Sciense lernin

Glenn

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Mar 16, 2019, 8:25:02 PM3/16/19

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"At Scientific American, Yale president Peter Salovey urges that “STEM majors' college experience must be integrated into a broader model of liberal education to prepare them to think critically and imaginatively about the world and to understand different viewpoints.” Realistically, in the inclusive environment that progressives are creating in the sciences today, that may well mean accommodating the ”meteoric rise” of witchcraft and astrology, along the lines of understanding “different viewpoints.”

https://www.mercatornet.com/features/view/which-side-will-atheists-choose-in-the-war-on-science/21598

"Salovey may say Yale is a victim, but a true leader would ask what in Yale’s process allowed such fraud to succeed or whether the process was even working."

https://www.aei.org/publication/in-the-college-admissions-scandal-yale-is-no-victim-its-incompetent/

RonO

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Mar 16, 2019, 9:10:02 PM3/16/19

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On 3/16/2019 7:21 PM, Glenn wrote:
> "At Scientific American, Yale president Peter Salovey urges that “STEM majors' college experience must be integrated into a broader model of liberal education to prepare them to think critically and imaginatively about the world and to understand different viewpoints.” Realistically, in the inclusive environment that progressives are creating in the sciences today, that may well mean accommodating the ”meteoric rise” of witchcraft and astrology, along the lines of understanding “different viewpoints.”

It looks like the ID perps are already doing this. My guess is that it
will not amount to anything more than the nothing that ID has amounted
to since the ID scam started.

https://www.discovery.org/id/events/

QUOTE:
Events
March 20, 2019
Intelligent Design Education Day - Seattle
Featured Speakers Include Drs. Jonathan Wells and Brian Miller
Seattle Pacific University - Seattle, WA

March 29, 2019
Intelligent Design Education Day - Dallas
Featuring Drs. Ray Bohlin, Paul Nelson, and others

April 5 - 6, 2019
Westminster Conference on Science and Faith
Darwin Devolves: God, Design, and the Failure of Chance in Explaining
Origins
Covenant Fellowship Church - Greater Philadelphia, PA

April 9, 2019
The Darwinian Roots of the Devaluation of Life
Featuring Dr. John West, Vice President of Discovery Institute
Greenville ARP Church - Greenville, SC

May 3 - 4, 2019
Reasons 2019: New Conversations on Science and Faith
Faith Bible Church - The Woodlands, TX
END QUOTE:

Remember what Behe said about ID and astrology.

Ron Okimoto

Hemidactylus

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Mar 16, 2019, 9:35:02 PM3/16/19

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Glenn <GlennS...@msn.com> wrote:
> "At Scientific American, Yale president Peter Salovey urges that “STEM
> majors' college experience must be integrated into a broader model of
> liberal education to prepare them to think critically and imaginatively
> about the world and to understand different viewpoints.” Realistically,
> in the inclusive environment that progressives are creating in the
> sciences today, that may well mean accommodating the ”meteoric rise” of
> witchcraft and astrology, along the lines of understanding “different viewpoints.”
>
> https://www.mercatornet.com/features/view/which-side-will-atheists-choose-in-the-war-on-science/21598
>

Funny that the above was written by Denyse O’Leary called by RationalWiki
“a Canadian intelligent design apologist”.
https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Denyse_O%27Leary

She tries to offer unsolicited advice to atheists about progressivism and
is disapproving of Salovey’s take on different viewpoints. That way lies
postmodern relativism. Yet your favorite site ogles Salovey because
implications:

https://evolutionnews.org/2018/06/yale-president-calls-for-objectivity-in-science-education/

“He might not welcome my saying so, but his emphasis on thinking critically
and examining evidence is spot-on... Yet the article also calls for better
science education and education in general. The language is excellent...
“think critically and imaginatively about the world and to understand
different viewpoints” — what a wonderful vision! Sounds familiar, too.”

How do you square those differing takes on Salovey from creationists?

> "Salovey may say Yale is a victim, but a true leader would ask what in
> Yale’s process allowed such fraud to succeed or whether the process was even working."
>
> https://www.aei.org/publication/in-the-college-admissions-scandal-yale-is-no-victim-its-incompetent/
>

So what connection are you trying to make between these articles Glenn? Are
you capable of explaining yourself in your own words without viciously
attributing disease states to people for no discernible reason? Or are you
a mindless troll addicted to the lulz? I lean strongly toward the latter.

Burkhard

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Mar 17, 2019, 1:15:03 PM3/17/19

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*Hemidactylus* wrote:
> Glenn <GlennS...@msn.com> wrote:
>> "At Scientific American, Yale president Peter Salovey urges that “STEM
>> majors' college experience must be integrated into a broader model of
>> liberal education to prepare them to think critically and imaginatively
>> about the world and to understand different viewpoints.” Realistically,
>> in the inclusive environment that progressives are creating in the
>> sciences today, that may well mean accommodating the ”meteoric rise” of
>> witchcraft and astrology, along the lines of understanding “different viewpoints.”
>>
>> https://www.mercatornet.com/features/view/which-side-will-atheists-choose-in-the-war-on-science/21598
>>
> Funny that the above was written by Denyse O’Leary called by RationalWiki
> “a Canadian intelligent design apologist”.
> https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Denyse_O%27Leary

Well, that could come as no surprise, given that the mercatornet paper
is pretty much bereft of facts, research or any understanding of current
scientific practice. Sounds as if someone is channeling Rand.

I'm currently part of three STEM-lead research projects, where computer
scientists, mathematicians, anthropologists, psychologists, sociologists
and media study folks work together on better and safer products. Almost
all of the lead investigators are dualy qualified, but we struggled to
get also enough high quality postdocs that combine STEM with humanities
- that's also because industry has spotted how much additional value
they bring, and they can by now pretty much write their own salary
cheque. This is particular strong in HCI and human-centred design
research, but also fields such as FAT algorithm research. De-biasing
algorithms is not easy, and the comp. sci and math communities have by
now learned that they need the humanities to help with that. (The IEEE
working groups on standard setting for socially responsible computing
are all also multi-disciplinary) And that's not just something fanciful,
biased algorithms can be lethal, e.g. if the VR that steers an
autonomous car is more likely to make mistakes when a female voice gives
the command, or if the collusion avoiding algorithm does not recognize
shapes of people with disabilities.

And that's not even talking about all those markets where the arts and
humanities are users of STEM, for instance developing digitized
repositories of artifacts for museums to increase accessibility of their
collections while minimizing deterioration, developing AIs that can
write news items, working with digital artists or developing legal tech
apps that allow more accurate predictions of the success of a case etc
etc etc. A billion £ industry that relies on steam with non-stem
collaboration, for which you lay the grounds at university.

So the Yale president is spot on, and doing his job, i.e. making sure
that his students are prepared for the labour market.

And then we get her disparaging the idea that “First, the nature of
pure of mathematics itself leads to styles of thinking that can be
damaging when applied beyond mathematics to social and human issues.”

How can this even be controversial? The financial crisis was to a good
deal due to mathematicians developing abstract models of the market that
had lost all contact with the underlying social and human issues
("assume unlimited amounts of money and zero transaction costs..."). The
"assume a perfectly spherical cow" has been a running joke for his
type of problem for ages. (and here on TO we have had of course Alan and
Ray, who both in their way use extremely limited formal models to argue
something is wrong with reality, rather then the other way round.)So
yes, it is important to remind mathematicians that their abstractions
are just that, and take it into account when deriving conclusions of
their ideas when applied to the real world.

Equally fact free and analytically muddled was that gem:
"One activist against sexual harassment candidly admits that, in her
view, the “hostile environment is perpetuated by a focus on the science
— and not on the people doing it"

I mean, du'h? if you are sexually molested by your supervisor, it's not
"science" doing the molesting, it's the person doing the science. And
that means indeed that anti-harassment strategies have to focus on
people, not on the science they do. 'caus if you do that, you start
making excuses for the inexcusable: "yes, s/he gave grades for sex/raped
a student/destroyed the career of a junior researcher who said no, BUT
look at the brilliant science, we can't fire them". And that can happen
of course independently of the subject, or the political viewpoint of
the perp, as the recent case of Avita Ronell and the disgraceful
behavior of her colleagues showed.

Now, people from sociology and psychology, especially those focusing on
institutions and their structure, e.g when studying corruption, will
tell you why universities are often vulnerable to this - same reason the
catholic church or the police are: strict hierarchies, massive power
differentials, limited accountability to third parties, and strong
esprit de corps all encourage that behaviour - which anyone who'd have
even a glance at the relevant (non-stem) research would know.

So in essence, the person who wrote the mercartornet piece is a bit of
an ill-informed idiot, so finding that she otherwise peddles ID should
not come as a major surprise.

Bob Casanova

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Mar 17, 2019, 1:55:03 PM3/17/19

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On Sat, 16 Mar 2019 17:21:44 -0700 (PDT), the following
appeared in talk.origins, posted by Glenn
<GlennS...@msn.com>:

Care to state how you regard this, and what point you think
it makes?
--

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

Alt.A...@aol.com

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Mar 18, 2019, 12:25:03 PM3/18/19

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Science Learning

Glenn

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Mar 18, 2019, 12:45:03 PM3/18/19

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I suppose that could be seen as fair, since the post titled "Sciense lernin" could be seen as implying atheists and/or progressives are not well educated.

Congratulations!

Bob Casanova

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Mar 18, 2019, 1:50:03 PM3/18/19

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On Sun, 17 Mar 2019 10:52:40 -0700, the following appeared
in talk.origins, posted by Bob Casanova <nos...@buzz.off>:

>On Sat, 16 Mar 2019 17:21:44 -0700 (PDT), the following
>appeared in talk.origins, posted by Glenn
><GlennS...@msn.com>:
>
>>"At Scientific American, Yale president Peter Salovey urges that “STEM majors' college experience must be integrated into a broader model of liberal education to prepare them to think critically and imaginatively about the world and to understand different viewpoints.” Realistically, in the inclusive environment that progressives are creating in the sciences today, that may well mean accommodating the ”meteoric rise” of witchcraft and astrology, along the lines of understanding “different viewpoints.”
>>
>>https://www.mercatornet.com/features/view/which-side-will-atheists-choose-in-the-war-on-science/21598
>>
>>"Salovey may say Yale is a victim, but a true leader would ask what in Yale’s process allowed such fraud to succeed or whether the process was even working."
>>
>>https://www.aei.org/publication/in-the-college-admissions-scandal-yale-is-no-victim-its-incompetent/
>
>Care to state how you regard this, and what point you think
>it makes?

No? OK.

jhc...@gmail.com

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Mar 18, 2019, 4:45:03 PM3/18/19

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On Monday, March 18, 2019 at 12:45:03 PM UTC-4, Glenn wrote:
> >
> > Science Learning
>
> I suppose that could be seen as fair, since the post titled
> "Sciense lernin" could be seen as implying atheists and/or
> progressives are not well educated.

And upon closer examination, we see exactly where the ignorance lies -

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/05/republican-lawmaker-rocks-tumbling-ocean-causing-sea-level-rise

Alan Kleinman MD PhD

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Mar 19, 2019, 10:40:03 AM3/19/19

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On Sunday, March 17, 2019 at 10:15:03 AM UTC-7, Burkhard wrote:
> *Hemidactylus* wrote:
> > Glenn <GlennS...@msn.com> wrote:
> >> "At Scientific American, Yale president Peter Salovey urges that “STEM
> >> majors' college experience must be integrated into a broader model of
> >> liberal education to prepare them to think critically and imaginatively
> >> about the world and to understand different viewpoints.” Realistically,
> >> in the inclusive environment that progressives are creating in the
> >> sciences today, that may well mean accommodating the ”meteoric rise” of
> >> witchcraft and astrology, along the lines of understanding “different viewpoints.”
> >>
> >> https://www.mercatornet.com/features/view/which-side-will-atheists-choose-in-the-war-on-science/21598
> >>
> > Funny that the above was written by Denyse O’Leary called by RationalWiki
> > “a Canadian intelligent design apologist”.
> > https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Denyse_O%27Leary
>
> Well, that could come as no surprise, given that the mercatornet paper
> is pretty much bereft of facts, research or any understanding of current
> scientific practice. Sounds as if someone is channeling Rand.

And you are? You have finally figured out that mutations are random events. How does this impact the theory of evolution? What mathematical principles should be used to describe the evolutionary process caused by these events?

Listen, egghead, I don't claim that my model shows something is wrong with reality. I'm showing you that there is something wrong with your perception of reality. The mathematics I've presented simply shows based on a given mutation rate, the probability of a particular mutation occurring at a particular site in a given number of replications for a single selection pressure and for multiple mutations to occur for multiple selection pressures. I derived those equations from first principles and correlate that with real empirical examples. That's what STEM-trained scientists do to solve problems, and you are not one of the STEM-trained scientists. If you were, you could easily recognize the validity of this mathematics for this simple phenomenon. What you are is a mathematically incompetent bungler.

Mark Isaak

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Mar 19, 2019, 2:25:03 PM3/19/19

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On 3/19/19 7:36 AM, Alan Kleinman MD PhD wrote:
> Listen, egghead, I don't claim that my model shows something is wrong with reality.

But that's only because you have no idea what reality is. You look
exclusively at two or three demonstrations with microorganisms and
ignore all the rest of adaptive evolution that's going on in the world.

--
Mark Isaak eciton (at) curioustaxonomy (dot) net
"Omnia disce. Videbis postea nihil esse superfluum."
- Hugh of St. Victor

Alan Kleinman MD PhD

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Mar 19, 2019, 2:50:03 PM3/19/19

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On Tuesday, March 19, 2019 at 11:25:03 AM UTC-7, Mark Isaak wrote:
> On 3/19/19 7:36 AM, Alan Kleinman MD PhD wrote:
> > Listen, egghead, I don't claim that my model shows something is wrong with reality.
>
> But that's only because you have no idea what reality is. You look
> exclusively at two or three demonstrations with microorganisms and
> ignore all the rest of adaptive evolution that's going on in the world.

BookMark is now going to post a single real, measurable and repeatable example of adaptive evolution which contradicts the math I've presented. He won't because his imaginary examples don't exist in reality. Maybe the Professor of Computational Legal Theory thinks he can present an example?

Glenn

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Mar 19, 2019, 4:15:03 PM3/19/19

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On Monday, March 18, 2019 at 1:45:03 PM UTC-7, JC wrote:
> On Monday, March 18, 2019 at 12:45:03 PM UTC-4, Glenn wrote:
> > >

Restored:
/

> > "At Scientific American, Yale president Peter Salovey urges that "STEM majors' college experience must be integrated into a broader model of liberal education to prepare them to think critically and imaginatively about the world and to understand different viewpoints." Realistically, in the inclusive environment that progressives are creating in the sciences today, that may well mean accommodating the "meteoric rise" of witchcraft and astrology, along the lines of understanding "different viewpoints."
> >
> > https://www.mercatornet.com/features/view/which-side-will-atheists-choose-in-the-war-on-science/21598
> >
> > "Salovey may say Yale is a victim, but a true leader would ask what in Yale’s process allowed such fraud to succeed or whether the process was even working."
> >
> > https://www.aei.org/publication/in-the-college-admissions-scandal-yale-is-no-victim-its-incompetent/

/

> > > Science Learning
> >
> > I suppose that could be seen as fair, since the post titled
> > "Sciense lernin" could be seen as implying atheists and/or
> > progressives are not well educated.
>
> And upon closer examination, we see exactly where the ignorance lies -
>
> https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/05/republican-lawmaker-rocks-tumbling-ocean-causing-sea-level-rise

Well, the Congressman did graduate from Yale.

Is that where your ignorance originates?

JC

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Mar 19, 2019, 4:40:03 PM3/19/19

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I'm sure you'll find levels of ignorance equal to the congressmans at every institution of higher learning. You quite clearly are a shining example from where ever you purchased your "education".

Glenn

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Mar 19, 2019, 4:50:03 PM3/19/19

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You haven't even a clue why I restored the thread, and probably don't care. Spite is like that, absent reason.

JC

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Mar 19, 2019, 5:20:03 PM3/19/19

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I didn't know you had restored it, but you're right, I don't care.

> Spite is like that, absent reason.

Silly twerp. Spite is the clearest example of caring about something. If a person doesn't care about something, they don't exhibit spiteful reactions, and reason may or may not have an influence, since spite and reason are completely unrelated. Keep trying though, at the very least it's fun watching you dig yourself deeper. Your parents money on your education wasn't very well spent.

Mark Isaak

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Mar 19, 2019, 6:00:05 PM3/19/19

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On 3/19/19 11:45 AM, Alan Kleinman MD PhD wrote:
> On Tuesday, March 19, 2019 at 11:25:03 AM UTC-7, Mark Isaak wrote:
>> On 3/19/19 7:36 AM, Alan Kleinman MD PhD wrote:
>>> Listen, egghead, I don't claim that my model shows something is wrong with reality.
>>
>> But that's only because you have no idea what reality is. You look
>> exclusively at two or three demonstrations with microorganisms and
>> ignore all the rest of adaptive evolution that's going on in the world.
> BookMark is now going to post a single real, measurable and repeatable example of adaptive evolution which contradicts the math I've presented. He won't because his imaginary examples don't exist in reality. Maybe the Professor of Computational Legal Theory thinks he can present an example?

_Zea mays_

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Mar 20, 2019, 10:20:03 AM3/20/19

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On Wednesday, March 20, 2019 at 8:45:03 AM UTC-4, Alan Kleinman MD PhD

> So this is what our educational system now produces, experts at
> channel surfing with a vocabulary that makes a cesspool look clean.

I think a more disconcerting demonstration of our education is that someone with two advanced degrees wastes his time posting in an internet forum, rather than actually helping people. And no, publishing papers on RMNS isn't helping anyone anymore than ranting in a internet forum about how your math disproves Toe (when it doesn't, and the only argument you offer is <whiny voice> "that's because you don't understand introductory probably theory wah wah wah" </whiny voice>)

> Too bad you are too ignorant to understand high school level
> probability theory

That's funny coming from a guy that thinks infinitesimals equal impossibilities.

> so that you could understand how stochastic processes work
> (like evolution).

REally? why don't you show us that paper you published where your RMNS math proves ToE impossible? oh, right, that's because you can't. useless fuckwad. I think there's a glenn-head eager to be shoved up your ass somewhere in here.

Alan Kleinman MD PhD

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Mar 20, 2019, 10:30:04 AM3/20/19

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On Wednesday, March 20, 2019 at 7:20:03 AM UTC-7, JC wrote:
> On Wednesday, March 20, 2019 at 8:45:03 AM UTC-4, Alan Kleinman MD PhD
>
> > So this is what our educational system now produces, experts at
> > channel surfing with a vocabulary that makes a cesspool look clean.
>
> I think a more disconcerting demonstration of our education is that someone with two advanced degrees wastes his time posting in an internet forum, rather than actually helping people. And no, publishing papers on RMNS isn't helping anyone anymore than ranting in a internet forum about how your math disproves Toe (when it doesn't, and the only argument you offer is <whiny voice> "that's because you don't understand introductory probably theory wah wah wah" </whiny voice>)

What do you know, ztupid has been cloned.

Peter Nyikos

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Mar 20, 2019, 1:50:03 PM3/20/19

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On Sunday, March 17, 2019 at 1:15:03 PM UTC-4, Burkhard wrote:
> *Hemidactylus* wrote:
> > Glenn <GlennS...@msn.com> wrote:

> >> "At Scientific American, Yale president Peter Salovey urges that “STEM
> >> majors' college experience must be integrated into a broader model of
> >> liberal education to prepare them to think critically and imaginatively
> >> about the world and to understand different viewpoints." Realistically,
> >> in the inclusive environment that progressives are creating in the
> >> sciences today, that may well mean accommodating the "meteoric rise" of
> >> witchcraft and astrology, along the lines of understanding "different viewpoints."
> >>
> >> https://www.mercatornet.com/features/view/which-side-will-atheists-choose-in-the-war-on-science/21598
> >>

> > Funny that the above was written by Denyse O'Leary called by RationalWiki
> > "a Canadian intelligent design apologist".
> > https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Denyse_O%27Leary
>
> Well, that could come as no surprise, given that the mercatornet paper
> is pretty much bereft of facts, research or any understanding of current
> scientific practice. Sounds as if someone is channeling Rand.

Ayn Rand? relevance, if so?

> I'm currently part of three STEM-lead research projects, where computer
> scientists, mathematicians, anthropologists, psychologists, sociologists
> and media study folks work together on better and safer products. Almost
> all of the lead investigators are dualy qualified, but we struggled to
> get also enough high quality postdocs that combine STEM with humanities
> - that's also because industry has spotted how much additional value
> they bring, and they can by now pretty much write their own salary
> cheque.

I'm not sure that's a good sign.

I'm sure there are many advantages to having people with strength
in the liberal arts, but the money may attract a lot of people with
more interest in an affluent lifestyle than with a love of
truth for the sake of truth.

Given the numerous cases of scientific fraud documented by
Retraction Watch, what do you think the outcome will be?
More of it, less of it, or about the same?

> This is particular strong in HCI and human-centred design
> research, but also fields such as FAT algorithm research. De-biasing
> algorithms is not easy, and the comp. sci and math communities have by
> now learned that they need the humanities to help with that. (The IEEE
> working groups on standard setting for socially responsible computing
> are all also multi-disciplinary) And that's not just something fanciful,
> biased algorithms can be lethal, e.g. if the VR that steers an
> autonomous car is more likely to make mistakes when a female voice gives
> the command, or if the collusion avoiding algorithm does not recognize
> shapes of people with disabilities.

All very laudable aims. But, given the fact that there are no professional
criteria for calling oneself a bioethicist, what kind of oversight can
we expect of these people?

>
> And that's not even talking about all those markets where the arts and
> humanities are users of STEM, for instance developing digitized
> repositories of artifacts for museums to increase accessibility of their
> collections while minimizing deterioration, developing AIs that can
> write news items, working with digital artists or developing legal tech
> apps that allow more accurate predictions of the success of a case etc

> etc etc. A billion £ [pound] industry that relies on steam with non-stem

> collaboration, for which you lay the grounds at university.
>
> So the Yale president is spot on, and doing his job, i.e. making sure
> that his students are prepared for the labour market.

Yeah, with the labour market what it is, any job where one may
play with a "blank check" is a huge source of bragging rights for Yale.

> And then we get her disparaging the idea that "First, the nature of
> pure of mathematics itself leads to styles of thinking that can be
> damaging when applied beyond mathematics to social and human issues."
>
> How can this even be controversial?

I'm sure you know a lot more about the limitations of mathematics
than does most of the general public. So I expect that it IS
controversial in the big outside world.

I doubt, for example, that most people are informed about what
you say next:

> The financial crisis was to a good
> deal due to mathematicians developing abstract models of the market that
> had lost all contact with the underlying social and human issues

Fortunately, I never dirtied myself with such "applications" of
mathematics -- but this is not the place to tout my three
forays into applications of mathematics to medicine.

Suffice it to say here that a lot of people mistake "mathematics"
for "quantification" or "statistics."

> ("assume unlimited amounts of money and zero transaction costs..."). The
> "assume a perfectly spherical cow" has been a running joke for his
> type of problem for ages. (and here on TO we have had of course Alan and
> Ray, who both in their way use extremely limited formal models to argue
> something is wrong with reality, rather then the other way round.)

Who is Ray? Surely not Ray Martinez! When did he ever dabble in
formal models?

> So yes, it is important to remind mathematicians that their abstractions
> are just that, and take it into account when deriving conclusions of
> their ideas when applied to the real world.
>

> Equally fact free and analytically muddled was that gem:
> "One activist against sexual harassment candidly admits that, in her
> view, the `hostile environment is perpetuated by a focus on the science

> -- and not on the people doing it' "

>
> I mean, du'h? if you are sexually molested by your supervisor, it's not
> "science" doing the molesting, it's the person doing the science.

You seem to be missing the point here. It's "focus" and not the
science itself that is being talked about here.

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

Bob Casanova

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Mar 20, 2019, 4:25:03 PM3/20/19

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On Wed, 20 Mar 2019 05:40:25 -0700 (PDT), the following
appeared in talk.origins, posted by Alan Kleinman MD PhD
<klei...@sti.net>:

>So this is what our educational system now produces, experts at channel surfing with a vocabulary that makes a cesspool look clean.

....says the self-proclaimed "biology expert" who has an
adolescent epithet for everyone who calls him out on his
errors (which means, generally, everyone here), and whose
doctorates presumably came from that same educational
system...

Glenn

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Mar 20, 2019, 4:30:03 PM3/20/19

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On Wednesday, March 20, 2019 at 10:50:03 AM UTC-7, Peter Nyikos wrote:
> On Sunday, March 17, 2019 at 1:15:03 PM UTC-4, Burkhard wrote:
> > *Hemidactylus* wrote:
> > > Glenn <GlennS...@msn.com> wrote:
> > >> "At Scientific American, Yale president Peter Salovey urges that “STEM
> > >> majors' college experience must be integrated into a broader model of
> > >> liberal education to prepare them to think critically and imaginatively
> > >> about the world and to understand different viewpoints." Realistically,
> > >> in the inclusive environment that progressives are creating in the
> > >> sciences today, that may well mean accommodating the "meteoric rise" of
> > >> witchcraft and astrology, along the lines of understanding "different viewpoints."
> > >>
> > >> https://www.mercatornet.com/features/view/which-side-will-atheists-choose-in-the-war-on-science/21598
> > >>
> > > Funny that the above was written by Denyse O'Leary called by RationalWiki
> > > "a Canadian intelligent design apologist".
> > > https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Denyse_O%27Leary
> >
> > Well, that could come as no surprise, given that the mercatornet paper
> > is pretty much bereft of facts, research or any understanding of current
> > scientific practice. Sounds as if someone is channeling Rand.
>
> Ayn Rand? relevance, if so?
>
>

No questions about Burkhard acknowledging Hemi's attack on the author?
About Burkhard's allowance of RationalWiki as an objective source?
About Burkhard's claim that argument for ID is void of facts, research, or any understanding of scientific practice?

snip the rest of the garbage.

Burkhard

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Mar 20, 2019, 5:10:03 PM3/20/19

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Peter Nyikos wrote:
> On Sunday, March 17, 2019 at 1:15:03 PM UTC-4, Burkhard wrote:
>> *Hemidactylus* wrote:
>>> Glenn <GlennS...@msn.com> wrote:
>>>> "At Scientific American, Yale president Peter Salovey urges that “STEM
>>>> majors' college experience must be integrated into a broader model of
>>>> liberal education to prepare them to think critically and imaginatively
>>>> about the world and to understand different viewpoints." Realistically,
>>>> in the inclusive environment that progressives are creating in the
>>>> sciences today, that may well mean accommodating the "meteoric rise" of
>>>> witchcraft and astrology, along the lines of understanding "different viewpoints."
>>>>
>>>> https://www.mercatornet.com/features/view/which-side-will-atheists-choose-in-the-war-on-science/21598
>>>>
>>> Funny that the above was written by Denyse O'Leary called by RationalWiki
>>> "a Canadian intelligent design apologist".
>>> https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Denyse_O%27Leary
>>
>> Well, that could come as no surprise, given that the mercatornet paper
>> is pretty much bereft of facts, research or any understanding of current
>> scientific practice. Sounds as if someone is channeling Rand.
>
> Ayn Rand? relevance, if so?
>

The same naive positivism (or objectivism in case of Rand) that contrast
"hard facts" that STEM gives you with illegitimate knowledge claims in
all other disciplines, and in particular dismissive of any attempts to
study the practice of science using the methods of sociology,
philosophy, history etc.

>
>> I'm currently part of three STEM-lead research projects, where computer
>> scientists, mathematicians, anthropologists, psychologists, sociologists
>> and media study folks work together on better and safer products. Almost
>> all of the lead investigators are dualy qualified, but we struggled to
>> get also enough high quality postdocs that combine STEM with humanities
>> - that's also because industry has spotted how much additional value
>> they bring, and they can by now pretty much write their own salary
>> cheque.
>
> I'm not sure that's a good sign.
>
> I'm sure there are many advantages to having people with strength
> in the liberal arts, but the money may attract a lot of people with
> more interest in an affluent lifestyle than with a love of
> truth for the sake of truth.

