Will Talk.origins Ever Get the Definition of IC Right??

[Peter Nyikos]

The short answer to whether t.o. will ever get the definition
of IC (Irreducible Complexity) right is:

Not as long as the incompetent opening sentence of Wikipedia on IC
stays the way it now is:

Irreducible complexity (IC) is a pseudoscientific argument
that certain biological systems cannot evolve by successive
small modifications to pre-existing functional systems
through natural selection.[1]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irreducible_complexity

This "definition" makes a category mistake, similar to the following:

The solar system is a pseudoscientific argument
that people can be given predictions and advice on their
everyday lives based on where in their orbits the various
planets are.

The original definition of IC, due to Behe, can be found in
The TalkOrigins Archive,
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/behe.html

By irreducibly complex I mean a single system composed of
several well-matched, interacting parts that contribute
to the basic function, wherein the removal of any one
of the parts causes the system to effectively cease functioning.

There is no argument here, just a definition. Behe does go on to
argue for some conclusions that seem superficially like the one
after the first line of the Wikipedia entry as transcribed here.
But that is a separate issue.


Irreducible complexity is a hot topic in the following talk.origins thread:

Subject: Re: Open questions in biology, biochemistry, and evolution

to which I first posted a few minutes ago. The thread is an amazing
hotchpot of misconceptions like the above (by some participants on
both sides of the ID/anti-ID divide!), and correct understandings of
the concept of IC by others, whose explanations seem to fall on deaf ears.

Peter Nyikos
Professor, Dept. of Mathematics -- standard disclaimer--
University of South Carolina
http://people.math.sc.edu/nyikos/

[Ray Martinez]

On Thursday, February 18, 2016 at 12:54:52 PM UTC-8, Peter Nyikos wrote:
> The short answer to whether t.o. will ever get the definition
> of IC (Irreducible Complexity) right is:
>
> Not as long as the incompetent opening sentence of Wikipedia on IC
> stays the way it now is:
>
> Irreducible complexity (IC) is a pseudoscientific argument
> that certain biological systems cannot evolve by successive
> small modifications to pre-existing functional systems
> through natural selection.[1]
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irreducible_complexity
>

Why should anyone care about a "definition" that doesn't use a Behe quotation?

> This "definition" makes a category mistake, similar to the following:
>

The only mistake (and a huge one at that) is failure to quote Behe, the claimant. Wikipedia is not a legitimate source----so what did you expect? Rather, it's a source where anyone with a computer can create "the knowledge."

Ray

[....]

[Peter Nyikos]

You bring up some good points, Ray, but the Wikipedia entry was
specifically linked by Bob Casanova on the thread of which I wrote.
He called it "a more balanced look":

https://groups.google.com/forum/#!original/talk.origins/RJqHymfuDco/o3KnwC7jGQAJ
Message-ID: <pofpbb56a8ikbioc0...@4ax.com>

Subject: Re: Open questions in biology, biochemistry, and evolution

Date: Thu, 11 Feb 2016 10:04:50 -0700

It seems obvious from his claims that Bob has swallowed the opening
sentence from Wikipedia hook, line, and sinker.

And it may ultimately be responsible for the confusion of
others as to the meaning of the concept, including Ron O, and,
more surprisingly, Behe partisan Otangelo Grasso. Ernest Major
set him straight, after a fashion:

[quote]
You can't legitimately equivocate between two definitions of irreducible
complexity. If you define irreducible complexity as meaning that a
system loses its function if any part is removed (how do you
non-arbitrarily define system, part and function?) then you can test
whether a system is irreducibly complex, but you can't use it as an
argument for design, as evolutionary processes produce such systems;

if you define irreducibly complex as meaning it can't evolve, you can't
show that a system is irreducibly complex by showing that its function
requires all its parts.
------------------end of quote from
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!original/talk.origins/RJqHymfuDco/HqInHRn0GQAJ

Note how the second alternative is the one the stupid Wiki entry
uses. It's not clear from what Ernest Major wrote that he himself
knows which is the correct definition. [I've quoted
his entire reply.]

Peter Nyikos

[Earle Jones27]

On 2016-02-18 20:50:29 +0000, Peter Nyikos said:

> The short answer to whether t.o. will ever get the definition
> of IC (Irreducible Complexity) right is:
>
> Not as long as the incompetent opening sentence of Wikipedia on IC
> stays the way it now is:
>
> Irreducible complexity (IC) is a pseudoscientific argument
> that certain biological systems cannot evolve by successive
> small modifications to pre-existing functional systems
> through natural selection.[1]
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irreducible_complexity

*
Peter: The strength of the 'Wiki' approach is that one can edit out errors.

Why don't you contact the Wiki folks and inform them of their errors
and suggest the words of Behe in their place?

earle
*

[Ray Martinez]

On Thursday, February 18, 2016 at 1:39:52 PM UTC-8, Peter Nyikos wrote:
> On Thursday, February 18, 2016 at 4:09:52 PM UTC-5, Ray Martinez wrote:
> > On Thursday, February 18, 2016 at 12:54:52 PM UTC-8, Peter Nyikos wrote:
>
> > > The short answer to whether t.o. will ever get the definition
> > > of IC (Irreducible Complexity) right is:
> > >
> > > Not as long as the incompetent opening sentence of Wikipedia on IC
> > > stays the way it now is:
> > >
> > > Irreducible complexity (IC) is a pseudoscientific argument
> > > that certain biological systems cannot evolve by successive
> > > small modifications to pre-existing functional systems
> > > through natural selection.[1]
> > > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irreducible_complexity
> > >
> >
> > Why should anyone care about a "definition" that doesn't use a Behe quotation?
> >
> >
> > > This "definition" makes a category mistake, similar to the following:
> > >
> >
> > The only mistake (and a huge one at that) is failure to quote Behe, the claimant. Wikipedia is not a legitimate source----so what did you expect? Rather, it's a source where anyone with a computer can create "the knowledge."
> >
> > Ray
> >
>
> You bring up some good points, Ray, but the Wikipedia entry was
> specifically linked by Bob Casanova on the thread of which I wrote.
> He called it "a more balanced look":
>

That explains a lot! I didn't think you laid in bed at night worrying about things Wikipedia, a public bathroom, says! I should have known a shallow thinker like Bob Casanova was behind all of this!

Ray

[Ray Martinez]

Because the people that run the website aren't interested in accuracy or objectivity, you don't know that?

Wikipedia is a public urinal.

Ray

[Rolf]

"Ray Martinez" <pyram...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:3e1a9fda-b50a-4e7c...@googlegroups.com...

I don't know that. The same info and much more can be found everywhere, it's
no secret that both Behe and Dembski are wrong on all counts. Why do you
think you should defend them? Do you have the slightest trace of anything
resembling credentials? You are poor on knowledge, and what you think you
know are poor caricatures of the real thing. Day by day you seem to get more
stupid. You know you have lost, you don't have a case and coming to this
urinal here tells it all.

If I could I'd be sorry for you but the way you have developed over the
years is an antidote for compassion.

Rolf
> Ray
>

[czeba...@gmail.com]

Why should Behe's definition be the operational one? His premises have thus far left most biologists unimpressed. Proclaiming his the correct one doesn't make it so.

gregwrld

[youngbl...@gmail.com]

Simply not true.

An early study in the journal Nature said that in 2005, Wikipedia's scientific articles came close to the level of accuracy in Encyclopædia Britannica and had a similar rate of "serious errors".[2] The study by Nature was disputed by Encyclopædia Britannica,[3] and later Nature replied to this refutation with both a formal response and a point-by-point rebuttal of Britannica's main objections.[4] Between 2008 and 2012, articles in medical and scientific fields such as pathology,[5] toxicology,[6] oncology,[7] pharmaceuticals,[8] and psychiatry[9] compared Wikipedia to professional and peer reviewed sources and found that Wikipedia's depth and coverage were of a high standard. Concerns regarding readability were raised in a study published by the American Society of Clinical Oncology[10] and a study published in Psychological Medicine (2012),[9] while a study published in the European Journal of Gastroenterology and Hepatology raised concerns about reliability.[11]

Wikipedia is open to anonymous and collaborative editing, so assessments of its reliability usually include examination of how quickly false or misleading information is removed. An early study conducted by IBM researchers in 2003--two years following Wikipedia's establishment--found that "vandalism is usually repaired extremely quickly--so quickly that most users will never see its effects"[12] and concluded that Wikipedia had "surprisingly effective self-healing capabilities".[13]

Several incidents have also been publicized in which false information has lasted for a long time in Wikipedia. In May 2005, an anonymous editor started a controversy when he created an article about John Seigenthaler containing several false and defamatory statements.[14] The inaccurate information remained uncorrected for four months. A biographical article in French Wikipedia portrayed a "Léon-Robert de L'Astran" as an 18th-century anti-slavery ship owner, which led Ségolène Royal, a presidential candidate, to praise him. A student investigation later determined that the article was a hoax and de L'Astran had never existed.[15]


75

22
Submit
582
Reddit
Lifeslittle

When you Google the question "How accurate is Wikipedia?" the highest-ranking result is, as you might expect, a Wikipedia article on the topic ("Reliability of Wikipedia").

That page contains a comprehensive list of studies undertaken to assess the accuracy of the crowd-sourced encyclopedia since its founding 10 years ago. Of course, if you find yourself on this page, you might worry that the list itself may not be trustworthy. Well, the good news is that almost all those studies tell us that it probably is.

In 2005, the peer-reviewed journal Nature asked scientists to compare Wikipedia's scientific articles to those in Encyclopaedia Britannica--"the most scholarly of encyclopedias," according to its own Wiki page. The comparison resulted in a tie; both references contained four serious errors among the 42 articles analyzed by experts.

And last year, a study published in the Journal of Clinical Oncology found that Wikipedia had the same level of accuracy and depth in its articles about 10 types of cancer as the Physician Data Query, a professionally edited database maintained by the National Cancer Institute.

It may make sense that Wikipedia would have more reliable articles about academic topics than pop culture ones, considering that the latter are more prone to rumors and hearsay. On the other hand, there's no Passion Pit entry at all in Encyclopaedia Britannica. With more than three million English-language entries, Wikipedia very often wins our preference by default.
http://www.livescience.com/32950-how-accurate-is-wikipedia.html

http://www.zmescience.com/science/study-wikipedia-25092014/

http://blog.wikimedia.org/2012/08/02/seven-years-after-nature-pilot-study-compares-wikipedia-favorably-to-other-encyclopedias-in-three-languages/

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/4530930.stm

[jillery]

On Thu, 18 Feb 2016 12:50:29 -0800 (PST), Peter Nyikos
<nyi...@bellsouth.net> wrote:

>The short answer to whether t.o. will ever get the definition
>of IC (Irreducible Complexity) right is:
>
>Not as long as the incompetent opening sentence of Wikipedia on IC
>stays the way it now is:
>
> Irreducible complexity (IC) is a pseudoscientific argument
> that certain biological systems cannot evolve by successive
> small modifications to pre-existing functional systems
> through natural selection.[1]
>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irreducible_complexity
>
>This "definition" makes a category mistake, similar to the following:

Of course, Wiki doesn't say the above is a definition. Instead, it's
a description, and an accurate one at that.

> The solar system is a pseudoscientific argument
> that people can be given predictions and advice on their
> everyday lives based on where in their orbits the various
> planets are.
>
>The original definition of IC, due to Behe, can be found in
>The TalkOrigins Archive,
>http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/behe.html
>
> By irreducibly complex I mean a single system composed of
> several well-matched, interacting parts that contribute
> to the basic function, wherein the removal of any one
> of the parts causes the system to effectively cease functioning.
>
>There is no argument here, just a definition. Behe does go on to
>argue for some conclusions that seem superficially like the one
>after the first line of the Wikipedia entry as transcribed here.
>But that is a separate issue.

Actually Behe's argument is the relevant issue here. Anyone can make
up definitions. You and Ray do it all the time. What matter is
whether anybody agrees with them.
--
This space is intentionally not blank.

[*Hemidactylus*]

I thought most of the articles were written by Lindsay Lohan.

> Wikipedia is a public urinal.

Well to be fair most of the articles have gone much further than you to
explain at an introductory level how the world operates. Do I detect a
hint of jealousy?

[Öö Tiib]

Because he coined that term.

[czeba...@gmail.com]

Oo Tib said:because he coined the term.

I should have remembered that, having read DBB. But does the definition now fit current usage and understanding? Certainly as a premise it is not accepted by most biologists is it?

gregwrld

[jillery]

On Thu, 18 Feb 2016 18:24:37 -0800 (PST), czeba...@gmail.com wrote:

>Oo Tib said:because he coined the term.
>
>I should have remembered that, having read DBB. But does the definition now fit current usage and understanding? Certainly as a premise it is not accepted by most biologists is it?

Behe coined the term, but not the concept he applied it to, as the
Wikipedia article points out.

Regarding your question, my impression is that IC as Behe defines it
is generally regarded as an unremarkable truism, an expected
characteristic of some biological systems. It's no surprise that when
any part of a complex molecule or biological system is removed, it
stops working. So that's not where the controversy lies.

Instead, the controversy lies with what Behe claims IC means, that the
presence of molecular IC is evidence for design with intent and
evidence against unguided evolution. My impression is only IDiots
agree that's true.

[*Hemidactylus*]

In the late 90s reading history of biology in evodevo books by Rudy Raff
and Brian Hall I encountered Baron Cuvier and his functionalist ideas of
correlation of parts and relation to embranchements.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irreducible_complexity#19th_century

"Chapter XV of Paley's Natural Theology discusses at length what he
called "relations" of parts of living things as an indication of their
design.[13]

Georges Cuvier applied his principle of the correlation of parts to
describe an animal from fragmentary remains. For Cuvier, this was
related to another principle of his, the conditions of existence, which
excluded the possibility of transmutation of species.[24]"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georges_Cuvier#Principle_of_the_correlation_of_parts

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georges_Cuvier#Principle_of_the_conditions_of_existence

http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/history/cuvier.html

" Cuvier saw organisms as integrated wholes, in which each part's form
and function were integrated into the entire body. No part could be
modified without impairing this functional integration:

. .. the component parts of each must be so arranged as to render
possible the whole living being, not only with regard to itself, but to
its surrounding relations, and the analysis of these conditions
frequently leads to general laws, as demonstrable as those which are
derived from calculation or experiment.

