Mark Frank, “OK, I’m With You Fellas.”

_{Barry Arrington
December 19, 2013

Intelligent Design

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Intelligent Design}

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O Brother Where Art Thou is in my top five all time favorite movies. In this particular clip both Everett and Pete want to be the leader of the three-man “gang.” So they take a vote . . .

O Brother Clip.

I was reminded of this when I read one of Mark Frank’s comments to my last post.

In that post I pointed out that over at The Skeptical Zone, Elizabeth Liddle says this:

Chance is not an explanation, and therefore cannot be rejected, or supported, as a hypothesis.

But Ronald A. Thisted, PhD, a statistics professor in the Departments of Statistics and Health Studies at the University of Chicago, says this:

If the chance explanation can be ruled out, then the differences seen in the study must be due to the effectiveness of the treatment being studied.

Mark Frank commented on the post, and I tried to pin him down as to whether he agreed with Thisted or Liddle. After much squirming he finally said:

I never disagreed with either Lizzie or Thisted on the essentials because they are in agreement. All that has happened is that Thisted has used ‘chance’ in a somewhat slipshod way.

Liddle: “Chance is not an explanation.”

Thisted: “The purpose of statistical testing is to rule out the chance explanation.”

Frank: “OK, I’m with you fellas.”

One of them might be right and the other wrong. They may both be wrong. One thing is certain, they can’t both be right.

Hey Mark, is this why you are so squishy on the Law of Noncontradiction? You want to reserve the option of having it both ways?

