tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20067416.post8387970271024335899..comments2023-12-21T06:35:36.624-05:00Comments on Recursivity: Stephen Meyer's Honesty ProblemUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger23125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20067416.post-21407760860507573192013-10-23T18:43:13.686-04:002013-10-23T18:43:13.686-04:00Notice that when I asked Mr Not-so-Free-Thinker to...Notice that when I asked Mr Not-so-Free-Thinker to produce those "favorable reviews" he was claiming, he magically disappeared.Jeffrey Shallithttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12763971505497961430noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20067416.post-36476085926777792392010-08-05T10:48:18.456-04:002010-08-05T10:48:18.456-04:00"Didn't Dawkins or some atheist say they ..."Didn't Dawkins or some atheist say they were open to the idea that perhaps aliens from another universe designed the universe we are in now?"<br /><br />I think you're thinking of the bit in Expelled where Dawkins says something along the lines of:<br /><br />"It's not impossible that life on earth could have been created & designed by aliens, but those aliens would have had to arise themselves by some evolutionary process somewhere else in the universe." <br /><br />Take note: 'life' does not equal 'the universe'... Your creationism is showing!James Cnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20067416.post-30583003294731554602009-12-16T18:58:58.895-05:002009-12-16T18:58:58.895-05:00favorable reviews
Maybe Mr. not-so-Free Thinker w...<i>favorable reviews</i><br /><br />Maybe Mr. not-so-Free Thinker would care to enlighten us about the "favorable reviews" of Dembski's work.Jeffrey Shallithttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12763971505497961430noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20067416.post-35273189943214657932009-12-15T21:43:30.501-05:002009-12-15T21:43:30.501-05:00MrFreeThinker wrote
Didn't Dawkins or some at...MrFreeThinker wrote<br /><br /><i>Didn't Dawkins or some atheist say they were open to the idea that perhaps aliens from another universe designed the universe we are in now?</i><br /><br />Not to my knowledge, and I've read all of Dawkins' books and a number of his essays and talks. Be nice to have a reference for a blind guess like that.RBHhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13562135000111792590noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20067416.post-21435734159580524632009-12-15T17:49:09.897-05:002009-12-15T17:49:09.897-05:00"Not true, since the truth of ID depends on t..."Not true, since the truth of ID depends on the existence of a being with sufficient causal powers to tweak the fundamental constants of physics."<br /><br />And that claim isn't uniquely religious. Didn't Dawkins or some atheist say they were open to the idea that perhaps aliens from another universe designed the universe we are in now?<br /><br />P.S. this post is a bit dated and you may want to change things now since Dembski has published a couple papers since then and gotten support from Robert Marks II and some citations and favorable reviews.MrFreeThinkerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12778096949945818236noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20067416.post-2185540108125072342009-12-03T21:40:21.969-05:002009-12-03T21:40:21.969-05:00You commit a fundamental confusion.
No, I don'...<i>You commit a fundamental confusion.</i><br /><br />No, I don't.<br /><br /><i> ID relies on no uniquely religious assumptions to make its case that some aspects of biology are better explained by design than by chance and/or necessity.</i><br /><br />Not true, since the truth of ID depends on the existence of a being with sufficient causal powers to tweak the fundamental constants of physics.<br /><br />But I'll admit it, you parrot the party line pretty well.<br /><br />And you say nothing about Meyer's dishonesty. Why am I not surprised?Jeffrey Shallithttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12763971505497961430noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20067416.post-19980841549472670782009-12-03T21:24:40.223-05:002009-12-03T21:24:40.223-05:00You commit a fundamental confusion. ID relies on n...You commit a fundamental confusion. ID relies on no uniquely religious assumptions to make its case that some aspects of biology are better explained by design than by chance and/or necessity. Its conclusion has philosophical implications concerning the explanatory inadequacy of naturalism, but this conclusion is earned through arguments. <br /><br />Moreover, Meyer states in The Signature of the Cell that the ID argument alone cannot tell us that much about the nature of the designer.<br /><br />The fact that a woman thought that Meyer's work helped people come to Christ does not mean that (a) the books is unscientific or (b) that it relies on uniquely religious premises. It does neither. However, the book might open people up to nonreductionistic nonnaturalistic understandings of reality, of which Christianity is one.Douglas Groothuis, Ph.D.https://www.blogger.com/profile/08766692378954258034noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20067416.post-48825059935586691262009-07-24T06:55:50.814-04:002009-07-24T06:55:50.814-04:00Dear Mr. FreeThinker:
You are too funny!
