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"But I didn't think the dots were very well connected in the submitted post to show what Gould actually did that was clearly wrong." Eliezer, the author, reads

• programnature 18y ago
  The post's logic goes like this: Evolutionary Biology originally has mistaken idea X. Person A corrects idea X with a more sophisticated idea Y. 30 years later, Gould corrects idea X with idea Z. The crime Gould is accused of is in arguing for his idea Z while ignoring the earlier idea Y. By the way, the earlier idea Y is pretty fatally flawed in the first place. It is based on the idea that the size/length/information content of a program is the same thing as the complexity of the program's behavior, which we now know is totally false. So its amusing that the author is so rabid in its defense.
  • derefr 18y ago
    with everything the author has previously said on information complexity (it's all over his posts) he's very likely aware of this. I think he wasn't saying that ignoring idea Y was immoral in and of itself, so much as that, without establising the existance of idea Y, idea Y'''' (that we believe today) can't be obviously developed, making it look like there's "room" for his idea Z.