A Tale of Two Newsgroups: talk.origins and sci.bio.paleontology

[peter2...@gmail.com]

Unlike a thread I began a few years ago with a similar Subject line,
this one is for transferring posts and replies that really belong in talk.origins from sci.bio.paleontology.

The following reply to a post by John Harshman over there is a clear example.
In that post, John cleverly took advantage of the context to make it seem like
he was claiming to have argued science with Dr. Dr. Kleinman
without either stating or directly implying to have done so.

If anyone reading this can find any example where Harshman argued science
with the Dr.Dr., I would very much like to see it.

On Thursday, June 17, 2021 at 4:45:17 PM UTC-4, John Harshman wrote:
> On 6/17/21 1:31 PM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
> > On Tuesday, June 15, 2021 at 8:26:57 PM UTC-4, in https://groups.google.com/g/sci.bio.paleontology/c/y_NKDdJixf8/m/OTHAv28TAgAJ
John Harshman wrote:
> >> On 6/15/21 3:52 PM, Peter Nyikos wrote:

> >>> It is your behavior on talk.origins that is very much political. To take just one of many
> >>> examples: you never tried to argue science with Dr. Dr. Kleinman, and confined yourself
> >>> to personal attacks. Your excuse for that was that nobody could convince him that he is wrong.
>>

What followed next was a display of what I call "Counterfeit responsiveness"
as described above to the general readership:

> >> You apparently know little of my interactions with Kleinman.
> >
> > You explicitly said what I call "Your excuse." And I stand by what I wrote, because you aren't
> > trying to come up with a single example of you trying to argue science with him.

> I have no interest in convincing you. Your bias against me is showing,
> and I don't see any point in trying to overcome it.

Gratuitous insult noted: you allege bias without justification.

What's more, the insult is almost self-defeating. Kleinman was DEMONSTRABLY biased against you,
and against evolution in the worst sort of way, and so it would seem that you had even
MORE reason to show no interest in arguing against him.


Peter Nyikos

[Öö Tiib]

For example that thread did arise because you challenged DrDrs models of evolution:
<https://groups.google.com/g/talk.origins/c/fQJoXIiYf6M/m/29sSdOOoAQAJ>
Then DrDr and Harshman seemed at least try to discuss it ... no t like you say
personal attacks from Harshman.
Later you joined, and Ray and Steady Eddie and it degraded. Im not sure how lot of it
was science what was discussed but did not seem so bad as you put it.

[peter2...@gmail.com]

Harshman has continued his absence from sci.bio.paleontology over the last four days,
and anyone seeing the following post can begin to suspect why.
He speculated on Günter Bechly being a creationist, in a high-handed way at that, and is at a loss
as to how support his claim in the face of what I wrote in the following post,
made on Jun 18, 2021, 4:24:37 PM (4 days ago):

https://groups.google.com/g/sci.bio.paleontology/c/y_NKDdJixf8/m/cH0QiONgAgAJ
Re: Dickinsonia is very likely an animal

Bechly had written a long article supporting the opposite conclusion about the enigmatic Dickinsonia:
https://evolutionnews.org/2018/09/why-dickinsonia-was-most-probably-not-an-ediacaran-animal/

The gist of my reply, linked above, follows:

On Thursday, June 17, 2021 at 9:15:59 PM UTC-4, John Harshman wrote:

> On 6/17/21 2:34 PM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
> > On Thursday, June 17, 2021 at 4:45:17 PM UTC-4, John Harshman wrote:
> >> On 6/17/21 1:31 PM, Peter Nyikos wrote:

> >>> On Tuesday, June 15, 2021 at 8:26:57 PM UTC-4, John Harshman wrote:
> >>>> On 6/15/21 3:52 PM, Peter Nyikos wrote:

> >>>>> On Monday, June 14, 2021 at 3:59:40 PM UTC-4, John Harshman wrote:
> >>>>>> On 6/14/21 11:31 AM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
> >>>>>>> On Monday, June 14, 2021 at 10:52:50 AM UTC-4, John Harshman wrote:
> >>>>>>>> On 6/14/21 4:45 AM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
> >>>>>>>>> On Saturday, June 12, 2021 at 5:08:53 AM UTC-4, John Harshman wrote:
> >
> >>>>>>>>>> But nobody should take anything published on EN&V seriously.
> >>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>>> Please confine this attitude to talk.origins, where it belongs.
> >>>>>>>
> >>>>>>> It belongs in talk.origins because the main emphasis there is political rather than scientific.
> >>>>>>> The "on topic" focus is on discrediting individuals, e.g. creationists, as opposed to refuting arguments
> >>>>>>> or discussing on topic issues on which there is significant disagreement.


<snip for focus>


> >>>> Nonsense. EN&V's "approach to scientific truth" is to decide that it
> >>>> isn't evolution and then come up with reasons why.
> >>>
> >>> It is you who are spouting nonsense. If you don't see a difference between "Dickinsonia is probably
> >>> not an animal" and "Dickinsonia didn't evolve" there is something seriously wrong with you.
> >
> >> What's wrong with me is that I can spot a subtext when I see one,

The definition of "subtext" in the Merriam-Webster dictionary is the following:

: the implicit or metaphorical meaning (as of a literary text)

There is no way that "Dickinsonia didn't evolve" can be a metaphorical or implicit meaning of
"Dickinsonia is probably not an animal".

Where did YOU find your definition ("reading between the lines")? _The Devil's Dictionary_, by Ambrose Bierce, perhaps?


> > Do you see denial of evolution in every paleontological claim made by a creationist?

> No. Bechly has managed to keep subtext out of his professional
> publications, as far as I know. But it's certainly there in everything
> on EN&V.

Until you can demonstrate that you can validly read this between the lines, your allegation is null and void.
Right now, what I wrote yesterday evening (to which you haven't made a response yet) is powerful evidence
that the correct expression for what you are doing here is "guilt by association."


> >> while you bend over backwards to avoid it.

I do bend over backwards to avoid indulging in guilt by association. Do you have a problem with that?


> > Please explain the word "subtext". "bend over backwards" is pejorative, and requires that you
> > provide a good definition.
> It's often known as "reading between the lines". Are you sure you don't
> know this word?

I have come across it from time to time, but IIRC it always conformed to the Merriam-Webster definition.

Not only is the M-W dictionary second only to the OED in authoritativeness, but according to it the
word has a long history, going back to 1726. So perhaps you've picked up your usage
by hobnobbing with polemicists and propagandists (in talk.origins?) who employ the
word for tendentious purposes.


Concluded in next reply, soon after I see that this one has posted.


Peter Nyikos

============================= end of excerpts

[peter2...@gmail.com]

Thank you for digging up this thread, Öö. It was interesting to see how slow I was to
be aggressive towards Kleinman back then. That changed completely in the next two years.

