Over at the “IDM collapse” thread I rather churlishly rejected CharlieM’s invitation to read an extensive piece by Stephen L. Talbott. Discovering he is a fan of Velikovsky did little to encourage me (that is, I fully realise, an argument from authority, but life is short and authors many. One needs a filter). What did catch my eye, however, is the fact that he is a contributor to Third Way of Evolution. This, on their front page, is what one might term their ‘manifesto’.
The vast majority of people believe that there are only two alternative ways to explain the origins of biological diversity. One way is Creationism that depends upon intervention by a divine Creator. That is clearly unscientific because it brings an arbitrary supernatural force into the evolution process. The commonly accepted alternative is Neo-Darwinism, which is clearly naturalistic science but ignores much contemporary molecular evidence and invokes a set of unsupported assumptions about the accidental nature of hereditary variation. Neo-Darwinism ignores important rapid evolutionary processes such as symbiogenesis, horizontal DNA transfer, action of mobile DNA and epigenetic modifications. Moreover, some Neo-Darwinists have elevated Natural Selection into a unique creative force that solves all the difficult evolutionary problems without a real empirical basis. Many scientists today see the need for a deeper and more complete exploration of all aspects of the evolutionary process.
That puzzles me. We need a root-and-branch rethink because of the widely-accepted phenomena of endosymbiosis, HGT, transposons and epigenetics? I honestly don’t get it. These are refinements easily, and already, accommodated. Neo-Darwinists do not ‘ignore’ these phenomena, nor consider them unimportant. They may fall outside a strict framework of genetic gradualism by ‘micromutation’, but are hardly keeping anyone awake nights.
Perhaps, on reflection, I should punt them my musings on the Evolution of Sex. It is non-Darwinian in the sense they appear to mean, so it should be right up their street!
nonlin, when I do not respond to you, it is pretty much always because you have written something so obviously idiotic that no response is warranted. You often lose the train of a conversation; my comment about cats can equally be applied to chameleons, viz:
I am ridiculing your “logic” regarding non-identical sets; your supposed refutation is off-point, as ever.
No. You and phoodoo appear to be missing the time factor. You are claiming that history has zero value in forecasting. You are claiming that Sabremetrics is useless, or impossible. Likewise medical research.
Regarding “math challenged”, did you finally understand the questions about P(A|B)?
But there is probably a way to tell if a difference is meaningful besides simply denying it reflexively. Perhaps, if you try real real hard, you can think up a meaningful difference between two individuals?
So your argument is that because multiple effective strategies have evolved, therefore there is no evolution? Really? This is exactly like saying that because there are multiple ways to get from one city to another, therefore transportation doesn’t exist.
In other words, your conclusion doesn’t remotely derive from the evidence, it derives entirely from religious necessity. Which means it’s not a conclusion at all, simply a doctrine which denies evidence. As always.
It’s a reasonably accurate summary. If someone was peddling a different story, I suspect it was some Creationist propaganda site. Are you able to substantiate this assertion?
Oh my goodness…
Mensa? Mensa, are you watching?
Maybe not, but probably a few of us are, and if they’re like me they’re wondering whether there is any thought or substance behind your taunts, or whether taunting is the only weapon in your intellectual arsenal. Perhaps a paragraph of explanation would make you look more, you know, sentient.
Words not your strong suit?
Your bi-weekly scare-quoted whine-fest has been centred on precisely that point: you asked for a beneficial allele, got one that wasn’t universally beneficial, and it was observed that nothing is ‘universally’ beneficial, being (as is the case with medicine) contextual and influenced by stochastic factors, including sample size.
Your remark definitely gives me the impression that you just stubbornly resist a fact you already have implicitly accepted. Why did you give me combinations of two traits with opposing effects? Doesn’t that mean that even you saw that all else being equal a strategy with a high mating success will displace one with low mating success and that a strategy that survives long will do better than a strategy that results in the organism dying young?
If I read your comment right, you view the simultanuous effect of multiple traits a damning fact. In fact, this can be solved by quantifying the differences (how much lower mating success, etc) and then plugging the numbers into an equation that gives you some fitness metric, e.g. the rate of increase of a population. Most likely, the effect of one of the traits will outweigh the other. In case of your latter example, the “one that dies young but breeds a lot” has the higher fitness, since you set the reproductive output of its competitor to zero.
So you don’t have a clue for what purpose Stonehenge was built? No worries, I’ll help. Let me narrow down the options for you:
1) The builders clipped their toenails with it
2) The builders rubbed their bums against it whenever these itched
3) It was built to mark a place of religious significance
What’s that? You think #3? How did you KNOW that? Have you done your famous calculations to exclude “randomness” perchance? Did you check all physical laws to make sure it wouldn’t result in this precise placement of a number of megaliths?
