Nick Matzke – Book Burner?

_{Barry Arrington

June 30, 2013

Intelligent Design}

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Nick Matzke famously got the publishing company Springer to suppress the publication of the papers of a conference held at Cornell. See here. He did this without having seen, much less read, any of the papers. Obviously, his motivation could not have been the content of the papers. He was motivated by the mere fact that several of the conference participants were well-known ID proponents.

Let us do a little thought experiment. Suppose that Nick had published his famous piece on Panda’s Thumb a few days later, and the head of Springer had called him up and said, “Hey, Nick, I’ve got some bad news and some good news. The bad news is that it is too late to stop publication of the book. The printer has done his work and the first printing of the book is finished. The good news is that not a single copy has left the printer’s warehouse, and they are all in a pile that has been drenched in gasoline. Nick, all you have to do is come over and toss a match on the pile of books and it will be as if they were never published in the first place.”

Nick follows UD and posts here from time to time, so I have two questions for him:

(1) Nick would you have tossed the match?

(2) If the answer to (1) is “no,” are you not a hypocrite? After all, the ultimate outcome from tossing the match would be identical to what you actually did – i.e., no book out there for people to buy.

BKA: Updated in response to Dr. Sewell’s comment @ 2.

Comments

Upright,
In any case, how is the establishment of CTA resulting in leucine being added to a polypeptide in a local system “paid for” by an increase in surrounding entropy, when the establishment of CTA resulting in leucine being added to a polypeptide in a local system cannot be derived from the Second Law of thermodynamics?
Any local decrease of entropy is "paid for" by the export of entropy to the surroundings. Otherwise the second law would be violated. The second law tells you that this must happen. It says nothing about how it has to happen. That is the strength of the second law; it must hold regardless of the mechanisms in question. (It is a law, after all.) If you've done physics, you've probably noticed how the first law (conservation of energy) can make it easy to solve some problems that would otherwise be quite difficult. The second law is like that, too. But this is only possible because the law is general. Universal. Yet it seems that like Granville, you want more from the second law than that. You evidently want it to predict the mapping of triplet to amino acid. But why? The second law only prohibits violations of the second law. That's all it does. Any mapping that conforms to the second law is allowed by it. Why isn't that enough? You don't (presumably) demand that the second law predict the absorption lines of helium, or the timing of the next solar eclipse. Why demand that it predict the mapping of triplet to amino acid?keiths_{July 4, 2013
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That’s why I’d like to see a review of Sewell’s article by someone (a) who has advanced training in thermodynamics, and publications to prove it; (b) who didn’t read Sewell’s article with the background attitude of “What’s the latest crap these ID people are pushing?” I’d feel much more confident about Sewell’s alleged incompetence after reading the review of someone like that.
Wasn't his work already reviewed - supposedly by peers in relevant fields - when it was approved for publicatation, and didn't the publisher say that the approval status of the peer review stood, even though they decided not to publish the paper? IMLO (in my layman's opinion), I think that Sewell's paper would be fairly uncontroversial if it didn't involve ID. Even with what science I've had in my education, I know that entropy was taught in terms of both capacity to do work (energy) and order; now that an ID advocate has made a rather compelling argument from the order side, suddenly entropy is **only** about heat energy. Apparently, Applied Mathematics Letters and its reviewers sided with Sewell, so all things considered, I think this is just another case of Darwinist Derangement Syndrome.William J Murray_{July 4, 2013
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Hardly. Now, that you have that out of the way, can you answer the question with something approaching an answer? Perhaps something that reflects the certainty you've reached in your skeptisicm of ID arguments - having claimed to have never heard one of any merit?Upright BiPed_{July 4, 2013
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Timaeus, My cat just woke me up, demanding to be fed, and I, being an Internet addict, am checking the thread.
If someone writes outside of his field, due to the inherent needs of an interdisciplinary investigation (which “thermodynamics and evolution” must necessarily be, involving mathematics, physics, and biology), that is not necessarily wrong, as long as the person takes the time to get the unfamiliar material right.
Yes! But the investigation need not be interdisciplinary. Any field is fair game for an outsider who "takes the time to get the unfamiliar material right." In other words, competence alone is sufficient to justify participation. Credentials are nice, but they aren't essential. Keep reading.
If Sewell got some of the physics wrong — and I make no comment on that either way, except to say that I have seen definitions *in physics books* which would justify his uses of the word “entropy” — then I have nothing against anyone correcting him; the problem comes when other people who are not themselves physicists do the correcting.
If physicists were the only ones who understood physics, then you might have a point, but they aren't. Do you at least acknowledge that IF the people doing the criticizing actually know what they're talking about, THEN it is entirely appropriate for them to criticize, despite the fact that they are not physicists? There are really two questions here. The first is whether it is at least possible for an outsider, even a pure autodidact, to write or criticize competently in a given field. The second is whether you should trust the opinion of any given outsider. The answer to the first question is yes, obviously. It happens, and the history of science (and of other fields too) is full of examples. The second question is not as easy to answer. If someone held forth on Plato's Timaeus, then I'll bet you would feel entirely competent to evaluate their arguments. You wouldn't need to see credentials, because your own knowledge would give you the confidence to render judgment. (Note that your confidence would come not from your credentials per se, but from your positive evaluation of your own competence in the subject.) In the case of thermodynamics, you don't feel competent to render judgment. Is Granville right? Does this glib keiths guy know what he's talking about, or is he bluffing? In such a case, I can understand why you would like to see credentials. If you can't judge the arguments themselves, then solid credentials at least give you more confidence in the person holding forth. It's a Bayesian inference; the posterior probability of "this person is competent" is higher given "this person has solid credentials". The problem is that many people, including me, are not going to recite their credentials for you. In that case you can either 1) learn enough to make your own judgments, 2) wait for someone you trust to render judgment, or 3) suspend judgment altogether. It's your choice, of course. I am not asking you to take my word on anything. By all means, poke and prod to see if my arguments make sense, and call me on it if they don't. I will return the favor. :)keiths_{July 4, 2013
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Are you suggesting that biochemical reactions violate the 2nd Law, Upright Biped? That the 2nd law is violated every time a protein is expressed?Elizabeth B Liddle_{July 4, 2013
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local increases in entropy are “paid for” by entropy decreases in the immediate surroundings on earth.
I did not see Keith's correction of you, but it seems you may have stated this backwards. In any case, how is the establishment of CTA resulting in leucine being added to a polypeptide in a local system "paid for" by an increase in surrounding entropy, when the establishment of CTA resulting in leucine being added to a polypeptide in a local system cannot be derived from the Second Law of thermodynamics? 1) there is no physicochemical relationship between specific nucleotides and amino acids 2) there is no physicochemical relationship between the specific arrangement C-T-A and leucine 3) there is no thermodynamic principle involved in establishing dimensionality within a medium .Upright BiPed_{July 4, 2013
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Elizabeth Liddle: Re: Your 211 above: I want to make sure we are talking about the same Sewell article. Above, I said the publisher was “MI” (Mathematical Intelligencer), but I meant to say Applied Mathematics Letters. This was the journal that pulled Sewell’s article, after it had been approved by peer-review, and ended up apologizing to Sewell and paying him a settlement. You seem to know the case I mean, even if you, like myself, referred to “MI” — which is an error. So, can you confirm we are talking about the same case? Now, assuming we are talking about the same case, here is your published opinion on the article which was pulled from AML: “I agree that the article should have been published, and I can see why it passed peer-review. I think it’s a very clarifying article.” —Elizabeth Liddle, June 8, 2011, reply #12 under: https://uncommondescent.com.....m-journal/ Now, above (211), you seem be saying, about the same article: “The editors didn’t have the “spine” to say “oops, we really messed up here, our review process was inadequate”. I’m confused. How can you say that “[the] review process was inadequate,” yet also say “I agree that the article should have been published, and I can see why it passed peer-review”? Are these two judgments incompatible? If so, who is right, the Elizabeth of 2013 or the Elizabeth of 2011?