Cuvier did not believe in organic evolution, for any change in an
organism's anatomy would have rendered it unable to survive. He studied
the mummified cats and ibises that Geoffroy had brought back from
Napoleon's invasion of Egypt, and showed that they were no different
from their living counterparts; Cuvier used this to support his claim
that lifeforms did not evolve over time. Organisms were functional
wholes; any change in one part would destroy the delicate balance. But
the functional integration of organisms meant that each part of an
organism, no matter how small, bore signs of the whole. Thus it was
possible to reconstruct organisms from fragmentary remains, based on
rational principles. Cuvier had a legendary ability to reconstruct
organisms from fragmentary fossils, and many of his reconstructions
turned out to be strikingly accurate. However, in practice, he based his
reconstructions less on rational principles than on his deep knowledge
of comparative anatomy of living organisms.

Cuvier's insistence on the functional integration of organisms led him
to classify animals into four "branches," or embranchements: Vertebrata,
Articulata (arthropods and segmented worms), Mollusca (which at the time
meant all other soft, bilaterally symmetrical invertebrates), and
Radiata (cnidarians and echinoderms). For Cuvier, these embranchements
were fundamentally different from each other and could not be connected
by any evolutionary transformation. Any similarities between organisms
were due to common functions, not to common ancestry: function
determines form, form does not determine function. Cuvier's ideas led
him to oppose the theories of his contemporaries, such as Buffon,
Lamarck, and Geoffroy St. Hilaire, who suggested that animal morphology
might be much more changeable and be affected by environmental
conditions. They pointed to vestigial, functionless structures and to
embryonic development to show that dissimilar organisms with different
functions might nonetheless share a common structural plan. Cuvier and
Geoffroy engaged in a famous public debate over their different
philosophies in 1830, at the Académie Royale des Sciences in Paris.
While Cuvier is generally said to have won the debate, the views of
Geoffroy continued to be perpetuated in scientific circles, and the
repercussions of this debate on form versus function can still be felt
in modern biology."

Given this historical context consider the speculations contained in the
following post:

http://scienceblogs.com/laelaps/2007/11/03/curioser-and-curioser/

Pay attention to comments where J Pieret says: "Edward J. Larson, in his
Evolution: The Remarkable History of a Scientific Theory makes the point
that Cuvier’s interlocking traits necessary to make an animal suitable
to its “conditions of life” (that enabled him — perhaps apocryphally —
to boast that he could identify an animal by a single bone) was a
version of “irreducible complexity” on the macro scale."

So Behe's IC has apparent ideational homology to Cuvier's correlation of
parts and his IC systems could be construed as molecular embranchements.
IC has baggage Peter cannot easily shed.

[Öö Tiib]

Clear definitions of terms are essential for meaningful discussion otherwise
it will turn into nonsense where each side attacks their own strawmen.
Behe's definition is clear enough for discussion; only "well-matched" is
dim in it.

Compare it with Dembski's:
"A system performing a given basic function is irreducibly complex
if it includes a set of well-matched, mutually interacting, nonarbitrarily
individuated parts such that each part in the set is indispensable to
maintaining the system's basic, and therefore original, function. The set of
these indispensable parts is known as the irreducible core of the system."
http://www.amazon.com/Free-Lunch-Specified-Complexity-Intelligence/dp/0742512975

That looks like solid tool of demagogue since nothing but trying
to clarify what was said here can be discussed. Most biologists
(religious or otherwise) have better things to do than to deal with
such a nonsense.

[Bill Rogers]

On Thursday, February 18, 2016 at 3:54:52 PM UTC-5, Peter Nyikos wrote:

> The original definition of IC, due to Behe, can be found in
> The TalkOrigins Archive,
> http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/behe.html
>
> By irreducibly complex I mean a single system composed of
> several well-matched, interacting parts that contribute
> to the basic function, wherein the removal of any one
> of the parts causes the system to effectively cease functioning.

Absolutely anything can be irreducibly complex, as long as you define the "single system", the "parts" and the "basic function," appropriately. So it's not a definition that, on its own, specifies anything at all, or allows one to distinguish things that are irreducibly complex from things that are not.

[Peter Nyikos]

How can I go about doing that? I've tried correcting a Wiki entry directly,
once, and the person whom I was correcting replaced what I had wrote that
did not repeat his/her original error, but made an even more stupid
mistake.

I also have to be careful of the following:

How correctios can be abused; includes triple revert rule:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Administrators%27_noticeboard/Edit_warring
http://tinyurl.com/c59qkv3


Peter Nyikos

[Rolf]

"Ray Martinez" <pyram...@yahoo.com> wrote in message

news:1eb8e5d4-4e49-4de0...@googlegroups.com...

What's wrong with this:

QUOTE

Irreducible complexity (IC) is a pseudoscientific argument that certain
biological systems cannot evolve by successive small modifications to

pre-existing functional systems through natural selection.[1] Central to the
creationist concept of intelligent design, IC is rejected by the scientific
community,[2] which regards intelligent design as pseudoscience.[3]
Irreducible complexity is one of two main arguments used by intelligent
design proponents, the other being specified complexity.[4]

Michael Behe, a professor of biochemistry at Lehigh University, first argued
that irreducible complexity made evolution purely through natural selection
of random mutations impossible.[5] However, evolutionary biologists have
demonstrated how such systems could have evolved.[6][7] There are many
examples documented through comparative genomics showing that complex
molecular systems are formed by the addition of components as revealed by
different temporal origins of their proteins.[8][9]

In the 2005 Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District trial, Behe gave
testimony on the subject of irreducible complexity. The court found that
"Professor Behe's claim for irreducible complexity has been refuted in
peer-reviewed research papers and has been rejected by the scientific
community at large."[2]


UNQUOTE

Why should we have any more respect for what you say in this urinal than you
have for anything said on Wikipedia?

Or should we be more concerned with what is being said than on where it is
said?

Are the stench of burnt flesh less agreeable to God when burnt in a lavatory
than in a synagogue?

Since you are so smart and knows better than anyone else I expect that you
can set the controversy straight and tell us what's wrong with the Wikipedia
piece on IC.

In what way does it differ from the view on IC by mainstream science?

Rolf

[jillery]

Apparently you think you're the sole arbiter of what is "correct". It
shouldn't surprise even you that Wikipedia has procedures to arbitrate
differences of opinions. Given your expressed but incorrect
assumption that you were "correcting" a definition, it's not
surprising that your "correction" was rejected.

[Kalkidas]

You're asking dyed-in-the-wool Darwinists to give a proper definition of
a concept that terrifies them? Good luck with that! :-)

[Rolf]

"Peter Nyikos" <nyi...@bellsouth.net> wrote in message
news:9eabe383-cd9e-4b02...@googlegroups.com...

> The short answer to whether t.o. will ever get the definition
> of IC (Irreducible Complexity) right is:
>
> Not as long as the incompetent opening sentence of Wikipedia on IC
> stays the way it now is:
>
> Irreducible complexity (IC) is a pseudoscientific argument
> that certain biological systems cannot evolve by successive
> small modifications to pre-existing functional systems
> through natural selection.[1]
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irreducible_complexity
>
> This "definition" makes a category mistake, similar to the following:
>
> The solar system is a pseudoscientific argument
> that people can be given predictions and advice on their
> everyday lives based on where in their orbits the various
> planets are.
>
> The original definition of IC, due to Behe, can be found in
> The TalkOrigins Archive,
> http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/behe.html

................
http://www.antievolution.org/cgi-bin/ikonboard/ikonboard.cgi?act=ST;f=14;t=1272;st=19500#entry251335

From



http://www.antievolution.org/cgi-bin/ikonboard/ikonboard.cgi?act=ST;f=14;t=1272;st=19500#entry251335



:

Quote (Tomato Addict @ Feb. 18 2016,14:42)

Cubist and/or Rossum:
As it happens I have an ID blogger on the FB line, insisting that
Behe's claims from 1996 have never been disproved. If Behe himself changed
his claim, that's all the leverage I need. Can you walk me thru to the
source where Behe says this himself?

I have the Behe and Snoke (2004) and Lych (2005) papers at hand.



Unfortunately, my reference is a link to the ISCID Encyclopedia definitions
of IC (IIRC there were three, Behe1, Behe2 and Dembski), and the ISCID site
is now dead.

There is a relevant quote from Darwin's Black Box: "Even if a system is
irreducibly complex (and thus cannot have been produced directly), however,
one can not definitely rule out the possibility of an indirect, circuitous
route. As the complexity of an interacting system increases, though, the
likelihood of such an indirect route drops precipitously." (DBB, p40)

The obvious question is to measure just how unlikely it is.

[Robert Camp]

On 2/18/16 12:50 PM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
> The short answer to whether t.o. will ever get the definition
> of IC (Irreducible Complexity) right is:

> Not as long as the incompetent opening sentence of Wikipedia on IC
> stays the way it now is:
>
> Irreducible complexity (IC) is a pseudoscientific argument
> that certain biological systems cannot evolve by successive
> small modifications to pre-existing functional systems
> through natural selection.[1]
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irreducible_complexity

There's a hint in the name of that website ('pedia') that allows those
wise enough to catch it know that the opening sentence is not offering a
definition, it's offering a summary explanation.

> This "definition" makes a category mistake, similar to the following:
>
> The solar system is a pseudoscientific argument
> that people can be given predictions and advice on their
> everyday lives based on where in their orbits the various
> planets are.

No, that's an obviously self-serving comparison. The better analogue
would be,

"Astrology is a pseudoscientific argument that people can be given

predictions and advice on their everyday lives based on where in their
orbits the various planets are."

> The original definition of IC, due to Behe, can be found in
> The TalkOrigins Archive,
> http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/behe.html

As well as on the linked Wikipedia page, despite your implications to
the contrary.

> By irreducibly complex I mean a single system composed of
> several well-matched, interacting parts that contribute
> to the basic function, wherein the removal of any one
> of the parts causes the system to effectively cease functioning.
>
> There is no argument here, just a definition. Behe does go on to
> argue for some conclusions that seem superficially like the one
> after the first line of the Wikipedia entry as transcribed here.
> But that is a separate issue.

No, it's not, your desires to defend Behe and redefine ID to suit your
purposes notwithstanding.

[Robert Camp]

Hmm, sort of like,

- (re: global warming) you're asking dyed-in-the-wool climatologists to

give a proper definition of a concept that terrifies them? Good luck
with that!

- (re: asteroid impacts) you're asking dyed-in-the-wool astronomers to

give a proper definition of a concept that terrifies them? Good luck
with that!

A little rational consideration suggests your snark is still-born.

How about this one,

- (re: evolution) you're asking dyed-in-the-wool creationists to give a

proper definition of a concept that terrifies them? Good luck with that!

Okay, I'll give you that one. Think you can guess where the salient
distinction lies? I'll give you a hint - one approach emphasizes
methodology, the other, ideology.

[Bob Casanova]

On Thu, 18 Feb 2016 13:38:18 -0800 (PST), the following
appeared in talk.origins, posted by Peter Nyikos
<nyi...@bellsouth.net>:

>On Thursday, February 18, 2016 at 4:09:52 PM UTC-5, Ray Martinez wrote:
>> On Thursday, February 18, 2016 at 12:54:52 PM UTC-8, Peter Nyikos wrote:
>
>> > The short answer to whether t.o. will ever get the definition
>> > of IC (Irreducible Complexity) right is:
>> >
>> > Not as long as the incompetent opening sentence of Wikipedia on IC
>> > stays the way it now is:
>> >
>> > Irreducible complexity (IC) is a pseudoscientific argument
>> > that certain biological systems cannot evolve by successive
>> > small modifications to pre-existing functional systems
>> > through natural selection.[1]
>> > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irreducible_complexity
>> >
>>
>> Why should anyone care about a "definition" that doesn't use a Behe quotation?
>>
>>
>> > This "definition" makes a category mistake, similar to the following:
>> >
>>
>> The only mistake (and a huge one at that) is failure to quote Behe, the claimant. Wikipedia is not a legitimate source----so what did you expect? Rather, it's a source where anyone with a computer can create "the knowledge."
>>
>> Ray
>>
>
>You bring up some good points, Ray, but the Wikipedia entry was
>specifically linked by Bob Casanova on the thread of which I wrote.
>He called it "a more balanced look":
>
>https://groups.google.com/forum/#!original/talk.origins/RJqHymfuDco/o3KnwC7jGQAJ
>Message-ID: <pofpbb56a8ikbioc0...@4ax.com>
>Subject: Re: Open questions in biology, biochemistry, and evolution
>Date: Thu, 11 Feb 2016 10:04:50 -0700
>
>It seems obvious from his claims that Bob has swallowed the opening
>sentence from Wikipedia hook, line, and sinker.

The opening sentence, given the fact that claimed IC is used
as justification for the assertion that such systems cannot
have evolved, is accurate. You just have to follow the
arguments used by the IC proponents. The sentence doesn't
exist in a vacuum, nor does Behe's original one.

>And it may ultimately be responsible for the confusion of
>others as to the meaning of the concept, including Ron O, and,
>more surprisingly, Behe partisan Otangelo Grasso. Ernest Major
>set him straight, after a fashion:
>
>[quote]
>You can't legitimately equivocate between two definitions of irreducible
>complexity. If you define irreducible complexity as meaning that a
>system loses its function if any part is removed (how do you
>non-arbitrarily define system, part and function?) then you can test
>whether a system is irreducibly complex, but you can't use it as an
>argument for design, as evolutionary processes produce such systems;
>
>if you define irreducibly complex as meaning it can't evolve, you can't
>show that a system is irreducibly complex by showing that its function
>requires all its parts.
>------------------end of quote from
>https://groups.google.com/forum/#!original/talk.origins/RJqHymfuDco/HqInHRn0GQAJ
>
>Note how the second alternative is the one the stupid Wiki entry
>uses. It's not clear from what Ernest Major wrote that he himself
>knows which is the correct definition. [I've quoted
>his entire reply.]
>
>Peter Nyikos

--

Bob C.

"The most exciting phrase to hear in science,
the one that heralds new discoveries, is not
'Eureka!' but 'That's funny...'"

- Isaac Asimov

[Bob Casanova]

On Thu, 18 Feb 2016 14:14:01 -0800 (PST), the following
appeared in talk.origins, posted by Ray Martinez
<pyram...@yahoo.com>:

> I should have known a shallow thinker like Bob Casanova was behind all of this!

....says the idiot who doesn't even know what "violence" or
"Christian" means, and has tested my IronyMeter once
again...

Go, Ray!

[Peter Nyikos]

What "same info" are you talking about here? Surely not the
same garbage that I quoted from that Wiki webpage!?

> it's
> no secret that both Behe and Dembski are wrong on all counts.

Maybe if you spelled out what those alleged "counts" are,
we might get somewhere.

Was it you who, a while back, said you find me too boring to
read? Or was it another one of those "R's", Rodjk perhaps?

