Sometimes very active discussions about peripheral issues overwhelm a thread, so this is a permanent home for those conversations.
The Skeptical Zone
"I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, think it possible that you may be mistaken."
Sometimes very active discussions about peripheral issues overwhelm a thread, so this is a permanent home for those conversations.
Joe,
So let me get this straight. You respond to my challenge that you should make your case by saying that you’ve already made it but won’t tell me how I can get to that or any search terms that’ll allow me to find it?
How very strange.
I wonder what inferences the rest of the UD crew will draw from this strange turn of events.
it’s ok Joe, I found it!
http://intelligentreasoning.blogspot.co.uk/2012/06/what-is-pornography.html
but I’m afraid that the image link is broken. Perhaps you could reedit the post so your friends at UD can see exactly what it is that you claim caused you to be unfairly banniated?
Those in need of a bit of a giggle should follow the “Cupcaek Incident” described at AtBC in the “Joe’s Tardgasm” thread, where Joe was caught out editing an old post of his own at his blog in order to supply false evidence for a claim he had made but couldn’t otherwise support. The fact that the claim itself was absolutely trivial merely adds to the wonderment.
I honestly couldn’t care less about Joe’s link except for a) the fact that I don’t want NSFW links on this blog (not fair on other posters) and b) the fact that he is lying about why he was banned.
And I only care about that because I want to be really clear that people are not banned from this site for posting opinions (or even insults, although they may find them moved to Guano). Only for posting stuff that makes the safe unsafe for other users, e.g. leaving porn links in their browsing history.
Sorry, I’m partly to blame for Joe’s recent foul mood. No one, not even Joe, honestly believes that the statue of David and what he posted are equivalent. He just likes to argue. Unfortunately, he’s not very good at it.
Yeah, I know. I just want to make it absolutely clear to his co-posters at UD that what he posted was something that would be unacceptable pretty well any discussion forum, whatever he says to the contrary. My tolerance is pretty high, but I’m not putting other people’s computers at risk. No-one wants mucky links in their browsing history, at least not without due warning, which he didn’t give.
OMagain,
The link is broken, but it contains the filename of the image, and the filename is more indicative and disturbing than any image could be.
the filename reveals a lot about Joe’s personal view of women and it also reveals his intention in posting it.
Now Kariosfocus, Behe, Dembsky and the rest of his friends at UD will forever be linked in google searches to Joe’s misogyny.
petrushka,
And yet KF continually makes a big deal about people commenting on UD who don’t constantly police everybody else on the other boards they might post on, basically making them responsible for other peoples behavior.
Perhaps it’s a case of selective hyper-doublestandards.
Ending this. but Joe seyz:
But that’s what this is all about Joe. If you won’t honestly deal with or represent your own actions (especially when they are on the record for all to see on the interwebz) how can anybody expect you to represent your opponents view accurately?
A dishonest player does not become honest just because they start playing a different game. You’ll find that few will want to play any game with you at all once your reputation spreads.
I mean, just look at how many people at UD actually talk to you Joe, other then to tell you off. Support group much? No so much.
So you made that breakfast, bed etc. Eat it up. lie in it. rub ticks on watermelons for all I care.
But consider this. How good will ‘all this’ make KF feel I wonder? 🙂 I bet thousands, well hundreds, well dozens, well tens, well one or two people might have clicked that link and found out a little bit more about you then you are willing to show at UD. So good luck with that. hope it works out well.
Sometimes Joe links to posts here, but not when he’s cherrypicking soundbites. Sad.
Didn’t want to derail that thread too much. Over at the Barry Arrington/Phineus thread Robin says:
Yes. And “civility” is a weapon of the culturally-dominant and privileged majority in our larger society – the Christian theocrats everywhere in the US, such as those who refuse to allow the word “uterus” spoken in the state legislature, even when the subject under discussion is a proposed bill affecting women’s reproductive health. But “uterus” is such a rude word, so inflammatory, so uncivil, don’t you know!
So it’s no surprise, following the examples of their right-wing masters, that the privileged christians at internet sites like UD use the same tactic of suppression in the name of “civility”. What’s different there is that practicing scientists, free thinkers, and agnostic/atheists – groups that have always been in the minority of society – are the new target of sanctions against “incivility” (compared to the historical targets of blacks, women, and LBGT folk peacefully attempting to secure their civil rights).