Yes, I disagree with my earlier assessment. When I first read the article, I interpreted it as saying something that I subsequently came to understand that it was not saying. I thought he was saying that in order to account for evolution, we have to show not that improbable things can happen, but that what has happened is not particularly improbable. With that I agree. It’s why I keep banging on about what is wrong with the usual CSI arguments (although not, it turns out, Dembski’s) and the notorious “P(T|H)”. Then when I re-read it I realised he was saying something much more extraordinary: that, to quote the article:
… to attribute the development of life on Earth to natural selection is to assign to it--and to it alone, of all known natural "forces"--the ability to violate the second law of thermodynamics and to cause order to arise from disorder.
What on earth can this mean, other than that the “development of life on Earth” must have involved a violation of the 2nd Law of thermodynamics? His complaint about the evolutionary explanation is not that the 2nd law cannot have been violated, but that it is unreasonable to posit that it was violated by a “natural” force, because no other known “natural” force can do so. To claim that the “order” we observe on earth in the form of “encyclopedias, science texts and novels, nuclear power plants, aircraft carriers with supersonic jets parked on deck, and computers connected to laser printers, CRTs and keyboards”, and indeed “the development of life” must have involved a violation of the 2nd Law, is a quite extraordinary claim. And the reviewers, who, one hopes, should have been quicker to see this than I did, should have raised serious concerns.Elizabeth B Liddle_{July 4, 2013
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Timaeus:
Elizabeth, you keep talking about “your training” as if it gives you some special insight — but I probably took as many basic physics and chemistry courses as you did (based on your c.v., I may well have taken more), and I certainly learned definitions of “entropy” in both chemistry and physics classes, but I don’t, on that basis, jump in and presume to be Granville’s teacher. I assume that, as thermodynamics is not my specialty, any “correction” I make might be based on imperfect understanding of my own. So if I suspected that Granville made an error in the physics, I wouldn’t declare it on my own authority, but would have someone with a Ph.D. in physics, specializing in thermodynamics, read his article, and then ask that person’s opinion.
I’m not “declaring it on my own authority”, Timaeus. I’m not saying anything that can’t be referred to in papers and text books. Indeed, I actually quoted from a couple of papers bemoaning the misunderstanding of the concept of “entropy” by students, and proposing that the word “disorder” is misleading, precisely because it leads to the problems exemplified by Sewell’s paper. Are you disputing my case that “thermodynamic entropy” does NOT mean “messed up” or “chaotic”? If so, it is easy enough to check!
I realize from long experience that you operate differently, and that I am not going to change you. That puzzles me — that you can tell me just yesterday that you didn’t start studying science until age 50 and you are only 61 now, and yet feel very confident correcting people in just about every scientific subject as if you are an “old hand” at science, but as I say, I am not going to change your very confident self-assessment and I’m not going to try.
I’m old, and a hand, but perhaps not an “old hand”. Nonetheless, when I see a flaw in an argument, I point it out. It’s perfectly possible that my own counter-argument is incorrect. But I rarely see it rebutted – more commonly, my credentials are questioned! For instance, over the junk DNA argument. I pointed out (with reference to Ohno’s paper, in which the term was coined) that Ohno did not claim that some sequences must be junk because he could not see a use for them. He claimed that some sequences must be junk because mutation rates were so large, that if all the genome was functional, the mutational load would be too great for populations to persist – yet they do. I was not arguing from authority – the paper is available for all to read. I just bothered to look it up. Where my training comes in (or appears to come in – maybe it’s just my particular bent and/or life experience) is that I am fairly expert in evaluating arguments, especially arguments based on probability, as well as systems-level analysis, including non-linear systems, as that’s my field. I’m a systems neuroscientist. But I don't ask you to believe me on that basis. I simply offer my argument and ask that it be evaluated on its merits just as I evaluate other arguments on their merits.
I won’t engage in discussion of the Sewell articles with you because my time is now extremely short and I can sense that your position is now well-rehearsed and inflexible.
No. I am always open to counter-argument. Indeed, keiths pointed out an important error I had made, which was to think that any local thermodynamic entropy increase on earth was “paid for” by decreased solar entropy. This is not the case – even if we consider the earth a closed system, local increases in entropy are “paid for” by entropy decreases in the immediate surroundings on earth. And indeed, I have not “rehearsed” my position with regard to Sewell’s argument. I’m still trying to get a really clear handle on just where his error lies! But that it is an error is clear, because there is no violation of the 2nd Law by designers – if there were, then we would have an easy solution to our energy problems!
I know you say you have read all his articles very carefully, but it doesn’t follow (and I mean this with an entirely neutral tone, not a smart-alecky one) that you entirely understand them.
Indeed.
I think you have misinterpreted some things Sewell says, and certainly he does not say, at least in the BioComplexity article — which *I* have read very carefully — that artifacts *in themselves* constitute a violation of the second law. He knows perfectly well that when humans build artifacts the second law holds true.
I would hope he does, but it seems to me that he does not. How else would you interpret this paragraph from his New Perspectives Paper:
Of course, we must be careful to define “extremely improbable” events to be events of probability less than some very small threshold: if we define events of probability less than 1% to be extremely improbable, then obviously natural causes cando extremely improbable things. But after we define a sufficiently low threshold, everyone seems to agree that “natural forces will rearrange atoms into digital computers” is a macroscopically describable event that is still extremely improbable from the microscopic point of view, and thus forbidden by the second law – at least if this happens in an isolated system.
(My bold) And then of course he goes on to argue that it is equally improbable – and thus equally forbidden, in an open system.
I think you are taking his remarks about artifacts out of context. That is partly excusable due to the odd set-up Granville gives the article, with artifacts as the end products of evolution — a point I mentioned before as a flaw in his exposition which invites criticism over an issue he didn’t need to get involved in — but still, I believe in always interpreting a piece of writing in the best possible light;
Me too.
so when I see an article that is not as well-written as it could be, I try to focus on what the author is driving at rather than to catch him out on an infelicitous phrase. (Probably a habit I learned after long years of grading essays, and one which has served me well as a peer-reviewer of academic articles; I get compliments from authors on my constructive criticism.)