Not everyone unfortunately is independently wealthy and can do science
for the love of it, most of us have to work for a living. Anyhow,the
people who write the cheques are not universities, we competed against
the likes of Microsoft, Facebook and Google.

You are however missing the point I was making here. Glenn's author
repeats and endorses the usual conservative talking points about useful
STEM and useless, politicized humanities: "But progressives can be just
as bad” because progressive ideology “is riddled with anti-scientific
feel-good fallacies designed to win hearts, not minds.”

But everyone who knows that field knows that it is big companies that
are desperately looking for dual qualified people, and willing to pay
for it, The market sides with the "progressives" here - it's just that
conservative politicians and pundits tend to know little about the real
economy, and her paper is another example. Again, combining STEM with
A&H is not some leftist pipedream, it's what the most successful
companies across various sectors have identified as key skills in their
employees

>
> Given the numerous cases of scientific fraud documented by
> Retraction Watch, what do you think the outcome will be?
> More of it, less of it, or about the same?

I'd say what we know already about scientific fraud in the university
sector indicates, unsurprisingly, that money is if at all only a
marginal factor. The academy always paid in a different currency -
reputation, admiration, citations, postnominal letters etc etc. So I'd
say about the same.

>
>
>> This is particular strong in HCI and human-centred design
>> research, but also fields such as FAT algorithm research. De-biasing
>> algorithms is not easy, and the comp. sci and math communities have by
>> now learned that they need the humanities to help with that. (The IEEE
>> working groups on standard setting for socially responsible computing
>> are all also multi-disciplinary) And that's not just something fanciful,
>> biased algorithms can be lethal, e.g. if the VR that steers an
>> autonomous car is more likely to make mistakes when a female voice gives
>> the command, or if the collusion avoiding algorithm does not recognize
>> shapes of people with disabilities.
>
> All very laudable aims. But, given the fact that there are no professional
> criteria for calling oneself a bioethicist, what kind of oversight can
> we expect of these people?

What oversight do you get as a mathematician? That too is not a
regulated profession after all. So I'd say a proper degree structure,
where these subjects are incorporated in the undergraduate and
postgraduate curriculum is a good start, the way Yale (and lots of other
unis, including my own which is why I teach also courses in comp.sci)
is doing it - and that is exactly hat Glenn's author ignorantly poo-poos.

>
>>
>> And that's not even talking about all those markets where the arts and
>> humanities are users of STEM, for instance developing digitized
>> repositories of artifacts for museums to increase accessibility of their
>> collections while minimizing deterioration, developing AIs that can
>> write news items, working with digital artists or developing legal tech
>> apps that allow more accurate predictions of the success of a case etc
>> etc etc. A billion £ [pound] industry that relies on steam with non-stem
>> collaboration, for which you lay the grounds at university.
>>
>> So the Yale president is spot on, and doing his job, i.e. making sure
>> that his students are prepared for the labour market.
>
> Yeah, with the labour market what it is, any job where one may
> play with a "blank check" is a huge source of bragging rights for Yale.
>
>
>> And then we get her disparaging the idea that "First, the nature of
>> pure of mathematics itself leads to styles of thinking that can be
>> damaging when applied beyond mathematics to social and human issues."
>>
>> How can this even be controversial?
>
> I'm sure you know a lot more about the limitations of mathematics
> than does most of the general public. So I expect that it IS
> controversial in the big outside world.

While that's arguably true, folks in this large outside world,
hopefully, don't self-identify as science journalists and pin articles
picking a fight with proper scientists. But the author does. Her
position is exactly that, i.e. that one can apply mathematics to the
real world without knowing anything about the methodological problems
and conceptual limitations in doing so, and that in particular you can
apply mathematics to complex social phenomena without knowing anything
about sociology. Which is why I mentioned Rand above - she had the same
idea, that even mentioning the fact that mathematical models are just
that, models and not reality itself, was anathema and equivalent of
subscribing to the most extreme form of social constructivism and
postmodernism. Same line argued here by author of the linked piece

>
>
> I doubt, for example, that most people are informed about what
> you say next:
>
>> The financial crisis was to a good
>> deal due to mathematicians developing abstract models of the market that
>> had lost all contact with the underlying social and human issues
>
> Fortunately, I never dirtied myself with such "applications" of
> mathematics -- but this is not the place to tout my three
> forays into applications of mathematics to medicine.
>
> Suffice it to say here that a lot of people mistake "mathematics"
> for "quantification" or "statistics."
>
>
>> ("assume unlimited amounts of money and zero transaction costs..."). The
>> "assume a perfectly spherical cow" has been a running joke for his
>> type of problem for ages. (and here on TO we have had of course Alan and
>> Ray, who both in their way use extremely limited formal models to argue
>> something is wrong with reality, rather then the other way round.)
>
> Who is Ray? Surely not Ray Martinez! When did he ever dabble in
> formal models?

Well, not on the same level of sophistication, but that's what what he
thought he was doing. Remember, he was talking about "logic" all the
time? Specifically, he thought he could formally prove, using nothing
else by Aristotle's principle of non-contradiction (A=A, which he cited
a lot but never correctly) and an equally false rendition of Newton's
Rule II of scientific inference, that the theory of evolution is
self-contradictory?

That's why he always dismissed your horse sequence etc - as he thought
he had proven a logical inconsistency, applying nothing but the laws of
logic, no possible empirical evidence could salvage the theory.

>
>
>> So yes, it is important to remind mathematicians that their abstractions
>> are just that, and take it into account when deriving conclusions of
>> their ideas when applied to the real world.
>>
>> Equally fact free and analytically muddled was that gem:
>> "One activist against sexual harassment candidly admits that, in her
>> view, the `hostile environment is perpetuated by a focus on the science
>> -- and not on the people doing it' "
>>
>> I mean, du'h? if you are sexually molested by your supervisor, it's not
>> "science" doing the molesting, it's the person doing the science.
>
> You seem to be missing the point here. It's "focus" and not the
> science itself that is being talked about here.

Don't think I'm missing anything here. If you are an activist against
sexual harassment at universities, your focus, quite rightly, is not
"the science itself", it is the scientists doing the harassing and the
structures that allow them to get away with it. The author of the piece,
strangely, disagrees with this. I pointed out that this is a stupid
position to take. Of course, the focus of anti-harassment activism are
scientists, not the science they are doing, and rightly so. I have no
idea why the writer of that piece thought the focus of anti-harassment
activism at university should be the science, not the scientists, or if
she thought anything at all, or even understood the implications of her
own text.

Glenn

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Mar 20, 2019, 5:50:02 PM3/20/19

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You're indicting Denyse O'Leary as being "particular[ly] dismissive of any attempts to study the practice of science using the methods of sociology,
philosophy, history etc". And it appears you would include witchcraft and astrology into those methods.

What a surprise.

JC

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Mar 20, 2019, 6:00:03 PM3/20/19

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Mar 21, 2019, 6:25:03 AM3/21/19

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Glenn <GlennS...@msn.com> wrote:
> On Wednesday, March 20, 2019 at 10:50:03 AM UTC-7, Peter Nyikos wrote:
>> On Sunday, March 17, 2019 at 1:15:03 PM UTC-4, Burkhard wrote:
>>> *Hemidactylus* wrote:
>>>> Glenn <GlennS...@msn.com> wrote:
>>>>> "At Scientific American, Yale president Peter Salovey urges that “STEM
>>>>> majors' college experience must be integrated into a broader model of
>>>>> liberal education to prepare them to think critically and imaginatively
>>>>> about the world and to understand different viewpoints." Realistically,
>>>>> in the inclusive environment that progressives are creating in the
>>>>> sciences today, that may well mean accommodating the "meteoric rise" of
>>>>> witchcraft and astrology, along the lines of understanding "different viewpoints."
>>>>>
>>>>> https://www.mercatornet.com/features/view/which-side-will-atheists-choose-in-the-war-on-science/21598
>>>>>
>>>> Funny that the above was written by Denyse O'Leary called by RationalWiki
>>>> "a Canadian intelligent design apologist".
>>>> https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Denyse_O%27Leary
>>>
>>> Well, that could come as no surprise, given that the mercatornet paper
>>> is pretty much bereft of facts, research or any understanding of current
>>> scientific practice. Sounds as if someone is channeling Rand.
>>
>> Ayn Rand? relevance, if so?
>>
>>
> No questions about Burkhard acknowledging Hemi's attack on the author?
>

What of it? Your thoughts on Shermer’s slam on the left?

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-liberals-war-on-science/

So in his estimation we gotta back the tribe by endorsing evolutionary
psychology and not being a bit concerned by the corporate aspect of GMOs
with the patents and profits? Do *you* want to agree with Shermer on
evolutionary psychology? You realize there are some complexities to GMOs
beyond the silly Frankenstein’s monster aspect? They are a boon to
humanity. But Shermer’s libertarian slip is showing. He comes across to me
as Manichean with us or against us.

Why would I ask about Shermer you wonder...O’Leary cites him. Did you get
that far?

I’m surprised she didn’t march out Boghossian and Lindsay’s attempts to
mimic Sokal, which has opened up a can of worms on the need for IRB review.
First they came for the IRBs then they toppled bioethics.

Apparently Nietzsche was right. What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.
But them helicopter parents swooped in and coddled the American youth mind
so now every university is, if those who warn us about catastrophizing risk
worst case scenario it, on the brink of Evergreen wokeness. You see the
Regressive Left catastrophizes everything in its nanny state agenda, where
New Atheists never do.

And when we get into (Danger Will Robinson) the prospect of adding Arts and
Humanities into the STEM agenda (the ghost of Matthew Arnold is aghast at
the irony contra Huxley) O’Leary says:

“Actually, if the class doesn’t cover enough ground to advance in physics,
everyone will get left behind. The lack of rigour will mostly harm the
students with less access to private resources (tutoring, math and science
camps, cram courses, private schooling, etc.) It harms them in three ways:
First, they are not getting the systematic, rigorous teaching they need;
second, their time is irrecoverably wasted on a variety of
non-science-related objectives, and third, if they go on in science, they
will be out of depth and struggling at the bottom of the class.”

What do the relishers of such schadenfreude who lecture atheists about the
internecine culture wars think about addition of “objective” Bible classes
into public school curricula? Arts bad, Bible good?

“...that may well mean accommodating the ”meteoric rise” of witchcraft and
astrology, along the lines of understanding “different viewpoints.”

>
> About Burkhard's allowance of RationalWiki as an objective source?

Burkhard wasn’t the one who posted RationalWiki. Should I have asked his
permission?

> About Burkhard's claim that argument for ID is void of facts, research,
> or any understanding of scientific practice?
>

Well? Can you cogently counter that?

Hemidactylus

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Mar 21, 2019, 8:15:03 AM3/21/19

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Sorry for the curt and context free reply. You cued my anger at Pinker for
the way *he* presents science against its detractors in *Enlightenment Now*
and underemphasizes the darker aspects, such as syphilis experiments on
people. He mentions Tuskegee but omits Guatemala. And also no MKULTRA and
other difficult stuff before he goes on to devalue IRBs and the field of
bioethics. So you accidentally touched a nerve. Still as you see Obama
called on bioethicists to review the experiments in Guatemala. Not a
shining moment for science. So maybe bioethics has a place.

Burkhard

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Mar 21, 2019, 2:10:03 PM3/21/19

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Yup. We agreed that at the last meeting of the EAC, remember? All public
communication to be send to me first for approval, as Director of Public
Relations, Perversions and Paperclip Procurement. We don't want to have
another Nietzsche Problem ever again now, do we?

Otherwise,I'd use RW just like wikipedia or any other encyclopedia for
that matter- it is as good as the evidence and sources it provides, and
in this case the links provided the relevant evidence for the only issue
that was at stake, i.e. that she really endorses ID 0 they linked ot her
own words.

Peter Nyikos

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Mar 21, 2019, 9:35:03 PM3/21/19

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On Wednesday, March 20, 2019 at 5:10:03 PM UTC-4, Burkhard wrote:
> Peter Nyikos wrote:
> > On Sunday, March 17, 2019 at 1:15:03 PM UTC-4, Burkhard wrote:
> >> *Hemidactylus* wrote:
> >>> Glenn <GlennS...@msn.com> wrote:
> >>>> "At Scientific American, Yale president Peter Salovey urges that "STEM
> >>>> majors' college experience must be integrated into a broader model of
> >>>> liberal education to prepare them to think critically and imaginatively
> >>>> about the world and to understand different viewpoints." Realistically,
> >>>> in the inclusive environment that progressives are creating in the
> >>>> sciences today, that may well mean accommodating the "meteoric rise" of
> >>>> witchcraft and astrology, along the lines of understanding "different viewpoints."

> >>>>
> >>>> https://www.mercatornet.com/features/view/which-side-will-atheists-choose-in-the-war-on-science/21598
> >>>>
> >>> Funny that the above was written by Denyse O'Leary called by RationalWiki
> >>> "a Canadian intelligent design apologist".
> >>> https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Denyse_O%27Leary

This was a blatant *ad hominem* by Hemidactylus, pandering to the
prejudice against ID that permeates talk.origins. Now that I've
had the time to read the article, it is obvious that it has nothing
to do with ID. What it DOES is to berate the far-out antiscientific
and anti-mathematical ideas of some "post-modern progressives". How
influential these progressives are, I have no idea, but neither you
nor Hemidactylus is addressing this issue, Burkhard.

> >> Well, that could come as no surprise, given that the mercatornet paper
> >> is pretty much bereft of facts, research or any understanding of current
> >> scientific practice. Sounds as if someone is channeling Rand.
> >
> > Ayn Rand? relevance, if so?
> >
>
> The same naive positivism (or objectivism in case of Rand) that contrast
> "hard facts" that STEM gives you with illegitimate knowledge claims in
> all other disciplines,

ALL other disciplines? I saw nothing to that effect in the article. Did you
actually think the author agreed with everyone she quoted?? It doesn't take
much acumen to spot the ones she singled out for disapproval. The context
is a dead giveaway to someone like me.

Not having read anything by Ayn Rand and precious little by Nathaniel Branden
(all of it specious) I have no idea whether Rand would agree with the author
on much of anything. So your "channeling" dig needs lots of explaining
for me to take it seriously.

> and in particular dismissive of any attempts to
> study the practice of science using the methods of sociology,
> philosophy, history etc.

Wait -- do you actually ENDORSE the wacky ideas that the author disparages?

Science, we are told by one source, is "inherently discriminatory to women
and minorities by promoting a view of knowledge as static and unchanging,
a view of teaching that promotes the idea of a passive student, and by
promoting a chilly climate that marginalizes women." (Laura Parson, dissertation,
University of North Dakota).
...
These misguided people argue not only that there is no objective reality,
but that attempts to find and teach it are sexist: that such endeavors are
masculine ones, and that the methods of science themselves make the discipline
sexist and patriarchal.

> >
> >> I'm currently part of three STEM-lead research projects, where computer
> >> scientists, mathematicians, anthropologists, psychologists, sociologists
> >> and media study folks work together on better and safer products. Almost
> >> all of the lead investigators are dualy qualified, but we struggled to
> >> get also enough high quality postdocs that combine STEM with humanities
> >> - that's also because industry has spotted how much additional value
> >> they bring, and they can by now pretty much write their own salary
> >> cheque.
> >
> > I'm not sure that's a good sign.

In fact, from my modest earning perspective, anyone making over $300,000 a year is
"rich," and anyone making a million dollars a year or more is "filthy rich."

> > I'm sure there are many advantages to having people with strength
> > in the liberal arts, but the money may attract a lot of people with
> > more interest in an affluent lifestyle than with a love of
> > truth for the sake of truth.
>
> Not everyone unfortunately is independently wealthy and can do science
> for the love of it, most of us have to work for a living.

I do mathematics for the love of it AND work for a living in the process.
Don't you love your work in the same way?

> Anyhow,the
> people who write the cheques are not universities, we competed against
> the likes of Microsoft, Facebook and Google.

And lost, I take it? What exactly *did* you mean by that open-ended
"write their own salary cheque"?

>
> You are however missing the point I was making here. Glenn's author
> repeats and endorses the usual conservative talking points about useful
> STEM and useless, politicized humanities:

"useless, politicized" is editorializing by you. Those words nowhere appear
in the article, and are not supported by what you quote next:

> "But progressives can be just
> as bad" because progressive ideology "is riddled with anti-scientific
> feel-good fallacies designed to win hearts, not minds."

YOU seem to be missing the point of this quote you took out of context.
It was NOT siding with conservatives. Quite the contrary. Look at what
immediately precedes your quote:

Five years ago at Scientific American, Michael Shermer pegged the progressive
approach to some environment issues as a liberal war on science. Campbell and
Berezow wrote in New Scientist (2013), "Conservatives rightly get a bad rap for
anti-science policies. But progressives can be just as bad" ...[continue
as above].

The author is railing against far-out ideas like the one I quoted,
and not against the humanities.

> But everyone who knows that field knows that it is big companies that
> are desperately looking for dual qualified people, and willing to pay
> for it, The market sides with the "progressives" here

Which ones? surely not the ones the author rails against.

>- it's just that
> conservative politicians and pundits tend to know little about the real
> economy, and her paper is another example.

So far, you have barely scratched the surface of the paper, and that rather
badly.

Continued in next reply, to be done soon after I see that this one
has posted.

Peter Nyikos
Professor, Dept. of Mathematics -- standard disclaimer--
University of South Carolina

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

Hemidactylus

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Mar 21, 2019, 10:40:02 PM3/21/19

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Peter Nyikos <nyi...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
> On Wednesday, March 20, 2019 at 5:10:03 PM UTC-4, Burkhard wrote:
>> Peter Nyikos wrote:
>>> On Sunday, March 17, 2019 at 1:15:03 PM UTC-4, Burkhard wrote:
>>>> *Hemidactylus* wrote:
>>>>> Glenn <GlennS...@msn.com> wrote:
>>>>>> "At Scientific American, Yale president Peter Salovey urges that "STEM
>>>>>> majors' college experience must be integrated into a broader model of
>>>>>> liberal education to prepare them to think critically and imaginatively
>>>>>> about the world and to understand different viewpoints." Realistically,
>>>>>> in the inclusive environment that progressives are creating in the
>>>>>> sciences today, that may well mean accommodating the "meteoric rise" of
>>>>>> witchcraft and astrology, along the lines of understanding "different viewpoints."
>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> https://www.mercatornet.com/features/view/which-side-will-atheists-choose-in-the-war-on-science/21598
>>>>>>
>>>>> Funny that the above was written by Denyse O'Leary called by RationalWiki
>>>>> "a Canadian intelligent design apologist".
>>>>> https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Denyse_O%27Leary
>
> This was a blatant *ad hominem* by Hemidactylus, pandering to the
> prejudice against ID that permeates talk.origins.

Blatant ad hom? Well:
https://evolutionnews.org/2017/05/how-naturalism-rots-science-from-the-head-down/

“Could intelligent design theory offer insights? Yes, but they come at a
cost. We must first acknowledge that metaphysical naturalism is death for
science. Metaphysical naturalists are currently putting the science claims
that are failing them beyond the reach of disconfirmation by evidence and
casting doubt on our ability to understand evidence anyway.

ID is first and foremost a demand that evidence matter, underwritten by a
conviction that reason-based thinking is not an illusion. That means, of
course, accepting fine-tuning as a fact like any other, not to be explained
away by equating vivid speculations about alternative universes with
observable facts. Second, ID theorists insist that the information content
of our universe and life forms is the missing factor in our attempt to
understand our world. Understanding the relationship between information on
the one hand and matter and energy on the other is an essential next
discovery. That’s work, not elegant essays.”

So...?

> Now that I've
> had the time to read the article, it is obvious that it has nothing
> to do with ID. What it DOES is to berate the far-out antiscientific
> and anti-mathematical ideas of some "post-modern progressives". How
> influential these progressives are, I have no idea, but neither you
> nor Hemidactylus is addressing this issue, Burkhard.
>

Read more like schadenfreude over the woes of New Atheism. Ironically this
issue puts you in the same foxhole as Jerry Coyne, who worst cases
everything from woke students at Evergreen to the funding habits of
Templeton.

Who are these legions of pomo progs and what have they done with our
institutions of learning? Are you familiar with post-modernism? Is it the
same as Critical Theory? Can totalizing narratives like Darwinism get taken
too far? Is Barthes “death of the author” a swan song for science and
technology? What exactly is “cultural Marxism”?

>
>>>> Well, that could come as no surprise, given that the mercatornet paper
>>>> is pretty much bereft of facts, research or any understanding of current
>>>> scientific practice. Sounds as if someone is channeling Rand.
>>>
>>> Ayn Rand? relevance, if so?
>>>
>>
>> The same naive positivism (or objectivism in case of Rand) that contrast
>> "hard facts" that STEM gives you with illegitimate knowledge claims in
>> all other disciplines,
>
> ALL other disciplines? I saw nothing to that effect in the article. Did you
> actually think the author agreed with everyone she quoted?? It doesn't take
> much acumen to spot the ones she singled out for disapproval. The context
> is a dead giveaway to someone like me.
>

What context is that? Please elaborate...

>
> Not having read anything by Ayn Rand and precious little by Nathaniel Branden
> (all of it specious) I have no idea whether Rand would agree with the author
> on much of anything. So your "channeling" dig needs lots of explaining
> for me to take it seriously.
>
>> and in particular dismissive of any attempts to
>> study the practice of science using the methods of sociology,
>> philosophy, history etc.
>
> Wait -- do you actually ENDORSE the wacky ideas that the author disparages?
>

So science has no historical context? Darwin wasn’t influenced by Malthus
or Adam Smith? How did he and Wallace stumble roughly on the same idea?
Dennett and Pinker’s wife Rebecca Goldstein capably dismantle scientific
detractors of philosophy in an episode of Closer to Truth, Templeton
backed. Sociology is a science, but scientists, being social beings are not
immune to structural issues. Hell economics is a limiter of science
(funding resources and priorities) as is ideology (especially religious
dogma). Why have stem cells been so taboo? Recall Dubya?

>
> Science, we are told by one source, is "inherently discriminatory to women
> and minorities by promoting a view of knowledge as static and unchanging,
> a view of teaching that promotes the idea of a passive student, and by
> promoting a chilly climate that marginalizes women." (Laura Parson, dissertation,
> University of North Dakota).
> ...
>

Women do encounter discrimination and harassment, though some of this
rhetoric goes in strange directions. It’s anecdotes marched out as worst
cases and generalized as what ALL ‘pomo prog cultural Marxists’ are saying.

>
> These misguided people argue not only that there is no objective reality,
> but that attempts to find and teach it are sexist: that such endeavors are
> masculine ones, and that the methods of science themselves make the discipline
> sexist and patriarchal.
>

How does one cherry picked instance become a warranted generalization? No
feminist glaciology?

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/03/qa-author-feminist-glaciology-study-reflects-sudden-appearance-culture-wars

Shermer’s libertarian bias leaks through.

“Whereas conservatives obsess over the purity and sanctity of sex, the
left's sacred values seem fixated on the environment, leading to an almost
religious fervor over the purity and sanctity of air, water and especially
food. Try having a conversation with a liberal progressive about
GMOs—genetically modified organisms—in which the words “Monsanto” and
“profit” are not dropped like syllogistic bombs.”

Do you agree with Shermer on the importance of evolutionary psychology? Or
are you one of those “cognitive creationists” he belittles?

>
> The author is railing against far-out ideas like the one I quoted,
> and not against the humanities.
>

“Something to watch carefully is the STEAM fad (STEM with "A" for Arts
inserted). It is an effort to integrate the arts with the sciences
which—again, consider the context of failing feeder schools—“makes the arts
a perfect staging ground for retreat from rigor in the name of
ideologically driven criteria.” From City Journal, we learn, “Mathematical
problem-solving is being deemphasized in favor of more qualitative group
projects; the pace of undergraduate physics education is being slowed down
so that no one gets left behind.””
[...]
“At Scientific American, Yale president Peter Salovey urges that “STEM

majors' college experience must be integrated into a broader model of
liberal education to prepare them to think critically and imaginatively
about the world and to understand different viewpoints.” Realistically, in
the inclusive environment that progressives are creating in the sciences
today, that may well mean accommodating the ”meteoric rise” of witchcraft

and astrology, along the lines of understanding “different viewpoints.””

A in STEAM and broadened liberal arts? Hmmm...I could say the same with
more warrant about the push for Bible classes in public schools. That’s
more threatening than bogeymen Derrida or Foucault.

>
>> But everyone who knows that field knows that it is big companies that
>> are desperately looking for dual qualified people, and willing to pay
>> for it, The market sides with the "progressives" here
>
> Which ones? surely not the ones the author rails against.
>

You’re arguing against a cardboard progressive cutout put together with
toothpicks and chewing gum.

>
>> - it's just that
>> conservative politicians and pundits tend to know little about the real
>> economy, and her paper is another example.
>
> So far, you have barely scratched the surface of the paper, and that rather
> badly.
>

You’re not exactly striking oil yourself Jed Clampett.

Peter Nyikos

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Mar 21, 2019, 11:55:03 PM3/21/19

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On Wednesday, March 20, 2019 at 5:10:03 PM UTC-4, Burkhard wrote:
> Peter Nyikos wrote:
> > On Sunday, March 17, 2019 at 1:15:03 PM UTC-4, Burkhard wrote:

> >> I'm currently part of three STEM-lead research projects, where computer
> >> scientists, mathematicians, anthropologists, psychologists, sociologists
> >> and media study folks work together on better and safer products.

The adage "too many cooks spoil the broth" comes to mind here. Also
"How many ______________ does it take to screw in a lightbulb?"

Now that may be unfair, but if so, I would like to know how all
these specialists are needed for *products* as opposed to *policies*.

> >> Almost
> >> all of the lead investigators are dualy qualified, but we struggled to
> >> get also enough high quality postdocs that combine STEM with humanities
> >> - that's also because industry has spotted how much additional value
> >> they bring, and they can by now pretty much write their own salary
> >> cheque.

I addressed this in my first reply to this long post of yours, but kept
it in for context. Here too:

> But everyone who knows that field knows that it is big companies that
> are desperately looking for dual qualified people, and willing to pay
> for it,

The cynic in me suggests that old fashioned nepotism might be at work
here, with companies very carefully tailoring the job description
around the person they have decided to hire, and only advertise it
because of legal requirements.

I've seen that sort of thing happen, to people I knew and cared very
much about, on both sides of the deal. One friend got a job due to such
careful tailoring, the other lost out on a (completely different) job whose description she fit perfectly. Had I learned about it soon after it had
happened, I would have advised her to look into suing the company for
discrimination.

But maybe that would have been bad advice -- it might have made lots
of companies decide to not to even call her in for interviews, lest they
get burned too.

Enough context, on with the rest.

> Again, combining STEM with
> A&H is not some leftist pipedream, it's what the most successful
> companies across various sectors have identified as key skills in their
> employees

See above about one reason those skills might be "key".

> >
> > Given the numerous cases of scientific fraud documented by
> > Retraction Watch, what do you think the outcome will be?
> > More of it, less of it, or about the same?
>
> I'd say what we know already about scientific fraud in the university
> sector indicates, unsurprisingly, that money is if at all only a
> marginal factor.

You've got to be kidding! University administrators are hungry for the
overhead that comes with multimillion dollar grants. Those grants
are what makes their science labs possible, and faculty complain about applying
for grants taking huge amounts of time from the research and writing
that they would like to be doing.

>The academy always paid in a different currency -
> reputation, admiration, citations, postnominal letters etc etc.

The president of my university makes well over $500,000 a year, and
it is because he is so good at attracting donors with deep pockets.
And all the things you name are big selling points.

Welcome to the world of USA academe, Burkhard. As one of the wisest professors
I ever knew wrote to me, "Things will get worse before they get
better, because we have sold ourselves to the devil of external funding."

> So I'd say about the same.

Care to reconsider?