Comments

#27 Box
Do you accept ‘gravity’ as an explanation? Or are you only willing to talk specifics?
As a statistical hypothesis? It would need more context. In general yes.
Second question: how about ‘randomness’ as a synonym for ‘chance’?
Not exactly a synonym - it would be very odd to say we met by randomness! But sometimes they can be used interchangeably.Mark Frank_{December 20, 2013
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Barry I am not sure whether you just didn't read everything that Lizzie wrote or are you deliberately omitted it. I quote a relevant passage:
Sure, we can use “chance” as a free-hand “explanation” – “it was just one of those things”; “we met purely by chance”; “if my parents hadn’t met by lucky chance, I wouldn’t be here”. But we are talking about formal statistical null hypothesis testing here (clearly – Barry headed his original post “A Statistics Question”) and in formal statistical hypothesis testing, chance is not a hypothesis.
It could hardly be clearer that Lizzie is not saying chance cannot be an explanation for anything in its broadest sense. She is saying it cannot be a hypothesis in the formal statistical sense. Furthermore your account of hypothesis testing in comment #2 suggests that you agree with here and actually there is no dispute of substance here. Something that interests me more is the way you keep referring back to Lizzie and quoting from her. You banned Lizzie for commenting here. I was never clear why but it was not for personal comments or bad language. I think it was either for making the same point repeatedly or for being insincere. In any case presumably you banned her because you thought that in some way her contributions were reducing the quality of the discussion. So why do you keep bringing her back into the discussion (albeit by the tedious method of quoting from and responding to another blog)? Has the quality of contributions suddenly improved? PS Have you seen the quote about chance from Casey Luskin. It starts:
When a person says that something happened “by chance,” there may seem to be an implication that chance actually caused the event. But “chance” is not the true cause.
Mark Frank_{December 20, 2013
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Of related note, the atheist's insistence on 'chance' as a causal explanation in Darwinian evolution (i.e. 'random' variation) is what prevents Darwinian evolution from ever having a rigid mathematical demarcation criteria in science:
“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. “On the other hand, I disagree that Darwin’s theory is as `solid as any explanation in science.; Disagree? I regard the claim as preposterous. Quantum electrodynamics is accurate to thirteen or so decimal places; so, too, general relativity. A leaf trembling in the wrong way would suffice to shatter either theory. What can Darwinian theory offer in comparison?” (Berlinski, D., “A Scientific Scandal?: David Berlinski & Critics,” Commentary, July 8, 2003)
bornagain77_{December 20, 2013
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Mark Frank @ 16. Lizzie says there is something called "chance" and it is not an explanation for anything. Thisted says there is something called "chance" and it can be an explanation. Those two statements cannot be reconciled no matter how much you stamp your foot. Everyone knows that. Why you don't admit it is a mystery.Barry Arrington_{December 20, 2013
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Once again, Mark Frank, please do not take the above as a personal criticism. It was just an observation of the general discussion. That is what led me to ask for clarification of your personal definition on Chance. As I said, I shall really ponder over what you said. Many Thanks. Ho-De-HoHo-De-Ho_{December 20, 2013
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Whatho everybody. This coin flipping sequence of threads has been deuced interesting to follow. I have often heard it said by some of the ID detractors that ID does not make any predictions. From following the statements of all of the good people here at UD who have been casting 500 coins about hither and thither, I think a case for a positive prediction can clearly be seen. I shall state it now. If a person were to be sauntering through the Roman districts one sunny afternoon and happened upon the Trevi fountain, they may plod over to have a look into its waters at all of the coins thrown into it by the many visiting lovers and wish-makers. Now what would our coin spotting adventurer expect to see? From the "500 coin" comments, I would say that if our adventurer towed the ID line, they would expect to see a pretty even distribution of heads and tails displayed amidst the booty. Why? Because, that kind of configuration does not need an intelligence or physical law to explain it and is observed repeatedly on a regular basis. On the other hand, from following this debate, one would conclude that our Roman sojourner, if he were anti-ID, would not predict anything whatsoever. If the coins were all Heads, well there you are. All Tails? Not a concern. A mixture