Since it’s you, let me explicitly spell out my point for you: You’ve smuggled an enormous amount of information about human buildings in to reach your conclusion that Stonehenge was built, including some pretty decent guesses about its possible purpose.
Very well. I present you with the expert opinion of our esteemed mr. phoodoo:
If they lack function, they cannot have purpose, right?
As you predicted, this is becoming entertaining very rapidly.
Are penguins adapted? If yes, to what exactly and how can we tell?
Remember, you can not use environment, context or survival without contradicting yourself.
Corneel,
A spectacular piece of point missing.
Seems more like a spectacular piece of you failing to read either for comprehension or at all, which is not surprising.
Enough about you, what about Corneel’s post?
phoodoo echoed Allan’s comment to Charlie in the “mixture” thread. Not sure what his point is.
Corneel,
Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.
Only that’s not what we’re discussing here, is it?
We’re talking about a mutation that is contingent that is mistakenly labeled as “beneficial”. Or a chameleon that is mistakenly labeled as “black” when in fact it is only SOMETIMES black.
IOW, you assign chameleons (mutation) to black chameleons (“beneficial” mutation), not the other way around. And this is obviously fucked. For those that are not entirely math challenged that is.
This is false. Besides, the guy was looking for an edge, so only what differentiates his approach from others matters. Are you familiar with that technique? Because anyone not math challenged would know this much.
Haha. Is rejecting the null “random” still challenging you?
As far as the “survival”? Not possible. Not least because you don’t even have a clear (mathematical) definition of “survival”. But take a stab by all means.
No. That is not at all the same, much less “exactly”. But hey, any proof?
So lemme get this straight. You didn’t deliver. But because others also do not “deliver” on something only you claim but they don’t, that’s OK? Wow!
How would you do that? You don’t know one bit more than I do. And I have no idea about 4, 5, etc. Do you? Stop bluffing.
Absolutely! It’s how it’s done – by others in this case. Only when it’s that obvious, no one bothers calculating.
I see rejecting the null “random” is still challenging you as well. No wonder.
No, that’s what you’re doing with your claim that you know its purpose. I know better, therefore don’t make crazy claims like you. Haha.
So your “proof” is someone else’s opinion? How crazy is that?
Silly question. Penguins just are. We have not seen penguins adapt from something else. We have found them where they are:
adapt
[əˈdapt]
VERB
make (something) suitable for a new use or purpose; modify.
“hospitals have had to be adapted for modern medical practice” · [more]
synonyms:
modify · alter · make alterations to · change · adjust · make adjustments to · convert · transform · redesign · restyle · refashion · remodel · reshape · revamp · rework · redo · [more]
become adjusted to new conditions.
“a large organization can be slow to adapt to change”
synonyms:
adjust · acclimatize · accommodate · attune · habituate · acculturate · conform · familiarize oneself with · habituate oneself to · become habituated to · [more]
But they are indeed endowed with adaptive capabilities like all organisms. No “evolution” needed.
I am interested in this concept, that Sabremetrics gave Billy Beane “an edge”, as you put it. If I understand you correctly, it does not matter whether Sabremetrics is a superior approach under all possible circumstances, only that Sabremetrics is a superior approach when compared with those other contemporary approaches with which it was in competition?
Is this accurate?
Well, I understand that P(null is true|data) [i.e. what we all care about] is different from P(data|null is true) [i.e. what you are unsuccessfully attempting to calculate]. You continue to confuse the two. That’s just awkward.
🙂
Corneel did not claim to know the purpose of Stonehenge. Nor did Corneel claim to know the purpose of the individual humans who cooperated to construct and reconstruct the edifice over a thousand years. We can make inferences, however.
Good grief!
Good grief!
This must be the most embarrassing way to say “No, I haven’t”.
Not what I said. Read again.
Please note that phoodoo, like you, is an ID supporter. One whom you even applauded somewhat upthread. Since I demonstrated that even another IDer cannot spot “purpose” in a snowflake, I’d say that warrants returning the burden of proof to you. Now, it is up to YOU to prove that snowflakes DO have purpose.
This continues to be very entertaining, I must say.
And then offers the following two definitions:
Bolding mine.
I also note the mention of use / purpose and environment (conditions) in your profferred definitions. All things you have been strenuously denying are relevant or even knowable.
Then he says:
Say what? Capabilities to adapt to what exactly? Not changes in their environment surely? Penguins just are.
Everything you wrote shows that my questions have been perfectly valid and that you have just been spouting nonsense.
No, you don’t understand correctly.
At least that’s what you claim. Because what else is there without an empty claim?
Only two? Does it mean you finally got along with cats and chameleons?
Yes, I let you down on Stonehenge, your purpose in life and my job priority #1. Haha.
Just did. Several comments. Yes it is.
Do that again Houdini. How did you turn the need for proof of something you said into a need for proof against it? Say anything crazy and if I’m not inclined to disprove it it’s true? Nice!
