A TSZ member recently made this claim:
Sanford’s recent paper with Cordova was rejected by multiple venues for bogus reasons. Everyone agreed the science is solid, but made up reasons why the paper should not be accepted.
And then is asked:
Name the venues and give their reasons for the rejection.
I’ve actually been asking this for literally years over at UD, although not lately. The claim that papers are rejected not because of the science but instead because of some other reason is often made. But I’ve never seen any actual evidence of this. Has anyone?
In fact, it’s also the stated reason from some at UD as to why they don’t even attempt to formally publish their work, they know it would simply be rejected for ideological reasons only.
Yet despite many years of asking I have never once seen any evidence for this claim. So in this thread I’d like to see the paper that was submitted, the journal or other it was submitted to and the rejection itself.
If nobody can supply any such evidence then this OP can be used in rebuttal in the future when such claims are again made, as we all know they will be.
In that case your chance hypothesis is tied to your specification, and so your specification is not valid.
EricMH,
Non sequitur to hide heretical theology (or mangled philosophy of religion).
Go speak to a (new) priest & get your priority straightened out, EricMH. It also wouldn’t hurt to stop talking back to people who you don’t know more than simply because you’ve studied mathematics, computing & informatics.
God isn’t subservient to IDT, nor are the Lord’s secrets on sale for a bargain subscription to a mysterious right-wing think tank in Seattle. For those who have swallowed a propaganda IDT virus, they can be quite easily healed if properly treated. If IDT is really what EricMH seeks as a basis for his religious worldview, then indeed, IDism has already turned into the classic definition of a ‘cult’.
You misunderstand the causality. I am not seeking justification for a religious view. ID does not prove the existence of God.
EricMH:
That’s incorrect. The two specifications I use — “looks like a flower” and “looks like a checkerboard” — do not depend in any way on the XOR mask.
Allowing the specification to be changed is a problem for you. A big one.
In your example where you apply the XOR mask and get the flower image from the scrambled one, your specification is exactly matched to the mask you chose.
To make the specification independent, you’ll have to choose the descramble mask at random. In which case you won’t get the flower image back.
The two are indeed tied to each other, for a very simple reason. The specification is being in a set of genotypes that have very high fitnesses. What Holloway calls the “chance hypothesis” is ordinary evolutionary processes, and these include natural selection, which works by having differences in fitness affect the frequencies of different genotypes in the population. There is not much of a coincidence that fitnesses show up in both the processes and the specification!
When we look at simple population genetics models, we find that they show that it is not impossible for changes of genotype frequency to move populations from outside the set of high-fitness genotypes to inside that set. The connection between the mechanisms and that set, namely the fitnesses, is natural.
It is when we think that we have a Law of Conservation of Complex Specified Information that the issue comes up of whether the specification depends on the mechanisms that change the composition of the population. Dembski was the one who said that the specification needed to be independent of mechanisms of change. So the fact that these are not independent may be a problem for his proof, but it is not a problem for my population genetics example.
EricMH:
Again, no. The specification before descrambling is “looks like a checkerboard”, and the specification after descrambling is “looks like a flower.” Neither of those specifications refers to or “is exactly matched to” the XOR mask.
The XOR mask is chosen at random. It’s step 2:
Eric,
Also, you seem to have forgotten that it is your specification that ends up being matched to the XOR mask, not mine.
Your two specifications are “looks like a flower” and “looks like a flower after being XORed with mask X”.
Mine are “looks like a flower” and “looks like a checkerboard”.
Your second specification refers to the mask, and is therefore invalid by your own stipulation. Neither specification of mine refers to the mask.
At any rate you haven’t refuted Dembski’s conservation of information.
The second time it is used to descramble it is not chosen at random. You are choosing to apply just the right XOR mask to turn random noise in into a flower. So, the mask and flower are exactly matched.
Heh, no you just did. You unwittingly gave the reason why conservation of CSI cannot stop natural selection from enriching a population with genomes of high fitness; the evolutionary process is not blind to the specification of interest.
