Deep problem created by Darwinian Ron Fisher’s p-values highlighted again

_{Denyse O'Leary

February 18, 2017

Culture, Darwinism, Intelligent Design, Mathematics, News

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File:R. A. Fischer.jpg — Ronald Fisher/Bletchley

Maybe this time it will matter.

From Frank Harrell at Statistical Thinking:

In my opinion, null hypothesis testing and p-values have done significant harm to science. The purpose of this note is to catalog the many problems caused by p-values. As readers post new problems in their comments, more will be incorporated into the list, so this is a work in progress.

The American Statistical Association has done a great service by issuing its Statement on Statistical Significance and P-values. Now it’s time to act. To create the needed motivation to change, we need to fully describe the depth of the problem.

We thought that Darwin’s reputation in pop science would be enough to frustrate any inquiry, but maybe not.

More.

We’re pretty familiar with all kinds of problems being swept under the rug as long as Darwin’s name can be associated with them in some way. It’s got to be a sign of weakening if the association with Darwin does not matter so much any more.

See also: Early Darwinian Ronald Fisher’s p-value measure is coming under serious scrutiny

and

Darwinism: Replacement or extension?

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Comments

Bob O'H @ 11
ba77 – your argument only makes sense if you believe these views you are ascribing to “atheistic materialism”, which I’m certain you don’t. FWIW, I don’t believe them.
Bob O'H @ 32
ba77 – I try to avoid the issues of self and free will, simply because we don’t have a good theory of consciousness. If we did, and it was entirely material, then your argument would be moot. As we don’t, I prefer a simple “I don’t know”.
Bob O'H @ 35
ba77 – (I’ve never “rejected the incoherence of the counterclaim, i.e. the claim that material is primary and mind is derivative”, merely some of the extrapolations from that claim).
So 'you' reject the materialistic 'extrapolation' that consciousness is generated by the material brain and you are thus merely an automaton with no free will? Or do you rightly reject the insanity of the position? If there really is a 'you' to clarify your exact position, please clarify the exact insanity of the position that 'you' are forced to believe in by no will of your own. :)
Darwin's Robots: When Evolutionary Materialists Admit that Their Own Worldview Fails - Nancy Pearcey - April 23, 2015 Excerpt: Even materialists often admit that, in practice, it is impossible for humans to live any other way. One philosopher jokes that if people deny free will, then when ordering at a restaurant they should say, "Just bring me whatever the laws of nature have determined I will get." An especially clear example is Galen Strawson, a philosopher who states with great bravado, "The impossibility of free will ... can be proved with complete certainty." Yet in an interview, Strawson admits that, in practice, no one accepts his deterministic view. "To be honest, I can't really accept it myself," he says. "I can't really live with this fact from day to day. Can you, really?",,, In What Science Offers the Humanities, Edward Slingerland, identifies himself as an unabashed materialist and reductionist. Slingerland argues that Darwinian materialism leads logically to the conclusion that humans are robots -- that our sense of having a will or self or consciousness is an illusion. Yet, he admits, it is an illusion we find impossible to shake. No one "can help acting like and at some level really feeling that he or she is free." We are "constitutionally incapable of experiencing ourselves and other conspecifics [humans] as robots." One section in his book is even titled "We Are Robots Designed Not to Believe That We Are Robots.",,, When I teach these concepts in the classroom, an example my students find especially poignant is Flesh and Machines by Rodney Brooks, professor emeritus at MIT. Brooks writes that a human being is nothing but a machine -- a "big bag of skin full of biomolecules" interacting by the laws of physics and chemistry. In ordinary life, of course, it is difficult to actually see people that way. But, he says, "When I look at my children, I can, when I force myself, ... see that they are machines." Is that how he treats them, though? Of course not: "That is not how I treat them.... I interact with them on an entirely different level. They have my unconditional love, the furthest one might be able to get from rational analysis." Certainly if what counts as "rational" is a materialist worldview in which humans are machines, then loving your children is irrational. It has no basis within Brooks's worldview. It sticks out of his box. How does he reconcile such a heart-wrenching cognitive dissonance? He doesn't. Brooks ends by saying, "I maintain two sets of inconsistent beliefs." He has given up on any attempt to reconcile his theory with his experience. He has abandoned all hope for a unified, logically consistent worldview. http://www.evolutionnews.org/2015/04/when_evolutiona095451.html
Dawkins himself admitted that it would be 'intolerable' for him to live his life as if atheistic materialism were actually true
Who wrote Richard Dawkins’s new book? – October 28, 2006 Excerpt: Dawkins: What I do know is that what it feels like to me, and I think to all of us, we don't feel determined. We feel like blaming people for what they do or giving people the credit for what they do. We feel like admiring people for what they do.,,, Manzari: But do you personally see that as an inconsistency in your views? Dawkins: I sort of do. Yes. But it is an inconsistency that we sort of have to live with otherwise life would be intolerable. http://www.evolutionnews.org/2006/10/who_wrote_richard_dawkinss_new002783.html
In what should be needless to say, if it is impossible for you to live as if your worldview were actually true then your worldview cannot possibly reflect reality as it really is but your worldview must instead be based on a delusion.
Existential Argument against Atheism - November 1, 2013 by Jason Petersen 1. If a worldview is true then you should be able to live consistently with that worldview. 2. Atheists are unable to live consistently with their worldview. 3. If you can’t live consistently with an atheist worldview then the worldview does not reflect reality. 4. If a worldview does not reflect reality then that worldview is a delusion. 5. If atheism is a delusion then atheism cannot be true. Conclusion: Atheism is false. http://answersforhope.com/existential-argument-atheism/
