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Antievolution.org Discussion Board > From the Panda's Thumb > After the Bar Closes... > Uncommonly Dense Thread 2

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bfish Posts: 267 Joined: Feb. 2006 (Permalink) Posted: Oct. 17 2008,15:56    Quote (Dr.GH @ Oct. 17 2008,10:53) DaveScot I’m filing this under education and intelligent design because it points out that a certain segment of the public veers radically from everyone else and it’s the same segment that radically opposes intelligent design. From Gallup 10/16/08 presidential tracking poll: Education: Obama%/McCain% High School or less: 42/48 Some College: 41/52 College graduate: 46/49 Post graduate: 55/40 ...... I don't think that D'Tard has those numbers correct. There just aren't that many post graduates to make the marginals work. Mystery solved, with the assistance of jerry at the UD site. Seems DT cherry-picked the numbers for non-hispanic whites. Here are  the numbers for the entire population. Obama leads in all groups.

Dr.GH Posts: 2333 Joined: May 2002 (Permalink) Posted: Oct. 17 2008,17:14    Quote (bfish @ Oct. 17 2008,13:56) Mystery solved, with the assistance of jerry at the UD site. Seems DT cherry-picked the numbers for non-hispanic whites. Here are  the numbers for the entire population. Obama leads in all groups. The point would seem to be made that havin' a post graduate degree, ya betcha, makes you most likely to be pro-Obama. Also. Or maybe anti-stupid. -------------- "Science is the horse that pulls the cart of philosophy." L. Susskind, 2004 "SMOLIN VS. SUSSKIND: THE ANTHROPIC PRINCIPLE"

khan Posts: 1554 Joined: May 2007 (Permalink) Posted: Oct. 17 2008,17:45    Quote (didymos @ Oct. 17 2008,01:30) Quote (dvunkannon @ Oct. 16 2008,18:49) Wow, 7 out of 10 responses to Scooter's post on Joe the Plumber are from... Scooter! By Nov 4, Scooter will be the only one left on UD, and he won't even notice. Here's a good non-DaveTard one:   Quote bb 10/16/2008 10:19 pm DaveScot, People in my neighborhood avoid McCain signs and bumper stickers because they don’t want their home or car vandalized. That says something about liberal voters doesn’t it? No, but it does suggest that people in your neighborhood are paranoiac morons. I would like to add that in my blue-collar neighborhood in SW Ohio, there are Obama and McCain signs (sometimes on adjoining lots) and they have both been there for at least several weeks. -------------- "It's as if all those words, in their hurry to escape from the loony, have fallen over each other, forming scrambled heaps of meaninglessness." -damitall That's so fucking stupid it merits a wing in the museum of stupid. -midwifetoad Frequency is just the plural of wavelength... -JoeG

Texas Teach Posts: 2084 Joined: April 2007 (Permalink) Posted: Oct. 17 2008,17:51    Quote (CeilingCat @ Oct. 17 2008,00:43) Is there a UD version of Poe's law?  Something like "Without a blatant indicator such as a smiley, it is impossible to tell the difference between a UD poster and a parody thereof."? Fixed that for you. -------------- "Creationists think everything Genesis says is true. I don't even think Phil Collins is a good drummer." --J. Carr "I suspect that the English grammar books where you live are outdated" --G. Gaulin

silverspoon Posts: 123 Joined: May 2007 (Permalink) Posted: Oct. 17 2008,18:12    Quote (bfish @ Oct. 17 2008,15:56) Quote (Dr.GH @ Oct. 17 2008,10:53) DaveScot I’m filing this under education and intelligent design because it points out that a certain segment of the public veers radically from everyone else and it’s the same segment that radically opposes intelligent design. From Gallup 10/16/08 presidential tracking poll: Education: Obama%/McCain% High School or less: 42/48 Some College: 41/52 College graduate: 46/49 Post graduate: 55/40 ...... I don't think that D'Tard has those numbers correct. There just aren't that many post graduates to make the marginals work. Mystery solved, with the assistance of jerry at the UD site. Seems DT cherry-picked the numbers for non-hispanic whites. Here are  the numbers for the entire population. Obama leads in all groups. As we all know, which Dave correctly demonstrates,  non-hispanic whites are the only demographic that *should* count. -------------- Grand Poobah of the nuclear mafia

