To the froup

[jillery]

The following is a link to a post which is the first post in
Harshman's most recent troll against jillery:

***************************************
From: John Harshman <john.h...@gmail.com>
Newsgroups: talk.origins
Subject: Re: A riposte of fine-tuning
Date: Sat, 21 Jan 2023 21:46:33 -0800
Organization: University of Ediacara
Lines: 76
Sender: ne...@beagle.ediacara.org
Message-ID: <--Cdne2S4_0kUFH-n...@giganews.com>
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For those who shun jillery's posts, except to remind everybody of how
proud they are of their negative opinions about jillery, and/or for
those who act as if Harshman's shit doesn't stink, jillery provides
the following challenge, which is a ready-made opportunity for them to
exercise both passions:

Explain how the following quote from jillery:

"You're right. How silly of me. Let me compare the list I cited with
the list you cited...."*


justifies the following quote from Harshman:

"Must you always be a useless taker of offense?"


followed by dozens of Harshman's posts filled with obfuscating noise,
ad-hominens, personal attacks, mindless made-up crap and
outright lies about jillery?

--
You're entitled to your own opinions.
You're not entitled to your own facts.

[Lawyer Daggett]

I've composed a longer response but will put a hold on it.
This one is long enough as is.

It distills to this: as annoying as John's style may seem, I get it.
To me he is asserting that there is a far more scientifically
robust answer and that it should be used.

I see it like this:
Imagine a first person trying to counter a creationist invoking the
2nd law of thermodynamics to refute evolution and they say
that you can violate the 2nd law if you plug in the freezer to
a power source. Then, a second person comes along and has
to correct that the 2nd law is never violated, somebody just
has the wrong conception of the 2nd law.

The first person then somehow feels the need to defend their
honor. But their honor was never impugned. It's just that there's
a better answer and the better answer should be used.

The "how silly of me" comes across as if you feel the need to
defend your honor. I don't think your honor was impugned.
I do think John has a better understanding of the Cambrian
Explosion and animal phyla arising before, during, and after.
I happen to agree that we should use the best references,
and defer to those who know them.

As to what Ron Dean's argument is about, I don't think either
of you can be considered 'right' as I don't think his argument(s)
are coherent or self-consistent. A back and forth about what
he should be arguing seems a fool's errand. Of course my
fool's errand would be to try to get him to make more explicit
and coherent claims, which includes getting him to understand
where his current claims (as elucidated so far) fall short of
the mark with respect to coherency, grasp of the fossil record,
and current interpretations. Many have been trying to do just
that, including you two, with very little progress.

Much of that lack of progress flows from the dynamics of the
many against one. It's hard to keep things on track, even if
the many agreed on the priorities.

[jillery]

I acknowledge your impression. However, your impression is incorrect
aka a misimpression. My intent above is to point out Harshman's
failure at that time to cite a list he prefers. Such failures are
something Harshman does regularly. I have noted it many times before.
Harshman's reaction to my notices is to go on the offensive and accuse
me of taking offense, just as he does above.

So your impression is incorrect, and your negative and prejudicial
characterization of me based on your misimpression, of "defending my
honor" is also incorrect, and Harshman's reaction to my comment, to
initiate a long-running troll, is completely unjustified.

If you were more familiar with Harshman's posts to me and my replies
to him, you would have no good reason to have that misimpression. My
impression is your misimpression satisfies your prejudice against me
and your bias for Harshman, and so you feel no need to inform yourself
or question your misimpression. This is not to suggest you should be
more informed of such things. This does suggest you should be aware
that your misimpression is based on ignorance of them.

>I do think John has a better understanding of the Cambrian
>Explosion and animal phyla arising before, during, and after.
>I happen to agree that we should use the best references,
>and defer to those who know them.

I do not here, nor have I ever, questioned Harshman's greater
expertise about the Cambrian Explosion. More to the point, I have
never claimed any particular expertise, nor are my arguments based on
my personal expertise. That makes your characterization above yet
another one of your prejudicial misimpressions.

I acknowledge I do challenge Harshman's regular failure to separate
his expertise from points not qualified by his expertise. As I
previously noted, the precise taxonomy and/or phylogeny of Cambrian
fossils don't inform R.Dean's point or Mark Isaak's challenge to it.
That makes Harshman's expressed criticism at best a mindless
obfuscation. To obsess over the precise number of phyla in reply to
R.Dean is like quibbling over the exact age of the Earth with a YEC.

>As to what Ron Dean's argument is about, I don't think either
>of you can be considered 'right' as I don't think his argument(s)
>are coherent or self-consistent. A back and forth about what
>he should be arguing seems a fool's errand. Of course my
>fool's errand would be to try to get him to make more explicit
>and coherent claims, which includes getting him to understand
>where his current claims (as elucidated so far) fall short of
>the mark with respect to coherency, grasp of the fossil record,
>and current interpretations. Many have been trying to do just
>that, including you two, with very little progress.

Assuming you mean to characterize my replies to R.Dean as "what he
should be arguing", that would be yet another one of your
misimpressions. Instead my arguments to R.Dean are similar to yours,
to note that his arguments are neither coherent nor consistent, and to
try to get him to make more explicit and coherent claims. That puts
you and me in the same foolish hole.

>Much of that lack of progress flows from the dynamics of the
>many against one. It's hard to keep things on track, even if
>the many agreed on the priorities.

More to the point, it's virtually impossible when one of the many
spends most of his time posting obfuscating noise, ad-hominens,
personal attacks, mindless made-up crap and outright lies, and others
cheer him on for doing it. The "A riposte of fine-tuning" thread is
only the most recent demonstration of this.