bornagain77_{February 22, 2017
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ba77 - we're done here. We're way off the OP, and in addition you're now you're puttinq words into my mouth (I've never "rejected the incoherence of the counterclaim, i.e. the claim that material is primary and mind is derivative", merely some of the extrapolations from that claim).Bob O'H_{February 22, 2017
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Bob O'H of related note to your self admitted inconsistency between your beliefs and actions, i.e. (you self-admittedly do not believe you are a mindless automaton with no free will, yet you continue to defend atheistic materialism as if it were true)
"I became a Christian because it is the thinking man’s religion. You have to ask questions. You have to make decisions. You have to study the Bible and ponder if it makes sense to you. You are asked to act on your beliefs so you have to seriously think about them. People like to say I am “lucky”, What is that? It takes more faith to believe in some vague unstable concept like “luck” than to believe in God who gives us many records of Himself and His involvement in the affairs of men." - Wesley So - World's #2 chess player http://evangelicalfocus.com/lifetech/2302/Wesley_So_I_am_not_foolish_enough_to_think_I_can_do_this_by_myself
bornagain77_{February 21, 2017
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Actually Bob, we now do have a good theory of consciousness. That 'theory', of course, being the ancient Theistic contention that consciousness is primary and material is derivative. When push came to shove, you self admittedly rejected the incoherence of the counterclaim, i.e. the claim that material is primary and mind is derivative, since it is epistemologically self-defeating. i.e. You rightly rejected the insane materialistic claim that you are a automaton with no free will! You back-tracking now and hoping someday for a 'entirely material' theory of consciousness will not help you since the same epistemologically self-defeating condition will arise for any conceivable materialistic theory that tries to place material before mind.
“In any philosophy of reality that is not ultimately self-defeating or internally contradictory, mind – unlabeled as anything else, matter or spiritual – must be primary. What is “matter” and what is “conceptual” and what is “spiritual” can only be organized from mind. Mind controls what is perceived, how it is perceived, and how those percepts are labeled and organized. Mind must be postulated as the unobserved observer, the uncaused cause simply to avoid a self-negating, self-conflicting worldview. It is the necessary postulate of all necessary postulates, because nothing else can come first. To say anything else comes first requires mind to consider and argue that case and then believe it to be true, demonstrating that without mind, you could not believe that mind is not primary in the first place.” – William J. Murray “No, I regard consciousness as fundamental. I regard matter as derivative from consciousness. We cannot get behind consciousness. Everything that we talk about, everything that we regard as existing, postulates consciousness.” Max Planck (1858–1947), the originator of quantum theory, The Observer, London, January 25, 1931 “Consciousness cannot be accounted for in physical terms. For consciousness is absolutely fundamental. It cannot be accounted for in terms of anything else.” Schroedinger, Erwin. 1984. “General Scientific and Popular Papers,” in Collected Papers, Vol. 4. Vienna: Austrian Academy of Sciences. Friedr. Vieweg & Sohn, Braunschweig/Wiesbaden. p. 334.
Moreover, the obvious fact that consciousness must be primary for experimental science to even be possible is, ‘surprisingly’, born out empirically. In fact, the primacy of consciousness in quantum mechanics is one of the most ‘counter-intuitive’ findings of Quantum Mechanics:
Experiment confirms quantum theory weirdness – May 27, 2015 Excerpt: The bizarre nature of reality as laid out by quantum theory has survived another test, with scientists performing a famous experiment and proving that reality does not exist until it is measured. Physicists at The Australian National University (ANU) have conducted John Wheeler’s delayed-choice thought experiment, which involves a moving object that is given the choice to act like a particle or a wave. Wheeler’s experiment then asks – at which point does the object decide? Common sense says the object is either wave-like or particle-like, independent of how we measure it. But quantum physics predicts that whether you observe wave like behavior (interference) or particle behavior (no interference) depends only on how it is actually measured at the end of its journey. This is exactly what the ANU team found. “It proves that measurement is everything. At the quantum level, reality does not exist if you are not looking at it,” said Associate Professor Andrew Truscott from the ANU Research School of Physics and Engineering. Despite the apparent weirdness, the results confirm the validity of quantum theory, which,, has enabled the development of many technologies such as LEDs, lasers and computer chips. The ANU team not only succeeded in building the experiment, which seemed nearly impossible when it was proposed in 1978, but reversed Wheeler’s original concept of light beams being bounced by mirrors, and instead used atoms scattered by laser light. “Quantum physics’ predictions about interference seem odd enough when applied to light, which seems more like a wave, but to have done the experiment with atoms, which are complicated things that have mass and interact with electric fields and so on, adds to the weirdness,” said Roman Khakimov, PhD student at the Research School of Physics and Engineering. http://phys.org/news/2015-05-quantum-theory-weirdness.html “Reality is in the observations, not in the electron.” – Paul Davies “We have become participators in the existence of the universe. We have no right to say that the past exists independent of the act of observation.” – John Wheeler
Of supplemental note:
The mind and its 'now' One of the biggest distinctions to be made of subjective ‘mind’, when compared to space-time, is that the subjective ‘mind’ has its own distinctive frame of reference, i.e. ‘the now’, that is set completely apart from the passing of time. Simply put, the subjective mind stays still while it watches time passing. Stanley Jaki puts the unique distinction of subjective mind compared to passing time like this,,, https://uncommondescent.com/physics/carlo-rovelli-theories-of-everything-ill-conceived-but-we-can-learn-to-understand-quantum-mechanics/#comment-625721