Ptaylor Posts: 1180 Joined: Aug. 2006 (Permalink) Posted: Oct. 17 2008,20:51    I think someone's been visiting here. Dave on the 16th:     Quote Perjury is an impeachable crime. Clinton almost got impeached for lying about a perfectly legal bj. (Ahem) yours truly:     Quote Actually, you're wrong Dave on the 17th:     Quote Perjury is an impeachable offense for a sitting president. Clinton got impeached, but wasn’t convicted, for lying about his sex life. -------------- We no longer say: “Another day; another bad day for Darwinism.” We now say: “Another day since the time Darwinism was disproved.” -PaV, Uncommon Descent, 19 June 2016

Ptaylor Posts: 1180 Joined: Aug. 2006 (Permalink) Posted: Oct. 17 2008,21:13    Quote (Zachriel @ Oct. 17 2008,15:32)   Quote DaveScot: A guy can’t be installed as POTUS that fails the background check for the highest level of security clearance in the United States of America. Of course he can. A security statute or order can't override the Constitution. It's a decision for the electorate, not officials of the security apparatus of the previous administration. No person except a natural born citizen, or a citizen of the United States, at the time of the adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the office of President; neither shall any person be eligible to that office who shall not have attained to the age of thirty five years, and been fourteen Years a resident within the United States. The President has executive powers and acts as commander in chief of the armed forces. Dave now:   Quote After some further reading it appears there’s no law or constitutional requirement that POTUS get a security clearance of any kind. Amazing. Emphasis mine. -------------- We no longer say: “Another day; another bad day for Darwinism.” We now say: “Another day since the time Darwinism was disproved.” -PaV, Uncommon Descent, 19 June 2016

olegt Posts: 1405 Joined: Dec. 2006 (Permalink) Posted: Oct. 17 2008,21:48    Dave does some research.   Quote Just out of curiosity I’ll see if I can find out how many of the top 100 richest Americans have no degree. I’ll predict that a majority do not. He discovers that things don't work that way: Quote Outside the top ten a majority have degrees. What might still be surprising is few of them have advanced degrees. The majority are Bachelor of Science, usually from an Ivy league. Graduate degrees are nearly all Masters in Business from an Ivy League. That's hardly surprising.  Entrepreneurs don't need an advanced degree in science.  Those who start on a path to a Ph. D. intend to become successful scientists, not businessmen.   Sometimes people change careers: Jim Simons, a highly successful mathematician, quit academia and now runs a highly profitable hedge fund Renaissance Technologies.  He is #57 on the Forbes 400 list.  But such cases are rare. -------------- If you are not: Galapagos Finch please Logout »

sparc Posts: 2088 Joined: April 2007 (Permalink) Posted: Oct. 18 2008,00:33    DaveScot:           Quote I’m a bit of a poll junkie. DaveScot:         Quote I’m filing this under education and intelligent design because it points out that a certain segment of the public veers radically from everyone else and it’s the same segment that radically opposes intelligent design. From Gallup 10/16/08 presidential tracking poll: Education: Obama%/McCain% High School or less: 42/48 Some College: 41/52 College graduate: 46/49 Post graduate: 55/40   Quote 27 January 2006 Harris Poll Shows ID Support Rises Fastest With Education DaveScot From Table 7 of the Harris Poll Belief in Evolution doubles from 17% to 35% as education goes from high school to postgrad. Belief in ID triples from 6% to 17% as education goes from high school to postgrad. WMAD: Quote belief in ID is more common among Democrats than Republicans DaveScot Quote Poll results can vary a lot for no apparent reason. Maybe postgraduate Guillermo Gonzales wasn't interviewed by Gallup. (I'll add links once the http button works again) -------------- "[...] the type of information we find in living systems is beyond the creative means of purely material processes [...] Who or what is such an ultimate source of information? [...] from a theistic perspective, such an information source would presumably have to be God." - William Dembski -