I agree with Corneel. Dembski’s Law of Conservation of Complex Specified Information, in any form that places a constraint on evolution, is totally refuted. Population genetics equations show that in lots of simple models of evolutionary change, the population can get farther and farther into the set of good genotypes that constitute the Specification. In all these cases the Specification does not change from one generation to the next, as is the case with Functional Information.
Any form of the LCCSI that is valid because it changes the specification in each generation does so by making use of the functions that describe the evolutionary changes to define the specifications. Those forms of the LCCSI do not in any way put any constraint or limit on evolution. (Note that I have not said that evolutionary processes are totally unconstrained, just that the LCCSI has nothing to do with the issue).
Dembski painted the picture that we had a criterion, Complex Specified Information. The criterion could be defined independently of any knowledge of the evolutionary processes. And when CSI was seen to be present, that meant that Design was extremely strongly supported. As far as I can see, nothing of that argument remains standing.
Oh yes, and there’s Peter Medawar’s “Law of Conservation of Information”. That is true but pretty trivial. It says that under 1-1 transformations of systems, no information gets lost. Which is pretty obvious because you can always go back to where you started, and then the information is still there.
Eric,
We’ve been over this already. My two specifications are “looks like a flower” and “looks like a checkerboard”. Neither one refers to the XOR mask.
So your complaint…
…is unjustified. My specifications are already independent of the XOR mask.
Please explain the refutation. So far you have not. LCI clearly constrains evolution, and any other natural process. The fact you don’t understand this suggests you don’t really understand Dembski’s argument.
Well, I’ve stated the same thing a couple times in a row, and you seem to have a problem reading what I wrote. But, at any rate, your example does not refute Dembski’s conservation of information.
What you and Felsenstein need to both do, if you really think you have a refutation, is to start with the fundamentals. First, list the mathematical definition of ASC. Then, carefully map each step of your counter example to the definition. At that point, the flaw in your reasoning will become apparent. But, you have got to do this homework yourself. I’ve given you enough hints. Until you do this, you do not have a refutation of Dembski’s argument.
The real fact is neither Dembski nor you understand evolutionary biology. You especially.
EricMH,
You misunderstand reality. It’s a condition called ‘expelled syndrome.’ You have brought it upon yourself in accepting IDist ideology, & promoting the DI’s attempts at turning IDism into a valid ‘strictly (natural) scientific’ theory cum worldview.
And no doubt the Roman Catholic Church is thankful you are not using or trying to use or thinking of trying to use ‘Intelligent Design’ theory to seek justification.
Yet you also wrote:
Again, please go talk with your priest about this. What you wrote is theologically unhinged & broken, at least the Catholicism that I’ve learned about within historical Christianity.
Uh, yeah. Really? Shocker there.
You are now communicating with someone who believes in what you believe ID doesn’t prove (but merely ‘infers’). So, why state the obvious? It’s hard to understand why you don’t get that you don’t need to repeat such trivial truths as that. Unfortunately for you, my words are devastating to the silly IDist ideology, using a basic appeals to logic and reason, as well as intuition and emotion as human beings that everyone can easily understand and apply in conversation and action.
It’s astonishing to me the fanaticism and stubbornness on display in EricMH’s words here. This includes talking down to his elders & wagging his design universalism as if taunting with condescension of a ‘higher intelligence’ coming from the IDM. It is perhaps even worse in-house when he does this looking down upon the ‘normal religious scientist’ who faithfully, cautiously, and resolutely rejects IDT.
So why continue to support Miller & West & co. at the DI with this divisive rhetoric in public? Do you misunderstand the causality of instigation, provocation & retaliation? If not, then why do you so easily in the DI’s unique case, seem to always condone it?
Gregory,
This is Demski’s argument Eric is defending not the DI’s. I see rhetorical claims of refutation but no real model that refutes it. Joes model of population genetics was challenged by gpuccio and Joe did not successfully respond to gpuccio’s single safe example which refuted the amount of FI Joe was claiming his model was injecting in the population.