> <https://groups.google.com/g/talk.origins/c/fQJoXIiYf6M/m/29sSdOOoAQAJ>
> Then DrDr and Harshman seemed at least try to discuss it ... no t like you say
> personal attacks from Harshman.

True, but neither did Harshman go after Kleinman on the subject of feather evolution,
of which Harshman knew a lot more than I did at the time (2017). As far as I could gather
from the thread you have linked, Harshman contented himself with trying to elicit from Kleinman
an admission that his two papers did not model natural selection.

Also, I was greatly handicapped by not having seen Kleinman's two papers.
After I read them, months later, I saw clearly that he had made no effort whatsoever
to model natural selection in them, and how rudimentary the mathematics was in those two papers.

> Later you joined, and Ray and Steady Eddie and it degraded. Im not sure how lot of it
> was science what was discussed but did not seem so bad as you put it.

Once I realized how inept Kleinman really was, I used his own mathematics to refute his
increasingly aggressive claims that reptiles cannot evolve to grow feathers.
Harshman not only didn't lift a finger when I did that, but six days ago he snipped my
account of that refutation. I'll be telling more about it in another post to this thread.


Peter Nyikos

[peter2...@gmail.com]

On Tuesday, June 22, 2021 at 5:11:06 PM UTC-4, peter2...@gmail.com wrote:

> Once I realized how inept Kleinman really was, I used his own mathematics to refute his
> increasingly aggressive claims that reptiles cannot evolve to grow feathers.
> Harshman not only didn't lift a finger when I did that, but six days ago he snipped my
> account of that refutation. I'll be telling more about it in another post to this thread.

Here is the actual post where I posted that account:

https://groups.google.com/g/sci.bio.paleontology/c/y_NKDdJixf8/m/V_jhYjt9AQAJ

Re: Dickinsonia is very likely an animal

Jun 15, 2021, 6:52:46 PM (7 days ago)

And here is the relevant excerpt:

______________________________________________

It is your behavior on talk.origins that is very much political. To take just one of many
examples: you never tried to argue science with Dr. Dr. Kleinman, and confined yourself
to personal attacks. Your excuse for that was that nobody could convince him that he is wrong.

But that misses the big picture of readers, including lurkers, who are dependent on knowledgeable people
to put scientific weapons against creationism (and not just individual creationists, of whom the Dr. Dr. was an
unusually nasty example) into their hands. If someone like you refuses to argue scientifically against them,
the natural inference is that he is not competent enough to argue against creationists scientifically.

I argued especially against Kleinman's lie that only a psychotic could think reptiles grew feathers.
I used his own mathematical analyses against him, in those papers that he managed to publish in a
reputable statistical journal. I gave realistic numbers on how 20 mutations, in the course of 40 million years,
could produce feathers if each mutation "amplified" [his word] from generation to generation. For that
I gave the insulating power of each step exceeding the previous one.

I squeezed him so tightly into the corner that, in order to avoid conceding defeat, he had to make
up a transparent lie: that I was assuming that the mutants involved are magically immune
to disease, weather, starvation, etc. I made it clear in my reply that this was completely false,
and he disappeared from the thread. Anyone lurking could draw the obvious inference.

============================= end of excerpt [1] =============================

Harshman arrogantly snipped everything after the first paragraph [2] with the following taunt:

"You apparently know little of my interactions with Kleinman. But here
you're going off on a wide tangent, and I'm going to snip the rest of it."

https://groups.google.com/g/sci.bio.paleontology/c/y_NKDdJixf8/m/o1zMMl-CAQAJ



[1] I added a phrase, "into their hands," that I had carelessly omitted. Otherwise it is exactly as I posted it.
[2] I only included it in the excerpt to give the context for "But that misses the big picture of readers,
including lurkers, who are dependent on knowledgeable people..."

Peter Nyikos

[John Harshman]

On 6/22/21 11:57 AM, peter2...@gmail.com wrote:
> Unlike a thread I began a few years ago with a similar Subject line,
> this one is for transferring posts and replies that really belong in talk.origins from sci.bio.paleontology.
>
> The following reply to a post by John Harshman over there is a clear example.
> In that post, John cleverly took advantage of the context to make it seem like
> he was claiming to have argued science with Dr. Dr. Kleinman
> without either stating or directly implying to have done so.

That's just your inability to read. I did argue science with Kleinman,
though not unless you agree that an argument can be carried on when one
party makes a point and the other responds with a vacuous insult.
Anyway, I argued, he didn't.

> If anyone reading this can find any example where Harshman argued science
> with the Dr.Dr., I would very much like to see it.

As I recall, I pointed out a number of things: that his equations
assumed a constant population size in which each individual gave rise to
one offspring and then died; that he didn't consider natural selection
at all, since his equations had no parameter for selection; that we have
fossils of feathered theropods in great profusion, so "reptiles" can
indeed grow feathers; etc. Just because you missed it, that doesn't mean
it didn't happen.

> On Thursday, June 17, 2021 at 4:45:17 PM UTC-4, John Harshman wrote:
>> On 6/17/21 1:31 PM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
>>> On Tuesday, June 15, 2021 at 8:26:57 PM UTC-4, in https://groups.google.com/g/sci.bio.paleontology/c/y_NKDdJixf8/m/OTHAv28TAgAJ
> John Harshman wrote:
>>>> On 6/15/21 3:52 PM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
>
>>>>> It is your behavior on talk.origins that is very much political. To take just one of many
>>>>> examples: you never tried to argue science with Dr. Dr. Kleinman, and confined yourself
>>>>> to personal attacks. Your excuse for that was that nobody could convince him that he is wrong.
>>>
>
> What followed next was a display of what I call "Counterfeit responsiveness"
> as described above to the general readership:
>
>>>> You apparently know little of my interactions with Kleinman.
>>>
>>> You explicitly said what I call "Your excuse." And I stand by what I wrote, because you aren't
>>> trying to come up with a single example of you trying to argue science with him.
>
>> I have no interest in convincing you. Your bias against me is showing,
>> and I don't see any point in trying to overcome it.
>
> Gratuitous insult noted: you allege bias without justification.
>
> What's more, the insult is almost self-defeating. Kleinman was DEMONSTRABLY biased against you,
> and against evolution in the worst sort of way, and so it would seem that you had even
> MORE reason to show no interest in arguing against him.

Why does this post belong in talk.origins? Why does it belong anywhere
at all?

[Glenn]

On Tuesday, June 22, 2021 at 4:41:06 PM UTC-7, John Harshman wrote:
> On 6/22/21 11:57 AM, peter2...@gmail.com wrote:
> > Unlike a thread I began a few years ago with a similar Subject line,
> > this one is for transferring posts and replies that really belong in talk.origins from sci.bio.paleontology.
> >
> > The following reply to a post by John Harshman over there is a clear example.
> > In that post, John cleverly took advantage of the context to make it seem like
> > he was claiming to have argued science with Dr. Dr. Kleinman
> > without either stating or directly implying to have done so.