Me too.Elizabeth B Liddle_{July 4, 2013
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Timaeus FWIW the concept of human artifacts as continuous with evolution is not unique to Sewell. Hans Hass, who died last week and who was a big influence on my interest in natural history from his underwater documanetaries in the 50s, spent much of his post-TV career promoting "energon theory", which had just such a premise. Logically, too, an entirely materialist view of human evolution must see human activities as evolutionary conequesces too, as much as that of the finch usung a cactus spine. It only falls apart granted human exceptionalism, but that undermines pure materialism anyway. That said it seems to jar somehow in his stuff - yet it does bring into sharp relief the issue he raises, since we're used to conceiving of planetary and biological evolution as natural or inevitable, whereas most of us take pause for thought at the idea of a computer being just the product of energy entering the world. It does seem crass, though, to insist that a statement like "the second law has no problem with increasing order in an open system" has done anything to provide an explanation, unless a rider like, "provided there is an organising principle within the system" be added. In other words, the first staement is only true under very special initial conditions, which ought to be recognised in any discussion not intended to mislead.Jon Garvey_{July 4, 2013
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Timaeus:
That’s why I’d like to see a review of Sewell’s article by someone (a) who has advanced training in thermodynamics, and publications to prove it; (b) who didn’t read Sewell’s article with the background attitude of “What’s the latest crap these ID people are pushing?” I’d feel much more confident about Sewell’s alleged incompetence after reading the review of someone like that.
You make a good point, Timaeus. Science is complicated, and an argument can sound plausible even when it is flawed. That's why stuff often does get past peer-review, and should, in my view - formal peer-review is only the start of the process - the really important review process happens when the paper is published and read by a the wider community of peers. Ultimately, the arguments that survive are the ones that stand up to review by the entire scientific community - and make predictions that are subsequently confirmed!Elizabeth B Liddle_{July 4, 2013
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Elizabeth, you keep talking about "your training" as if it gives you some special insight -- but I probably took as many basic physics and chemistry courses as you did (based on your c.v., I may well have taken more), and I certainly learned definitions of "entropy" in both chemistry and physics classes, but I don't, on that basis, jump in and presume to be Granville's teacher. I assume that, as thermodynamics is not my specialty, any "correction" I make might be based on imperfect understanding of my own. So if I suspected that Granville made an error in the physics, I wouldn't declare it on my own authority, but would have someone with a Ph.D. in physics, specializing in thermodynamics, read his article, and then ask that person's opinion. I realize from long experience that you operate differently, and that I am not going to change you. That puzzles me -- that you can tell me just yesterday that you didn't start studying science until age 50 and you are only 61 now, and yet feel very confident correcting people in just about every scientific subject as if you are an "old hand" at science, but as I say, I am not going to change your very confident self-assessment and I'm not going to try. I won't engage in discussion of the Sewell articles with you because my time is now extremely short and I can sense that your position is now well-rehearsed and inflexible. I know you say you have read all his articles very carefully, but it doesn't follow (and I mean this with an entirely neutral tone, not a smart-alecky one) that you entirely understand them. I think you have misinterpreted some things Sewell says, and certainly he does not say, at least in the BioComplexity article -- which *I* have read very carefully -- that artifacts *in themselves* constitute a violation of the second law. He knows perfectly well that when humans build artifacts the second law holds true. I think you are taking his remarks about artifacts out of context. That is partly excusable due to the odd set-up Granville gives the article, with artifacts as the end products of evolution -- a point I mentioned before as a flaw in his exposition which invites criticism over an issue he didn't need to get involved in -- but still, I believe in always interpreting a piece of writing in the best possible light; so when I see an article that is not as well-written as it could be, I try to focus on what the author is driving at rather than to catch him out on an infelicitous phrase. (Probably a habit I learned after long years of grading essays, and one which has served me well as a peer-reviewer of academic articles; I get compliments from authors on my constructive criticism.) If you disagree with the above, I'm sorry that I won't have time to continue this. I've already put hours and hours into this thread, and I can't justify the time taken away from my family and my work. (I don't see how you can possibly maintain a scientific research career in your own field of neurobiology/psychology, given the immense amount of time you put into blogging, debating, and reading just about every ID writing there is, reading up on evolutionary theory, etc., but I gave up trying to figure that one out long ago.) I would, however, appreciate it if you would look at the apparent contradiction I mentioned above between your 2011 and 2013 position on one of Sewell's articles, and reply to it. Thank you.Timaeus_{July 4, 2013
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keiths: If someone writes outside of his field, due to the inherent needs of an interdisciplinary investigation (which "thermodynamics and evolution" must necessarily be, involving mathematics, physics, and biology), that is not necessarily wrong, as long as the person takes the time to get the unfamiliar material right. If Sewell got some of the physics wrong -- and I make no comment on that either way, except to say that I have seen definitions *in physics books* which would justify his uses of the word "entropy" -- then I have nothing against anyone correcting him; the problem comes when other people who are not themselves physicists do the correcting. When they say: "You don't understand the physics! You aren't using the word "entropy" correctly" -- who am I supposed to believe? The non-physicist who wrote the article, or the non-physicists who are correcting the article? It seems to me that the right person to correct Sewell *on physics* is a physicist. But I haven't yet seen a physicist show up here, or anywhere else, and complain that Sewell's arguments are all wrong *because of the physics*. I've seen only a neurobiologist and an engineer of some undefined type. (Software engineer? Chemical engineer? Electrical engineer? Bachelor's? Master's? Doctorate?) I can certainly imagine that in *some* fields of engineering great knowledge of thermodynamics might be routine; I don't think that would be the case for all fields; but I don't see how a neurobiologist has any special insight into thermodynamics at all. Anyone can look up definitions on the internet and try for a quick "killer argument" based on a particular definition (which might disagree with a definition Sewell is using from an equally reputable source), but a deep and broad knowledge of how terms like entropy, disorder, etc. are used within the fields of physics and cosmology -- that just isn't in the training manual for neurobiologists. So how is a non-physicist outsider supposed to tell whose arguments are better? Merely by following the reasoning? But if the reasoning is based on contestable definitions of terms, or on a contestable understanding of key concepts in a very difficult field (thermodynamics), how can a non-specialist reader be sure that *any* of the participants (author or critics) knows what he/she is talking about? By confidence in tone of voice? In that case, the one who manages the most authoritative, most definitive demeanor, the one who seems to be treating the other one as a slow student rather than as a scientific colleague, would be the one to trust. But I don't think that is a very reliable criterion for scientific understanding. That's why I'd like to see a review of Sewell's article by someone (a) who has advanced training in thermodynamics, and publications to prove it; (b) who didn't read Sewell's article with the background attitude of "What's the latest crap these ID people are pushing?" I'd feel much more confident about Sewell's alleged incompetence after reading the review of someone like that.Timaeus_{July 4, 2013
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One point I would make, Timaeus, is that empirical scientists in any field do have a general training in science, because science is "joined up". The reason I have weighed in on Granville's 2nd law argument is not because I am a physicist and he is not (neither of us are) but because my training enables me to see that his assertion that designed things (human artefacts, and indeed biological organisms) constitute a violation of the 2nd Law of thermodynamics is based on a quite obvious conflation of the word "disorder" as used sometimes to describe thermodynamic entropy, and "disorder" as used to describe the mess in a junkyard after a tornado has been through it. He also, like many ID scholars, equivocates (not deliberately I'm sure) with the word "probability". As I keep saying, and I expect you agree, "probability" is not the property of a state but rather an estimate of the expected frequency of that state given a specific generative process. A hexagonal snowflake is a highly "improbable" arrangement of water molecules in liquid water; however it is a highly "probable" arrangement of water molecules in cold damp air. Labelling certain arrangements of matter (people; computers; bacterial flagella) as "improbable" is meaningless, unless you specify the process under which those arrangements are improbable. That is the flaw in both Dembski's argument, and in Sewell's. However, Sewell adds an additional and egregious error by claiming that organisms and artefacts themselves constitute a violation of the 2nd Law. No, they don't, because it doesn't!Elizabeth B Liddle_{July 4, 2013
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bpragmatic:
Liddles response: NOTHING.