What’s up with your confusion? You bolded “new”. What’s “new” in penguin world? Did their design change since their discovery? Did they “evolve” at all since then?
Alan got it, so I think I explained myself sufficiently clear: We are not completely blank slates. I don’t need anybody to tell me that Stonehenge was not a carwash. If you insist in misunderstanding me, this discussion serves no other purpose than to showcase your unwillingness to engage in meaningful conversation.
… says the guy who claimed snowflakes are created with a purpose and that it was upon ME to prove otherwise.
Hey, I’ve got invisible smurfs growing under my toenails. Prove me wrong!
Nonlin, it was YOU that completely bypassed the biological meaning of adaptation and posted the dictionary definitions. These mentioned change, new purpose and new conditions. It was also YOU that claimed that penguins have adaptive capabilities. YOUR words, Nonlin. Now I am asking you to put two and two together.
So, DID their design change since their discovery? What NEW purposes need penguins adopt? What NEW conditions prompts such changes?
I know you have illiteracy problems, but missing everything else that was bolded and seeing only the word “new”? That’s a whole new record in failing to read for comprehension.
No, he didn’t. You claimed – and it’s demonstrably false – that purpose can be inferred from design: “Like the design of a plane is clearly intended for the purposes of flying, so is the build of a swallow. “ http://theskepticalzone.com/wp/the-third-way/comment-page-7/#comment-278874
This is false. I didn’t claim one way or the other. You did! The [unmet] burden of proof is on you alone.
You’re not making any sense.
You are going around in circles again. I suggest that you start pondering how you would separate purpose from order. Are they the same thing?
Are you now saying it is impossible to determine whether snowflakes have purpose? Do you have any clue why you are struggling so hard with this? I do.
That figures! I was repeating your own words back at you.
Oh the irony! 😕🙂🤭
Not really, if you pay any attention. But you might be circling. Why ponder? They’re two distinct concepts and this is well known. Of course not the same.
No, I am not saying anything about snowflakes. But you are saying too much and it’s all unsupported. I see you’d like me to join you. Not interested. But I am very interested in you either supporting your outlandish claims or admitting you have no clue. Haha.
I knew someone, back in school, whom I found impossible to talk to. If he already knew what I was telling him, then I was boring and redundant. If he did NOT already know, he assumed I was spouting bullshit and had no appetite for it!
But he taught me something important. If someone has a sincere desire to know, they’ll listen and learn. And if they have a sincere desire NOT to know, communication is impossible. Someone whose responses consist pretty much entirely of attacks and insults is invariably insulating themselves from things they would much rather not be exposed to, for fear they might understand it.
Yet you argue that we can infer purpose from non-random patterns.
Yet you are incapable of deciding whether snowflakes have intentional purpose.
phoodoo stuck out his neck and answered the question about the purpose of snowflakes. Heck, any child will gladly answer that question, yet you dare not. All because you cannot separate purpose from order. Why is that, Nonlin?
Corneel,
What is the purpose of a grain of sand?
Grains of sand were not made with any particular function in mind, so they have none. You can give them purpose by using them to build a pretty sand castle or such.
Agree?
Corneel,
So I don’t even understand the question about a snowflake. Why is it any different?
I suggest you can ask the same question about the Universe or a subatomic particle. And those who see the “hand” of a creator seem to think that answers the question. Comes back to the same thing; whether physical explanations are sufficient for physical phenomena and whether bringing in imaginary explanations adds anything to our understanding.
What’s different? Snowflakes form due to the properties of water molecules and the ambient weather conditions. In other words, God makes snowflakes.
You are not Nonlin, phoodoo. In our discussion, I introduced the snowflake example for a very different reason. If you revisit our discussion, you’ll see I introduced snowflakes to demonstrate that highly ordered entities could still arise in the presence of “random” environmental influences (and as a result no two snowflakes are alike). You conceded that snowflakes have no purpose, but argued against them being highly ordered.
Nonlin takes a way more bizarre position than you arguing:
1) That non-random organisation (order) is sufficient to demonstrate purpose
2) That we can spot whether an object has purpose, but can only learn what that purpose is when we are being told
3) That the burden of proof rests on those claiming NO apparent purpose for some entity
… while simultaneously denying that this is what he is doing. I doubt you want to defend his position.
Corneel,
Blimey! Thanks for the Cliff notes. 😁
Yes, we reject the null ‘random’ which leaves us adopting the ‘design’ hypothesis. This is SOP. And since there is no design without a purpose, we infer purpose despite not knowing what that purpose actually is. Where’s your confusion?
I have no obligation to decide anything. Point is your decision was wrong and your claim outrageously wrong. When will you admit that?
Wrong again.
Here you go again with the nonsense!!! How would you know that??? And if not, why make such a foolish claim?
There are no “physical explanations”! Only nonsense.