> >
> >
> >> This is particular strong in HCI and human-centred design
> >> research, but also fields such as FAT algorithm research. De-biasing
> >> algorithms is not easy, and the comp. sci and math communities have by
> >> now learned that they need the humanities to help with that. (The IEEE
> >> working groups on standard setting for socially responsible computing
> >> are all also multi-disciplinary) And that's not just something fanciful,
> >> biased algorithms can be lethal, e.g. if the VR that steers an
> >> autonomous car is more likely to make mistakes when a female voice gives
> >> the command, or if the collusion avoiding algorithm does not recognize
> >> shapes of people with disabilities.

That is the benign side of something whose dark side the article under
discussion deals with.

> >
> > All very laudable aims. But, given the fact that there are no professional
> > criteria for calling oneself a bioethicist, what kind of oversight can
> > we expect of these people?
>
> What oversight do you get as a mathematician?

Pure mathematics is unique in that everything can be independently checked,
without a huge amount of expensive equipment.

Yes, sometimes mistakes in "proofs" take decades for an interested reader
to discover, but usually there isn't much grant money riding on the difference.
Our grants are pocket money compared to what university administrators
really drool over.

> That too is not a
> regulated profession after all. So I'd say a proper degree structure,
> where these subjects are incorporated in the undergraduate and
> postgraduate curriculum is a good start, the way Yale (and lots of other
> unis, including my own which is why I teach also courses in comp.sci)

> is doing it - and that is exactly what Glenn's author ignorantly poo-poos.

I think you need to carefully read the article from beginning to end,
and find some quotes which justify this condemnation.

Having courses on the books says nothing about how well they will be taught.
Faculty are increasingly hamstrung by deans imposing Mickey Mouse standards
of detailed syllabi. In some big universities, departments are so regimented
that all the faculty teaching sections of the same course -- and there can be
several dozen sections of the "business calculus" course, for instance --
have to give the students the same identical test on the same identical date.
Where's the professionalism in all this?

> >
> >>
> >> And that's not even talking about all those markets where the arts and
> >> humanities are users of STEM, for instance developing digitized
> >> repositories of artifacts for museums to increase accessibility of their
> >> collections while minimizing deterioration, developing AIs that can
> >> write news items, working with digital artists or developing legal tech
> >> apps that allow more accurate predictions of the success of a case etc
> >> etc etc. A billion £ [pound] industry that relies on steam with non-stem
> >> collaboration, for which you lay the grounds at university.
> >>
> >> So the Yale president is spot on, and doing his job, i.e. making sure
> >> that his students are prepared for the labour market.

> > Yeah, with the labour market what it is, any job where one may
> > play with a "blank check" is a huge source of bragging rights for Yale.

And of megabucks from rich alumni and alumnae of Yale.

But chew on this: students graduating from Yale have a big advantage
in the labour market simply because they are from Yale and not
from one of the numerous big state schools that are way down in the rankings.
So the Yale president is "spot on" largely because he is the *Yale* president.

Remainder deleted, to be replied to later. I'm giving a seminar tomorrow morning,
and it's time to get a good night's sleep.

Peter Nyikos
Professor, Dept. of Mathematics -- standard disclaimer--
University of South Carolina

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

Peter Nyikos

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Mar 22, 2019, 12:35:02 AM3/22/19

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On Thursday, March 21, 2019 at 10:40:02 PM UTC-4, *Hemidactylus* wrote:
> Peter Nyikos <nyi...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
> > On Wednesday, March 20, 2019 at 5:10:03 PM UTC-4, Burkhard wrote:
> >> Peter Nyikos wrote:
> >>> On Sunday, March 17, 2019 at 1:15:03 PM UTC-4, Burkhard wrote:
> >>>> *Hemidactylus* wrote:
> >>>>> Glenn <GlennS...@msn.com> wrote:
> >>>>>> "At Scientific American, Yale president Peter Salovey urges that "STEM
> >>>>>> majors' college experience must be integrated into a broader model of
> >>>>>> liberal education to prepare them to think critically and imaginatively
> >>>>>> about the world and to understand different viewpoints." Realistically,
> >>>>>> in the inclusive environment that progressives are creating in the
> >>>>>> sciences today, that may well mean accommodating the "meteoric rise" of
> >>>>>> witchcraft and astrology, along the lines of understanding "different viewpoints."
> >
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>> https://www.mercatornet.com/features/view/which-side-will-atheists-choose-in-the-war-on-science/21598
> >>>>>>
> >>>>> Funny that the above was written by Denyse O'Leary called by RationalWiki
> >>>>> "a Canadian intelligent design apologist".
> >>>>> https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Denyse_O%27Leary
> >
> > This was a blatant *ad hominem* by Hemidactylus, pandering to the
> > prejudice against ID that permeates talk.origins.
>
> Blatant ad hom?

Yes, it was used to poison the wells about "the above", viz., the article
actually under discussion. As does your use of the link below.

>Well:
> https://evolutionnews.org/2017/05/how-naturalism-rots-science-from-the-head-down/

And now, I really need to hit the sack, like I told Burkhard.

Peter Nyikos

Burkhard

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Mar 22, 2019, 5:05:03 AM3/22/19

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Peter Nyikos wrote:
> On Wednesday, March 20, 2019 at 5:10:03 PM UTC-4, Burkhard wrote:
>> Peter Nyikos wrote:
>>> On Sunday, March 17, 2019 at 1:15:03 PM UTC-4, Burkhard wrote:
>>>> *Hemidactylus* wrote:
>>>>> Glenn <GlennS...@msn.com> wrote:
>>>>>> "At Scientific American, Yale president Peter Salovey urges that "STEM
>>>>>> majors' college experience must be integrated into a broader model of
>>>>>> liberal education to prepare them to think critically and imaginatively
>>>>>> about the world and to understand different viewpoints." Realistically,
>>>>>> in the inclusive environment that progressives are creating in the
>>>>>> sciences today, that may well mean accommodating the "meteoric rise" of
>>>>>> witchcraft and astrology, along the lines of understanding "different viewpoints."
>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> https://www.mercatornet.com/features/view/which-side-will-atheists-choose-in-the-war-on-science/21598
>>>>>>
>>>>> Funny that the above was written by Denyse O'Leary called by RationalWiki
>>>>> "a Canadian intelligent design apologist".
>>>>> https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Denyse_O%27Leary
>
> This was a blatant *ad hominem* by Hemidactylus, pandering to the
> prejudice against ID that permeates talk.origins. Now that I've
> had the time to read the article, it is obvious that it has nothing
> to do with ID. What it DOES is to berate the far-out antiscientific
> and anti-mathematical ideas of some "post-modern progressives". How
> influential these progressives are, I have no idea, but neither you
> nor Hemidactylus is addressing this issue, Burkhard.
>

Beg your pardon? My entire post was about this (and did not discuss ID
at all). In particular, the long part where I showed that far from being
a post-modern leftist conspiracy, it is a response to market demands and
what pretty hard nosed entrepreneurs look for in graduates (and are
willing to pay for). You remember, the part where yo did not really
engage with the argument but went off on a tangent of the negative
influence of money n academic integrity? Now THAT for the author of that
piece would have been probably an example of far left progressive
post-modernism.

I followed this up with three direct quotes from the article which
showed that she combines ignorance of the field with an inability to
from a cogent argument.

>
>>>> Well, that could come as no surprise, given that the mercatornet paper
>>>> is pretty much bereft of facts, research or any understanding of current
>>>> scientific practice. Sounds as if someone is channeling Rand.
>>>
>>> Ayn Rand? relevance, if so?
>>>
>>
>> The same naive positivism (or objectivism in case of Rand) that contrast
>> "hard facts" that STEM gives you with illegitimate knowledge claims in
>> all other disciplines,
>
> ALL other disciplines? I saw nothing to that effect in the article. Did you
> actually think the author agreed with everyone she quoted??

It only requires average text comprehension ability to see whom she
quotes approvingly and whom not.

It doesn't take
> much acumen to spot the ones she singled out for disapproval. The context
> is a dead giveaway to someone like me.

If that were the case, you'd not have asked the question I'd say.

>
> Not having read anything by Ayn Rand and precious little by Nathaniel Branden
> (all of it specious) I have no idea whether Rand would agree with the author
> on much of anything. So your "channeling" dig needs lots of explaining
> for me to take it seriously.

Suit yourself. You can look up Rand's attitude to post-modernism, and
her conception of scientific knowledge, quire frankly water down my back.

>
>> and in particular dismissive of any attempts to
>> study the practice of science using the methods of sociology,
>> philosophy, history etc.
>
> Wait -- do you actually ENDORSE the wacky ideas that the author disparages?

I'm saying the "wacky ideas" are strawmen that come from her utter
ignorance of these disciplines.

Hemidactylus

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Mar 22, 2019, 6:25:02 AM3/22/19

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Burkhard <b.sc...@ed.ac.uk> wrote:
> Peter Nyikos wrote:
>>
[snip]

>>
>> ALL other disciplines? I saw nothing to that effect in the article. Did you
>> actually think the author agreed with everyone she quoted??
>
> It only requires average text comprehension ability to see whom she
> quotes approvingly and whom not.
>
> It doesn't take
>> much acumen to spot the ones she singled out for disapproval. The context
>> is a dead giveaway to someone like me.
>
> If that were the case, you'd not have asked the question I'd say.
>

It may be helpful to start with this piece on the cratering “institutional
rot” of movement atheism where she quotes an ex-Muslim and PZ Meyerz about
the dark sides:

https://www.mercatornet.com/features/view/a-shambolic-atheist-community-faces-some-tough-choices/21401

So we have that and the downfall of Krauss and then a sermon on sin: “One
difficulty for the atheists is that, apart from not believing in God, they
don’t believe in sin.” and the avoidance of such a topic in atheist
circles.

“And they don’t know what to do about it except denounce each other,
perhaps because for once, they can’t blame the church.” Schadenfreude? And
with Pinker at least we have the Kantian acknowledgement of humans as built
from crooked timber and in two books a warty argument for a long view
humanistic redemption from the Hobbesian default. And with Greg Epstein’s
_Good Without God_ we have a secular rabbinic refutation of O’Leary’s
superficial and insincere crocodilian lamentations.

Then the serious misrepresentation betraying a subtle political agenda digs
its claws into the hapless chimeric prey:

“Serious progressives believe that all “truths” are constructs created by
power-seekers. Whether or not progressives claim to be atheists, they are
nihilists.”

Really?

Then she quotes someone studying comparative religion to accuse atheists of
hate speech. And strangely goes on to pretend theists are losing their mojo
when they put an ally in the White House because the Johnson Amendment who
bullies on Twitter and continues to mock the late Senator McCain while the
GOP bites it tongue. Jesus wept.

I may have reservations about atheist columnist George Will, but at least
he acted on principle by bolting the GOP over Trump. That’s more than can
be said for the Religious Right who have made a Faustian bargain. Not
familiar enough with O’Leary’s politics to know what she thinks of that
situation, but her “But traditional theistic religion has much less power
in society than formerly. So a question arises, why it is still socially OK
for atheists to spew hate and scorn unchecked?” was an ignorant thing to
say.

Hemidactylus

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Mar 22, 2019, 6:45:03 AM3/22/19

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Is it poisoning the well to ponder her latent agenda and the subtle but
manifest irony that ID itself is a war on science?

Burkhard

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Mar 22, 2019, 11:35:03 AM3/22/19

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Peter Nyikos wrote:
> On Wednesday, March 20, 2019 at 5:10:03 PM UTC-4, Burkhard wrote:
>> Peter Nyikos wrote:
>>> On Sunday, March 17, 2019 at 1:15:03 PM UTC-4, Burkhard wrote:
>
>>>> I'm currently part of three STEM-lead research projects, where computer
>>>> scientists, mathematicians, anthropologists, psychologists, sociologists
>>>> and media study folks work together on better and safer products.
>
> The adage "too many cooks spoil the broth" comes to mind here.

based on your extensive experience in software design?

Also
> "How many ______________ does it take to screw in a lightbulb?"
>
> Now that may be unfair, but if so, I would like to know how all
> these specialists are needed for *products* as opposed to *policies*.

Well, to give a few examples, under the GDPR, all products (which
includes software products) that process personal data must by law have
"data protection by design". This includes also data security. We know
that technologically unsophisticated users are the main security risk
(not updating software, disabling firewall etc) and also are quite bad
at doing risk assessments. So for law compliant software that keeps
people safe, especially in an IoT context, you need "usable privacy",
things that protect users in real life. For this you need to understand
why people make no or not sufficient use of some existing tools. That's
were cognitive science and psychology comes in. These systems are
physically embedded, so users interact with them through bodily
movements etc (think of IoT-enabled jewelry e.g.) To understand how a
user could manipulate them in a secure way therefore needs also
knowledge of ergonomics and generally human movement and interaction.
These then also have to work in social contexts, i.e. depending on the
choices other people make (herd immunity is needed), so one also has to
understand how thinking about privacy and data security happens in
groups ("all my friends do X, therefore it's probably safe" etc) And all
these insights then need to be turned into design solutions, for which
you have the artists and media study folks, where one can use e.g.
various forms of visualization to alert people in non-intrusive yet
effective ways of risks and what to do about it.

In another project, the outcome will be a product that assists border
police to identify smuggled art. That means it must be able to
distinguish between a £5 replica from the museum shop and a real
thing.To do its job, it needs to know what the substantive law says
(what art is protected) and also what the procedural law says (what type
of evidence is needed, how does it have to be stored and verified). And
then it needs to know a lot about art history, and the type of red flags
an art historian would look out for when making such an assessment. And
it then has to present all this in a way that makes sense for the
intended user,but is also legally waterproof.And this requires in many
jurisdictions to quantify the accuracy of the assessment, which is where
the forensic statisticians come in

And we also work with artists who try to use the carbon footprint and
ethical sourcing of their products as a unique selling point. To make
this a convincing case to their customers, and also to comply with
advertising law, they again need a way to integrate this information so
that customers can easily access and understand it. That again involves
various data visualization approaches, but because the product is art,
here they should be informative, reliable and also beautiful. Simply
putting e.g. a QR code on them would not work. So you need to be able to
think also like an artists, and integrate aesthetics, (consumer)
psychology, (design) informatics, a bit of legal oversight and also a
bit of material science at the integration stage.

>
>
>>>> Almost
>>>> all of the lead investigators are dualy qualified, but we struggled to
>>>> get also enough high quality postdocs that combine STEM with humanities
>>>> - that's also because industry has spotted how much additional value
>>>> they bring, and they can by now pretty much write their own salary
>>>> cheque.
>
> I addressed this in my first reply to this long post of yours, but kept
> it in for context. Here too:
>
>> But everyone who knows that field knows that it is big companies that
>> are desperately looking for dual qualified people, and willing to pay
>> for it,
>
> The cynic in me suggests that old fashioned nepotism might be at work
> here, with companies very carefully tailoring the job description
> around the person they have decided to hire, and only advertise it
> because of legal requirements.

Ad you can back this up with evidence, of course? Not just anecdotes?

>
> I've seen that sort of thing happen, to people I knew and cared very
> much about, on both sides of the deal. One friend got a job due to such
> careful tailoring, the other lost out on a (completely different) job whose description she fit perfectly. Had I learned about it soon after it had
> happened, I would have advised her to look into suing the company for
> discrimination.

and you know the qualities that the successful candidate had too?
Because without that, you'd have no leg to stand on.

>
> But maybe that would have been bad advice -- it might have made lots
> of companies decide to not to even call her in for interviews, lest they
> get burned too.
>
>
> Enough context, on with the rest.
>
>> Again, combining STEM with
>> A&H is not some leftist pipedream, it's what the most successful
>> companies across various sectors have identified as key skills in their
>> employees
>
> See above about one reason those skills might be "key".
>
>>>
>>> Given the numerous cases of scientific fraud documented by
>>> Retraction Watch, what do you think the outcome will be?
>>> More of it, less of it, or about the same?
>>
>> I'd say what we know already about scientific fraud in the university
>> sector indicates, unsurprisingly, that money is if at all only a
>> marginal factor.
>
> You've got to be kidding! University administrators are hungry for the
> overhead that comes with multimillion dollar grants. Those grants
> are what makes their science labs possible, and faculty complain about applying
> for grants taking huge amounts of time from the research and writing
> that they would like to be doing.

Fraud has also come from disciplines that were "low cost" to operate,
including history. And it wasn't the administrators either who did the
defrauding. I still say what the academics get out of it are reputation
points which if at all are only indirectly connected to money for them.

>
>
>> The academy always paid in a different currency -
>> reputation, admiration, citations, postnominal letters etc etc.
>
> The president of my university makes well over $500,000 a year, and
> it is because he is so good at attracting donors with deep pockets.
> And all the things you name are big selling points.

Sorry, you lost me here - are you saying your university president
acquired his postnominal letters fraudulently, and does not have the
qualification he claims to have? Because that would be the only way in
which this would be pertinent for the issue

>
> Welcome to the world of USA academe, Burkhard. As one of the wisest professors
> I ever knew wrote to me, "Things will get worse before they get
> better, because we have sold ourselves to the devil of external funding."
>
>
>> So I'd say about the same.
>
> Care to reconsider?

Not really, no. None of what you say above is pertinent for the point,
really. The ability for multiple-qualified candidates to get lots of
money when working in industry has no connection that I can see on the
occurrence of academic fraud

I've given a couple of direct quotes.

>
> Having courses on the books says nothing about how well they will be taught.

And the paper presents no evidence that they will be taught badly. In
fact, it presents no evidence at all.

> Faculty are increasingly hamstrung by deans imposing Mickey Mouse standards
> of detailed syllabi. In some big universities, departments are so regimented
> that all the faculty teaching sections of the same course -- and there can be
> several dozen sections of the "business calculus" course, for instance --
> have to give the students the same identical test on the same identical date.
> Where's the professionalism in all this?
>
>
>>>
>>>>
>>>> And that's not even talking about all those markets where the arts and
>>>> humanities are users of STEM, for instance developing digitized
>>>> repositories of artifacts for museums to increase accessibility of their
>>>> collections while minimizing deterioration, developing AIs that can
>>>> write news items, working with digital artists or developing legal tech
>>>> apps that allow more accurate predictions of the success of a case etc
>>>> etc etc. A billion £ [pound] industry that relies on steam with non-stem
>>>> collaboration, for which you lay the grounds at university.
>>>>
>>>> So the Yale president is spot on, and doing his job, i.e. making sure
>>>> that his students are prepared for the labour market.
>
>>> Yeah, with the labour market what it is, any job where one may
>>> play with a "blank check" is a huge source of bragging rights for Yale.
>
> And of megabucks from rich alumni and alumnae of Yale.
>
> But chew on this: students graduating from Yale have a big advantage
> in the labour market simply because they are from Yale and not
> from one of the numerous big state schools that are way down in the rankings.
> So the Yale president is "spot on" largely because he is the *Yale* president.

Sorry, that makes no sense at all. I gave the reasons why the strategy
of the president delivers the type of graduate the market needs. That
Yale graduates have other advantages too is neither here nor there for
the issue under discussion.

Glenn

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Mar 22, 2019, 12:20:03 PM3/22/19

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On Monday, March 18, 2019 at 9:45:03 AM UTC-7, Glenn wrote:
> On Monday, March 18, 2019 at 9:25:03 AM UTC-7, Alt.A...@aol.com wrote:

> > On Saturday, March 16, 2019 at 7:25:02 PM UTC-5, Glenn wrote:
> > >
> > > "At Scientific American, Yale president Peter Salovey urges that "STEM majors' college experience must be integrated into a broader model of liberal education to prepare them to think critically and imaginatively about the world and to understand different viewpoints." Realistically, in the inclusive environment that progressives are creating in the sciences today, that may well mean accommodating the "meteoric rise" of witchcraft and astrology, along the lines of understanding "different viewpoints."
> > >
> > > https://www.mercatornet.com/features/view/which-side-will-atheists-choose-in-the-war-on-science/21598
> > >

> > > "Salovey may say Yale is a victim, but a true leader would ask what in Yale’s process allowed such fraud to succeed or whether the process was even working."
> > >
> > > https://www.aei.org/publication/in-the-college-admissions-scandal-yale-is-no-victim-its-incompetent/
> >

> > Science Learning
>
> I suppose that could be seen as fair, since the post titled "Sciense lernin" could be seen as implying atheists and/or progressives are not well educated.
>

> Congratulations!

"Twenty percent of U.S. college students completing four-year degrees—and 30 percent of students earning two-year degrees—have only basic quantitative literacy skills, meaning they are unable to estimate if their car has enough gasoline to get to the next gas station or calculate the total cost of ordering office supplies, according to a new national survey by the American Institutes for Research (AIR). The study was funded by The Pew Charitable Trusts."

https://www.air.org/news/press-release/new-study-literacy-college-students-finds-some-are-graduating-only-basic-skills

First thing to do after reading is to be skeptical of the word "Pew", since that has something to do with church buildings.

Hemidactylus

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Mar 22, 2019, 12:55:03 PM3/22/19

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At least in the US there needs to be more scrutiny and berating of
networking equipment companies selling to the home user, especially of
routers. These typically have ancient and hobbled versions of Linux, are
poorly implemented (no packaging modularity for patching flaws), crappy
GUIs etc.

See: https://routersecurity.org/bugs.php

>
> In another project, the outcome will be a product that assists border
> police to identify smuggled art. That means it must be able to
> distinguish between a £5 replica from the museum shop and a real
> thing.To do its job, it needs to know what the substantive law says
> (what art is protected) and also what the procedural law says (what type
> of evidence is needed, how does it have to be stored and verified). And
> then it needs to know a lot about art history, and the type of red flags
> an art historian would look out for when making such an assessment. And
> it then has to present all this in a way that makes sense for the
> intended user,but is also legally waterproof.And this requires in many
> jurisdictions to quantify the accuracy of the assessment, which is where
> the forensic statisticians come in
>
> And we also work with artists who try to use the carbon footprint and
> ethical sourcing of their products as a unique selling point. To make
> this a convincing case to their customers, and also to comply with
> advertising law, they again need a way to integrate this information so
> that customers can easily access and understand it. That again involves
> various data visualization approaches, but because the product is art,
> here they should be informative, reliable and also beautiful. Simply
> putting e.g. a QR code on them would not work. So you need to be able to
> think also like an artists, and integrate aesthetics, (consumer)
> psychology, (design) informatics, a bit of legal oversight and also a
> bit of material science at the integration stage.
>

Not entirely pointed to your response, but to humanities in general and
bioethics specifically, since Peter used the term elsethread...I’ve been
struggling with this informal article cited by Pinker:

https://jme.bmj.com/content/41/1/28

Savulescu takes issue with scientism (ironically given Pinker’s hate of the
word):

“The tendency today is to roll over and ‘scientify’ everything. Evidence
will tell us what to do, people believe. But what constitutes sufficient
evidence is an ethical decision when we make up our minds about what to
do.” Great point. Wish Pinker had mentioned this while shadowboxing a
critique of Sam Harris and some bewildering BS squirted out by Leon Kass.
But things soon derail. See the subheading “Two failures of medical ethics:
research ethics and organ transplantation”.

First his demarcation of the privacy/and content issue for data usage. Or
“an obsession with prioritising consent over all other values.” And we get
to “Likewise there is no ethical obligation to obtain consent to use data
or discard tissue that is not central to a person's life plans and
conceptions of their own good. To use someone's discarded hair to stuff a
pillow without their consent is not wrong. It might be bizarre, but it is
not immoral.” I recall hearing that discarded hair had been used as a
source for cysteine intended for human consumption. Gross but unethical if
so? Next comes the next step: “Even more importantly, it is legitimate to
restrict freedom and not obtain consent when it is in the public interest.
Our freedom is restricted by the law all the time.” Yes seat belts. And the
standard nanny state crescendo and Nuffield intervention ladder:
http://nuffieldbioethics.org/report/public-health-2/policy-process-practice/intervention-ladder-for-web

I’m for more than nudging parents to get kids vaccinated and quarantining
people with nasty diseases in emergency circumstances. But Savulescu
proceeds “So, too, the use of data and discarded tissue (and anonymised
case studies in ethical discourse) is in the public interest.” Getting
closer now...But I take his point regarding stem cells.

“Organ transplantation is another example of the lethal effects of bad
ethics... We all have the most basic moral duty to donate organs, as I will
now argue.” Not there yet. Point taken, but there’s more. Delineation of
morality from prudence and self-interest. Getting shoes wet to save a
drowning child. Ok.

“When it comes to organ donation, there are many proposed ways of obtaining
organs: consent systems, organ conscription, opt-out, priority to those who
agree to donate, directed donation, etc.” Uh oh here we go. Gird your loins
or you may lose them posthumously.

Here’s the hard sell: “But there is a basic moral obligation to donate
organs. Why? Because this is not just an easy rescue, it is a zero cost
rescue. Organs are of no use to us when we are dead, but they are literally
lifesaving to others. Nonetheless, most people choose to bury or burn these
lifesaving resources, and are allowed to. Yet the state extracts death
duties and inheritance taxes, but not the most important of their previous
assets—their organs.”

Wait what? Does the state claim ownership to my innards, regardless of my
preference or belief system? Backing up a bit he had earlier said: “Most
people I meet, including those involved in medical ethics, are moral
relativists (they believe that ethics is relative to culture) or
subjectivists (what is right is just what people desire). For example, they
believe we should obtain consent because the Declaration of Helsinki, the
World Medical Association (WMA), or the BMJ ethics committee say we should.
They believe that what is right is relative to views or desires of a group,
individual or culture. This is deeply wrong and denies the existence of
ethics altogether.”

So is it ethical to act in the interests of public good and just take the
organs of a selfish subjectivist? Sure it would have been moral for them to
donate their organs by choice after they die, but are we allowed to
supersede that and make that decision for them?

Earlier he said: “For example, if people wish to donate their organs or
gametes for posthumous conception, it fails to respect their past autonomy
to over-ride their wish to donate organs or gametes.22 It is positively
wrong to let families over-ride the expressed wish of organ donors to
donate, even though this is standard medical practice and there is no legal
basis for it. People on transplant waiting lists die because of this
unethical practice.” Sounds asymmetrical in retrospect. We can’t override a
wish to donate organs, but we might apparently override the wish not to
donate and selfishly have our organs rot or burn with us.

Burkhard

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Mar 22, 2019, 3:45:03 PM3/22/19

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sorry, hit "send" when I meant "save" in previous reply, here the rest

She objects against STEAM, she objects against the attempts to connect
science education with liberal education, and blames the arts and
humanities for a "rise in belief in astrology", so yes, it's in the
article. And the latter is of course a slippery slope for her...I assume
she does not object against having a department of divinity.

Did you
> actually think the author agreed with everyone she quoted??

No, what gives you that idea?

It doesn't take
> much acumen to spot the ones she singled out for disapproval. The context
> is a dead giveaway to someone like me.

>
> Not having read anything by Ayn Rand and precious little by Nathaniel Branden
> (all of it specious) I have no idea whether Rand would agree with the author
> on much of anything. So your "channeling" dig needs lots of explaining
> for me to take it seriously.

The author dismisses any discussion of the methodological issues that
arise if you apply abstract mathematics or physical theories to real
life problems (her own knowledge of physics is not evidenced).
Similarly, Rand, in "An Introduction to objectivist epistemology"
considers our concept formation a more or less infallible process where
we reach objectively true insights that directly correspond to external
features of the world. One rather absurd consequence of this is that
scientists can never be innocently mistaken - all false theories must be
the result of deception. Which is why she dismissed all "scientific
progress" models of epistemology (Popper, Kuhn etc) as postmodern
abominations.

Even the most radical mainstream scientific realists knows of course
that science is not just looking at things and then recording the
observation ("science as stamp collecting"), but it is this primitive
positivism that Rand endorsed, and the author accepts too.

>
>> and in particular dismissive of any attempts to
>> study the practice of science using the methods of sociology,
>> philosophy, history etc.
>
> Wait -- do you actually ENDORSE the wacky ideas that the author disparages?