bornagain77_{February 21, 2017
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ba77 - I try to avoid the issues of self and free will, simply because we don't have a good theory of consciousness. If we did, and it was entirely material, then your argument would be moot. As we don't, I prefer a simple "I don't know". And no, this isn't an invitation to try to engage me further. :-) As I wrote, I try to avoid discussing these issues, as they usually generate more heat than light (especially here).Bob O'H_{February 21, 2017
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Bob O'H, no problem, and thank you for finally conceding, in post 11, after much delay. that you do not believe that you are a mindless automaton with no free will. In other words, thank you for conceding the basic point that you do not believe atheistic materialism to be true. My question is now, since you self-admittedly do not believe you are a mindless automaton with no free will, why do you continue to defend atheistic materialism as if it were true in your defence of Darwinian precepts? Does not this glaring inconsistency between you actions and beliefs bother you immensely? Of footnote, per Bayes' and Price contention that numerous 'independent witnesses to a miracle' 'could overwhelm the great improbability of an event and establish it as fact.'
“The basic probabilistic point” of Price’s article, says statistician and historian Stephen Stigler, “was that Hume underestimated the impact of there being a number of independent witnesses to a miracle, and that Bayes’ results showed how the multiplication of even fallible evidence could overwhelm the great improbability of an event and establish it as fact.” - How a Defense of Christianity Revolutionized Brain Science – JORDANA CEPELEWICZ
In regards to that point, I hold that the numerous independent examples of convergent evolution in supposedly widely divergent life forms likewise falsifies common descent.
Claims about convergent evolution are absurd _ Feb. 2017 1. C4 photosynthesis. According to 'science' it has evolved 60 times independently. Scientists have not succeeded in building an autonomous photosynthesis system. But evolution has done this for 60 times! Seems to be easy! 2. Eye 35 times. Think about the complex mechanism and signaling pathways that are connected with brain. And according to 'science' humans and squids evolved same eyes using same genes. What a coincidence! 3. Giving birth, 150 times. Piece of cake for evolution. Very convincing. 4. Carnivorous plants. Nitrogen-deficient plants have in at least 7 distinct times become carnivorous. 5. Hearing. 30 times. Bats and dolphins separately evolved same sonar gene. What a surprise! (Do they really think that one gene is sufficient for developing a sonar ability?) 6. Bioluminescence is quite a mystery for science. According to darwinists it has independently evolved even 27 times! 7. Magnetite for orientation, magnetically charged particles of magnetite for directional sensing have been found in unrelated species of salmon, rainbow trout, some butterflies and birds. 8. Electric organ in some fishes. 6 times. Independently from each other. Sure. 9. Parthenogenesis. Some lizards, insects, fishes and rodents are able to reproduce asexually, without males. Etc.. etc.. etc.. http://sciencerefutesevolution.blogspot.fi/2017/02/claims-about-convergent-evolution-are.html Live birth has evolved many times independently in vertebrates, http://crev.info/2017/02/fossils-too-detailed-to-be-old/
In fact in just considering the single point of the sheer, mind blowing, complexity being dealt with in life, I hold that you have essentially 'lost your mind' if you deny that life was designed:
“It is not enough to say that design is a more likely scenario to explain a world full of well-designed things. It strikes me as urgent to insist that you not allow your mind to surrender the absolute clarity that all complex and magnificent things were made that way. Once you allow the intellect to consider that an elaborate organism with trillions of microscopic interactive components can be an accident… you have essentially “lost your mind.”” Jay Homnick – American Spectator 2005
bornagain77_{February 21, 2017
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ba77 @ 27 - thank you for finally answering me! Fisher was certainly not a frequentist - wd400 has given you a link to the Wikipedia page on fiducial inference, which outlines Fisher's ideas. If you want something more direct to show that Fisher wasn't a frequentist, here's a paper where Fisher explicitly attacks the central idea of frequentism (in section 2, "Repeated Sampling from the Same Population").Bob O'H_{February 21, 2017
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Whatever,
Bob, your argument is not with me, but the links and people quoting him as a Frequentist and as laying down the Foundation of Frequentist in University, or books about Fisher and the others. Maybe he was not as rigged as others as is quoted also. If you desire to change Wiki, or the Classroom, or challenge the authors of the books I referenced, etc., do so.
bornagain77_{February 20, 2017
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As Bob said, Fisher developed Fiducial inference, which is distinct from frequentism (indeed your own links say this...). A brief description (of what is indeed a confusing idea): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fiducial_inferencewd400_{February 20, 2017
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wd400, too funny, you are the reigning king of refusing to concede when you are wrong. Bob claimed that "Fisher wasn’t a frequentist" Yet per DATCG,
“The frequentist or classical school is associated with Sir Ronald Fisher (who gave us the null hypothesis and p-values as evidence against the null) and Neyman and Pearson (who gave us Type I and II errors, power, alternative hypotheses, deciding to reject or not reject based on an alpha level). Fisher and Neyman/Pearson had different views on statistics and what is taught today in the typical “statistics for scientists” course is a jumbled combination of both, which can lead to much confusion (Hubbard & Bayarri, 2003; Christensen, 2005).” Reference… Frequentist or Classical School associated with Fisher For a class at Waterloo University… Fisher (e.g. 1922) laid the foundations for a frequentist theory.