Dawkins tried to show 90 bits of functional information being generated algorithmically. The problem is the model needed a target which included selection feedback. No one since has shown how real natural selection feedback can be effective in creating 90 bits of FI without a target sequence. Given the transition of invertebrates to vertebrates has been estimated by gpuccio to substantially greater than one thousand bits, don’t you see an issue for science here? Joe is claiming no limit to natural selection yet the claim is undefended in my opinion.
Let’s put the ideology of the DI to the side for the moment. Does Joe have a legitimate claim that he has refuted Demski’s claims?
It’s not necessary to refute something which was never demonstrated in the first place Bill. Dembski and ErinMH’s idiocy has nothing to do with actual evolutionary biology or genetics. Gpuccio’s nonsense is just as bad. Their claims are just as much a Creationist wet dream as your “magic mind POOF!” stupidity.
EricMH: This is frustrating, because in 2007 I wrote a long and careful article explaining Dembski’s argument in considerable detail, and showing why it does not work to constrain evolution. That included raising the issue of Dembski’s changing the specification, and also presenting a simple numerical example of gene frequency change at one DNA site, and showing that it altered the information. Dembski’s argument was dead in the water by that point. (In the same article, I also explained why Dembski’s No Free Lunch argument did not work, a fact that a number of other people had explained earlier in their own articles. There were also arguments refuting front-loading and the notion that smoothness of fitness surfaces required a Designer. So I covered many of the arguments that we have heard since.) Others here who read that article can comment on whether they found it clear. I thought it was indeed clear. I worked for months on it, very carefully. I’ve written two major textbooks in my field, and reviews usually seem to describe them as “clear”.
I will shortly put a post at Panda’s Thumb explaining why the ASC, whether conserved or not, does not constrain evolutionary change. At all, as far as I can tell.
I also have that 2012 gene frequency numerical example, showing that if one keeps the specification the same (set of high-fitness genotypes) natural selection can get one more and more specified information. You have yet to show how the “Law of Conservation of Information” prevents that from happening.
Anyway, which Law of Conservation of Information? Peter Medawar’s rather-trivial one? Dembski’s LCCSI of 2002? The notion that ASC is conserved? Or the laws involving “active information” that Marks and Dembski described, which have the interesting property of explicitly allowing differences of fitness to change genotype frequencies, without any intervention of the Designer needed, where they invoke the Designer only to set up those fitness surfaces?
A little detail and clarity would help. I’ve “busted a gut” trying to understand, clarify, and explain. Your turn.
Yes, he does. And you have shown you don’t understand these things, so I am not going to bend myself into a pretzel trying to make you understand. I am going to discuss these matters with EricMH where there is hope I can make some progress, one way or the other.
And it’s “Dembski”.
Here is why I do not take colewd’s arguments seriously. He reads my comments and then says:
whereas what I said, specifically, was
Joe Felsenstein,
‘Nuf said.
I think it’s you who needs to start with fundamentals. Everyone else is talking about CSI, and you keep responding with ASC.
1. Look up the definition of CSI in Dembski’s (2002) No Free Lunch: Why Specified Complexity Cannot Be Purchased without Information. (You have to get the definition from NFL because it was there that Dembski made the argument for the Law of Conservation of [Complex Specified] Information that everyone else is discussing here.)
2. Literally write down the definition of CSI, precisely as you see it in the book. Don’t just register in your mind your interpretation of what you see. That is, do not leave yourself latitude to turn the definition into what you think it ought to have been, or what you think Dembski must have meant. Just copy what Dembski actually wrote.
3. Next write the definition of ASC below the definition of CSI, and compare the two.
4. Ask yourself, “How did I get this so wrong?” Make an honest effort to learn about yourself, and contemplate how you might do better in the future.
Joe Felsenstein,
This is my mistake sorry.
I am still trying to figure out why the LCCSI is irrelevant. Can the definition be tweaked to make it relevant?
I read your paper this am it is articulate in most instances accept where you claim the LCCSI is irrelevant to whether natural selection can create information. I see you used Dawkins example.
