Patrick Elliott <sel### [at] npgcablecom> wrote:
> and "Quirkology", which covers some seriously 
> goofy studies that have been done over the years, which do a fair job of 
> dispelling the suggestion that the average person is *at all* rational, 
> outside of where they have to be to get something accomplished (and not 
> even always then).

  It indeed is so that the innate way of thinking for the human brain is
*not* rational skepticism. Rational skepticism is something that has to
be learned via years of study and the willingness to understand how the
world really works.

  The innate instinct of the human brain is to be naive, to believe what
you are told. This actually makes sense from an evolutionary perspective:
If a child is told "don't eat that plant, it's dangerous", this child had
a significantly higher chance of survival if he took that claim at face
value instead of being skeptical and testing it. Hence humans have been
naturally selected to be naive, especially in matter concerning dangers.
(It's no wonder that so many conspiracy theories are related to things
that are ostensibly dangerous. For example "vaccines are dangerous",
"fluoridated water is dangerous", "chemotherapy is poison", "the government
is out to get you", etc.)

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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On 29-12-2011 3:21, Cousin Ricky wrote:
> andrel<byt### [at] gmailcom>  wrote:
>>   monkeys still are not a clade as
>> the humans have to be left out.
>
> Why should humans be left out?  Because someone's religion says so?

in fact there is no religion that says explicitly so. simply because 
there was no reason to say anything about it at the time.
what e.g. the bible says is (KJV) 'So God created man in his own image, 
in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.' 
from this you can deduce that man was created and did not evolve from 
anything else. it does not say that man is not a monkey however. in 
genesis several groups of animals are named e.g. cattle, fish, and 
whales. if everything is created independently you can not group several 
species together. otoh if you are allowed to do that there is no reason 
not to group man with e.g. the mammals. tertium non datur.

> Because we don't like being monkeys?

some people don't.

> In everyday speech, it's fine to set humans apart from monkeys.  We do the same
> thing when we talk about "humans and animals."  However, in scientific contexts,
> there is no point to it.

there is a very good reason. it is called 'tradition'.

>> this sort of things happen more often when names are used that date back
>> to when we did not know yet how the genetic relationships were. we have
>> it e.g. where birds are dinosaurs, dinosaurs (apart from birds) are
>> reptiles but birds are not reptiles.
>
> Mammals are also descended from ancient reptiles.

no

> The biological community is
> going to have to decide what they want to do with the term "reptile."

they did, although their definitions change over time.

> And
> "fish."  And perhaps "amphibian," although I haven't studied that term.
>
> P.S. The bubbles in my Venn diagram show lay usage, not scientific.  That's why
> humans aren't in any of the bubbles.  The image as a whole was intended to lay
> bare how silly it is to set our species apart from other primates in light of
> today's knowledge.
>


-- 
tip: do not run in an unknown place when it is too dark to see the 
floor, unless you prefer to not use uppercase.

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On 29-12-2011 9:09, Warp wrote:
> Cousin Ricky<rickysttATyahooDOTcom>  wrote:
>> If A was the most recent common ancestor of Old World monkeys and New World
>> monkeys, then how could A not be a monkey?
>
>    It of course depends on how the ancestral species are named, but I don't
> see your point.
>
>    Just because archosaurs are the most recent common ancestors of both
> birds and crocodiles doesn't mean that a bird is a crocodile (or the
> other way around). They are (according to cladistics) both archosaurs,
> but not each other.
>
>    Likewise if humans and monkeys had a common ancestor, that doesn't mean
> that humans are monkeys (or the other way around). Unless you specifically
> name this common ancestor "monkey".

I answered that in a previous post. the last common ancestor of humans 
and monkeys was by definition a monkey.
still, humans are not monkeys. they are, however, apes.


-- 
tip: do not run in an unknown place when it is too dark to see the 
floor, unless you prefer to not use uppercase.

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andrel <byt### [at] gmailcom> wrote:
> I answered that in a previous post. the last common ancestor of humans 
> and monkeys was by definition a monkey.

  What do you mean "by definition"?

