that has been proposed would require that is a different issue than the main point that has been under dispute here (and which you have studiously avoided), which is whether or not Sewell has claimed that 2LOT has been violated on his view of how life originated and developed (i.e. on an ID view). Keith insists he has. The obvious fact, however, is that he hasn’t. At least not in any article that Keith has quote-mined thus far.
I also note that you’ve oversimplified Sewell’s argument to call it rubbish, but that’s not the primary issue I’ve been addressing, so I’m not going to bother correcting your summary of the argument.
I don’t think I can agree with that.
It comes from an analysis of theoretical heat engines, such as the Carnot engine. It is additionally supported by observation, but there is a theoretical basis.
Yup, that certainly seems to be the case.
I’m not convinced that some of the people here who mercilessly attack Sewell and his argument have actually bothered to read and understand the structure of his argument in the first place (in fact, in recent weeks I’ve come to notice that some people here seem to have an incredibly hard time understanding and processing the meaning of conditional arguments in general). My lack of expertise in the relevant fields make me refrain from proclaiming Sewell is correct when it comes to his formulas and things of that nature, but if that aspect of his argument ultimately proves sound then the actual logic of the argument itself seems quite reasonable. And yet, I hasten to repeat that the correctness of his argument is not the issue I’ve been debating here, but only the meaning of certain statements he has made that have been taken out of context and misrepresented here by Keith.
Indeed.
Man, this is funny.
It’s a good thing we have HeKS here to translate Sewellese for us.
Sewell:
HeKS:
Sewell:
HeKS:
Sewell:
HeKS:
Sewell:
HeKS:
Sewell:
HeKS:
It seems that Sewell has a unique inability to use the subjunctive mood when it is needed. Luckily, HeKS is available to correct Sewell for us.
Oh, wait — no, Sewell uses the subjunctive all the time in his writing, just like a normal English speaker. I guess the only time he forgets to use the subjunctive is when what he’s saying just happens to contradict what HeKS wants him to say. What an interesting coincidence.
And on every one of those occasions, he also just happens to forget to add the qualifier: if it had come about via unguided natural forces. Another amazing coincidence!
HeKS, to keiths:
LOL. Anyone have a mirror HeKS can borrow?
You’re the best, HeKS.
Keith, you’re like a bad joke with a never-ending punchline. Sewell says what he means and I keep pointing you to what he has said in its proper context. In each article he makes clear the conditional scenario upon which the entire article is predicated. You ignore this and then quote-mine him in an attempt to prove that he says something other than what he obviously means based on the context he lays out in the article. And when your silly errors are pointed out to you you simply ignore the obvious context and try to argue by implication that he needs to reiterate the conditional nature of his argument (and reflect it in his grammar) every time he writes a sentence that an utterly careless reader like yourself might (intentionally) misconstrue to be meant in an absolute rather than in a conditional sense. It’s all rather pathetic.
One of the many things you don’t seem to understand here, Keith, is that I have nothing invested in whether or not this or that ID proponent happens to claim that the second law really has been broken. If Sewell actually said that, I would simply disagree with him and move on. What I care about is your systematic attempts to misrepresent his words by divorcing them from their context. And, in fact, based on my experience of your behavior, misrepresenting people’s words and arguments seems to be your primary reason for participating in debates.
And of course HeKS is still ignoring the fact — as I am now explaining for the fourth time in this thread — that the second law does not have an “if unguided” clause.
Violations of the second law are violations of the second law, whether or not guidance is involved. Otherwise humans could violate the second law at will.
The second law says that uncompensated local entropy decreases are impossible. No exceptions are made for guidance.
If an unguided natural process creates an uncompensated local entropy decrease, it has violated the second law.
If a chipmunk creates an uncompensated local entropy decrease, it has violated the second law.
If a human creates an uncompensated local entropy decrease, he or she has violated the second law.
If God creates an uncompensated local entropy decrease, he/she/it has violated the second law.
Granville, despite his limitations, apparently understands this better than HeKS. He says that the second law has been violated, not that it would have been violated, and he does so on at least five separate occasions.
To argue that he misspoke all five times, as HeKS does, is beyond ridiculous.
The only sensible conclusion — for someone who “reads with the intention of actually understanding”, anyway — is that Granville means what he says.
HeKS,
Are you kidding? You are completely invested in this emotionally.
It bugs the crap out of you that I’ve caught you in another mistake, and that people are laughing at your comical and dishonest attempts to deny the obvious.
No, Keith. You’re describing what you want to be the case. I’m not emotionally invested in this at all. I’m intellectually invested in making sure that Sewell’s words are not blatantly misrepresented by you. That’s it. That’s all. For goodness sake, I haven’t even been insisting that either his argument or his conclusion is ultimately right. I’ve only been arguing that it is not what you claim. That you would think I have some deep emotional investment in that just shows how delusional you are. I think the problem is that you’re simply incapable of wrapping your head around the idea that someone would take such a determined stand for no other reason than to ensure that someone’s arguments and words were not misrepresented. I’m sure that baffles you since you’ve shown consistently, across hundreds of comments, in almost every single post I’ve ever seen you make, that you don’t care at all about accurately representing the arguments made by people who disagree with you.