Bottom line, Bob made an unreferenced claim that is contrary to several cites. If Bob desires to dispute the counterclaim then the burden is on him to go beyond just him saying so. DATCG further offered
Bob, your argument is not with me, but the links and people quoting him as a Frequentist and as laying down the Foundation of Frequentist in University, or books about Fisher and the others. Maybe he was not as rigged as others as is quoted also. If you desire to change Wiki, or the Classroom, or challenge the authors of the books I referenced, etc., do so.
Thus, I see no need to concede that I am wrong in a technical sense since no evidence has been presented by Bob that I was wrong other than him saying so. Moreover, even if I were wrong in a technical sense, then, unlike Darwinists such as yourself, I would have no problem whatsoever admitting that I was wrong in a technical sense. Especially since it would not go one micrometer as to providing you actual empirical evidence for your atheistic claims regarding Darwinism. But as the citations on the thread now sit (especially citations by DATCG), I was right in my overall 'corrective' towards Bob's claim that “Fisher wasn’t a frequentist”. That is just the way it is as it now sits.bornagain77_{February 20, 2017
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It's not a matter of whether I am a "reliable witness", you just need to tell Bob what he got wrong in describing Fisher's and the N-P approach to inference. I suspect you just misunderstood Bob's first comment, or at least don't have a very deep knowledge of the history of statistical inference (few people do, after all!). It would be a simple thing to say you were mistaken. But, as ever, you'd rather do this copy-paste version of the Gish Gallop where you throw out a hundred misconceptions and refuse to defend any of them when they are shown to be wrong.wd400_{February 20, 2017
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This is surreal. wd400 comes to Bob's assistance. wd400, in case you are unaware of this fact, you are hardly someone that I, or most people on UD, would consider to be a reliable witness. In fact, I consider your supposed help to be even more damning for Bob's case. Moreover, on top of everything, Bob confessed @ 11 “FWIW I don’t believe them”, (i.e. the premises of atheistic materialism.) Thus Bob conceded the main point that I am concerned about. i.e Atheistic materialism is false! Everything else that he says from here on out is icing on the cake as far as I am concerned. Moreover, you guys can cite jerry-rigged statistics all you want and I will just cite the actual empirical evidence from the fossil record and genetics to refute you. In science, evidence trumps mathematical models all day long! Bottom line, the old adage applies in regards to Darwinists trying to use jerry-rigged statistics to establish the validity of their atheistic worldview.
'There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.' - Mark Twain
bornagain77_{February 20, 2017
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I should add -- in the last version of CSI that Dembski defended "CSI" was a p-value under a null hypothesis test. (Or would be, there was no attempt to actually apply the test).wd400_{February 20, 2017
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BA, I think Bob is asking you where the disagreement between your quote and his statement lies. He said that Fisher described signficance testing (true) and that N-P formalized his ideas (true). The N-P idea was called hypothesis testing. You then provided links that say precisely this by claim they are a "correcive". Is it possible you have waded into a topic you are ill-equipped to talk about. (Especially with someone who is a senior editor at a journal that deals explicitly with statically inference...). FWIW, p-values are not used a great deal in phylogenetic analysis. For the most part phylogeneticists maximise a likelihood or examine a posterior distribution of trees. Tests with p-values (or similar approaches with model selection stats or Bayes factors) are sometimes used examine specific hypotheses, but no more than in other fields.wd400_{February 20, 2017
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Bob O'H, DATCG listed further references on top of my initial wiki reference, whereas you have listed none thus far. I certainly don't take 'your' word for it. (especially after the fruit fly study shenanigan you pulled a few months ago). To be blunt, I consider you dishonest Bob. Moreover, 'you' have not established that 'the common descent analysis (is) probably OK'. Not even close. Darwinists are notorious for fabricating evidence out of thin air, i.e notorious for being liars!. Yet, when we look at real evidence, instead of statistics that are widely known to be exceptionally prone to personal bias, we find, as Casey Luskin cited, that common descent consistently fails to explain the evidence:
But Isn’t There a Consilience of Data That Corroborates Common Descent? – Casey Luskin – December 2, 2010 Excerpt: Dr. Theobald might have had a point, were it not for the fact that: (1) Phylogeny and biogeography don’t always agree. (2) Phylogeny and paleontology don’t always agree. (3) Transitional fossils are often missing (or the “predicted” transitional fossils fall apart on closer inspection). (4) Hierarchical classifications often fail. (5) “Homologous” structures often have different developmental pathways or different structures often have “homologous” developmental pathways. (6) Morphological and molecular phylogenies are often incongruent. http://www.evolutionnews.org/2010/12/but_isnt_there_lots_of_other_d041111.html
Moreover, if we test the feasibility of 'unlimited plasticity', which is a necessary cornerstone of the common descent hypothesis, we find,,,