of the two? So what. After all, all configurations are possible are they not. On top of this, what would be the response of of the ID advocate if all coins were heads up? They would no doubt say to themselves: "Gosh that is odd. Why are they all like that? Very rummy. Perhaps some child is diving down and turning them all Heads up. Or is there some particularly localised force of nature at work here? Let me see..." - or thoughts to that effect. If the urge took them, they could set up a camcorder or whatever, in order to see if there is a diving boy or girl interfering with the coins orientation. If not, let's start doing some more detailed research on the fountain. This is weird stuff what? By contrast, the anti-ID figure (as posited on these threads), on finding all coins glimmering their Heads to him, would merely say. Nothing interesting here. No need for inquiry. This is of note since I have often heard it said that ID stultifies curiosity in science. However, that is clearly not the case in the science of coin tossing at least. The opposite view, in this instance, would appear to waving this flag. By-the-by, I am sure nobody opposing ID would actually hold these singular views, but merely from the comments here at UD these views are what an impartial bystander could conclude. Thanks for reading. Ho-De-HoHo-De-Ho_{December 20, 2013
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Thank you for your answer Mark Frank. I think your explanation of Chance is pretty reasonable and sensible. I never thought you were a pure determinist. I shall ponder your comments, as I enjoy looking at things from the perspective of others. You express things very eloquently Mark Frank and I have found merit in most, if not all of the comments you share. Of course, nobody has the monopoly on the correct point of view, and that is why I solicited your explanation of Chance. To be honest I do not find anything to raise a hand in objection to with your definition of Chance. The difficulty of course is the multiplicity of definitions one can ascribe to a word. In this ongoing saga of 500 coin tosses, I understand the use of the word Chance to, in essence, mean 'not deliberate'. I mean to say, if I stood outside and tossed a few hundred coins onto the lawn without any attention to the way I tossed nor any care as to what side up they landed, I would expect such a non deliberate approach to achieve a pretty even share of heads and tails. That would be a 'Chance' result, in the colloquial everyday world, I would hazard. If I found 500 Heads peeping back at me though, I should first suspect a deliberate explanation. Such as a two headed coin, or weighted coin or spooky goings on, since the observed and repeated natural laws haven't tended towards such a one sided result. I could be wrong, but I think that that would be the response of most people irrespective of their personal beliefs. Please do not think that I am trying to shoe-horn your position in this discussion Mark Frank. Nor am I stating that your viewpoint is wrong. I have been trying to understand why some seem against saying 500 heads, while technically possible, does actually smack of deliberate intervention rather than non deliberate Chance. Please do not read this as being personally antagonistic towards your good self Mark Frank. I am speaking somewhat generically as an observer of these discussions. I also appreciate the quite even toned line that you take. Perhaps a comment I made on another post may explain my thoughts from a more tongue in cheek perspective. I shall post it below for your consideration. Please understand that the following post is not an attack on those who believe in evolution or are not persuaded by ID. I have no particular investiture in either. I wrote the following simply as an observation on what I had been reading. Thank you.Ho-De-Ho_{December 20, 2013
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#26 Mark Frank, Do you accept 'gravity' as an explanation? Or are you only willing to talk specifics? Second question: how about 'randomness' as a synonym for 'chance'?Box_{December 20, 2013
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#25 Box No I am not joking. The quotes you supply are all either in the context of specific hypotheses which contain unpredictable elements (i.e. the interpretation I am offering of "chance as a hypothesis) are not about hypotheses at all.Mark Frank_{December 20, 2013
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Mark Frank, Surely you are joking when you say that you do not see the relevance!? The chance hypothesis is a crucial explanation for ... everything. More Koonin quotes:
(…) the emergence of even highly complex systems by chance is not just possible, but inevitable (392)
(…) one of Darwin’s key achievements was demonstrating the essential interaction between chance and necessity in the evolution of life. According to Darwin, most of the heritable variation is random, and the directionality of evolution is brought about entirely by natural selection that governs the fixation or elimination of the random mutations (Darwin, 1859). (257)