> That's just your inability to read. I did argue science with Kleinman,
> though not unless you agree that an argument can be carried on when one
> party makes a point and the other responds with a vacuous insult.
> Anyway, I argued, he didn't.

What did you argue against, then? Insults?

[peter2...@gmail.com]

John, you are telling a 100% documented lie below, in the sense of "lie" that almost everyone
agrees to be a lie: a falsehood that you know to be a falsehood when you utter it, delivered
in a completely non-jocular manner. The lie, shown in context below, was:

"That's just your inability to read."

There is also a *prima* *facie* case for that lie having been uttered with intent to deceive a large
fraction, perhaps a majority of the readers , given the kind of people who read talk.origins these days.

On Tuesday, June 22, 2021 at 7:41:06 PM UTC-4, John Harshman wrote:
> On 6/22/21 11:57 AM, peter2...@gmail.com wrote:
> > Unlike a thread I began a few years ago with a similar Subject line,
> > this one is for transferring posts and replies that really belong in talk.origins from sci.bio.paleontology.
> >
> > The following reply to a post by John Harshman over there is a clear example.
> > In that post, John cleverly took advantage of the context to make it seem like
> > he was claiming to have argued science with Dr. Dr. Kleinman
> > without either stating or directly implying to have done so.
.
> That's just your inability to read.
.
> I did argue science with Kleinman,
> though not unless you agree that an argument can be carried on when one
> party makes a point and the other responds with a vacuous insult.
> Anyway, I argued, he didn't.

Note the placement of the lie: it creates the impression that what follows the lie,
"That's just your inability to read," actually refers to something that I knew about at the time
when I wrote the text that precedes it. People who are too lazy or rushed to read more than 20 lines beyond what
appears above will be left with that impression, and those who read your posts and not
mine, like your buddy Bob Casanova, will be delighted by the virtual reality you are dishonestly creating for them.

> > If anyone reading this can find any example where Harshman argued science
> > with the Dr.Dr., I would very much like to see it.

Here I've snipped claims about what you recall, and will deal with them later.

> > On Thursday, June 17, 2021 at 4:45:17 PM UTC-4, John Harshman wrote:
> >> On 6/17/21 1:31 PM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
> >>> On Tuesday, June 15, 2021 at 8:26:57 PM UTC-4, in https://groups.google.com/g/sci.bio.paleontology/c/y_NKDdJixf8/m/OTHAv28TAgAJ
> > John Harshman wrote:
> >>>> On 6/15/21 3:52 PM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
> >
> >>>>> It is your behavior on talk.origins that is very much political. To take just one of many
> >>>>> examples: you never tried to argue science with Dr. Dr. Kleinman, and confined yourself
> >>>>> to personal attacks. Your excuse for that was that nobody could convince him that he is wrong.
> >>>
> >
> > What followed next was a display of what I call "Counterfeit responsiveness"
> > as described above to the general readership:

With so many lines intervening between what preceded your lie, "That's just your inability to read,"
and the following, it would take a very attentive reader to connect the two, and to realize what
chicanery you indulged in.

> >>>> You apparently know little of my interactions with Kleinman.
> >>>
> >>> You explicitly said what I call "Your excuse." And I stand by what I wrote, because you aren't
> >>> trying to come up with a single example of you trying to argue science with him.
> >
> >> I have no interest in convincing you. Your bias against me is showing,
> >> and I don't see any point in trying to overcome it.
> >
> > Gratuitous insult noted: you allege bias without justification.

Will you view what I have written this time around as a bunch of insults? Will you use it
to feed your self-centered, self-righteous perception that I am biased against you?

> > What's more, the insult is almost self-defeating. Kleinman was DEMONSTRABLY biased against you,
> > and against evolution in the worst sort of way, and so it would seem that you had even
> > MORE reason to show no interest in arguing against him.

> Why does this post belong in talk.origins?

It is all about the history of talk.origins, which your kind massively rewrites in their favor.
"That's just your inability to read" is a prime example of that.

> Why does it belong anywhere at all?

Spoken like a pathologically self-righteous jerk. Mark Isaak is the only regular who tops you in that respect.


Peter Nyikos

[peter2...@gmail.com]

Glenn, did you read more than 20 lines beyond what appears above before you snipped everything below it?

If so, you missed a great rarity where Harshman is concerned: a tremendous whopper of a lie,
with all the documentation that it is one that one could ask for.

One of the reasons I have long judged Harshman to be the most cunningly dishonest regular in talk.origins
is that he is very careful not to post lies that are easily seen to be lies, except on very rare occasions.

And then he really cuts loose in a masterful illustration of the Big Lie technique, writing something so outrageous,
that people would never dream that he would say it unless it is true.

You show no sign of having detected what a whopper of a lie "That's just your inability to read." was, even though
you left it in above. All you wrote was the following one-liner:

> What did you argue against, then? Insults?

Kleinman wasn't into accusing people of dishonesty or hypocrisy, so I doubt that he ever did what
Harshman routinely refers to as my insults: valid accusations of dishonesty and hypocrisy.

I think he will take the direct reply to his post that I did a few minutes as a personal affront,
nothing more, and will go right on behaving as he always has, with redoubled animus against me.


Peter Nyikos

[John Harshman]

On 6/23/21 7:31 AM, peter2...@gmail.com wrote:
> John, you are telling a 100% documented lie below, in the sense of "lie" that almost everyone
> agrees to be a lie: a falsehood that you know to be a falsehood when you utter it, delivered
> in a completely non-jocular manner. The lie, shown in context below, was:
>
> "That's just your inability to read."
>
> There is also a *prima* *facie* case for that lie having been uttered with intent to deceive a large
> fraction, perhaps a majority of the readers , given the kind of people who read talk.origins these days.

I've missed the documentation of the lie. Could you present it again?

> On Tuesday, June 22, 2021 at 7:41:06 PM UTC-4, John Harshman wrote:
>> On 6/22/21 11:57 AM, peter2...@gmail.com wrote:
>>> Unlike a thread I began a few years ago with a similar Subject line,
>>> this one is for transferring posts and replies that really belong in talk.origins from sci.bio.paleontology.
>>>
>>> The following reply to a post by John Harshman over there is a clear example.
>>> In that post, John cleverly took advantage of the context to make it seem like
>>> he was claiming to have argued science with Dr. Dr. Kleinman
>>> without either stating or directly implying to have done so.
> .
>> That's just your inability to read.
> .
>> I did argue science with Kleinman,
>> though not unless you agree that an argument can be carried on when one
>> party makes a point and the other responds with a vacuous insult.
>> Anyway, I argued, he didn't.
>
> Note the placement of the lie: it creates the impression that what follows the lie,
> "That's just your inability to read," actually refers to something that I knew about at the time
> when I wrote the text that precedes it. People who are too lazy or rushed to read more than 20 lines beyond what
> appears above will be left with that impression, and those who read your posts and not
> mine, like your buddy Bob Casanova, will be delighted by the virtual reality you are dishonestly creating for them.

