Executive Summary:
Barry Arrington doesn’t understand ID. KF talks about math and design detection but never does it. ID exists as an amorphous miasmic anti-evolutionary argument. It is the North Korea of the internet
Barry Arrington doesn’t understand ID.
in now epic thread Barry told us what would convince him ID was wrong:
The science bomb that will destroy my belief in ID: A single example of natural forces observed to have create Orgel’s CSI.
Now as IDists can’t actually measure CSI (they don’t appear to understand it at UD) this was troublesome, but a close examination of Dembski’s CSI contains the term P(T|H), which is described by him as
Moreover, H, here, is the relevant chance hypothesis that takes into account Darwinian and other material mechanisms.
So Barry wanted a demonstration of CSI being made by natural forces, whilst Dembski defines CSI as only to be ‘counted’ in the absence of them. Barry doesn’t understand CSI. I asked him if he thought that “CSI=FSC=FSCO/I”. He never responded.
KF talks about math and design detection but never does it
KF’s behavior is perhaps the most odious of the moderators there. Rather than have an actual discussion, he creates multiple one-off posts with closed comments, which means that associated critique is never attached to the post itself. This effectively allows him to perpetually reboot once destroyed arguments as if they are new and unassailable. This just shows us the strong connection between creationism and ID – creationists are still rolling out “2LoT” and “If we came from Monkeys” today.
All of KF’s posts are basically reformations of Hoyle’s tornado in a junkyard arguments: Complex things cannot spontaneously generate. Of course this has *nothing* to do with life and does not consider P(T|H). KF has yet to do any credible math pertaining to an evolutionary narrative. Sadly telling.
ID exists as an amorphous miasmic anti-evolutionary argument
The general trend at UD is for the IDists to tell us what they think evolution can’t do rather than what ID can do. It is gapism in its purest form. The target moves from PCD to abiogenesis to the first cell and they want a complete history of the evolution of life with pictures and an index of all the mutations as they happened. Given the ‘Jesus this’ and ‘God that’ that happens at UD, I wonder if they have the same high bar for other ‘historical’ events.
It is the North Korea of the internet
They silently ban, delete accounts, place in moderation, mark up others posts and post themselves with comments disabled. This degree of message control is a symptom of their arguments being completely noncompetitive when there is a free and fair exchange of ideas.
The best meltdown evar.
It’s just a never-ending game of burden-shift. Every single long thread there degenerates into “You have prove X!” “No, you have to prove Y!” “NO YOU do!” “Unh-unh–I’m the one who’s talking about the absence of the absence of UN-guided Non-design! So it’s your burden” “My view is simpler. I mean don’t you get that billions are less than trillions?!–This is YOUR problem!” Page after page after page of it.
I guess if you hang around there long enough you can infer people’s “church,” try to guess how often they go, and get a sense what places with other views they may have visited–whether there was a conversion in their history somewhere. You can see who’s absolutely positive, who’s curious, etc. I guess that’s a fun game too. But is there any other point, really? I mean, It’s like being stuck in a Sartre play.
We are all stuck in a Sarte play. That’s the point of Sarte plays.
For the record:
Minutes after that exchange where KF went into and drastically changed my post and I called him on it I was silently banned. My account wasn’t killed but all my attempts to posts are immediately deleted.
When keith s came back to protest my treatment KF responded with a flat out lie.
kairosfocus: “As you full well know, further, I do not hold power of banning”
KS has been abusing his moderator powers for some time but never this blatantly.
Take a good look at yourself UD. You’re a place where scum like KF will go into people’s posts and change messages, delete words, add his own. Is that the kind of “academic freedom” you guys want?
Adapa,
Hi and welcome to TSZ, Adapa. My experience was that various IP addresses I was using were blocked. There’s a free app called Hola that works very well with Google Chrome.
I suspect this is disingenuous. Barry said I was not banned on a previous occasion. Technically true; it was just my comments stayed in moderation. The IP blocking appears to be a new strategy.