The "whacky ideas" are a strawmen of the author and not grounded in
reality, that's my point. A small group of outliers come up with extreme
ideas, but their impact on scientific practice is somewhere between
negligible and nonexisting. But there are very good historians,
sociologists and theorists of science whose work nonetheless challenges
uncritical positivism (which therefore no mainstream theorist endorses,
since Kant the latest)

>
> Science, we are told by one source, is "inherently discriminatory to women
> and minorities by promoting a view of knowledge as static and unchanging,
> a view of teaching that promotes the idea of a passive student, and by
> promoting a chilly climate that marginalizes women." (Laura Parson, dissertation,
> University of North Dakota).

Fascinating, I seem to have entered a parallel universe and now talk to
people's negative alter egos.

Aren't Glenn and some of his fellow travelers making the same point all
the time, that the scientific establishment suppresses or "expels" other
viewpoints, and claim certainty and uniformity where in reality there is
(ought to be) disagreement and controversy? Isn't their point, and yours
as well, that the "objective truth of science" is evoked illegitimately
as a rhetorical tool to marginalize e.g. ID?

Because that's exactly what that quote says.

Now me, I'd say that wherever science is taught as "promoting a view of

knowledge as static and unchanging, a view of teaching that promotes the

idea of a passive student" it is taught badly (and at least in
pre-university level, I've seen a lot of it, and some of it later too).
It is of course also historically wrong, theories do change. So rather
than teaching students the current best scientific theory as if this
version is the ultimate and unchanging truth, a better method would is
to also teach a bit how it evolved from older, now rightly discarded
theories, and how the current theories might one day get discarded or
heavily modified too. That can be done in the relevant science course,
or, as the Yale model proposes, in a dedicated history of science module
Which is why some of the best pop sci writers like Gould or Dawkins
often add a personal, or historical, element.

That then turns students from passive memorisers of unchanging truth to
explorers and researchers who actively try to find out new things.

Does the bad version of science teaching affect woman more than men? I'd
say there is pretty strong evidence that that's the case - it means that
challenging the status quo is particularly burdensome and requires a
mentality that enjoys picking a fight. If someone is socialized in an
environment where the expectation for them is to be demur,
accommodating, agreeable etc that is even more difficult. And there are
of course studies to back this up, going back to Alice Rossi's work back
in the 1960s. (quite a lot f it reported in Athena Unbound, with more
recent studies) Or from individual science biographies, e.g. the way
Crick treated Franklin. Tomorrow is not just my birthday, but also that
of Emmy Noether. How many people know of her, and how many of her male
contemporaries with lesser achievements? Why did she never get the a
full chair? etc etc

> ...
> These misguided people argue not only that there is no objective reality,

Again a Rand and Author convergence, as Kant would have been one such
person - or rather in his case, while there is, it is also inaccessible.
Not all non-realists are postmodern constructivists. Non-realism comes
in all sorts of flavours, and some if it I find rather compelling - to
cite one who also made a major contribution to logic and set theory.

Anyhow, this is a quote from Coyne. And I happily put him in the same
basket. He very clearly thinks that it is not proper science unless same
zebra fish was killed in the process. One reason I stopped reading his
blog. For his science I have his papers, and they I respect, for his
ill-informed ramblings, which all too often includes attacks against the
humanities (especially if they are funded by Templeton ) I have no time.

> but that attempts to find and teach it are sexist: that such endeavors are
> masculine ones, and that the methods of science themselves make the discipline
> sexist and patriarchal.

As above, there is a confusion between the method and the practice of
science.

>
>
>>>
>>>> I'm currently part of three STEM-lead research projects, where computer
>>>> scientists, mathematicians, anthropologists, psychologists, sociologists
>>>> and media study folks work together on better and safer products. Almost
>>>> all of the lead investigators are dualy qualified, but we struggled to
>>>> get also enough high quality postdocs that combine STEM with humanities
>>>> - that's also because industry has spotted how much additional value
>>>> they bring, and they can by now pretty much write their own salary
>>>> cheque.
>>>
>>> I'm not sure that's a good sign.
>
> In fact, from my modest earning perspective, anyone making over $300,000 a year is
> "rich," and anyone making a million dollars a year or more is "filthy rich."
>
>>> I'm sure there are many advantages to having people with strength
>>> in the liberal arts, but the money may attract a lot of people with
>>> more interest in an affluent lifestyle than with a love of
>>> truth for the sake of truth.
>>
>> Not everyone unfortunately is independently wealthy and can do science
>> for the love of it, most of us have to work for a living.
>
> I do mathematics for the love of it AND work for a living in the process.
> Don't you love your work in the same way?

Sure. And I was lucky enough, and privileged enough, to make it into
that type of job. I did not graduate e.g. with crippling student depth,
lived in a society with good universal health coverage, so that being
unemployed was not a health risk, and knew that if push came to shove my
parents could support me for a bit. That does not mean that I can expose
students who are not that lucky to the same risks. So I neither begrudge
them their salaries, nor do I find it problematic that that's what they
are aiming for. The majority of them will end up in reasonably well
paid, if mundane jobs. Part of my responsibility is tot get them there.

>
>> Anyhow,the
>> people who write the cheques are not universities, we competed against
>> the likes of Microsoft, Facebook and Google.
>
> And lost, I take it? What exactly *did* you mean by that open-ended
> "write their own salary cheque"?
>
>>
>> You are however missing the point I was making here. Glenn's author
>> repeats and endorses the usual conservative talking points about useful
>> STEM and useless, politicized humanities:
>
> "useless, politicized" is editorializing by you. Those words nowhere appear
> in the article,

Eh, the entire article is about this? How progressives allegedly try to
politicize science? Which article have you been reading?

and are not supported by what you quote next:
>
>> "But progressives can be just
>> as bad" because progressive ideology "is riddled with anti-scientific
>> feel-good fallacies designed to win hearts, not minds."
>
> YOU seem to be missing the point of this quote you took out of context.
> It was NOT siding with conservatives. Quite the contrary. Look at what
> immediately precedes your quote:
>
> Five years ago at Scientific American, Michael Shermer pegged the progressive
> approach to some environment issues as a liberal war on science. Campbell and
> Berezow wrote in New Scientist (2013), "Conservatives rightly get a bad rap for
> anti-science policies. But progressives can be just as bad" ...[continue
> as above].

No contradiction with what I wrote. One can be against (some)
conservative science polices, and nonetheless use other conservative
talking points to criticize the left. And theis is a quote - there is
nowhere in the text any indication that she also agrees with the first
sentence.

>
> The author is railing against far-out ideas like the one I quoted,
> and not against the humanities.

"Something to watch carefully is the STEAM fad (STEM with "A" for Arts
inserted). It is an effort to integrate the arts with the sciences
which—again, consider the context of failing feeder schools—“makes the
arts a perfect staging ground for retreat from rigor in the name of
ideologically driven criteria.”
>
>

>> But everyone who knows that field knows that it is big companies that
>> are desperately looking for dual qualified people, and willing to pay
>> for it, The market sides with the "progressives" here
>
> Which ones? surely not the ones the author rails against.

Yes these ones. The ones who know enough about the world they model to
understand the methodological issues, to start with.

Glenn

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Mar 22, 2019, 4:05:03 PM3/22/19

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Peter, why do you waste your time with this bozo?

Hemidactylus

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Mar 22, 2019, 4:20:02 PM3/22/19

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Talk about vicious ad homs. Burk is probably the most valuable even handed
poster still on this group who puts thought and time into his posts and is
never mean spirited, which may be a reason Peter seems to respect him too
even if they disagree. Peter definitely respected Richard Norman who has
disowned us and taken up Quora instead.

Peter Nyikos

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Mar 22, 2019, 5:40:03 PM3/22/19

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On Friday, March 22, 2019 at 11:35:03 AM UTC-4, Burkhard wrote:
> Peter Nyikos wrote:
> > On Wednesday, March 20, 2019 at 5:10:03 PM UTC-4, Burkhard wrote:
> >> Peter Nyikos wrote:
> >>> On Sunday, March 17, 2019 at 1:15:03 PM UTC-4, Burkhard wrote:
> >
> >>>> I'm currently part of three STEM-lead research projects, where computer
> >>>> scientists, mathematicians, anthropologists, psychologists, sociologists
> >>>> and media study folks work together on better and safer products.
> >
> > The adage "too many cooks spoil the broth" comes to mind here.
>
> based on your extensive experience in software design?

A well known adage of the 1960's is "It doesn't take a weatherman to
tell which way the wind is blowing."

> Also
> > "How many ______________ does it take to screw in a lightbulb?"
> >
> > Now that may be unfair, but if so, I would like to know how all
> > these specialists are needed for *products* as opposed to *policies*.
>
> Well, to give a few examples, under the GDPR, all products (which
> includes software products) that process personal data must by law have
> "data protection by design". This includes also data security. We know
> that technologically unsophisticated users are the main security risk
> (not updating software, disabling firewall etc) and also are quite bad
> at doing risk assessments. So for law compliant software that keeps
> people safe, especially in an IoT context, you need "usable privacy",
> things that protect users in real life.

From what? you don't seem to explain below.

>For this you need to understand
> why people make no or not sufficient use of some existing tools. That's
> were cognitive science and psychology comes in.

"why" is not relevant; it is, "what can we do to take care of such people"?

And the answer all too often is, give the design to people well versed
in advertising. It used to take only two clicks from the university webpage
to get to the Department of Mathematics webpage. Now it takes twice that many,
and the relevant "button" is not always easy to find. You have to search
for the one for the College of Arts and Sciences. But when you get there,
to a page dominated by advertising, the right button asks you, in effect,
"Do you really want to look up the College of Arts and Sciences? then click here."
The page to which the click takes you is almost all advertising that
extols the College. Hidden in one of the paragraphs is a link -- not blue,
but garnet, the university color -- that takes you to "Departments and schools"
and there is where you finally get to click for the Math department.
then finally enables you to click for the math department itself.

Big universities are run like big businesses, with Administration in the role
of management, faculty in the role of white-collar labor that often has to
defer to real blue-collar workers, and students in the form of customers.
Hence all the advertising in the brave new world of search software.

> These systems are
> physically embedded, so users interact with them through bodily
> movements etc (think of IoT-enabled jewelry e.g.)

And problems with sensitivity to the materials, that can take a long
time to show up. Good luck on having it show up right where the implant is.

> To understand how a
> user could manipulate them in a secure way therefore needs also
> knowledge of ergonomics and generally human movement and interaction.
> These then also have to work in social contexts, i.e. depending on the
> choices other people make (herd immunity is needed), so one also has to
> understand how thinking about privacy and data security happens in
> groups ("all my friends do X, therefore it's probably safe" etc) And all
> these insights then need to be turned into design solutions, for which
> you have the artists and media study folks, where one can use e.g.
> various forms of visualization to alert people in non-intrusive yet
> effective ways of risks and what to do about it.

Sorry, I have no desire to become a cyborg. Whose idea was this tampering
with bodies just to get some sort of unspecified security?

Did anyone with expertise in philosophy not suggest that the human race
might be better off without such products?

>
> In another project, the outcome will be a product that assists border
> police to identify smuggled art. That means it must be able to
> distinguish between a £5 replica from the museum shop and a real
> thing.

So far, so good, but what's the point of software replacing a human
policeman to make the following judgments?

>To do its job, it needs to know what the substantive law says
> (what art is protected) and also what the procedural law says (what type
> of evidence is needed, how does it have to be stored and verified).

> And
> then it needs to know a lot about art history, and the type of red flags
> an art historian would look out for when making such an assessment. And
> it then has to present all this in a way that makes sense for the
> intended user,but is also legally waterproof.And this requires in many
> jurisdictions to quantify the accuracy of the assessment, which is where
> the forensic statisticians come in
>
> And we also work with artists who try to use the carbon footprint and
> ethical sourcing of their products as a unique selling point. To make
> this a convincing case to their customers, and also to comply with
> advertising law, they again need a way to integrate this information so
> that customers can easily access and understand it. That again involves
> various data visualization approaches, but because the product is art,
> here they should be informative, reliable and also beautiful.

Yeah, like the art on all those webpages en route to the math department.

And once a student, and parents, decides USC is good for them, the
wooing ends, and the honeymoon ends when it is revealed that freshman
have to live on campus unless their family lives in either Richland
or Lexington counties. They also have to take the dorm room that is
assigned to them, even if it is a musty basement room, or has a thermostat
over which they have no control, along with a sealed window. Up in Clemson
they can't even control how fast their fan run

> putting e.g. a QR code on them would not work. So you need to be able to
> think also like an artists, and integrate aesthetics, (consumer)
> psychology, (design) informatics, a bit of legal oversight and also a
> bit of material science at the integration stage.

Oh, and a bit closer to home for you: Oxford victims of sexual coercion by
boyfriends are discouraged from reporting it. Bad PR for Oxford, and all that.

> >>>> Almost
> >>>> all of the lead investigators are dualy qualified, but we struggled to
> >>>> get also enough high quality postdocs that combine STEM with humanities
> >>>> - that's also because industry has spotted how much additional value
> >>>> they bring, and they can by now pretty much write their own salary
> >>>> cheque.
> >
> > I addressed this in my first reply to this long post of yours, but kept
> > it in for context. Here too:
> >
> >> But everyone who knows that field knows that it is big companies that
> >> are desperately looking for dual qualified people, and willing to pay
> >> for it,
> >
> > The cynic in me suggests that old fashioned nepotism might be at work
> > here, with companies very carefully tailoring the job description
> > around the person they have decided to hire, and only advertise it
> > because of legal requirements.
>
> Ad you can back this up with evidence, of course? Not just anecdotes?

Yes. See below about the two cases where I was intimately involved.

>
> >
> > I've seen that sort of thing happen, to people I knew and cared very
> > much about, on both sides of the deal. One friend got a job due to such
> > careful tailoring,

For one thing, she was a minority temporary faculty member, so part of the
description was being able to counsel students in that minority. I know,
because I was asked to write a letter of recommendation for her. I wrote that
I really had no firsthand knowledge of how good a counselor she was, but
I knew she was a member of the coveted minority. Otherwise, stuck to her mathematical
research and scholarship.

> the other lost out on a (completely different) job whose description she fit perfectly. Had I learned about it soon after it had
> > happened, I would have advised her to look into suing the company for
> > discrimination.
>
> and you know the qualities that the successful candidate had too?

They included extra ones that were not in the job description. The unsuccessful
applicant was asked about some of them in the phone interview. She met them
very well indeed. When she asked why she didn't get the job, the employer
made the mistake of saying, "the one who got the job had music experience."
Reaction: "Why didn't you ask me about that? I could have told you that
I have extensive music experience too!" [Eight years of piano lessons
and one year of playing French Horn in a school band.]

You can bet that employer never made that kind of mistake again! There's
the dark side of adding A to STEM.

Are you quite sure this kind of thing doesn't take place right under
your nose?

> Because without that, you'd have no leg to stand on.
> >
> > But maybe that would have been bad advice -- it might have made lots
> > of companies decide to not to even call her in for interviews, lest they
> > get burned too.
> >
> >
> > Enough context, on with the rest.
> >
> >> Again, combining STEM with
> >> A&H is not some leftist pipedream, it's what the most successful
> >> companies across various sectors have identified as key skills in their
> >> employees
> >
> > See above about one reason those skills might be "key".
> >
> >>>
> >>> Given the numerous cases of scientific fraud documented by
> >>> Retraction Watch, what do you think the outcome will be?
> >>> More of it, less of it, or about the same?
> >>
> >> I'd say what we know already about scientific fraud in the university
> >> sector indicates, unsurprisingly, that money is if at all only a
> >> marginal factor.
> >
> > You've got to be kidding! University administrators are hungry for the
> > overhead that comes with multimillion dollar grants. Those grants
> > are what makes their science labs possible, and faculty complain about applying
> > for grants taking huge amounts of time from the research and writing
> > that they would like to be doing.
>
> Fraud has also come from disciplines that were "low cost" to operate,
> including history. And it wasn't the administrators either who did the
> defrauding.

So the buck always stops with the defrauder and doesn't impact
the one who overlooked them, eh?

Sort of like, the Roman Catholic Church is only now going after the
higher ups who shielded priestly molesters. It only took them

I still say what the academics get out of it are reputation
> points which if at all are only indirectly connected to money for them.
> >
> >
> >> The academy always paid in a different currency -
> >> reputation, admiration, citations, postnominal letters etc etc.
> >
> > The president of my university makes well over $500,000 a year, and
> > it is because he is so good at attracting donors with deep pockets.
> > And all the things you name are big selling points.
>
> Sorry, you lost me here - are you saying your university president
> acquired his postnominal letters fraudulently, and does not have the
> qualification he claims to have?

I'm sorry, YOU have lost me by not addressing the issue of "always
paid in a different currency."

> Because that would be the only way in
> which this would be pertinent for the issue

Which issue?

> >
> > Welcome to the world of USA academe, Burkhard. As one of the wisest professors
> > I ever knew wrote to me, "Things will get worse before they get
> > better, because we have sold ourselves to the devil of external funding."
> >
> >
> >> So I'd say about the same.
> >
> > Care to reconsider?
>
> Not really, no. None of what you say above is pertinent for the point,
> really. The ability for multiple-qualified candidates to get lots of
> money when working in industry has no connection that I can see on the

> occurrence of academic fraud.

I'm talking about scientific fraud, not just academic fraud.

jillery

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Mar 22, 2019, 5:45:02 PM3/22/19

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So the reports of norman's demise are greatly exaggerated? If so, he
disowned S.B.P. as well.

I did a cursory check of Quora. Based on their profiles, there seems
to be several Richard Normans active there.

--
I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.

Evelyn Beatrice Hall
Attributed to Voltaire

Hemidactylus

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Mar 22, 2019, 6:05:02 PM3/22/19

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We had a huge thread and all here:

https://groups.google.com/d/msg/talk.origins/oSYc37f0510/ZqOn-0w4AgAJ

Where I said: “This Richard Norman claims he knows
about Neuroscience. Richard Norman (aka RSNorman) appears to be alive and
well and news of his death greatly exaggerated.”

And Peter replied: “I certainly hope so.”

jillery

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Mar 22, 2019, 8:10:03 PM3/22/19

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Yes, I recall that thread. I even contributed to it. I thought it
appropriate to reprise the same quote you posted. It should go
without saying, appearances can be deceiving, thus my post to which
you reacted.

So has anybody actually confirmed that any one of those Quora normans
of the present is the rsnorman of T.O.'s past?

Peter Nyikos

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Mar 22, 2019, 8:25:03 PM3/22/19

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"latent agenda"...is that your siege-mentality suspicions at work, like
your suspicions about me being a closet creationist?

> and the subtle but
> manifest irony that

...you are ignorant of what the best ID proponents, Behe and Minnich,
do and did. But then, so was Judge Jones, who was so mesmerized by the
ACLU brief that he forgot all about Minnich's beautifully controlled
experiments about which he had testified right under His Honor's nose.
And so Jones pronounced ID as not being a science.

Fortunately, that was just in his wretched Opinion of the Court, and
not in his impeccable ruling that had the force of law.

>ID itself is a war on science?

You aren't worth the ammunition it takes to blow you out of the water.
But if you could get Burkhard to endorse this benighted opinion of
yours, that would be worth the ammunition. For then I would be "killing
two birds -- an eagle and a shrike -- with one stone," as the (embellished)
old saying goes.

But, regardless of what affection Burkhard might have for you,
I think he is far too level-headed to follow you down the rabbit
hole on this one.

Peter Nyikos
Professor of Mathematics
at the original USC -- standard disclaimer --

Glenn

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Mar 22, 2019, 9:25:03 PM3/22/19

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I wonder how many times in everyday life would Jillery use the word "reprise"...

Peter Nyikos

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Mar 22, 2019, 9:40:02 PM3/22/19

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Like you, I had the mishap of somehow hitting the "post" button without
meaning to. This happened earlier this afternoon.

But I had written quite a lot by the time that had happened,
so I would like your input as to how well I answered your skeptical
questions about "writing the job description with one person in mind."

Beg your pardon? You wrote nothing about the degree of influence enjoyed by the radical progressives that she was talking about and quoting.

What issue did you THINK I was talking about?

> (and did not discuss ID
> at all).

Your snide remarks in direct response to Hemidactylus seemed to be directed
at least as much at ID as at the article or the author. See below the last thing
I quote from you in this post.

> In particular, the long part where I showed that far from being
> a post-modern leftist conspiracy,

...thereby knocking down a straw man...

> it is a response to market demands and
> what pretty hard nosed entrepreneurs look for in graduates

Hard nosed enough to leave off certain items from a job description
and use them as surprise additions to catch interviewees off guard?
And to withhold secret "desireables" for the job even during the
interviews?

That's what I was writing about shortly before the unintended early
posting, and yes, I would call that hard-nosed, but I can also
think of more on-target adjectives.

> (and are
> willing to pay for). You remember, the part where yo did not really
> engage with the argument but went off on a tangent of the negative
> influence of money n academic integrity?

"academic" is your editoralizing.

You picked up that tangent and ran with it, making naive comments
about how money influences faculty little if at all. And my rejoinder
about grants went unanswered; instead you focused exclusively on sticking
up for the administration. I take it your job is primarily administrative
and that you don't do any academic research?

> Now THAT for the author of that
> piece would have been probably an example of far left progressive
> post-modernism.

Your "shotgun" approach to what actually went on between us leaves
much to be desired.

>
> I followed this up with three direct quotes from the article which
> showed that she combines ignorance of the field with an inability to
> from a cogent argument.

Cherry-picked quotes every one, and not supportive of what you are
saying right here. You seem to have your own ideas of what she
*should* be arguing for, and judging her arguments on that basis.

And you still haven't even scratched the surface of how influential
(or not) the radical progressives she quotes, and their kindred
spirits, are.

Is that because you haven't the slightest clue about that?

> >>>> Well, that could come as no surprise, given that the mercatornet paper
> >>>> is pretty much bereft of facts, research or any understanding of current
> >>>> scientific practice.

The "no surprise, given that" is what makes this an indirect -- and
unjustified -- dig at ID.

In assessing the relative merits of the best ID theory (mainly due to
Michael Behe) and evolutionary theory, one needs to keep two things
in mind:

1. The biochemical form of ID theory has had only one-tenth as much
time to develop as has evolutionary theory, and

2. In its present form, evolutionary theory is really microevolutionary
theory. It's as though all economic theory were about microeconomics.

And the irony is, Hemidactylus is very happy if it stays that way.

Careful-- by evolutionary theory I mean not the overwhelming evidence
(almost all of it "stamp collecting") that evolution has taken place
on a massive scale. It is extremely powerful in the case of eumetazoans,
especially vertebrates.

I mean the attempt to coherently explain HOW and WHY it took the form it did.

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

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Mar 23, 2019, 8:00:03 AM3/23/19

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On Fri, 22 Mar 2019 18:24:15 -0700 (PDT), Glenn <GlennS...@msn.com>

What makes "reprise" so special to you? Too many syllables?

Mark Isaak

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Mar 23, 2019, 12:05:02 PM3/23/19

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On 3/22/19 5:19 PM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
>
> ...you are ignorant of what the best ID proponents, Behe and Minnich,
> do and did.

It is worth reminding people that the only ID which Behe has proposed --
that a unicellular common ancestor of life was created with the genes
for all IC systems -- was widely deemed laughable. His other "ID" work
has, rather, been anti-evolution work.

I have not followed Minnich's work, but all that I have seen from him
that would qualify him as an ID proponent was his saying, "I support ID"
(or words to that effect).

--
Mark Isaak eciton (at) curioustaxonomy (dot) net
"Omnia disce. Videbis postea nihil esse superfluum."
- Hugh of St. Victor

jillery

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Mar 23, 2019, 12:25:02 PM3/23/19

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On Sat, 23 Mar 2019 09:02:56 -0700, Mark Isaak
<eciton@curiousta/xyz/xonomy.net> wrote:

>On 3/22/19 5:19 PM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
>>
>> ...you are ignorant of what the best ID proponents, Behe and Minnich,
>> do and did.
>
>It is worth reminding people that the only ID which Behe has proposed --
>that a unicellular common ancestor of life was created with the genes
>for all IC systems -- was widely deemed laughable. His other "ID" work
>has, rather, been anti-evolution work.
>
>I have not followed Minnich's work, but all that I have seen from him
>that would qualify him as an ID proponent was his saying, "I support ID"
>(or words to that effect).

Minnich testified in the Dover trial of his experiments with the
bacterial flagellum, to show that removing each part made the
flagellum stop working, thus qualifying the flagellum as IC according
to Behe's test for IC. However, Behe's test for IC turned out to be a
meaningless test for IC, and IC turned out to be a meaningless test
for ID or against evolution by unguided natural processes.

Mark Isaak

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Mar 23, 2019, 1:10:02 PM3/23/19

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On 3/23/19 9:20 AM, jillery wrote:
> On Sat, 23 Mar 2019 09:02:56 -0700, Mark Isaak
> <eciton@curiousta/xyz/xonomy.net> wrote:
>
>> On 3/22/19 5:19 PM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
>>>
>>> ...you are ignorant of what the best ID proponents, Behe and Minnich,
>>> do and did.
>>
>> It is worth reminding people that the only ID which Behe has proposed --
>> that a unicellular common ancestor of life was created with the genes
>> for all IC systems -- was widely deemed laughable. His other "ID" work
>> has, rather, been anti-evolution work.
>>
>> I have not followed Minnich's work, but all that I have seen from him
>> that would qualify him as an ID proponent was his saying, "I support ID"
>> (or words to that effect).
>
> Minnich testified in the Dover trial of his experiments with the
> bacterial flagellum, to show that removing each part made the
> flagellum stop working, thus qualifying the flagellum as IC according
> to Behe's test for IC. However, Behe's test for IC turned out to be a
> meaningless test for IC, and IC turned out to be a meaningless test
> for ID or against evolution by unguided natural processes.

That's as much as I know about his work. His testifying qualifies, I
think, as saying, "I support ID", but, as you note, his scientific work
has very little relevance to evolution and absolutely no relevance to ID.

RonO

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Mar 23, 2019, 1:35:02 PM3/23/19

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Minnich performed the classic knockout mutation survey to identify parts
of an interacting system. Beadle and Tatum got the Nobel for this type
of work that they did in the 1930's. The way he did it was to use
transposons as the mutators. This means that when a gene gets knocked
out by the insertion of the transposon you can pull out the gene using
the transposon sequence and it is an efficient means of identifying the
interacting genes associated with whatever system you are studying.

Minnich was involved in an analysis on the flagellar tail proteins that
were identify in his "IC" screen.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10940048

When he looked at the structure of the flagellar tail it was apparent
that it evolved over a long period of time and it evolved in a
sequential manner by gene duplication in steps consistent with how the
tail is known to be made.

Minnich never looked into the design of any of his other IC parts of the
flagellum. If you read the paper it is about the evolution of the parts
of the tail, but the authors were restricted (likely by Minnich) to not
mention evolution. It is strange to talk about a phylogeny and the
relationship of the parts (which parts are obviously derived from
others) and have it described the way they did it in the paper.

This just means that Minnich knew that the tail wasn't Behe's type of IC
part of the flagellum years before the Dover fiasco.