I am unable to interpret that rant. But what shows your inability to
read is that you misunderstood the statement of mine that you were
talking about, i.e. that I supposedly went to great pains to imply
something without actually saying it. I did not. I thought I was quite
clear that I actually did argue science with Kleinman.

>>> If anyone reading this can find any example where Harshman argued science
>>> with the Dr.Dr., I would very much like to see it.
>
> Here I've snipped claims about what you recall, and will deal with them later.

Feel free.

>>> On Thursday, June 17, 2021 at 4:45:17 PM UTC-4, John Harshman wrote:
>>>> On 6/17/21 1:31 PM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
>>>>> On Tuesday, June 15, 2021 at 8:26:57 PM UTC-4, in https://groups.google.com/g/sci.bio.paleontology/c/y_NKDdJixf8/m/OTHAv28TAgAJ
>>> John Harshman wrote:
>>>>>> On 6/15/21 3:52 PM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
>>>
>>>>>>> It is your behavior on talk.origins that is very much political. To take just one of many
>>>>>>> examples: you never tried to argue science with Dr. Dr. Kleinman, and confined yourself
>>>>>>> to personal attacks. Your excuse for that was that nobody could convince him that he is wrong.
>>>>>
>>>
>>> What followed next was a display of what I call "Counterfeit responsiveness"
>>> as described above to the general readership:
>
> With so many lines intervening between what preceded your lie, "That's just your inability to read,"
> and the following, it would take a very attentive reader to connect the two, and to realize what
> chicanery you indulged in.

It would certainly take more attentiveness than I have, because I have
no idea what you're talking about. Again, the Queeg is strong in this one.

>>>>>> You apparently know little of my interactions with Kleinman.
>>>>>
>>>>> You explicitly said what I call "Your excuse." And I stand by what I wrote, because you aren't
>>>>> trying to come up with a single example of you trying to argue science with him.
>>>
>>>> I have no interest in convincing you. Your bias against me is showing,
>>>> and I don't see any point in trying to overcome it.
>>>
>>> Gratuitous insult noted: you allege bias without justification.
>
>
> Will you view what I have written this time around as a bunch of insults? Will you use it
> to feed your self-centered, self-righteous perception that I am biased against you?

I view it as barely contained madness. There can be no other reasonable
view.

>>> What's more, the insult is almost self-defeating. Kleinman was DEMONSTRABLY biased against you,
>>> and against evolution in the worst sort of way, and so it would seem that you had even
>>> MORE reason to show no interest in arguing against him.
>
>> Why does this post belong in talk.origins?
>
> It is all about the history of talk.origins, which your kind massively rewrites in their favor.
> "That's just your inability to read" is a prime example of that.

Considering that you grossly misunderstood the statement, it isn't an
example of what you imagine it is.

>> Why does it belong anywhere at all?
>
> Spoken like a pathologically self-righteous jerk. Mark Isaak is the only regular who tops you in that respect.

No Nyikos would be complete without a gratuitous attack on a third
party. Folks, is he getting worse, or is it my imagination? Perhaps a
very long vacation would be advised?

[Dale]

On 6/22/2021 2:57 PM, peter2...@gmail.com wrote:
> ... that really belong in talk.origins from sci.bio.paleontology ...

some people post paleontology here but don't like creationism there


--
Mystery -> https://www.dalekelly.org/

[peter2...@gmail.com]

On Tuesday, June 22, 2021 at 7:41:06 PM UTC-4, John Harshman wrote:
> On 6/22/21 11:57 AM, peter2...@gmail.com wrote:

The first two lines below are repeated for context; after that comes the part I deleted
in my first reply.

> > If anyone reading this can find any example where Harshman argued science
> > with the Dr.Dr., I would very much like to see it.

> As I recall, I pointed out a number of things: that his equations
> assumed a constant population size in which each individual gave rise to
> one offspring and then died;

That's just one interpretation of what he wrote in those two papers.
Another is to just assume a population is constant, with insignificant fluctuations.
The latter interpretation is more scientific in spirit. Didn't Kleinman tell you that?

> that he didn't consider natural selection
> at all, since his equations had no parameter for selection;

He talked about it in his final section, using the word "amplify," but gave no equations for it. Where was the argument?

> that we have
> fossils of feathered theropods in great profusion, so "reptiles" can
> indeed grow feathers; etc.

Could I find this in the 2017 thread that Mr. Tiib linked?

Anyway, "reptiles" is a nonexistent group by your standards. So the issue revolves around what
Kleinman considered to be a reptile as opposed to a bird.

Most creationists classify Archaeopteryx as a bird. Microraptor and various other genera with
true feathers are so close to Archie that they would also be classified as birds. Caudipteryx
is something that is classed as a secondarily flightless bird by many, not just by creationists or by BANDITS.

What example with true feathers did you tell him about that cannot easily be construed as a bird?


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

[*Hemidactylus*]

Didn’t he just come back after a very long posting break? The 2001-2010
absence didn’t have much effect either. We’re stuck with the way he is.

[Bob Casanova]

On Wed, 23 Jun 2021 17:48:35 -0400, the following appeared
in talk.origins, posted by Dale <da...@dalekelly.org>:

>On 6/22/2021 2:57 PM, peter2...@gmail.com wrote:
>
>> ... that really belong in talk.origins from sci.bio.paleontology ...
>
>some people post paleontology here but don't like creationism there
>

Think that might be because it's off-topic there?
>
--

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

[John Harshman]

On 6/23/21 3:00 PM, peter2...@gmail.com wrote:
> On Tuesday, June 22, 2021 at 7:41:06 PM UTC-4, John Harshman wrote:
>> On 6/22/21 11:57 AM, peter2...@gmail.com wrote:
>
> The first two lines below are repeated for context; after that comes the part I deleted
> in my first reply.
>
>>> If anyone reading this can find any example where Harshman argued science
>>> with the Dr.Dr., I would very much like to see it.
>
>> As I recall, I pointed out a number of things: that his equations
>> assumed a constant population size in which each individual gave rise to
>> one offspring and then died;
>
> That's just one interpretation of what he wrote in those two papers.
> Another is to just assume a population is constant, with insignificant fluctuations.
> The latter interpretation is more scientific in spirit. Didn't Kleinman tell you that?

No. In fact he told me that he doesn't assume a constant population, and
he's not even talking about a particular population size or number of
generations. It's only his arbitrary way of computing how many
replications happen.

And the math does assume that every member of the population reproduces
exactly once.

>> that he didn't consider natural selection
>> at all, since his equations had no parameter for selection;
>
> He talked about it in his final section, using the word "amplify," but gave no equations for it. Where was the argument?