Of course I’m for civility in general. Everyone’s experience is better when we can restrain ourselves from unreasonable name-calling and slurs. I think Lizzie’s site has perfect moderation to achieve that goal – yes, truly, I mean perfect.
Lizzie isn’t using accusations of “incivility” as a tool with which to silence those whose voices were already in the minority. BIG difference!
hotshoe,
I’m particularly sensitive to charges of incivility because at sites like UD it’s always been a prelude to banning.
Banning is the only real form of bullying. Mere rudeness with no actual threat attached speaks for itself.
It’s also a classic propaganda strategy. “Hey, we’re just upholding civility! If we don’t, those folks will lead us into anarchy and chaos!” And so on. Most people like the implication of civility. The problem arises when you come to realize that enforcing civility is just putting lipstick on oppression.
Robin,
Yes, lipstick on oppression. That’s what I picked up in the tone of your original comment on the other thread.
Contra what Petrushka just said. While banning is the predictable result for sites like ID, banning is not what I see is wrong about pretenses toward civility.
As you say, enforcing civility is (or at least can be) damaging in itself, being propaganda that devalues the voices of the “uncivil”, while those so-called uncivil folks are already the ones who are oppressed by a particular system. The damage doesn’t have to result in banning (on internet sites) or job discrimination, arrests, etc (in society at large) to be witnessed as damage.
Used to be lynching was one of the possible results of “incivility” by black men, so I guess we’re making progress if the damage the christians can inflict is no longer lethal.
True that Hotshoe.
Hey Petruska – Joe called you a name: Rub-tey!
Ok, I’m kidding, but his retort of your observation is nontheless funny:
hotshoe,
Couldn’t resist. It’s the season for Python.
Robin,
Joe couldn’t name a Nobel winning biochemist who works on OOL if his life depended on it.
petrushka,
Hee hee. Took me a moment to get the reference, then I literally laughed out loud. Thanks for the cheering-up moment!
Joe responds:
BWAAHAHHAAHAAA
De Duve :
Nobel Prize? Check.
OOL work? Not so much.
Orgel:
OOL work? Check.
Nobel Prize? Err, no.
That’s 0 for 2.
Further proof (not that it’s needed) that Joe doesn’t know JACK.
Okay, so I felt a little guilty characterizing de Duve’s musings on OOL as not work, but Joe just keeps digging.
He now realizes that Orgel never won a Nobel [waves cheerily], so he correctly names Urey (I suspect that he has heard many times about the limitations of Miller-Urey), but also names Sanger and Monod. Huh?
Now batting 1 for 5.
Joe still doesn’t know JACK, but maintains that “There isn’t anyone’s work that is dismissed out-of-hand.”
Okey-dokey.
Joe – unlike most vintage wines – just gets funnier with age. 🙂
Granville Sewell is still sulking, but he still hasn’t learned anything. He appears to be in an infinite loop; and the comments are turned off.
This is what he still thinks.
Why not pick up a good physics text on thermodynamics and statistical mechanics and actually learn the stuff? How can the math be over his head?
Sulking?
My description would be wearing his martyr complex on his lapel.
Granville Sewell is behaving like a selfish child having a tantrum because he could not get his way.
Given where he constantly posts his kvetching, I suspect your assessment may be more accurate than mine.
Mike Elzinga,
It’s not the math Granville is having trouble with. It’s the physics.
This is what I secretly believe? That man-made artefacts are the result of spontaneous organisation?. Or of NS and random mutation selecting for those particular artefacts?
What about beaver dams and caddis-fly larva tubes? Or rabbit burrows? Or nests? Or … do I believe that they are spontaneously organised too?
Actually he isn’t having trouble with the thermoodynamics or the physics — he’s left out lots of biology. Actually we do believe that with natural selection and random mutation (and other evolutionary forces) that the process starts with atoms and ends with computers, and that it’s not incredibly improbable. He’s just left out
* Chemical compounds
* All kinds of complexes of chemicals pre-origin-of-life
* Cells
* Multicellular organisms
* Bilateral symmetry
* Nervous systems
* Sensory organs
* Vertebrae
* Limbs
* Warmbloodedness
* Hands
* big brains
* agriculture
* societies
* industry
* electronics
… and then you can get computers.