Incredible, but true! Amazing new research reported in Atlantic Magazine: You cannot educate people into believing in evolution.
Is that why they believe in god?
Guy thinking “I don’t believe god really exists [I am real, you idiot – Gd]“
After denying it twice KF has now admitted yes he was behind my banning and that I was banned for “brazen slander”. But who was slandered? The only name mentioned was Dembski in the sentence “(after Kitzmiller) Many ID leaders like Dembski have dropped the pretenses and have gone back to talking about God the Creator.”
I wonder if Dembski would agree that pointing out his belief in God the Creator constitutes slander?
It was an interesting experience dealing with so many psychotics and outright liars among the UD regulars but I’ve had enough. Talk about a dysfunctional inbred little family…
I’ve had a run in with Keith here. I tend to pity anyone who goes up against him.
petrushka,
I like his tenacity. And his toupe.
Adapa,
As Allan likes to say, oh stop whining, just present your case. If they banned you it must be because you couldn’t present any case. I guess you should have come prepared with a better argument. Its all your fault.
Why ‘must it be’ that, Phoodoo? Present your case.
Why is phoodoo’s trolling allowed here? His comments are nothing but disruptive crap that is obviously intended to instigate fights. If reasonable discussion/debate is the goal of this site, it won’t be achieved by allowing trolls to run amok.
What was your case, again?
By the way, notice that TSZ does not ban YOU for not presenting a case EVER…
Creodont2,
The whole ethos of the site is free and frank discussion. It would be a foolish action to ban him for pursuing his case (particularly given the context of this thread), even if we may not particularly agree with it or his methods. I give him more credit than many of the UD regulars who remain lodged in the bunker. I don’t find him provocative; he just makes me chuckle.
I think he’s guilty of a lot of the same methods he has so much moral indignation about and scorn for when it comes from his opponents. Winning/qvelling is too important to him to care sufficiently about errors in his own arguments, IMHO. His whole team ethos reminds me of some of the rabid Sox fans in my area. Plus, for all of his intelligence, he’s often full of shit and will never admit when he’s fudged.
So, I agree with petrushka that he’s unpleasant to deal with. But is it really good to have members of our “tag team” hide salt in their own trunks (or use the sleeper hold–which really should be banned!!) just because the other guys do it? Because they have their Joes, we have to have our Joes?
Ah, by all measures, even “the sainted” Lizzie can’t stand it here anymore. FWIW, I’d make hotshoe–or somebody else who doesn’t think the Citizens United decision represents what’s best about the U.S.A and rational discourse–the moderator here. This view that the only choices are either to (i) allow everything (but porn and ads, I guess) or (ii) ban everyone we disagree with is just the glorification of a false dichotomy bred of a religious belief in an endowment (by the Creator) in a natural right to “freeze peaches.” [credit hotshoe]
walto,
Well, your (i) was Lizzie’s choice. Granted, she seems to have gone. I come and go myself. But I would be amazed if she didn’t welcome phoodoo et al with open arms, because discussion between opponents seems to be the whole point.
My “case” has nothing to do with ID. It has to do basic intellectual honesty. KF began going into and modifying my posts, changing the wording and adding his own. I told him that was a cowardly and despicable abuse of his moderation powers which it was. I also told him he could answer my posts with posts of his own, not just butcher my original. KF responded by then deleting my comments and blocking all my posts making it impossible for me to reply. When Keith s called him on it, KF denied it twice then finally admitted it and made up a big lie about why he had me banned.
True to form the other cowards at IDers then started taking pot shots at me and my arguments knowing full well I couldn’t answer. These are the same cowards who had nothing to say when I could still defend myself. Even this morning HeKS is still taking pot shots.
How would you feel if a moderator here started altering the words in your posts? Then blocked your replies but kept up the verbal attacks on you?
UD has every right to run their site like the Gestapo. I have every right to point out what a bunch of lying hypocrites they are when the boast about allowing open discussion then keep pulling the silent bannings and censorship like this.