Zachriel Posts: 2723 Joined: Sep. 2006 (Permalink) Posted: Oct. 18 2008,06:58    Quote (Ptaylor @ Oct. 17 2008,21:13)   Quote (Zachriel @ Oct. 17 2008,15:32)       Quote DaveScot: A guy can’t be installed as POTUS that fails the background check for the highest level of security clearance in the United States of America. Of course he can. A security statute or order can't override the Constitution. It's a decision for the electorate, not officials of the security apparatus of the previous administration. No person except a natural born citizen, or a citizen of the United States, at the time of the adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the office of President; neither shall any person be eligible to that office who shall not have attained to the age of thirty five years, and been fourteen Years a resident within the United States. The President has executive powers and acts as commander in chief of the armed forces. Dave now:   Quote After some further reading it appears there’s no law or constitutional requirement that POTUS get a security clearance of any kind. Amazing. Emphasis mine. We all do our part to keep DaveScot informed of the latest (the U.S. Constitution was ratified in 1788) developments. DaveScot finds it amazing that the elected choice of the people isn't subject to approval by the government's unelected, secret security apparatus. Quote DonaldM: Yeah, that is kinda mindboggling. -------------- You never step on the same tard twice—for it's not the same tard and you're not the same person.

didymos Posts: 1828 Joined: Mar. 2008 (Permalink) Posted: Oct. 18 2008,11:22    DLH:   Quote DLH 10/18/2008 7:48 am Common sense from a common citizen Is Obama a natural born citizen of the United States? Less Goss Well, let's see the sort of sense demonstrated by said citizen:   Quote I do not know the truth about the Obama citizenship question. Neither do you. Perhaps Mr. Obama does not know the truth either, since he was very young at the time of his birth. But, someone knows where the truth lies. Do you believe that we, the voters, are entitled to know the truth regarding Mr. Obama's citizenship before the elections in November? I can't figure out what's worse: that some guy actually wrote that with no apparent comic intent, or that DLH praises the man's "sense". -------------- I wouldn't be bothered reading about the selfish gene because it has never been identified. -- Denyse O'Leary, professional moron Again "how much". I don't think that's a good way to be quantitative.-- gpuccio

stevestory Posts: 13407 Joined: Oct. 2005 (Permalink) Posted: Oct. 19 2008,00:44    Quote DaveScot: A guy can’t be installed as POTUS that fails the background check for the highest level of security clearance in the United States of America. Where does Davetard get these ideas?

carlsonjok Posts: 3326 Joined: May 2006 (Permalink) Posted: Oct. 19 2008,00:54    Quote (stevestory @ Oct. 19 2008,00:44)   Quote DaveScot: A guy can’t be installed as POTUS that fails the background check for the highest level of security clearance in the United States of America. Where does Davetard get these ideas? For the better part of the last week, Dave has been exercising various ideas about how Obama is not qualified to be President. I have to assume that he has been diligently researching the topics using a variety of credible legal resources. -------------- It's natural to be curious about our world, but the scientific method is just one theory about how to best understand it.  We live in a democracy, which means we should treat every theory equally. - Steven Colbert, I Am America (and So Can You!)