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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>> On the other hand, reading Molecular Biology of the Gene [Watson et al]
>> left me uninterested, yet reading Darwin's Black Box showed me just how
>> interesting molecular biology is, and gave me decent intuitive
>> metaphores for how this stuff actually works - something which the dense
>> scientific reference text did not.
>>
> Not that I would bet on the intuitive metaphors of some clown trying to
> argue against its corner stone, as useful.

Well, yeah, some of the stuff in the book is /obviously/ insane.

I remember being particularly shocked at the bit where he waives his 
hands around a bit, and then writes "now that we have conclusively 
/proven/ that ID is the correct theory..." At which point, I have two 
major objections:

1. You just spent two chapters utterly failing to convince me that 
evolution is false. You haven't /proven/ it false, you've just whinged 
that "X cannot evolve" (i.e., "I cannot imagine how X could evolve", 
which follows directly from "I don't want it to be possible for X to 
evolve").

2. Even if I accept that evolution is false, this does not prove that ID 
is therefore true. DOES. NOT. FOLLOW.

It defies belief that the author was genuinely unaware of objection #2. 
So what we are looking at here is willful deception of the less 
attentive reader. Such a thing disgusts me.



When Behe stops talking nonesense about how evolution is "impossible" 
and sticks to objective facts (like how rhodopsin works), things get 
much better.

The weighty tome tells us that propeins are amino acid polymers, each 
molecule weighting a few thousand Daltons, and that under physiological 
conditions molecular degradation is thermodynamically unfavourable, 
and... Behe, on the other hand, tells us that proteins are the cogs, 
gears, wheels, pullies, scaffolding and building materials of the 
cellular world.

A protein is a chemical. Usually you don't think much about individual 
chemical molecules. You think of a whole glass of the chemical as one 
essentially continuous entity. Much like a note from a piano is made of 
many individual waves, but you think of it as a continuous thing. But 
when you start thinking of molecules not as abstract things but as 
physical objects that can bend, stretch, pull, push and so forth, and 
you realise that enzymes work by grabbing molecules and slotting them 
together the right way around... suddenly molecular biology makes far 
more sense.

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

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Orchid XP v8 <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
> 2. Even if I accept that evolution is false, this does not prove that ID 
> is therefore true. DOES. NOT. FOLLOW.

  This is a very typical false dichotomy. It naturally goes like: "Either
evolution is true, or ID is true. Hence if we prove evolution to the false,
the only possible conclusion is that ID is true."

  This argumentative fallacy is really, really common. If someone wants to
"prove" that ID is true, what is by far the most common tactic? Try to prove
evolution as false.

  Creationists use several other false dichotomies as well, such as for
example "either the Universe was created by nothing, or it was created by
an intelligent being", and "either life was formed by chance, or it was
created by an intelligent being".

  Of course the argument is inherently more fallacious than that. Let's
assume for a second that the universe was indeed created by an intelligent
being. This raises many obvious questions: What kind of being? Where is this
being now? Does this being still exist? Where did it come from? Are there
more than one? Was this being also created by another intelligent being?
How did this being create the universe? What kind of powers does it have?
Is this the only universe that it has created?

  The whole premise of ID doesn't actually answer anything at all, much
less anything useful. (Exactly what is the use in knowing that some kind
of "intelligent being" created the universe? How does this knowledge help
us in any way or form? We can't know anything at all about this hypothetical
"being", other than speculate that perhaps it created the universe. How does
this help us?)

  Of course the creationist will then turn to try to explain how the Bible
allegedly contains things that the people of the time could not have possibly
known. Even if that were true (and that's a big if), that's another fallacy.
(Writing some information that the people of the time "could not have
possibly known" doesn't tell anything about where that information came
from. Claiming that "it must have been given by God" is another false
dichotomy. There are many other possible explanations.)

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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On 29/12/2011 12:32 PM, Warp wrote:
> Orchid XP v8<voi### [at] devnull>  wrote:
>> 2. Even if I accept that evolution is false, this does not prove that ID
>> is therefore true. DOES. NOT. FOLLOW.
>
>    This is a very typical false dichotomy. It naturally goes like: "Either
> evolution is true, or ID is true. Hence if we prove evolution to the false,
> the only possible conclusion is that ID is true."

