Sandbox (1)

Sometimes very active discussions about peripheral issues overwhelm a thread, so this is a permanent home for those conversations.

1,772 thoughts on “Sandbox (1)”

  1. UD has started a thread on the cost of search.

    Here’s my question. Given that ID is really a search for gaps in which to locate their “god of the gaps”, does Dembski’s argument show that ID is impossible?

  2. I have maintained for several years that ID is impossible in the absence of omniscience.

    Sauce for the goose.

    If evolution can’t produce protein codes (given the evidence that random sequences can have rudimentary function) then design is impossible.

    Only the library of Babel could contain the information required by the Designer.

  3. The cost of search argument assumes that the Search For a Search chooses among all possible mappings of genotypes into fitnesses, all weighted equally. In other words, it assumes that a typical genotype-to-fitness mapping associates each genotype with a randomly chosen fitness.

    That means that on a typical fitness surface, one mutation to a DNA sequence carries you to a disastrously bad fitness most of the time, and it assumes that a one-base mutation is on average as bad as mutating all the bases in the genome simultaneously. Of course, in such a world, evolution can’t happen.

    It is the same assumption that Dembski made in trying to use the No Free Lunch Theorem to argue that natural selection of mutants typically cannot achieve adaptation.

    Real fitness surfaces are much smoother than that, as many people have pointed out. And that in turn comes from the laws of physics: everything does not tightly interact with everything else. If I move a pencil on my desk your roof does not start to leak as a result. Arguing that typical fitness surfaces are “white-noise” surfaces implies a tightness of interaction of everything with everything else that is unrealistic.

    I have some discussion of this in my paper on Dembski’s arguments and many other people had been raising this issue even earlier.

    Note the implication. If a Designer is needed to set up smooth-enough fitness surfaces for natural selection to work, then even though that Designer is needed, she is only needed to set up the laws of physics, and in that case, once that is done natural selection does in fact work.

    Unless the UD crowd addresses this random-fitness-surface assumption of Dembski’s, their whole discussion is a waste of time.

  4. Ugh. I note that they are still propagandizing that as “The Cornell Conference”, even though they’ve been forced to admit (elsewhere) that they just rented a performance space and Cornell as a university had nothing to do with their act. Still attempting to give themselves the benefit of some glory stolen from Cornell’s academic reputation, they are liars and thieves for Jesus. Ugh.

  5. I see that the law of excluded middle is still getting much attention at UD. When I have a chance, I will write a post discussing how this principle works (or doesn’t) in quantum mechanics, using the example of electron spin. It’s fun to examine how the logical NOT operation works in the quantum world.

  8. And if you don’t mind, could you do the same on vjtorley’s upcoming thread regarding the immaterial soul?

    Thanks!

  9. Confession time!

    I was going to suggest updating to the latest version of WordPress and meant to try it out on a blog of mine first to see if there were any snags. I opened the admin page and already had TSZ admin page open. I clicked the wrong page so I have inadvertently updated this site. I apologise for this unintentional presumption. I intended to merely mention it so that the database could be saved before any action.

    Sorry!

  10. Best wishes to Kairosfocus’s son, we all hope it goes well.

    But, being an atheist and a skeptic I can’t help asking…
    If the treatment succeed do we credit god or skilled medical practicioners? If both, which part was god responsible for?
    Should it go bad, who’s then at fault? God for not intervening? The devil for meddling? Bad medical practice?

  11. I don’t think many theists thinks that skilled medical practitioners aren’t the first line approach to therapy, just as they don’t think you could pray to be transported to work instead of getting the bus.

    But when things are so touch and go that even the most skilled practitioner has no good guarantee of success, even the least superstitious of us are going to urge whatever powers determine the toss of a coin to bend the right way in this case.

    My heartfelt best wishes to kairosfocus and his son too.

  12. Sorry – KF’s gratuitous jab at the “vicious and twisted” (and so on) at the time of his son’s medical crisis is what I most noticed.