Further, you falsely claim that I’ve argued Sewell misspoke in these multiple cases that you’ve quote-mined, but anyone can see that I’ve done no such thing. Sewell did not misspeak in any of these instances. Rather, he simply spoke in the conditional context he had set up. He simply relied on honest readers paying attention to the context and structure of his argument so that he wouldn’t have to endlessly write awkward sentences reiterating the conditional nature of his claims. Your interpretation of his meaning based on the isolated sentences you’ve pointed to is entirely unwarranted based on the context and structure of his argument (which your last post shows you don’t even understand). Heck, even if it turned out that he actually personally believed that the second law really had been violated, that would still not be a warranted reading of the actual articles in question, because they simply do not make that claim when read in context.
I know you love to think that I’m sitting here feeling bad, or embarrassed, or emotionally invested in what Sewell personally believes, or whatever other awkward emotions you like to attribute to me in your fever dreams, but that is nothing more than a fantasy on your part, Keith. The only ’emotion’ you invoke in me is intellectual disgust, if that can even be called an emotion. You haven’t caught me in any mistake, much less in another mistake, but if I actually thought you did I would simply thank you for pointing out the inaccuracy. It would serve you well to realize that not everyone is arguing from the same emotional motives that you clearly are.
HeKS,
Since you’re clearly going to continue denying your mistake, no matter how obvious it is to everyone, let’s at least see if we can educate you a bit in this thread.
Do you understand this, from my earlier comment?
There is no “unless guided” clause, and certainly no “unless supernaturally guided” clause. Do you understand this?
Then you’ve been wasting your time basically. People are wrong on the internet all the time, are you going to correct them all?
For all your protestations of limited time, and you waste it like this?
I have to wonder why you don’t get the same feeling from UD and all the strawmen that are built and destroyed there daily. Are you happy that KF makes claims there are metrics that *prove* ID in the design of life but never seems to actually use them? You must be as I’ve never seen you take him to task in the say way you are doing with Keith here.
Then why not actually try listening to experts and what they seem to be telling you? Then perhaps you’d not waste so many words defending the indefensible.
Theres a simple sanity test for Sewell’s intended meaning. Ask yourself why he mentions the second law at all.why would he bring it up if he doesn’t think it has been brokent?
Then ask — since neither humans nor animals can violate 2LOT — even when designing, how has it been violated and by whom.
Then ask exactly what chemical reaction required for life or for evolution violates 2LOT. Point to an instance.
HeKS,
I’m glad to see you continuing the conversation. I hope you’re successful in convincing some other ID proponents to visit here. I know how hard it is to address multiple people when you’re the only one holding a particular view.
Back to Sewell:
Here Sewell is simply wrong. The second law is about thermodynamics. I don’t have a Ph.D. like some commmenters here, but I do have a degree in chemical engineering. I am confident that Sewell is incorrect here.
Here again, Sewell is simply wrong. Mike Elzinga demonstrated that Sewell’s “X-entropies” fail simple dimensional analysis. His equations are literally nonsensical.
This means that your statement:
is unsupported. Nonsense is not an argument.
Do you get that Sewell’s argument is not that local entropy decreases don’t need to be compensated? Sewell’s argument is not, “Hey everyone, local entropy decreases don’t need to be compensated cause, like, God.”
His criticism of the ‘open system / compensation’ argument has nothing to do with there being a lack of a need for compensation if design is involved.
There’s wrong … and then there’s Keith. My intellectual investment in issues like this sometimes stupidly makes me devote more time than I have to trying to correct or at least highlight particularly egregious examples of the sort of thing that Keith pulls as a matter of course.
You see, it’s one thing for someone to honestly misunderstand something and then unintentionally misrepresent it. It has happened to me a couple of times even though I’m a pretty careful reader who has spent a good portion of my adult life so far reading and interpreting policy and legal documents to simplify them for government employees. On the few occasions that it has happened it has been because I didn’t have access to some larger context, but when someone has pointed it out, I’ve simply apologized for the mistake and thanked them for directing my attention to it.
Keith is a completely different animal. I’ve watched him blatantly misrepresent what his intellectual opponents have written literally hundreds of times now. It is quite honestly like nothing I have ever seen in my life. And I don’t think he’s actually stupid, so it seems to be a rather obvious case of blatant intellectual dishonesty. I have a hard time just letting that stand when I see it. And particularly because nobody here seems willing to call him on it.
I don’t know whether KF is ultimately right or wrong with his particular implementation of the CSI concept. I think the logic of what he’s arguing seems to be correct as far as it goes, but I think there are likely some problems in trying to calculate it in practice, or at least outside of aspects of OOL scenarios, which would undercut the ability to use it actually prove things.
That said, if I see someone on the ID side make some claim or argument that I think is inaccurate or misleading I do and have said something about it if nobody is else beats me to it. I’ve also criticized pro-ID commenters for being overly harsh to anti-ID commenters when the response was unwarranted (in other words, behaving like Keith does here), which has made me unpopular with at least one or two people over there (though others have responded much more positively). I’ve also tried not to misrepresent the anti-ID, atheist, or whatever side of issues I’ve addressed and to deal with them fairly, as was recognized and commented on by at least one person who I believe is a member here. So I try my best to practice what I’m preaching.
Which experts would those be?
In any case, I don’t require such subject matter experts to tell me what Sewell’s argument actually is or the logical structure it takes or the contextual meaning of the conclusion he offers. That I’m perfectly capable of discerning and evaluating. And what I’m defending is simply an accurate reading of what that actually is. Sewell can defend the correctness of his argument or not, if the criticisms apparently offered here have even been brought to his attention. I don’t claim to be qualified to judge that. What I can do is defend an accurate interpretation of what the argument is for the sake of ensuring accuracy. And as far as I can tell, in spite of all his whining and accusations, Keith doesn’t seem to even actually understand the basic structure of the argument at all.