N.Wells
Posts: 1836
Joined: Oct. 2005
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| Quote | Edited to add missing link, better spacing:
All the definitions I offered were automatically rejected for "not following standard definitions."
In this thread definitions are being used to "start with a conclusion" that ahead of time concludes such things as "intelligence" cannot exist at the genomic molecular and/or cellular levels, You are a meat robot with a network of autopilots, and whatever else the definer's imagination can dream up.
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It is very unscientific to force others to start with "standard definitions", especially when said definitions come from the Anti-ID movement. |
Some days, it seems like you don't know how to read. I've been saying all along that you have a choice: anyone doing science can use standard definitions, or they can use non-standard definitions (i.e. redefine terms), but they have to state their re-definitions (even with standard usages, it's usually a good idea to restate definitions for your key terms or to provide references to prior literature that discusses the definitions and uses them the way you are going to). Without providing detailed definitions and operational definitions, they are constrained to using terms in traditional ways (which you don't do, as we have all been noting). If scientists are using non-standard definitions they are absolutely obliged to justify the non-standard definitions. Next, they need to provide an operational definition so that every knows what is being measured and how to measure it, so that we can all verify each others' measurements. After that, they have to be consistent in their use of the terms. You have not done any of this.
You are welcome to redefine intelligence to include "molecular intelligence" as long as you state clearly what you mean by it, justify/demonstrate its existence and its ability to behave as you claim it does and can do what you assert, show that it provides an explanation above and beyond standard understanding, and provide an operational definition so that it can be measured. The fact that you refuse to do this means that we can't tell what you are talking about, you can't tell what you are talking about, and you aren't doing anything that qualifies as science or stands any chance of being useful or valuable.
| Quote | | All the definitions I offered were automatically rejected for "not following standard definitions." |
No, you have yet to offer useful and valid definitions that are clearly stated, justified, and logically consistent with themselves and with known related information.
You also have a second category of terminological abuse that is even less amenable to redefinition. Note that the terms that you abuse include some very clearly defined terms such as "fractal" and "self-similar" (rather than ones that might benefit from redefinition, like "intelligence"). You have no interest in redefining those, because you want to claim their standard connotations (i.e. you want your stuff to meet their criteria). Unfortunately, your stuff fails to do that, so you are simply using those terms incorrectly.
Absent redefinitions, yes, you do have to stick with standard definitions. It is very unscientific to do otherwise.
Also, you are the one here who is making unsupported assertions and smuggling in conclusions in your assumptions and premises.
| Quote | The way this scientific process works is:
(1) Study what is known about how the device or system needing to be explained works.
(2) Program a computer model to demonstrate the working device or system.
(3) Write a "Theory Of Operation" to explain how the computer model works.
(4) Publish the source code of the computer model and its theory of operation where others who program computer models will eventually find it on the internet.
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That is an incorrect statement about scientific methodology, although it is only moderately wrong as a statement about modelling. With respect to the latter, you left out
2.5, Ground-truth your model;
2.6, Go back to 2 and modify your program accordingly, and iterate through 2 to 2.6 until the model is shown to be a sufficiently accurate representation.
Also, #4 needs to be "publish in a peer-reviewed and archived venue where others who are interested in the subject of the model will find it".
Avida provides a good example of all this, while your stuff is more of a counter-example of how not to do science. Even as written, your steps are not what you have done. You haven't studied up sufficiently in most of the areas where you make your major and exceptional claims*, and your model does not pertain to many of the areas where you are making those exceptional claims*. (*These include natural selection, evolution, reproduction, genetics, the Cambrian explosion, the emergence of intelligence.)
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