So he’s right, we do say that it is not-incredibly-improbable to go from atoms to computers, given input of solar energy. It’s just that he has left out any mention of other things that happen along the way. In short, his description is pure propaganda, and deeply misleading in that it quite-deliberately makes evolutionary biology appear to be advocating the tornado-in-a-junkyard.
That’s certainly obvious.
I was just browsing through some of the entropy and the second law stuff over at UD. It is just amazing how far off track they are over there; and damned snooty about it as well. They believe they really know.
It has to be a cultural effect. They spend all of their time reinforcing and elaborating their misconceptions; and they appear to really believe they know more about physics than the entire physics community.
I don’t know if Sewell has ever really studied a physics text; but if he ever does, I would hazard a guess that by the time the words and equations got through his cultural filter, he would very likely conclude that the textbook simply reaffirms what he already believes.
Joe Felsenstein,
Once one has ruled out evolution then evolution becomes impossible.
I wonder if he could do that little high school physics/chemistry scaling-up exercise. As you point out, he leaves out so much; and a lot of it is material learned in high school.
One then has to wonder just where his science education goes off the rails. Middle school, perhaps? Elementary school?
After something like 50 years of watching this ID/creationist stuff, I am still amazed at how little science they know. And their political operatives want everyone else to be just as ignorant.
Mike Elzinga,
Sewell is a different case, though, since as a mathematician he’s supposed to know some physics and maybe even a little bit of biology (say what photosynthesis is). His mathematical credentials get invoked, so one expects at least a little scientitic knowledge.
Yes, one would think so.
Granville Sewell makes this comment back when he was being challenged by Sal Cordova.
I don’t know what to make of “always in private of course.” And what of the engineering professor who called it “a really highly significant piece of work” but never to quote him by name (exclamation point)?
It’s all a bit weird. Sewell claims to have done joint work with engineers and physicists. I can understand an engineer not knowing some of the more subtle ideas about entropy and the second law; most engineering problems don’t get into those issues. But I can’t understand why Sewell would not have consulted some physicists. He claims that he has been arguing this for eleven years. Did he ever ask a physicist? If he did, what was he told?
And during that whole argument with Sal Cordova over at UD, not one of those people looked at Sal’s reference to the concept test; or if they did, didn’t get the point. Looking through the responses by kairosfocus and others, I see nothing but a blizzard of copy/paste without comprehension.
Fifty years of ID/creationism has produced an “alternative world view” built on a cargo cult science. Much of it started out as taunting by Henry Morris and Duane Gish in order to lure scientists into public debates. But these were YEC’s who were bending and breaking science to comport with biblical literalism. All the misconceptions and misrepresentations were put in place in the 1970s and simply carried over to atoms and molecules when “scientific” creationism morphed into ID.
The current generation of ID/creationists is made up of people who really believe that these caricatures are real science. They have seen nothing else and don’t know the origin of these caricatures and misconceptions. Some of them don’t like YECs – and YEC’s don’t like them – but ID people would be horrified to find out that they are eating YEC meat.
Mike Elzinga (and others),
Mike, I think Sewell is shifting his ground. Earlier he had this “X-entropy” argument, with equations, which he seemed to think showed that distributions of each element (say carbon) would get more and more dispersed. There were assertions that he had his units wrong in this argument. He also, obviously, ignored the fact that elements interact with other elements and form chemical compounds, so you could not discuss distributions of the elements in isolation.
I made several posts at PT arguing that he was, in his entropy argument, saying that “all that we see entering [the biosphere] is radiation and a few meteorite framents”. Folks more knowledgeable than I quiety said to me in email that I was misreading Sewell’s argument, that he was using the “X-entropies” and not talking about energy.
Now, however, he seems to have changed his tune and yes, he is talking about energy, and he even seems to be responding to some of the criticisms about the way he [mis-]handled energy coming from the sun.
Am I misreading what is and what was his argument? (Of course he is extremely unspecific about what it means for evolution, too).
I think solar energy flux can be a bit of a red herring anyway. For sure, it is what powers us and our vehicles, for instance, and helps keeps us in a balmy liquid-water zone, but there is sufficient free energy right here on earth to power a carbon-based ecosystem, and quite likely the earliest ecosystems gained NO convertible input from the sun. Early life is very unlikely to have had the capacity (or the UV resistance) to harvest energy from sunlight.