BWE Posts: 1902 Joined: Jan. 2006 (Permalink) Posted: Oct. 19 2008,01:39    That graphic gets a lot of mileage. -------------- Who said that ev'ry wish would be heard and answered When wished on the morning star Somebody thought of that, and someone believed it Look what it's done so far The Daily Wingnut

didymos Posts: 1828 Joined: Mar. 2008 (Permalink) Posted: Oct. 19 2008,03:09    All the politicking is starting to attract detractors: idnet.com.au: Quote idnet.com.au 10/19/2008 12:24 am If the anti ID crowd needed any further evidence for when they assert that ID is a political movement, they will soon get it from all the US right wing politics so brazenly displayed here. To be pro ID does not equate with being right or left wing. Let’s make that clear in the intro to posts like this one. I know BO has no time for ID and I think that alone is where we should address our points. Just a view from Australia. and acorbit: Quote acorbit 10/19/2008 1:02 am Does this blog actually discuss ID any more? Given all the purely political, anti-Obama/pro-McCain posts recently I’m beginning to wonder. Enjoy them while they last. -------------- I wouldn't be bothered reading about the selfish gene because it has never been identified. -- Denyse O'Leary, professional moron Again "how much". I don't think that's a good way to be quantitative.-- gpuccio

Jkrebs Posts: 590 Joined: Sep. 2004 (Permalink) Posted: Oct. 19 2008,09:15    They appear to be gone already.  Dave is hard at work this morning.

didymos Posts: 1828 Joined: Mar. 2008 (Permalink) Posted: Oct. 19 2008,09:49    More paranoid drippings from deric davidson: Quote 10/19/2008 9:31 am Obama, Pelosi and Reid in charge of the US of A. Think about that. This would surely be the most left wing government and executive ever. What would be the future of ID in such a socio-political environment? The push to drive ID into obscurity will be given a considerable boost no doubt. It's sort of cute how he thinks ID isn't already doomed to obscurity, or actually, already in obscurity. -------------- I wouldn't be bothered reading about the selfish gene because it has never been identified. -- Denyse O'Leary, professional moron Again "how much". I don't think that's a good way to be quantitative.-- gpuccio

carlsonjok Posts: 3326 Joined: May 2006 (Permalink) Posted: Oct. 19 2008,10:40    Quote (Jkrebs @ Oct. 19 2008,09:15) They appear to be gone already.  Dave is hard at work this morning. Hard work is a good way to fend off the depression he might otherwise feel about now. In this comment from a few weeks ago, Dave expresses his appreciation for them acceptable blacks.   Quote Give me a chance to vote for Colin Powell or Condi Rice for the whitehouse. Love to have either or both. They’re both far more qualified than Obama, blacker than Obama, and one is a woman. Of course, this morning Colin Powell officially endorsed Barack Obama for President.  He must be having a hard time choosing between acknowledging Obama as a legitimate contender for the office or denouncing Powell for having played the race card. -------------- It's natural to be curious about our world, but the scientific method is just one theory about how to best understand it.  We live in a democracy, which means we should treat every theory equally. - Steven Colbert, I Am America (and So Can You!)

Bob O'H Posts: 2564 Joined: Oct. 2005 (Permalink) Posted: Oct. 19 2008,11:26    Busy goings on at UD today.  First Dr. Dr. D. plugs a new programme, reveals that he's finally got a paper accepted, and also complains that there's too much politics and not enough science ID. In response, Dave decides to try and sound sciency, with inevitable results.  The biologists amongst you, in particular, will find this amusing.  As I'm back in moderation, I'll leave my comments here as well: Quote Dave - you're comparing apples and oranges.  Lenski and co. were looking at the evolution of a new function - at the start of the experiment the bacteria didn't have any genes for lactose digestion. In the paper you cite here, Xie looks at induction of genes that are already present.  His <i>E. coli</i> strains already have the genes for lactose digestion, so there is no evolution.  What he is looking at is the details of how expression of the genes is triggered, not how these genes originate. -------------- It is fun to dip into the various threads to watch cluelessness at work in the hands of the confident exponent. - Soapy Sam (so say we all)

RupertG Posts: 80 Joined: Nov. 2005 (Permalink) Posted: Oct. 19 2008,11:50    Dembski has been busy - four co-authored papers in review and a nice shiny website dedicated to... well, I'm not exactly sure. I suspect it's something to do with proving that computers can't simulate evolution, or simulated evolution can't be useful in any way, which should be as fruitful a mission as proving that bumblebees can't fly. -------------- Uncle Joe and Aunty Mabel Fainted at the breakfast table Children, let this be a warning Never do it in the morning -- Ralph Vaughan Williams

