Learned Hand
Posts: 214
Joined: Oct. 2009
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In his latest screed, Barry Arrington makes a few odd comments. First, he says that "Jeffrey Shallit and I have been discussing the differences between a random string of text and a designed string of text." It's hard to see his indignant series of invective and complaints as any kind of "discussion;" he would need to substantively respond to Shallit's arguments for that. Here, for example, he is essentially conceding that Shallit is right but complains that the mathematician used a mathematical definition of "random" rather than reading his mind and using a lay definition, which Arrington finds objectionable (even though, as Frank points out, the lay definition is useless in a design-detection context). That's not a conversation, it's an angry man looking for an excuse to be angry about something.
Second, Arrington claims that as a lawyer he has some relevant expertise: "lawyers bring training in logic, reasoning and the evaluation of evidence issues to the table, and as this exchange demonstrates, that training can be useful in dissecting the ramblings of fundamentalists like Shallit."
In a word, no. I've heard this kind of posturing since law school, and it simply isn't true. Lawyers aren't automatically competent, much less experts, in "logic, reasoning and the evaluation of evidence." Law school spends surprisingly little time on those things, and an attorney only builds experience with them in practice if he uses them. Arrington doesn't seem to.
That's not a dig at his practice. Maintaining a solo practice for any length of time is a respectable accomplishment, and I do respect it. I wouldn't want to try it. But Arrington's practice seems to be small-scale bankruptcy work, and (according to his website, which like all firm websites is probably inflated) a little litigation on the side. Mom-and-pop litigation doesn't make someone an expert in "logic, reasoning and the evaluation of evidence."
The proof is in the pudding. Arrington's bitter complaint is about Shallit's use of the second definition in his dictionary. But the one he wants to use is the one that, as Frank pointed out, is useless for design detection: it assumes the absence of "aim, reason, or pattern." An expert in logic would have predicted this point, or at least have been able to respond to it. (Such an expert might also have wondered whether the fact that he created the "random" string in order to illustrate a point means that it was, in fact, "made [with] definite aim, reason, or pattern.")
There's nothing logical or reasonable about Arrington's response. Shallit made an interesting and valid point. Arrington's only response is to shriek about the definitions in his layperson's dictionary, posturing as if Shallit has made some awful faux pas, rather than responding on point and with an eye to the context of the discussion. It's just an excuse to pile invective on Shallit, without bothering to have an actual discussion.
It's not hard to see the reasoning behind Arrington's bilious complaints. An actual conversation, in which he listened to and responded to substantive points rather than endlessly complaining, would probably not end well. Shallit is, after all, an expert. Arrington does not have the training, patience, mental flexibility or temper to have an actual "discussion" about randomness with him. So he falls back on his lawyerin' credentials and relies on the results-oriented thinking of his fellow travelers to prevent anyone but the critics from pointing out that the blog-emperor is naked as well as raving.
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