3 ms·

To elaborate on my comment, if you've read the paper, they have a large section devoted to fine tuning, intelligent design, and the surrounding criticisms and r

by yters 6y ago

To elaborate on my comment, if you've read the paper, they have a large section devoted to fine tuning, intelligent design, and the surrounding criticisms and responses, all with explicity references to the main authors, such as Dembski, and their works. I'm not really grasping how your comment is addressing the paper and the reason for the warning notice.

eesmith 6y ago
Here's an example of what I mean: > William Dembski, who mainly belongs to the frequentist’s school in statistics, regards the fine-tuning argument as suggestive, as pointers to underlying design. Dembski's "design" is specifically "intelligent design". The blurb for the book cited starts. 'How can we identify events due to intelligent causes'. Is that the same type of design as the authors mean? Let's go back to the long discussion of what 'design' means: > A design is a specification or plan for the construction of an object or system, or the result of that specification or plan in the form of a product. ... Humans have a powerful intuitive understanding of design that precedes modern science. Our common intuitions invariably begin with recognizing a pattern as a mark of design. So, is DNA a 'specification or plan for the construction of an object'? For many proteins it certainly is. So, is DNA a design? According to this definition, yes! But Dembski's argument is that there must an intelligent designer. While biologists often use phrases like "evolution designed" to describe the results of standard evolution. Picking one paper from a Google Scholar search, https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-642-71152-7_24 https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-642-71152-7_... says "Immunology is frequently the prisoner of its own semantics. Evolution designed an immune system equipped to recognize all foreign antigens, the structure of which it cannot know in advance." Or in a summary from https://stm.sciencemag.org/content/5/202/202ec148.short https://stm.sciencemag.org/content/5/202/202ec148.short "In modern times, we turn up the thermostat if we’re cold, but evolution designed our bodies to acclimate to cold temperatures and maintain euthermia (normal body temperature) without the assistance of external climate control." Neither claim an intelligent designer involved, so that "powerful intuitive understanding of design" must include designs that were not created by a designer, yes? Which means that Dembski's use of the term 'design' is not shared by the general readership a biology journal, and omitting the qualifier intelligent design when talking about Dembski's work is a form of white-washing - just like I described when I wrote 'most reviewers ... are not likely to notice a paper which uses certain terms which only have meaning to creationists'. You write 'they have a large section devoted to ... intelligent design, and the surrounding criticisms and responses'. I see one paragraph which specifically calls out intelligent design. The next paragraph is on William Dembski. Is Dembski's work specifically ID? Then why wasn't Dembski's earlier work described that way? I looked at (Olofsson, 2008). It says outright "In a way, the ideas in The Design Inference and No Free Lunch are examples of an exaggerated belief in mathematical methods in the sciences." And cites other publications describing problems in Dembski's work. The third and last paragraph in this section claims that Dembski's work has been re-formulated as ASC, and implies that the re-formulation overcomes those criticisms. So, has it? It's not hard to find criticisms of ASC: http://theskepticalzone.com/wp/evo-info-4-non-conservation-of-algorithmic-specified-complexity/ http://theskepticalzone.com/wp/evo-info-4-non-conservation-o... and https://pandasthumb.org/archives/2019/12/Is-Algorithmic-Specified-Complexity-Useless-for-Analyzing-Evolution.html https://pandasthumb.org/archives/2019/12/Is-Algorithmic-Spec... , for examples, the latter arguing "the connection to evolution is lacking". Given Dembski's earlier 'exaggerated belief in mathematical methods in the sciences' and the strength of the many previous criticisms, why are Thorvaldsen and Hössjer confident that ASC overcomes those criticisms? They don't say. You'll be hard-pressed to find a reviewer diligent enough to go through all of the citations to check for this level of undue optimism.
- yters 6y ago
  You should probably read more of the article to get a better idea of what the authors are arguing. They are making a fine tuning argument like Barrow and Tipler. Barrow and Tipler wrote a whole book on the fine turning of cosmological constants, and it was well received. The whole article provides the theoretical background for fine tuning arguments, and the main evidence they rely on are the big name ID proponents: Dembski, Behe, Axe, Sanford. In fact, the article is absolutely chock full of references to peer reviewed ID articles. They call out ID by name multiple times, and explain its connection to their work, and state that the results imply intelligent agency. For example, "Axe also elaborates on the massive improbabilities of anything like functional proteins arising by natural selection (Axe, 2016). The search space turns out to be too impossibly vast for blind selection to have even a slight chance of success. The contrasting view is innovations based on ingenuity, cleverness and intelligence." I really don't see any sneakiness going on here. Also, is it normal to respond to blog post criticisms in a journal article? Otherwise, I'm not sure why you think it is a problem the journal authors didn't respond to blog posts. I've not seen such a requirement before, and I've spent a fair amount of time in academia. On the other hand, from what I see, the authors do respond to published criticisms of ID theory, e.g. papers by Wilkins, Elsberry and Olofsson. So, at least regarding your concern they do not mention the criticisms of ID and provide responses, hopefully this should set you at ease. Finally, the authors explain why they think ASC overcomes, or at least addresses the previous criticism of ID: "However, it is hard to apply to many interesting biological applications or contexts, because a huge number of potential but unknown scenarios may exist, which makes it difficult to phrase a null hypothesis for a statistical test." with the fact that ASC is measured in regards to a specific probability distribution: "ACS incorporates both Shannon and Kolmogorov complexity measures, and it quantifies the degree to which an event is improbable and follows a pattern." and this approach is further improved by a later result they mention by Montañez. At any rate, I recommend giving the article a careful read before coming to conclusions. So, I still do not understand why it is within normal scholarly protocols to post a warning about the article. It is very forthright about its ID connection, in fact forming almost the entirety of the paper around ID arguments and authors, addresses criticisms, cautions about its own conclusions, and seems to be pretty mathematically rigorous and written by well credentialed authors.

