The dilemma pits human folk intuition against actual probability theory, with surprising results. But the howler is that pigeons tended to get this right more easily than humans – at least in one study. (Another study found that it depended on the humans’ age.)
Probability
Astronomers hope to wring their space aliens from Bayesian analysis
In the real world, we are hoping to find fossil bacteria on Mars. There may or may not be fossil bacteria on Mars but the search feels more like science.
Probability of a single protein forming by chance
Hat tip: Philip Cunningham April 7, 2017
Extraterrestrial civilizations: When all else fails, try Bayesianism
From ScienceDaily: Could there be another planet out there with a society at the same stage of technological advancement as ours? To help find out, EPFL scientist Claudio Grimaldi, working in association with the University of California, Berkeley, has developed a statistical model that gives researchers a new tool in the search for the kind Read More…
AI and pop music: Can simple probabilities outperform deep learning?
Haebichan Jung tells us that he built an original pop music-making machine “that could rival deep learning but with simpler solutions.” Deep learning “is a subfield of machine learning concerned with algorithms inspired by the structure and function of the brain called artificial neural networks.” (Jason Brownlee, Machine Learning Mastery) Jung tells us that he Read More…
Silenced! Selectivity too close to truth?
Should science pursue truth regardless of consequences? Or must we succumb to political correctness? Must selectivity of females always equal males? Consider: Academic Activists Send a Published Paper Down the Memory Hole – by Theodore P. Hill “In the highly controversial area of human intelligence, the ‘Greater Male Variability Hypothesis’ (GMVH) asserts that there are Read More…
What is Randomness? Part 1, with David Nguyen
Contextual Bias David Nguyen is with Think Tank Learning. See also: Asking, what is more prone to error: Science or scientists?
Does eternally inflating cosmology cause probabilities to fail?
From John D. Norton: (2018) Eternal Inflation: When Probabilities Fail. [Preprint] In eternally inflating cosmology, infinitely many pocket universes are seeded. Attempts to show that universes like our observable universe are probable amongst them have failed, since no unique probability measure is recoverable. This lack of definite probabilities is taken to reveal a complete predictive Read More…
Answering DiEb: Just what is “search” in a sense relevant to ID?
For some time now, objector DiEb has been raising the question, what do we mean by speaking of “search” in the context of evolutionary search. At 311 in the parody thread, she [IIRC] remarks: >>Search is a central term in the work of Dr. Dr. William Dembski jr, Dr. Winston Ewert, and Dr. Robert Marks Read More…
Confusing Probability: The “Every-Sequence-Is-Equally-Improbable” Argument
Note to Readers: The past few days on this thread there has been tremendous activity and much discussion about the concept of probability. I had intended to post this OP months ago, but found it still in my drafts folder yesterday mostly, but not quite fully, complete. In the interest of highlighting a couple of the issues Read More…
Evolution posits origins in Europe? Scant evidence for mutations
“two fossils of an ape-like creature which had human-like teeth have been found in Bulgaria and Greece, dating to 7.2 million years ago.” vs “combined base changes can be counted on the fingers.”
Design Disquisitions: Jeffrey Koperski on Two Bad and Two Good Ways to Attack ID (Part 2): Two ‘Good’ Ways
Part two of my series looking at Jeffrey Koperski’s paper ‘Two Bad Ways to Attack Intelligent Design and Two Good Ones’ is now up on my blog. This one is quite in depth, but a couple of interesting issues come up along the way. I examine the concept of soft and hard anomalies in scientific Read More…
Biostatistician Makes “Own Goal” in Argument Against Dembski
Recently a criticism was leveled against Dembski’s 2005 paper Specification: the pattern that signifies intelligence. As is often the case, if you read the criticism carefully, you will realize that, even though he says Dembski is wrong, it turns out that the more exacting answer would favor Dembski’s conclusion more strongly, not less.
Following up Bostrom’s argument from simulation of universes . . .
That is, why inferring design on functionally specific, complex organisation and associated information, e.g.: and equally: . . . makes good sense. Now, overnight, UD’s Newsdesk posted on a Space dot com article, Is Our Universe a Fake? The article features “Philosopher Nick Bostrom, director of the Future of Humanity Institute at Oxford University.” I Read More…
“Naturalism or Christian Theism: Where Does the Evidence Point?” TreeSearch Founder Blake Giunta Debates Justin Schieber
I want to draw readers’ attention to a great debate that recently took place at the University of Texas at Dallas, between Blake Giunta, the founder of a recently-developed online apologetics resource called “TreeSearch“, and Justin Schieber, the host of the Reasonable Doubts radio show and podcast. Blake posted a postmortem review of the debate at his Read More…