Eliminating the conflict between the Lamarckian and Darwinian evolutionary scenarios, far from being of purely historical significance, affects our fundamental views on the role and place of chance in evolution. This then seems to be a veritable, if underappreciated, paradigm shift in modern biology. (274)

The studies reviewed in this chapter reveal more complex, unexpected contributions both on the side of chance/randomness and on the side of adaptive, even directional processes (287)

Speaking of chance, entropy (noise) at all levels of biological information transmission can be a constructive factor of evolution, in large part because of the robustness of biological networks. (288)

The MWO model not only permits but guarantees that, somewhere in the infinite multiverse (moreover, in every single infinite universe), such a complex system would emerge; moreover, there is an infinite number of these systems. Thus, the pertinent question is not whether systems of any complexity have emerged spontaneously by chance alone (the MWO guarantees this), but what is the most likely breakthrough stage whose appearance on Earth should be attributed to chance under anthropic reasoning? (386)
Box_{December 20, 2013
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To expand a bit on Barb's excellent post at 7, in which she pointed out that 'chance' is given causal power by atheists, Eddington reflects on the dilemma for atheists here:
"I have no “philosophical axe to grind” in this discussion. Philosophically, the notion of a beginning of the present order of Nature is repugnant to me. I am simply stating the dilemma to which our present fundamental conception of physical law leads us. I see no way round it; but whether future developments of science will find an escape I cannot predict. The dilemma is this: Surveying our surroundings, we find them to be far from a “fortuitous concourse of atoms”. The picture of the world, as drawn in existing physical theories shows arrangements of the individual elements for which the odds are multillions to 1 against an origin by chance. Some people would like to call this non-random feature of the world purpose or design; but I will call it non-committally anti-chance. We are unwilling in physics that anti-chance plays any part in the reactions between the systems of billions of atoms and quanta that we study; and indeed all our experimental evidence goes to show that these are governed by the laws of chance. Accordingly, we sweep anti-chance out of the laws of physics–out of the differential equations. Naturally, therefore, it reappears in the boundary conditions, for it must be got into the scheme somewhere. By sweeping it far enough away from the sphere of our current physical problems, we fancy we have got rid of it. It is only when some of us are so misguided as to try to get back billions of years into the past that we find the sweepings all piled up like a high wall and forming a boundary–a beginning of time–which we cannot climb over. A way out of the dilemma has been proposed which seems to have found favour with a number of scientific workers. I oppose it because I think it is untenable, not because of any desire to retain the present dilemma, I should like to find a genuine loophole. But that does not alter my conviction that the loophole that is at present being advocated is a blind alley. Eddington AS. 1931. The end of the world: from the standpoint of mathematical physics. Nature 127:447-453.
Indeed, that 'high wall' that one cannot climb over is found to be a much higher wall than Eddington had realized in his day:
"This now tells us how precise the Creator’s aim must have been: namely to an accuracy of one part in 10^10^123." Roger Penrose - Emperor’s New Mind, Penrose, pp 339-345 – 1989 "The time-asymmetry is fundamentally connected to with the Second Law of Thermodynamics: indeed, the extraordinarily special nature (to a greater precision than about 1 in 10^10^123, in terms of phase-space volume) can be identified as the "source" of the Second Law (Entropy)." Roger Penrose - The Physics of the Small and Large: What is the Bridge Between Them?
It is also important to note how pervasive entropy is in its explanatory power:
Shining Light on Dark Energy – October 21, 2012 Excerpt: It (Entropy) explains time; it explains every possible action in the universe;,, Even gravity, Vedral argued, can be expressed as a consequence of the law of entropy. ,,, The principles of thermodynamics are at their roots all to do with information theory. Information theory is simply an embodiment of how we interact with the universe —,,, http://crev.info/2012/10/shining-light-on-dark-energy/
This number for the initial entropy of the universe is gargantuan. If this number were written out in its entirety, 1 with 10^123 zeros to the right, it still could not be written on a piece of paper the size of the entire visible universe, even if a number were written down on each sub-atomic particle in the entire universe, since the universe only has 10^80 sub-atomic particles in it. In this following video it is pointed out that if one tries to explain that gargantuan initial entropy of the universe by appealing to 'pre-Big Bang states' then one finds that the entropy problem gets even worse and worse the further back one tries to go:
The Absurdity of Inflation, String Theory and The Multiverse - Dr. Bruce Gordon - video http://vimeo.com/34468027 'If there was a pre-Big Bang state, and you have some bounces, that fine-tuning gets even finer as you go backwards, if you can even imagine such a thing" Dr. Bruce Gordon - quoted from 3:40 minute mark of the preceding video
It is interesting to note how 'pre-Big Bang states' that Dr. Gordon referred to, in which 'fine-tuning gets even finer as you go backwards', reflects what Dembski's 'Search for a Search' paper highlighted. A paper in which he and Dr. Marks proved that 'searching for a successful search increases exponentially' as one go backwards,,,
The Search for a Search: Measuring the Information Cost of Higher Level Search William A. Dembski and Robert J. Marks II Excerpt: We prove two results: (1) The Horizontal No Free Lunch Theorem, which shows that average relative performance of searches never exceeds unassisted or blind searches, and (2) The Vertical No Free Lunch Theorem, which shows that the difficulty of searching for a successful search increases exponentially with respect to the minimum allowable active information being sought. http://evoinfo.org/publications/search-for-a-search/
Moreover, to circumvent any objections that information and entropy are not connected, the connection between information and entropy is found to be much tighter than many people realize,