Only because I didn't see your response - the discussion seems to have moved to Granville's thread.
E. Liddle said: “Modelling the expected distribution under some kind of process in which each “draw” is independent from prior “draws” is clearly not a model of Darwinian processes.” Bpragmatic responded: I don’t believe that in the OOL phase of “evolution”, the laws of physics and chemistry (darwinian processes are beholding to) would be anywhere near as charitable to the material formation requirements as would “independent draws” as you seem to imply with the above statement.
That is perfectly valid, because we don't currently have a good model of OOL. But nobody is suggesting that it is is "random draw" - chemistry is not "random draw".
In fact I would propose that there is a clear cut scientific case for asserting that some sort of guiding intelligence is required to overcome the IMPOSSIBILITY of certain component relationships from developing guideded purely by the laws of physics and chemical reactions.
Well, indeed, and this is the ID position. I am not persuaded by any "scientific case" that has so far been put. Rejecting the null of "random draw" does not do it, nor does claiming that living things violate the 2nd Law of thermodynamics. They don't.Elizabeth B Liddle_{July 4, 2013
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Timaeus, I hope that was cathartic. :) I'm glad you've cooled down a bit. Your questions deserve a thoughtful response. I don't know for sure when I'll be able to address them because of the holiday, though, so if you don't hear from me right away, don't think I'm ignoring you. In the meantime, something for you to think about. You asked above why
...so many non-specialists, and in some cases even non-scientists (lawyers, etc.) want to jump in on science debates and take sides, and why they aren’t more shy of saying something that is unfair, unreasonable, uninformed, etc.
You realize that Granville is a mathematician, right? He is neither a physicist nor a specialist in thermodynamics. In short, he is exactly what you are complaining about in that quote. (So am I. I am an engineer, not a physicist.) Is it really so hard to believe that someone might make fundamental mistakes in a field outside his area of expertise? (Evidently not, since that is exactly what evokes your concern in the quote above.) Is it really so hard to believe that someone else, who was a bit more careful and more familiar with the subject, would be able to catch those mistakes?keiths_{July 4, 2013
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keiths (220): Well, glad we got that cleared up. :-) The first hot button was your phrase "crap science." If you had written, "I don't agree with *this sentence* of Sewell's" or "I think the argument in *this paragraph* is invalid" I would not have got steamed up. But you dismissed the whole article as "crap science." Such a sweeping judgment requires a large and long acquaintance with "good science." So I wanted proof of that acquaintance. But you chose to hide behind the "qualifications don't matter, only the argument does" bit -- which I've seen before (99.9% of the time from people without qualifications), and while I can accept that for "point criticisms," I simply won't accept that for judgments that sound like they are coming from Moses. That magisterial tone was the second hot button. One characteristic of most highly-trained academics that I know (and of scientists, in my experience, even more than, say, philosophers, sociologists, or historians) is that they hesitate to render judgments outside of their field; or, when they do venture outside of their field, it is usually only to a closely-related field, and even then, they render all their judgments tentatively, with caveats. You don't find a professor of engineering, for example, reviewing a botany article and saying that it is "crap science." (You don't in fact find him reviewing a botany article at all.) Even a physics article, unless it was in a branch of physics that overlapped with the engineering prof's expertise, the engineer would probably not be reviewing at all, judging himself not competent; and if he did venture some remarks, they would be guarded, cautious, and limited to his expertise. They would also avoid words like "crap." But on the internet, many people with nowhere near the technical expertise of an engineering professor will pick up any article they feel like reading, skim it for ten minutes, decide they hate the conclusion, and then feel competent to argue about it on the internet to the tune of thousands of words, for a week or even a month, rendering judgment on it. So, e.g., an anthropologist or psychologist might a read a paper about thermodynamics and evolution, and not have the slightest hesitation to render a damning judgment on it, not having the slightest doubt that perhaps, in jumping into a subject (thermodynamics) in which he had next to no training, he might be combating ignorance with imperfect knowledge of his own. And a computer programmer who has not taken a biology course since tenth grade might read a book by Behe, and pronounce it "crap science," and then fiercely defend that judgment with secondhand arguments picked up off the internet, without the slightest worry that maybe she is a bit short of the relevant knowledge to make such a judgment. I find this lack of intellectual humility, this willingness to jump into argument mode at the drop of a hat, with minimal or no study, just a quick read and then full speed ahead, arguing by the seat of the pants, to be one of the worst things about the internet culture. The question for me is *why* so many non-specialists, and in some cases even non-scientists (lawyers, etc.) want to jump in on science debates and take sides, and why they aren't more shy of saying something that is unfair, unreasonable, uninformed, etc. What pleasure does anyone get out of "faking it" under a pseudonym? I mean, if a computer programmer *knows* that he doesn't know as much about biochemistry as Behe, and knows evolutionary theory only by hearsay, never having taken even one undergrad biology course, what drives such a person, not simply to *raise questions about possible weaknesses* in Behe's arguments, but to *aggressively attack* Behe, denouncing his work as crap science? I wouldn't *dream* of publically arguing, even under a pseudonym, that Hawking's physics is "crap science" -- even if I thought it was. I would discipline myself to learn a *lot* about cosmology before I dared to utter a peep against Hawking. I would do *at least* an undergrad degree in physics and astronomy before I would venture a *cautious* disagreement; and a sweeping denunciation, I would not venture I until I had a Ph.D. like Hawking. And even then I would not use the word "crap" to characterize his errors. So answer me this, keiths: why aren't the bloggers at Panda's Thumb, TalkOrigins, Pharyngula more like me? Why are they not much more hesitant to denounce *every single ID author*, including ID authors who are writing in fields that are *not* fields the bloggers have any significant training in? (E.g., we often have a computer programmer with B.S. degree certain Meyer is wrong about origin of life, a biologist with B.S. degree certain that Dembski is wrong about graduate-level information theory, a physics B.S. who has never taken a biochemistry course denouncing Behe's remarks on proteins, etc.) Why are these people not more intellectually humble? Why are they not more conscious of the possibility that they could have badly misunderstood someone's argument (especially since many of them bad-mouth ID works they haven't read)? Why aren't they more willing to give and take points in discussion, working on the assumption that maybe someone else knows as much science, or more, than they do, and that (gasp) that person may be on the ID side? Why the arrogance? Why the swaggering? Why the posturing? Why the supreme confidence? Can you explain *any* of this to me, keith? If you can, I'd be grateful. It would educated me in a dark, mysterious corner of human psychology which is alien to my nature, and which I need help understanding. Best wishes.Timaeus_{July 3, 2013