> Why do you
> think you should defend them? Do you have the slightest trace of anything
> resembling credentials? You are poor on knowledge, and what you think you
> know are poor caricatures of the real thing.

That is very true where Behe is concerned, although I am not sure
whether you have a correct idea of what the poor caricatures consist of.

Dembski, I'm not sure about; he sold his intellectual birthright for
a mess of pottage at the fundie university where he worked, by saying
he saw nothing wrong with a literal interpretation of the Noachim flood
[or was it the literal seven days of creation? I forget.] But he may
have some valid points about specified complexity.

> Day by day you seem to get more
> stupid. You know you have lost, you don't have a case

I believe you are right about that, and I've called Martinez
a special kind of troll who posts outrageous things just
because he enjoys the challenge of twisting and turning to
make it look like he hasn't lost the debate.

Casanova disagrees, by the way; he thinks Martinez is just
plain illogical and ignorant, and has no idea that he has
lost when he keeps digging himself in further.

> and coming to this
> urinal here tells it all.

"this urinal"? The one Martinez is talking about is Wikipedia.

> If I could I'd be sorry for you but the way you have developed over the
> years is an antidote for compassion.

That, I agree with.

> Rolf
> > Ray
> >

Peter Nyikos

[jillery]

Most people can recognize that rockhead starts out by talking about
*Behe's definition* of IC, and ends up talking about the *concept* of
IC, which is not Behe's. Even you should be able to understand these
are two separate issues. Conflating them only obfuscates any rational
discussion about either.

[jillery]

On Fri, 19 Feb 2016 17:50:21 +0100, "Rolf" <rolf.a...@gmail.com>
wrote:

The quote you cite above is the substance of Behe's argument, so one
can only wonder why rockhead doesn't mention it. Instead, he
repetitively posts the technically correct but pointless and trivial
argument that it's not part of Behe's *definition* of IC.

[jillery]

Some people act as if Behe discovered IC, when all he did was coin the
phrase and apply it to that characteristic at the molecular level.
Your comments above illustrate well some of the earlier history of the
concept of IC.

On a side note, it's sad how life and history treated Cuvier and
Lamarck so differently. Cuvier was draped with honors, while he
ruthlessly harried Lamarck et. al. over notions of evolving species.
Lamarck died blind and destitute and was buried in a pauper's grave,
and is remembered mostly for the failed hypothesis of acquired
characteristics that bears his name.

[Peter Nyikos]

On Thursday, February 18, 2016 at 6:29:51 PM UTC-5, czeba...@gmail.com wrote:
> Why should Behe's definition be the operational one?

Because he is the one who originated the concept, and it is one that
is perfectly coherent and applicable: either a system fulfills the
definition or it does not. And it is self-explanatory, whereas the
mumbo jumbo of the Wikipedia entry is enough to produce cognitive
dissonance even if one is completely ignorant of the original
definition.

> His premises have thus far left most biologists unimpressed.

His premises have to do with individual systems, like the bacterial
flagellum or the Krebs cycle, and in the first case he
claims it fits the original definition, and in the latter case
he claims it does not. And he is correct on both counts.

A funny feature of the Talk.Origins Archive FAQ by Keith Robison on IC
is that Robison [who does NOT get the concept of IC right]
suggests that Behe ought to claim that the Krebs Cycle is IC -- and then
promptly gives an argument that it is NOT IC! Fortunately, the Archive does
link Behe's rebuttal where he points out this foolishness of Robison's.

> Proclaiming his the correct one doesn't make it so.
>
> gregwrld

Proclaiming that a derogatory claim masquerading as a definition
should be the definition doesn't make it the definition, no
matter how many scientists are conned into thinking that it
IS the correct definition.

Peter Nyikos
Professor, Department of Math. -- standard disclaimer --
U. of South Carolina at Columbia
http://www.math.sc.edu/~nyikos/

[jillery]

Instead of telling everybody what the concept of IC is not, right here
would have been a good place to say what you thought the concept of IC
actually is.

Alternately, if you believe Behe's definition of IC completely
embodies your concept of IC, right here would have been a good place
to say how your concept of IC fits in Behe's argument, that IC systems
are evidence for Design and evidence against biological evolution.

Just sayin'.

[Peter Nyikos]

On Friday, February 19, 2016 at 8:59:51 AM UTC-5, Bill Rogers wrote:
> On Thursday, February 18, 2016 at 3:54:52 PM UTC-5, Peter Nyikos wrote:
>
> > The original definition of IC, due to Behe, can be found in
> > The TalkOrigins Archive,
> > http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/behe.html
> >
> > By irreducibly complex I mean a single system composed of
> > several well-matched, interacting parts that contribute
> > to the basic function, wherein the removal of any one
> > of the parts causes the system to effectively cease functioning.
>
> Absolutely anything can be irreducibly complex, as long as you define the
> "single system", the "parts" and the "basic function," appropriately.

Is your idea of "appropriately" anything like Mark Isaak's?
See satire below [3].

> So it's not a definition that, on its own, specifies anything at all,
> or allows one to distinguish things that are irreducibly complex
> from things that are not.

Behe only discusses things on a molecular level, or the next step
up. He very modestly described the flagellum as having only three
parts -- the rotor, the motor, and the paddle [1] -- thereby badly
weakening his case for its IC nature being strongly suggestive
of design. Minnich [2] was much more impressive, testifying in Dover
of an experiment with a flagellum consisting of 35 individual
molecules, and knocking out ANY ONE of them resulted
in an inability to swim.

[1] _DArwin's Black Box_, page 72.

[2] http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/dover/day20pm2.html

[3] I can't find the original posting at the moment, but
here it is from a reply I did to Glenn. The opening statement,
set off from the margin, is by Mark Isaak:

> > "It is well known that ... almost every object in the universe is
> > simultaneously both IC and not-IC, depending on how one chooses
> > parts and functions;"
> >
> > This inspired me to come up with the following anecdote about you:
> >
> > Mark goes to the Parts Department of a Toyota dealership and asks
> > the guy behind the counter for 100 atoms of iron and 30 molecules
> > of plastic.
> >
> > In response to various marks of incomprehension from behind the
> > counter, Mark says:
> >
> > "Some portions of your engine are still made of steel, and iron
> > atoms are parts of steel pieces, so you should have plenty of
> > atoms of iron available. And your fenders are all plastic, aren't
> > they? The parts of plastic are long molecules."
> >
> > To make a long story short, Mark does not get the kind of treatment
> > from the Parts Department that he was hoping for, so he asks to see
> > the manager. After relating how the people at Parts had treated him,
> > he says,
> >
> > "I don't see why you even have a Parts Department. If you look at it
> > the right way, each new car and each used car -- excuse me, I mean
> > each pre-owned car -- that you sell is a part of your inventory. So
> > really, all your salespeople are selling parts, same as the Parts
> > Department."
> >
> > After a pause for reflection, the manager decides to humor Mark,
> > up to a point.
> >
> > "If you look at things that way, we don't even need a Service Department.
> > After all, the services they perform are only part of the services we
> > provide. The salespeople in the showroom and the lots are performing a
> > service by providing customers with cars that should fit their budgets.
> > The people in Parts are performing a service by selling people the parts
> > that are actually for sale.
> >
> > "And I'm performing you a service by listening patiently to what you
> > have to say."
======================== end of excerpt from

https://groups.google.com/forum/#!original/talk.origins/wzfWG7oISnk/UPc6NEJn3c0J
Subject: Re: Fulfilling a Prediction from Intelligent Design
Date: Wed, 10 Sep 2014 06:36:56 -0700 (PDT)
Message-ID: <21acc320-9d70-450d...@googlegroups.com>

Peter Nyikos
Professor, Dept. of Mathematics -- standard disclaimer--
U. of S. Carolina at Columbia
http://people.math.sc.edu/nyikos/

[Ray Martinez]

On Thursday, February 18, 2016 at 2:44:52 PM UTC-8, Rolf wrote:
> "Ray Martinez" <pyram...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
> news:3e1a9fda-b50a-4e7c...@googlegroups.com...
> > On Thursday, February 18, 2016 at 2:09:51 PM UTC-8, Earle Jones27 wrote:
> >> On 2016-02-18 20:50:29 +0000, Peter Nyikos said:
> >>

> >> > The short answer to whether t.o. will ever get the definition
> >> > of IC (Irreducible Complexity) right is:
> >> >
> >> > Not as long as the incompetent opening sentence of Wikipedia on IC
> >> > stays the way it now is:
> >> >
> >> > Irreducible complexity (IC) is a pseudoscientific argument
> >> > that certain biological systems cannot evolve by successive
> >> > small modifications to pre-existing functional systems
> >> > through natural selection.[1]
> >> > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irreducible_complexity
> >>

> >> *
> >> Peter: The strength of the 'Wiki' approach is that one can edit out
> >> errors.
> >>
> >> Why don't you contact the Wiki folks and inform them of their errors
> >> and suggest the words of Behe in their place?
> >>
> >> earle
> >> *
> >
> > Because the people that run the website aren't interested in accuracy or
> > objectivity, you don't know that?
> >
> > Wikipedia is a public urinal.
> >
>

> I don't know that. The same info and much more can be found everywhere, it's
> no secret that both Behe and Dembski are wrong on all counts. Why do you

> think you should defend them?

I haven't, especially Dembski. He's a straight out "Christian" Evolutionist, his writings literally riddled with contradictions and subjective thought. Here is criticism I wrote about him, take a look:

https://groups.google.com/d/msg/uncommon-descent/Y2MiU4Le4EU/t6roc26NCAAJ

> Do you have the slightest trace of anything
> resembling credentials?

I never claimed to have a college degree.

> You are poor on knowledge

One cannot expect an Atheist like yourself to say anything else about me, a Christian-anti-Evolutionist.

> and what you think you

> know are poor caricatures of the real thing. Day by day you seem to get more
> stupid. You know you have lost, you don't have a case and coming to this

> urinal here tells it all.
>

Good honest hatred.

> If I could I'd be sorry for you but the way you have developed over the
> years is an antidote for compassion.
>

> Rolf
> > Ray
> >

Ray

[Peter Nyikos]

I think you are right about the "terrified" part, Kalkidas, although
I would put it less strongly: there is a deep insecurity that is
felt by science-loving [1] atheists and "nones" who know that biblical
literalist creationism is a pathetic movement doomed to eventual
extinction, but who are unable to come up with arguments against Intelligent
Design that sound convincing to the average layman.

And so they try to convince others (and often succeed in convincing
themselves) that ID is just "creationism in a cheap suit" and feel
a necessity to publish wholesale disinformation about Behe, Meyer,
etc. in furtherance of this agenda.

[1] I think it is an admirable thing to love science; I have
loved it since the age of seven at the latest; it is the
shenanigans of some scientists that I frequently object to.

By the way, it is good to see you posting here again, Kalkidas. Since
we last encountered each other, I was somehow "drafted" into a
blog that doubles as an e-mail "list" and as a Usenet newsgroup:

http://groups.google.com/group/Online_Sadhu_Sanga

Featuring such well-known/notorious participants as Deepak Chopra,
it argues for a Vedantic view of biology, rejecting materialism
and supporting Intelligent Design.

Do you follow this "blog" regularly? I can't spare the time
for reading more than about one post per week, and one
post by myself per month. I believe the majority of my posts
to date have been on the side of mainstream science -- which
does NOT include the smear campaign against ID waged by so
many prominent mainstream scientists.

Peter Nyikos
Professor, Dept. of Mathematics

U. of S. Carolina, Columbia -- standard disclaimer--
http://people.math.sc.edu/nyikos/

[Ray Martinez]

On Thursday, February 18, 2016 at 3:49:51 PM UTC-8, youngbl...@gmail.com wrote:

> On Thursday, February 18, 2016 at 2:19:52 PM UTC-8, Ray Martinez wrote:
> > On Thursday, February 18, 2016 at 2:09:51 PM UTC-8, Earle Jones27 wrote:
> > > On 2016-02-18 20:50:29 +0000, Peter Nyikos said:
> > >

> > > > The short answer to whether t.o. will ever get the definition
> > > > of IC (Irreducible Complexity) right is:
> > > >
> > > > Not as long as the incompetent opening sentence of Wikipedia on IC
> > > > stays the way it now is:
> > > >
> > > > Irreducible complexity (IC) is a pseudoscientific argument
> > > > that certain biological systems cannot evolve by successive
> > > > small modifications to pre-existing functional systems
> > > > through natural selection.[1]
> > > > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irreducible_complexity
> > >

> > > *
> > > Peter: The strength of the 'Wiki' approach is that one can edit out errors.
> > >
> > > Why don't you contact the Wiki folks and inform them of their errors
> > > and suggest the words of Behe in their place?
> > >
> > > earle
> > > *
> >
> > Because the people that run the website aren't interested in accuracy or objectivity, you don't know that?
> >
> > Wikipedia is a public urinal.
> >

> > Ray
>
> Simply not true.

Anyone with a computer can create an article or edit an article (= public urinal). This includes entertainers and media types like Bill O'Reilly or Nancy Grace.

>
> An early study in the journal Nature said that in 2005, Wikipedia's scientific articles came close to the level of accuracy in Encyclopædia Britannica and had a similar rate of "serious errors".[2]
>

So far my description of Wikipedia as a public urinal is not harmed in the least. And a proper citation is missing; the same is equates to a hallmark of a public urinal. I bet you're a "contributor" at Wiki-urinal, isn't that true?

>
The study by Nature was disputed by Encyclopædia Britannica,[3]
>

I bet!

>
and later Nature replied to this refutation with both a formal response and a point-by-point rebuttal of Britannica's main objections.[4] Between 2008 and 2012, articles in medical and scientific fields such as pathology,[5] toxicology,[6] oncology,[7] pharmaceuticals,[8] and psychiatry[9] compared Wikipedia to professional and peer reviewed sources and found that Wikipedia's depth and coverage were of a high standard. Concerns regarding readability were raised in a study published by the American Society of Clinical Oncology[10] and a study published in Psychological Medicine (2012),[9] while a study published in the European Journal of Gastroenterology and Hepatology raised concerns about reliability.[11]
>

A string of claims supported by improper citations, closing with a negating contradiction. Once again, you're doing more for my description that one could imagine!

> Wikipedia is open to anonymous and collaborative editing, so assessments of its reliability usually include examination of how quickly false or misleading information is removed.
>

LOL! The removal claim is obviously throwaway.

>
An early study conducted by IBM researchers in 2003--two years following Wikipedia's establishment--found that "vandalism is usually repaired extremely quickly--so quickly that most users will never see its effects"[12] and concluded that Wikipedia had "surprisingly effective self-healing capabilities".[13]
>

Irrelevant information, 13 years old.