Scant search for the Maker Excerpt: “But where is the experimental evidence? None exists in the literature claiming that one species has been shown to evolve into another. Bacteria, the simplest form of independent life, are ideal for this kind of study, with generation times of 20 to 30 minutes, and populations achieved after 18 hours. But throughout 150 years of the science of bacteriology, there is no evidence that one species of bacteria has changed into another, in spite of the fact that populations have been exposed to potent chemical and physical mutagens and that, uniquely, bacteria possess extrachromosomal, transmissible plasmids. Since there is no evidence for species changes between the simplest forms of unicellular life, it is not surprising that there is no evidence for evolution from prokaryotic to eukaryotic cells, let alone throughout the whole array of higher multicellular organisms.” - Alan H. Linton - emeritus professor of bacteriology, University of Bristol - Scant Search For a Maker - April 20, 2001 http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/story.asp?storycode=159282 Tom Bethell's Rebuke to Fellow Journalists: A Skeptical Look at Evolution Is Not Beyond Your Powers - January 31, 2017 Excerpt: Experimentation shows that organisms "evolve" -- only to revert to a mean, a predictable "Reversion to the Average," as famed breeder Luther Burbank put it. Species "inhabit 'plateaus' of limited space upon which variants are free to roam," says Bethell. Artificial selection, beloved by Darwin, can "push" varieties around the plateau, nothing more. Stasis and extinction, not transmutation, is observed. http://www.evolutionnews.org/2017/01/tom_bethells_re103461.html "What is the use of their unceasing mutations if they do not change? In sum, the mutations of bacteria and viruses are merely hereditary fluctuations around a median position; a swing to the right, a swing to the left, but no final evolutionary effect." Pierre-Paul Grasse’, a renowned French evolutionist. "Despite a close watch, we have witnessed no new species emerge in the wild in recorded history. Also, most remarkably, we have seen no new animal species emerge in domestic breeding. That includes no new species of fruitflies in hundreds of millions of generations in fruitfly studies, where both soft and harsh pressures have been deliberately applied to the fly populations to induce speciation. And in computer life, where the term “species” does not yet have meaning, we see no cascading emergence of entirely new kinds of variety beyond an initial burst. In the wild, in breeding, and in artificial life, we see the emergence of variation. But by the absence of greater change, we also clearly see that the limits of variation appear to be narrowly bounded, and often bounded within species." Kevin Kelly from his book, "Out of Control" Many of these researchers also raise the question (among others), why -- even after inducing literally billions of induced mutations and (further) chromosome rearrangements -- all the important mutation breeding programs have come to an end in the Western World instead of eliciting a revolution in plant breeding, either by successive rounds of selective "micromutations" (cumulative selection in the sense of the modern synthesis), or by "larger mutations" ... and why the law of recurrent variation is endlessly corroborated by the almost infinite repetition of the spectra of mutant phenotypes in each and any new extensive mutagenesis experiment (as predicted) instead of regularly producing a range of new systematic species... (Wolf-Ekkehard Lönnig, "Mutagenesis in Physalis pubescens L. ssp. floridana: Some Further Research on Dollo's Law and the Law of Recurrent Variation," Floriculture and Ornamental Biotechnology Vol. 4 (Special Issue 1): 1-21 (December 2010).) Information and Mutation -- Responding to David Levin's (antifreeze protein) - Lee M. Spetner - February 2, 2016 Excerpt: Twenty years ago I wrote: "No random mutation has been observed that adds information to the genome." I repeated this in my latest book and the statement still stands. It bothers the Darwinists because it refutes common descent and Darwinian evolution. http://www.evolutionnews.org/2016/02/information_and102571.html
Thus Bob if you truly want to establish the supposed mathematical validity of your preferred theory, since you have no empirical evidence to do so (in fact empirical evidence falsifies your theory), I suggest that you find the 'law of evolution' within the known physical universe so as to be able to build a proper mathematical model for Darwinian evolution. A rigorous model that can be tested against in the lab! Else-wise, as you yourself have shown, we are dealing with pseudo-scientists, charlatans and liars, not scientists.
“It is our contention that if ‘random’ is given a serious and crucial interpretation from a probabilistic point of view, the randomness postulate is highly implausible and that an adequate scientific theory of evolution must await the discovery and elucidation of new natural laws—physical, physico-chemical, and biological.” Murray Eden, “Inadequacies of Neo-Darwinian Evolution as a Scientific Theory,” Mathematical Challenges to the Neo-Darwinian Interpretation of Evolution, editors Paul S. Moorhead and Martin M. Kaplan, June 1967, p. 109. The Evolution of Ernst: Interview with Ernst Mayr - 2004 Excerpt: biology (Darwinian Evolution) differs from the physical sciences in that in the physical sciences, all theories, I don't know exceptions so I think it's probably a safe statement, all theories are based somehow or other on natural laws. In biology, as several other people have shown, and I totally agree with them, there are no natural laws in biology corresponding to the natural laws of the physical sciences. ,,, And so that's what I do in this book. I show that the theoretical basis, you might call it, or I prefer to call it the philosophy of biology, has a totally different basis than the theories of physics. http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-evolution-of-ernst-in/ WHAT SCIENTIFIC IDEA IS READY FOR RETIREMENT? Evolution is True - Roger Highfield - January 2014 Excerpt:,,, Whatever the case, those universal truths—'laws'—that physicists and chemists all rely upon appear relatively absent from biology. Little seems to have changed from a decade ago when the late and great John Maynard Smith wrote a chapter on evolutionary game theory for a book on the most powerful equations of science: his contribution did not include a single equation. http://www.edge.org/response-detail/25468
bornagain77_{February 20, 2017
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ba77 @17 - I'll ask once more. What exactly was the corrective you wanted to make at comment 3? DATCG - I'm well aware of the criticisms of p-values. They are not universally awful, so to say "X uses p-values, therefore X is suspect" is going too far. For the common descent analysis they are probably OK (there are alternative statistics which may be a bit better but it's a model comparison problem, rather than parameter estimation).Bob O'H_{February 20, 2017
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More from the article I linked in #19, on P-Values...