Obviously, that kind of thing is disgraceful and indefensible. Why would anybody want to post at a place like that?
walto,
I am not in favor of arbitrary censoring, but the thing is, this is exactly what happens at Wikipedia, and you all seem to love it. Allan says, well, just stop whining, do something about it, blah , blah…..
Well, you can’t just do something about it, so the hypocrisy of the selective indignation from some of you characters is rather unseemly.
Phoodoo, insteading of whining, why not just do some experiments to back up Sheldrake’s claims? They aren’t expensive to do.
I can guess at the answer. People have done the experiments informally and have not confirmed Sheldrake. I’m sure there are individuals who believe they are confirmed, but what counts is the ability of any honest experimenter to replicate the results. If that had happened, we would have heard about it.
Just for the record. I have had dogs all my adult life. That’s nearly 45 years. I know they anticipated my return from work, but they never anticipated my return at unusual times. That’s 45 years of negative data.
With that attitude ID will never prosper.
Oh, wait…
I seem to remember a TV program some time ago that did exactly that:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/155928.stm
Well I know that the effect is not strong and consistent. I also know about selective memory and confirmation bias.
Duke university funded a psi lab for at least 20 years. The first years were promising, but as the controls got better, the effects tended to evaporate. This was a serious and sustained effort, and it did not confirm any psychic phenomena.
So it’s not like no one has ever tried.
Looking at the nature of the posts that Dr. Liddle does now at TalkRational, I don’t think she stopped posting at TSZ to avoid the Monty-Python-argument-sketch discussions that often occur here.
In fact, based on the large amount of work and time she spent on her posts here last year, and looking at posts at TalkRational now, I would guess just the opposite.
Sometimes you just want a break from your day job. Unless of course you don’t have one, I guess.
Phoodoo says: “If they banned you it must be because you couldn’t present any case.”
Apart from being demonstrably historically inaccurate, your logic makes no sense whatsoever. So UD bans posters who cannot present any case? Why would they do that? They do ban posters reeeeal fast if the poster points out their hypocrisy. Which is exactly what Adapa did. It started with WJM and BarryA deliberately misrepresenting what Adapa had said. When called on it, they retreated to censorship.
Maybe. I miss her. Her intellectual curiosity over ID may also waned, she believes the movement to be (scientifically) dead: http://www.antievolution.org/cgi-bin/ikonboard/ikonboard.cgi?act=ST;f=14;t=7640;st=30#entry230019
I think she tired of the repetitiveness. Lizzie always put a huge effort into her posts and comments. I tried provoking her with a gibe about her existence being questioned by newer subscribers but it’s up to her. I do find it strangely surreal, though. “Waiting for Godot” seems appropriate. I see she resigned as admin from Talk Rational last month.
Now if there were new developments in ID theory!
Whether it happens at Wikipedia is controversial. Whether it happens at UD is not. Why don’t you complain about that site here?
Dr Elizabeth Liddle (commenting here) on 5th January 2014:
It just dawned on me that ID is dead.
Dembski is off all radar. He doesn’t even show up in the search box at South Carolina bible college or whatever. The last post on the Design Inference is a year old.
Meyer’s book went up like a firework and came down with the stick.
Most of the static websites are moribund. UD has banned virtually all dissenters. The few brave enough to wander over to TSZ bail out after a couple of rounds. The biologic institute inflates its “selected publications” with publications that have nothing to do with the biologic institute and seems to be doing no more than pretending to produce output.
Bio-Complexity is moribund.
Behe doesn’t seem to have much to say.
The big guys won’t come out to debate. The small ones mostly won’t leave heavily censored sites. Even the UD newsdesk peddles 6 year old stories as “news”.
And all the threads are about religion. Or tossing coins.
I don’t know why I hadn’t seen it before.
It’s dead.
Hadn’t seen that before, Rich. Thanks, explains a lot.
Too bad some people’s strategy is disrupting any reasonable debate. They can’t win the debate, but at least they won’t lose because there will be no debate.