> Several incidents have also been publicized in which false information has lasted for a long time in Wikipedia. In May 2005, an anonymous editor started a controversy when he created an article about John Seigenthaler containing several false and defamatory statements.[14] The inaccurate information remained uncorrected for four months. A biographical article in French Wikipedia portrayed a "Léon-Robert de L'Astran" as an 18th-century anti-slavery ship owner, which led Ségolène Royal, a presidential candidate, to praise him. A student investigation later determined that the article was a hoax and de L'Astran had never existed.[15]
>

LOL!

Like I said: a public urinal.

>
> 75
>
> 22
> Submit
> 582
> Reddit
> Lifeslittle
>
> When you Google the question "How accurate is Wikipedia?" the highest-ranking result is, as you might expect, a Wikipedia article on the topic ("Reliability of Wikipedia").
>
> That page contains a comprehensive list of studies undertaken to assess the accuracy of the crowd-sourced encyclopedia since its founding 10 years ago. Of course, if you find yourself on this page, you might worry that the list itself may not be trustworthy. Well, the good news is that almost all those studies tell us that it probably is.
>
> In 2005, the peer-reviewed journal Nature asked scientists to compare Wikipedia's scientific articles to those in Encyclopaedia Britannica--"the most scholarly of encyclopedias," according to its own Wiki page. The comparison resulted in a tie; both references contained four serious errors among the 42 articles analyzed by experts.
>
> And last year, a study published in the Journal of Clinical Oncology found that Wikipedia had the same level of accuracy and depth in its articles about 10 types of cancer as the Physician Data Query, a professionally edited database maintained by the National Cancer Institute.
>
> It may make sense that Wikipedia would have more reliable articles about academic topics than pop culture ones, considering that the latter are more prone to rumors and hearsay. On the other hand, there's no Passion Pit entry at all in Encyclopaedia Britannica. With more than three million English-language entries, Wikipedia very often wins our preference by default.
> http://www.livescience.com/32950-how-accurate-is-wikipedia.html
>
> http://www.zmescience.com/science/study-wikipedia-25092014/
>
> http://blog.wikimedia.org/2012/08/02/seven-years-after-nature-pilot-study-compares-wikipedia-favorably-to-other-encyclopedias-in-three-languages/
>
> http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/4530930.stm


Bizarre; incoherent; but I'm sure a few of your Evolutionist brothers here at Talk.Origins will defend what you say regardless.

Ray (Paleyan Creationist)

[August Rode]

Ray, can you give me an example of any modern source which you find trustworthy?

[Bill Rogers]

Name any object, and one can generate a basic function and a way of dividing the object into "well-matched parts" such that removal of any one of the parts will destroy the function. That's the weakness of Behe's definition. Anything at all can be irreducibly complex.

[Kalkidas]

It's amazing the lengths some people go to to "prove" that there is no
such thing as irreducible complexity. Kenneth Miller in particular
fancies himself an expert at this. But he misunderstands IC and thinks
that it applies to substance rather than function. He takes a mousetrap,
removes the wooden base, nails the rest of the contraption to the floor,
and claims that he has just caused the mousetrap to function as a
mousetrap without all its parts, failing to realize that it still has
all its parts, only the floor is now functioning as the base.

> By the way, it is good to see you posting here again, Kalkidas. Since
> we last encountered each other, I was somehow "drafted" into a
> blog that doubles as an e-mail "list" and as a Usenet newsgroup:
>
> http://groups.google.com/group/Online_Sadhu_Sanga
>
> Featuring such well-known/notorious participants as Deepak Chopra,
> it argues for a Vedantic view of biology, rejecting materialism
> and supporting Intelligent Design.
>
> Do you follow this "blog" regularly? I can't spare the time
> for reading more than about one post per week, and one
> post by myself per month. I believe the majority of my posts
> to date have been on the side of mainstream science -- which
> does NOT include the smear campaign against ID waged by so
> many prominent mainstream scientists.

I was unaware of that group, but I have checked it out. Thanks for the info.

[jillery]

On Fri, 19 Feb 2016 14:19:53 -0700, Kalkidas <e...@joes.pub> wrote:

>It's amazing the lengths some people go to to "prove" that there is no
>such thing as irreducible complexity. Kenneth Miller in particular
>fancies himself an expert at this. But he misunderstands IC and thinks
>that it applies to substance rather than function. He takes a mousetrap,
>removes the wooden base, nails the rest of the contraption to the floor,
>and claims that he has just caused the mousetrap to function as a
>mousetrap without all its parts, failing to realize that it still has
>all its parts, only the floor is now functioning as the base.

<http://udel.edu/~mcdonald/mousetrap.html>

Miller has also shown that separate parts can have separate function,
and so need not evolve all at once and with the same function.

[Ray Martinez]

http://darwin-online.org.uk/

Ray

[August Rode]

And why is that one trustworthy where Wikipedia is not?

[*Hemidactylus*]

Yeah. Lamarck was an important figure regardless of how he is regarded.
Thanks for taking me seriously.

[jillery]

On Fri, 19 Feb 2016 19:14:50 -0500, *Hemidactylus*

There are some times when your apparent exuberance makes it hard to
tell whether you're serious. Which usually ain't a bad thing, just
sayin'. But unless you have refined your style, the above was too
well-presented to be one of those times.

[*Hemidactylus*]

I have become more serious of late. All others except you are officially
on notice. Rockhead especially, but Harshman and your pal Norman should
pay attention. I don't play.

[Peter Nyikos]

On Friday, February 19, 2016 at 4:24:48 PM UTC-5, Kalkidas wrote:

> It's amazing the lengths some people go to to "prove" that there is no
> such thing as irreducible complexity. Kenneth Miller in particular
> fancies himself an expert at this. But he misunderstands IC and thinks
> that it applies to substance rather than function. He takes a mousetrap,
> removes the wooden base, nails the rest of the contraption to the floor,
> and claims that he has just caused the mousetrap to function as a
> mousetrap without all its parts, failing to realize that it still has
> all its parts, only the floor is now functioning as the base.

Remarkably enough, Keith Robison also gave the same example, and
Behe gave the same rebuttal which you are giving.

I say "remarkably" because this is the second example of which
I know of these two giving the same argument and neither crediting
the other with having also done it.

The other was a brilliant piece of insight into how the clotting
cascade could lengthen almost indefinitely in small, "Darwinian"
steps. It is simple once one sees it, but then so was Kekule's brilliant
insight into the structure of the benzene ring, which came to him
in a dream where a snake took its own tail into its mouth.

If Robison got that from Miller, I can see why Robison was so
modest when I praised him for his insight. [This was way back
in 1996; I have no idea where Robison is now.]

But this other thing about the mousetrap base being the floor -- this is
going from the sublime to the ridiculous, and it makes me suspicious
that both things were borrowed from one person to the other without
credit. It falls way short of plagiarism, but it is still tacky.

By the way, Kalkidas: we encounter each other so seldom, you may
not be aware that I try to leave the weekends completely free of
posting to Usenet. But I'll be back here on Monday, of that you
may be sure!

Peter Nyikos
Professor, Department of Math. -- standard disclaimer --

U. of S. Carolina at Columbia

http://www.math.sc.edu/~nyikos/

[Peter Nyikos]

It is not accurate: it is a caricature. I said "superficially like"
in the part Ray snipped, but there are important differences that
anyone sincerely interested in scientific methodology can pick up.

Here is what Ray didn't care enough about:

______________reposted from OP___________________________

The original definition of IC, due to Behe, can be found in
The TalkOrigins Archive,
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/behe.html

By irreducibly complex I mean a single system composed of
several well-matched, interacting parts that contribute
to the basic function, wherein the removal of any one
of the parts causes the system to effectively cease functioning.

There is no argument here, just a definition. Behe does go on to
argue for some conclusions that seem superficially like the one
after the first line of the Wikipedia entry as transcribed here.
But that is a separate issue.

____________________________________end of repost___________

> You just have to follow the
> arguments used by the IC proponents.

Not Behe's. Jillery posted something that shows that, then wondered
why I hadn't quoted it. The answer is simple: lack of time. I've
been busy on three threads today, and almost every post I've done
has been a rush job. I've also had a lot of things to do today
outside of talk.origins.

> The sentence doesn't
> exist in a vacuum, nor does Behe's original one.

++++++++++++++++++++++++ jillery posting style on

The only vacuum is between your ears.

++++++++++++++++++++++++ jillery posting style off

[Well, you asked for it by ignoring what I wrote below.]

> >And it may ultimately be responsible for the confusion of
> >others as to the meaning of the concept, including Ron O, and,
> >more surprisingly, Behe partisan Otangelo Grasso. Ernest Major
> >set him straight, after a fashion:
> >
> >[quote]
> >You can't legitimately equivocate between two definitions of irreducible
> >complexity. If you define irreducible complexity as meaning that a
> >system loses its function if any part is removed (how do you
> >non-arbitrarily define system, part and function?) then you can test
> >whether a system is irreducibly complex, but you can't use it as an
> >argument for design, as evolutionary processes produce such systems;
> >
> >if you define irreducibly complex as meaning it can't evolve, you can't
> >show that a system is irreducibly complex by showing that its function
> >requires all its parts.
> >------------------end of quote from
> >https://groups.google.com/forum/#!original/talk.origins/RJqHymfuDco/HqInHRn0GQAJ
> >
> >Note how the second alternative is the one the stupid Wiki entry
> >uses. It's not clear from what Ernest Major wrote that he himself
> >knows which is the correct definition. [I've quoted
> >his entire reply.]
> >
> >Peter Nyikos
> --
>
> Bob C.

Did you actually type that "Bob C." or is it part of your whole .sig?

Peter Nyikos
Professor, Department of Math. -- standard disclaimer --
U. of S. Carolina at Columbia
http://www.math.sc.edu/~nyikos/

PS I snipped [the rest of ?] your .sig, which never seems to vary.

[kiwi.j...@gmail.com]

.. one pops one's head in, decades later, one pops in, and Nyikos is still squirting the same squink drivel.

I never thought I'd miss Ted.

[jillery]

On Fri, 19 Feb 2016 19:40:45 -0800 (PST), Peter Nyikos
<nyi...@bellsouth.net> wrote:

>Not Behe's. Jillery posted something that shows that, then wondered
>why I hadn't quoted it. The answer is simple: lack of time. I've
>been busy on three threads today, and almost every post I've done
>has been a rush job. I've also had a lot of things to do today
>outside of talk.origins.

I've pointed this out before, but obviously it's need repeating. If
you spent less time posting so much compulsive gratuitous noise, you
would have more time to answer in a substantive way. Just sayin'.

[kiwi.j...@gmail.com]

Will talk.origins ever get the definition of "Irreducible Complexity" right? Well, let's see, how about:
<http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/behe.html>
<http://www.talkdesign.org/faqs/icdmyst/ICDmyst.html>

Yep, that quotes Behe. (Gosh, is Nykios going to say that _Behe_ got his definition of IC wrong?) Yep, it shows why Behe is wrong. End of story.

Nyikos has known of this for 19 years. he couldn't address it then, and he can't address it now. All he can do is obfuscate.

He'll bite your legs off!

[*Hemidactylus*]

Holy crap. There's only one person who I recall from the golden oldies
who would sign in as kiwi. I recall you and Fouts giving some some guy
named Stew (or Stu?) a hard time. And Matt S. And of course Nyikos.

Welcome back old timer. Not sure if you know that Harter passed away
several years back :-(

Karl hasn't posted in years. Jabbers neither (thank goodness). Some of
us oldies still around, though maybe some under new nyms. Still part of
"hershey" collective?

[Ernest Major]

Among botanists Lamarck is remembered for the Encyclopedie Methodique.
Botanique. People in other fields may well remember him for his
contributions to their fields.

--
alias Ernest Major

[Burkhard]

and supported by hard, empirical data, that won't go away regardless how
many tantrums you throw. Every type pf publications can have, and often
do have, errors. The question is a) how many and b) how fast they get
corrected. All empirical studies show that wikipedia performs at the
upper end.

[jillery]

Kiwis are known for laying large eggs. Just sayin'.

[Mark Isaak]

On 2/18/16 12:50 PM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
> The short answer to whether t.o. will ever get the definition
> of IC (Irreducible Complexity) right is:
>
> Not as long as the incompetent opening sentence of Wikipedia on IC
> stays the way it now is:
>
> Irreducible complexity (IC) is a pseudoscientific argument
> that certain biological systems cannot evolve by successive
> small modifications to pre-existing functional systems
> through natural selection.[1]
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irreducible_complexity
>

> This "definition" makes a category mistake, similar to the following:
>

> The solar system is a pseudoscientific argument
> that people can be given predictions and advice on their
> everyday lives based on where in their orbits the various
> planets are.
>

> The original definition of IC, due to Behe, can be found in
> The TalkOrigins Archive,
> http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/behe.html
>
> By irreducibly complex I mean a single system composed of
> several well-matched, interacting parts that contribute
> to the basic function, wherein the removal of any one
> of the parts causes the system to effectively cease functioning.
>
> There is no argument here, just a definition. Behe does go on to
> argue for some conclusions that seem superficially like the one
> after the first line of the Wikipedia entry as transcribed here.
> But that is a separate issue.

Is there anywhere in the universe where the term "irreducible
complexity" does not come associated with the argument?

If not (and I know of none), then your complaint is a trivial quibble.

--
Mark Isaak eciton (at) curioustaxonomy (dot) net
"The evil that is in the world always comes of ignorance, and good
intentions may do as much harm as malevolence, if they lack
understanding." - Albert Camus, _The Plague_

[Mark Isaak]

On 2/19/16 6:50 AM, Rolf wrote:
> What's wrong with this:
>
> QUOTE

> Irreducible complexity (IC) is a pseudoscientific argument that certain
> biological systems cannot evolve by successive small modifications to

> pre-existing functional systems through natural selection.[1] Central to the
> creationist concept of intelligent design, IC is rejected by the scientific
> community,[2] which regards intelligent design as pseudoscience.[3]
> Irreducible complexity is one of two main arguments used by intelligent
> design proponents, the other being specified complexity.[4]
>
> Michael Behe, a professor of biochemistry at Lehigh University, first argued
> that irreducible complexity made evolution purely through natural selection
> of random mutations impossible.[5]

In that line, "impossible" should be replaced with "effectively
impossible." Behe does admit, in one place, a wildly improbable chance
of IC coming together.