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This, which was ignored by E. Liddle from another post: E. Liddle said: “Modelling the expected distribution under some kind of process in which each “draw” is independent from prior “draws” is clearly not a model of Darwinian processes.” Bpragmatic responded: I don’t believe that in the OOL phase of “evolution”, the laws of physics and chemistry (darwinian processes are beholding to) would be anywhere near as charitable to the material formation requirements as would “independent draws” as you seem to imply with the above statement. In fact I would propose that there is a clear cut scientific case for asserting that some sort of guiding intelligence is required to overcome the IMPOSSIBILITY of certain component relationships from developing guideded purely by the laws of physics and chemical reactions. Liddles response: NOTHING. Why deal with reality questions when you can continue to pull the "discussions" down the rabbit trail to nowhere. Especially when it achieves the personal goals of: ????? Lizzy, come clean. You have no clue when it comes to applying your alleged "expertise" regarding probabilities and mathematical conclusions towards requirements of OOL. I know that if you don not respond to my statements, it might be because you think you have "bigger fish to fry". I really dont know. But, if you can respond to this post in a way that scietifically supports your position, I am looking forward to that. I hope your sink is clean. Another question: Can the paid nde propoganda machine come up with some one who can really demonstrate valid arguable positions on these issues?bpragmatic_{July 3, 2013
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This, which was ignored by E. Liddle from another post: E. Liddle said: “Modelling the expected distribution under some kind of process in which each “draw” is independent from prior “draws” is clearly not a model of Darwinian processes.” Bpragmatic responded: I don’t believe that in the OOL phase of “evolution”, the laws of physics and chemistry (darwinian processes are beholding to) would be anywhere near as charitable to the material formation requirements as would “independent draws” as you seem to imply with the above statement. In fact I would propose that there is a clear cut scientific case for asserting that some sort of guiding intelligence is required to overcome the IMPOSSIBILITY of certain component relationships from developing guideded purely by the laws of physics and chemical reactions. Liddles response: NOTHING. Why deal with reality questions when you can continue to pull the "discussions" down the rabbit trail to nowhere. Especially when it achieves the personal goals of: ????? Lizzy, come clean. You have no clue when it comes to applying your alleged "expertise" regarding probabilities and mathematical conclusions towards requirements of OOL. I know that if you do respond to my statements, it might be because you think you have "bigger fish to fry". I really dont know. But, if you can respond to this post in a way that scietifically supports your position, I am looking forward to that. I hope your sink is clean.bpragmatic_{July 3, 2013
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Timaeus,
I showed that you had misunderstood what Sewell was trying to prove in the paper... *You* wanted to go on raging against what you thought Sewell privately believed ..
No. Read my summary again. Everything in it is based on what Granville wrote in the paper itself.
As for your other remarks, you don’t believe them yourself, in anything that relates to your own personal health and safety. Would you really want your government’s decision regarding, say, meat inspection rules, or birth vaccinations, decided by an internet free-for-all, in which millions of people posted their arguments and opinions in forums like this? No, you would want your government to listen to, not a bunch of pseudonymous quacks who had taught themselves medicine by reading Wikipedia articles or watching TV talk shows, but health-care experts with serious university training in meat science, epidemiology, and so on. You’d rather have experts than people who sound really good in argument but don’t know really know what they’re talking about.
Timaeus, dude -- take it easy. You're getting all worked up. I haven't argued that meat inspection rules should be "decided by an internet free-for-all." Your imagination is running a bit wild here. Here's what I wrote:
Second, my qualifications are irrelevant to the validity of my arguments. If you think my criticisms of Granville’s paper are invalid, then tell us exactly why, and back up your assertions. It’s the beauty of internet anonymity: the strength of the arguments is what matters, not the authors’ credentials.
You continue, blood pressure clearly rising:
How many times on the internet have you run up against hobbyists and cranks, who keep repeating the same arguments, and keep saying: “You can’t refute my argument, so I’m right! HA!” ? And when you *do* refute their argument, they don’t recognize it as a refutation, because they are too stupid or too ignorant to realize how stupid or ignorant they are. They think *your refutation* is wrong. And if finally, in disgust at their stubbornness and stupidity, you say, “Look, I have a Ph.D. in physics and astronomy, and I’ve spent 30 years thinking about problems like this, and you by your own admission failed tenth-grade science, and I tell you the earth is not flat,” they will always reply: “You can’t argue from qualifications! It’s only the evidence that matters …” But of course argument from evidence has already failed, so the only thing left to say is that you have training, the other person doesn’t, and leave the discussion. You can’t cure the other person’s ignorance; but if you can leave in him (or her) the sting of feeling uneducated, that may arouse him to better himself by getting some education, so that he can better compete with you in argument. And by the time he has completed that education, the argument will be over, because he will agree with you. And the world will be a better place because there is one less fool in it.
Dang, Timaeus. I think I know what your hot-button is now. Steam begins to jet out of your ears:
Are you aware of how “debates” are settled behind the scenes on Wikipedia? Do you think the disagreeing parties all advance very rational arguments, and agree like gentlemen and ladies that the final Wikipedia article will represent only the best arguments, and that they will humbly lay all their original views aside in order to achieve that aim? Fat chance! The final Wikipedia articles represent the views of those with the most endurance, the most free time on their hands to watch the site in the wee hours of the morning and reverse all the changes to what they wrote, and who are the most willing to insult and browbeat other contributors until they give up. And if anyone dares to say, “Excuse me, but what are your qualifications on this subject? Based on your remarks, you don’t seem to understand it at all, whereas I teach the subject at Harvard,” what is the response? “Qualifications don’t matter; it’s all how well you document what you say.” And if you say in return: “Yes, there must be documentation, but you are using biased sources who share your own prejudices, written by untrained people who do not understand the subject”; they then start arguing that their sources are just as good as yours (even though they aren’t); and the argument goes on forever. And since Harvard professors have teaching responsibilities, and essays to grade, and research to do, and families to raise, whereas 22-year-old single male computer geeks have infinite time to argue on Wikipedia, they always get their way, and the more knowledgeable person doesn’t get his.
Your eyeballs begin to bulge out of their sockets:
In a *real* encyclopedia, on the other hand, an editor who knows what he is talking about appoints writers who know what they are talking about — world experts — to write the articles, and the opinions of 22-year-old computer geeks on international finance, Islam, evolution, etc. are thankfully omitted. That is why you can trust a serious encyclopedia most of the time (not all of the time), whereas you can never trust Wikipedia and always have to check its statements against a source that is written by experts rather than autodidacts. In an ideal world, where everyone had the purest of motivations, and felt the *moral obligation* never to argue off the top of their head, never to literature-bluff, never to make up their mind on an issue until they had studied it in depth, never to argue ad hominem, never to use rhetoric, and never to stubbornly hold to a position when they have been shown to be wrong — I would agree with you, in a world like that, we wouldn’t need qualifications, just the best argument: intellectual honesty plus the *sense of duty* that drove people to study before speaking, would produce the right results. But we live in a world full of egomaniacs who fake and lie and pretend they know more than they know, and use rhetoric and sarcasm and ad hominem remarks to get others to back down, and who will not *ever* grant a point to the other side even when deep down they know the other side has a point. So saying, “all that matters is the strength of the argument” is right in theory; but in practice, it means that everyone can argue interminably for every position, without any resolution, since there are no judges (the principle of expertise having been rejected) who can step in and say: “This guy is right and this other guy is a fraud who talks glibly but doesn’t know the first thing about the subject.”