As if M...Dear Mr. FreeThinker:<br /><br />You are <i>too</i> funny!<br /><br />As if Martin Luther's name could be slurred more than he had done himself, with his <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Luther_and_antisemitism" rel="nofollow">antisemitism</a>.<br /><br />Anyway, the source from my quote is from an incident involving Philip of Hesse. Philip wanted to take multiple wives, and to do so, tried to get his second bigamous marriage approved by church authorities. Martin Luther arranged a letter declaring the second marriage legal (the "Wittenberg Declaration") and then pretended to know nothing about it. He wrote Philip of Hesse and counseled him to lie about the arrangement. <br /><br />That is the context for the quote, and it can be found in <i>Here I Stand: A Life of Martin Luther</i> by Bainton, among <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Luther" rel="nofollow">other places</a>.Jeffrey Shallithttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12763971505497961430noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20067416.post-63943776860248529832009-07-23T22:05:23.126-04:002009-07-23T22:05:23.126-04:00It seems like a silly argument. Wouldn't even...It seems like a silly argument. Wouldn't even reflected photons be considered "information"? They get ejected from the sun, travel millions of miles, hit a leaf, or a rock, or what have you, and certain frequencies are reflected back. When we look at them with the right sensory apparatus we can determine the direction and colour of the object from which they were reflected. At no point in the "creation" of that information do we require any intelligence to step in and sort things out. The fact that we can SEE tells us that information is created all the time through purely natural causes - the only step that requires intelligence is the interpretation of that information, and WE are the ones doing the interpreting.<br /><br />I don't know, maybe I'm missing something but it seems to me that his argument could be pulled apart by a third-grader.Alexhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02683324200571312720noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20067416.post-46496173938397051682009-07-23T21:31:51.956-04:002009-07-23T21:31:51.956-04:00Mr Shallit. Given how particular you have been abo...Mr Shallit. Given how particular you have been about quotations in your past interactions with ID proponents , I would suggest you provide some sort of primary source for that Martin Luther quote or perhaps remove it (so that Luther's name isn't slurred).<br />I've read some Martin Luther and that does not seem to be consistent with his philosophy and I can't find it in any commentary so I am unable to check the context.MrFreeThinkerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12778096949945818236noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20067416.post-48046684581974542072009-07-22T23:31:04.119-04:002009-07-22T23:31:04.119-04:00Thanks much Jeff, for your clarification. I consu...Thanks much Jeff, for your clarification. I consulted Wikipedia after the fact, which said much the same. My opponent stuck to one definition, which he repeated often without rephrasing. I don't know that he really understood it.<br /><br />He seemed shaky in other areas as well; he claimed the idea of gradualism in evolution was a fallacy of composition. I have only suspicions as to why.<br /><br />I mainly objected to his claim that unlikely events were impossible, barring intelligent intervention. However, my RNG thought-experiment seemed to give him the most consternation.<br /><br />At the very least, that conversation led me to an interest in pursuing information theory as a hobby, though I think I lack the time and discipline to make a serious study of it.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20067416.post-43322106141278419812009-07-22T17:10:00.825-04:002009-07-22T17:10:00.825-04:00Jeff, your post triggered a memory.
Did I ever te...Jeff, your post triggered a memory.<br /><br />Did I ever tell you about The time you assigned a busy beaver "contest" for 5 and 6 states?<br /><br />I ran randomly generated FSMs and halted them automatically after what I felt was a sufficiently large but practical number of moves. I ran these simulations over the weekend.<br /><br />The winner of my simulated contest used one state to return to the beginning of a tape (the ones column), and add one to a binary number on the tape. It used the remaining states to carry the one as necessary. It conveniently halted after counting to 32 (64?) on the tape.<br /><br />My experience of seeing such cleverness arise by chance is a valuable cautionary tale. I use it whenever I'm tempted to rely on intuition about such things.D. Swartnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20067416.post-999717755221330652009-07-22T06:03:57.778-04:002009-07-22T06:03:57.778-04:00Anonymous:
I don't think you're wrong, ex...Anonymous:<br /><br />I don't think you're wrong, exactly. The difficulty in determining whether you are is that Dembski has been very inconsistent in his definition of what constitutes "information" and "CSI". Sometimes he says to be "information" the probability must be smaller than the universal bound, and sometimes he says it doesn't. Sometimes it is measured in bits; other times it is just yes/no, it contains information or it doesn't.<br /><br /> This is discussed in my long refutation written with Elsberry, which I linked to in my blog posting. Nailing down exactly what Dembski claims is often difficult because of these inconsistencies. We show in our paper that no matter what interpretation is taken, Dembski's claims are bogus.Jeffrey Shallithttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12763971505497961430noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20067416.post-64119928234791523352009-07-21T22:54:21.749-04:002009-07-21T22:54:21.749-04:00I once found myself arguing specified complexity w...I once found myself arguing specified complexity without knowledge of AIT. My IDer opponent, sadly, was a fledgeling computer scientist, like myself (I weep for my profession).