Sorry, what argument? But no, he's not using "amplify" to refer to
selection, just an increase in the number of individuals with a
particular genotype. His math covers neither the increase nor any reason
for increase.

>> that we have
>> fossils of feathered theropods in great profusion, so "reptiles" can
>> indeed grow feathers; etc.
>
> Could I find this in the 2017 thread that Mr. Tiib linked?

Don't know. I brought it up many times in various threads. I think it's
why he started talking about "reptiles growing feathers" in the first place.

> Anyway, "reptiles" is a nonexistent group by your standards. So the issue revolves around what
> Kleinman considered to be a reptile as opposed to a bird.

No, that isn't the issue at all. Kleinman has zero interest in taxonomy
and is likely unaware of any controversy of nomenclature.

> Most creationists classify Archaeopteryx as a bird. Microraptor and various other genera with
> true feathers are so close to Archie that they would also be classified as birds. Caudipteryx
> is something that is classed as a secondarily flightless bird by many, not just by creationists or by BANDITS.

Not sure of your point there. Would a creationist classify Oviraptor or
Velociraptor as a bird? How about Tyrannosaurus or Compsognathus?

> What example with true feathers did you tell him about that cannot easily be construed as a bird?

We really didn't get into the meaning of "true feathers". That's your
obsession. And of course anything can easily be construed as a bird, as
shown by Caudipteryx. If it has feathers, it's a bird, goes the BANDIT
reasoning. Thus nobody had any clue that oviraptorosaurs might be birds
until Caudipteryx, but Caudipteryx is an oviraptorosaur and Caudiperyx
has feathers, so apparently oviraptorosaurs are now birds. This is way
beyond anything Kleinman ever thought about. He restricted himself to
one-liners about "reptilefeatharians", and that was the whole of his
interest or reasoning.

[Dale]

On 6/23/2021 7:38 PM, Bob Casanova wrote:
> On Wed, 23 Jun 2021 17:48:35 -0400, the following appeared
> in talk.origins, posted by Dale <da...@dalekelly.org>:
>
>> On 6/22/2021 2:57 PM, peter2...@gmail.com wrote:
>>
>>> ... that really belong in talk.origins from sci.bio.paleontology ...
>>
>> some people post paleontology here but don't like creationism there
>>
> Think that might be because it's off-topic there?
>>

double standard?

[*Hemidactylus*]

sbp is under the sci. umbrella which means nothing now. It meant something
when sci.bio.evolution was extant and had an active moderator. But
talk.origins was a means of migrating the kooky stuff away from the sci.
groups.

[peter2...@gmail.com]

On Wednesday, June 23, 2021 at 5:51:06 PM UTC-4, Dale wrote:
> On 6/22/2021 2:57 PM, peter2...@gmail.com wrote:
> > ... that really belong in talk.origins from sci.bio.paleontology ...
>
> some people post paleontology here but don't like creationism there

In fact, the way s.b.p. showed up in the preceding version of Google Groups, there was
a statement that it was not for discussing creationism. But Harshman brought creationism
into it loud and clear when he posted the following allegation about "Evolution News & Science Today":

"But nobody should take anything published on EN&V seriously."

This was an indirect attack on the author of an article there: Günter Bechly, author of
an article about Dickinsonia, an enigmatic fossil organism from the Ediacaran period, the last pre-Cambrian period.
Harshman was aggressively implying that Günter Bechly was a creationist, but when I looked at what
Harshman had written about him in another post, the obvious conclusion was that Harshman was
indulging in guilt by association. I made that clear in the following post:

https://groups.google.com/g/sci.bio.paleontology/c/y_NKDdJixf8/m/JSr6dSQkAgAJ

Re: Dickinsonia is very likely an animal

Jun 17, 2021, 9:51:26 PM (6 days ago)

I'll be reposting it to this thread. For more lighthearted fare, you might enjoy the following post,
where I showed about an hour ago how John Harshman and Erik Simpson tied themselves in knots in just three lines,
two in a post by John and one in Erik's reply to it.

https://groups.google.com/g/sci.bio.paleontology/c/y_NKDdJixf8/m/3wH2-Z_4AwAJ

Re: Dickinsonia is very likely an animal

Peter Nyikos

PS I saw just now how you asked Casanova, the close ally of both Harshman and Simpson, about a double standard.
You can see all the evidence you need in the first post I've linked up there.

[Dale]

okay, I guess paleontology kooky stuff fits

[peter2...@gmail.com]

It didn't work. Harshman got downright kooky about creationism in s.b.p., as you
would know if you had followed this very thread. I gave a synopsis to Dale just now
and he can see the double standard. In fact my post where I did this showed up here just as I
was typing the preceding sentence.

I also told Dale about a post I did there just today, an amusing one from his and my POV, but the humor was
lost on you when you replied to it. I suggested at the end of my reply to you just now that
you might not want to linger there any longer -- but not for the reason Erik gave you.

Just so readers know what I am talking about, here is a link to the post in which I
replied to you just now:

https://groups.google.com/g/sci.bio.paleontology/c/y_NKDdJixf8/m/11pY_nj9AwAJ

[peter2...@gmail.com]

Wrong. The kooky stuff is all off-topic, as I told you. And Hemidactylus added his own kookiness
about ten minutes BEFORE he did the post to which you are replying. Here is an excerpt
from my reply to the post where he did it, with just enough context.

________________________________ excerpt _______________________________________

On Wednesday, June 23, 2021 at 9:20:16 PM UTC-4, *Hemidactylus* wrote:
> Peter Nyikos <peter2...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > On Wednesday, June 23, 2021 at 3:32:22 PM UTC-4, John Harshman wrote:
> >> Sorry, I was in Iceland for 2 weeks.
> >
> > If so, all the posts you did this month were done from Iceland, beginning
> > with one on Jun 12, 2021, 5:08:53 AM.
> > And you neglected to tell us anything about any internet downtime or power outage before you
> > played dumb with your next comment:
> >
> >
> >> What are you on about now?
> >
> > Why ask? The obvious conclusion from what you said and didn't say in your
> > preceding sentence is that you couldn't see what went on because you
> > didn't want to know what was going on. Why start now?
> >
> > And I told Erik Simpson about the highly probable reason you didn't want
> > to see what was going on, right in the post to which you are replying. Are you too
> > scrolling-impaired to look at it now?
> >
> > And Erik made a monkey out of himself with the reply he did to your disingenuous question,
> > falsely accusing me of drifting further and further of touch -- when he
> > couldn't even figure out that you had to be doing all your June posts from Iceland.
> >
> >
> > The only sensible thing Erik has done here after June 17 was to wish me
> > to have fun with Glenn.
> > When Glenn sees what bumbling and fumbling the two of you have done in
> > just two posts (one apiece), he's bound to have a lot of fun, and it'll be fun for me too.
> >
> > But you'll both hate both of us all the more for that, won't you?
> >
> So this group isn’t about discussing paleontology is it?