Ocean vents harbour rich ecosystems based entirely upon the energy conversion of chemotrophs, passing electrons down thermodynamic gradients from inorganic donors to inorganic acceptors, and using the energy to build carbon compounds which others then eat. Barely a joule comes into these systems from the sun, other than a bit of heat – even most of that comes from within, by radioactive decay, another process that doesn’t disobey the 2nd Law.
I think I’ve discovered a trick in using this forum. If you want to reply to a post and have your comment appear indented below the post, you click the small black reply button.
Sometimes this button doesn’t appear. In such cases I click the blue reply button, which builds a response stub and opens the response box. Then I scroll back up to the comment I’m responding and Lo, the black button appears. I click it and now my response will be indented below the comment.
Hi Joe,
Here are links to my technical dissection of Sewell’s AML paper:
Monkey See, Monkey Do, an overview.
Part I. Monkey See, in which we will follow Sewell’s manipulations of heat, heat current, and temperature.
Part II. Monkey Do, in which Sewell “generalizes” thermal entropy.
Part III. Importer-exporter, in which Sewell smuggles order across the boundary.
Part IV. Is entropy imported and exported? A crucial sleight of hand.
And here is a non-technical summary
Sewell has retained a set of confusions that were rampant in the 1980s; confusions that were kept alive in the public mind primarily by the “scientific” creationists.
He says:
I am familiar with Ford’s book; I once considered it for one of my courses for non-majors. I also have on my shelf a couple of other books that use “disorder” as a metaphor for entropy. There were a number of authors who were a bit sloppy in texts for the non-major.
Taking another statement from that same thread by Sewell, we find this:
There can’t be a clearer statement of Sewell’s misconceptions and confusions than in the first sentence of that paragraph. If there were no second law, matter simply could not condense. Compounds, liquids, solids, and all the complex molecules of life couldn’t exist. Stars couldn’t exist; there would be no periodic table of elements.
And as to Styer’s and Bunn’s papers, neither of them ever advocated that life represented a decrease in entropy. They simply turned the tables on ID/creationists by showing that even if the decrease in entropy were true –which it is not – then there is still a much larger increase in entropy of the universe.
In fact, in his paper “Entropy and Evolution”, Am. J. Phys. 76 _11_, November 2008, Styer deals explicitly with ID/creationist misconceptions and misrepresentations about order; and he then adds this parenthetical remark in the introduction:
Furthermore – and in the introduction – Styer lays out explicitly what he is doing.
What Sewell and everyone else over at UD don’t get is that we in the physics community don’t use the word “compensation” the way they think we do. In fact, I have rarely heard entropy discussed in that way because it has no physical meaning. It is misleading.
And one doesn’t have to use living organisms as an example of a system with decreasing entropy. The entire Earth is a condensation of matter into solids and liquids. Energy has to be released in order for that to happen. It happens whenever any form of matter condenses. The second law is required.
Whatever UD has become, it certainly is a place where cargo cult science it kept alive and nurtured. This is the stuff that gets fed to the political operatives of the far right and convinces a gullible subset of the public that scientists are covering up something.
But ID/creationism is junk science to its very core. It’s not just about biology. All that stuff about complex specified information and all the other forms of information start with the tornado-in-the-junkyard metaphor. And that metaphor is dead wrong.
Sewell just doesn’t listen.
4 comments above, KF:
He reminds me of Brando in the Godfather, motioning a lackey to his ear.
He doesn’t know we are, but we probably are, and if we were it would be typical. Why not have a read for yourself, KF? KF? Oh, you’ve cocked a deaf ‘un again.
Joe chimes in:
I think this is one of those rare occasions where I agree with KF
Yes indeed.
Nice use of multilayered irony there too by KF – the arguments of people who (assumedly) use ad hominem are not to be taken seriously 🙂
Nor those of their associates, or their associates’ associates, and yea even unto Kevin Bacon himself 🙂 🙂
(And meantime, on we scroll, and find … 🙂 🙂 🙂 )
Joe,
And of course you have all the people at UD who support you and your ideas, plus of course the many years of developing your position into an intricately constructed web of mutually supporting ideas so that you can convince others of the validity of your cause!
Oh, wait now….