> However, evolutionary biologists have
> demonstrated how such systems could have evolved.[6][7] There are many
> examples documented through comparative genomics showing that complex
> molecular systems are formed by the addition of components as revealed by
> different temporal origins of their proteins.[8][9]
>
> In the 2005 Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District trial, Behe gave
> testimony on the subject of irreducible complexity. The court found that
> "Professor Behe's claim for irreducible complexity has been refuted in
> peer-reviewed research papers and has been rejected by the scientific
> community at large."[2]
>
> UNQUOTE

The rest looks good.

[Paul J Gans]

kiwi.j...@gmail.com wrote:
>.. one pops one's head in, decades later, one pops in, and Nyikos is still squirting the same squink drivel.

>I never thought I'd miss Ted.

Ted was fun.

--
--- Paul J. Gans

[RonO]

On 2/18/2016 4:09 PM, Earle Jones27 wrote:
> On 2016-02-18 20:50:29 +0000, Peter Nyikos said:
>

>> The short answer to whether t.o. will ever get the definition
>> of IC (Irreducible Complexity) right is:
>>
>> Not as long as the incompetent opening sentence of Wikipedia on IC
>> stays the way it now is:
>>

>> Irreducible complexity (IC) is a pseudoscientific argument
>> that certain biological systems cannot evolve by successive
>> small modifications to pre-existing functional systems
>> through natural selection.[1]

>> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irreducible_complexity
>
> *
> Peter: The strength of the 'Wiki' approach is that one can edit out
> errors.
>
> Why don't you contact the Wiki folks and inform them of their errors and
> suggest the words of Behe in their place?
>
> earle
> *
>

Likely no editing would be needed. Both Minnich and Behe defended that
definition in Dover by putting up their only "scientific" test of what
they thought IC was. The test simply was to check to see if the
flagellum could evolve naturally again. Both Minnich and Behe put up
the same "scientific" test. Everyone knows that it is a bogus test
because no one knows how to start such an experiment at this time (what
were the conditions under which the flagellum evolved and what genes
were already present?). Just because the experiment is stupid and bogus
does not mean that Minnich and Behe were not testing for exactly what
they wanted to test for.

No other scientific tests were put up to verify that IC existed in nature.

Ask any IDiot what IC would be used for if they could demonstrate that
it existed in nature. Even Behe claims that it would be used to
demonstrate that the system could not have evolved naturally, therefore,
his IDiot notion that some outside designer was needed to tweek the IC
system is supported.

Ron Okimoto

[Bob Casanova]

On Sat, 20 Feb 2016 21:28:13 +0000 (UTC), the following
appeared in talk.origins, posted by Paul J Gans
<gan...@panix.com>:

>kiwi.j...@gmail.com wrote:
>>.. one pops one's head in, decades later, one pops in, and Nyikos is still squirting the same squink drivel.
>
>>I never thought I'd miss Ted.
>
>Ted was fun.

Yep. I always liked visualizing "flying feral chickens". And
unlike many others, Ted had a sense of humor.
--

Bob C.

"The most exciting phrase to hear in science,
the one that heralds new discoveries, is not
'Eureka!' but 'That's funny...'"

- Isaac Asimov

[riskys...@gmail.com]

On Friday, February 19, 2016 at 4:24:48 PM UTC-5, Kalkidas wrote:

> It's amazing the lengths some people go to to "prove" that there is no
> such thing as irreducible complexity.

On the contrary, I have never seen anyone deny the existence of irreducible complexity; only the implication that its existence is a problem for a standard biology that is explicitly expected to produce irreducible complexity.

Irreducible complexity is perfectly fine evidence against an evolutionary trajectory that no one supports - each current "component" of a system added one at a time. But how it tells us that any current structure or function could not have been arrived at by any conventional means is beyond me.

I suspect that the past and current inventory of life on earth has scarcely made a dent in catalog of possible creature types that "life as we know it" could support. And a large part of the reason for that is that some "possible" creatures have not (yet) been within genetic "reach". Life has meandered through an unimaginably vast phase space, reaching only the tiniest portion of it; much as all the card players in history of the world have only produced the smallest fraction of possible orderings of the deck.

It's not that there is no sense at all in the idea that you can't quickly get from A to B. But to say that some extant "B" is unreachable in the absence of any clear knowledge of "A" (not to mention the steps in between) makes no sense to me. This is especially so given the actual suspected scenario: parts modified so as to produce in incipient function - likely very inefficiently - then further modified, added to, and discarded over and over to refine the function. That the result of this process might produce a system that is sensitive to the removal of any of its parts seems likely and unremarkable to me.

[Ray Martinez]

Because the information was created by scholars and it cannot be edited by anyone with a computer. Wikipedia, on the other hand, is a public urinal; anyone with a computer can play scholar and create an article or edit an article.

Ray

[Ray Martinez]

Just like I said.....LOL!

It goes without saying: a site where anyone with a computer can create or edit the information is accurately described as a public urinal. Persons looking for reliable information never think of consulting a public urinal.

Ray

[August Rode]

Ah. Just like the papers referenced in the "References" section of any
Wikipedia page. So you trust those, right?

Is this all it takes to gain your trust, Ray? The information has to be
created by scholars and it can't be edited by just anyone? Is that all
there is?

> Wikipedia, on the other hand, is a public urinal; anyone with a computer can play scholar and create an article or edit an article.

That isn't entirely untrue, I'll grant. However, that isn't generally
true of the sources quoted in the 'References' sections. Everything in
Wikipedia is supposed to be sourced in such a way (although it falls
short in practice) and one can read the original sources to ensure that
the Wikipedia article represents them fairly.

The value of Wikipedia isn't in its articles; it's in the collection of
sources that the articles reference.

[Burkhard]

>>>> An early study in the journal Nature said that in 2005, Wikipedia's scientific articles came close to the level of accuracy in Encyclopćdia Britannica and had a similar rate of "serious errors".[2]

>>>>
>>>
>>> So far my description of Wikipedia as a public urinal is not harmed in the least. And a proper citation is missing; the same is equates to a hallmark of a public urinal. I bet you're a "contributor" at Wiki-urinal, isn't that true?
>>>
>>>>

>>> The study by Nature was disputed by Encyclopćdia Britannica,[3]

>>>>
>>>
>>> I bet!
>>>
>>>>
>>> and later Nature replied to this refutation with both a formal response and a point-by-point rebuttal of Britannica's main objections.[4] Between 2008 and 2012, articles in medical and scientific fields such as pathology,[5] toxicology,[6] oncology,[7] pharmaceuticals,[8] and psychiatry[9] compared Wikipedia to professional and peer reviewed sources and found that Wikipedia's depth and coverage were of a high standard. Concerns regarding readability were raised in a study published by the American Society of Clinical Oncology[10] and a study published in Psychological Medicine (2012),[9] while a study published in the European Journal of Gastroenterology and Hepatology raised concerns about reliability.[11]
>>>>
>>>
>>> A string of claims supported by improper citations, closing with a negating contradiction. Once again, you're doing more for my description that one could imagine!
>>>
>>>> Wikipedia is open to anonymous and collaborative editing, so assessments of its reliability usually include examination of how quickly false or misleading information is removed.
>>>>
>>>
>>> LOL! The removal claim is obviously throwaway.
>>>
>>>>
>>> An early study conducted by IBM researchers in 2003--two years following Wikipedia's establishment--found that "vandalism is usually repaired extremely quickly--so quickly that most users will never see its effects"[12] and concluded that Wikipedia had "surprisingly effective self-healing capabilities".[13]
>>>>
>>>
>>> Irrelevant information, 13 years old.
>>>

>>>> Several incidents have also been publicized in which false information has lasted for a long time in Wikipedia. In May 2005, an anonymous editor started a controversy when he created an article about John Seigenthaler containing several false and defamatory statements.[14] The inaccurate information remained uncorrected for four months. A biographical article in French Wikipedia portrayed a "Léon-Robert de L'Astran" as an 18th-century anti-slavery ship owner, which led Ségolčne Royal, a presidential candidate, to praise him. A student investigation later determined that the article was a hoax and de L'Astran had never existed.[15]

only by a potty mouth whose mother never taught him how to talk in
polite society

> Persons looking for reliable information never think of consulting a public urinal.

And persons look for reliable information on wikipedia, and very often
find it - indeed, more often than in many traditional encyclopedias.
Which sort of proves you wrong - again.
>
> Ray
>
>

[Dana Tweedy]

Of course, for Ray, the information also has to fit with Ray's
prejudices, and preconceived notions.

>
>> Wikipedia, on the other hand, is a public urinal; anyone with a
>> computer can play scholar and create an article or edit an article.
>
> That isn't entirely untrue, I'll grant. However, that isn't generally
> true of the sources quoted in the 'References' sections. Everything in
> Wikipedia is supposed to be sourced in such a way (although it falls
> short in practice) and one can read the original sources to ensure that
> the Wikipedia article represents them fairly.
>
> The value of Wikipedia isn't in its articles; it's in the collection of
> sources that the articles reference.

What Ray fails to note is that while "anyone" can edit the information,
among those "anyones" there are scholars and experts who actually know
something about the topic. They can edit the information and make
corrections too. Ray seems to think that the only people who make edits
are those who would provide misinformation. He fails to consider that
people who are educated, and knowledgeable also make edits to Wikipedia.
The references help confirm that the information is reasonable and
correct.

Of course, the real reason Ray hates Wikipedia is that it shows that
he's wrong on every topic he expresses an opinion.


DJT

[Dana Tweedy]

>>>>> Encyclopædia Britannica and had a similar rate of "serious errors".[2]

>>>>>
>>>>
>>>> So far my description of Wikipedia as a public urinal is not harmed
>>>> in the least. And a proper citation is missing; the same is equates
>>>> to a hallmark of a public urinal. I bet you're a "contributor" at
>>>> Wiki-urinal, isn't that true?
>>>>
>>>>>

>>>> The study by Nature was disputed by Encyclopædia Britannica,[3]

>>>>> anti-slavery ship owner, which led Ségolène Royal, a presidential

If Wikipedia is a "urinal" then Ray's "book" would be considered the
lowest level of a Port-a-Potty on Sunday night at an outdoor Rock
concert weekend, after a Noro virus outbreak has occurred.


DJT

[kiwi.j...@gmail.com]

On Saturday, February 20, 2016 at 1:29:45 PM UTC-8, Paul J Gans wrote:

> >I never thought I'd miss Ted.
>
> Ted was fun.

hi Paul,

Ted was sad. Regular t.0'ers met him; he genuinely beleived the Neanderthals-riding-pterosaurs-or-maybe-teratorns-down-flux-tues-from-Saturn. As I recall the description of the meeting, he seemed like caring guy --the kind who'd jump into a river by a weir to rescue a girl -- in the park where they met. Deeply, deeply confused, but a good guy.

It's been a decade or two-and-a-bit, so maybe my recollection is off.

PS: you *DID* tell me how to do my job; but at the time and place I was in, and you were in, you wouldn't realize that that *was* a job. Nevertheles, I drove by billboards on US-101 which related to the disagreement we had. That's a fact.
Its' very germane to people I knew personally at that time: Larry, Sergey, Dave Filo. I'm sure no-one here would tell Rosalind Franklin how to do X-ray crystalloraph. And to this day, _anyone_ can crap on computer scientists.
(see: jillery painting NNTP-server-developers as incompetents who couldn't manage an 8- bit-clean data path). There's even a name for it in the BSD world: "bike-shed". (as in, almost no-one will critique how to build a nuclear reactor; but anyone can comment on how to build a bike-shed).

PPS: Do you still have an academic email? You must be emeritus by now!

PPS: If you have it, I'll tell you a story about a so-RP-British speaker making absolutely baseless statements about computer viruses in the local grad-student pub :).

PPPS: I'm _still_ embarrased about my "second moment" boo-boo, and .. boats with outboard motors (amazon?) I forget the context). I was talking about bow-thrusters on container ships, and Cook-Channenl ferries. Do you recall?

PPPPS: Yes, I _do_ have that level of recall. [[How else do you think I quoted, uh, more or less. Ch. 44 of the Feynamn lectures, to a Creationist? :) ]]

cheers,
--jonathan (yes, "the siphons do all the work" jonathan)

[kiwi.j...@gmail.com]

> Kiwis are known for laying large eggs. Just sayin'.

Oooh, an ad-hominem! Sur-Prise, Sur-Prise, Sur-Prise!

Why don't you answer the technical points I've repeatedly raised? (Note that I'm putting them on the same paragraph, in case you do a Huikos "edit-for-clarity".) Those points include: RFC-3977, the fact that NNTP runs over TCP and is _by definition_ 8- bit-clean.

And, again, here is your factually-false steatement, which is not just false, but insults damn-near everyone who worked on Usenet since 1980:

-> Apparently some news servers are still >limited to 7-bit ASCII.

Name them, jillery. Name them. Name then, here and now. Or be damned as a _liar_. Name them.

I'm waiting. You can give me IPv4-addresses if you have to. Go on, tell me.
Be ward that once in a while I would actually 'read news" using telnt, to test software. yes, dearest jillery, and test both VT220 emuilators and xrn, by typing characters with French accents, on an LK-201.

But I forgot, facts and details apparently mean nothing to you. Exactly like most Creationists here .Does that surprise you?

I assume that you know, since this is talk.origins, even proven liars can continue to post here. But your credibility will be zero.

[jillery]

On Sun, 21 Feb 2016 23:36:14 -0800 (PST), kiwi.j...@gmail.com
wrote:

>> Kiwis are known for laying large eggs. Just sayin'.
>
>Oooh, an ad-hominem! Sur-Prise, Sur-Prise, Sur-Prise!

Ad-hominems "R" kiwi.

>Why don't you answer the technical points I've repeatedly raised? (Note that I'm putting them on the same paragraph, in case you do a Huikos "edit-for-clarity".) Those points include: RFC-3977, the fact that NNTP runs over TCP and is _by definition_ 8- bit-clean.

Why don't you answer the technical points I raised instead of deleting
my text?

>And, again, here is your factually-false steatement, which is not just false, but insults damn-near everyone who worked on Usenet since 1980:

Since you can't possibly know the feelings of "damn-near everyone who
worked on Usenet since 1980", by your own personal definition of a
lie, you just lied.

>-> Apparently some news servers are still >limited to 7-bit ASCII.
>
>Name them, jillery. Name them. Name then, here and now. Or be damned as a _liar_. Name them.

Since the issue I was discussing isn't dependent on the veracity of
the statement you're so obsessed with, I withdraw it. Feel better
now?