Ron Okimoto

Glenn

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Mar 23, 2019, 2:50:03 PM3/23/19

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You're absolutely crazy, and should be reported.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC111384/

jillery

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Mar 23, 2019, 3:30:03 PM3/23/19

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Minnich acknowledged that he used the knockout mutation method of
Beadle and Tatum. Minnich's claim was that he used that method to
identify the "well-matched parts" of the bacterial flagellum, and to
knock them out one by one, and by so doing performed Behe's test for
IC as Behe specified in DBB. I agree Behe's test for IC doesn't
really test Behe's type of IC, but it can't reasonably be said that
Minnich didn't do Behe's test for IC.

jillery

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Mar 23, 2019, 3:30:03 PM3/23/19

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On Sat, 23 Mar 2019 10:05:46 -0700, Mark Isaak

<eciton@curiousta/xyz/xonomy.net> wrote:

>On 3/23/19 9:20 AM, jillery wrote:
>> On Sat, 23 Mar 2019 09:02:56 -0700, Mark Isaak
>> <eciton@curiousta/xyz/xonomy.net> wrote:
>>
>>> On 3/22/19 5:19 PM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
>>>>
>>>> ...you are ignorant of what the best ID proponents, Behe and Minnich,
>>>> do and did.
>>>
>>> It is worth reminding people that the only ID which Behe has proposed --
>>> that a unicellular common ancestor of life was created with the genes
>>> for all IC systems -- was widely deemed laughable. His other "ID" work
>>> has, rather, been anti-evolution work.
>>>
>>> I have not followed Minnich's work, but all that I have seen from him
>>> that would qualify him as an ID proponent was his saying, "I support ID"
>>> (or words to that effect).
>>
>> Minnich testified in the Dover trial of his experiments with the
>> bacterial flagellum, to show that removing each part made the
>> flagellum stop working, thus qualifying the flagellum as IC according
>> to Behe's test for IC. However, Behe's test for IC turned out to be a
>> meaningless test for IC, and IC turned out to be a meaningless test
>> for ID or against evolution by unguided natural processes.
>
>That's as much as I know about his work. His testifying qualifies, I
>think, as saying, "I support ID", but, as you note, his scientific work
>has very little relevance to evolution and absolutely no relevance to ID.

Minnich also did an experiment designed to test a result of the LTEE:

<https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26833416>

This experiments developed 46 Cit+ populations in 12 to 100 weeks, as
opposed to the several years for a single Cit+ population in the LTEE,
using similar genetic pathways as the LTEE Cit+ population. Minnich
says this shows "no new genetic information (novel gene function)
evolved", but I don't understand how he reached that conclusion. Even
if the frequency of Cit+ is a consequence of experimental conditions,
that says nothing about the creation of new information, which was the
ability to transport citrate in oxic conditions.

In either case, while Behe and others have claimed this as evidence of
ID, I don't see where Minnich says anything about this experiment
having anything to do with IC.

Peter Nyikos

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Mar 25, 2019, 11:20:03 AM3/25/19

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Yes, and Okimoto is talking above about a paper having nothing
to do with the experiment to which he testified in Dover. The
paper only talks about the tail and not about the whole flagellar
apparatus.

> I agree Behe's test for IC doesn't
> really test Behe's type of IC,

Didn't you mean to type "ID" instead of "IC" here? If not, you
sure are being confusing here.

Okimoto is harping on ID above, and Minnich's point in his Dover
testimony about his experiments was that they demonstrated IC.

> but it can't reasonably be said that
> Minnich didn't do Behe's test for IC.

Correct. He pointedly identified "the basic function," namely
swimming, to which all the "well-matched, interacting parts...contribute[d]."
[DBB, p. 39].

Behe's big mistake, one that has caused literally myriads of hours
to be wasted by hundreds if not thousands of people, was to
absent-mindedly continue:

wherein removal of any of the parts causes the system
to effectively cease functioning

instead of writing,

wherein removal of any of the parts effectively terminates
that basic function.

In that case, the amount of wasted time could easily have been
decimated. Apart from pseudo-scientific blather
about the meaning of "parts" (or whatever) a la Mark Isaak,
it would have been more properly focused on the issue of what,
if anything, the system was good for even in the absence of
one or more parts.

All the talk about exaptation from a Type III secretory mechanism
falls under the latter category. Scott Minnich actually addressed that point
in Dover by giving some experimental evidence that the Type III mechanism
actually evolved from the bacterial flagellum by losing parts,
instead of the evolution going in the other direction by gaining parts.

Not being as experienced a debater as Phillip Johnson or even
Michael Behe, Scott Minnich neglected to mention that even
if the majority (FWIW) opinion of scientists is correct, it only
"kicks the can further down the road." That's because now we also have
the problem of how the Type III mechanism, which certainly seems
to be IC for *its* function, might have evolved.

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

Burkhard

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Mar 25, 2019, 11:20:03 AM3/25/19

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Yep, and that's just for starters. For a long time security was an
afterthought, some way down the line after "Is this cool"? "Will that
make money now?"and finally "Can we beat the competition to it"?. But
any comprehensive approach to security needs to take the human user into
account - that's the evidence from the "firewall wars" - no matter how
good one is, if an ill-informed user can switch them off because they
think "that speeds up my computer and there's no risk", there will be
trouble. And unfortunately not just for the chap who let their computer
get compromised, the DDoS attack that gets enabled that way will also
harm third parties. In an IoT environment, this will get worse - and the
"inform and consent" model is definitely broken here, two issues that
segue into the bioethics paper below

That's a strange and very mixed paper, so I'll spread my answers a bit.
Generally I rate Savulescu highly, and I'm using quite a number of his
papers in my neuroscience and law course.

But this one is more a rant than a careful analysis, and also has a
slightly irritating whining tone to it - bioethics as a subject is
broken because people just refuse to do what I tell them, and me being
an important Oxford Prof and all that. When in reality that might just
mean that his arguments failed to persuade lots of folks who also are
quite good and thoughtful when it comes to these issues.

He then uses examples that are carefully designed to show the apparent
stupidity of his interlocutors - but what gets lost in the process are
the issues that come up once you try to derive a general rule from them,
and in some of the cases that is at least a bit disingenuous.

So e.g. the "selecting for perfect pitch". Now, what could be wrong with
that? Very little at first sight, I'd agree. But what he does not
mention is that this discussion was triggered by a very different kind
of issue, parents selecting/designing offspring so that the newborn
could then become organ donor for an older child of theirs with an
illness . Here the decision to "harvest" the newborn could be taken
either before s/he is of age and can make up their own mind. And even if
it is done later, and there is an element of choice involved, the
pressure here to "do the right thing and save your brother's life, you
own yours to him too (because we only had you because of him) would
indeed be difficult to overcome.

The ethical principle at stake here is Kant's categorical imperative
(especially in the second formulation), and I was surprised that he
nowhere seems to acknowledge that (it's also behind the "Dignity in
Data protection" argument he poo-poos further down).

Now, maybe he just wants to say that a general prohibition to select for
traits catches too many problematic examples like the one he gives, and
we need a more finely tailored rule to prevent the problematic examples.
But he gives no proposal on how such a rule could look like, and so
ultimately he seems to embrace indirectly the position he explicitly
repudiates - i.e. a highly context sensitive, "relativistic" process
where some trusted old person (an Oxford professor for Ethics, say)
makes case by case decisions.

There are other problems with his example. First, perfect pitch might be
one of those traits that don't come with any costs (I actually don't
know if that's true either, that's a scientific question, not an ethical
one) But this is not generally the case, and as a species we have a bad
track record making that call - just look at the over-bred dog varieties
with all sorts of illnesses and neuroticism. So his scenario could a) be
the exception rather than the rule and b) require a degree of knowledge
we don;t normally have.

And then we would get to those traits that do limit choice - say parents
who want their kids to become athletes and make lots of money (and this
way maybe provide for parents in their old age) So they select for
testosterone and similar traits, resulting in girls that will face
significant discrimination due to their male looks, and many life
choices closed to them. His answer seems to be that we should in this
case change societal attitudes to external appearance and to
conventional conceptions of beauty, which may be little consolation for
the child NOW.

His position also seems to be that "being alive is always better than
never being born" which for all sorts of reasons is problematic. (He
deals with this a bit in the variant where he discusses delaying child
birth until one has money to enable a good upbringing, but does not draw
what seems to me the obvious conclusions regarding his earlier analysis
with perfect pitch) But it also seems to me problematic to move from
"the child would not have a right to complain that she was born" to
"therefore the choices of the parents were ethically neutral". Just for
starters, he reduces the ethical question to one of conflict between the
rights of the child and those of the parents. But these are not
necessarily the only ethical issues that are at stake. This is another
Kantian issue, this time the imperative in its third formulation.
Sometimes an action is wrong not because it individually caused harm,
but because it would cause harm were everyone to decide to do the same.
(or inversely, it can;t be the basis of a universal law). One such
issue, again in analogy to dog breeding, would be a loss of diversity
- we and up with a societies where everyone wants to sing, and nobody
wants to farm or build things. The real life issue here is selection for
gender - if a society rewards having boys more than having girls, the
cumulative choice for boys causes massive social problems (As we see in
China e.g.). Greater susceptibility to illnesses on the species level,
rather then the individual level, could also result from "design fads"
when it comes to children.

So it seems to me he is using a superficially appealing example that
simply tries to eliminate all those issues that the people who don't
want a permission to clone are mostly concerned about.

>
> “The tendency today is to roll over and ‘scientify’ everything. Evidence
> will tell us what to do, people believe. But what constitutes sufficient
> evidence is an ethical decision when we make up our minds about what to
> do.” Great point. Wish Pinker had mentioned this while shadowboxing a
> critique of Sam Harris and some bewildering BS squirted out by Leon Kass.
> But things soon derail. See the subheading “Two failures of medical ethics:
> research ethics and organ transplantation”.

Yes and no, I'd say. Yes in the sense that this is indeed an important
issue in principle, and there is a tendency to "trespass" by the
sciences and reduce ethical issues to technological ones. That's rather
pronounced in my own main field of work, whee e.g. lots of people at the
moment think that problem with algorithmic bias is simply a software
engineering issue (let's come up with new techniques to minimize it)
which, while perfectly sound and laudable, does not answer the deeper
ethical concerns what type of bias we should not tolerate as society,
and if certain forms of automated decision making could be ethically
wrong even if they are accurate.

But also to an extend no. If it comes to concrete examples, in
concrete settings, the issue will often be "is this likely to cause
disproportionate harm?". And for this you need the science side. His
evocation of the principle allows him to sidestep all the dangers of his
preferred solution (as this becomes a "science issue) while selectively
demanding from the opposition to give better evidence that there is an
actual danger of harm.

That also links to the bigger issues that the paper touches on -
rationality vs emotion, individual vs society and rules vs context
sensitive decisions.

He rejects e.g. ethical relativism. On one level of abstraction, that's
unproblematic, and he makes the case well. But then he uses this for a
different level of analysis, where things become more murky.

The issue here is attitude to risk and risk perception. I'd argue that
they are shaped massively by society, change over time, and what we
consider within a society as "acceptable risk" is often difficult to
rationalise along general principles. E.g. if the simple rule were
"minimize the risk of violent death", we'd massively redistribute
resources and policing efforts away from anti-terrorism activity to
traffic policing and road safety. But of course, what we consider
"acceptable" risk is not just a mathematical equation, it is a
culturally shaped attitude.

In his paper, you get this issue when he discusses data protection, and
is annoyed that his German interlocutor is a data protection
fundamentalist (and again also ignores the Kantian argument that he is
given and turns it into a utilitarian one). It is generally true in a
European research context that the Germans, and for tat matter Poles,
Hungarians, Dutch etc tend to be much more rigid when it comes to DP,
the UK would like a much less regimented approach. We just did a report
from a EU project that tried to maximise data sharing.
(https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs11023-018-9467-4) The
issues were difficult, to say the least, but his caricature is also
rather off the mark. The "consent" model has been widely criticized for
all sorts of reasons, including that it does not give enough protection,
there are good alternatives in place that are also law compliant and
allow more data sharing (e.g. the Scottish SHIPS project) and any ethics
board that still "fetishizes consent" is just not up to speed with best
practice.

But there is of course an underlying reason why Germans, Dutch, Poles
etc are mire stringent when it comes to data sharing. They all had in
living memory massive experiences with the abuse of medical data by the
state. The Nazis when invading the Netherlands seized all the health
record, which had been collected for entirely benign purposes, and used
them to target people for killing. The UK did never experience this
radical abuse of data by the state (so we tell ourselves - people in
Northern Ireland or some of the former colonies might disagree).

So for him the issue is: why should we not collect medical data? It will
help curing people, and what's the worst that can happen? A researcher
selling it on to insurance companies, who then increase premiums for the
test subjects - well, we can fine them for this.

For the German, the "worst that could happen" by contrast is not with
the current government, but a future dictator getting hold of it.

On an abstract level, both can agree that "disproportionate risk must be
avoided", as ethical universal. But what that means in practice will
differ massively between cultures, and the personal experience people
have made in their lives. This can't be resolved through ethical theory.
It also can't be resolved through science - there is no way to quantify
the likelihood of future misuse of data by rogue governments before it
is too late. Neither the German nor the UK perspective in this sense is
objectively "right".

And that's why people then go back to consent: as there is no objective
answer, we must leave it to a degree to individuals to decide if they
feel it is too risky. Yes, there are issues with that too. Some can be
mitigated by better education, and explanation of what we know about the
risks. But I don't think that the call a middle class, middle aged
Oxford prof makes here is necessarily more sound than that of a young
busdriver. The former can protect and shield himself from some of the
consequences if the call was wrong much better than the latter, eg.

More later

Peter Nyikos

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Mar 25, 2019, 12:05:03 PM3/25/19

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Yes, in marked contrast to yourself. I here make explicit something
you should have been able to deduce from a post I did on Friday, to
which you have not yet replied:

Burkhard : eagle :: Hemidactylus : shrike

The one person so far who has replied to that post is that perennial
intellectual lightweight/propaganda specialist Mark Isaak. Naturally,
he did not quote the part of my post where I implicitly made that analogy.

Also naturally, he snipped all clues as to the fact that it was
you whom I was addressing, as well as my reasoning as to why
I accused you of ignorance of what Michael Behe and Scott Minnich
are up to.

Also naturally, he inadvertently revealed that he is even more
ignorant about that than you are, and amended your bizarre
claim that ID is anti-science to an even more bizarre claim that
Behe himself is mainly anti-evolution.

Jillery, and your dearly beloved Ron O, have, with their finest kid gloves,
corrected Mark's first abysmal claim, but Ron O was almost as
clumsy as Mark himself, while jillery got rather confusing herself
while correcting Ron O.

If you are at all interested in on-topic discussion, I suggest you
carefully read what I subsequently wrote to jillery this morning.

> and is never mean spirited,

Maybe so, but he WAS quite testy with me when I suggested
that at least some of the hirings that he rhapsodized about might
have been done for reasons having nothing to do with the ones he gave.
He hasn't replied to the two posts where I provided some details
about whose existence he had been quite pointedly [to say the least] skeptical.

Of course, Burk might want to check out whether such reasons
actually are behind some hirings, and there was precious little opportunity
to inquire about those on a weekend.

> which may be a reason Peter seems to respect him too
> even if they disagree. Peter definitely respected Richard Norman who has
> disowned us and taken up Quora instead.

Are you sure you want to use such a mean-spirited-sounding word
as "disowned"?

Peter Nyikos

Burkhard

unread,

Mar 25, 2019, 12:15:03 PM3/25/19

to talk-o...@moderators.isc.org

Did she give any evidence for this "influence"? No. And I addressed this
by calling out her strawmen, showing that far from a leftist conspiracy,
this responds to the research needs identified both by industry and
quite a number of "hard science" research communities.

There are different ways to respond to an article. If it has
substance, one can engage with the substance If it lacks substance, as
in this case, one can point out the lack of substance and the internal
contradictions.

Did she even manage to give a coherent account of what should count as
"radical progressive"? another no. We hear that "the deny objective
reality" - so if this is the view you agree with, you'd be committed to
argue that exposing science students to e.g. Kant is going to destroy
the project of enlightenment. You can also include Berkeley, Hume, quite
possibly Leibniz, and Hegel. Or among the more recent philosophers of
science Poincaré, Duhem, Bertrand Russel, W.yv.O Quine, Kyle Stanford,
Nancy Cartwright, Ian Hacking, etc etc.

There has been one philosopher of note (or notoriety) who did indeed
argue that the above are indistinguishable from radical post-modern
social-constructivist philosophers and all part of the same
intellectual decline of western thought that started in the 17th century
when we abandoned Aristotle - the rightly ignored Ayan Rand.

>
> What issue did you THINK I was talking about?
>
>
>> (and did not discuss ID
>> at all).
>
> Your snide remarks in direct response to Hemidactylus seemed to be directed
> at least as much at ID as at the article or the author. See below the last thing
> I quote from you in this post.
>
>
>> In particular, the long part where I showed that far from being
>> a post-modern leftist conspiracy,
>
> ...thereby knocking down a straw man...

Indeed, s atrawmen the author makes, which was indeed my intention.

>
>> it is a response to market demands and
>> what pretty hard nosed entrepreneurs look for in graduates
>
> Hard nosed enough to leave off certain items from a job description
> and use them as surprise additions to catch interviewees off guard?

> And to withhold secret "desireables" for the job even during the
> interviews?

You are using baseless speculation about the prevalence of an abuse by
HR departments. You don't provide data. You in particular don't provide
any data that indicates that including interdisciplinary expertise in
the curriculum makes this worse. "Job advert stacking" is ancient. The
easiest way to do it, and with a much easier way to justify it, is to
include specific job experience, and maybe a foreign language. I can
easily do this for any given job and not stray beyond the disciplinary
boundaries.

Wanna try? Here is one:

Wanted: Mathematician, educated to PhD level, with specialism in
point-set topology, base properties of regular spaces, and the
application of special axioms from set theory to consistency and
independence result. Specific demonstrable research expertise in Flat
spaces of continuous functions, Dowker spaces and topological
applications of Antidiamond principles an advantage. Must have
experience of university teaching at UG and PG level, especially
demonstrable experience with teaching General Topology, Linear Algebra,
Vector calculus and set theoretic topology. Experience of teaching to
non-mathematics students, e.g. Calculus for students from business
administration courses, particularly welcome. Should have demonstrable
experience of successful PhD supervision, especially in fields such as
D-spaces and L-special trees or Metrizability of trees. Must have track
record attracting NSF grant funding. As some of our research is in
collaboration with the Department of Defense, the applicant must be
willing to collaborate with army supported research. Security clearance
and/or past military service/rank an advantage.

How many people do you think match this description, and could there be
one that is "best match" even without seeing the applications? And I can
of course always add a bit, especially since some people don;t update
their online CV :o)

So your segue into job advert stuffing has no connection to the issues
raised in the paper

>
> That's what I was writing about shortly before the unintended early
> posting, and yes, I would call that hard-nosed, but I can also
> think of more on-target adjectives.
>
>
>
>> (and are
>> willing to pay for). You remember, the part where yo did not really
>> engage with the argument but went off on a tangent of the negative
>> influence of money n academic integrity?
>
> "academic" is your editoralizing.
>
> You picked up that tangent and ran with it,

jup, that was in hindsight a mistake. It does not add anything to the
discussion of the paper

making naive comments
> about how money influences faculty little if at all.

You made the same point when you said that you became an academic
because of the love of the subject, btw. And we simply have clear
patterns of academic misconduct and fraud where it is clear that the
perpetrator did not benefit financially. As there are salary ceilings
for most of us that's hardly surprising.

And my rejoinder
> about grants went unanswered; instead you focused exclusively on sticking
> up for the administration.

I did not stick up for the administration, I tried to make sense of your
post, which followed its tangent from "research misconduct" to
"misconduct by administrators", without rhyme or reason. So I asked for
clarification if you accuse your president of misconduct, because that
was the only way I could think of that related it to the point under
discussion.

I take it your job is primarily administrative
> and that you don't do any academic research?

Wow....
o

>
>
>> Now THAT for the author of that
>> piece would have been probably an example of far left progressive
>> post-modernism.
>
> Your "shotgun" approach to what actually went on between us leaves
> much to be desired.
>
>>
>> I followed this up with three direct quotes from the article which
>> showed that she combines ignorance of the field with an inability to
>> from a cogent argument.
>
> Cherry-picked quotes every one,

Then you should have no problems restoring the context and show why my
interpretation is wrong. So far you haven't really provided any evidence
apart, maybe, from some tangential anecdotes, so you and the paper have
at least that in common.

and not supportive of what you are
> saying right here. You seem to have your own ideas of what she
> *should* be arguing for, and judging her arguments on that basis.
>
> And you still haven't even scratched the surface of how influential
> (or not) the radical progressives she quotes, and their kindred
> spirits, are.

because it's really her job to provide the evidence, as it's her making
the claim. And I showed that the "radical progressives", to the extend
that she describes their position at all, would include Kant, Hume, and
Poincare,

>
> Is that because you haven't the slightest clue about that?
>
>
>>>>>> Well, that could come as no surprise, given that the mercatornet paper
>>>>>> is pretty much bereft of facts, research or any understanding of current
>>>>>> scientific practice.
>
> The "no surprise, given that" is what makes this an indirect -- and
> unjustified -- dig at ID.
>
> In assessing the relative merits of the best ID theory (mainly due to
> Michael Behe) and evolutionary theory, one needs to keep two things
> in mind:
>

Firstly, the "best" here is you editorializing, I never said "best"
theories, nor did I mention Behe. And you should be aware of the fact
that to say that "If someone has trait A, they are more likely to also
have trait B" does not lead to "Most people with B have A".

Now I happen to also not rate Behe particularly highly, and more
specifically just don't accept that he has any form of ID theory, but
that's a different story. For my "dig" to be true it's sufficient that
people who know little about science are more likely to be attracted y
ID than those who do.

Burkhard

unread,

Mar 25, 2019, 1:45:03 PM3/25/19

to talk-o...@moderators.isc.org

Peter Nyikos wrote:
> On Friday, March 22, 2019 at 11:35:03 AM UTC-4, Burkhard wrote:
>> Peter Nyikos wrote:
>>> On Wednesday, March 20, 2019 at 5:10:03 PM UTC-4, Burkhard wrote:
>>>> Peter Nyikos wrote:
>>>>> On Sunday, March 17, 2019 at 1:15:03 PM UTC-4, Burkhard wrote:
>>>
>>>>>> I'm currently part of three STEM-lead research projects, where computer
>>>>>> scientists, mathematicians, anthropologists, psychologists, sociologists
>>>>>> and media study folks work together on better and safer products.
>>>
>>> The adage "too many cooks spoil the broth" comes to mind here.
>>
>> based on your extensive experience in software design?
>
> A well known adage of the 1960's is "It doesn't take a weatherman to
> tell which way the wind is blowing."

Quite. Did I ever tell you that in my considerate opinion, we should
close down all mathematics departments, because don't you know, all the
young ones these days have pocket calculators and similar gewgaws, so
there really is no point teaching that stuff any longer?

>
>
>> Also
>>> "How many ______________ does it take to screw in a lightbulb?"
>>>
>>> Now that may be unfair, but if so, I would like to know how all
>>> these specialists are needed for *products* as opposed to *policies*.
>>
>> Well, to give a few examples, under the GDPR, all products (which
>> includes software products) that process personal data must by law have
>> "data protection by design". This includes also data security. We know
>> that technologically unsophisticated users are the main security risk
>> (not updating software, disabling firewall etc) and also are quite bad
>> at doing risk assessments. So for law compliant software that keeps
>> people safe, especially in an IoT context, you need "usable privacy",
>> things that protect users in real life.
>
> From what? you don't seem to explain below.

Since the topic as I said is "data protection by design", I thought that
was obvious - misuse of their data, either because they unwisely shared
it, or because the security of the system was compromised.

>
>> For this you need to understand
>> why people make no or not sufficient use of some existing tools. That's
>> were cognitive science and psychology comes in.
>
> "why" is not relevant; it is, "what can we do to take care of such people"?

And to do this efficiently, you think we don't need to understand why
they make the choices they make or engage in otherwise risky behavior?
If you were to design a better rear mirror for cars because evidence
shows that drivers don't look sufficiently into it, don't you think it
matters if they do so because the angle of current models is awkward,
their size is too small, it interferes with the other displays they try
to look at at the same time or everything is fine with the mirror, they
just lack the training to use them right? Now I would say that depending
on the answer, you'd chose very different strategies to improve the
design. Similarly, if I want to increase uptake of a beneficial drug, I
might want to know first if people don't use it because it's too
expensive, because they suffer embarrassing side effects, because they
are too big to swallow comfortably, they interact with other medication
they have to take etc etc So before I can start to think how to improve
the drug, I need to know why people don't use what we have.

>
> And the answer all too often is, give the design to people well versed
> in advertising. It used to take only two clicks from the university webpage
> to get to the Department of Mathematics webpage. Now it takes twice that many,
> and the relevant "button" is not always easy to find. You have to search
> for the one for the College of Arts and Sciences. But when you get there,
> to a page dominated by advertising, the right button asks you, in effect,
> "Do you really want to look up the College of Arts and Sciences? then click here."
> The page to which the click takes you is almost all advertising that
> extols the College. Hidden in one of the paragraphs is a link -- not blue,
> but garnet, the university color -- that takes you to "Departments and schools"
> and there is where you finally get to click for the Math department.
> then finally enables you to click for the math department itself.

Now, that could be bad website design. It could however also be a
response to changing user habits - people googling for info and ten
going from the google website rather than the university launch page.
That's why most web developers would use something like google analytics
to find out how people get to the info they want, how many false tries
they make etc etc.

Now that is too basic to be part of academic research, that's normal
design procedure. You could ask if it is not unfair to older users like
yourself who have to adapt their search strategies and might as a result
feel excluded. That would be closer to what we sometimes do. But still
not enough meat to it. But what is an interesting research question that
one could tackle in a small project with computer science and other
relevant experts from the social sciences could be if a) more generally,
changes of design in response to changing user habits excludes, rather
then merely inconveniences, older users (which could be an issue for
websites that are necessary to navigate, e.g. by government agencies)
and if so, if there are design solutions for this that make transitions
more gradual.

>
> Big universities are run like big businesses, with Administration in the role
> of management, faculty in the role of white-collar labor that often has to
> defer to real blue-collar workers, and students in the form of customers.
> Hence all the advertising in the brave new world of search software.
>
>> These systems are
>> physically embedded, so users interact with them through bodily
>> movements etc (think of IoT-enabled jewelry e.g.)
>
> And problems with sensitivity to the materials, that can take a long
> time to show up. Good luck on having it show up right where the implant is.

Not talking about implants here (though they would be one example),
merely IoT or "cyberphysical systems". So you go into a lecture room and
use hand movements to activate microphones and screens rather than
pushing buttons or voice commands. Has lots of applications, e.g. if you
work in noisy environments, or where lots of people talk at the same
time (i.e. industrial manufacturing environments with robotic
co-workers), environments were silence is needed, or to assist people
who can't speak.

>
>> To understand how a
>> user could manipulate them in a secure way therefore needs also
>> knowledge of ergonomics and generally human movement and interaction.
>> These then also have to work in social contexts, i.e. depending on the
>> choices other people make (herd immunity is needed), so one also has to
>> understand how thinking about privacy and data security happens in
>> groups ("all my friends do X, therefore it's probably safe" etc) And all
>> these insights then need to be turned into design solutions, for which
>> you have the artists and media study folks, where one can use e.g.
>> various forms of visualization to alert people in non-intrusive yet
>> effective ways of risks and what to do about it.
>
> Sorry, I have no desire to become a cyborg.

So no peacemaker for you should you suffer a heart attack? No
intelligent cochlear implant if you lose hearing?

Whose idea was this tampering
> with bodies just to get some sort of unspecified security?

The "tampering with bodies" was really your idea, not sure what you
mean. But as far as security and tampering with bodies is concerned,
that would be military applications, mostly. So that e.g. the commander
of a unit can get real time reading of the vitals of the personnel under
their command, and can send help when a problem is identified. There are
also safety critical civilian applications, e.g. monitoring pilots, or
during a humanitarian crisis keeping track of people.

>
> Did anyone with expertise in philosophy not suggest that the human race
> might be better off without such products?

So now you are saying we did not involve enough different disciplines,
sort of the exact opposite of what you've argued so far? And yes, the
philosophical issues are part of the "ethics and law" remit. And as so
often, in real life they turn out to be more nuanced and difficult than
what the man in the pub, or the non-weatherman predicting the weather,
might think of in 5 minutes. Why, one might even think that it requires
careful research and expertise, some of which one might want to give to
students while undergraduates. So in a STEAM curriculum, the computer
scientists who ten to be ever slightly to enthusiastic about just
building stuff get a bit of exposure to things like "cyborgs in
literature", fro the Golem of Prague to Pygmalion or Karel Čapek to get
a bit sensitized to the idea that there is something that goes to the
heart of human self-identity when we turn ourselves into machines. Or
some courses in anthropology based ethical systems, where I for one
would happily include a discussion of "Laudato si"(and have indeed
someone from divinity lead one of my classes) , together with
anthropologically based ethics by other religious and non-religious
traditions,

But all that according to the author of the paper would be diluting the
objectivism of science which neither wants nor needs this type of
detraction from the things that really matter.