As the statistical association statement points out, this situation is far from merely of academic concern. “The issues touched on here affect not only research, but research funding, journal practices, career advancement, scientific education, public policy, journalism, and law,” the authors point out in the report, published online March 7 in The American Statistician. Many of the experts who participated in the process wrote commentaries on the document, some stressing that it did not go far enough in condemning P values’ pernicious influences on science. “Viewed alone, p-values calculated from a set of numbers and assuming a statistical model are of limited value and frequently are meaningless,” wrote biostatistician Donald Berry of MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston. He cited the serious negative impact that misuse and misinterpretation of P values has had not only on science, but also on society. “Patients with serious diseases have been harmed. Researchers have chased wild geese, finding too often that statistically significant conclusions could not be reproduced. The economic impacts of faulty statistical conclusions are great.” Echoing Berry’s concerns was Boston University epidemiologist Kenneth Rothman. “It is a safe bet that people have suffered or died because scientists (and editors, regulators, journalists and others) have used significance tests to interpret results,” Rothman wrote. “The correspondence between results that are statistically significant and those that are truly important is far too low to be useful. Consequently, scientists have embraced and even avidly pursued meaningless differences solely because they are statistically significant, and have ignored important effects because they failed to pass the screen of statistical significance.” Stanford University epidemiologist John Ioannidis compared the scientific community’s attachment to P values with drug addiction, fueled by the institutional rewards that accompany the publication process.
DATCG_{February 20, 2017
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Bob, your argument is not with me, but the links and people quoting him as a Frequentist and as laying down the Foundation of Frequentist in University, or books about Fisher and the others. Maybe he was not as rigged as others as is quoted also. If you desire to change Wiki, or the Classroom, or challenge the authors of the books I referenced, etc., do so.DATCG_{February 20, 2017
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Darwin blamed God... "I own that I cannot see as plainly as others do, and as I should wish to do, evidence of design and beneficence on all sides of us. There seems to me too much misery in the world. I cannot persuade myself that a beneficent and omnipotent God would have designedly created the Ichneumonidae with the express intention of their feeding within the living bodies of caterpillars, or the cat should play with mice." So, blame God for Darwinism. Christianity gets blamed for everything else. ---------------- P-values have problems. The article linked in the Post discusses problems and list them. And there's lengthy discussion in comments to follow. The question is, do these problems with P-Values discussed in the article reflect on possible problems in the past for Darwinism and for Darwin's Tree of Life today. I don't know, but since P-values are utilized, then claims of a Darwinist and Eugenicist like Fisher, or modern day Darwinist is an area for review, is it not? On a broader level, not just P-Values, are statistics merely telling Darwinist what they want to see in the data? Good question if you throw a bias of Darwinist in the equation. Does their need to see outcomes bias the use of statistics? Are these stats simply used as fodder for a belief system? Namely, Darwin's replacement of a Designer he detested with one he liked, that he created - a blind creator of materialist forces. So, did Fisher misuse Statistics or other Darwinist to prop of their blind creation story? Worth a deeper look? What precisely can a P-value tell you? From an article I link below... "No. 5: “A p-value, or statistical significance, does not measure the size of an effect or the importance of a result.”"
What, then, does it measure? That’s principle No. 1: “… how incompatible the data are with a specified statistical model.” But note well principle No. 2: “P-values do not measure the probability that the studied hypothesis is true, or the probability that the data were produced by random chance alone.” And therefore, always remember principle No. 3: “Scientific conclusions … or policy decisions should not be based only on whether a p-value passes a specific threshold.”
Quote from Science News... Experts warn of Misuse of P-ValuesDATCG_{February 20, 2017
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Bob O'H, derail the thread? Now that is purposely avoiding a very important point that is now in play. Namely, your admittance @11 that you do not believe atheistic materialism to be true! You instead want to focus, without any reference thus far, on some mundane point in statistics that is, IMHO, totally empirically trivial as to falsifying Darwinian evolution as far as experimental science itself is concerned, all the while ignoring this major, jaw dropping, self-admitted inconsistency in your actions and beliefs. i.e. You have now admitted that you do not believe atheistic materialism to be true and yet you defend it anyway! Why this stark inconsistency in you actions and beliefs Bob? More importantly, since you now admit that you believe you really are a real person, instead of a neuronal illusion, how exactly do you ground this 'personhood' you believe in? I find it necessary to appeal to Theism so as to ground my 'personhood'. Namely, I find it necessary to appeal to a 'soul' to answer this following simple, yet profound, question: ",,, the question, rather, is why things don’t fall completely apart — as they do, in fact, at the moment of death. What power holds off that moment — precisely for a lifetime, and not a moment longer?"
