Subjects: Evolutionary computation. Information technology–Mathematics.
I cannot tell you exactly what will be in the forthcoming book by Marks, Dembski, and Ewert. I made it clear in Evo-Info 1 and Evo-Info 2 that I was responding primarily to technical papers on which the book is based. With publication delayed once again, I worry that the authors will revise the manuscript to deflect my criticisms. Thus I’m going to focus for a while on the recent contributions to the “evolutionary informatics” strain of creationism by George D. Montañez, a former advisee of Marks who is presently a doctoral candidate in machine learning at Carnegie Mellon University (advisor: Cosma Shalizi). My advice for George is that if he wants not to taken for a duck, then he had better not walk like a duck and swim like a duck and quack like a duck.
Interestingly, young-earth creationist Jonathan Bartlett did an Amazon “customer review” of Introduction to Evolutionary Informatics in late January, after World Scientific had changed its online announcement to indicate that the book would be published in May. When I let the folks at Amazon headquarters know that they were misrepresenting the book as available for purchase, they went above and beyond the call of duty to correct the mistake. I’m interested in hearing from Jonathan whether he removed his “customer review” voluntarily. Of course, I’d like to know also what led him to post it in the first place.
I’ll hazard to suggest that the book will be much like the supporting materials, which were revised extensively in January. The presentations on the Weasel, ev, and Avida models of evolution are self-contained. And they cast doubt on the advertising claim:
Built on the foundation of a series of peer-reviewed papers published by the authors, the book is written at a level easily understandable to readers with knowledge of rudimentary high school math.
Click on the “Mathematics” tab here, and you will see that the math — the easy stuff, as it happens — is something that almost everyone will skip. It’s there to impress, not to enlighten, the general reader. As I’ve said before, I would love to address the math, and not the rhetoric that the authors attach to it. Things would be much easier for me if the authors turned out to have magical teaching powers. But we have evidence now, and the evidence says no magic.
What does Tom have against ducks?
As a Ruby fan, you shouldn’t object to duck typing.
I sent a PM to Jon Bartlett immediately after I posted.
Edit: And now email.
Amazon removed it, not me. I emailed them about it and they said it was because they don’t allow reviews of pre-release books, but I didn’t see that in the guidelines. I’m a little frustrated because if I knew they were going to remove it, I would have saved a copy of it, as well as screenshotted the comment on it where you accused me of lying.
I requested a pre-release copy of the book a while ago (back in Nov/Dec I think) because I’m trying to figure out (a) whether there is a book that I can use to teach the technical parts of ID to homeschool STEM students, and (b) whether or not there was a need for such a book for me to write. I write textbooks that I think the world needs, especially for my own homeschool co-op classes. So, I figured I’d see if this was the book I was hoping for or if it still needed to be written. Dr. Marks later emailed me a PDF of the pre-production PDF, and said that he was also looking for something like back-cover quotes.
Anyway, I did not read every word, but I went through most of the book over a weekend. It was not the book I was hoping for (a book with problems to work, solutions, etc.), but it was a very good summary of the work that the evolutionary informatics lab has done so far. As an author myself, I know how important (and hard) it is to get a review, especially for a book with a subject that popular audiences aren’t familiar with. Therefore, I wrote a review.
Out of curiosity, (a) why did you think I wrote the review (I don’t even see why someone would question someone’s motivations for writing a review – that seems strange in and of itself), and (b) why did you accuse me of lying in your Amazon comment of having said that I read the book in my review? What evidence did you base this on?
johnnyb,
I’m curious. Were you offered the book free of charge in return for the promise of a review? I’ve received several such offers. I don’t think there’s anything particularly inappropriate about that–so long as everything is disclosed…..
What a pity – I won’t get a free pre-release book. Otherwise, I would have given the advice to be a little bit more careful with the index: something like
is just sloppy if there isn’t an entry on FOOHOA (seems to be true for all “see also”s…)
Even when all those issues are corrected, it will never rise to the level of Stan Kelly-Bootle’s The Devil’s DP Dictionary with the classic:
I did not promise to review the book at any time, nor was I asked to make such a promise. In fact, the email I received from them explicitly states that there was no obligation on my part for anything.
The Ev Ware Simulation described on the linked page does not seem to bear any resemblance whatsoever to Schneider’s ev.
Whoa, whoa, whoa! When did World Scientific add the E-Book and Reviews tabs to the page for the book?
I see the reviews in effect containt a list of people discrediting themselves. To pull a Trump: Sad!
You’d better reconsider that claim.