  13. Reciprocating Bill 2:
    Sorry – KF’s gratuitous jab at the “vicious and twisted” (and so on) at the time of his son’s medical crisis is what I most noticed.

    I had to look. I couldn’t believe that anyone could be so small-minded as to slur his personal opponents during a request for prayer for a family medical emergency. Yes, KF is so, and did so. Dear, oh dear, what a shame. But to look on his behavior most charitably: he is not completely sane at the moment; given his situation he is being tossed on waves of grief, anger, and fear for his son; he can’t think straight and is not fully responsible if/when he deflects some of his anger to innocent targets (us). I pity him.

  14. I wish him well also, but I have to confess a bit of moral confusion.

    My first and only grandson was premature and spent a month in ICU. During such times, when you are wishing for the coin toss to go your way, you are inevitably wishing it will go the other way for someone else. That is, if you are capable of reflection on reality.

    Statistics mean that your good fortune is someone else’s bad fortune. It’s a slightly gentler version of Mark Twain’s War Prayer.

    I don’t mean to blight anyone’s life here, but it’s something I can’t help thinking about.

  15. I am a cynical and uncharitable soul. What evidence do we have that Gordon “KairosFocus” Mullings even has a male child in the first place? Because if the only reason to think so is that KF said so, well, if KF said the Sun was shining, I wouldn’t believe him until after I looked out the window to check…

  16. (It is remarkable how little charity some of us are displaying).

    As someone who has to teach probability theory, it is not true that changing this coin toss makes the next one more likely to have the opposite outcome. Many of my students seem to think that some mysterious force called The Laws of Probability makes it true that if a fair coin, tossed independently, comes up Heads 10 times in a row, that the next toss is more likely than not to come up Tails.

    Ain’t so, nor is it true what all the other students believe, that you Have A Run of Heads Going and thus the next toss is more likely than not to also be Heads.

  17. Joe Felsenstein: Many of my students seem to think that some mysterious force called The Laws of Probability makes it true that if a fair coin, tossed independently, comes up Heads 10 times in a row, that the next toss is more likely than not to come up Tails.

    Which is why Dembski’s idea in NFL that somehow an intelligent Designer could sneak “information” into a quantum-random stream of photons without it being detected is nuts.

  18. I think KF exaggerates his importance to the politics of his island, but I have no evidence that he has ever made up anything as concrete as a family. I’m just not that cynical.

    And considering the population size of his homeland, I suspect that anyone who speaks loudly and often could have some influence.

  19. Sal got caught deleting an embarrassing comment in one of his threads at UD. Note Joe’s reply to a comment of Sal’s that is no longer there.

    Advice to everyone: keep a close eye on Sal when he posts here.

  21. Looks like Sal deleted one of Mung’s comments at the same time:

    8 Mung July 26, 2013 at 7:16 pm

    so, once again, sal is caught deleting or modifying posts.

    why is he still tolerated at ud?

    9 Mung July 26, 2013 at 7:30 pm

    In the not too distant past, I posted to a thread initiated by Salvador Cordova. He modified the actual content of my post in such a way as to misrepresent what I had actually written.

    I objected. Nothing was done. So I left UD for a time.

    But here we are again. A thread initiated by Salvador. I post a comment. It fails to appear. Coincidence?

    Mung reposted the second comment on a different thread with the preface “Delete this Salvador:”.

  22. keiths,

    Huh. I saw Mung’s comment in that genetics thread, didn’t I? I don’t remember what it was but I remember it was there Cordova deleting comments with no notice makes me feel like I’m losing my mind. It’s Orwellian.

    Mung is right. Why do they tolerate Cordova at UD?

    Gourd, I can hardly believe I’m agreeing with something Mung says …

    .