<br /><br />He may not have reproduced Dembski accurately, but regardless, his argument made no sense. He prattled at me for a minute or two about the Universal Probability Bound, and how anything less probable than that must be evidence of Design, before I stopped him and said (paraphrased):<br /><br />"Say I have a random number generator, and one day it starts spitting out the Fibbonacci Sequence. Lets stipulate that it spits out N + 1 terms of the sequence, where the likelihood of my RNG producing more than N Fibbonacci numbers in sequence is less than your UPB. Why is that sequence of N + 1 terms evidence of design — why does it magically contain information — where N terms is not and does not?"<br /><br />He didn't have an answer. Not that he admitted it; he dissembled, equivocated and reiterated until we both had to leave. Were both of us wrong, or was it just him?Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20067416.post-5060850386784011562009-07-20T23:28:08.710-04:002009-07-20T23:28:08.710-04:00For TomC: Marcus Hutter maintains a page on algor...For TomC: Marcus Hutter maintains a <a href="http://www.hutter1.net/ait.htm" rel="nofollow">page</a> on algorithmic information theory that has some tutorial links and book references. It looks like the page hasn't been updated recently and some of the links are broken, but it should still prove useful.<br /><br />Gregory Chaitin, one of the co-developers of AIT, has written a number of books for a general audience. He has a very quirky style and likes to prove things by using LISP code, so he's not to everyone's taste, but you might try looking at his book "Exploring Randomness".<br /><br />For a *very* concise introduction to AIT, you could also look at section 6.4 of Siper's "Introduction to the Theory of Computation".Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20067416.post-43953231481573986942009-07-19T21:30:45.814-04:002009-07-19T21:30:45.814-04:00Re Jason's comment: Pierce (d. 2002) was a cl...Re Jason's comment: Pierce (d. 2002) was a close associate of Claude Shannon at Bell Labs- he was also a well-known science fiction writer, using the name J. J. Coupling. (The pseudonym refers to a quantum mechanical phenomenon.)<br /><br />Bob CarrollAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20067416.post-75693480367025061892009-07-18T20:23:28.817-04:002009-07-18T20:23:28.817-04:00David MacKay's book on information theory, lea...David MacKay's book on information theory, learning and inference is beautiful and at roughly the level TomC is after. Much more Shannon than Kolmogorov, as usual. It covers lots of topics besides information theory. Very clearly and approachably written, but it does expect you to put in a fair bit of intellectual work to get the most out of it.Gareth McCaughanhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05377158305586280009noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20067416.post-54834627884209988872009-07-17T18:03:59.561-04:002009-07-17T18:03:59.561-04:00There is an excellent book published by Dover that...There is an excellent book published by Dover that presents a remarkably clear intorduction to Shannon information for laypeople. It is called "An Introduction to Information Theory: Symbols, Signals and Noise," by John R. Pierce. The early chapters in particular are incredibly readable. The book was first published in 1961, but the Dover edition was released in 1980 and is decsribed as a second, revised edition.Jason Rosenhousehttp://www.scienceblogs.com/evolutionblognoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20067416.post-39960373314787245262009-07-17T15:38:33.418-04:002009-07-17T15:38:33.418-04:00Tom Schneider has a page of information theory res...Tom Schneider has a page of <a href="http://www-lmmb.ncifcrf.gov/~toms/itresources.html" rel="nofollow">information theory resources on the web</a>. I have not evaluated any of them. I suspect they're mostly Shannon-oriented. Jeffrey?RBHhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13562135000111792590noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20067416.post-63030138630606596682009-07-17T15:36:49.356-04:002009-07-17T15:36:49.356-04:00Great! I actually bought that book not too long ag...Great! I actually bought that book not too long ago, but haven't gotten around to reading it yet. I will now, so thanks again!TomCnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20067416.post-67291587601439956102009-07-17T06:59:08.443-04:002009-07-17T06:59:08.443-04:00TomC:
To my knowledge there are no good book-len...TomC: <br /><br />To my knowledge there are no good book-length treatments of information theory for laymen. One book that's worth reading (although it is hard to find these days) is Renyi's <i>A Diary on Information Theory</i>. It is good, but Renyi unfortunately died before he could finish it. And it only covers Shannon information, not Kolmogorov information.<br /><br />Wesley Elsberry and I wrote a chapter for <i>Why Intelligent Design Fails</i> that explains the basics of Kolmogorov theory.Jeffrey Shallithttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12763971505497961430noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20067416.post-32162926220409827952009-07-16T15:41:37.126-04:002009-07-16T15:41:37.126-04:00I prefer Nietzsche's take on the subject: “T...I prefer Nietzsche's take on the subject: “The most perfidious way of harming a cause consists of defending it deliberately with faulty arguments.”Unknownhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04837308086830228614noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20067416.post-21618934588276071832009-07-16T11:37:50.346-04:002009-07-16T11:37:50.346-04:00Jeffrey,
Perhaps this has been asked before, but,...Jeffrey,<br /><br />Perhaps this has been asked before, but, in your humble opinion, what are some of the better books out there explaining information as mathematicians or computer scientists understand it? I'd like a few technical references, actually, say, at the advanced undergrad or beginning grad level, if you have a few. <br /><br />I ask because I have friends who think Dembski is great, and I would love to tehnically counter their arguments about his "specified complexity" crap.<br /><br />Thanks in advance, and sorry again if this has been asked before.TomCnoreply@blogger.com