It is, and I've been intending to start a paleontology thread on Dickinsonia,
but Harshman kept poisoning the wells by aggressively insinuating that the author
of one of the articles that I'd be copying facts --- data, not reasoning -- from was
a creationist.

> Unless instead
> paleontology is the practice of unearthing and classifying interpersonal
> vendettas of old vintage.

I take it anything before June 19, 2021 is "old vintage," judging from the post to
which you are replying. :)


> Is that the tale of two newgroups pinned?

Yes, and it only has to do with posts after June 11, 2021. Do you ever stop and think
before you try to put me in a bad light? As here:

> The
> actual subject matter is occasional backdrop for habitual name drop
> chatter.

Where do you see more than one of that above? Erik even avoided dropping Glenn's name,
instead referring to him as "a troll" who "derailed" a thread. The "derailing"
took the form of Glenn being as sensitive to "insults" as Erik himself was,
right in the text that you have preserved above, going back through
each of 5 (five) successive posts.


> Why didn’t Harshman notify everyone of his travel plans?

He didn't need to -- it was irrelevant. And you'd know that, if you had actually bothered
to read the post to which you are replying.


I suggest you not linger any longer in this thread, lest you make as big a monkey
of yourself as Erik made of himself in his reply to Harshman's post. I'd say
you are more than halfway there already.


Peter Nyikos

PS Don't take Erik's silliness about this group being "almost dead," etc. seriously.
He's just suffering from a temporary case of sour grapes.

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

[Bob Casanova]

On Wed, 23 Jun 2021 21:17:26 -0400, the following appeared

in talk.origins, posted by Dale <da...@dalekelly.org>:

>On 6/23/2021 7:38 PM, Bob Casanova wrote:
>> On Wed, 23 Jun 2021 17:48:35 -0400, the following appeared
>> in talk.origins, posted by Dale <da...@dalekelly.org>:
>>
>>> On 6/22/2021 2:57 PM, peter2...@gmail.com wrote:
>>>
>>>> ... that really belong in talk.origins from sci.bio.paleontology ...
>>>
>>> some people post paleontology here but don't like creationism there
>>>
>> Think that might be because it's off-topic there?
>>>
>
>double standard?
>

In what way? Creationism has nothing to do with
paleontology.

[jillery]

You read about history in history class.
You read about science in science class.
Is that a double standard?

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

[peter2...@gmail.com]

On Thursday, June 24, 2021 at 1:31:06 AM UTC-4, jillery wrote:
> On Wed, 23 Jun 2021 21:17:26 -0400, Dale <da...@dalekelly.org> wrote:
>
> >On 6/23/2021 7:38 PM, Bob Casanova wrote:
> >> On Wed, 23 Jun 2021 17:48:35 -0400, the following appeared
> >> in talk.origins, posted by Dale <da...@dalekelly.org>:
> >>
> >>> On 6/22/2021 2:57 PM, peter2...@gmail.com wrote:
> >>>
> >>>> ... that really belong in talk.origins from sci.bio.paleontology ...
> >>>
> >>> some people post paleontology here but don't like creationism there
> >>>
> >> Think that might be because it's off-topic there?
> >>>
> >
> >double standard?

Absolutely. Bob Casanova's buddy John Harshman talked aggressively about
creationists in sci.bio.paleontology, using guilt by association to smear both
an online magazine and a writer of an article therein as creationist. And
nobody, including you, seems to have a problem with that.

Not even Erik Simpson has any problem with that. OTOH he got irate about how hospitable
I was to talk.origins "exiles" in sci.bio.paleontology during the last long downtime of Beagle.
I let them know that I would have no objection to talk about creationism and creationists
as long as the downtime lasted.

There's a double standard if there ever was one: intolerant of the topic under extraordinary
circumstances, but having no problem with it while talk.origins is going great guns.

> You read about history in history class.
> You read about science in science class.
> Is that a double standard?

You make it sound like you never had a college education: they have courses there about the history of science,
and also about historical sciences, of which a big chunk of paleontology is one and a big chunk of
anthropology is another. Also a hefty part of geology is about the geological history of the earth.

No wonder you prefer astronomy and cosmology to biology and OOL and evolution: they
aren't as "messy" as these three topics, which are more central to what goes on in talk.origins.


Peter Nyikos

[peter2...@gmail.com]

I have documented my reasons for calling Harshman's insinuations about Bechly being a creationist
"guilt by association." Here is the post where I showed how weak Harshman's case was.

_________________________excerpt _______________________________________________

On Sunday, June 13, 2021 at 3:46:42 AM UTC-4, John Harshman wrote:
> On 6/12/21 8:54 AM, erik simpson wrote:
> > On Saturday, June 12, 2021 at 2:08:53 AM UTC-7, John Harshman wrote:
> >> On 6/11/21 10:02 PM, erik simpson wrote:

> >>> I do not dismiss Bechly's review out of hand, but I don't find it useful, and it's pretty obvious from both
> >>> its tone and its provinance where his sympathies lie.

Not obvious at all, unless John is quoting a highly non-representative portion of his manifesto.

Keep reading.

> >> It's actually hard to tell where his sympathies lie. He's said on
> >> occasion that there is very good evidence for universal common descent,
> >> and yet he continually tries to cast doubt on any particular examples,
> >> including human relationships to chimps.

"human relationships to chimps" is too vague. It could include a belief that
chimps are descended from australopithecines. Heterodox, yet still within
scientific respectability.

>>> He's all over the place.

> >>
> >> But nobody should take anything published on EN&V seriously.

What I read in his manifesto suggests that you are being very narrow-minded.

Keep reading.

> > It's the first thing by Bechly that I've ever read. It struck me that he sounds like Glenn in casting doubt generally,
> > but a highly educated Glenn, if you can imagine it.
> >
> Try this:
> https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/t/questions-for-gunter-bechly-and-swamidass-on-unbelievable/13822
>
> Quoting from Bechly's web site manifesto:
>
> “I am convinced that the evidence strongly points towards a combination
> of old earth and common ancestry with saltational development.

IOW, not a creationist at all. Read Gould's chapter "Return of the hopeful monster"
(IIRC, in The Panda's Thumb) if you think saltation has anything to do with creationism.

> The latter I see as quantum computations based on entangled DNA that
> collapses into non-random adaptive macro-mutations, which because of
> their survival value populate and propagate more branches of the wave
> function. Intelligent Design is instantiated not by supernatural
> interventions within spacetime but by fine-tuned initial conditions,
> fine-tuned laws of nature, and a fine-tuned fitness landscape.

Sounds like the butterfly effect. Not a hint of creationism here.

> The fitness landscape of evolutionary biology is a discernible set of
> alternative possibilities and as such a subset of Hilbert space of the
> universal wave function in quantum mechanics.