Flames shoot out of your nostrils:
If you really believed your own principle, you would never go to a school to get qualifications in anything, you would just stand on a street corner and argue with everyone you met about every subject, including subjects about which you knew nothing, and would make up your “truth” from what seemed to you to be the “most reasonable” arguments you encountered. And 90% of what you would end up believing would be folklore, urban legend, propaganda, lies, and other forms of misinformation. But I bet you have gone to school, to get a computer science or engineering degree or the like. So you do think that some people are experts who know more than others, and you do have to take on faith to some extent the expertise of your teachers (you can’t argue out every single thing they tell you or you will never finish your degree). In practice expertise, and the acknowledgment of expertise, is necessary in the world. The imagination of a world where no one has any qualifications, but everyone just argues, and everyone accedes to the best argument out of love of truth, is a nice fantasy, but it corresponds to no world that will ever be inhabited by human beings (as opposed to angels).
Wow. I hope you have calmed down a bit since you wrote that. Your imagination (and emotions) were really getting the best of you. I have not argued that qualifications and credentials are useless, Timaeus. Far from it. They are extremely useful in employment or admissions decisions, for example. It is impossible to get a full and accurate picture of a person's skills and experience from a couple of interviews. In those situations, credentials can be a useful substitute for long acquaintance. But internet commenters are not asking you to hire them or admit them to your school. They are merely presenting an argument. You don't need the complete picture of their background, their abilities, or their experience. You can judge each comment on its merits and move on to the next. It should be clear to anyone with experience in the world that credentials do not always signify competence. There is no need to rely on them when assessing comments on a blog. Isn't this obvious? Why demand a display of credentials when an argument stands or falls on its own validity?keiths_{July 3, 2013
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keiths: I showed that you had misunderstood what Sewell was trying to prove in the paper. That's all I undertook to show. *You* wanted to go on raging against what you thought Sewell privately believed (i.e., you think he believes -- even though he did not argue for it in the paper -- that the second law of thermodynamics disproves evolution). I'm saying, if you want to argue about Sewell's private beliefs, write to him and tell him you think his private beliefs are nonsense. Or, if he makes those private beliefs public and argues for them in a paper, criticize *that* paper. I'm only talking about the current paper. As for your other remarks, you don't believe them yourself, in anything that relates to your own personal health and safety. Would you really want your government's decision regarding, say, meat inspection rules, or birth vaccinations, decided by an internet free-for-all, in which millions of people posted their arguments and opinions in forums like this? No, you would want your government to listen to, not a bunch of pseudonymous quacks who had taught themselves medicine by reading Wikipedia articles or watching TV talk shows, but health-care experts with serious university training in meat science, epidemiology, and so on. You'd rather have experts than people who sound really good in argument but don't know really know what they're talking about. How many times on the internet have you run up against hobbyists and cranks, who keep repeating the same arguments, and keep saying: "You can't refute my argument, so I'm right! HA!" ? And when you *do* refute their argument, they don't recognize it as a refutation, because they are too stupid or too ignorant to realize how stupid or ignorant they are. They think *your refutation* is wrong. And if finally, in disgust at their stubbornness and stupidity, you say, "Look, I have a Ph.D. in physics and astronomy, and I've spent 30 years thinking about problems like this, and you by your own admission failed tenth-grade science, and I tell you the earth is not flat," they will always reply: "You can't argue from qualifications! It's only the evidence that matters ..." But of course argument from evidence has already failed, so the only thing left to say is that you have training, the other person doesn't, and leave the discussion. You can't cure the other person's ignorance; but if you can leave in him (or her) the sting of feeling uneducated, that may arouse him to better himself by getting some education, so that he can better compete with you in argument. And by the time he has completed that education, the argument will be over, because he will agree with you. And the world will be a better place because there is one less fool in it. Are you aware of how "debates" are settled behind the scenes on Wikipedia? Do you think the disagreeing parties all advance very rational arguments, and agree like gentlemen and ladies that the final Wikipedia article will represent only the best arguments, and that they will humbly lay all their original views aside in order to achieve that aim? Fat chance! The final Wikipedia articles represent the views of those with the most endurance, the most free time on their hands to watch the site in the wee hours of the morning and reverse all the changes to what they wrote, and who are the most willing to insult and browbeat other contributors until they give up. And if anyone dares to say, "Excuse me, but what are your qualifications on this subject? Based on your remarks, you don't seem to understand it at all, whereas I teach the subject at Harvard," what is the response? "Qualifications don't matter; it's all how well you document what you say." And if you say in return: "Yes, there must be documentation, but you are using biased sources who share your own prejudices, written by untrained people who do not understand the subject"; they then start arguing that their sources are just as good as yours (even though they aren't); and the argument goes on forever. And since Harvard professors have teaching responsibilities, and essays to grade, and research to do, and families to raise, whereas 22-year-old single male computer geeks have infinite time to argue on Wikipedia, they always get their way, and the more knowledgeable person doesn't get his. In a *real* encyclopedia, on the other hand, an editor who knows what he is talking about appoints writers who know what they are talking about -- world experts -- to write the articles, and the opinions of 22-year-old computer geeks on international finance, Islam, evolution, etc. are thankfully omitted. That is why you can trust a serious encyclopedia most of the time (not all of the time), whereas you can never trust Wikipedia and always have to check its statements against a source that is written by experts rather than autodidacts. In an ideal world, where everyone had the purest of motivations, and felt the *moral obligation* never to argue off the top of their head, never to literature-bluff, never to make up their mind on an issue until they had studied it in depth, never to argue ad hominem, never to use rhetoric, and never to stubbornly hold to a position when they have been shown to be wrong -- I would agree with you, in a world like that, we wouldn't need qualifications, just the best argument: intellectual honesty plus the *sense of duty* that drove people to study before speaking, would produce the right results. But we live in a world full of egomaniacs who fake and lie and pretend they know more than they know, and use rhetoric and sarcasm and ad hominem remarks to get others to back down, and who will not *ever* grant a point to the other side even when deep down they know the other side has a point. So saying, "all that matters is the strength of the argument" is right in theory; but in practice, it means that everyone can argue interminably for every position, without any resolution, since there are no judges (the principle of expertise having been rejected) who can step in and say: "This guy is right and this other guy is a fraud who talks glibly but doesn't know the first thing about the subject." If you really believed your own principle, you would never go to a school to get qualifications in anything, you would just stand on a street corner and argue with everyone you met about every subject, including subjects about which you knew nothing, and would make up your "truth" from what seemed to you to be the "most reasonable" arguments you encountered. And 90% of what you would end up believing would be folklore, urban legend, propaganda, lies, and other forms of misinformation. But I bet you have gone to school, to get a computer science or engineering degree or the like. So you do think that some people are experts who know more than others, and you do have to take on faith to some extent the expertise of your teachers (you can't argue out every single thing they tell you or you will never finish your degree). In practice expertise, and the acknowledgment of expertise, is necessary in the world. The imagination of a world where no one has any qualifications, but everyone just argues, and everyone accedes to the best argument out of love of truth, is a nice fantasy, but it corresponds to no world that will ever be inhabited by human beings (as opposed to angels).Timaeus_{July 3, 2013
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Timaeus, Regarding the rest of your comment, I don't think you realize just how bad Granville's paper is. It's not just middling or mediocre; it's awful. Way out on the left tail of the distribution. Read my summary again, keeping in mind that it isn't even a complete list of the problems with Granville's paper! You write:
The journal or book publisher does not want rough stones; it wants fairly polished ones. They don’t have to be *perfect*; everyone knows that scientific arguments can be more or less persuasive, and that what some readers find a strong argument, other readers will find a weak one. So even a journal or book article can’t be expected to strike every single journal or book reader as flawless and incontestable; but still, the article must be in pretty good shape, or it won’t be published.