  23. Slimy Sal has been accorded posting privileges here. Over at Uncommon Descent, Slimy Sal has recently engaged in the sort of airbrushing-over-inconvenient-history behavior as our old ‘friend’, thread-deletin’ Chris Doyle. So I think it would be appropriate for Lizzie to confirm or deny whether good old Sal has been granted the keys to the Delete-o-Tron over here at TSZ?

  24. Now Sal has deleted Mung’s two comments. His total is up to at least four deleted comments in that thread now.

    Good thing Mung reposted the second one on Cornelius Hunter’s thread. It’s still there..

  25. cubist,

    Sal currently has “author” status, thus able to write, publish and delete his own posts. Presumably any comments attached to deleted posts would also be deleted. If Sal is ‘creatively’ editing and deleting comments elsewhere, I would be rather concerned (taking the Chris Doyle event into consideration).

    Perhaps a precautionary change in status to subscriber is in order.(Sal can always ask for a change back- perhaps even give an explanation and an assurance.) I am very much in favour of free exchange of ideas and am vehemently against censorship so I find this a hard one to call. Fortunately, it’s Lizzie’s blog and her choice.

  26. I thought I had disabled deletion of posts. I should check.

    I certainly changed some settings after Chris deleted his threads.

  27. Not sure it’s as easy as that, Lizzie. I had a look on the dashboard plus a quick Google search that seems to suggest that changes need to be made to a template, a CSS edit.

  29. KF has been deleting and editing other people’s post since forever. Why pick on Sal?

  30. KF has been deleting and editing other people’s post since forever. Why pick on Sal?

    I didn’t know that! At UD, you mean? I know the “speaker in the ceiling” thing which is marginally less reprehensible than altering a comment written by someone else.

  31. OK, I’ll ask eigenstate to take a look.

    Sal says at UD that he might have deleted a comment here. If so apologies, and until I make things delete proof can I make it clear that the policy here is no deletion. Posts can be moved to Guano or to here (or to another thread).

  32. petrushka,

    KF has been deleting and editing other people’s post since forever. Why pick on Sal?

    KF hasn’t gotten a free pass. See below.

    And KF, as far as I know, doesn’t try to hide his censorship. When he deletes a comment, he at least leaves the shell so that people know what he has done. (In his weirdly hypocritical mind, he is perhaps proud of himself.)

    Sal deletes comments completely and tries to pretend that they were never there. And as the UD thread shows, he will even try to revise history by deleting his own comments when he writes something stupid.

    I applied Mr. Leathers to KF’s ‘seat of learning’ in an earlier OP:

    We also had no interest in posting an essay at UD, a website that is notorious in the blogosphere for banning and censoring dissenters. Kairosfocus himself, in a ridiculous display of tinpot despotism, censored no less than 20 comments in the “Essay Challenge” thread itself!

    (Link, Link, Link, Link, Link, Link, Link, Link, Link, Link, Link, Link, Link, Link, Link, Link, Link, Link, Link, Link)

    The commenter in question, ‘critical rationalist’, was banned from UD and has taken refuge here at TSZ, where open discussion is encouraged, dissent is welcome, comments are not censored, and only one commenter has ever been banned (for posting a photo of female genitalia).

  36. A quick addendum there.

    As a moderator, I have occasionally moved a duplicate post to trash. I take duplicates to be accidental mistakes. The trash eventually disappears, but the delay is long enough to allow accidental trashing to be corrected.

  38. An interesting OOL research result: http://www.washington.edu/news/2013/07/29/natural-affinities-unrecognized-until-now-may-have-set-stage-for-life-to-ignite/

    In testing one of the fatty acids representative of those found before life began – decanoic acid – the scientists discovered that the four bases in RNA bound more readily to the decanoic acid than did the other seven bases tested.

    By concentrating more of the bases and sugar that are the building blocks of RNA, the system would have been primed for the next steps, reactions that led to RNA inside a bag.

    . . .