Wesley R. Elsberry Posts: 4991 Joined: May 2002 (Permalink) Posted: Oct. 19 2008,11:55    Dembski and Marks:   Quote The active information supplied by the "divide and conquer" oracle is necessary to perform the search.  In essence, Dr. Dawkins concurs when he writes    "Chance is a minor ingredient in the Darwinian recipe [as exemplified in the WEASEL example], but the most important ingredient is the cumulative selection [i.e. the divide and conquer oracle]  which is quintessentially nonrandom." (Italics not added )  [5]. In evolutionary computing, the active information can be generated by a programmer skillfully querying an information rich oracle.   I informed Dembski of the basic error in his mis-reading of Dawkins over eight years ago. I similarly notified Bob Marks last year that he was following Dembski into long-known error. From my response last year:   Quote The accurate way to describe Dawkins’s “weasel” program is this way: 1. Use a set of characters that includes the upper case alphabet and a space. 2. Initialize a population of n 28-character strings with random assignments of characters from our character set. 3. Identify the string or strings closest to the target string in the population. 4. If a string matches the target, terminate. 5. Base a new generation population of size n upon copies of the closest matching string or strings, where each position has a chance of randomly mutating, based upon a set mutation rate. 6. Go to step 3. Dembski and Marks claim that Dawkins’s “weasel” program smuggles in information of the target by use of partitioned search, by which they mean that every time a particular letter matches in a string, that correct assignment of letter and position are retained in all future generations. This is equivalent to the bad old password login scheme on DEC machines, where one could figure out which characters in a proffered password matched and continue login attempts until all of them matched. However, that is not how Dawkins’s “weasel” program worked, so every statement Dembski and Marks make that is based upon that false premise is utterly meaningless. Just as the Marks and Dembski “ev” critique failed upon easily checkable stuff, one can run Dawkins’s “weasel” and get results similar to those reported by Dawkins; however, running Dembski and Marks’s “weasel” with the partitioned search will return results that are far different from what Dawkins reported. The accurate version of Dawkins' "weasel" is conspicuous by its absence from the Dembski and Marks page, primarily, one presumes, because the outcome of analysis of that version sinks their claims completely. ETS: Invective. Edited by Wesley R. Elsberry on Oct. 19 2008,11:57 -------------- "You can't teach an old dogma new tricks." - Dorothy Parker

Art Posts: 69 Joined: Dec. 2002 (Permalink) Posted: Oct. 19 2008,12:01    Quote (Bob O'H @ Oct. 19 2008,11:26) Busy goings on at UD today.  First Dr. Dr. D. plugs a new programme, reveals that he's finally got a paper accepted, and also complains that there's too much politics and not enough science ID. In response, Dave decides to try and sound sciency, with inevitable results.  The biologists amongst you, in particular, will find this amusing.  As I'm back in moderation, I'll leave my comments here as well:   Quote Dave - you're comparing apples and oranges.  Lenski and co. were looking at the evolution of a new function - at the start of the experiment the bacteria didn't have any genes for lactose digestion. In the paper you cite here, Xie looks at induction of genes that are already present.  His <i>E. coli</i> strains already have the genes for lactose digestion, so there is no evolution.  What he is looking at is the details of how expression of the genes is triggered, not how these genes originate. Um, wasn't Lenksi et al. all about citrate utilization?