Joe,
Ask and you shall receive: http://www.random.org/
And here is your ASCII string that arose via blind and undirected phyical processes.
http://www.random.org/integers/?num=100&min=1&max=100&col=5&base=10&format=html&rnd=new
Oh, but wait. If the weather is designed then so are these numbers, right Joe?
Joe,
Then there is no need to calculate FSCI/O as the mere fact a file is formatted in ASCII proves that the contents represented by those symbols is designed.
So this makes somewhat of a mockery of KF’s billions of examples analogy.
Rather it’s that any data represented in ascii format is therefore designed. Yet we had a similar conversation with Gpuccio where he got very angry when I suggested that.
Just another example of why ID is going nowhere – everyone is pulling in a seperate direction.
Joe, perhaps you could talk to Gpuccio and work out between you if a printed sheet of numbers (ASCII data) is always designed on the basis of the mere fact it’s printed out, never mind it’s ASCII.
Gpuccio was very clear on this. I suggest you re-read the relevant threads, and also take another look at KF’s actual argument. It’s the content that matters for these examples.
That you can’t tell the map from the thing the map represents is perhaps no surprise.
Joe sums up ID:
Yes, I can see that you need to see if the thing you are trying to determine is designed or not before you determine if it is designed, or not.
So if you see one of any billions of messages on the internet and understand it, it’s designed.
If you see one and you don’t understand it, it’s obviously not designed.
Yep, that about sums it up.
Yes, if you know what the numbers represent you can make a determination of design.
So if you don’t know what the numbers represent you can’t say if they are designed or not.
So, once again, JoeG shows us why ID is not science. They can’t make a determination solely on the basis of the provided evidence for design or not. They have to add “what it represents” or “do we understand it” as well.
Presumably, then, random strings of ASCII are detected as “design” because computer representations of characters in ASCII format required design. Design to build the computer, design to create ASCII.
According to Joe, if SETI received a string of numbers “from the sky” until they knew what those numbers represented they would not be able to determine design.
What if we have no referent for what those numbers represent, but they were unlikely to have arisen via random processes? No chance of determining design? Is there FSCO/I present until we determine design?
etc etc ad infinitum.
JoeG,
Now I feel we’re getting somewhere.
Case A: A series of numbers are receieved by SETI on a tight band.
Case B: A series of numbers are received by SETI bleeding over every channel
Please explain in which case, and why, you would conclude design.
Actually, SETI is just looking for a narrow band transmission, something for which there is no known natural source,
SETI is not looking for a message.
KF to Joe:
Hmm
And therefore biology is designed? I think not KF.
But if you have billions of examples of text strings and the values of
FSCO/I for each of those strings then presumably you have a computer program that can determine the value for FSCO/I for a given input string?
Could you link that for me please KF? Otherwise how have you tested your claims “billions” of times?
Yes, there might be billions of text messages out there but given that the ability to calculate FSCI/O for those messages is what the current point is, your response is not very useful. How is it calculated in a generic way? Can it be? Give the pseudocode to do so, so it that it might be implemented in real code.
Really KF? Really? No wonder you judge JoeG not. You say the same things except you are just more sophisticated in the way you go about insulting those who differ in opinion. Two peas in a pod.
Absolutely. What I am hoping for (well, not that bothered) is for Joe to walk me through a very general (a signal is received) to a very specific (a ET signal was received) example and see all the assumptions he then has to make to get to that point. Narrow vs wide band etc.
And perhaps that would have been the straw that broke the camels back, ID can be inferred for anything as it’s so vague but SETI actually has parameters to be met first and JoeG would have accepted he might be wrong about one or two of his ideas about lumping ID in with SETI, archaeology etc.
SETI’s designer might be unknown but it’s their ability to send a signal with specific parameters that we’re looking for.
ID’s designer of course could send any signal from any point in the universe and that would still be compatible with ID.
Should we look at the CSI of CAEK again?
A good thread would be possible design methods that would prove ID.
Example:
1) Joe could look in the future and determine requirements for future biological designs, i.e., what changes will be required for the next generation.
2) Mung could write the specifications for the new functionality.
3) kairosfocus could implement the changes either in the womb or retrofitting existing members of the population as is done for the F-35 fighter.
ID could then be actually seen as science and Darwinism could be “shown the door”.