This is, of course, utter nonsense. It really annoys me.

>    This argumentative fallacy is really, really common. If someone wants to
> "prove" that ID is true, what is by far the most common tactic? Try to prove
> evolution as false.

Einstein didn't otherthrow Newton by proving that Newton's laws of 
motion are flawed; he did it by offering an alternative, superior 
explanation.

And yet, read any text proving how ID is correct, and you'll hear 
"evolution this" and "evolution that" and "evolution the other"... I'm 
sorry, I thought you were telling me about ID? What does ID claim the 
answer is?

>    Of course the argument is inherently more fallacious than that. Let's
> assume for a second that the universe was indeed created by an intelligent
> being. This raises many obvious questions: What kind of being? Where is this
> being now? Does this being still exist? Where did it come from? Are there
> more than one? Was this being also created by another intelligent being?
> How did this being create the universe? What kind of powers does it have?
> Is this the only universe that it has created?
>
>    The whole premise of ID doesn't actually answer anything at all, much
> less anything useful.

How did we end up with such a vivid range of lifeforms on this planet? 
It's baffling, and it demands explanation. Evolution says "there's this 
specific mechanism by which it can happen". ID says "God did it". That's 
not even an answer, that's an /excuse/.

Evolution makes several testable predictions - for example, that various 
organisms should possess useless organs (because they once did something 
useful, and are no longer needed, and yet their "cost" is not sufficient 
to eliminate them). And all these predictions match the real world, as 
far as we know.

ID predicts that evolution is false. It makes no further predictions. On 
that metric alone, evolution is a superior theory. Even an incorrect 
theory can be superior if it describes the world better. Hell, we still 
teach people Newton's laws of motion, even though they have been 
conclusively proven false.

As you point out, ID says "the Designer did it", and then tells us 
nothing about the Designer. That's only half a theory. If you're saying 
that the Designer designed everything that exists today in one instant 
and then left, that's one theory. If you claim the Designer is invisibly 
at work all around as, constantly, to this day, that's a completely 
different theory, which yields utterly different predictions. So really, 
ID is an incomplete theory. Make up your mind who or what this 
"Designer" is, and then we might be able to have a sane discussion.

For example, WHY DID HE DO THIS? If we knew the design goal for life, we 
might be able to measure various lifeforms and see whether they meet 
this design goal. But noooo, ID does not specify.

Alternatively, HOW DID HE DO THIS? If we knew the design methods, the 
cognative limitations of the Designer, the tools available to Him, we 
might be able to look at life and see if its design is consistent with 
these constraints or not. But again, noooo. ID does not specify.

If you claim that the genome of all modern organisms was encoded into 
the original singular life form on Earth, we can do some math to compute 
whether that's feasible. But nooo, ID doesn't actually say when or where 
the design took place.

In short, if ID were to actually BE SPECIFIC, there's some danger that 
it might become testable. As it is, ID is not a scientific theory. Not 
because it is untrue [it is, but that isn't the reason], but because IT 
DOESN'T PREDICT ANYTHING. Similarly, string theory is not a science, 
because it makes no predictions. In the case of string theory, we can at 
least append "yet". :-P

>    Of course the creationist will then turn to try to explain how the Bible
> allegedly contains things that the people of the time could not have possibly
> known.

Irrelevant. Does it contain the information that ID does not? No? Well 
then you guys still have a problem, don't you? :-P

Of course, all of this is transparently a question of certain people NOT 
LIKING a theory, and wanting to make people stop saying it's true. They 
don't actually care about the truth, only what makes them happy. As if 
truth can be influenced by what you believe.