To spell things out, johnnyb evidently thinks that he’s free to slander me because the material is no longer visible at Amazon.
There’s a gem at the bottom:
An editor edited editor 0’Leary.
I will reiterate – YOU DID accuse me of lying in your comment on my post at Amazon. That is an out-and-out fact. It is not slander because it is true. You can take that up with whomever you wish.
Bullshit. I would be legally liable for defamation of character, EVEN in the United States, if that were true. I am not the fool that you are presently demonstrating yourself to be.
It would be simpler if you would just quote what was said.
From complaints that I sent to the Federal Trade Commission and to the office of Jeff Bezos:
What am I going to produce next? Do you want to cut your losses, or double down on your foolish play?
I’m confused. Is he accused of lying because he wrote a review of a book he hadn’t read, or accused of lying about having read or not read an unpublished manuscript?
What does this mean?
That sounds to me like manuscript was available, albeit in preliminary form. It sounds to me like it was read, although not every word.
Tom –
I’m not talking about your complaint to the FEC. I’m talking about the comment you posted publicly to my review on Amazon. For those who don’t know, the review (and the comment) is no longer there, probably because of Tom English’s complaints to them about the book and the review. I don’t have the text because Tom English got both my review and his comments removed from Amazon’s website.
In his comments, Tom basically said that I couldn’t have read the book because it was not out yet, and that the contents of the book did not match what my review said. Both of those are wrong, but the one I am specifically calling Tom out for is the first – claiming that I didn’t read it. I had. As I said, not every word, but I don’t read every word of any book.
Now, for those who don’t believe me, just look at this present post by Tom. Is he spending his time making substantial comments, or is here merely complaining that a book has a positive review? Is that what level skepticism has sunk to? Complaining to the FTC because a book you don’t like has a positive review? Do you really think that the availability on Amazon’s page is some nefarious creationist plot by World Scientific to make more money, or are you just causing trouble for people you don’t like? Seriously, if this OP is what the “skeptical” movement has sunk to, it’s frankly laughable.
I say emphatically that Tom English indicated on the comment on my Amazon review that I had not read the book. I point to this very post as evidence of the way that Tom English prefers to engage his opponents, which is consistent with his behavior on Amazon.
johnnyb,
How different is the published book from the manuscript you received?
I gave David Fogel a lot of feedback on drafts of Blondie24: Playing at the Edge of AI. But I did not review the book at Amazon until I had reviewed what actually was published.
You should make an exception for the Bible. It’ll change your life.
I pointed out that Amazon was gaining an unfair advantage over vendors who were not claiming that the book was available for purchase. And it was. Do you want to deny that? Or do you prefer to make up a censorship story? No need to answer. You’ve already said yes to the latter.
The advantage to World Scientific was to establish demand in advance of the first printing run.
They did not. You have a long history of misrepresenting what you think leading ID proponents ought to have said as what they actually have said. Your video on specified complexity is a prime example. (I broke down, and watched it. I wished that I had not. On technical matters, you’re an utter waste of my time.)
I commented that the outline of the book was more informative than your “review.” I gave readers a link to it, so they could judge for themselves. I also gave them a link to my Evo-Info series, and made it clear that I was responding to papers on which the book is based.
Any idiot, though not any IDiot, can see that I’ve explained why I’m deferring a substantive response.
You had nothing to say when I gave a hugely embarrassing example of algorithmic specified complexity in Evo-Info 2. There was nothing you could say.
The skeptical movement? Sheer projection, coming from beneath the big tent of the ID movement. Nothing makes it more clear that ID is crypto-creationism than the fact that it has a place for YECs like you and Salvador Cordova.
Indeed. I can’t remember the last time I needed a “what is it” in my code.
Still more than happy to share my Ruby knowledge with anyone who wants to learn it. That’s actually what’s been consuming most of my free time lately. I have four books on Rails 5 that I’ve been working through.
Not that you ever understood ev in the first place, Mathgrrl. Is that what is up with you? I got under your skin years ago over at UD by showing that you didn’t know dick all about ev? Might be time to let go.
Getting under someone’s skin is a vital skill of clowns.
The Muslim world adopted a similar approach a thousand years ago. They are now a thousand years behind the times. We see how amenable they are to updating their views (and knowledge) to fit the world around them. But who among us would say that Muslims are doing their children a disservice?
Mung,
Hopefully I’ll always get a bit of credit for recognizing that you knew something about software development, when the standard story was that you couldn’t read a Weasel program, let alone write one. Hopefully you’ll recall that I have [ETA: NOT] joined in telling people to write a Weasel program. Focusing on a process with only one survivor in each generation is a surefire way to acquire false intuitions. In fact, I think that various of the misapprehensions of Marks, Dembski, and Ewert are ultimately due to preoccupation with the Weasel.