From your paper.
Evidence does not require proof. This is the terrible position evolutionary biology is in. It has demanded that the theory is true unless the competing theory proves it false.
At this point I don’t know how close Demski is to making a reasonable proof against natural selection. Your arguments appear to be quibbling at this point but I remain open. Again you were challenged by gpuccio against your population genetic toy model of inserting information. You never dealt with his argument as far as I can tell.
Joe Felsenstein,
Here is a shot at the weakness of this argument. You are doing the same thing as Dawkins except instead of the weasel target you are starting with the flower. You need the original information to find the information.
The reversal of the genome required the original sequence to be part of the algorithm. Since the original information was part of the algorithm lunch was not free in your case. 🙂
So, sigh, what’s your version of events, where did the information come from in the first place?
Was it by any chance a mind?
Citation please.
Gpuccio refuses to argue in the realm of science. Prove me wrong, provide a citation that is not a link to UD for this ‘estimation’?
colewd,
Was the SPECIFIED information lost. The answer is no it simply was not visible until it is algorithmically re generated as a picture on the screen. Without starting from the original specified information the algorithm would not generate the rose.
OMagain,
Does it really matter where he argues or posts his information at this point? Evolutionary scientific papers alone have turned out to be a very poor source of information on their own.
At least guys like Joe Felsenstein are challenging their science against the design guys.
Let’s take the amino acid sequence of your favorite protein: Pre-mRNA-processing-splicing factor 8 (PRPF8). You know, the one that was preserved “through out all eukaryotic life”. Now scramble the sequence to generate a new protein and have it replace the original.
What are the chances it functions as well as, or better than, the original protein? Will the unfortunate owner of a genome coding for this novel protein still match the specification “has high fitness”?
Corneel,
Without smiley I can’t tell whether you are joking. Poe’s law and all that.
Corneel,
I am just equating your example with Joe’s argument. If the original specified information was preserved through algorithmic means the specified information was not lost. Your discussion with different then does argument.
It kinda does, yeah. It’s just more practical to have a definitive reference to a single argument. For example, can you link me to this estimate of increase in complexity you mention?
Yes, it was. Consider this: Puccio cannot unlock a safe by entering a scrambled code, even if he knows exactly how to transform it to the correct one. The scrambled code cannot perform the function of the original sequence, so the scrambling made it lose its specification.
Completely wrong. When there is a permutation of some image, and you need to reverse the permutation, what you need is a record of which pixel in the original was copied to which pixel in the permuted image. Then you can put everything back. But you don’t need to know what the original image was — just where each pixel went. So reversing the permutation does not have to have the original image in the algorithm. Not in any way.
keths has made a simpler version of my permutation argument here, involving and XOR mask which needs only to be applied twice to reverse itself. There it is even clearer that the algorithm does not need to contain a goal.
One might say that selection for fitness is the “algorithmic process” that brings about the “scrambled information” in the first place.
Corneel,
Joe Felsenstein,
You appear to be making a rhetorical argument at this point. The pixel information in Joes’ case is the specified information. The rose is just the image our eyes see. You started with the pixel specified information that looks like a rose to us, saved it, and brought it back. It took a mind, a body, and a computer to generate the rose originally that the algorithm recovered.
The real challenge here is generating information with selected random change. I now agree with Eric that Demski is on solid scientific and mathematical ground but I am still open to a real counter argument. I appreciate Joe posting his article. His challenges are very interesting.
If he wants to be taken seriously by science it does.
Right now he’s the co-ed Wiffle Ball team manager claiming his squad could beat the Washington Nationals in a baseball 7 game series. He can brag to his buddies at UD all he wants but until he gets off his ass and puts his words to the real test in the scientific community he’s just another mouthy wanna-be. Just like you Bill.
No, you’re not, as demonstrated here.
Nothing wrong with healthy optimism.
Why do you suppose Dembski as given up on it all then?