“Is there a real connection between entropy in physics and the entropy of information? …. The equations of information theory and the second law are the same, suggesting that the idea of entropy is something fundamental…” Tom Siegfried, Dallas Morning News, 5/14/90 – Quotes attributed to Robert W. Lucky, Ex. Director of Research, AT&T, Bell Laboratories & John A. Wheeler, of Princeton & Univ. of TX, Austin in the article Demonic device converts information to energy – 2010 Excerpt: “This is a beautiful experimental demonstration that information has a thermodynamic content,” says Christopher Jarzynski, a statistical chemist at the University of Maryland in College Park. In 1997, Jarzynski formulated an equation to define the amount of energy that could theoretically be converted from a unit of information2; the work by Sano and his team has now confirmed this equation. “This tells us something new about how the laws of thermodynamics work on the microscopic scale,” says Jarzynski. http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=demonic-device-converts-inform
Thus that high wall facing atheists, that Eddington referred to at the beginning of the universe, has the highly unusual characteristic of growing even higher, and higher, if one tries to scale it by appealing to 'chance' as a causal factor for the universe! :) It is also very interesting to note that Ludwig Boltzmann, an atheist, when he linked entropy and probability, did not, as Max Planck a Christian Theist points out in the following link, think to look for a constant for entropy:
The Austrian physicist Ludwig Boltzmann first linked entropy and probability in 1877. However, the equation as shown, involving a specific constant, was first written down by Max Planck, the father of quantum mechanics in 1900. In his 1918 Nobel Prize lecture, Planck said: “This constant is often referred to as Boltzmann’s constant, although, to my knowledge, Boltzmann himself never introduced it – a peculiar state of affairs, which can be explained by the fact that Boltzmann, as appears from his occasional utterances, never gave thought to the possibility of carrying out an exact measurement of the constant.” http://www.daviddarling.info/encyclopedia/B/Boltzmann_equation.html
I hold that the primary reason why Boltzmann, an atheist, never thought to carry out, or even propose, a precise measurement for the constant on entropy is that he, as an atheist, had thought he had arrived at the ultimate ‘chance’ cause for how everything in the universe operates when he had link probability with entropy. i.e. In linking entropy with probability, Boltzmann, again an atheist, thought he had explained everything that happens in the universe to a ‘random’ chance basis. To him, as an atheist, I hold that it would simply be unfathomable for him to even conceive that the ‘random chance’ (probabilistic) events of entropy in the universe should ever be constrained by a constant that would limit the effects of ‘random’ entropic events of the universe. Whereas on the contrary, to a Christian Theist such as Planck, it is expected that even these seemingly 'chance' entropic events of the universe should be bounded by a constant: Verse and Music
Romans 8:20-21 For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God. Phillips, Craig & Dean – When The Stars Burn Down – Worship Video with lyrics http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rPuxnQ_vZqY
Supplemental note:
Quantum Zeno effect Excerpt: The quantum Zeno effect is,,, an unstable particle, if observed continuously, will never decay. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_Zeno_effect
In other words, why should the entropy of an unstable particle care if and when I decide to look at it unless consciousness precedes material reality? Supplemental quote:
"In discussions with biologists I met large difficulties when they apply the concept of 'natural selection' in a rather wide field, without being able to estimate the probability of the occurrence in a empirically given time of just those events, which have been important for the biological evolution. Treating the empirical time scale of the evolution theoretically as infinity they have then an easy game, apparently to avoid the concept of purposesiveness. While they pretend to stay in this way completely 'scientific' and 'rational,' they become actually very irrational, particularly because they use the word 'chance', not any longer combined with estimations of a mathematically defined probability, in its application to very rare single events more or less synonymous with the old word 'miracle.'" - Wolfgang Pauli
bornagain77_{December 20, 2013
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#21 Box Thanks for the quotes but I don't see their relevance. As I tried to explain in #16 the word "chance" is a very broad brush word which can be used many ways. My objection (and I think it is shared by Nick and Lizzie) is to proposing "chance" in the abstract as a hypothesis to explain the 500 heads. I am not even sure we disagree with Barry! But he seems averse to any attempt to clarify exactly what he meant by chance in the original OP. In the last 30 minutes I read Barry's comment #2 above, which rudeness and aggression aside, is not a bad description of conventional hypothesis testing and suggests that when he talks of chance being a hypothesis he means something like "resulting from the unpredictable variation within a specific null hypothesis". In other words there might well be no dispute at all! It just needs a little more clarity about what he means by chance as hypothesis.Mark Frank_{December 20, 2013
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Ho-De-Ho Thanks for your very pleasant comment. I am not a complete determinist. I think there are some events that are truly uncaused and logically unpredictable. I would describe chance as encompassing those elements that are effectively unpredictable. This encompasses both outcomes which are logically unpredictable and outcomes which have determining causes but we don't know what they are. I don't think the distinction matters as far as this debate is concerned. Do you see it as important?Mark Frank_{December 20, 2013
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Mark Frank, Quotes from Eugene V. Koonin, “The Logic of Chance”, 2012.
Undirected, random variation is the main process that provides the material for evolution. Darwin was the first to allow chance as a major factor into the history of life, and this was arguably one of his greatest insights. (p.14)