My response to you is not an exception to the rule. I’ve never painted in broad strokes. And I’ll allow readily that George Montañez understands some things much better than Marks, Dembski, and Ewert do. Not to damn him with faint praise, but Marks et al. still do not get the significance of the No Free Lunch theorems for optimization, and George does not have that problem.
ID proponents never retract anything. They silently revise, keep the rhetoric the same, and wail piteously when critics fail to keep up. Dembski gave three key references in his University of Chicago talk, and they all defined active information differently. When Joe Felsenstein responded without taking the third into account, he got what-for from Dembski. Did Dembski breathe a hint that he’d had to make a big change in definition, to get the math to work out? Of course he did not. I’m sick of dealing with this garbage. It’s not how legitimate scholars behave. It’s how political activists, manipulating public opinion, behave.
I don’t know why he acts the way he often does. But I do know that if you let him know that you expect better from him, he responds appropriately.
Tom, to Mung:
Very, very little.
Mung’s attempt at a Weasel program was comically inept, as anyone who actually understands Weasel could tell you.
Absolutely.
I programmed in BASIC in high school. Bought my own Commodore 64 and have been peeking and poking ever since. Taught myself AWK. Taught myself C and even sold an app I wrote in C.
Completed certificate programs in Java, C, and Ruby/Ruby on Rails from the University of Washington. Still waiting for them to offer a classroom version of their course in C++ Programming.
I’m always willing to let people here underestimate me.
🙂
Yet they rarely do. It’s quite difficult.
Mung,
All I remember is squirming about no CSI calculations. But now it’s non calculated FIASCO everything is okay.
LoL. It would take a fake person to reach that conclusion.
You’ve shown absolutely zero aptitude for programming. Is that something you really want to get into?
Why would I need to? I’m talking about math. The domain of us humble cashiers.
I think it is more honorable to have no aptitude for programming than to have aptitude and use it deliberately to write pragrams tat don’t work.
Belly laugh.
Mung was writing jokes in code. I’d suspected that he had been sandbagging. When I saw the humor, I knew it for sure.
Either I do not understand the Weasel, or you do not get jokes. I’m leaning toward the latter.
They would be amusing if he were able to understand a little bit about Wagner and the existence of adjacent sequences having equivalent viability.
Without demonstrating that understanding, his jokes are tedious and pointless.
I think everyone gets that Weasel is a toy program that does not prove anything beyond its narrow scope. Unfortunately for ID, most of their argument from improbability is within that scope.
I haven’t been watching Alan’s thread. I’ve read only the essay that Wagner published in Aeon, evidently to promote sales of Arrival of the Fittest. The book is on my reading list, and I’d rather form my own impression of it.
As I indicated above, Mung lives down to expectations, but will also live up to expectations, if you change them. I’m not excusing his behavior.
If everyone gets it, then those who have gone on and on and on about the Weasel, year after year after year, have played into the hand of ID foolishly.
Ain’t nothing crypto about my creationism, therefore ID isn’t crypto creationism, it’s a pillar of creationism. ID is a necessary but not sufficient premise for creationism.
The Discovery Institute has always objected strenuously to the observation that “intelligent design” creationism is creationism.
Mung,
Nice additions in Seattle. Ok, I’d ‘hire’ you for a new project. Big money social enterprise volunteer! = )
Just won few months incubation prize at a technical university. Need system code architecting guidance. I may have little or much aptitude, while also no claim to know programing. If Ya Got the Blueprint…
One condition, rather obvious for the mechanical thinkers in the room to anticipate: you won’t be allowed to use your ‘intelligence’ in any of the ‘development’ (let’s polish our clarity & not call something ‘evolution’ where it doesn’t belong) or ‘designing’ that you do for us. We only hire token intelligent, stochastic-inspired NLP programmers for our ‘Skynet is self-aware’ production outfit. ; ) Forked on the IDM’s own petard!
If you’re skeptical about that, then no deal and you’re just an average boring intelligent tech freak nobody wants to meet in person because they just can’t ‘dumb themselves down’ (or is that wise themselves up?) to the conversational level of the average non-techie person.
I recently reread the original paper on ev, and also Dembski’s fabulously stupid account, back in 2001 or so, of how Schneider “smuggled in complex specified information.” Marks et al. have switched to saying, “3.7.3. A man-in-the-loop sneaks in active information,” tacitly admitting that Dembski misunderstood ev in the first place.