>
>>
>> In another project, the outcome will be a product that assists border
>> police to identify smuggled art. That means it must be able to
>> distinguish between a £5 replica from the museum shop and a real
>> thing.
>
> So far, so good, but what's the point of software replacing a human
> policeman to make the following judgments?

The short answer is that it's terribly difficult to make people with
advanced degrees in art history join airport security, where they work
an extremely boring job just above minimum wage and get insulted by
irate members of the public a lot.

The longer answer needs a discussion of training and career structure in
the police, self-understanding of police/border security officers and
how they see their role, understanding of people flows in airports (and
how much delay per search event would make the system crash - short,
lots and lots of questions for which relevant expertise is available in
the social sciences, especially criminology. Hence multi-disciplinary
studies. The one you have issues with due to a cooking analogy, remember?

>
>> To do its job, it needs to know what the substantive law says
>> (what art is protected) and also what the procedural law says (what type
>> of evidence is needed, how does it have to be stored and verified).
>
>
>> And
>> then it needs to know a lot about art history, and the type of red flags
>> an art historian would look out for when making such an assessment. And
>> it then has to present all this in a way that makes sense for the
>> intended user,but is also legally waterproof.And this requires in many
>> jurisdictions to quantify the accuracy of the assessment, which is where
>> the forensic statisticians come in
>>
>> And we also work with artists who try to use the carbon footprint and
>> ethical sourcing of their products as a unique selling point. To make
>> this a convincing case to their customers, and also to comply with
>> advertising law, they again need a way to integrate this information so
>> that customers can easily access and understand it. That again involves
>> various data visualization approaches, but because the product is art,
>> here they should be informative, reliable and also beautiful.
>
> Yeah, like the art on all those webpages en route to the math department.

Is your department selling artwork? Now one of the artists in residence
we are working with works with silver and gold. One of the ideas we are
exploring with her is an extension of an older project on "Tales Of
Things and electronic Memory." So an engagement ring e.g. that
"remembers" the wedding and the honeymoon, and maybe key moments of the
shared life afterwards. So if the grandkids come to visit, you point it
at a smartphone and they can see how the world was like when
grandparents met, how they looked like, the first moment the ring was
put on the finger etc etc.

Is this a life's necessity? Arguably not, though there are some
interesting uses to assist people with dementia using the same approach.
But it raises a lot of technical, ethical, legal and philosophical
issues if you want to do it right, enough to argue that at the moment
they go beyond what companies do on their own in-house anyway, and
requires basic research together with industry partners. And if that
creates also a few jobs in Scotland then I'm all for it

But to cut this short - I know this might look like a radical idea, but
do you think that maybe, just maybe

- if five senior academics draw up a plan for a major research project
- it passes four levels of university-internal peer review (three at the
collaborating schools, one at cross-university level, all stacked with
academics working in the field)
- passes three levels of external peer review and final approval by the
national science funding body, so that also 17 other senior academics
looked at it)
- they manage to convince industry partners (from computer manufacturers
to big banks to festival organizers) to provide matching funding to
the tune of £6m

that someone, somewhere would have spotted if there were something
obvious wrong or irrelevant in the approach, something of the type an
outsider might spot in 5 min, or that maybe, just maybe they bloody
know what they are doing, including relevant research questions that
haven't been asked or answered yet, and the right type of mix of subject
expertise?

You know, just, as a radical thought?

>
> And once a student, and parents, decides USC is good for them, the
> wooing ends, and the honeymoon ends when it is revealed that freshman
> have to live on campus unless their family lives in either Richland
> or Lexington counties. They also have to take the dorm room that is
> assigned to them, even if it is a musty basement room, or has a thermostat
> over which they have no control, along with a sealed window. Up in Clemson
> they can't even control how fast their fan run
>
>> putting e.g. a QR code on them would not work. So you need to be able to
>> think also like an artists, and integrate aesthetics, (consumer)
>> psychology, (design) informatics, a bit of legal oversight and also a
>> bit of material science at the integration stage.
>
> Oh, and a bit closer to home for you: Oxford victims of sexual coercion by
> boyfriends are discouraged from reporting it. Bad PR for Oxford, and all that.

Not quite sure what point you want to make here?

>
>
>>>>>> Almost
>>>>>> all of the lead investigators are dualy qualified, but we struggled to
>>>>>> get also enough high quality postdocs that combine STEM with humanities
>>>>>> - that's also because industry has spotted how much additional value
>>>>>> they bring, and they can by now pretty much write their own salary
>>>>>> cheque.
>>>
>>> I addressed this in my first reply to this long post of yours, but kept
>>> it in for context. Here too:
>>>
>>>> But everyone who knows that field knows that it is big companies that
>>>> are desperately looking for dual qualified people, and willing to pay
>>>> for it,
>>>
>>> The cynic in me suggests that old fashioned nepotism might be at work
>>> here, with companies very carefully tailoring the job description
>>> around the person they have decided to hire, and only advertise it
>>> because of legal requirements.
>>
>> Ad you can back this up with evidence, of course? Not just anecdotes?
>
> Yes. See below about the two cases where I was intimately involved.

Two cases pretty much = anecdotes, don't you think?

>
>>
>>>
>>> I've seen that sort of thing happen, to people I knew and cared very
>>> much about, on both sides of the deal. One friend got a job due to such
>>> careful tailoring,
>
> For one thing, she was a minority temporary faculty member, so part of the
> description was being able to counsel students in that minority. I know,
> because I was asked to write a letter of recommendation for her. I wrote that
> I really had no firsthand knowledge of how good a counselor she was, but
> I knew she was a member of the coveted minority. Otherwise, stuck to her mathematical
> research and scholarship.

Not quite sure what conclusions you draw from this. Did you say in the
reference her scholarship was abysmal? Then and only then do you have
(some) evidence that it was tailoring that got her the job. If not, how
do you know that she did not get the job because of her strength in
research that you testified to? Indeed, if "tailoring was involved,
candidates with a referee who did speak to their counseling ability
would have had the upper hand. So if anything that would indicate that
this did no play a decisive role.

Second, academic roles are more than just research, for most of us, and
the university can only function well if these too are done
professionally end expertly. Very often, this does not happen, and these
things are treated as an after thought. So I was e.g. for many years the
disability officer of our faculty, without much in terms of prior
training and expertise. A job that if you do it badly, life are at
stake, so if anything something where relevant expertise would be more
relevant than even in my core research field. Not being disabled myself,
and with no relevant education background, I tried to do my best, learn
as fast as possible and listen to as many students as I could - but
without a shadow of a doubt someone with direct personal experience
could have done a better job.

So I would have found it perfectly OK at the pot of application, if the
university decided it had to get its act together to assist students
with disability, to use relevant experience at the every least as a tie
breaker between me and another candidate.

>
>
>> the other lost out on a (completely different) job whose description she fit perfectly. Had I learned about it soon after it had
>>> happened, I would have advised her to look into suing the company for
>>> discrimination.
>>
>> and you know the qualities that the successful candidate had too?
>
> They included extra ones that were not in the job description. The unsuccessful
> applicant was asked about some of them in the phone interview. She met them
> very well indeed. When she asked why she didn't get the job, the employer
> made the mistake of saying, "the one who got the job had music experience."
> Reaction: "Why didn't you ask me about that? I could have told you that
> I have extensive music experience too!" [Eight years of piano lessons
> and one year of playing French Horn in a school band.]
>
> You can bet that employer never made that kind of mistake again! There's
> the dark side of adding A to STEM.

And how would that differ from adding competency in a
language/experience of studying abroad? Or a specialism within the
subject, or a different Stem field ("yes, your math is good, but the
other candidate has experience in biology, and as part of the research
is modelling of population dynamics, we took him")

Now, without further detail it's difficult to analyze this case -
"could" be a massive and obvious violation of HR practice, which indeed
could give rise to legal action.

But here a variation of the story. Say the company develops games, and
needs a mathematician to build more credible AIs ans Non-player
characters (something that involves lot of game and decision theory,
hence they do hire also from our math department). In their CV,
candidate 1 mentions that they were member of an electric band, and that
he has lots of experience writing software code for electronic music and
embed it in videos. In the "what do you bring to this job" session, the
candidate says that having played the games of the company, he thought
the experience could be much enhanced though communal chanting before
the battle, and they already have some ideas how that could be done.
Nobody in the company had anticipated this in the job description. But
it showed the candidate a) had thought carefully about what they want to
do in their job and b) brings an interesting new skill, which separated
them from the others.

So this becomes a short "the other guy did music" in the post-interview
feedback, often given by someone junior who acted as a mere notetaker
and did not understand why that was significant. Now, would they go back
to all the other candidates and ask them: Oh, by the way, you did not
mention this in your CV or the interview, but we found one candidate who
also does interesting things with music, could you do this too? Not
any appointment panel I ever sat on, and I did a fair few. There is in
most interesting (i.e. most graduate) jobs a degree of unpredictability,
where different candidates may or may not be able to use their personal
experience to argue their case.

Can this degree of professional judgement making be abused? Of course,
and sometimes it is. If the problem becomes systematic, someone should
use some math to analyze the patterns - but that would be the kind of
math for social justice that the author of the paper incompetently tries
to ridicule.

>
> Are you quite sure this kind of thing doesn't take place right under
> your nose?
>

Course it might. But a) it has nothing to do with STEAM in particular,
you could as well use a different Stem experience, or any experience,
from "traveling abroad" to "job experience as tour guide". B) there is
no evidence offered that moving to STEAM curricula makes it worse - on
the contrary, one could argue that once everyone had some "A" exposure
while doing STEM, it becomes less suitable to differentiate between
candidates. And third, to combat this the very disciplines that are most
focused in looking at and analyzing systematic abuse of power in
situations of power imbalance, such as hiring decisions, are exactly the
type of subjects the author attacks.

So in summary, you offer to anecdotes, which remain inconclusive even on
their own terms, and even if they were examples of "tailoring" would
not substantiate the claim that a STEAM curriculum makes them worse, and
indeed some evidence to suggest that the opposite would be the case.

Peter Nyikos

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Mar 25, 2019, 2:00:03 PM3/25/19

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Did you for there being negligible influence? No.

> And I addressed this
> by calling out her strawmen,

...not to be confused with the anti-scientific feminists and others
that she quoted, and which you STILL haven't talked about directly.

> showing that far from a leftist conspiracy,
> this responds to the research needs identified both by industry and
> quite a number of "hard science" research communities.
>
> There are different ways to respond to an article. If it has
> substance, one can engage with the substance If it lacks substance, as
> in this case, one can point out the lack of substance and the internal
> contradictions.

I see no internal contradictions, unless you are using the word
"contradictions" in its very loose Marxist sense, having nothing to
do with logic.

>
> Did she even manage to give a coherent account of what should count as
> "radical progressive"?

The quotes make a good start on that. Hers was not meant to be a
detailed treatise.

Did you make any attempt to show that the people she did quote
might be far removed from a promotion of astrology and Wicca? No.

> another no. We hear that "the deny objective
> reality" - so if this is the view you agree with,

Hemidactylus claimed you are never mean-spirited. Why, then,
this blatantly contrary-to-fact "if" clause?

> you'd be committed to
> argue that exposing science students to e.g. Kant is going to destroy
> the project of enlightenment. You can also include Berkeley, Hume, quite
> possibly Leibniz, and Hegel. Or among the more recent philosophers of
> science Poincaré, Duhem, Bertrand Russel, W.yv.O Quine, Kyle Stanford,
> Nancy Cartwright, Ian Hacking, etc etc.

I was exposed to the majority of the less recent ones in
a year-long philosophy course and audits of more advanced ones
in a then-fine liberal arts college, Washington and Jefferson,
and I dare say my understanding of science is at least equal to yours.

I've snipped you bringing up Ayn Rand without ever having tried to
show that the author was "channeling Rand".

> >
> > What issue did you THINK I was talking about?
> >
> >
> >> (and did not discuss ID
> >> at all).
> >
> > Your snide remarks in direct response to Hemidactylus seemed to be directed
> > at least as much at ID as at the article or the author. See below the last thing
> > I quote from you in this post.
> >
> >
> >> In particular, the long part where I showed that far from being
> >> a post-modern leftist conspiracy,
> >
> > ...thereby knocking down a straw man...
>
> Indeed, s atrawmen the author makes, which was indeed my intention.

Did you even manage to give a coherent account of what those strawmen
were? If so, I failed to see it.

Continued in next reply to this post, to be done soon after
I see that this one has posted.

Peter Nyikos

Peter Nyikos

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Mar 25, 2019, 2:15:03 PM3/25/19

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On Monday, March 25, 2019 at 12:15:03 PM UTC-4, Burkhard wrote:

> Peter Nyikos wrote:
> > On Friday, March 22, 2019 at 5:05:03 AM UTC-4, Burkhard wrote:

> >> In particular, the long part where I showed that far from being

> >> a post-modern leftist conspiracy, it is a response to market demands and

> >> what pretty hard nosed entrepreneurs look for in graduates
> >
> > Hard nosed enough to leave off certain items from a job description
> > and use them as surprise additions to catch interviewees off guard?
>
>
> > And to withhold secret "desireables" for the job even during the
> > interviews?
>
> You are using baseless speculation about the prevalence of an abuse by
> HR departments.

You have a long row to hoe before you can show it is baseless.

> You don't provide data.

I did in a post to which you still haven't replied, and to which
I was referring above:

_________________________ excerpt ___________________________

> > The cynic in me suggests that old fashioned nepotism might be at work
> > here, with companies very carefully tailoring the job description
> > around the person they have decided to hire, and only advertise it
> > because of legal requirements.
>
> Ad you can back this up with evidence, of course? Not just anecdotes?

Yes. See below about the two cases where I was intimately involved.

>
> >

> > I've seen that sort of thing happen, to people I knew and cared very
> > much about, on both sides of the deal. One friend got a job due to such
> > careful tailoring,

For one thing, she was a minority temporary faculty member, so part of the
description was being able to counsel students in that minority. I know,
because I was asked to write a letter of recommendation for her. I wrote that
I really had no firsthand knowledge of how good a counselor she was, but

I knew she was a member of the coveted minority. Otherwise, [I] stuck to her
mathematical research and scholarship.

> > the other lost out on a (completely different) job whose description she fit perfectly. Had I learned about it soon after it had
> > happened, I would have advised her to look into suing the company for
> > discrimination.
>
> and you know the qualities that the successful candidate had too?

They included extra ones that were not in the job description. The unsuccessful
applicant was asked about some of them in the phone interview. She met them
very well indeed. When she asked why she didn't get the job, the employer
made the mistake of saying, "the one who got the job had music experience."
Reaction: "Why didn't you ask me about that? I could have told you that
I have extensive music experience too!" [Eight years of piano lessons
and one year of playing French Horn in a school band.]

You can bet that employer never made that kind of mistake again! There's
the dark side of adding A to STEM.

Are you quite sure this kind of thing doesn't take place right under
your nose?

===========================end of excerpt ==================

I doubt that you would have any indication of it taking place
even if it is. You would have to be lucky to be present at one,
because the interviewer would know that [s]he is being scrutinized.
Your presence would be a guarantee that the question of why the
candidate was turned down would not be answered in such a revealing
way as that one about music experience was.

> You in particular don't provide
> any data that indicates that including interdisciplinary expertise in
> the curriculum makes this worse.

This is not about curriculum, this is about hiring practices.

> "Job advert stacking" is ancient. The
> easiest way to do it, and with a much easier way to justify it, is to
> include specific job experience, and maybe a foreign language. I can
> easily do this for any given job and not stray beyond the disciplinary
> boundaries.

Irrelevant. The issue here is exactly about going outside disciplinary
boundaries, as in both of the above cases.

By the way, the first case was where the successful employee
was in a minority within the minority that was named in the
job description. But it was the bigger minority that was to
her advantage; the smaller one would have been a handicap.
[And no, neither had to do with gender.]

And the second case, IIRC, was for a job in environmental science
education and administration. I can check if you are really interested.

> Wanna try? Here is one:

> Wanted: Mathematician,

Since you scrupulously stayed within the boundaries, I've
snipped your comical, and completely irrelevant, description.
All you did with it was waste your time. [Not much of mine: I saw
at a glance that it was completely inside disciplinary boundaries,
except for the kind of employer that I would be willing to work for.]

Remainder deleted, to be replied to later.

Peter Nyikos

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Mar 25, 2019, 4:10:03 PM3/25/19

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On Monday, March 25, 2019 at 1:45:03 PM UTC-4, Burkhard wrote:
> Peter Nyikos wrote:
> > On Friday, March 22, 2019 at 11:35:03 AM UTC-4, Burkhard wrote:
> >> Peter Nyikos wrote:
> >>> On Wednesday, March 20, 2019 at 5:10:03 PM UTC-4, Burkhard wrote:
> >>>> Peter Nyikos wrote:
> >>>>> On Sunday, March 17, 2019 at 1:15:03 PM UTC-4, Burkhard wrote:
> >>>
> >>>>>> I'm currently part of three STEM-lead research projects, where computer
> >>>>>> scientists, mathematicians, anthropologists, psychologists, sociologists
> >>>>>> and media study folks work together on better and safer products.
> >>>
> >>> The adage "too many cooks spoil the broth" comes to mind here.
> >>
> >> based on your extensive experience in software design?
> >
> > A well known adage of the 1960's is "It doesn't take a weatherman to
> > tell which way the wind is blowing."
>
>
> Quite. Did I ever tell you that in my considerate opinion, we should
> close down all mathematics departments, because don't you know, all the
> young ones these days have pocket calculators and similar gewgaws, so
> there really is no point teaching that stuff any longer?

And you accused ME of going off on a tangent!

An even bigger irony is that less than a week ago, John Harshman
accused me of "logorrhea" and his toady Mark Isaak even put "further
logorrhea" when he changed the Subject line but took over the
one-on-one from John.

But no one has ever accused you of it -- Correct?

Looks like I'd better make a beginning here: :-)

<huge snip of mostly logorrhea by you to get to something I talked
about in my last reply to you>

> >>>> But everyone who knows that field knows that it is big companies that
> >>>> are desperately looking for dual qualified people, and willing to pay
> >>>> for it,
> >>>
> >>> The cynic in me suggests that old fashioned nepotism might be at work
> >>> here, with companies very carefully tailoring the job description
> >>> around the person they have decided to hire, and only advertise it
> >>> because of legal requirements.
> >>
> >> Ad you can back this up with evidence, of course? Not just anecdotes?
> >
> > Yes. See below about the two cases where I was intimately involved.
>
> Two cases pretty much = anecdotes, don't you think?

As far as evidence goes, I am ahead of you, two-zip.

And I think you are stretching the word "anecdotal". In one case,
I spoke from firsthand knowledge, and in the second, I am in very
frequent contact with the person involved. The account I describe
came directly from that person, even without any prompting from me.

>>
> >>> I've seen that sort of thing happen, to people I knew and cared very
> >>> much about, on both sides of the deal. One friend got a job due to such
> >>> careful tailoring,
> >
> > For one thing, she was a minority temporary faculty member, so part of the
> > description was being able to counsel students in that minority. I know,
> > because I was asked to write a letter of recommendation for her. I wrote that
> > I really had no firsthand knowledge of how good a counselor she was, but
> > I knew she was a member of the coveted minority. Otherwise, stuck to her mathematical
> > research and scholarship.
>
> Not quite sure what conclusions you draw from this. Did you say in the
> reference her scholarship was abysmal?

No, but you seem to be deliberately missing the point. The point
is what one might justifiably call job description gerrymandering.

Had alleged counseling ability been left off, there might have been
over 200 qualified candidates for the job, and it's anybody's guess
whether she would have received it and ultimately tenure.

<snip for focus>

> Second, academic roles are more than just research, for most of us, and
> the university can only function well if these too are done
> professionally end expertly.

There is at least one staff member in the department who struck
me as being very appropriate for non-mathematical counseling.
Like the faculty member I'm talking about, she was also in
the same minority mentioned in the job description. But unlike
her, this staff member is in a very important sub-minority of
that minority.

I've snipped a personal anecdote unrelated to job description gerrymandering.
For someone who uses the word "anecdotal" the way you did, you aren't
careful about the relevance of yours.

> >> the other lost out on a (completely different) job whose description she fit perfectly. Had I learned about it soon after it had
> >>> happened, I would have advised her to look into suing the company for
> >>> discrimination.
> >>
> >> and you know the qualities that the successful candidate had too?
> >
> > They included extra ones that were not in the job description. The unsuccessful
> > applicant was asked about some of them in the phone interview. She met them
> > very well indeed. When she asked why she didn't get the job, the employer
> > made the mistake of saying, "the one who got the job had music experience."
> > Reaction: "Why didn't you ask me about that? I could have told you that
> > I have extensive music experience too!" [Eight years of piano lessons
> > and one year of playing French Horn in a school band.]
> >
> > You can bet that employer never made that kind of mistake again! There's
> > the dark side of adding A to STEM.
>
> And how would that differ from adding competency in a
> language/experience of studying abroad?

My point is that it was NOT added to the job description
or even to the questions that were answered during the interview.

Are you really this dense?

> Or a specialism within the
> subject, or a different Stem field ("yes, your math is good, but the
> other candidate has experience in biology, and as part of the research
> is modelling of population dynamics, we took him")

"Sorry about not asking you about whether you did research on
that, let alone how much."

> Now, without further detail it's difficult to analyze this case -
> "could" be a massive and obvious violation of HR practice, which indeed
> could give rise to legal action.

Like I said, I was only told about this was a year after the fact.
A lawsuit could, at the very least, have revealed just WHAT
qualifications the person actually hired had, and how they stacked
up against hers.

Of course, the biggest evidence of chicanery would have come
down to the willingness of the interviewer to commit perjury,
knowing full well that the plaintiff hadn't recorded the phone call.

And even if she had, the evidence would have been thrown out on
the grounds that it was illegally obtained. In the USA at least,
one must let the other party know that the call is being recorded,
if indeed it is.

<snip basically irrelevant hypothetical>

> So this becomes a short "the other guy did music" in the post-interview
> feedback, often given by someone junior who acted as a mere notetaker
> and did not understand why that was significant.

Doesn't apply in this case.

> Now, would they go back
> to all the other candidates and ask them: Oh, by the way, you did not
> mention this in your CV or the interview,

...because a too-long CV, with a lot of skills and hobbies that have nothing
to do with a job description, is not an asset under normal
circumstances. Nor is blabbing about them in an interview.

> but we found one candidate who
> also does interesting things with music, could you do this too?

"We found one candidate who is a good swimmer, are you one too?"

Or any other qualification under the sun which has nothing
to do with the job description. [BTW the unsuccessful candidate
was on two different swim teams spanning eight years at least.]

> Not
> any appointment panel I ever sat on, and I did a fair few. There is in
> most interesting (i.e. most graduate) jobs a degree of unpredictability,
> where different candidates may or may not be able to use their personal
> experience to argue their case.
>
> Can this degree of professional judgement making be abused? Of course,
> and sometimes it is. If the problem becomes systematic, someone should
> use some math to analyze the patterns - but that would be the kind of
> math for social justice that the author of the paper incompetently tries
> to ridicule.

As usual, you are distorting the message of the article. Your gratuitous
use of the words "social justice" has to do with the outcome of a very much
mainstream mathematical analysis.

And she is all in favor of good sound mathematics. And you
have no reason to think that she would be against this application
to social justice.

What's more, your comments here it have to do with a form of
social justice that I suspect is lost in the tremendous emphasis
on gender, ethnic, etc discrimination.

Or do you know of ANY curriculum which tries to do something about
the general phenomenon of "It isn't what you know, it's WHO you
know, that is the key to success."? Because the first case
I told you about was part of that general phenomenon, and the
fishy way in which the interviewer behaved in the other case seems indicative
of it being in play there too.

> >
> > Are you quite sure this kind of thing doesn't take place right under
> > your nose?
> >
>
> Course it might. But a) it has nothing to do with STEAM in particular,
> you could as well use a different Stem experience, or any experience,
> from "traveling abroad" to "job experience as tour guide".

Those do NOT have to do with the "A" part. Music experience very
much does.

> B) there is
> no evidence offered that moving to STEAM curricula makes it worse - on
> the contrary, one could argue that once everyone had some "A" exposure
> while doing STEM, it becomes less suitable to differentiate between
> candidates.

It will always be suitable as long as "A" qualifications are not
even hinted at in job descriptions, and yet come out, without warning,
in job interviews, while others aren't even mentioned there,
but are used to hire someone who already had an inside track
of "who you know."

Except for the very first job I was routinely assigned by the
Army, and for which I had not had a lick of training, ALL the
jobs I've had depended crucially on my knowing someone "on
the inside".

THAT might be a good thing for you to research. It might eventually
get seen as part of the reason why disparate qualifications are
put into various job descriptions.

> And third, to combat this the very disciplines that are most
> focused in looking at and analyzing systematic abuse of power in
> situations of power imbalance, such as hiring decisions, are exactly the
> type of subjects the author attacks.

There are some very fashionable abuses of power that crowd out
the "it's WHO you know" phenomenon from public awareness.

>
> So in summary,

... you have not made a case for anything in particular here.
I've snipped your alleged "summary" along with a huge number
of statements by myself to which you had no reply.

And that included pointed comments by myself about fraud, which
you kept trying to narrow down to academic fraud, even though
the whole issue started out as fat salaries in private companies
tempting people they employ to commit fraud.

After all: unlike tenured faculty, their jobs depend greatly
on a consistent, oft-scrutinized level of performance.

Peter Nyikos

Glenn

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Mar 25, 2019, 4:45:03 PM3/25/19

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On Wednesday, March 20, 2019 at 3:00:03 PM UTC-7, JC wrote:
> On Wednesday, March 20, 2019 at 5:50:02 PM UTC-4, Glenn wrote:

> > On Wednesday, March 20, 2019 at 2:10:03 PM UTC-7, Burkhard wrote:
> > > Peter Nyikos wrote:
> > > > On Sunday, March 17, 2019 at 1:15:03 PM UTC-4, Burkhard wrote:

> > > >> *Hemidactylus* wrote:
> > > >>> Glenn <GlennS...@msn.com> wrote:
> > > >>>> "At Scientific American, Yale president Peter Salovey urges that “STEM
> > > >>>> majors' college experience must be integrated into a broader model of
> > > >>>> liberal education to prepare them to think critically and imaginatively
> > > >>>> about the world and to understand different viewpoints." Realistically,
> > > >>>> in the inclusive environment that progressives are creating in the
> > > >>>> sciences today, that may well mean accommodating the "meteoric rise" of
> > > >>>> witchcraft and astrology, along the lines of understanding "different viewpoints."
> > > >>>>
> > > >>>> https://www.mercatornet.com/features/view/which-side-will-atheists-choose-in-the-war-on-science/21598
> > > >>>>
> > > >>> Funny that the above was written by Denyse O'Leary called by RationalWiki
> > > >>> "a Canadian intelligent design apologist".
> > > >>> https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Denyse_O%27Leary
> > > >>

> > > >> Well, that could come as no surprise, given that the mercatornet paper
> > > >> is pretty much bereft of facts, research or any understanding of current

> > > >> scientific practice. Sounds as if someone is channeling Rand.
> > > >
> > > > Ayn Rand? relevance, if so?
> > > >
> > >
> > > The same naive positivism (or objectivism in case of Rand) that contrast
> > > "hard facts" that STEM gives you with illegitimate knowledge claims in

> > > all other disciplines, and in particular dismissive of any attempts to
> > > study the practice of science using the methods of sociology,
> > > philosophy, history etc.
> > >
> > You're indicting Denyse O'Leary as being "particular[ly] dismissive of any attempts to study the practice of science using the methods of sociology,
> > philosophy, history etc". And it appears you would include witchcraft and astrology into those methods.
> >
> > What a surprise.
>
> fer fucks sake you're an idiot

You haven't posted in a while. Has the Mueller report made you suicidal?