Bob O'H Posts: 2564 Joined: Oct. 2005 (Permalink) Posted: Oct. 19 2008,12:14    Ouch, true, yes. My bad for not checking what Dave wrote, and not thinking back to the original work. -------------- It is fun to dip into the various threads to watch cluelessness at work in the hands of the confident exponent. - Soapy Sam (so say we all)

oldmanintheskydidntdoit Posts: 4999 Joined: July 2006 (Permalink) Posted: Oct. 19 2008,12:43    Quote Yeah… Except it as little to do with the paper — and/or field of research — of Lenski (which I’m well aware of, because I’ve read 2 of his papers just today). DaveScot, maybe you would like to have a close look at Lenski’s work… A voice of sanity in the wilderness over at UD? Finchy Go Atticus! -------------- I also mentioned that He'd have to give me a thorough explanation as to *why* I must "eat human babies". FTK if there are even critical flaws in Gauger’s work, the evo mat narrative cannot stand Gordon Mullings

Bob O'H Posts: 2564 Joined: Oct. 2005 (Permalink) Posted: Oct. 19 2008,13:15    Guess what, OldMan.  It's gone already. -------------- It is fun to dip into the various threads to watch cluelessness at work in the hands of the confident exponent. - Soapy Sam (so say we all)

Wesley R. Elsberry Posts: 4991 Joined: May 2002 (Permalink) Posted: Oct. 19 2008,13:17    I knew I had done up a graph of the comparison between an accurate rendition of Dawkins' "weasel" and Dembski's mistaken "oracle weasel" version. The following graph is comprised of data taken from 100 runs of the program per mutation rate per treatment, and reports the average number of unique candidate solutions examined to get to a matching string. The accurate version of Dawkins' "weasel" is shown in purple. The Dembski-Marks fantasy of "oracle-weasel" is yellow-orange. The average performance of Dawkins' "weasel", which does not utilize the partitioning ("divide and conquer") that Dembski and Marks claim, is only two to three times worse on average than the "oracle weasel" Dembski and Marks fabricated, right up to the point where an increase in the mutation rate makes it likely that two or more characters in the string would be mutated per offspring. At higher mutation rates, it is clear that the Dembski-Marks "oracle weasel" has the advantage in performance due to "locking-in" of correct letters, which the accurate Dawkins' "weasel" does not do. But the graph clearly shows that even without "locking-in" of letters the accurate Dawkins' "weasel" does eventually get to the correct string, and takes only slightly over ten times as many candidates as does the Dembski-Marks "oracle weasel". There's the whole other issue of what, exactly, Dembski and Marks take to be a "query". Dembski and Marks derive a number of 98 queries for the Dembski-Marks "oracle weasel". I never saw a solution arrived at without at least 338 unique candidate solutions examined for "oracle weasel" in runs I made, which indicates something of a mismatch between Dembski-Marks analysis and practice. If we accept their estimate of 8.3e38 queries as approximately accurate for random search, accurate Dawkins' "weasel" outperformed that by a factor of 2.9e35 times. Evolutionary computation considered accurately vastly outperforms random search for this problem, and closely approaches the oracular and deterministic performance that Dembski and Marks do take up. The result is counter to the claims Dembski and Marks make that evolutionary computation requires oracles/"divide and conquer" techniques to beat random search. Sweet. I seems that next year I may have an easy peer-reviewed publication rebutting Dembski and Marks, if this is the stuff they are putting out there. -------------- "You can't teach an old dogma new tricks." - Dorothy Parker

stevestory Posts: 13407 Joined: Oct. 2005 (Permalink) Posted: Oct. 19 2008,17:49    Quote (carlsonjok @ Oct. 19 2008,11:40) Quote Give me a chance to vote for Colin Powell or Condi Rice for the whitehouse. Love to have either or both. They’re both far more qualified than Obama, blacker than Obama, and one is a woman. Of course, this morning Colin Powell officially endorsed Barack Obama for President.  He must be having a hard time choosing between acknowledging Obama as a legitimate contender for the office or denouncing Powell for having played the race card. Yeah. If Davetard endorses Colin Powell, and Colin Powell endorses Obama, then by the transitive property, Davetard is endorsing Obama.