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

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On 12/29/2011 1:17 AM, Warp wrote:
> Patrick Elliott<sel### [at] npgcablecom>  wrote:
>> and "Quirkology", which covers some seriously
>> goofy studies that have been done over the years, which do a fair job of
>> dispelling the suggestion that the average person is *at all* rational,
>> outside of where they have to be to get something accomplished (and not
>> even always then).
>
>    It indeed is so that the innate way of thinking for the human brain is
> *not* rational skepticism. Rational skepticism is something that has to
> be learned via years of study and the willingness to understand how the
> world really works.
>
>    The innate instinct of the human brain is to be naive, to believe what
> you are told. This actually makes sense from an evolutionary perspective:
> If a child is told "don't eat that plant, it's dangerous", this child had
> a significantly higher chance of survival if he took that claim at face
> value instead of being skeptical and testing it. Hence humans have been
> naturally selected to be naive, especially in matter concerning dangers.
> (It's no wonder that so many conspiracy theories are related to things
> that are ostensibly dangerous. For example "vaccines are dangerous",
> "fluoridated water is dangerous", "chemotherapy is poison", "the government
> is out to get you", etc.)
>
A better analogy, perhaps (given the tendency of children to test damn 
near anything once) is that, "Its better to a assume that the rustling 
in the bush is a pouncing tiger, than to have to look, to find out for 
certain."

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On 12/29/2011 5:00 AM, Orchid XP v8 wrote:
> The weighty tome tells us that propeins are amino acid polymers, each
> molecule weighting a few thousand Daltons, and that under physiological
> conditions molecular degradation is thermodynamically unfavourable,
> and... Behe, on the other hand, tells us that proteins are the cogs,
> gears, wheels, pullies, scaffolding and building materials of the
> cellular world.
>
Which makes one sort of wonder why he fails to grasp/explain why the 
scaffolding, gears, wheels, pullies, etc. are all arranged in a DNA 
strand such that one, to use an architecture analogy, one is required to 
rearrange all the parts of the house, to open the door, since neither 
the door, the entry, the hallway, the living room, nor the roof, are 
arranged in such a manner as to be actually connected, or part of the 
same structure at all, until you remove all the "scaffolding" from 
between them, and crank the wheels, gears, and things, to cram it all 
back into something that actually functions. lol

So, yeah. Its either disingenuous that he doesn't "notice" these sorts 
of things, or he is like some guy that plots a long, complex, and 
absolutely effective, escape from the mental hospital, while imagining 
that he has invisible friends, who are watching the guards for him, is 
casting magic spells on the locks, and needs to get out, before the 
space aliens implant his brain in yet another body that doesn't belong 
to him.

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On 12/29/2011 5:32 AM, Warp wrote:
> Orchid XP v8<voi### [at] devnull>  wrote:
>> 2. Even if I accept that evolution is false, this does not prove that ID
>> is therefore true. DOES. NOT. FOLLOW.
>
>    This is a very typical false dichotomy. It naturally goes like: "Either
> evolution is true, or ID is true. Hence if we prove evolution to the false,
> the only possible conclusion is that ID is true."
>
>    This argumentative fallacy is really, really common. If someone wants to
> "prove" that ID is true, what is by far the most common tactic? Try to prove
> evolution as false.
>
>    Creationists use several other false dichotomies as well, such as for
> example "either the Universe was created by nothing, or it was created by
> an intelligent being", and "either life was formed by chance, or it was
> created by an intelligent being".
>
>    Of course the argument is inherently more fallacious than that. Let's
> assume for a second that the universe was indeed created by an intelligent
> being. This raises many obvious questions: What kind of being? Where is this
> being now? Does this being still exist? Where did it come from? Are there
> more than one? Was this being also created by another intelligent being?
> How did this being create the universe? What kind of powers does it have?
> Is this the only universe that it has created?
>
Because, to every creationist, the "what does this do for us", is, 
"proves that our cherry picked list of crazy laws, moral codes, and 
personal prejudices, many of which we have to treat the Bible like its 
the amazing Elastagirl, to fit it to, is true as well, or something way 
closer than what you liberal, atheist, communist, scientists think." 
Assuming of course that they don't simply assume that those 4 things are 
all redundant, and mean the same thing anyway. You need to, apparently, 
be all three to be a) rich, and b) have a trophy wife, which explains 
why I haven't found a rich scientist/professor, and most of them would 
rather kick a vacuous air head super model, than marry one.

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