Speculative, but no more speculative than some of the ideas that the physicist/cosmologist
Steven Carlip takes seriously. You could ask Erik Simpson about them if you want to know more:
he seems to think the world of Steven Carlip.


> Due to entanglement the
> wave function of the universe represents a single integrated information
> state that is equivalent with a universal consciousness (based on
> Tononi’s IIT). Universal wave function (platonic abstract objects) and
> universal mind (consciousness) are co-dependent in a strange loop: The
> universal wave function “lives” in the universal mind, and the universal
> mind is based on the integrated information of this wave function. This
> unifies Neoplatonism with objective (monistic) idealism and
> (panen)theism. Spacetime emerges from entangled quantum information and
> thus from universal consciousness.”

This looks like a lot of what goes on in the Sadhu Sanga group. "swamidass" [see url above] seems to ring a bell.
Their leaders think of the Vedas with the same reverence as evangelical Christians think of the Bible.

But not all evangelical Christians are creationists, and although Bechly may have
absorbed some things from Sadhu Sanga, it doesn't mean he subscribes to all the ideas
of the people who run the group.

You've led me on a wild goose chase by letting me think Bechly is a creationist, John.

He may very well have published in Evolution News because he found a sympathetic ear
for some of his ideas, and will take any reasonable opportunity to disseminate them.
EN editors might like the way he does not go along with some of the
prevailing "conventional wisdom" about biota.


Who knows, he might publish an article in Evolution News challenging the "consensus"
that birds are dinosaurs.

Be afraid. Be very afraid. :-) :-)

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

https://groups.google.com/g/sci.bio.paleontology/c/y_NKDdJixf8/m/JSr6dSQkAgAJ

Jun 17, 2021, 9:51:26 PM

Re: Dickinsonia is very likely an animal

Peter Nyikos

[jillery]

On Thu, 24 Jun 2021 11:12:25 -0700 (PDT), "peter2...@gmail.com"
<peter2...@gmail.com> wrote:

>On Thursday, June 24, 2021 at 1:31:06 AM UTC-4, jillery wrote:
>> On Wed, 23 Jun 2021 21:17:26 -0400, Dale <da...@dalekelly.org> wrote:
>>
>> >On 6/23/2021 7:38 PM, Bob Casanova wrote:
>> >> On Wed, 23 Jun 2021 17:48:35 -0400, the following appeared
>> >> in talk.origins, posted by Dale <da...@dalekelly.org>:
>> >>
>> >>> On 6/22/2021 2:57 PM, peter2...@gmail.com wrote:
>> >>>

>> >>>> ... that really belong in talk.origins from sci.bio.paleontology ....

>> >>>
>> >>> some people post paleontology here but don't like creationism there
>> >>>
>> >> Think that might be because it's off-topic there?
>> >>>
>> >
>> >double standard?
>
>Absolutely. Bob Casanova's buddy John Harshman talked aggressively about
>creationists in sci.bio.paleontology, using guilt by association to smear both
>an online magazine and a writer of an article therein as creationist. And
>nobody, including you, seems to have a problem with that.
>
>Not even Erik Simpson has any problem with that. OTOH he got irate about how hospitable
>I was to talk.origins "exiles" in sci.bio.paleontology during the last long downtime of Beagle.
>I let them know that I would have no objection to talk about creationism and creationists
>as long as the downtime lasted.

If only your comments applied to Dale's question, instead of once
again compulsively going off the rails with your mindless spam of
pointless personal attacks.

>There's a double standard if there ever was one: intolerant of the topic under extraordinary
>circumstances, but having no problem with it while talk.origins is going great guns.
>
>
>> You read about history in history class.
>> You read about science in science class.
>> Is that a double standard?
>
>You make it sound like you never had a college education: they have courses there about the history of science,
>and also about historical sciences, of which a big chunk of paleontology is one and a big chunk of
>anthropology is another. Also a hefty part of geology is about the geological history of the earth.
>
>No wonder you prefer astronomy and cosmology to biology and OOL and evolution: they
>aren't as "messy" as these three topics, which are more central to what goes on in talk.origins.

If I was a student in one of your classes, and another student
repeatedly interrupted your lecture with questions and comments about
the 100 Years War, I would absolutely expect you to remind said
student of the topic of the class, and strongly encourage said student
to refrain from wasting everybody's time. And if you did not, I
would, and then bring up with your department head your failure to
keep order in the classroom.

[John Harshman]

On 6/24/21 11:59 AM, peter2...@gmail.com wrote:
> I have documented my reasons for calling Harshman's insinuations about Bechly being a creationist
> "guilt by association." Here is the post where I showed how weak Harshman's case was.
>
> _________________________excerpt _______________________________________________
>
> On Sunday, June 13, 2021 at 3:46:42 AM UTC-4, John Harshman wrote:
>> On 6/12/21 8:54 AM, erik simpson wrote:
>>> On Saturday, June 12, 2021 at 2:08:53 AM UTC-7, John Harshman wrote:
>>>> On 6/11/21 10:02 PM, erik simpson wrote:
>
>>>>> I do not dismiss Bechly's review out of hand, but I don't find it useful, and it's pretty obvious from both
>>>>> its tone and its provinance where his sympathies lie.
>
> Not obvious at all, unless John is quoting a highly non-representative portion of his manifesto.
>
> Keep reading.
>
>>>> It's actually hard to tell where his sympathies lie. He's said on
>>>> occasion that there is very good evidence for universal common descent,
>>>> and yet he continually tries to cast doubt on any particular examples,
>>>> including human relationships to chimps.
>
> "human relationships to chimps" is too vague. It could include a belief that
> chimps are descended from australopithecines. Heterodox, yet still within
> scientific respectability.

You keep misunderstanding simple and, I would think, obvious sentences.
I mean he casts doubt on whether humans are related to chimps by
descent, not on particular scenarios of relationship.

>>>> He's all over the place.
>>>>
>>>> But nobody should take anything published on EN&V seriously.
>
> What I read in his manifesto suggests that you are being very narrow-minded.
>
> Keep reading.
>
>>> It's the first thing by Bechly that I've ever read. It struck me that he sounds like Glenn in casting doubt generally,
>>> but a highly educated Glenn, if you can imagine it.
>>>
>> Try this:
>> https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/t/questions-for-gunter-bechly-and-swamidass-on-unbelievable/13822
>>
>> Quoting from Bechly's web site manifesto:
>>
>> “I am convinced that the evidence strongly points towards a combination
>> of old earth and common ancestry with saltational development.
>
> IOW, not a creationist at all.

Yes, that's not a creationist statement. I'm contrasting that with his
frequent attacks on common descent elsewhere.

> Read Gould's chapter "Return of the hopeful monster"
> (IIRC, in The Panda's Thumb) if you think saltation has anything to do with creationism.
>
>> The latter I see as quantum computations based on entangled DNA that
>> collapses into non-random adaptive macro-mutations, which because of
>> their survival value populate and propagate more branches of the wave
>> function. Intelligent Design is instantiated not by supernatural
>> interventions within spacetime but by fine-tuned initial conditions,
>> fine-tuned laws of nature, and a fine-tuned fitness landscape.
>
> Sounds like the butterfly effect. Not a hint of creationism here.