The Unbearable Wholeness of Beings - Stephen L. Talbott - 2010 Excerpt: Virtually the same collection of molecules exists in the canine cells during the moments immediately before and after death. But after the fateful transition no one will any longer think of genes as being regulated, nor will anyone refer to normal or proper chromosome functioning. No molecules will be said to guide other molecules to specific targets, and no molecules will be carrying signals, which is just as well because there will be no structures recognizing signals. Code, information, and communication, in their biological sense, will have disappeared from the scientist’s vocabulary. ,,, the question, rather, is why things don’t fall completely apart — as they do, in fact, at the moment of death. What power holds off that moment — precisely for a lifetime, and not a moment longer? Despite the countless processes going on in the cell, and despite the fact that each process might be expected to “go its own way” according to the myriad factors impinging on it from all directions, the actual result is quite different. Rather than becoming progressively disordered in their mutual relations (as indeed happens after death, when the whole dissolves into separate fragments), the processes hold together in a larger unity. http://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/the-unbearable-wholeness-of-beings Scientific evidence that we do indeed have an eternal soul (Elaboration on Talbott's question “What power holds off that moment — precisely for a lifetime, and not a moment longer?”)– video 2016 https://youtu.be/h2P45Obl4lQ Form/soul - video playlist https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLtAP1KN7ahiYxgYCc-0xiUAhNWjT4q6LD
Here is another simple question for you Bob so as to give you the proper perspective on what is truly important and on what is not:
Mark 8:37 "Is anything worth more than your soul?" - Jesus
Supplemental quote:
It’s Really Not Rocket Science – Granville Sewell – November 16, 2015 Excerpt: “It is not enough to say that design is a more likely scenario to explain a world full of well-designed things. It strikes me as urgent to insist that you not allow your mind to surrender the absolute clarity that all complex and magnificent things were made that way. Once you allow the intellect to consider that an elaborate organism with trillions of microscopic interactive components can be an accident… you have essentially “lost your mind.”” Jay Homnick – American Spectator 2005 http://www.evolutionnews.org/2015/11/it_really_isnt100911.html
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ba77 - please don't bother trying to derail the thread. What, specifically, are the corrections you were pointing to @ 3? DATCG - Fisher wasn't a frequentist. He laid the foundations for a maximum likelihood based approach to statistics, which is nowadays interpreted in a frequentist framework, but his philosophy of probability was based on 'fiducial probablilities'. There's a joke amongst statisticians that fiducial probability is difficult to explain, because only Fisher really understood them.Bob O'H_{February 20, 2017
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For a class at Waterloo University... Fisher (e.g. 1922) laid the foundations for a frequentist theory.DATCG_{February 20, 2017
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From BA77's wiki link... "Two major contributors to frequentist (classical) methods were Fisher and Neyman.[4]" Reference: (4) Lehmann, E. L. (2011). Fisher, Neyman, and the creation of classical statistics. New York: Springer. ISBN 978-1441994998.DATCG_{February 20, 2017
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re: Fisher... "The frequentist or classical school is associated with Sir Ronald Fisher (who gave us the null hypothesis and p-values as evidence against the null) and Neyman and Pearson (who gave us Type I and II errors, power, alternative hypotheses, deciding to reject or not reject based on an alpha level). Fisher and Neyman/Pearson had different views on statistics and what is taught today in the typical "statistics for scientists" course is a jumbled combination of both, which can lead to much confusion (Hubbard & Bayarri, 2003; Christensen, 2005)." Reference... Frequentist or Classical School associated with FisherDATCG_{February 20, 2017
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Bob O'H, "I don’t believe them", (i.e. the premises of atheistic materialism.) So 'you' only defend atheistic materialism? When push comes to shove, you don't actually believe it? Pathetic!bornagain77_{February 20, 2017
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ba77 - your argument only makes sense if you believe these views you are ascribing to "atheistic materialism", which I'm certain you don't. FWIW, I don't believe them. So, now we've got that out of the way (we both agree that I exist), can we get back to what I had asked - can you please clarify what exactly the correction is @ 3.Bob O'H_{February 20, 2017
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Bob O'H, ad hominems?? "You", if it were possible for there to be a 'you' within atheistic materialism, are hallucinating again. I certainly did not attack 'you'. In fact, I attacked the sheer absurdity of there being no 'you' within the atheistic worldview. Then I pointed out that, according to population genetics, even if there were a 'you' within atheistic materialism, then everything 'you' perceived would be an illusion. And even if I did personally attack 'you', exactly how is it possible to insult a mindless collection of fermions and bosons since there is no real person within that collection to insult? Do rocks have feelings?
"There is no self in, around, or as part of anyone’s body. There can’t be. So there really isn’t any enduring self that ever could wake up morning after morning worrying about why it should bother getting out of bed. The self is just another illusion, like the illusion that thought is about stuff or that we carry around plans and purposes that give meaning to what our body does. Every morning’s introspectively fantasized self is a new one, remarkably similar to the one that consciousness ceased fantasizing when we fell sleep sometime the night before. Whatever purpose yesterday’s self thought it contrived to set the alarm last night, today’s newly fictionalized self is not identical to yesterday’s. It’s on its own, having to deal with the whole problem of why to bother getting out of bed all over again." - A.Rosenberg, The Atheist’s Guide to Reality, ch.10
I would ask Bob to be logically consistent in his atheism, but then I would have presuppose a Theistic premise there really is a person named Bob who could be rational. But alas, within atheism there is just a neuronal illusion labeled Bob. All rationality is gone within atheistic materialism!bornagain77_{February 20, 2017
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ba77 - would it be possible for you to get back to explaining the "corrective note" @ 3, and clarifying what exactly the correction is. These ad hominems don't help, and rather give the impression you're trying to avoid the subject.Bob O'H_{February 20, 2017