Nothing Denyse O'Leary has said would indicate being dismissive of sociology, philosophy or history. The attempt to include the charge that she include what she would be against, witchcraft and astrology, is obvious.

Burkhard

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Mar 25, 2019, 4:45:03 PM3/25/19

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Her claim, her burden of proof

>
>
>> And I addressed this
>> by calling out her strawmen,
>
> ...not to be confused with the anti-scientific feminists and others
> that she quoted, and which you STILL haven't talked about directly.

I've addressed any point of "substance" that I could find. If there were
others, feel free to do as I did, quote them and tell me why you find
the criticism compelling

>
>
>
>> showing that far from a leftist conspiracy,
>> this responds to the research needs identified both by industry and
>> quite a number of "hard science" research communities.
>>
>> There are different ways to respond to an article. If it has
>> substance, one can engage with the substance If it lacks substance, as
>> in this case, one can point out the lack of substance and the internal
>> contradictions.
>
> I see no internal contradictions, unless you are using the word
> "contradictions" in its very loose Marxist sense, having nothing to
> do with logic.

First, I said "an" article - I made a general methodological observation
on how one can critique an article without necessarily showing factual
mistakes, the way you demanded. Second, the internal contradiction that
I did discuss was between on the one hand demanding scientific rigour,
but at the same time advocating the very approach to methodology that is
not rigorous and a known source of mistakes - that was the issue about
"spherical cows" if you remember.

>
>
>
>>
>> Did she even manage to give a coherent account of what should count as
>> "radical progressive"?
>
> The quotes make a good start on that.

I addressed some of them directly, pointing out that the consequence
would be to ban Kant. If you think there are other parts of the paper
that make a better case, feel free to quote them.

Hers was not meant to be a
> detailed treatise.

Indeed not. Hers was an uninformed pub rant. Exactly as I was saying.

>
> Did you make any attempt to show that the people she did quote
> might be far removed from a promotion of astrology and Wicca? No.

Her claim, her burden. And even if I felt inclined to look at the
factual basis of that part of her paper, I would not have been able even
if I wanted to, as she did not cite any academic whose work she thinks
would lead to astrology etc by name. As with most of the paper, its done
by insinuation only.

>
>
>
>> another no. We hear that "the deny objective
>> reality" - so if this is the view you agree with,
>
> Hemidactylus claimed you are never mean-spirited. Why, then,
> this blatantly contrary-to-fact "if" clause?

You might want to re-read what I said. I cite her position, and say that
"if you do indeed agree with (her) view"... So are you now saying you do
not agree with her? The why would we have that discussion?

>
>
>> you'd be committed to
>> argue that exposing science students to e.g. Kant is going to destroy
>> the project of enlightenment. You can also include Berkeley, Hume, quite
>> possibly Leibniz, and Hegel. Or among the more recent philosophers of
>> science Poincaré, Duhem, Bertrand Russel, W.yv.O Quine, Kyle Stanford,
>> Nancy Cartwright, Ian Hacking, etc etc.
>
> I was exposed to the majority of the less recent ones in
> a year-long philosophy course and audits of more advanced ones
> in a then-fine liberal arts college, Washington and Jefferson,
> and I dare say my understanding of science is at least equal to yours.

For some reason this comes to mind:
https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/81JrskWprFL._SX425_.jpg

An if you did take a year long philosophy course as part of your STEM
degree, then you did in fact do a STEAM degree, the very thing she rails
against. So going back to the issue of logical contradictions...
And you should also have picked up enough to understand that "denying
objective reality" is something with a quite reputable philosophical
tradition and insufficient to single out the "radical postmodernists"
whoever they might be.

>
>
> I've snipped you bringing up Ayn Rand without ever having tried to
> show that the author was "channeling Rand".

Everybody who knows enough about Rand, of indeed followed the TO
discussions we had about her epistemology, should get it even from what
I said. Everyone less can get a book

>
>>>
>>> What issue did you THINK I was talking about?
>>>
>>>
>>>> (and did not discuss ID
>>>> at all).
>>>
>>> Your snide remarks in direct response to Hemidactylus seemed to be directed
>>> at least as much at ID as at the article or the author. See below the last thing
>>> I quote from you in this post.
>>>
>>>
>>>> In particular, the long part where I showed that far from being
>>>> a post-modern leftist conspiracy,
>>>
>>> ...thereby knocking down a straw man...
>>
>> Indeed, s atrawmen the author makes, which was indeed my intention.
>
> Did you even manage to give a coherent account of what those strawmen
> were? If so, I failed to see it.

Matt 13:13 and all that. I gave an extended discussion to show how the
desire for STEAM is driven by industry demands, and how a focus on
institutions rather than scientific context is the exact right way to go
about reforming, well, institutions.

Mark Isaak

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Mar 25, 2019, 6:00:02 PM3/25/19

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On 3/25/19 1:09 PM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
> On Monday, March 25, 2019 at 1:45:03 PM UTC-4, Burkhard wrote:

>> [snip a dead-on-target point]

>
> And you accused ME of going off on a tangent!
>
> An even bigger irony is that less than a week ago, John Harshman
> accused me of "logorrhea" and his toady Mark Isaak even put "further
> logorrhea" when he changed the Subject line but took over the
> one-on-one from John.

Contrary to your paranoia-based perceptions, the "logorrhea" in the
subject line referred to my own contributions to that sub-thread.

Glenn

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Mar 25, 2019, 6:40:02 PM3/25/19

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Prove this: "pretty much bereft of facts, research or any understanding of current scientific practice."
>
She provided many references and sources, despite your claim to the contrary.
Here's many more:

https://www.mercatornet.com/features/view/sceptic-asks-why-do-people-who-abandon-religion-embrace-superstition/21369

The red lines under words are links. Your burden of proof that she needs to "prove" anything.

Here's another, with many links and data. This is what is called research.

https://www.mercatornet.com/articles/view/decline_in_belief_in_god_masks_rise_in_superstition#sthash.IZkCv66b.dpuf

jillery

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Mar 25, 2019, 7:25:02 PM3/25/19

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Sorry, but you're the one who's confused here. Behe wrote DBB back in
1996. Kitzmiller v Dover was in 2005. How can you still be confused
about these issues? Yes, RonO is discussing ID, and Minnich testified
about Behe's test for IC. Minnich so testified because Behe claimed
that his type of IC implies ID.

But Behe's test for IC doesn't test for Behe's type of IC, as Behe's
type of IC specifies that parts be well-matched. But simply removing
parts doesn't test or measure how well-matched are the parts. Behe's
test for IC only tests if the parts are required for the entire IC
system to work at all.

Burkhard

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Mar 25, 2019, 8:20:03 PM3/25/19

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Burkhard wrote:
> *Hemidactylus* wrote:
OK, continuation

>
> More later
>
>
>>
>> First his demarcation of the privacy/and content issue for data usage. Or
>> “an obsession with prioritising consent over all other values.” And we
>> get
>> to “Likewise there is no ethical obligation to obtain consent to use data
>> or discard tissue that is not central to a person's life plans and
>> conceptions of their own good. To use someone's discarded hair to stuff a
>> pillow without their consent is not wrong. It might be bizarre, but it is
>> not immoral.” I recall hearing that discarded hair had been used as a
>> source for cysteine intended for human consumption. Gross but
>> unethical if
>> so?

Interesting. I know that when wigs were more common, people could get
good money selling theirs. So in that case, it could be theft -
depriving the owner of the possibility to sell it. But what if the owner
did not know that it had this potential - that's maybe closer to his
"discarded" terminology. Can you be deprived of something you did not
know you had in the first place? Imagine I find out your lost twin (the
evil one) left you his house. But you never learned about the will. If I
now settle in the house (maybe knowing that you've been sleeping rough
and are desperate for money) would my behaviour be ethical? I would say
no. On a larger scale, you find this in issues such as the land grab of
white settlers in Australia, in cultures that did not have a concept of
personal property in land. Would it be OK to say that this was ethically
unproblematic, because "private property in land" was not part of their
"life plan and conception of their own good"? So even with the seemingly
unproblematic example, once we try to get a general rule from it things
can get more complicated

Next comes the next step: “Even more importantly, it is legitimate to
>> restrict freedom and not obtain consent when it is in the public
>> interest.

Just as an aside, the GDPR, just as its predecessor the DPD,permit data
processing without consent if this is "in the public interest". It is
true that research ethics boards do not use this as much as they could
as basis for processing. I had a student who did her PhD about this. The
reason is not so much that people don't think data processing in the
public interest is unethical. The problem is more that people can
disagree a lot what "the public interest", and that from a legal
perspective makes it risky. So you permit as ethics review board consent
free data processing because you think it's in the public interest in
this case, and then one of the data subjects sues, only for the court to
find that it might have been in the interest of the university, or a
pharmaceutical company, but not as such "the public" - and the result is
a massive fine (my student had some ideas how to address this).

In the US, you have a similar discussion about public interest in the
field of eminent domain post-Kelo. So your president in his prior job
argued that an old lady should be thrown out of her house because it was
in the "public interest" that he should get the land to build a casino
on it, which would make him richer, and as a result mean he'd pay more
tax, which would be in the public interest. Kelo justifies this, but is
generally hated by libertarians and parts of the conservatives, one of
the reasons the more principled among them are not fans of his.

So in summary a similar problem to the one I wrote about last time -
most can agree on the ethical principle that public interest can trump
autonomy (so no need for consent), but if this is the case in any given
set of circumstances can be highly contested.

>> Our freedom is restricted by the law all the time.” Yes seat belts.
>> And the
>> standard nanny state crescendo and Nuffield intervention ladder:
>> http://nuffieldbioethics.org/report/public-health-2/policy-process-practice/intervention-ladder-for-web
>>
>>
>> I’m for more than nudging parents to get kids vaccinated and quarantining
>> people with nasty diseases in emergency circumstances. But Savulescu
>> proceeds “So, too, the use of data and discarded tissue (and anonymised
>> case studies in ethical discourse) is in the public interest.”

it may or may not be though. What if it's for a a vaccine against a
virus - that good, no? But the vaccine is developed by the army, so that
they can use the virus without endangering their own population - that's
bad, no? But the virus is only mildly incapacitating, so it's a
non-lethal alternative to bombs, so that's good, no? But it will be used
in a war of aggression to take another countries territory, so that's
bad, no? But the other country did not even use that territory, it was
snot part of its nation's "life plans and conceptions of their own
good", just en imperial leftover they don't care about, but for us it
means we can use it to open a new trade line and thousands won't starve,
so that's good, no?

People can and will disagree on this, with good reasons on both sides.
So using "consent" acknowledges that. You could say though that it is
precisely the job of the ethics board to make that choice, not to pass
the buck to the individual patient. I have some sympathy for that view,
and as I said supervised a PhD that came up with some governance
proposals to put this into practice (some of them in her paper here
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1467-6478.2016.00759.x).

But he's over-simplifying the issue a lot here...

OK, that's an interesting one, on many levels. First, I think what he
wants to say is not inconsistent, but he puts it badly and/or sails
close to the wind.

What he means is: "the current ethical framework allows some bad actions
(allows relatives to override the right moral choice of the deceased to
donate) and does not sufficiently promote some good actions (the use of
organs without consent). In the first case, 2 goods are violated - the
public interest in the organs AND the autonomy of the donor, in the
second case only 1 (the use of the organs).

Since for him, the use of the organs is ethically mandated anyway and
trumps all other concerns, he only muddies the waters unnecessarily by
mentioning that the first one also violates consent.

So his argument has a couple of steps, all sound initially plausible,
all come with issues. Now, I agree with a lot of what he is saying
there - I do think there is a strong ethical duty to donate organs, and
the state should be permitted to push in that direction a lot (e.g. opt
out, with very limited rights of relatives to object, would be my
preference) It's just that it is much more complicated than he claims,
and his argument has some serious gaps. But they are interesting gaps,
and show some deeper issues in ethics, between reason and emotion,
objectivism vs relativism, and rules vs context-specific decisions.

His argument, once you make all premises explicit, runs a bit like this

1) There is a strong ethical duty to do things that cost you nothing,
but have clear benefits to others
2) if a person fails to do some X for which there is a clear ethical
duty, it can't be immoral for the state to make that person do X, or
achieve X in some other way - especially if there are no costs for that
person.
3) donating organs is such a moral duty, as it costs the dead nothing,
yet can save the life of others.

The first is the least problematic - as long as you treat it as an
abstract ethical principle. The problem comes up if you try to decide
what "0 costs" means. Take the example of the rescuer who gets his shoes
wet, and therefore refuses to rescue. Definitely morally wrong in most
cases. But what if he suffers from a serious phobia, or OCD which makes
it close to impossible for him to have wet shoes without obsessively
polishing them? Should we factor such emotional and psychological harm
into our equation, would we not say that this person is at least not as
blameworthy as one who really had no problems apart from annoyance about
wet shoes? We'll come to that when we discuss 3.

It can also result in some odd phenomena if it is scaled across society
- the tyranny of the opinionated minority. Take a society, a bit like
ours, where most people have no strong feelings about lots of issues. I
don't mind if the beef I eat is halal, or kosher (leaving aside animal
rights issues for the moment), or if my hair is shorter than a given
length, or if I don't wear red on Fridays, or whatever. But it matters a
lot for group X, they are much much happier if all meat is halal, all
hair shorter than given length, and nobody wears red on Fridays. The
ethically right thing so Savulescu, would be for us to only eat halal,
have short hair, not wear red on Fridays etc - no costs to us, overall
increase in happiness. But suddenly we have the odd situation that in
this society, a tiny minority can dictate how everyone else should live
their lives - now the ethical issues here are complicated, but can't be
just ignored.

2) is much more problematic - that's your point above, "Does the state
claim ownership to my innards". For starters, it raises the "free will"
problem. Free will, or autonomy, must mean also that I sometimes make
bad ethical choices. If my hand is forced all the time, ethical action
becomes in a way impossible, "donating your organs" is then just like
"obey gravity". That's a problem with nudging if it gets too much, and
even more so with all the "compliance by design" approaches that you get
in IT law and ethics every since Larry Lessig wrote "Code and other laws
of cyberspace". So to give space to the ethical must also mean, at least
sometimes, the ability to act unethically.

Second, only because I have an ethical duty to do X seems insufficient
to create a permission for third parties, or the state, to do X on my
behalf. just £2 can buy malaria nets and safe several lives. Savulescu,
as Oxford Prof, would arguably not even notice the loss of £2, so he has
an ethical duty to donate (that's behind the Singer discussion that he
cites). Now if he does not donate the £2, that alone does not make it OK
for the state to take his money and donate on his behalf - sure, the
state could decide, as result of a democratic decision making process,
to enact a law that increases tax for everyone - but that's very
different form just taking his money because it is "obviously" saving a
life at little to no costs for him. And most certainly I'm not allowed
to just go to his house, take £2 and put it in the next donation box.
But that's pretty much what he needs for this argument, even though he
does not spell out 2 in detail.I would say it is at least consistent to
say in some situations that it is wrong for me not to do X, and
nonetheless wrong for the state do then do X on my behalf.

3) is difficult for other reasons. You asked:

>> Wait what? Does the state claim ownership to my innards, regardless
of my
>> preference or belief system?

Yes, indeed. That's the form that ethical objectivism takes for him.(and
as all ethical objectivists, he'd struggle to account for ethical
progress, but that's a different issue) All 3 premises are objectively,
universally true, independent of any cultural, religious, psychological
issues. If your religion requires burning of the bodies, then your
religion is just morally evil, objectively.

First, we should not that he does not discuss at all those who simply
disagree that it is no cost for them - the argument has been made e.g.
that medical doctors might not try their very best IF they already
consider you as potential donor for three other of their patients- an
empirical issue he ignores. (I don't think it has much merit myself, but
it is an often raised objection)

Now, I would say that we find burial rites, and protection of graves,
from the very moment we find human culture. Indeed, evidence for burials
are often the first evidence given for the evolutionary step that made
us modern humans. Some people argue we find it even in other mammals, if
they are closely related to us. So very close to a human universal. It
is also closely related to grief and grieving as a pan-human phenomenon.
So I'd say if relatives of the deceased, at a time of tremendous stress
and emotional turmoil for them, feel they can only cope (better cope) if
they know the deceased is all in one place, to visit the grave, or if a
proper 3 days wake is held, then this is an ethically relevant aspect of
the situation. Just as it is in my hypothetical above, with the OCD
sufferer who just can't get over his wet shoes. It is ethically better
if they agree to the donation, but it can be nonetheless ethically wrong
for the state to force them at such a time. The better course, for me,
would be to a) create a narrative where organ donation becomes a
positive, helpful experience for most (publishing stories of people who
were helped by the experience, have celebratory rituals etc), where
donors are encouraged during their lifetime to explain their choice to
their relatives, where an opt out system makes it more likely than not
that almost everybody donates, and in this way making the few who can't
bring themselves to do it easily absorbed.

But that's for him already ethical relativism, as I give (some) weight
for culturally contingent, irrational, feelings. And I would not even
always do this. There was a recent case in the UK of a child who has a
compromised immune system. As a result he can't go to school any longer.
But he could send a robot on his behalf - see though its eyes, and
participate to a degree in class, talk to his friends etc.
Unfortunately, some parents of the other children refused consent,
claiming the privacy and security of their children was compromised if
video footage of them is send online. Now here I'd reason exactly like
Savulescu. The fears they have are entirely irrational and unfounded.
This is after all just footage form a classroom, so what would be the
issue even if someone else saw it? And yes in this case data security
can be guaranteed to an extremely high standard. So I'd be willing
without compunction to override the withheld consent in this case, in a
way I would not do it in the organ donation case. But that's because
"cultural norms" matter in my analysis in a way they don't in his.

Peter Nyikos

unread,

Mar 25, 2019, 9:20:03 PM3/25/19

to talk-o...@moderators.isc.org

Taking a break from talk about the OP to talk about something central to
talk.origins -- more so than the topic of the OP.

On Monday, March 25, 2019 at 12:15:03 PM UTC-4, Burkhard wrote:

> Peter Nyikos wrote:
> > On Friday, March 22, 2019 at 5:05:03 AM UTC-4, Burkhard wrote:
> >> Peter Nyikos wrote:
> >>> On Wednesday, March 20, 2019 at 5:10:03 PM UTC-4, Burkhard wrote:
> >>>> Peter Nyikos wrote:
> >>>>> On Sunday, March 17, 2019 at 1:15:03 PM UTC-4, Burkhard wrote:
> >>>>>> *Hemidactylus* wrote:
> >>>>>>> Glenn <GlennS...@msn.com> wrote:
> >>>>>>>> "At Scientific American, Yale president Peter Salovey urges that "STEM
> >>>>>>>> majors' college experience must be integrated into a broader model of
> >>>>>>>> liberal education to prepare them to think critically and imaginatively
> >>>>>>>> about the world and to understand different viewpoints." Realistically,
> >>>>>>>> in the inclusive environment that progressives are creating in the
> >>>>>>>> sciences today, that may well mean accommodating the "meteoric rise" of
> >>>>>>>> witchcraft and astrology, along the lines of understanding "different viewpoints."
> >>>
> >>>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>> https://www.mercatornet.com/features/view/which-side-will-atheists-choose-in-the-war-on-science/21598
> >>>>>>>>
> >>>>>>> Funny that the above was written by Denyse O'Leary called by RationalWiki
> >>>>>>> "a Canadian intelligent design apologist".
> >>>>>>> https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Denyse_O%27Leary

> >>>>>> Well, that could come as no surprise, given that the mercatornet paper
> >>>>>> is pretty much bereft of facts, research or any understanding of current
> >>>>>> scientific practice.
> >
> > The "no surprise, given that" is what makes this an indirect -- and
> > unjustified -- dig at ID.
> >
> > In assessing the relative merits of the best ID theory (mainly due to
> > Michael Behe) and evolutionary theory, one needs to keep two things
> > in mind:
> >
>
> Firstly, the "best" here is you editorializing,

No, it is setting the stage for a sharp contrast between your dig
at the worst of ID and the best.

> I never said "best"
> theories, nor did I mention Behe. And you should be aware of the fact
> that to say that "If someone has trait A, they are more likely to also
> have trait B" does not lead to "Most people with B have A".

"someone" is everyone behind the fact that you were not surprised
that the mercatornet paper was (allegedly) "pretty much bereft
of ... any understanding of current scientific practice."

And I would estimate that over 95% of all people who are sold on ID are
creationists or laymen who have no idea of the scientific methodology
of the embryonic science of ID -- or of much of anything scientific.

Does my saying this surprise you? It shouldn't.

>
> Now I happen to also not rate Behe particularly highly, and more
> specifically just don't accept that he has any form of ID theory, but
> that's a different story.

I'd like to hear more of this story of yours. Since you have no trouble
cranking out 200+ line posts, you should be able to tell me lots.

> For my "dig" to be true it's sufficient that
> people who know little about science are more likely to be attracted y
> ID than those who do.

And people who know little about science relevant to talk.origins
are more likely to be attracted to it than those who do. That includes
both creationists and anti-creationists.

Worse yet, some of those who know the most science prefer to use
dirty debating tactics to discussing the science in a mature adult way.

In fact, the reason you gave years ago for having killfiled me
is that I spend too much time on personal issues. But that time
is mainly used up with combating misrepresentations of myself
and of people like Michael Behe.

However, your stated reason for killfiling me seems distinctly hollow now,
given that you had NOTHING to say about the following:

> > 1. The biochemical form of ID theory has had only one-tenth as much
> > time to develop as has evolutionary theory, and
> >
> > 2. In its present form, evolutionary theory is really microevolutionary
> > theory. It's as though all economic theory were about microeconomics.
> >
> > And the irony is, Hemidactylus is very happy if it stays that way.
> >
> >
> > Careful-- by evolutionary theory I mean not the overwhelming evidence
> > (almost all of it "stamp collecting") that evolution has taken place
> > on a massive scale. It is extremely powerful in the case of eumetazoans,
> > especially vertebrates.
> >
> > I mean the attempt to coherently explain HOW and WHY it took the form it did.

No comment from you on any of this. The mercatornet article was not
dealing with challenges against ID, so there is some excuse for the
author not displaying understanding about scientific practice.

But what should I conclude from your silence here, about YOUR understanding
of science that is relevant to the charter of talk.origins?

If your scientific understanding is great, but irrelevant to talk.origins,
why are you hanging around here?

Tomorrow I hope to find the time to begin a new thread:

Subject: Towards a Scientific Theory of Macroevolution

I hope that, my comments above notwithstanding, you will participate in
an intelligent, helpful way.

Peter Nyikos
Professor, Dept. of Mathematics -- standard disclaimer--

U. of South Carolina in Columbia
http://people.math.sc.edu/nyikos/

Burkhard

unread,

Mar 25, 2019, 9:20:03 PM3/25/19

to talk-o...@moderators.isc.org

Peter Nyikos wrote:
> On Monday, March 25, 2019 at 1:45:03 PM UTC-4, Burkhard wrote:
>> Peter Nyikos wrote:
>>> On Friday, March 22, 2019 at 11:35:03 AM UTC-4, Burkhard wrote:
>>>> Peter Nyikos wrote:
>>>>> On Wednesday, March 20, 2019 at 5:10:03 PM UTC-4, Burkhard wrote:
>>>>>> Peter Nyikos wrote:
>>>>>>> On Sunday, March 17, 2019 at 1:15:03 PM UTC-4, Burkhard wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>>>> I'm currently part of three STEM-lead research projects, where computer
>>>>>>>> scientists, mathematicians, anthropologists, psychologists, sociologists
>>>>>>>> and media study folks work together on better and safer products.
>>>>>
>>>>> The adage "too many cooks spoil the broth" comes to mind here.
>>>>
>>>> based on your extensive experience in software design?
>>>
>>> A well known adage of the 1960's is "It doesn't take a weatherman to
>>> tell which way the wind is blowing."
>>
>>
>> Quite. Did I ever tell you that in my considerate opinion, we should
>> close down all mathematics departments, because don't you know, all the
>> young ones these days have pocket calculators and similar gewgaws, so
>> there really is no point teaching that stuff any longer?
>
> And you accused ME of going off on a tangent!

I thought the sarcasm was rather obvious? You offer your outsider
opinion about the merits of my subject, backed up by a pithy clichee, so
I replied in kind, in the hope you'd see why it does not work like this.

But apparently "leaving the rest of the exercise to the reader" was a
bad idea.

>
> An even bigger irony is that less than a week ago, John Harshman
> accused me of "logorrhea" and his toady Mark Isaak even put "further
> logorrhea" when he changed the Subject line but took over the
> one-on-one from John.
>
> But no one has ever accused you of it -- Correct?
>
> Looks like I'd better make a beginning here: :-)
>
>
> <huge snip of mostly logorrhea by you to get to something I talked
> about in my last reply to you>
>
>
>>>>>> But everyone who knows that field knows that it is big companies that
>>>>>> are desperately looking for dual qualified people, and willing to pay
>>>>>> for it,
>>>>>
>>>>> The cynic in me suggests that old fashioned nepotism might be at work
>>>>> here, with companies very carefully tailoring the job description
>>>>> around the person they have decided to hire, and only advertise it
>>>>> because of legal requirements.
>>>>
>>>> Ad you can back this up with evidence, of course? Not just anecdotes?
>>>
>>> Yes. See below about the two cases where I was intimately involved.
>>
>> Two cases pretty much = anecdotes, don't you think?
>
> As far as evidence goes, I am ahead of you, two-zip.

Not really, for that they would have to be on point, and as I've shown
the aren't, really. And I gave three examples of large research projects
with industry involvement where the industry partners systematically,
and not just in one given case, search for and hire people with STEAM
experience - and that was just three examples from 23 years of working
with our professional body representing practitioners, and also working
with industry, so yes I'd say I have a reasonably good idea what they
are looking for in an applicant and why.

>
> And I think you are stretching the word "anecdotal". In one case,
> I spoke from firsthand knowledge, and in the second, I am in very
> frequent contact with the person involved. The account I describe
> came directly from that person, even without any prompting from me.

" Anecdotal" does not mean "wrong", it means "not proven to be
representative for a general claim".

>
>
>>>
>>>>> I've seen that sort of thing happen, to people I knew and cared very
>>>>> much about, on both sides of the deal. One friend got a job due to such
>>>>> careful tailoring,
>>>
>>> For one thing, she was a minority temporary faculty member, so part of the
>>> description was being able to counsel students in that minority. I know,
>>> because I was asked to write a letter of recommendation for her. I wrote that
>>> I really had no firsthand knowledge of how good a counselor she was, but
>>> I knew she was a member of the coveted minority. Otherwise, stuck to her mathematical
>>> research and scholarship.
>>
>> Not quite sure what conclusions you draw from this. Did you say in the
>> reference her scholarship was abysmal?
>
> No, but you seem to be deliberately missing the point. The point
> is what one might justifiably call job description gerrymandering.

Your unsupported claim is that that's what happened here. Now, if your
reference had been abysmal, and she'd been hired nonetheless, you'd have
a little bit more evidence (still far from conclusive), but you don't
even have that.

>
> Had alleged counseling ability been left off, there might have been
> over 200 qualified candidates for the job, and it's anybody's guess
> whether she would have received it and ultimately tenure.

Possibly. And if the reference to "being able to do math" had been left
off, even more people could have applied, thousands. So you simply
assume, without any evidence, that you know better than the people who
drafted the job advert what skills and experiences where needed for that
job. You may or may not, but you have given absolutely zero reasons to
think you do, and quite a lot of what you write below points in the
opposite direction.

>
> <snip for focus>
>
>> Second, academic roles are more than just research, for most of us, and
>> the university can only function well if these too are done
>> professionally end expertly.
>
> There is at least one staff member in the department who struck
> me as being very appropriate for non-mathematical counseling.
> Like the faculty member I'm talking about, she was also in
> the same minority mentioned in the job description. But unlike
> her, this staff member is in a very important sub-minority of
> that minority.