After all your mistakes, you get the three points remarkably accurate (with small corrections). What gives? So absolutely no denying. See?
Before you go nuts again, here are the small corrections:
1) There has to be enough order to reject the null “random”
2) We can infer what the purpose is sometimes, but knowledge of design doesn’t guarantee knowledge of the purpose
3) Burden of proof ALWAYS rests on he that makes the claim. Why are we even discussing this?
Non-lin says it. End of argument!
There are no other explanations. Certainly not from you. I think I’ll stick with my scientific observation and experiment and partial explanations and not yet having more detailed or comprehensive explanations. I think that is more realistic.
What have you inferred purpose in already then, what design do you have knowledge of and what knowledge do you have of purpose?
Be specific! If you can’t say for anything, reconsider?
Jock and I have been telling you over and over: You cannot reject “randomness” without knowledge of the appropriate underlying distribution and you don’t have that knowledge.
Here is a fun experiment for you to perform at home: pour equal parts water and salad oil into a glass jar. Screw the lid on tightly. Shake the jar vigorously. Then put it down and observe. You’ll see the liquids separating into a two-phase system. Now, I guarantee that your test for randomness will convincingly reject the null hypothesis of a homogeneous (uniform) distribution of water and oil.
So now we conclude that the two-phase system was designed, right? There are no physical explanations for what happens in that jar, right?
That’s silly. Of course we do know the random distribution. And its trivial. Consider the 2d image of the DNA: we take a picture and build the grayscale distribution each pixel should randomly follow. Then look at the actual image and clearly see it follows a nonrandom pattern. Do the same fore Stonehenge: take a sample of all rocks in the area, build one of many distributions (size, color, position, L/W, altitude, etc) and see Stonehenge doesn’t fit the random null on any of those. QED.
Absolutely! Follow the flowchart. First: we see “not random”. Second: we don’t identify the designer so we label “necessity”. Third: we know of no “necessity” without a designer. Forth: we conclude “designer” because of this.
All “explanations” are pointing to the same Designer and nowhere else. Because we know of no “necessity” without a designer. This was discussed http://nonlin.org/intelligent-design/
Meanwhile, you FALSELY claimed snowflakes are not designed. I am still waiting for proof or a retraction.
BTW, whatever happened with the e coli that won’t “evolve”?
BTW2, whatever happened with “beneficial mutation” that never is?
…
BTWn, whatever happened with “evolution” being 100% false whichever way you analyze it?
When will you stop covering for stupid? Aren’t you tired of losing all the time?
Hmmm? I seem to recall our founder posting a photo challenge to ID proponents to see if they could make good on their claim to discern “Design”.
This was a dumb argument then and it’s just as dumb now. Using a snowflake to say that appears designed is silly. A snowflake doesn’t have integrated parts that work towards an intelligent process, it doesn’t have functional parts that can be deduced. It simply looks cool. That is the whole basis for bringing snowflakes into any such discussion of design detection.
And yet humans incorporate design detection into their lives every single day. When you see an object you have never seen before you study it to determine what it is, is it man-made, does it have function. We even do it with beaver damns. So when you see an old house at the end of a deserted road, you deduce that looks like a built object, made with purpose and thought. It’s so silly to deny this obvious point. How did we know that the Antikythera mechanism was designed, even though we had no idea what it was?
The argument against design detection is incredibly inept.
The argument is simply that the ID community have, so far, shown no ability, method of skill in detecting “Design”. Sure, we can infer whether artefacts are the result of human intervention or other species. There’s no panacea for doing this, certainly nothing useful from the ID camp. If I were wrong, you’d be able to give examples.
Detected much design from your Intelligent Designer have you? Got a worked example?
Name a single example of design detection that detected Intelligent Design. I.E. Design by the same entity that you think made the universe. Not humans, or beavers or termites. The thing you believe is the Intelligent Designer.
Or do you go with colewd with his ‘atoms are designed’ speil?
Human design can and is detected. Intelligent Design by the Intelligent Designer? Never once.
The argument against Intelligent Design detection is that simply no such design has ever been ‘detected’.
Demonstrate me wrong.
Could you name some example of an area on earth, any area at all, that would NOT be designed according to this test? If you can’t name any, will you finally agree that this test is rubbish?
You do realize that you have devised a test that will label anything and everything “designed” indiscriminately, right?
Very few people would agree with you that a two-phase system is designed, since it can actually be seen to automatically establish itself without intervention. The liquids will not mix because of chemical polarity, so it has a *gasp* physical explanation! You are wrong on all accounts, as usual.
We know of plenty of “necessity” without designer. You are the only person that refuses to make a distinction between “necessity” and “Design”. Everyone else does.
Now you mention it, I am growing a bit weary of this discussion. You can have the last word if you like.
Moved a comment to guano. I remind phoodoo to take a hint.