(…) the interplay of randomness (chance) and regularity (necessity) in life and its evolution. (preface)

As best I could, I tried to stick with the leitmotif of the book, the interplay between chance and nonrandom processes.. (xii)

Considering Darwin’s work in a higher plane of abstraction that is central to this book, it is worth emphasizing that Darwin seems to have been the first to establish the crucial interaction between chance and order (necessity) in evolution. Under Darwin’s concept, variation is (nearly) completely random, whereas selection introduces order and creates complexity. In this respect, Darwin is diametrically opposed to Lamarck, whose worldview essentially banished chance. (3)

As emphasized earlier, Darwin recognized a crucial role of chance in evolution, but that role was limited to one part of the evolutionary process only: the emergence of changes (mutations, in the modern parlance). (10)

Here chance enters the picture at a new level: Although Darwin and his immediate successors saw the role of chance in the emergence of heritable change (mutations), drift introduces chance into the next phase—namely, the fixation of these changes—and takes away some of the responsibility from selection. (10)
Box_{December 20, 2013
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Mark Frank, may I say that I respect your view. You have a commendable and pleasant way of expressing yourself. Also, I am with you when you argue that each person has a right to hold a viewpoint even if contrary to ones antagonist or even the majority line. May I ask you a question Mark Frank, so that I may understand your position on Chance more fully? Are you saying, that if we knew the precise details of all things in a given situation, then we could predict accurately what is by law determined to take place and hence, in this scenario, Chance would not truly exist? Chance is merely our way of saying, we do not have every relevant detail to explain the outcome of an event. Would that be, in broad brush-strokes your position on Chance. Thanks.Ho-De-Ho_{December 20, 2013
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#18 Paul
The really sad part is that Nick Matzke could have avoided all this by simply allowing truth to be a guide rather than simply opposing ID on principle.
This principle should guide us all – but why do you assume that Nick was not guided by what he sees as the truth? There has been an outbreak here of assuming that what you say is so obviously true that anyone who is disagreeing with you must be doing so insincerely. Nick, myself, Lizzie and many others on TSZ all sincerely belief that it is wrong to think that “Chance” as a simple abstract concept can be a hypothesis. We have given reasons for it. We have tried to seek common ground by offering more precise definitions. What more do you expect? Barry (or any of you) could have avoided all this by responding to my request (repeated many times) “By chance do you mean a 50% probability of each coin being head or tails independent of other coins”. It is not as if Barry answered “No – what I mean is ….”. He just avoided answering the question (as far I can see - there have been a lot of comments flying about on many threads)Mark Frank_{December 20, 2013
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The really sad part is that Nick Matzke could have avoided all this by simply allowing truth to be a guide rather than simply opposing ID on principle. I have seen where, by recognizing that his opponents might have some points, listening, and responding as directly as possible to those points, he can make a worthwhile contribution. Perhaps there is a lesson in there for all of us. Never get so caught up in opposition that you fail to recognize when your opponent has a point. Truth is still more important than winning. (That is hard on all of our egos--we might have to admit we were at least partially wrong.) It also means that we might have to surrender the typical argument that our opponent has made a mistake, and has therefore lost all credibility. People make mistakes all the time. What is important is whether the core argument is valid and sound.Paul Giem_{December 20, 2013
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#15 Eric I don't think anyone is claiming chance does not exist. I certainly believe there are such things as non-determined events. Our only point is that "chance" is far too vague to act as a hypothesis. I hope my #16 will explain.Mark Frank_{December 19, 2013
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Barry - all you have done is trawl the paper for quotes which you could use to give the appearance of a contradiction. I expect this works nicely in court and is effective in a debating format like this where people do not have time to dig deeper. It does not, however, reveal the truth. I would ask any one who is genuinely interested in this topic as opposed to “winning the debate” to read and understand Thisted’s paper and Lizzie’s response on TSZ. I will summarise the main points here. As Lizzie says the word “chance” is vague and can be used in many ways. Informally people often say “chance” explained this or something happened by chance. However, Barry was using the word in the context of “chance as a hypothesis” to explain the 500 heads. As someone who has studied formal statistics Barry should know this is utter nonsense. The null hypothesis is never something as imprecise as chance. It is a specific claim such as “there is no difference between treatment A and treatment B” with an associated probability distribution. The alternative hypothesis (and nowadays it would be quite