    The scientists also discovered a second, mutually reinforcing mechanism: The same bases of RNA that preferentially stuck to the fatty acid also protected the bags from disruptive effects of salty seawater. Salt causes the fatty acid bags to clump together instead of remaining as individual “cells.”

    . . .

    The ability of the building blocks of RNA to stabilize the fatty acid bags simplifies one part of the puzzle of how life started, Keller said.

    “Taken together, these findings yield mutually reinforcing mechanisms of adsorption, concentration and stabilization that could have driven the emergence of primitive cells,” she said.

    I immediately thought of Mike Elzinga’s comments about intelligent design creationists not understanding simple, fundamental concepts of chemistry and physics at the molecular level. Modeling this as a set of equiprobable interactions among billiard ball like atoms would definitely yield a much lower probability estimate. That, of course, is exactly what the IDCists want.

  39. Lizzie,

    None of my business really, but you say this at UD:

    Also the Crick’s “Central Dogma” (“DNA makes RNA makes protein”) is no longer dogma (dogmas ain’t healthy in science).

    That’s not the Central Dogma! It’s how Nirenberg shorthands it (no idiot, of course, having started the ball rolling with the elucidation of the genetic code). Here’s Crick defending himself in 1970: http://www.nature.com/nature/focus/crick/pdf/crick227.pdf He was referring to transfers between the two alphabets, nucleic acid and protein, not unidirectionality in the nucleic acid part, or enzymatic construction of short xNA sequence (eg telomeres). Reverse transcription is not a violation of the central dogma (whose very ‘dogmaticism’ was in any case a bit of tongue-in-cheek humour). Reverse translation would be.

    DNA and RNA are barely different molecules. The one has an oxygen atom in the ribose ring where the other does not, and uses an unmethylated thymine. That’s it – give or take an O every subunit and a -CH3 every 4th on average, they are the same. There is nothing to forbid sequential information transfers in either direction. The death of the CD is perennially trumpeted, but no-one has encountered an actual violation yet.

  42. From AtBC:

    Is this true:

    “And Alan Fox: Quote
    That’s nothing. He even deleted a comment of mine at TSZ in one of his guest posts! J’étais carrément scandalisé!”

    If so I hope his posting privallages were pulled.

  43. Hi Rich

    I think this is better discussed here in the sandbox. Sal said it himself in a comment at UD. I’ll have a look and see if I can find it. I believe Eigenstate was going to modify the css to eliminate the possibility of thread authors of being able to delete comments rather than just moving them. It hasn’t happened yet, though, I don’t think..

  44. Alan Fox:

    Hi Rich

    I think this is better discussed here in the sandbox. Sal said it himself in a comment at UD. I’ll have a look and see if I can find it. I believe Eigenstate was going to modify the css to eliminate the possibility of thread authors of being able to delete comments rather than just moving them. It hasn’t happened yet, though, I don’t think..

    No worries with moving the post. But my vote is to remove his posting privallages, not to change the system to accomodate someone not honest enough to use it.

  45. I agree with you and already said so upthread

    Perhaps a precautionary change in status to subscriber is in order. (Sal can always ask for a change back- perhaps even give an explanation and an assurance.) I am very much in favour of free exchange of ideas and am vehemently against censorship so I find this a hard one to call. Fortunately, it’s Lizzie’s blog and her choice.

    This would still allow Sal to comment but not (potentially) delete or edit other comments. I’m not in favour of banning Sal.

  46. I’m not sure of the desirability of banning, or altering privileges, for reason of an individual’s behaviour elsewhere.

    If a thread owner at TSZ was so rude/dishonest as to delete a comment, it would very quickly be made known. THEN appropriate action could and should be taken.

  47. Possibly not. Sal stated he deleted a comment of mine here at TSZ. I don’t recall the incident, unless it was a welcome comment in which I also asked him if he still insisted that a company called Genetic-ID were using Dembski’s Explanatory Filter in their business.

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