Granville's paper isn't "fairly polished" or "in pretty good shape". It's as rough as #12 sandpaper and in worse shape than an intensive care patient. It didn't deserve to be published by Springer or any other reputable publisher.keiths_{July 3, 2013
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Timaeus,
I have not yet noticed any reply to my question about your qualifications to distinguish “crap science” from “serious science”...
Well, first of all, you bailed out of the thread in a feigned huff, so I didn't think you were still expecting a reply:
Repeating myself again will do no good. So I’m done.
(You were right, by the way. Repeating yourself wouldn't have done any good. Instead of repeating yourself, you would have been better off responding to my arguments.) Second, my qualifications are irrelevant to the validity of my arguments. If you think my criticisms of Granville's paper are invalid, then tell us exactly why, and back up your assertions. It's the beauty of internet anonymity: the strength of the arguments is what matters, not the authors' credentials. Third, have you overlooked the irony? You're asking about my scientific qualifications and whether they entitle me to judge Granville's paper. What about your scientific qualifications to judge my scientific judgment of Granville's paper? In the end, of course, credentials don't matter. By the quality of his arguments, each of us demonstrates (or fails to demonstrate) his competence. It says something about your (lack of) confidence that you would prefer to compare credentials instead of actually debating.keiths_{July 3, 2013
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keiths: I have not yet noticed any reply to my question about your qualifications to distinguish "crap science" from "serious science"; I guess I will have to draw my own conclusions, based upon my own perceptions of your level of scientific knowledge, and of your reasoning skills. On another matter, you wrote: "By accepting Granville’s paper, the organizers showed that the BI was not a serious scientific conference. Springer did the right thing in refusing to publish." I suspect that I have a good deal more experience in attending academic conferences than you do. And in my experience, the organizers of a conference -- especially exploratory, interdisciplinary conferences like the BI conference, where the whole idea was to push the horizons outward a bit, explore new possible connections between different scientific areas -- do not police papers in detail beforehand. They usually ask only for abstracts or outlines of the paper to be submitted beforehand. They then make a judgment, based on the abstract or outline, and based on the area of competence of the writer, whether the writer's paper would make a suitable contribution to the overall goals of the conference. Once accepted, the papers are then read at the conference, and the audience at the conference -- an audience of the peers of the paper-writers -- questions and criticizes the presentations. (And believe me, there was much criticism of some of the papers at the BI conference -- this was no audience of unthinking yes-men.) The authors then take the criticism home, digest it, and rewrite the paper accordingly, usually with the goal of publishing it in some journal somewhere. The "pre-criticism" of their conference peers thus helps them to write a better journal article. So conference papers are not supposed to be perfect gems of polished science! Some are; and if they are, that's great. But more often, they are diamonds in the rough, and need further work. In accepting Granville's submission, the BI conference was not automatically endorsing everything he would say on the podium; it was saying: this line of investigation is plausible enough that the other people of the conference will want to hear about it. A much more important line of quality control than the conference is the journal or scientific book publisher. The journal or book publisher does not want rough stones; it wants fairly polished ones. They don't have to be *perfect*; everyone knows that scientific arguments can be more or less persuasive, and that what some readers find a strong argument, other readers will find a weak one. So even a journal or book article can't be expected to strike every single journal or book reader as flawless and incontestable; but still, the article must be in pretty good shape, or it won't be published. Now, let's look at what you've said. You've said that the publisher was right to reject the *conference* proceedings because of the quality of *one article* that came out of the conference. Wouldn't it be more logical for the publisher to have told the conference organizers: "We will publish the other papers, but not this one, because it's not good enough?" Why cancel *the whole volume* because *one* paper was not good enough? Or, suppose that two or three out of maybe 20 or 30 papers were not up to standard? Why not delete those papers and publish the rest? The whole justification of the outcry about the book by the Darwinists is that they wanted to alert the publisher to the possible low quality of the papers. Fine; let's say the publisher reviewed the papers (which it should have done, anyway, prior to any outcry and long before it advertised the book), and found that 15% of them were not up to standard. So what? It could have published a smaller book, with fewer papers. Less expensive and easier for scientists to afford. So even if we take the best possible interpretation of the Matzke gang's motives (ahem!), and even if we allow that some of the papers at the conference were weaker than others, and were not good enough to be published, that *still* doesn't justify sacking the whole book. But we *know* the real reason why the book was sacked. The book was sacked because of its ID associations. No matter how good the papers were, some feeble excuse would have been found to extricate the publisher. (As we saw in the Sewell AML case, where the publisher, after accepting the peer-reviewed article, suddenly [after finding out Sewell had ID associations] decided it was more philosophical than scientific. Right!) And by the way, I have seen many conference volumes in many different academic subjects, and I know from experience that the quality of papers in conference volumes is very often uneven. Readers do not expect that every single paper in a conference volume will just blow them away with brilliance and expertise. They are happy if the majority of papers are competent and if the volume contains a few strikingly new insights. (Just as you think you've bought a good basket of fruit if only a few of the pieces are on the soft side, most of the pieces are reasonably firm and tasty, and a few are perfect in texture and delicious in flavor.) So again we have a double standard going on here: any *other* scientific conference volume is OK if some of its papers are clunkers, and overall they average just slightly above the mediocre middle; an *ID* conference volume can't have *any* weak papers, or it's obviously just creationist drivel that shouldn't be published.Timaeus_{July 3, 2013
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Elizabeth Liddle: Re: Your 211 above: I want to make sure we are talking about the same Sewell article. Above, I said the publisher was "MI" (Mathematical Intelligencer), but I meant to say Applied Mathematics Letters. This was the journal that pulled Sewell's article, after it had been approved by peer-review, and ended up apologizing to Sewell and paying him a settlement. You seem to know the case I mean, even if you, like myself, referred to "MI" -- which is an error. So, can you confirm we are talking about the same case? Now, assuming we are talking about the same case, here is your published opinion on the article which was pulled from AML: "I agree that the article should have been published, and I can see why it passed peer-review. I think it’s a very clarifying article." ---Elizabeth Liddle, June 8, 2011, reply #12 under: https://uncommondescent.com/darwinism/breaking-breaking-id-friendly-math-prof-granville-sewell-gets-apology-and-damages-from-journal/ Now, above (211), you seem be saying, about the same article: "The editors didn’t have the “spine” to say “oops, we really messed up here, our review process was inadequate”. I'm confused. How can you say that "[the] review process was inadequate," yet also say "I agree that the article should have been published, and I can see why it passed peer-review"? Are these two judgments incompatible? If so, who is right, the Elizabeth of 2013 or the Elizabeth of 2011?Timaeus_{July 3, 2013
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Granville has started a new thread defending his paper. The discussion has moved there.keiths_{July 3, 2013
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Elizabeth @192:
Although when the answer you cite is given as the response to Sewell’s argument, it is understandable – because even if it were true that designed things have reduced entropy (and living things, like trees, do have less entropy than the material they are made of had before it was as a tree, which is why we can use wood as fuel), that is not a violation of the 2nd Law, because Earth is an open system – we receive energy from the sun, and while the wood of the tree represents a local decrease in entropy, it is more than “compensated” (Sewell’s term) by the increase in solar entropy. Taken as a whole system, including the sun, the 2nd Law is not violated by trees. Sewell agrees, and gets irritated when people assume he is saying this.