>I'm waiting. You can give me IPv4-addresses if you have to. Go on, tell me.
>Be ward that once in a while I would actually 'read news" using telnt, to test software. yes, dearest jillery, and test both VT220 emuilators and xrn, by typing characters with French accents, on an LK-201.
>
>But I forgot, facts and details apparently mean nothing to you. Exactly like most Creationists here .Does that surprise you?
>
>I assume that you know, since this is talk.origins, even proven liars can continue to post here. But your credibility will be zero.

Liars and trolls "R" kiwi.

[Rolf]

"August Rode" <aug....@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:nadjrd$hes$1...@dont-email.me...

An insight and understanding like that are beyond the capability of people
like you-know-who.
I have tried to no avail telling you-know-who that on a number of occasions.

But labelling Wikipedia a "public urinal" is of course a handy argument to
avoid having to be serious and show some common sense and intelligence
behind your writings.
I seriously think whatever Ray's got to say these days are well past their
'best before date' - if they ever were in any way resembling 'better' than
¤#%#¤% with respect to 'value'.

Ray defending IC? The shortest joke in the world.

[Jonathan Stone]

On Monday, February 22, 2016 at 12:59:40 AM UTC-8, jillery wrote:

> On Sun, 21 Feb 2016 23:36:14 -0800 (PST), jonathan wrote:

> >-> Apparently some news servers are still >limited to 7-bit ASCII.
> >
> >Name them, jillery. Name them. Name then, here and now. Or be damned as a _liar_. Name them.

[[ not even an atempt to state _any_ Usenet communication is limited to 7-bit SCII)


Name them. Name the NNTP servers that are limited to "7-b9it ASCII".

Name them, or be damned as a liar.
And if you wqnt "relevance" for my former posts: those of us who can read for comprehension, are still waiting for a well-formed argument.

[Jonathan Stone]

]... ]

Oh, that's *Sweeet*. When someone exposes that you're lying, change the Subject: line to call then a "troll".

[August Rode]

Surely. It's an ad hominem argument. Ray's mastered those. It's far
easier for him to pretend to himself what Wikipedia has no value
whatsoever than to consider that it has significant value in spite of
the relatively few errors it contains.

[August Rode]

Perhaps that's a projection on his part. He's largely uneducated so
perhaps he considers that Wikipedia is edited by people just like him.

> He fails to consider that
> people who are educated, and knowledgeable also make edits to Wikipedia.
> The references help confirm that the information is reasonable and
> correct.
>
> Of course, the real reason Ray hates Wikipedia is that it shows that
> he's wrong on every topic he expresses an opinion.

That's obvious to everyone but Ray, I suspect. Remember that he
considers his own knowledge to be infallible and that if Wikipedia says
something different, it must therefore be Wikipedia that's wrong.

[Jonathan Stone]

On Monday, February 22, 2016 at 12:59:40 AM UTC-8, jillery wrote:

> On Sun, 21 Feb 2016 23:36:14 -0800 (PST), kiwi.j...@gmail.com
> wrote:
>

> Why don't you answer the technical points I raised instead of deleting
> my text?

I forgot to say: You don;'t _have_ any "technical points.
You lie. End of story.

Not as pertains to Usenet: if dim memory serves, even UUCP f-protocol was 8-bit-clean; but grossly inefficent, since it required byte-stuffing of any octess whih the 8th bit set. And, AS I ALREADY F*CKING SAID, ACSnet hanlded X.25 "stealing" the 8th but by doing, uh... it's been 30 years.. Lempel-Zif like encoding, but avoiding using the top bit.

And, yes, I *know* the poeple who worked on ACSnet (hello kre, mea culpa).


And yes, jillery, your asshat assertions are (a) demonstrably false, (b) given the constraints in place at the time, clearly imply incompetence on the part of the people working in the field, and therefore (c) are offensive to said people. And yes, while somewhat tangential - I left and did a doctorate at Stanford, in the same area -- I *AM* close enough to the field to say, in no 8ncertain terms:

* your claims are factually inmcorect
* your claims are offensive to the people working in the relevant field

These are facts. They are not s8bject to debate. Given that t.o is what t.o is, you can continue making the claims you have made.

I won't pretend to be value-neutral here. Bu8 I do have a long, _long- history here, going back to net.origins.

I really, realy, really suggest that you read RFC-3977. Just the parts that cite "UTF-8" And then do a careful; reading of the Wikipedia entry on :Unicode", specificall7 the "History" section.

Once you've done that, I will give you citations to both RFCs and acccepted-best-practice (as in, Usenix papers) which pooit to the informal-but-widespread acceptance of "Just send msg-boides as 8 bit clean".

However, my cynical side says you dont' undertand any of the above.
After all, you continue to demonstrate *TOTAL IGNORANCE* of UTF-16 vs UTF-8.

as far as I can eee, and I did try to parse the example whici

(a) was not shown, at all the message I replied to and
(b) PROVES, FLAT OUT that you don't understand the distction between UTF-16 and UTF-8;

whic, ipso facto, proves my claim that YOU DONT'T KNOW WHAT YOU ARE TALKING BOUT.

Sadl7, that's not an ad-hominem It's not an insult. it's a FACT>

[jillery]

On Mon, 22 Feb 2016 04:02:35 -0800 (PST), Jonathan Stone
<kiwi.j...@gmail.com> wrote...


... nothing relevant.

[jillery]

On Mon, 22 Feb 2016 02:36:51 -0800 (PST), Jonathan Stone
<kiwi.j...@gmail.com> wrote:

>On Monday, February 22, 2016 at 12:59:40 AM UTC-8, jillery wrote:
>
>> On Sun, 21 Feb 2016 23:36:14 -0800 (PST), jonathan wrote:
>
>> >-> Apparently some news servers are still >limited to 7-bit ASCII.
>> >
>> >Name them, jillery. Name them. Name then, here and now. Or be damned as a _liar_. Name them.
>
>[[ not even an atempt to state _any_ Usenet communication is limited to 7-bit SCII)

How clever of you to delete my text and substitute your self-serving
noise above. According to your personal definition of a lie, you just
lied.

<snip self-serving noise below>

[Peter Nyikos]

On Friday, February 19, 2016 at 11:34:47 PM UTC-5, Jonathan Stone wrote:
> .. one pops one's head in, decades later, one pops in, and Nyikos is still squirting the same squink drivel.
>

> I never thought I'd miss Ted.

Howdy, Jonathan.

Your "...still squirting..." makes me wonder: do you know that I went
on a posting break from talk.origins from mid-2001 to December 2010?
Yep, almost a decade.

And when I came back, I told everyone I was letting bygones
be bygones, except for ONE person who had tried to pin the
unforgivable sin of "hater of gays" on me way back then.
Him, I boycotted for half a year until I was sure he had
cleaned up his act, and then I gave him a clean bill of health
which I've never rescinded and never regretted.

[As I explained later, I figure there ought to be a kind of
"statute of limitations" on misbehavior, no more than seven years,
as long as the person manifests some improvement over the dirty
tactics of yore.]

Unfortunately, no one else except "el cid," who died within a month
of my return, and two others, seemed to care about that. I patiently
bore the slings and arrows of each other old-timer in turn, especially
John Harshman, but one by one they showed that they were just the
sort to take a mile when you give them an inch.

Anyway, the upshot of all this, where you are concerned, is that
I will be patient with your insults as long as they seem to be
sincere, starting now. [I've seen some insincere-looking insults
from you, like the one above, but since you may not have known about my
private, personal "statute of limitations" until now, I won't take
offense at those.]

Peter Nyikos

[Peter Nyikos]

On Sunday, February 21, 2016 at 5:49:42 PM UTC-5, riskys...@gmail.com wrote:
> On Friday, February 19, 2016 at 4:24:48 PM UTC-5, Kalkidas wrote:
>
> > It's amazing the lengths some people go to to "prove" that there is no
> > such thing as irreducible complexity.
>
> On the contrary, I have never seen anyone deny the existence of irreducible
> complexity;

Meet Bob Casanova:

Would those be slogans like "irreducible complexity" and
"intelligent design", for which no actual evidence has been
provided and which have been firmly rebutted?

https://groups.google.com/forum/#!original/talk.origins/RJqHymfuDco/o3KnwC7jGQAJ
Message-ID: <pofpbb56a8ikbioc0...@4ax.com>
Subject: Re: Open questions in biology, biochemistry, and evolution
Date: Thu, 11 Feb 2016 10:04:50 -0700

Casanova seems to think that the existence of irreducible
complexity has been firmly refuted; that could mean a
number of things. Chances are, it means that he hasn't got the
definition of Irreducible Complexity (IC) disentangled from the
concept of Intelligent Design. This is a malaise that seems to infect
one internet forum after another.

>only the implication that its existence is a problem for a standard biology
> that is explicitly expected to produce irreducible complexity.

"explicitly expected" is a mistake innumerable people make
by looking at out-of-context quotes by Muller almost a
century ago. Others, who are familiar with the context,
simply don't know the definition of IC, even if they do
not conflate it with that of ID, but blindly take the word
of those who say that Muller's concept was the same as Behe's.
It isn't.

> Irreducible complexity is perfectly fine evidence against an
> evolutionary trajectory that no one supports - each current
> "component" of a system added one at a time.

Surprise! There is plenty of evidence that the majority
of factors in the two cascades to which Behe devotes
individual chapters DID evolve with one component added
at a time! But then having each component gradually modified
until each and every component became indispensible.

Ironically, the process by which this is believed to have
happened DID happen in "small, Darwinian steps." It is
only the few components of the cascades that are not
serine proteases that pose a real problem for evolutionary
biology. [Well, OK, one serine protease to rule them all,
and the other factors.]

> But how it tells us that any current structure or function could
> not have been arrived at by any conventional means is beyond me.

Yes, I believe Behe greatly overrates the significance of IC.
It does give "more bang for the buck" by having to account for
a "scaffolding" which has more components than the IC system
which is hypothesized to result from the original system. As
Behe put it:

Even if a system is irreducibly complex (and thus cannot
have been produced directly), however, one can not definitely
rule out the possibility of an indirect, circuitous
route. As the complexity of an interacting system increases,
though, the likelihood of such an indirect route drops precipitously.
-- _Darwin's Black Box, p40

[Kudos to Rolf for posting this already last week.]

In the case of the two cascades, the much smaller original
systems were probably IC, and that is where the circuitous route
with "more bang for the buck" comes in. But since there were so
few components, the likelihood was probably within the bounds
needed for evolution in the ca. 300-400 my time frame.

The bacterial flagellum, with 35 components identified by
Minnich, poses a much more difficult problem. There is
a common "rebuttal" involving hypothesized evolution from
a Type III secretory system, but that only accounts for two pieces
being exapted, at least one of which had many components and
was IC itself.

> I suspect that the past and current inventory of life on earth has
> scarcely made a dent in catalog of possible creature types that
> "life as we know it" could support.

Yes, but don't you find it remarkable that only one phylum
out of 30 has evolved large terrestrial animals with internal
skeletons, and only one has evolved terrestrial animals with
jointed legs? Yet both went on to produce winged representatives,
capable of sustained flight.

> And a large part of the reason for that is that some "possible"
> creatures have not (yet) been within genetic "reach".

Nor are any expected in the form of new body plans. The conventional
wisdom about the Cambrian explosion is that it exhausted the extreme
malleability of animal types that was possible before ca. 550 mya.

For example, no phylum besides Chordata is expected to be capable of
evolving something like a vertebral column able to support its
members on land.

Hemichordates have something resembling a very short notochord,
but nothing has come of it for 500 million years.

I've left the rest of what you wrote unremarked, but if you
think the above hasn't taken care of the main points, feel
free to let me know.

Peter Nyikos
Professor, Dept. of Mathematics -- standard disclaimer--
University of South Carolina
http://people.math.sc.edu/nyikos/

PS What name would you like to be known by? riskys...@gmail.com
is awkward, and isn't even your full e-mail address; but the
rest is hidden due to masking by New Google Groups.

[jillery]

On Mon, 22 Feb 2016 13:43:16 -0800 (PST), Peter Nyikos
<nyi...@bellsouth.net> wrote:

>On Sunday, February 21, 2016 at 5:49:42 PM UTC-5, riskys...@gmail.com wrote:
>> On Friday, February 19, 2016 at 4:24:48 PM UTC-5, Kalkidas wrote:
>>
>> > It's amazing the lengths some people go to to "prove" that there is no
>> > such thing as irreducible complexity.
>>
>> On the contrary, I have never seen anyone deny the existence of irreducible
>> complexity;
>
>Meet Bob Casanova:
>
> Would those be slogans like "irreducible complexity" and
> "intelligent design", for which no actual evidence has been
> provided and which have been firmly rebutted?
>
>https://groups.google.com/forum/#!original/talk.origins/RJqHymfuDco/o3KnwC7jGQAJ
>Message-ID: <pofpbb56a8ikbioc0...@4ax.com>
>Subject: Re: Open questions in biology, biochemistry, and evolution
>Date: Thu, 11 Feb 2016 10:04:50 -0700
>
>Casanova seems to think that the existence of irreducible
>complexity has been firmly refuted; that could mean a
>number of things.

The only thing it means is that you quotemined Casanova, and conflated
two different meanings of IC from two different topics. Casanova's
post is a reply to Otangelo Grasso, who argues for Behe's concept of
IC, that IC is evidence against evolution and for ID. Riskyschedule
refers here to the non-ID version of IC, as Behe narrowly defines IC,
which merely identifies an unremarkable feature of molecular systems
without any ID entanglement.

>Chances are, it means that he hasn't got the
>definition of Irreducible Complexity (IC) disentangled from the
>concept of Intelligent Design. This is a malaise that seems to infect
>one internet forum after another.

Since Behe himself explicitly proposed IC to be a test for ID, your
alleged malaise is a necessary outcome of discussing Behe's IC.

>>only the implication that its existence is a problem for a standard biology
>> that is explicitly expected to produce irreducible complexity.
>
>"explicitly expected" is a mistake innumerable people make
>by looking at out-of-context quotes by Muller almost a
>century ago. Others, who are familiar with the context,
>simply don't know the definition of IC, even if they do
>not conflate it with that of ID, but blindly take the word
>of those who say that Muller's concept was the same as Behe's.
>It isn't.

Since Behe himself explicitly associates IC with ID, right here would
have been a good place for you to specify what you think the
differences are between Behe's definition of Irreducible Complexity
and Muller's definition of interlocking actions.

>> Irreducible complexity is perfectly fine evidence against an
>> evolutionary trajectory that no one supports - each current
>> "component" of a system added one at a time.
>
>Surprise! There is plenty of evidence that the majority
>of factors in the two cascades to which Behe devotes
>individual chapters DID evolve with one component added
>at a time! But then having each component gradually modified
>until each and every component became indispensible.
>
>Ironically, the process by which this is believed to have
>happened DID happen in "small, Darwinian steps." It is
>only the few components of the cascades that are not
>serine proteases that pose a real problem for evolutionary
>biology. [Well, OK, one serine protease to rule them all,
>and the other factors.]