No, I am recycling arguments that you yourself have used previously, because all others you thoughtlessly dismiss. Puccio’s 150-digit safe code is like Joe’s string of pixels just a stand-in (dare I say a metaphor?) for the same thing: the ability of polymeric sequences to perform a biological function. You previously insisted that even the smallest change to the amino acid sequence of PRPF8 or to the beta chain of the F1 subunit of ATP synthase will make it stop working; only one code unlocks the safe, only one image looks like a zinnia. And now, just because it suits you, you turn 180 degrees and state that even the scrambled image still contains specified information. In metaphorical terms, you are arguing that even a scrambled PRP8 protein will function just fine.
And most importantly: it took a die-hard ID-creationist who associated the pattern of black-and-white dots with the contours of flowers he previously saw in real life. It is you that sees the flower, and it is you that puts the meaning into a square of mere black-and-white pixels. That is why when it gets scrambled it loses its specified information, for the simple reason that to you, it ceases to look like a flower.
Corneel,
If it is reversed to the original configuration it will function fine. Joes claim is that he can algorithmically generate information because he can reverse a process of scrambled bits to the original configuration. He can do this but it does not violate the no free lunch theorem as the information is already in the algorithm almost by definition.
His proof must isolate mind from the process. The original rose required a mind as part of the process. Joes reversible process does exist in the cell and its called DNA repair.
Demski’s and Eric’s challenge is the generation of de novo information.
First of all, it’s “Dembski”.
Second of all, I was not talking about “algorithmically generating information”. I was talking about the information becoming specified. You obviously do not understand that concept but persist in lecturing us about it. Also you drag in the no-free-lunch argument, which is a totally different one, and one utterly dead for at least the last 15 years.
My 2012 population genetics example, showing that information can become more and more specified by ordinary evolutionary processes, has no “mind” in it. Did you notice that, or not? It shows that none of these supposed Laws of Conservation of This and That seem to intervene to stop this happening.
Joe Felsenstein,
The issue is understanding what is the “specified information” and what is its origin. The specified information is the code that generates the rose in your example. You then make a statement that you have not changed the information because it is recoverable but in the scrambled state it cannot generate the rose. I would argue until you exercise the recovery process that specified information is lost.
The more important point is the recovery process is not possible without the pre existence of the original specified information.
I thought so also but now I think it may rise from the ashes. I re read your paper this am and I don’t think you properly addressed Dembski’s issue of smuggling. You appeared to smuggle in your example proof of natural selection.
Can you cite this paper? One thought is that because you start with a functioning group of animals you cannot isolate mind out of the equation.
Yes, that is your first thought, isn’t it. A totally useless thing to discuss.
The 2012 example is in my first post (not comment, post) here at TSZ. You can easily use the site to search for all my posts and find that. Plus, I have a link to it earlier in this thread.
Joe Felsenstein,
Gpuccio challenge this argument with the single safe vs 100 safe model. Do you remember his argument?
Do you claim that if fitness has increased that CSI has also increased?
Bill,
gpuccio did not have an argument; he had a failure to comprehend. He is insisting that the fitness surface is a spike function. Even you understood this failing, suggesting that any “lowlands” from whence the target was accessible should be included in the target for any of his improbability calculations.
gpuccio’s response: “prove to me that slopes exist!”
It is sad.
No. Because CSI denotes a certain amount of Specified Information. CSI cannot increase. It is like when we’re climbing mountains, our altitude can increase, but “10,000 feet” cannot increase.
Yes, of course I remember gpuccio’s example. And I have talked about it here as thoroughly as it is relevant. Namely, not.
But I want to concentrate on your brilliant point about “mind”:
What a thorough refutation of my argument! We were all considering what evolution could do in a population of organisms, and whether we could show that the Law of Conservation of This and That prevented CSI from arising in the population. But you noticed that we had already assumed that there was a population of organisms. And therefore that “mind” was involved.
That seems to solve the problem, validating Dembski’s argument doesn’t it? But it leaves us puzzled as to why he needed to write a book hundreds of pages long — because all he needed to do was to point out that a population of organisms was actually a population of organisms.