The compensation idea is, frankly, silly. The reason a tree can exist has nothing to do with the fact that the Earth is an open system and the tree's reduced entropy is "compensated" by increased entropy at the sun. Otherwise, tell me, please, what physical mechanism alerts the Sun to the fact that there is a tree growing on the Earth and, therefore, the Sun should increase its entropy? :) ----- Thank you for the detailed summary of your understanding of Sewell's argument. It looks like you have some interesting thoughts. I'll juxtapose that with Timaeus' summary if I get a chance to go through Sewell's argument in more detail. Looks like a new thread just got started on this topic, so maybe I'll swing over there for any further discussion.Eric Anderson_{July 3, 2013
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Timaeus: Not a response from Nick, but here is one from "Eric" at PT:
Eric replied to a comment from Elizabeth Liddle | July 2, 2013 12:58 PM | Reply
Elizabeth Liddle said: Some questions from Timaeus at UD, which I have promised to pass on:
I would like you to ask him [Nick Matzke]: 1. Did he in fact honestly believe that Springer had accepted the papers without actually reading them? 2. If so, why did he believe this? 3. If he thought they *had* read them, why did he think they still needed his advice? Did he think this publishing house, one very competent by his own judgment, needed his correction? 4. Did he have any qualms at all about advising a publishing house not to publish papers he had not read, at least some of which were by authors about whom he knew nothing? 5. Did Nick, in his communication with Springer, make any direct *or veiled* threats of leading a boycott of the book if they went ahead with publication? 6. Did Nick do anything at Panda’s Thumb, or anywhere else, to encourage anyone to boycott the book if it were published? 7. Did others, because of Nick’s action, threaten any boycott of the book if it were published? Elizabeth, I look forward to hearing back from you, and indirectly from Nick, on this matter.

I am in no way Nick, nor do I speak for him, but… 1 & 2: Nick excerpts from a Springer Web Page that implies the book is already set for publication. For example, the Springer page says “Due: March 31, 2012 $179.00.” All of the commenters seem to take it for granted that the book is set for publication too. Timaeus could have checked this himself, because the link to Nick’s original (Feb 2012) article is right there at the bottom of this one. 3-6: Again, the link to Nick’s original article is right at the bottom of the page - Timaeus should just go read it and judge from him/herself! Now, if he wants my interpretation of Nick’s original article, I can give that: this article is typical Panda’s thumb reporting and editorializing on a current event. No message to Springer or boycott of Springer is either mentioned or implied. Stylistically, its no different from the many many “look how the media industry got it wrong again” type of articles PTers publish. 7: Another question Timaeus could’ve answered, by going to Nick’s article and checking the 150 comments it generated. Are there any calls for boycott? No. Did anyone interpret it as a call for a boycott? No. Did anyone respond that they were going to give Springer a piece of their mind? No. Its unclear to me why Timaeus didn’t just look for the answers himself. The link’s right there.
Elizabeth B Liddle_{July 3, 2013
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Timaeus:
We *know* that in the case of the MI article of Sewell, the decision was based on spinelessness. The editor declared that there was no technical inadequacy in the article. It was pulled because Sewell is an ID guy and the journal didn’t want to be embarrassed by the association, not because the journal thought the article was bad. The decision was political, not academic.
I agree that the MI was spineless, but not because there was "no technical inadequacy in the article". Clearly the article is technically inadequate. The editors didn't have the "spine" to say "oops, we really messed up here, our review process was inadequate". So it just paid up, said something nice to Granville, and hoped the problem would go awayElizabeth B Liddle_{July 3, 2013
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Some final (!) thoughts on Sewell (it would be good if he would comment): The reason we know his "answer" is wrong is that if it were the case that a designing mind can violate the 2nd Law - that a designed house has less entropy than a tornado-wrecked house - we would have an instant solution to our energy crisis. All that would be required would be to design something "improbable" with spent fuel - and then re-use it. Or even just get an army of housewives to tidy a bank of houses each day, a second army of kids to mess them up again, and use the released energy to drive a generator. But of course designed things do not usually have less entropy than non-designed things, and when they do, they do not have it courtesy of a designing mind, but courtesy of increased entropy elsewhere (in the fuel used in the process, for instance). I have hunch where Sewell is coming from. I think he is thinking of Maxwell's Demon, a thought experiment in which a tiny "intelligent agent" shunts high energy molecules through a hole into one compartment, and low energy molecules out through the same hole, resulting in a heat differential where there was none before - and a decrease in entropy. The reason of course that this would not be a violation of the 2nd law is that the demon needs to eat. And indeed, by "feeding" the "demon" in a fridge, that's exactly what we do. But if we think it possible that minds are immaterial, and can therefore do the shunting without fuel, then indeed minds would violate the 2nd Law. In fact, that's my big objection to the notion of an "immaterial mind" - if it's immaterial, how does it affect the brain (move ions around to make neurons fire) without violating the 2nd law? And if it does violate the second law, why can't we use our minds to create usable energy stores? Granville's mistake, in effect, is to think we can, because he really does think that a messy house has more entropy than the same house after an inteliigent housewife (eyeroll!) has tidied it up. It's quite extraordinary, even given that Sewell is not a physicist. It's possible, I guess, that he has never tidied a house :) And thus never experienced the resulting urgent need for a cup of tea and a chocolate biscuit.Elizabeth B Liddle_{July 3, 2013
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Timaeus
You seem to have trouble understanding the difference between “establishing what argument an author is making” and “assessing that argument to determine its worth.” You cannot do the second thing until you have done the first thing.
In some cases, the two have to go hand in hand. It is extremely difficult to see what argument Sewell is making because it makes so little sense, and is based on so much apparent misunderstanding of basic physics. The fundamental problem with his paper, in my view, is that he does not understand that "order" is not the same as "negentropy" (thanks, keiths, I had forgotten that word!), and, specifically, that negentropy does not mean "not-chaos". At first reading it is extremely difficult to know why he keeps on going on about tidy houses being related to the 2nd Law, because they are not! It's only when you (or I) finally realise that he actually thinks that a tidy house has more negentropy than a messy house that your (or my) jaw drops. It's a bit like getting to the end of a bad piece of math homework, seeing that the answer is wrong, but having to go through the work line by line until you find just where the key mistake has been made! Of course it's possible that the answer is nobel-prizewinningly right after all, but not in this case.Elizabeth B Liddle_{July 3, 2013
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