You're correct above. My impression is that Riskyschedule misstated
what he meant. Behe's argument is that all of the parts of IC systems
have to come together at the same time, and that is the model most
scientists don't support.

>> But how it tells us that any current structure or function could
>> not have been arrived at by any conventional means is beyond me.
>
>Yes, I believe Behe greatly overrates the significance of IC.
>It does give "more bang for the buck" by having to account for
>a "scaffolding" which has more components than the IC system
>which is hypothesized to result from the original system. As
>Behe put it:
>
> Even if a system is irreducibly complex (and thus cannot
> have been produced directly), however, one can not definitely
> rule out the possibility of an indirect, circuitous
> route. As the complexity of an interacting system increases,
> though, the likelihood of such an indirect route drops precipitously.
> -- _Darwin's Black Box, p40
>
>[Kudos to Rolf for posting this already last week.]

So are you now discussing Behe's concept of IC, as a tool to find
evidence against evolution and for ID? Or have you forgotten that you
started this topic by limiting it to just Behe's definition of IC?

>In the case of the two cascades, the much smaller original
>systems were probably IC, and that is where the circuitous route
>with "more bang for the buck" comes in. But since there were so
>few components, the likelihood was probably within the bounds
>needed for evolution in the ca. 300-400 my time frame.
>
>The bacterial flagellum, with 35 components identified by
>Minnich, poses a much more difficult problem. There is
>a common "rebuttal" involving hypothesized evolution from
>a Type III secretory system, but that only accounts for two pieces
>being exapted, at least one of which had many components and
>was IC itself.
>
>
>> I suspect that the past and current inventory of life on earth has
>> scarcely made a dent in catalog of possible creature types that
>> "life as we know it" could support.
>
>Yes, but don't you find it remarkable that only one phylum
>out of 30 has evolved large terrestrial animals with internal
>skeletons, and only one has evolved terrestrial animals with
>jointed legs? Yet both went on to produce winged representatives,
>capable of sustained flight.

Both?

>> And a large part of the reason for that is that some "possible"
>> creatures have not (yet) been within genetic "reach".
>
>Nor are any expected in the form of new body plans. The conventional
>wisdom about the Cambrian explosion is that it exhausted the extreme
>malleability of animal types that was possible before ca. 550 mya.
>
>For example, no phylum besides Chordata is expected to be capable of
>evolving something like a vertebral column able to support its
>members on land.
>
>Hemichordates have something resembling a very short notochord,
>but nothing has come of it for 500 million years.
>
>I've left the rest of what you wrote unremarked, but if you
>think the above hasn't taken care of the main points, feel
>free to let me know.
>
>Peter Nyikos
>Professor, Dept. of Mathematics -- standard disclaimer--
>University of South Carolina
>http://people.math.sc.edu/nyikos/
>
>PS What name would you like to be known by? riskys...@gmail.com
>is awkward, and isn't even your full e-mail address; but the
>rest is hidden due to masking by New Google Groups.
>
> Life has meandered through an unimaginably vast phase space, reaching only the tiniest portion of it; much as all the card players in history of the world have only produced the smallest fraction of possible orderings of the deck.
>>
>> It's not that there is no sense at all in the idea that you can't quickly get from A to B. But to say that some extant "B" is unreachable in the absence of any clear knowledge of "A" (not to mention the steps in between) makes no sense to me. This is especially so given the actual suspected scenario: parts modified so as to produce in incipient function - likely very inefficiently - then further modified, added to, and discarded over and over to refine the function. That the result of this process might produce a system that is sensitive to the removal of any of its parts seems likely and unremarkable to me.

[Bob Casanova]

On Mon, 22 Feb 2016 13:43:16 -0800 (PST), the following
appeared in talk.origins, posted by Peter Nyikos
<nyi...@bellsouth.net>:

>On Sunday, February 21, 2016 at 5:49:42 PM UTC-5, riskys...@gmail.com wrote:
>> On Friday, February 19, 2016 at 4:24:48 PM UTC-5, Kalkidas wrote:
>>
>> > It's amazing the lengths some people go to to "prove" that there is no
>> > such thing as irreducible complexity.
>>
>> On the contrary, I have never seen anyone deny the existence of irreducible
>> complexity;
>
>Meet Bob Casanova:
>
> Would those be slogans like "irreducible complexity" and
> "intelligent design", for which no actual evidence has been
> provided and which have been firmly rebutted?
>
>https://groups.google.com/forum/#!original/talk.origins/RJqHymfuDco/o3KnwC7jGQAJ
>Message-ID: <pofpbb56a8ikbioc0...@4ax.com>
>Subject: Re: Open questions in biology, biochemistry, and evolution
>Date: Thu, 11 Feb 2016 10:04:50 -0700
>
>Casanova seems to think that the existence of irreducible
>complexity has been firmly refuted; that could mean a
>number of things. Chances are, it means that he hasn't got the
>definition of Irreducible Complexity (IC) disentangled from the
>concept of Intelligent Design. This is a malaise that seems to infect
>one internet forum after another.

Actually, what it meant (as anyone with even a faint trace
of comprehension would know unless they just *had* to find
fault for some reason) is not that IC doesn't exist - any
system which requires all its parts to function is by
definition "irreducibly complex" - , but that it doesn't
mean that it can't have been arrived at through exaptation
of existing structures and parts via known evolutionary
processes. The subject was "Open questions in biology,
biochemistry, and evolution", and context should have made
obvious that my response was in relation to that; note my
use of the word "slogans".

I now return you to your regularly scheduled bashing of
those who had the temerity to ask inconvenient questions of
Peter the Great.

<snip>

[Rolf]

"Ray Martinez" <pyram...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:f0ab0634-8c55-4d6c...@googlegroups.com...

>> >> Encyclopćdia Britannica and had a similar rate of "serious errors".[2]

>> >>
>> >
>> > So far my description of Wikipedia as a public urinal is not harmed in
>> > the least. And a proper citation is missing; the same is equates to a
>> > hallmark of a public urinal. I bet you're a "contributor" at
>> > Wiki-urinal, isn't that true?
>> >
>> >>

>> > The study by Nature was disputed by Encyclopćdia Britannica,[3]

13 years? Nothing compared with the thousands of years for your beloved
scriptures, written by ignorant people in anitquity.

>> >> Several incidents have also been publicized in which false information
>> >> has lasted for a long time in Wikipedia. In May 2005, an anonymous
>> >> editor started a controversy when he created an article about John
>> >> Seigenthaler containing several false and defamatory statements.[14]
>> >> The inaccurate information remained uncorrected for four months. A
>> >> biographical article in French Wikipedia portrayed a "Léon-Robert de
>> >> L'Astran" as an 18th-century anti-slavery ship owner, which led

>> >> Ségolčne Royal, a presidential candidate, to praise him. A student

[Greg Guarino]

On 2/22/2016 4:43 PM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
> On Sunday, February 21, 2016 at 5:49:42 PM UTC-5, riskys...@gmail.com wrote:
>> On Friday, February 19, 2016 at 4:24:48 PM UTC-5, Kalkidas wrote:
>>
>>> It's amazing the lengths some people go to to "prove" that there is no
>>> such thing as irreducible complexity.
>>
>> On the contrary, I have never seen anyone deny the existence of irreducible
>> complexity;
>
> Meet Bob Casanova:
>
> Would those be slogans like "irreducible complexity" and
> "intelligent design", for which no actual evidence has been
> provided and which have been firmly rebutted?
>
> https://groups.google.com/forum/#!original/talk.origins/RJqHymfuDco/o3KnwC7jGQAJ
> Message-ID: <pofpbb56a8ikbioc0...@4ax.com>
> Subject: Re: Open questions in biology, biochemistry, and evolution
> Date: Thu, 11 Feb 2016 10:04:50 -0700



> Casanova seems to think that the existence of irreducible
> complexity has been firmly refuted;

We could ask him, I suppose. But I expect he agrees that there are
systems that cease to perform a certain function if any of their parts
are missing.

that could mean a
> number of things. Chances are, it means that he hasn't got the
> definition of Irreducible Complexity (IC) disentangled from the
> concept of Intelligent Design. This is a malaise that seems to infect
> one internet forum after another.

I think the source of that entanglement is ID proponents themselves. Do
they not frequently present systems that are irreducibly complex as
evidence that natural biological evolution is very very unlikely to have
produced them?

>> only the implication that its existence is a problem for a standard biology
>> that is explicitly expected to produce irreducible complexity.
>
> "explicitly expected" is a mistake innumerable people make
> by looking at out-of-context quotes by Muller almost a
> century ago. Others, who are familiar with the context,
> simply don't know the definition of IC, even if they do
> not conflate it with that of ID, but blindly take the word
> of those who say that Muller's concept was the same as Behe's.
> It isn't.

I don't know anything about Muller. I do however think that it is
unsurprising that biological evolution would produce and refine
functions that cease to work without all of the parts involved.

>> Irreducible complexity is perfectly fine evidence against an
>> evolutionary trajectory that no one supports - each current
>> "component" of a system added one at a time.
>
> Surprise! There is plenty of evidence that the majority
> of factors in the two cascades to which Behe devotes
> individual chapters DID evolve with one component added
> at a time! But then having each component gradually modified
> until each and every component became indispensible.

The second sentence weakens any argument that the alleged irreducible
complexity of the current system is evidence against it's having evolved
by natural processes. The current "parts" did not in come along one at a
time, thus removing one does not recreate any earlier stage.

> Ironically, the process by which this is believed to have
> happened DID happen in "small, Darwinian steps." It is
> only the few components of the cascades that are not
> serine proteases that pose a real problem for evolutionary
> biology. [Well, OK, one serine protease to rule them all,
> and the other factors.]
>
>> But how it tells us that any current structure or function could
>> not have been arrived at by any conventional means is beyond me.
>
> Yes, I believe Behe greatly overrates the significance of IC.
> It does give "more bang for the buck" by having to account for
> a "scaffolding" which has more components than the IC system
> which is hypothesized to result from the original system. As
> Behe put it:

I'm not sure I understand that paragraph.

> Even if a system is irreducibly complex (and thus cannot
> have been produced directly), however, one can not definitely
> rule out the possibility of an indirect, circuitous
> route. As the complexity of an interacting system increases,
> though, the likelihood of such an indirect route drops precipitously.
> -- _Darwin's Black Box, p40

I wonder what exactly is meant by "direct" and "circuitous" here. How
much evolution could be considered "direct"? And how does "circuitous"
apply to a situation without a preplanned goal?

"Likelihood" is also problematic. The likelihood that evolution will
produce any particular structure or creature is infinitesimal, but the
likelihood of it modifying lineages over time to produce *some* sort of
successful adaptations is pretty good.

>
> [Kudos to Rolf for posting this already last week.]
>
> In the case of the two cascades, the much smaller original
> systems were probably IC, and that is where the circuitous route
> with "more bang for the buck" comes in. But since there were so
> few components, the likelihood was probably within the bounds
> needed for evolution in the ca. 300-400 my time frame.
>
> The bacterial flagellum, with 35 components identified by
> Minnich, poses a much more difficult problem. There is
> a common "rebuttal" involving hypothesized evolution from
> a Type III secretory system, but that only accounts for two pieces
> being exapted, at least one of which had many components and
> was IC itself.

I'm still not clear on how the alleged IC nature of any current *system*
presents a problem for biological evolution unless "34 of the 35 current
components with the last one entirely missing" is hypothesized to be one
of the previous iterations.

Of course, that would be unusual, wouldn't it? Much more likely is what
you wrote above; that the current components were likely all modified
multiple times. Removing one entirely is very unlikely to recreate any
stage in the history of the "system", thus the "failure" of such a
configuration is not very instructive.

>> I suspect that the past and current inventory of life on earth has
>> scarcely made a dent in catalog of possible creature types that
>> "life as we know it" could support.
>
> Yes, but don't you find it remarkable that only one phylum
> out of 30 has evolved large terrestrial animals with internal
> skeletons, and only one has evolved terrestrial animals with
> jointed legs? Yet both went on to produce winged representatives,
> capable of sustained flight.

I find many things about life on earth to be remarkable, but it sounds
as if you're asking if I find what you mention "unexpected". I wouldn't
know where to begin in deciding what to "expect". But biological
evolution seems to be heavily dependent on contingency; maybe that's the
way it happened largely because of previous events.

>> And a large part of the reason for that is that some "possible"
>> creatures have not (yet) been within genetic "reach".
>
> Nor are any expected in the form of new body plans. The conventional
> wisdom about the Cambrian explosion is that it exhausted the extreme
> malleability of animal types that was possible before ca. 550 mya.
>
> For example, no phylum besides Chordata is expected to be capable of
> evolving something like a vertebral column able to support its
> members on land.
>
> Hemichordates have something resembling a very short notochord,
> but nothing has come of it for 500 million years.
>
> I've left the rest of what you wrote unremarked, but if you
> think the above hasn't taken care of the main points, feel
> free to let me know.
>
> Peter Nyikos
> Professor, Dept. of Mathematics -- standard disclaimer--
> University of South Carolina
> http://people.math.sc.edu/nyikos/
>
> PS What name would you like to be known by? riskys...@gmail.com
> is awkward, and isn't even your full e-mail address; but the
> rest is hidden due to masking by New Google Groups.

You can call me "Greg". :)

I occasionally post from a computer that I have not yet set up a real
newsreader on. Sometimes I forget to change the default username.

[Ray Martinez]

This is PRECISELY WHY Evolutionists are known to be genuinely stupid; they think a website where anyone with a computer can create and edit the information is reliable and scholarly.

Intelligent people know that it goes with saying that such a web site is the antithesis of scholarly and reliable. Moreover most people also know that Wikipedia is a pro-secular hate site. The bias is fanatically pro-Atheism without any attempt to hide or conceal.

Ray (Christian)

[Bill Rogers]

And yet, it IS in fact quite reliable. You can find that out by comparing the information in Wikipedia to the information in standard textbooks or professional articles on the same topics. And when you make that comparison, you find that Wikipedia is very accurate. Moreover, the wikipedia articles generally provide good references, so that if you dislike taking wikipedia's word for something, you can go track down the source and look at it yourself.

In spite of the fact that "anybody with a computer can create and edit the information," the information is generally very reliable. And it comes with the means for you to double check its reliability. You may not like it. But it's true.