unacceptable not to formulate the alternative hypothesis as well) is also a probability distribution. This is clearly what both Lizzie and Thisted meant, although Thisted expressed himself rather sloppily. It might be that is what Barry meant by “chance as a hypothesis” for explaining the 500 heads but when I articulated the most plausible hypothesis (50% independent probability of each coin being heads) and repeatedly asked him to confirm that this was what he meant by “chance” he did not do so. When Thisted was using chance as an explanation he meant that the results could be explained by the null hypothesis plus the unexplained variation (reflected in the probability distribution). Possibly Thisted was using “chance” to refer to the unexplained bit. The irony is that in this sense chance variation could well be the result of intelligent intentional action (think for example of opinion polls). Mark Frank_{December 19, 2013
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The alternative to the "chance doesn't exist" school of thought is that everything is deterministic. Right down to the smallest particle, right back to the Big Bang and before. Every particle of every atom of every molecule of every amino acid of every protein of every cell of every organ of every organism of all of nature is where it is right now and behaving exactly as it is right now due to the sheer necessity of physics and chemistry. Everything we see around us was already built in out of force of necessity from the very first instant of existence. And yet, that contradicts what even what most ardent evolutionists believe. Gould famously quipped that if the tape of life were replayed we would end up with entirely different organisms. So, yes, unless one wants to go down the absolute deterministic intellectual dead end, chance must be acknowledged as real. Not just a definitional convenience -- though it could certainly be useful in that sense as well -- but an actual part of reality. ----- BTW, I finally got the 2+2=4 question for the captcha problem!Eric Anderson_{December 19, 2013
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This is brutal.Mapou_{December 19, 2013
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On the other hand, it is necessary to show their scorched earth never-admit-you-are-wrong-even-when-you-know-you-are tactics in the small things that are easily understood.
Well said, I never thought we'd annihilate a nationally known evolutionary biologist who has been called upon to spearhead the assault on ID at Dover and ID literature. He was vanquished on pathetically simple questions: 1. chance's role in 500 coins being heads 2. chance's role in the outcome of a two-headed coin toss He failed miserably for all the world to see.scordova_{December 19, 2013
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Chance is not an explanation, and therefore cannot be rejected, or supported, as a hypothesis. Lizzie
and Mark in support
Thisted has used ‘chance’ in a somewhat slipshod way.
But they are obviously not up-to-date on the latest and greatest evolutionary literature! In 2011, evolutionary biologist Eugene Koonin wrote this highly acclaimed book: The Logic of Chance: The nature and origin of biological evolution He writes:
The overwhelming importance of chance in the emergence of life on Earth suggested by this line of enquiry is unorthodox and sure to make some uncomfortable Eugene Koonin The Logic of Chance
Koonin is a big advocate of multiverses as it helps chance become a theoretically viable mechanism of evolution. Larry Moran loves that book. I point that out to show that it would put Lizzie's claim:
Chance is not an explanation, and therefore cannot be rejected, or supported, as a hypothesis. Lizzie
in the minority even among her associates. So why did she do it? Maybe she was trying to bail out one of her heroes who go reduced to ashes in recent debate at UD.scordova_{December 19, 2013
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Sal asks if the games are worth playing. I have to admit that constantly correcting Darwinist sophistry is tedious and wearisome (KF's ability to come back over and over to basic correctives, his seemingly bottomless well of patience, is a marvel to behold). On the other hand, it is necessary to show their scorched earth never-admit-you-are-wrong-even-when-you-know-you-are tactics in the small things that are easily understood. That way when they inevitably carry those tactics into the bigger game, they will have already scorched their credibility in addition to the earth.Barry Arrington_{December 19, 2013
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Are such games worth playing? Well, it depends on whether having this sort of fun is valuable to the participants. When engaging in such games, at some point it has little to do with the real issues at hand.
When the game ends up effecting things like national policy and education, I would say it is of the highest importance to understand, reveal, and disassemble the rhetorical tactika of the Darwinists. Hell, I'd even suggest compiling these few threads in a section on the site for reference.TSErik_{December 19, 2013
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Red herrings can backfire. We have Lizzie saying:
Chance is not an explanation, and therefore cannot be rejected, or supported, as a hypothesis.
and Mark saying:
Thisted has used ‘chance’ in a somewhat slipshod way.
but in effect, they end up criticizing many of their own, like Larry Moran and evolutionary textbook author Douglas Futuyma
according to the textbook, evolution by chance occurs http://sandwalk.blogspot.com/2009/02/dawkins-on-chance.html