And you simply assume, without evidence, that that was the deciding
factor- and not e.g. that according to your own reference, she was
better suited than the other applicants, or that it was the feedback she
could provide about her counseling that showed she was simply good at
it, not her membership. Sorry, does not fly.

>
>
> I've snipped a personal anecdote unrelated to job description gerrymandering.
> For someone who uses the word "anecdotal" the way you did, you aren't
> careful about the relevance of yours.

The relevance of mine was to show that what you cited as "evidence"
isn't any. And I did this through an on-point model. I thought you as
mathematician would understand how you disprove an inference? i.e.
given a case (a model) that has all the characteristics of your
example, but comes to the opposite conclusion, hence showing
conclusively that your premises as stated do not support your conclusion.

That this took the form of a personal example is irrelevant for the
exercise, it was not about making an empirical claim, it was showing
that your logical inference was lacking. For that one counterexample is
sufficient - the falsification verification asymmetry, don't you know?

>
>>>> the other lost out on a (completely different) job whose description she fit perfectly. Had I learned about it soon after it had
>>>>> happened, I would have advised her to look into suing the company for
>>>>> discrimination.
>>>>
>>>> and you know the qualities that the successful candidate had too?
>>>
>>> They included extra ones that were not in the job description. The unsuccessful
>>> applicant was asked about some of them in the phone interview. She met them
>>> very well indeed. When she asked why she didn't get the job, the employer
>>> made the mistake of saying, "the one who got the job had music experience."
>>> Reaction: "Why didn't you ask me about that? I could have told you that
>>> I have extensive music experience too!" [Eight years of piano lessons
>>> and one year of playing French Horn in a school band.]
>>>
>>> You can bet that employer never made that kind of mistake again! There's
>>> the dark side of adding A to STEM.
>>
>> And how would that differ from adding competency in a
>> language/experience of studying abroad?
>
> My point is that it was NOT added to the job description
> or even to the questions that were answered during the interview.
>
> Are you really this dense?

And my point, at this specific stage, is that it is not connected to
STEAM, the issue under discussion. You could replace "music" with any
other characteristic, and still get the same result. That could be
experience in another STEM subject, experience living abroad, anything.
And that means that your story has no bearing whatsoever on the issue
under discussion - if it had, it would work only for additional
expertise in the arts. Are you really that dense that you don't
understand that for your example to make any contribution to the issue
in the article, it has to come from a limited range of "additional
expertise". i.e. prefer a STEAM over a STEM student, and must not work
for any other additional skill?

>
>
>> Or a specialism within the
>> subject, or a different Stem field ("yes, your math is good, but the
>> other candidate has experience in biology, and as part of the research
>> is modelling of population dynamics, we took him")
>
> "Sorry about not asking you about whether you did research on
> that, let alone how much."

"So you had expertise there too? Pro tip for next time round, put all
this in your CV when you submit it, and do a bit of research about your
future employer to see where their needs are, and in what fields they
have strength and in which fields they have gaps"

That's the job of the applicant.

And anyhow, you are again missing the point entirely. The issue is that
another STEM subject, say biology, could have resulted in the exact
same outcome as an additional expertise in music- and that shows that
your examples have absolutely nothing to do with the article, or the
danger of teaching STEAM.

>
>
>> Now, without further detail it's difficult to analyze this case -
>> "could" be a massive and obvious violation of HR practice, which indeed
>> could give rise to legal action.
>
> Like I said, I was only told about this was a year after the fact.
> A lawsuit could, at the very least, have revealed just WHAT
> qualifications the person actually hired had, and how they stacked
> up against hers.
>
> Of course, the biggest evidence of chicanery would have come
> down to the willingness of the interviewer to commit perjury,
> knowing full well that the plaintiff hadn't recorded the phone call.
>
> And even if she had, the evidence would have been thrown out on
> the grounds that it was illegally obtained. In the USA at least,
> one must let the other party know that the call is being recorded,
> if indeed it is.
>
>
> <snip basically irrelevant hypothetical>

sigh. The basically irrelevant hypothetical should show, for anyone with
basic training in formal reasoning and proof, and in particular basic
model theory, that your premises do not support your conclusion. That is
I gave your a model where all your premises where true, but your
conclusion wrong. In how much detail do I need to spell out for you what
that means for an argument?

>
>
>> So this becomes a short "the other guy did music" in the post-interview
>> feedback, often given by someone junior who acted as a mere notetaker
>> and did not understand why that was significant.
>
> Doesn't apply in this case.

How do you know? And even if, we'd be back to an anecdote to evidence an
claimed general pattern.

>
>
>> Now, would they go back
>> to all the other candidates and ask them: Oh, by the way, you did not
>> mention this in your CV or the interview,
>
> ...because a too-long CV, with a lot of skills and hobbies that have nothing
> to do with a job description, is not an asset under normal
> circumstances. Nor is blabbing about them in an interview.

And if the other guy found a way to leverage that experience in a way
that made sense to the employer, then he succeeded in making this an
unusual set of circumstances. Tough luck for those who are not as good
at presenting themselves in the best possible light, still perfectly
rational and legitimate for the employer to hire the one person who
could convince them he had a skill they did not think of, but which will
prove an asset for them.

>
>
>> but we found one candidate who
>> also does interesting things with music, could you do this too?
>
> "We found one candidate who is a good swimmer, are you one too?"

Did the swimmer make a compelling case that this skill was of benefit
for the employer?

>
> Or any other qualification under the sun which has nothing
> to do with the job description.

You simply assume your conclusion. That is that you know better than
anyone else what the "right" criteria for this job were.You have given
no reasons why I should believe this.

[BTW the unsuccessful candidate
> was on two different swim teams spanning eight years at least.]
>
>
>
>
>> Not
>> any appointment panel I ever sat on, and I did a fair few. There is in
>> most interesting (i.e. most graduate) jobs a degree of unpredictability,
>> where different candidates may or may not be able to use their personal
>> experience to argue their case.
>>
>> Can this degree of professional judgement making be abused? Of course,
>> and sometimes it is. If the problem becomes systematic, someone should
>> use some math to analyze the patterns - but that would be the kind of
>> math for social justice that the author of the paper incompetently tries
>> to ridicule.
>
> As usual, you are distorting the message of the article. Your gratuitous
> use of the words "social justice" has to do with the outcome of a very much
> mainstream mathematical analysis.

What is gratuitous about my use of social justice? Mathematics are here
used to achieve social justice, i.e identify systematic discrimination.
That applies mathematics to a specific social phenomenon. The article
explicitly - my emphasis

"which sounds very much like a way of distracting attention from the
hard work of ABSTRACT thinking in favour of other—doubtless
laudable—achievements that are not relevant to learning math. Learning
how to apply math correctly to issues of social justice is a
"distraction" from the real thing for her.

>
> And she is all in favor of good sound mathematics. And you
> have no reason to think that she would be against this application
> to social justice.

apart from her own words of course

>
> What's more, your comments here it have to do with a form of
> social justice that I suspect is lost in the tremendous emphasis
> on gender, ethnic, etc discrimination.

You suspect. Tat settles it then, I'm convinced now. I mean, who in his
right mind would doubt your gut instincts?

>
> Or do you know of ANY curriculum which tries to do something about
> the general phenomenon of "It isn't what you know, it's WHO you
> know, that is the key to success."?

Not sure what you mean with the "do about". Teach that it happens? That
would be the social sciences, there is lots of social network analysis
and career path researched and taught there.

Minimizing the negative effects? Lots. All those that have active
mentoring and networking courses, so that everyone, and not just the
privileged few, a) know how to build networks and b)are part of one once
they graduate, including folks who in the past struggled to get into
relevant networks,

Because the first case
> I told you about was part of that general phenomenon,

you claimed this, but never adequately evidenced it

and the
> fishy way in which the interviewer behaved in the other case seems indicative
> of it being in play there too.
>
>>>
>>> Are you quite sure this kind of thing doesn't take place right under
>>> your nose?
>>>
>>
>> Course it might. But a) it has nothing to do with STEAM in particular,
>> you could as well use a different Stem experience, or any experience,
>> from "traveling abroad" to "job experience as tour guide".
>
> Those do NOT have to do with the "A" part. Music experience very
> much does.

Sigh. That's what made your example an anecdote - as my hypotheticals
that you snipped proved, the story would work just as well with any
arbitrary value inserted for "music" (you yourself offer "swimming"
above), so there is nothing intrinsic here about STEAM. If you can
change the value of a variable without changing the outcome, the value
obviously does not matter.

>
>
>> B) there is
>> no evidence offered that moving to STEAM curricula makes it worse - on
>> the contrary, one could argue that once everyone had some "A" exposure
>> while doing STEM, it becomes less suitable to differentiate between
>> candidates.
>
> It will always be suitable as long as "A" qualifications are not
> even hinted at in job descriptions, and yet come out, without warning,
> in job interviews, while others aren't even mentioned there,
> but are used to hire someone who already had an inside track
> of "who you know."

And again, why is that specific to STEAM, and does not include e.g.
discovering in the interview that the applicant was a fast runner, or
had experience in another STEM subject not mentioned in he advert?

Nothing, absolutely nothing, if your stories permits the conclusion that
this is premised on using an "A" subject.

>
> Except for the very first job I was routinely assigned by the
> Army, and for which I had not had a lick of training, ALL the
> jobs I've had depended crucially on my knowing someone "on
> the inside".
>
> THAT might be a good thing for you to research. It might eventually
> get seen as part of the reason why disparate qualifications are
> put into various job descriptions.
>
>
>> And third, to combat this the very disciplines that are most
>> focused in looking at and analyzing systematic abuse of power in
>> situations of power imbalance, such as hiring decisions, are exactly the
>> type of subjects the author attacks.
>
> There are some very fashionable abuses of power that crowd out
> the "it's WHO you know" phenomenon from public awareness.
>
>
>>
>> So in summary,
>
> ... you have not made a case for anything in particular here.

Apart from showing that what you thought was evidence for your claims
was anything but of course.

> I've snipped your alleged "summary" along with a huge number
> of statements by myself to which you had no reply.

Because they had even less to do with the issue under discussion then
the rest, and even for that that a stretch

>
> And that included pointed comments by myself about fraud, which
> you kept trying to narrow down to academic fraud,

even though
> the whole issue started out as fat salaries in private companies
> tempting people they employ to commit fraud.

research fraud. And as you started this irrelevant tangent, and then
brought in university administrators as case study, I did indeed think
that that's what you were talking about. As I can't read your mind, and
your intervention had nothing that I could see to do with the topic, I'm
left to guessing what you try to talk about.

>
> After all: unlike tenured faculty, their jobs depend greatly
> on a consistent, oft-scrutinized level of performance.

Indeed, so if they commit fraud, and the machine they build does not
work as intended, or the drugs don't cure, they will be found out. Great
job shooting your won foot though
>
>
> Peter Nyikos
>

Peter Nyikos

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Mar 25, 2019, 10:10:02 PM3/25/19

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I overlooked this cunning editorializing, making it look like this
was what Minnich was actually testing.

And so, you are able to lie about me and about various issues below.

> >> and to
> >> knock them out one by one, and by so doing performed Behe's test for
> >> IC as Behe specified in DBB.

Where? you never document this alleged specification.

> >
> >Yes, and Okimoto is talking above about a paper having nothing
> >to do with the experiment to which he testified in Dover. The
> >paper only talks about the tail and not about the whole flagellar
> >apparatus.
> >
> >
> >> I agree Behe's test for IC doesn't
> >> really test Behe's type of IC,
> >
> >Didn't you mean to type "ID" instead of "IC" here? If not, you
> >sure are being confusing here.
>
>
> Sorry, but you're the one who's confused here.

The reason you should be sorry is that you fail utterly to support this
claim below, and that your argument is based on a cunning equivocation.

> Behe wrote DBB back in
> 1996. Kitzmiller v Dover was in 2005. How can you still be confused
> about these issues?

How can you say that I am confused? I know as well as everyone
else that Behe wrote DBB in 1996. In fact, I started discussing
and debating it very soon thereafter. And I read huge chunks of
the Dover testimony and Judge Jones' travesty.

> Yes, RonO is discussing ID, and Minnich testified
> about Behe's test for IC. Minnich so testified because Behe claimed
> that his type of IC implies ID.

Another cunning equivocation. It ignores the fact that Behe did NOT claim
that *all* IC implies ID. Re-read the qualifiers at the top of page 40
of DBB, as to number of parts, until that sinks in.

Also, take note that in DBB, Behe only credited the flagellum with four relevant
parts. Minnich split up each of Behe's parts into their constituent molecules
and showed that every one of those thirty-some molecules was essential for
"the basic function."

Ironically, Minnich also negated thereby Mark Isaak's favorite argument against
the bacterial flagellum being IC.

It is the propagandists at the Discovery Institute that made
that unequivocal claim. When I complained about that to someone at the DI,
he refused to adopt my alternative wording, "When a system is IC,
intelligent design is our working hypothesis." And when I complained
about that to Behe, he said he has very little influence on what the DI
says about IC.

Does what I say here surprise you? It shouldn't. My opinion of the
DI is not very high, but if it is to be defeated, I want it done
fair and square, not by the kind of bait-and-switch scam Ron O
keeps using against it [1] nor by any other misrepresentation of it
or of Behe's relationship with it.

[1] Despite Ron O's incessant talk about a bait and switch scam by
the DI, the only perennial bait and switch scam that has ever been
demonstrated in t.o. is due to Ron O, not the DI.

>
> But Behe's test for IC doesn't test for Behe's type of IC, as Behe's
> type of IC specifies that parts be well-matched.

As they are in every system that Behe ever claimed to be IC. Also they
are interacting. That becomes clear from the detailed description of
the parts of the systems.

You are setting up a straw man here, based on another cunning equivocation
about what Minnich had said.

> But simply removing
> parts doesn't test or measure how well-matched are the parts. Behe's
> test for IC only tests if the parts are required for the entire IC
> system to work at all.

Your failure to quote anything by Behe that would show what this alleged
"Behe's test" actually is, is duly noted.

Peter Nyikos
Professor, Dept. of Mathematics

U. of South Carolina -- standard disclaimer--

http://people.math.sc.edu/nyikos/

Hemidactylus

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Mar 25, 2019, 10:55:02 PM3/25/19

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Peter Nyikos <nyi...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
>
[snip]

>
> It is the propagandists at the Discovery Institute that made
> that unequivocal claim. When I complained about that to someone at the DI,
> he refused to adopt my alternative wording, "When a system is IC,
> intelligent design is our working hypothesis."

So when current knowledge and understanding fall short of ideal we invoke
the default god explanation because that’s had such a track record of being
so much more informative and not spawning mutually contradictory worldviews
based on faith and revelation. Because IC leading to ID is god gapping
plain and simple. And it plays to the motivated reasoning of a tribal
Christian mindset that a biochemist can display his disconfirmation bias
toward laypeople and they just eat it up as on the flip side it confirms
their faith driven notions (ie- they reason from a notion instead of toward
it).

Did you read Behe’s Potemkin village chapter on the state of cognitive
philosophy? Funny he didn’t deign to inform us of the Libet results or the
controversy of free will. The Calvinists might scoff at that sad chapter.
What place has he for the unconscious given the limits if his beloved
introspection? Saint Paul might have a word in edgewise on that chapter in
Romans 7:15:
“"I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I
do the very thing I hate." [Oxford Annotated Bible- RSV]
Or 7:25: “"So then, I of
myself serve the law of God with my mind, but with my flesh I serve the
law of sin."

I would have thought he would have utilized Searle’s 1st person ontology
but no... Sad attempt at making a point in that chapter. Not even a shout
out to Dennett’s elbow room, just using the Churchland’s eliminative
materialism as the example for how all cognitive philosopher’s think.
Played well to the ignorant simpleton rubes perhaps.

To quote the self appointed master of cognitive philosophy pontificating
well out side his wheelhouse: “The point is that, although material things
do influence the mind, they do not constitute it.”
Darwin Devolves
Michael J. Behe

Given the sad train wreckage and thought casualties found in that chapter
how am I to trust his portrayal of molecular evolution? Just because he’s a
biochemist who knows how to play a crowd already in his tribe?

Glenn

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Mar 25, 2019, 11:05:02 PM3/25/19

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On Monday, March 25, 2019 at 7:55:02 PM UTC-7, *Hemidactylus* wrote:
> Peter Nyikos <nyi...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
> >
> [snip]
> >
> > It is the propagandists at the Discovery Institute that made
> > that unequivocal claim. When I complained about that to someone at the DI,
> > he refused to adopt my alternative wording, "When a system is IC,
> > intelligent design is our working hypothesis."
>
> So when current knowledge and understanding fall short of ideal we invoke
> the default god explanation because

You do like talking about yourself...

jillery

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Mar 25, 2019, 11:10:02 PM3/25/19

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On Mon, 25 Mar 2019 19:08:08 -0700 (PDT), Peter Nyikos

The only editorializing here is from you.

>And so, you are able to lie about me and about various issues below.
>
>
>> >> and to
>> >> knock them out one by one, and by so doing performed Behe's test for
>> >> IC as Behe specified in DBB.
>
>Where? you never document this alleged specification.

So why do *you* think Minnich removed each "part" of the flagellum and
checked for functionality? What do *you* think Minnich was
testifying about in the Dover trial?

>> >Yes, and Okimoto is talking above about a paper having nothing
>> >to do with the experiment to which he testified in Dover. The
>> >paper only talks about the tail and not about the whole flagellar
>> >apparatus.
>> >
>> >
>> >> I agree Behe's test for IC doesn't
>> >> really test Behe's type of IC,
>> >
>> >Didn't you mean to type "ID" instead of "IC" here? If not, you
>> >sure are being confusing here.
>>
>>
>> Sorry, but you're the one who's confused here.
>
>The reason you should be sorry is that you fail utterly to support this
>claim below, and that your argument is based on a cunning equivocation.

Now that's editorializing. Tu quoque back atcha, asshole.

>> Behe wrote DBB back in
>> 1996. Kitzmiller v Dover was in 2005. How can you still be confused
>> about these issues?
>
>How can you say that I am confused? I know as well as everyone
>else that Behe wrote DBB in 1996.

And yet you *still* are confused about what Behe said.

>In fact, I started discussing
>and debating it very soon thereafter. And I read huge chunks of
>the Dover testimony and Judge Jones' travesty.
>
>
>> Yes, RonO is discussing ID, and Minnich testified
>> about Behe's test for IC. Minnich so testified because Behe claimed
>> that his type of IC implies ID.
>
>Another cunning equivocation. It ignores the fact that Behe did NOT claim
>that *all* IC implies ID. Re-read the qualifiers at the top of page 40
>of DBB, as to number of parts, until that sinks in.

No equivocation, cunning or otherwise. I said nothing about "all",
nor does my point rely on it. You're just making up crap because you
have nothing intelligent to say.

>Also, take note that in DBB, Behe only credited the flagellum with four relevant
>parts. Minnich split up each of Behe's parts into their constituent molecules
>and showed that every one of those thirty-some molecules was essential for
>"the basic function."
>
>Ironically, Minnich also negated thereby Mark Isaak's favorite argument against
>the bacterial flagellum being IC.

Since you're being pointlessly pedantic, what Minnich tested was not
"molecules" but separate proteins. The real irony here is that
Minnich and Behe used different descriptions of parts, which
*supports* Mark Isaak's argument.

<snip more of your editorializing>

>> But Behe's test for IC doesn't test for Behe's type of IC, as Behe's
>> type of IC specifies that parts be well-matched.
>
>As they are in every system that Behe ever claimed to be IC. Also they
>are interacting. That becomes clear from the detailed description of
>the parts of the systems.
>
>You are setting up a straw man here, based on another cunning equivocation
>about what Minnich had said.

No strawman from me. Either Behe's IC requires well-matched parts or
it doesn't. If it does, the test for Behe's IC must test for it. If
it doesn't, Behe should not have specified it.

>> But simply removing
>> parts doesn't test or measure how well-matched are the parts. Behe's
>> test for IC only tests if the parts are required for the entire IC
>> system to work at all.
>
>Your failure to quote anything by Behe that would show what this alleged
>"Behe's test" actually is, is duly noted.

Your failure to show how quoting anything by Behe would make any
difference at this point, is duly noted. Tu quoque back atcha,
asshole.

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

You should be embarrassed to associate your employers with such
nonsense as your posts.

Hemidactylus

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Mar 25, 2019, 11:15:02 PM3/25/19

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You completely truncated my post which merely goes to show you are an
anti-intellectual simpleton, perhaps the target demographic of Behe’s book.

Glenn

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Mar 26, 2019, 12:55:02 AM3/26/19

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Nah, you're just an mad immature atheist little boy that doesn't get away with claiming that Behe invokes God. What is funny is that you don't believe it yourself.

Hemidactylus

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Mar 26, 2019, 6:55:03 AM3/26/19

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“Most people, including myself, are theists and will naturally tend to
ascribe the design to God.”

Excerpt From Darwin Devolves by Michael J. Behe

Giving you the benefit of the doubt perhaps you haven’t read the book or
this chapter and have nothing substantive to contribute. Behe thinks
digressive zombie arguments and Bostrom’s bizarre computer simulation stand
for the whole. This is a misrepresentation that seems to be deliberately
targeted at mocking cognitive philosophy in the eyes of his target
audience, Heartland folk who hate Ivory Tower intellectuals residing in New
England and California (Coastal Elites).

Burkhard

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Mar 26, 2019, 7:15:03 AM3/26/19

to talk-o...@moderators.isc.org

And you do this by editorializing or more accurately, by ascribing an
expression to me that I did not use.

>
.>> I never said "best"

>> theories, nor did I mention Behe. And you should be aware of the fact
>> that to say that "If someone has trait A, they are more likely to also
>> have trait B" does not lead to "Most people with B have A".
>
> "someone" is everyone behind the fact that you were not surprised
> that the mercatornet paper was (allegedly) "pretty much bereft
> of ... any understanding of current scientific practice."

"someone" is what we call in logic a "universal quantifier" that ranges
in this case over all people. Do I really have to spell it out in FOP
for you to see the logical mistake you made above?

>
> And I would estimate that over 95% of all people who are sold on ID are
> creationists or laymen who have no idea of the scientific methodology
> of the embryonic science of ID -- or of much of anything scientific.
>
> Does my saying this surprise you? It shouldn't.

Little you sat can surprise me this days, tbh. But in that case, your
claim is considerably stronger than the one you criticized me for, so
heaven knows what you try to say there.

>
>
>>
>> Now I happen to also not rate Behe particularly highly, and more
>> specifically just don't accept that he has any form of ID theory, but
>> that's a different story.
>
> I'd like to hear more of this story of yours. Since you have no trouble
> cranking out 200+ line posts, you should be able to tell me lots.

I've said this several times on other threads where this was the topic,
including threads you participated in (more recently one about Dover)
It's not the topic of this thread, so I don't plan to derail it even
more than you already managed to do.

But in short, the Theory of evolution provides a blueprint of inquiry
that for any given trait T, it generates testable hypothesis that could
in principle answer:

- when that trait evolved
- where that trait evolved
- which environmental factors caused the evolution of the trait
- how the trait evolved (that's were mutations come in and their mechanisms)
- in case of adaptive traits, why the trait evolved, what benefits
exactly did it confer to the organism in its specific environment

Any theory of intelligent design should be able at a minimum to do the
same in the terminology of design, so specifically provide a blueprint
of inquiry that could answers for any given trait T

- when it was designed
- where it was designed
- by whom it was designed
- how it was designed
- and why the designer chose that trait, what's their plan for that
specific organism

They don't need to have answers to all of these questions, for all
traits, research is after all always an ongoing process. But they must
have a research road map that tells me how to generate the relevant
hypotheses for a given trait and how one would in theory test them, just
as the ToE does.

If they don't, they just blow hot air.

>
>
>> For my "dig" to be true it's sufficient that
>> people who know little about science are more likely to be attracted y
>> ID than those who do.
>
> And people who know little about science relevant to talk.origins
> are more likely to be attracted to it than those who do. That includes
> both creationists and anti-creationists.

And I'm sure you think you made some point?

>
> Worse yet, some of those who know the most science prefer to use
> dirty debating tactics to discussing the science in a mature adult way.
>
> In fact, the reason you gave years ago for having killfiled me
> is that I spend too much time on personal issues. But that time
> is mainly used up with combating misrepresentations of myself
> and of people like Michael Behe.
>
>
> However, your stated reason for killfiling me seems distinctly hollow now,
> given that you had NOTHING to say about the following:

I chose which points I find interesting enough to respond to, thank you
very much. If you want to hire me so that I answer what you want to get
answered, you can always negotiate with my employer a consultancy. And
in particular, and getting back to the reason of killfiling, I have no
intention whatsoever to get involved in your endless feuds with pretty
much everyone else, or dragging other people into the exchange, as you
do below, again. So not replying to the below is in fact perfectly
consistent with my killfile then.

>
>>> 1. The biochemical form of ID theory has had only one-tenth as much
>>> time to develop as has evolutionary theory, and
>>>
>>> 2. In its present form, evolutionary theory is really microevolutionary
>>> theory. It's as though all economic theory were about microeconomics.
>>>
>>> And the irony is, Hemidactylus is very happy if it stays that way.
>>>
>>>
>>> Careful-- by evolutionary theory I mean not the overwhelming evidence
>>> (almost all of it "stamp collecting") that evolution has taken place
>>> on a massive scale. It is extremely powerful in the case of eumetazoans,
>>> especially vertebrates.
>>>
>>> I mean the attempt to coherently explain HOW and WHY it took the form it did.
>
> No comment from you on any of this. The mercatornet article was not
> dealing with challenges against ID, so there is some excuse for the
> author not displaying understanding about scientific practice.

The paper was about scientific politics and practice. So there was some
excuse not to talk about ID, but no excuse not to know about science.

>
> But what should I conclude from your silence here, about YOUR understanding
> of science that is relevant to the charter of talk.origins?

Whatever you please, as you will do anyway, I guess.

>
>
> If your scientific understanding is great, but irrelevant to talk.origins,
> why are you hanging around here?

Because sometimes issues are raised for which I have on point expertise,
and I chose to share it as a public service.
And because sometimes I learn something new and relevant for my
interests, though this is now regrettably the exception, especially
after John W left.
And because sometimes, creationists came up with some ideas that were so
much from left field and so wrong in interesting and new ways that they
forced me to pause and rethink my answer, which is intellectually
stimulating. Regrettably, this type of creationist has been dying out
too, Madman was the giant, Ray the last survivor.

Mark Isaak

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Mar 26, 2019, 12:00:03 PM3/26/19

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On 3/25/19 7:08 PM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
> [...]

> Also, take note that in DBB, Behe only credited the flagellum with four relevant
> parts. Minnich split up each of Behe's parts into their constituent molecules
> and showed that every one of those thirty-some molecules was essential for
> "the basic function."
>
> Ironically, Minnich also negated thereby Mark Isaak's favorite argument against
> the bacterial flagellum being IC.

My favorite argument about the flagellum's ICness is that it does not
matter whether it is IC or not. Minnich did nothing to negate that
argument.

Ironically, Minnich supported an argument of mine that you seem to
disagree with the most -- that "parts" are not arbitrary. The way to
disprove my argument is to show strong inter-rater reliability in
determining what the specific parts are. Behe and Minnich show one
prominent case where such inter-rater reliability does not exist.

Mark Isaak

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Mar 26, 2019, 12:15:03 PM3/26/19

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On 3/25/19 7:08 PM, Peter Nyikos wrote:

> [snip]

> It is the propagandists at the Discovery Institute that made
> that unequivocal claim. When I complained about that to someone at the DI,
> he refused to adopt my alternative wording, "When a system is IC,
> intelligent design is our working hypothesis." And when I complained
> about that to Behe, he said he has very little influence on what the DI
> says about IC.

I'm curious, Peter. Do you, personally, agree that "When a system is
IC, intelligent design is my working hypothesis", or do you suggest that
that position applies to the Discovery Institute and not to you?