by yters 6y ago

eesmith 6y ago

Here's an example of what I mean: > William Dembski, who mainly belongs to the frequentist’s school in statistics, regards the fine-tuning argument as suggestive, as pointers to underlying design. Dembski's "design" is specifically "intelligent design". The blurb for the book cited starts. 'How can we identify events due to intelligent causes'. Is that the same type of design as the authors mean? Let's go back to the long discussion of what 'design' means: > A design is a specification or plan for the construction of an object or system, or the result of that specification or plan in the form of a product. ... Humans have a powerful intuitive understanding of design that precedes modern science. Our common intuitions invariably begin with recognizing a pattern as a mark of design. So, is DNA a 'specification or plan for the construction of an object'? For many proteins it certainly is. So, is DNA a design? According to this definition, yes! But Dembski's argument is that there must an intelligent designer. While biologists often use phrases like "evolution designed" to describe the results of standard evolution. Picking one paper from a Google Scholar search, https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-642-71152-7_24 https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-642-71152-7_... says "Immunology is frequently the prisoner of its own semantics. Evolution designed an immune system equipped to recognize all foreign antigens, the structure of which it cannot know in advance." Or in a summary from https://stm.sciencemag.org/content/5/202/202ec148.short https://stm.sciencemag.org/content/5/202/202ec148.short "In modern times, we turn up the thermostat if we’re cold, but evolution designed our bodies to acclimate to cold temperatures and maintain euthermia (normal body temperature) without the assistance of external climate control." Neither claim an intelligent designer involved, so that "powerful intuitive understanding of design" must include designs that were not created by a designer, yes? Which means that Dembski's use of the term 'design' is not shared by the general readership a biology journal, and omitting the qualifier intelligent design when talking about Dembski's work is a form of white-washing - just like I described when I wrote 'most reviewers ... are not likely to notice a paper which uses certain terms which only have meaning to creationists'. You write 'they have a large section devoted to ... intelligent design, and the surrounding criticisms and responses'. I see one paragraph which specifically calls out intelligent design. The next paragraph is on William Dembski. Is Dembski's work specifically ID? Then why wasn't Dembski's earlier work described that way? I looked at (Olofsson, 2008). It says outright "In a way, the ideas in The Design Inference and No Free Lunch are examples of an exaggerated belief in mathematical methods in the sciences." And cites other publications describing problems in Dembski's work. The third and last paragraph in this section claims that Dembski's work has been re-formulated as ASC, and implies that the re-formulation overcomes those criticisms. So, has it? It's not hard to find criticisms of ASC: http://theskepticalzone.com/wp/evo-info-4-non-conservation-of-algorithmic-specified-complexity/ http://theskepticalzone.com/wp/evo-info-4-non-conservation-o... and https://pandasthumb.org/archives/2019/12/Is-Algorithmic-Specified-Complexity-Useless-for-Analyzing-Evolution.html https://pandasthumb.org/archives/2019/12/Is-Algorithmic-Spec... , for examples, the latter arguing "the connection to evolution is lacking". Given Dembski's earlier 'exaggerated belief in mathematical methods in the sciences' and the strength of the many previous criticisms, why are Thorvaldsen and Hössjer confident that ASC overcomes those criticisms? They don't say. You'll be hard-pressed to find a reviewer diligent enough to go through all of the citations to check for this level of undue optimism.

yters 6y ago
You should probably read more of the article to get a better idea of what the authors are arguing. They are making a fine tuning argument like Barrow and Tipler. Barrow and Tipler wrote a whole book on the fine turning of cosmological constants, and it was well received. The whole article provides the theoretical background for fine tuning arguments, and the main evidence they rely on are the big name ID proponents: Dembski, Behe, Axe, Sanford. In fact, the article is absolutely chock full of references to peer reviewed ID articles. They call out ID by name multiple times, and explain its connection to their work, and state that the results imply intelligent agency. For example, "Axe also elaborates on the massive improbabilities of anything like functional proteins arising by natural selection (Axe, 2016). The search space turns out to be too impossibly vast for blind selection to have even a slight chance of success. The contrasting view is innovations based on ingenuity, cleverness and intelligence." I really don't see any sneakiness going on here. Also, is it normal to respond to blog post criticisms in a journal article? Otherwise, I'm not sure why you think it is a problem the journal authors didn't respond to blog posts. I've not seen such a requirement before, and I've spent a fair amount of time in academia. On the other hand, from what I see, the authors do respond to published criticisms of ID theory, e.g. papers by Wilkins, Elsberry and Olofsson. So, at least regarding your concern they do not mention the criticisms of ID and provide responses, hopefully this should set you at ease. Finally, the authors explain why they think ASC overcomes, or at least addresses the previous criticism of ID: "However, it is hard to apply to many interesting biological applications or contexts, because a huge number of potential but unknown scenarios may exist, which makes it difficult to phrase a null hypothesis for a statistical test." with the fact that ASC is measured in regards to a specific probability distribution: "ACS incorporates both Shannon and Kolmogorov complexity measures, and it quantifies the degree to which an event is improbable and follows a pattern." and this approach is further improved by a later result they mention by Montañez. At any rate, I recommend giving the article a careful read before coming to conclusions. So, I still do not understand why it is within normal scholarly protocols to post a warning about the article. It is very forthright about its ID connection, in fact forming almost the entirety of the paper around ID arguments and authors, addresses criticisms, cautions about its own conclusions, and seems to be pretty mathematically rigorous and written by well credentialed authors.