I think it is described best as “cargo cult science”. They want to have the sciencey words and the respectability and legitimacy that goes with them. It does not confuse scientists, but then the layperson is the target. They also want a plurality of viewpoints; “You’ve got your science, I’ve got mine”
Guillermoe,
It’s probably fair to say that, when UD-sympathetic commenters stop, things pretty much dry up. Since I regard this as simply a leisure activity (one of many, I hasten to add!), I’m not too fussed either way – if there’s someone to discuss with, even if they try disruption or a curious combination of hyper-skepticism and hyper-credulity, I’ll give it a go, for the exercise.
Allan Miller,
I know things get more interesting when opposite views are confronted, but circular arguing (you know, claiming something, ignoring the answers and then claiming it again some time later), trolling, phallacious arguments, tce, are not my idea of opposite views.
It would be very interesting to have a honest debate on ID, or at leats to debate with someone capable of understanding the answers to his claims.
People like phoodoo turn out being very boring…
One painful (for them) observation is they don’t understand ID. They have a vague notion of what they’d like it to be and its partly a function of making it up as you go along, but the actual math is beyond them. What’s stopping them running the numbers for design on things? We all know but they dare not say.
walto, you said: “Because they have their Joes, we have to have our Joes?”
You equating Keith S to Joe G is one of the most ridiculous things I have ever read. Keith is NOTHING like Joe G.
+1, Full disclaimer, I like KeithS.
Lizzie was never very good at arguing. She would make stuff up, and then when her bluff was called out, she would just say, Oh I have explained it already, or run from the argument completely. So her saying ID is dead is pretty meaningless.
The funny thing is, she makes a website, so she can let people express whatever bile and nonsense they choose, and she can’t even stand the environment she herself created. I guess her experiment didn’t work too well for her.
Now do you wonder why UD has to disallow some posters? Because if they didn’t this is the crap you would get. I guess evolutionary theory is dead, if this is the best you have. You don’t even have a theory of evolution, and Allan can’t even answer if he thinks the assassination of JFK was a conspiracy.
Watch TSZ slowly going down the drain….
That’s precious Phoodoo. Why is someone with your telepathy here? You should be out solving crimes, sunshine..
The theory of evolution offers no explanation for how JFK got shot.
I can’t believe anyone ever needed to type that!
phoodoo,
God, I know, right? Fancy not having an opinion oin the matter!
phoodoo,
Back to the Good Ship UD with you, then. You’ll like them there, they hate Wikipedia too!
I didn’t mean to equate them. My point was that keiths is willing to, let’s say, “get down to their level.” I don’t think that’s either necessary or appropriate. I don’t have a ton of experience with UD, but IMHO, there are more praise-worthy heroes to be found over there.
However, you’re right, he’s not Joe, and I shouldn’t have put it that way (though I’m guess you actually HAVE heard ‘more ridiculous things.”)
ETA: To explain, I’ve had a half dozen really unpleasant run-ins with keiths having nothing whatever to do with evolution. I won’t characterize them, since I’m hardly impartial, but encourage you to rummage around here and find them. You might find out where my bile regarding keiths comes from.
Your crap is exactly what they want to get.
And what do you have? So far, you have been talking about nothing but the ToE.
We have already told you what the ToE says, so we have a theory. Your theory, on the other hand, what was it?
Must be frustrating having to use those childish arguments all the time.
Given that phoodoo is over here more then at UD it says much about UD.
I don’t look at Talk Rational much, but I get the impression from looking at the topics and the posters that there are more people and a wider range of topics discussed. However, the level of sophistication for the discussions I looked at is nowhere near what it was at TSZ last year when some very intelligent people were participating, Dr Liddle among them.
But there is a lot of hard work doing those posts. Sometimes you just want light repartee to relax, and there are more topics and more people at TR for that lighter conversation.
I agree that if TSZ is only about responding to the arguments for ID, then it could not help but get repetitious.