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"if you are right about materialism, then I to have have a soul (regardless of my opinions on the matter). So, although it may be clear to you, it is not clear to this soul." And 'you' complain about clarity? Moreover, given Darwinian premises, it is impossible for anything to ever be 'clear' for 'you': That is to say, given materialistic/atheistic premises, not only are our personal beliefs about reality held to be somewhat flawed, and therefore in need of testing, even our perceptions/observations of reality itself are held to be untrustworthy and thus ‘illusory’ given the materialistic premises of atheism. Richard Dawkins puts the awkward situation between Darwinian evolution and reliable observation like this:
Why Atheism is Nonsense Pt.5 – “Naturalism is a Self-defeating Idea”video Excerpt: “Since we are creatures of natural selection, we cannot totally trust our senses. Evolution only passes on traits that help a species survive, and not concerned with preserving traits that tell a species what is actually true about life.” Richard Dawkins – quoted from “The God Delusion” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ff-5rsrDRGM
In the following video and article, Donald Hoffman has, through numerous computer simulations of population genetics, proved that if Darwinian evolution were actually true then ALL of our perceptions of reality would be illusory.
Donald Hoffman: Do we see reality as it is? – Video – 9:59 minute mark Quote: “,,,evolution is a mathematically precise theory. We can use the equations of evolution to check this out. We can have various organisms in artificial worlds compete and see which survive and which thrive, which sensory systems or more fit. A key notion in those equations is fitness.,,, fitness does depend on reality as it is, yes.,,, Fitness is not the same thing as reality as it is, and it is fitness, and not reality as it is, that figures centrally in the equations of evolution. So, in my lab, we have run hundreds of thousands of evolutionary game simulations with lots of different randomly chosen worlds and organisms that compete for resources in those worlds. Some of the organisms see all of the reality. Others see just part of the reality. And some see none of the reality. Only fitness. Who wins? Well I hate to break it to you but perception of reality goes extinct. In almost every simulation, organisms that see none of reality, but are just tuned to fitness, drive to extinction that perceive reality as it is. So the bottom line is, evolution does not favor veridical, or accurate perceptions. Those (accurate) perceptions of reality go extinct. Now this is a bit stunning. How can it be that not seeing the world accurately gives us a survival advantage?” https://youtu.be/oYp5XuGYqqY?t=601 The Evolutionary Argument Against Reality - April 2016 The cognitive scientist Donald Hoffman uses evolutionary game theory to show that our perceptions of an independent reality must be illusions. Excerpt: “The classic argument is that those of our ancestors who saw more accurately had a competitive advantage over those who saw less accurately and thus were more likely to pass on their genes that coded for those more accurate perceptions, so after thousands of generations we can be quite confident that we’re the offspring of those who saw accurately, and so we see accurately. That sounds very plausible. But I think it is utterly false. It misunderstands the fundamental fact about evolution, which is that it’s about fitness functions — mathematical functions that describe how well a given strategy achieves the goals of survival and reproduction. The mathematical physicist Chetan Prakash proved a theorem that I devised that says: According to evolution by natural selection, an organism that sees reality as it is will never be more fit than an organism of equal complexity that sees none of reality but is just tuned to fitness. Never.” https://www.quantamagazine.org/20160421-the-evolutionary-argument-against-reality/
Moreover, completely contrary to what Hoffman found for Darwinian theory, it turns out that accurate perception, i.e. conscious observation, far from being unreliable and illusory, is experimentally found to be far more integral to reality, i.e. far more reliable of reality, than the math of population genetics predicted. In the following experiment, it was found that reality doesn’t exist without an observer.
New Mind-blowing Experiment Confirms That Reality Doesn’t Exist If You Are Not Looking at It – June 3, 2015 Excerpt: The results of the Australian scientists’ experiment, which were published in the journal Nature Physics, show that this choice is determined by the way the object is measured, which is in accordance with what quantum theory predicts. “It proves that measurement is everything. At the quantum level, reality does not exist if you are not looking at it,” said lead researcher Dr. Andrew Truscott in a press release.,,, “The atoms did not travel from A to B. It was only when they were measured at the end of the journey that their wave-like or particle-like behavior was brought into existence,” he said. Thus, this experiment adds to the validity of the quantum theory and provides new evidence to the idea that reality doesn’t exist without an observer. http://themindunleashed.org/2015/06/new-mind-blowing-experiment-confirms-that-reality-doesnt-exist-if-you-are-not-looking-at-it.html
Apparently science itself could care less if atheists are forced to believe, because of the mathematics of population genetics, that their observations of reality are illusory! Thus, given materialistic premises, people become neuronal illusions whose observations of reality are illusory. And why in blue blazes should anyone trust what illusions having illusions have to say about reality? (of personal note: Edgar Allen Poe’s poem “Dream within a Dream” is a fitting reference at this point)
A Dream Within A Dream - Poem by Edgar Allan Poe http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/a-dream-within-a-dream/
bornagain77_{February 19, 2017
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ba77 - if you are right about materialism, then I to have have a soul (regardless of my opinions on the matter). So, although it may be clear to you, it is not clear to this soul. So, I'll ask again - can you explain what exactly you are trying to correct in my comment? Mung - ha! I like that! But it might not be a popular view around here. :-)Bob O'H_{February 19, 2017
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