Erasmus, FCD Posts: 6349 Joined: June 2007 (Permalink) Posted: Oct. 19 2008,19:02    wes the safe wager is that the 'review' process shall extend on and anon indefinitely.  i'm sure daniel smith would approve of this bet.  you may pay up at timestep eternity - 1. you'd think they would at least fix errors such as those privately, little Napoleons, even if they refuse to engage in the grand old scientific tradition of personal communication (among the many others they ignore or deny outright).  Perhaps they instead pray for their designer to smite thee.  Imprecatory peer review you see.  Anyway your technique and styles are impeccable and deadly.  As my Tsalagi friend once told me "I extol you". -------------- You're obviously illiterate as hell. Peach, bro.-FtK Finding something hard to believe based on the evidence, is science.-JoeG the odds of getting some loathsome taint are low-- Gordon E Mullings Manjack Heights Montserrat I work on molecular systems with pathway charts and such.-Giggles

Wesley R. Elsberry Posts: 4991 Joined: May 2002 (Permalink) Posted: Oct. 19 2008,19:53    Maybe I'm being too trusting, but Dembski mentions "acceptance", which to everybody else at least means that the journal will publish a version of the paper. The fact that they've only managed one acceptance with, what, four manuscripts submitted implies that 3/4ths of the journals have at least non-comatose reviewers, or that 3/4ths of the reviewer pools used are at least partially clued-in. Over on that thread, "Stelios" practices brinksmanship by questioning that central assumption that Dembski got wrong. "idnet.au.org", one of the IDC ringer "reviewers" involved in the Amazon scam for "The Design of Life", is taking up the responses.   Quote Stelios 10/19/2008 3:27 pm idnet.com.au, Understood, but it seems to me that the right “letter”, when found, is still and continues to be subject to random mutation as per the rest of the letters. The concept of a letter becoming “fixed” in place and unchangable from that point on simply does not appear. I’ll re-read that chapter, but can you substantiate via a quote from Dawkins in the meanwhile? 12 idnet.com.au 10/19/2008 4:28 pm Stelios, I am absolutely sure about this. I have studied Dawkins work. Have a look at the strings that he includes in the text. You can see that once selected, a letter becomes fixed. "idnet.au.org" makes an unwarranted inductive leap. Having one incomplete example of output, he is asserting that a state of affairs seen there must be part of the general rules applied. "idnet.au.org" will not be able to fulfill "Stelios"'s request for a quote, because no such quote exists. I corresponded with Dawkins back in 2000 on this topic, asking if there were any edition of "The Blind Watchmaker" that might have stated things the way Dembski describes. Dawkins replied then (I have the email up in another window here for reference), and said that, no, there was no alternative edition where Dembski was describing it correctly, and, no, his program did not privilege matched characters, and that doing so would be very bad didactically since such a description would be precisely what natural selection does not do. It was, of course, that last consideration that made me believe Dembski had the wrong of it well before I got the reply from Dawkins confirming that Dembski was way off. Edited by Wesley R. Elsberry on Oct. 19 2008,20:39 -------------- "You can't teach an old dogma new tricks." - Dorothy Parker

Zachriel Posts: 2723 Joined: Sep. 2006 (Permalink) Posted: Oct. 19 2008,20:16    Quote (Bob O'H @ Oct. 19 2008,11:26) Busy goings on at UD today.  First Dr. Dr. D. plugs a new programme, reveals that he's finally got a paper accepted ... I'm sort of hoping it's The Information Cost of No Free Lunch. In the paper, Dembski talks about word search. Quote In refuting the NFLT, for example, critics talk of search structures having “links” in the optimization space and smoothness constraints allowing for use of “hill-climbing” optimization. Making such assumptions about underlying search structures is not only common but also vital to the success of optimizing searchers (e.g., adaptive filters and the training of layered perceptron neural networks). Such assumptions, however, are useless when searching to find a sequence of, say, 7 letters from a 26-letter alphabet to form a word that will pass successfully through a spell checker ... Turns out that a standard evolutionary algorithm will find 7-letter words thousands of times faster than random search. Turns out that words are, indeed, connected by "links". I'm surprised Dembski has yet to modify this section of his paper as I'm sure he must be aware by now that the claim is not supportable. -------------- You never step on the same tard twice—for it's not the same tard and you're not the same person.

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