[Burkhard]

But Ray is not looking for "reliability" or even "truth". He is looking
for "authority". Theological mindset, (mis)applied to science. Wiki
could outperform any encyclopedia by massive margins, and he could not
care less, he craves an authoritative source that makes critical
analysis of one;s sources irrelevant.

[Ray Martinez]

Bill's reply simply repeats the claim of Evolutionists: a web site where anyone with a computer can create or edit the information is scholarly and reliable.

Like I said: This is PRECISELY WHY Evolutionists are considered genuinely stupid. The fact that the public creates and edits the information falsifies any notion that said information is scholarly or reliable.

Ray (Paleyan Creationist)

[Bill Rogers]

And my claim is correct, as anyone can find out who takes the time to compare the information in wikipedia with the information on the same topic in standard textbooks or professional journals. You seem unwilling to take the time to examine evidence, preferring to insist that those who disagree with you must be wrong about wikipedia simply by virtue of their beliefs about biology. The evidence does not vanish simply because you do not look at it.

>
> Like I said: This is PRECISELY WHY Evolutionists are considered genuinely stupid. The fact that the public creates and edits the information falsifies any notion that said information is scholarly or reliable.

This is certainly where you differ from many others here. Most of us argue claims on the basis of evidence (and there's plenty of evidence that the information in wikipedia is quite reliable). You try to argue from first principles (e.g. the information cannot be reliable because anyone can submit to wikipedia) or by avoiding the actual argument and trying to impugn the source ("typical atheist evolutionist rant").


>
> Ray (Paleyan Creationist)

[Ray Martinez]

So Bill, our Evolutionist, digs in his heels, unable to see the contradiction between "public as a source" and the concepts of "scholarly and reliability."

I've always said Evolutionists have no awareness of their illogic.

Ray (Paleyan Creationist)

[August Rode]

This "argument" of yours is no different than others you have used.
Rather than evaluate what is at Wikipedia, you find it so much easier to
denigrate the site and its methods as though it had nothing true to say
at all. It's the ad hominem / poisoning the well combination of
fallacies again.

The correct approach is to *evaluate* what Wikipedia has to say to
determine whether it contains errors in specific places or not. That's
too much work for you so you simply pretend it has nothing true to say.
And why? Because your standard of what's true is what's in your own mind
and Wikipedia doesn't reflect that.

> Intelligent people know that it goes with saying that such a web site is the antithesis of scholarly and reliable.

Poisoning the well *again*, Ray? Is it really any wonder why no one
thinks your command of logic is entirely absent.

> Moreover most people also know that Wikipedia is a pro-secular hate site.

I assume by "most," what you actually mean is you and a few other
rabidly fundamentalist Christians. I'd ask you to point out specific
instances of hate but you wouldn't do it.

> The bias is fanatically pro-Atheism without any attempt to hide or conceal.

As nearly as I can tell, this is simply you declaring that anything you
don't agree with is necessarily pro-atheism. It's wrong *every* *single*
*time* you try to use it. You and your beliefs are not the exemplar of
Christian knowledge and beliefs. There are all kinds of Christians out
there, Ray, with beliefs that disagree with yours in many respects. Your
attempts to paint them as non-Christians wears thin.

[Bill Rogers]

OK Ray, then please show some evidence that wikipedia is unreliable. Simply claiming that it cannot be reliable because you personally think it illogical that an open access source could be reliable is not convincing. How do you account for the fact that studies find wikipedia at least as reliable as, for example, Encyclopedia Britannica? Why do you ignore the fact that wikipedia provides references that allow you to check it's claims against scholarly sources?

Your willingness to shut your eyes to obviously easy to check evidence about wikipedia, makes it less surprising that you are willing to shut your eyes to evidence about biology.

>
> Ray (Paleyan Creationist)

[Burkhard]

Yes, because a) where a claim comes from is not dispositive for the
question of whether it is true or not
b) there is significant, scientific and quantifiable knowledge about the
efficiency of crowd sourcing and using the public as a source of
scientific knowledge. In fact, significant number of scientists in your
favourite period, Victorian England, where amateurs and "gentleman
scientists", i.e. the same sort of interested member of the public that
these days write wiki entries.

In fact, one of the most scholarly sources for etymology and word usage
imaginable, the Oxford English Dictionary, has used wiki-type public
involvement since 1857, when volunteer readers began to collect
quotations for the British Philological Society’s New English
Dictionary. This soon became under James A. H. Murray, the "Reading
Programme" that still exists, in changing incarnations, today. “Anyone
can help,” was the motto of this approach.

The reliability of public, crowd sourced knowledge generation has been
studies intensely in recent years, now that the Internet enables this on
a much larger scale than previously possible.

see e.g. Crall, A.W., Newman, G.J., Stohlgren, T.J., Holfelder, K.A.,
Graham, J. and Waller, D.M., 2011. Assessing citizen science data
quality: an invasive species case study. Conservation Letters, 4(6),
pp.433-442.

or

Wiggins, Andrea, et al. "Mechanisms for data quality and validation in
citizen science." e-Science Workshops (eScienceW), 2011 IEEE Seventh
International Conference on. IEEE, 2011.

or

Gardiner, Mary M., et al. "Lessons from lady beetles: accuracy of
monitoring data from US and UK citizen‐science programs." Frontiers in
Ecology and the Environment 10.9 (2012): 471-476.

They are not perfect, but no method in isolation is. Sometimes they
outperfom established researchers, sometimes they perform as well,
sometimes they are doing worse. As with all sources therefore, a
critical evaluation of the specific claim is needed, and everybody with
basic training can do this.

[Bill Rogers]

Ray, you should never take any source as "truth" anyway. If you are skeptical of something written in wikipedia, all you need do is follow up with the "scholarly sources" provided in the reference section of the wikipedia article. Skepticism of what you read is good, good, good. And if you are skeptical of the references that are provided by wikipedia, go to the the references provided by the references and check them out. Or do a search on Google Scholar or PubMed to find additional references on the subject. Skepticism is good.

Skepticism is always good. But 99% of the time, after you've tracked down all the references, and the secondary references in those references, it will turn out that the information in wikipedia was actually correct.

I can tell you, I am what you would call a "scholarly expert" on malaria. I've published dozens of papers on malaria in "scholarly" journals and textbooks. And I can tell you that the wikipedia article on malaria is quite reliable, in spite of the fact that, in principle, anybody at all could submit a contribution to that article. You may find it "illogical" but it's quite true. And anyone can check and find out that it's true.

[jillery]

That's "it goes without saying", Mr. genuinely stupid person.

>that such a web site is the antithesis of scholarly and reliable. Moreover most people also know that Wikipedia is a pro-secular hate site. The bias is fanatically pro-Atheism without any attempt to hide or conceal.
>
>Ray (Christian)

[Peter Nyikos]

Those are generally reliable where straight science is the issue,
although even there, the sources don't always provide the information
the article cites them for. One example is the article on Francis
Crick. It said something about directed panspermia in such a way
as to create the impression [probably due to carelessness of wording]
that Crick and Orgel had changed their minds about DP. But the
linked article not only does not mention DP, it actually showed that
they continued to endorse something favorable to that hypothesis.

Non-science articles can be awful. My one foray into correcting
an error had nothing to do with anything on-topic for talk.origins.
I saw someone making the natural error that it had to do with ID,
simply because of the context, but it was a stupid mistake about
a former State Superintendent of Schools, Inez Tenenbaum.

I corrected it, but very soon it was revised to where it made
another stupid statement while not repeating the first. I got
disgusted at that point and quit trying to change it.

> Skepticism of what you read is good, good, good. And if you are skeptical of the references that are provided by wikipedia, go to the the references provided by the references and check them out. Or do a search on Google Scholar or PubMed to find additional references on the subject. Skepticism is good.
>
> Skepticism is always good. But 99% of the time, after you've tracked down all the references, and the secondary references in those references, it will turn out that the information in wikipedia was actually correct.

I'm skeptical about that.

Is it possible that you read mostly science articles, and have
not checked a fair sample of all wiki articles?

Peter Nyikos
Professor, Dept. of Mathematics

U. of S. Carolina, Columbia -- standard disclaimer--
http://people.math.sc.edu/nyikos/

PS I still haven't gotten any answers as to how to go about
contacting the right place to avoid a "battle of revisions."

[John Stockwell]

On Thursday, February 18, 2016 at 1:54:52 PM UTC-7, Peter Nyikos wrote:
> The short answer to whether t.o. will ever get the definition
> of IC (Irreducible Complexity) right is:
>
> Not as long as the incompetent opening sentence of Wikipedia on IC
> stays the way it now is:
>
> Irreducible complexity (IC) is a pseudoscientific argument
> that certain biological systems cannot evolve by successive
> small modifications to pre-existing functional systems
> through natural selection.[1]
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irreducible_complexity
>

> This "definition" makes a category mistake, similar to the following:
>
> The solar system is a pseudoscientific argument
> that people can be given predictions and advice on their
> everyday lives based on where in their orbits the various
> planets are.

Ok. Seems like a fair point. When faced with a technical term, we
should go to the technical sources where it is used to find the definition
in context.





>
> The original definition of IC, due to Behe, can be found in
> The TalkOrigins Archive,
> http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/behe.html
>
> By irreducibly complex I mean a single system composed of
> several well-matched, interacting parts that contribute
> to the basic function, wherein the removal of any one
> of the parts causes the system to effectively cease functioning.
>
> There is no argument here, just a definition. Behe does go on to
> argue for some conclusions that seem superficially like the one
> after the first line of the Wikipedia entry as transcribed here.
> But that is a separate issue.

So Behe's non-peer reviewed tome is pretty much it.

Where is the great body of peer reviewed scientific papers that
show the efficacy of this concept and its place in modern science?

-John




>
>
> Irreducible complexity is a hot topic in the following talk.origins thread:

>
> Subject: Re: Open questions in biology, biochemistry, and evolution
>

> to which I first posted a few minutes ago. The thread is an amazing
> hotchpot of misconceptions like the above (by some participants on
> both sides of the ID/anti-ID divide!), and correct understandings of
> the concept of IC by others, whose explanations seem to fall on deaf ears.
>
> Peter Nyikos

[czeba...@gmail.com]

What is so different about the smallest features of life re: IC? The human body is IC yet science is able to trace aspects of its evolution back to early vertebrates. Our features have precursors that go back hundreds of millions of years. Why wouldn't cellular structures evolve by the same means, i.e., RM, NS, neutral drift, etc. that gave us our current parts? What's so special about being small?
Isn't it really just a case if IDiots trying to take advantage of what science doesn't know yet? Seems like a bad bet to me.
Maybe they just like losing...

gregwrld

[Mark Isaak]

On 2/22/16 1:43 PM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
> On Sunday, February 21, 2016 at 5:49:42 PM UTC-5, riskys...@gmail.com wrote:
>> On Friday, February 19, 2016 at 4:24:48 PM UTC-5, Kalkidas wrote:
>>
>>> It's amazing the lengths some people go to to "prove" that there is no
>>> such thing as irreducible complexity.
>>
>> On the contrary, I have never seen anyone deny the existence of irreducible
>> complexity;
>
> Meet Bob Casanova:
>
> Would those be slogans like "irreducible complexity" and
> "intelligent design", for which no actual evidence has been
> provided and which have been firmly rebutted?
>
> https://groups.google.com/forum/#!original/talk.origins/RJqHymfuDco/o3KnwC7jGQAJ
> Message-ID: <pofpbb56a8ikbioc0...@4ax.com>
> Subject: Re: Open questions in biology, biochemistry, and evolution
> Date: Thu, 11 Feb 2016 10:04:50 -0700
>
> Casanova seems to think that the existence of irreducible
> complexity has been firmly refuted; that could mean a
> number of things.

He said "irreducible complexity" had been rebutted, not that "the
existence of irreducible complexity" had been rebutted. Irreducible
complexity is more than an existence claim; it inevitably comes with the
baggage of an argument intelligent design. That argument, as you well
know, has been refuted.

> Chances are, it means that he hasn't got the
> definition of Irreducible Complexity (IC) disentangled from the
> concept of Intelligent Design. This is a malaise that seems to infect
> one internet forum after another.

Irreducible complexity *is* fully and completely entangled with the
concept of Intelligent Design. One never sees IC without ID lurking
nearby. And that is by design -- Behe's design and the design of other
establishing members of the Intelligent Design movement.

>> only the implication that its existence is a problem for a standard biology
>> that is explicitly expected to produce irreducible complexity.
>
> "explicitly expected" is a mistake innumerable people make
> by looking at out-of-context quotes by Muller almost a
> century ago.

The fact remains that Muller explicitly expected irreducible complexity
just as Behe defined it. The only difference is that Muller did not go
on to wrap up the concept of interlocking complexity with mumbo-jumbo
about intelligent design and the impossibility of evolution. Is that
what you mean by "out-of-context"?

> Others, who are familiar with the context,
> simply don't know the definition of IC, even if they do
> not conflate it with that of ID, but blindly take the word
> of those who say that Muller's concept was the same as Behe's.
> It isn't.

Muller says otherwise. I posted a quote to that effect last week. Did
you read it?

> Yes, I believe Behe greatly overrates the significance of IC.

I believe you do, too.

--
Mark Isaak eciton (at) curioustaxonomy (dot) net
"The evil that is in the world always comes of ignorance, and good
intentions may do as much harm as malevolence, if they lack
understanding." - Albert Camus, _The Plague_

[Ernest Major]

On 24/02/2016 22:50, John Stockwell wrote:
> On Thursday, February 18, 2016 at 1:54:52 PM UTC-7, Peter Nyikos wrote:
>> The short answer to whether t.o. will ever get the definition
>> of IC (Irreducible Complexity) right is:
>>
>> Not as long as the incompetent opening sentence of Wikipedia on IC
>> stays the way it now is:
>>
>> Irreducible complexity (IC) is a pseudoscientific argument
>> that certain biological systems cannot evolve by successive
>> small modifications to pre-existing functional systems
>> through natural selection.[1]
>> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irreducible_complexity
>>
>> This "definition" makes a category mistake, similar to the following:
>>
>> The solar system is a pseudoscientific argument
>> that people can be given predictions and advice on their
>> everyday lives based on where in their orbits the various
>> planets are.
>
> Ok. Seems like a fair point. When faced with a technical term, we
> should go to the technical sources where it is used to find the definition
> in context.
>

The Wikipedia article could be better, but I think that it is talking
about the irreducible complexity argument, not the irreducible
complexity concept.

--
alias Ernest Major

[Rolf]

"Bill Rogers" <broger...@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:aeed3e06-6bce-4d6f...@googlegroups.com...

Good point!

>>
>> Ray (Paleyan Creationist)
>
>