So now, both Mark and Lizzie are demonstrated to not only be at variance with ID, the statistics paper Barry quoted, but also some of their own. Are such games worth playing? Well, it depends on whether having this sort of fun is valuable to the participants. When engaging in such games, at some point it has little to do with the real issues at hand. I find a tiny amount of value in such games in as much at it reminds me the critics are more out to disagree than they are to deal with ideas impartially.scordova_{December 19, 2013
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Bill Dembski outlines a critic's strategy:
Irrelevancies are stressed ... ask for endless detail, throw in countless red herrings,
prediction accurate
If the experiment fails to prove the efficacy of the drugs, that is because the noise due to the random sampling is too high.
That had little to do with the paper in question.
Irrelevancies are stressed ... ask for endless detail, throw in countless red herrings,
that also characterizes this statement by Lizzie
Chance is not an explanation, and therefore cannot be rejected, or supported, as a hypothesis.
Lizzie is free to define "chance" so that statement is true, but that wouldn't be a charitable rendering of how it is being used in ID discussions. We at UD know the anti-ID playbook, and the anti-IDists know the ID playbook. It's really a matter at some point how long both parties want to keep playing the game and what value each party has in playing such games. The strategy is valuable to anti-IDists because it changes the subject and causes the ID folks to actually stop arguing their case and talk about irrelevancies. The ID folks engage in it because sometimes the anti-ID folks will say something gobsmakingly stupid in the process of throwing red herring in, and thus the ID folks can discredit the critics when the red herring backfires, so in that sense, occasionally a red herring back fires in a big way. The other way a red herring can backfire is when it results in a critic saying something that will demonstrate a Darwinists effectively criticizing another Darwinist. And thus a Darwinist ends up discrediting another Darwinist. Barb, God bless her, has done just that!
“Chance and chance alone did it all from the primeval soup to man,” said Nobel laureate Christian de Duve, speaking about the origin of life. If Dr. Liddle thinks chance isn’t an explanation, then she might want to have a conversation with Dr. de Duve.
Thank you Barb!scordova_{December 19, 2013
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"Chance and chance alone did it all from the primeval soup to man,” said Nobel laureate Christian de Duve, speaking about the origin of life. If Dr. Liddle thinks chance isn't an explanation, then she might want to have a conversation with Dr. de Duve. The term "chance" can be defined several ways: a mathematical probability, such as the chance involved in flipping a coin; however, when scientists use this term, generally it's substituting for a more precise word such as “cause,” especially when the cause is not known. “To personify ‘chance’ as if we were talking about a causal agent,” notes biophysicist Donald M. MacKay, “is to make an illegitimate switch from a scientific to a quasi-religious mythological concept.” Similarly, Robert C. Sproul points out: “By calling the unknown cause ‘chance’ for so long, people begin to forget that a substitution was made. . . . The assumption that ‘chance equals an unknown cause’ has come to mean for many that ‘chance equals cause.’” Nobel laureate Jacques L. Monod, for one, used this chance-equals-cause line of reasoning. “Pure chance, absolutely free but blind, [is] at the very root of the stupendous edifice of evolution,” he wrote. “Man knows at last that he is alone in the universe’s unfeeling immensity, out of which he emerged only by chance.” Note he says: ‘BY chance.’ Monod does what many others do—he elevates chance to a creative principle. Chance is offered as the means by which life came to be on earth. In fact, dictionaries show that “chance” is “the assumed impersonal purposeless determiner of unaccountable happenings.” Thus, if one speaks about life coming about by chance, he is saying that it came about by a causal power that is not known.Barb_{December 19, 2013
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But remember Barry, you’re responding to someone who said the Law of Large Numbers has no relevance to reality.
If you go back and look where I made that quoted comment, I also said that the law of large numbers does apply to mathematical models. A properly designed statistical experiment uses a carefully specified mathematical model.Neil Rickert_{December 19, 2013
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That is wrong in so many ways it is difficult to know where to begin.
I'll admit to being a little careless in that statement you criticized. It is, of course, possible that the drug is not efficaceous, so I should have included that possibility in my statement. My main point was that the confidence levels in a test are related to the randomness of the sampling, rather than to any randomness in the response to the drug.
Finally, while Neil is wrong about the “sampling noise” being the “chance” that is tested, ...
I did not say that is what is tested. Rather, that is what the confidence levels and confidence intervals are all about. Of course, we are attempting to test the effects of the drug, but the sampling noise is an important part of how we evaluate the tests.Neil Rickert_{December 19, 2013
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