Agreed. That's not why I posted it. But it sounds like something a lot
weirder than the butterfly effect, which has nothing to do with quantum
computations or "entangled DNA", whatever that is.

>> The fitness landscape of evolutionary biology is a discernible set of
>> alternative possibilities and as such a subset of Hilbert space of the
>> universal wave function in quantum mechanics.
>
> Speculative, but no more speculative than some of the ideas that the physicist/cosmologist
> Steven Carlip takes seriously. You could ask Erik Simpson about them if you want to know more:
> he seems to think the world of Steven Carlip.

I for one have no idea what it means. How about you?

>> Due to entanglement the
>> wave function of the universe represents a single integrated information
>> state that is equivalent with a universal consciousness (based on
>> Tononi’s IIT). Universal wave function (platonic abstract objects) and
>> universal mind (consciousness) are co-dependent in a strange loop: The
>> universal wave function “lives” in the universal mind, and the universal
>> mind is based on the integrated information of this wave function. This
>> unifies Neoplatonism with objective (monistic) idealism and
>> (panen)theism. Spacetime emerges from entangled quantum information and
>> thus from universal consciousness.”
>
> This looks like a lot of what goes on in the Sadhu Sanga group. "swamidass" [see url above] seems to ring a bell.
> Their leaders think of the Vedas with the same reverence as evangelical Christians think of the Bible.

That has nothing to do with Joshua Swamidass, I assure you.

> But not all evangelical Christians are creationists, and although Bechly may have
> absorbed some things from Sadhu Sanga, it doesn't mean he subscribes to all the ideas
> of the people who run the group.
>
> You've led me on a wild goose chase by letting me think Bechly is a creationist, John.

Never said he was. I merely said it's curious that he attacks common
descent so often, given that he talks in his manifesto about all the
evidence for it.

> He may very well have published in Evolution News because he found a sympathetic ear
> for some of his ideas, and will take any reasonable opportunity to disseminate them.
> EN editors might like the way he does not go along with some of the
> prevailing "conventional wisdom" about biota.

No, he's a big wheel in the ID movement, one of the few who actually
publishes real science in real journals. Perhaps the only paleontologist
other than Kurt Wise.

> Who knows, he might publish an article in Evolution News challenging the "consensus"
> that birds are dinosaurs.

He might. He seems to challenge just about any ideas of evolution. But
why the scare quotes? It *is* the consensus.

[peter2...@gmail.com]

On Thursday, June 24, 2021 at 6:16:06 PM UTC-4, John Harshman wrote:
> On 6/24/21 11:59 AM, peter2...@gmail.com wrote:
> > I have documented my reasons for calling Harshman's insinuations about Bechly being a creationist
> > "guilt by association." Here is the post where I showed how weak Harshman's case was.
> >
> > _________________________excerpt _______________________________________________
> >
> > On Sunday, June 13, 2021 at 3:46:42 AM UTC-4, John Harshman wrote:
> >> On 6/12/21 8:54 AM, erik simpson wrote:
> >>> On Saturday, June 12, 2021 at 2:08:53 AM UTC-7, John Harshman wrote:
> >>>> On 6/11/21 10:02 PM, erik simpson wrote:
> >
> >>>>> I do not dismiss Bechly's review out of hand, but I don't find it useful, and it's pretty obvious from both
> >>>>> its tone and its provinance where his sympathies lie.
> >
> > Not obvious at all, unless John is quoting a highly non-representative portion of his manifesto.
> >
> > Keep reading.
> >
> >>>> It's actually hard to tell where his sympathies lie. He's said on
> >>>> occasion that there is very good evidence for universal common descent,
> >>>> and yet he continually tries to cast doubt on any particular examples,
> >>>> including human relationships to chimps.
> >
> > "human relationships to chimps" is too vague. It could include a belief that
> > chimps are descended from australopithecines. Heterodox, yet still within
> > scientific respectability.

And there are a number of respectable scientists who take the hypothesis seriously,
without necessarily endorsing it. One is the utter dearth of chimp fossils more than
a million years old, when last I visited this theme.

> You keep misunderstanding simple and, I would think, obvious sentences.

It's amazing how, on the one hand, you have claimed thousands of times
that I am not being clear enough [a claim that Erik Simpson turned into an outright scam]
and on the other hand, to imagine that the specific meaning of a highly
ambiguous sentence must be obvious to me.

Worse yet, you didn't take my perfectly reasonable example as a sign that
maybe, just maybe, you weren't clear enough and should try to explain
yourself unambiguously.

You did try, and fairly well, but you really should have left out your baseless preamble.

> I mean he casts doubt on whether humans are related to chimps by
> descent, not on particular scenarios of relationship.

What do you mean by "related to chimps by descent"?
Did Bechly actually claim that chimps and ourselves have no common ancestor,
not even one as far back as the Mesozoic era???

> >>>> He's all over the place.
> >>>>
> >>>> But nobody should take anything published on EN&V seriously.
> >
> > What I read in his manifesto suggests that you are being very narrow-minded.
> >
> > Keep reading.
> >
> >>> It's the first thing by Bechly that I've ever read. It struck me that he sounds like Glenn in casting doubt generally,
> >>> but a highly educated Glenn, if you can imagine it.
> >>>
> >> Try this:
> >> https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/t/questions-for-gunter-bechly-and-swamidass-on-unbelievable/13822
> >>
> >> Quoting from Bechly's web site manifesto:
> >>
> >> “I am convinced that the evidence strongly points towards a combination
> >> of old earth and common ancestry with saltational development.
> >
> > IOW, not a creationist at all.

> Yes, that's not a creationist statement. I'm contrasting that with his
> frequent attacks on common descent elsewhere.

How about documenting one, for a change?

> > Read Gould's chapter "Return of the hopeful monster"
> > (IIRC, in The Panda's Thumb) if you think saltation has anything to do with creationism.
> >
> >> The latter I see as quantum computations based on entangled DNA that
> >> collapses into non-random adaptive macro-mutations, which because of
> >> their survival value populate and propagate more branches of the wave
> >> function. Intelligent Design is instantiated not by supernatural
> >> interventions within spacetime but by fine-tuned initial conditions,
> >> fine-tuned laws of nature, and a fine-tuned fitness landscape.

By the way, the last sentence sounds like something Kenneth Miller, or
even Mark Isaak, might write.

> > Sounds like the butterfly effect. Not a hint of creationism here.

> Agreed. That's not why I posted it. But it sounds like something a lot
> weirder than the butterfly effect, which has nothing to do with quantum
> computations or "entangled DNA", whatever that is.

Maybe if you found where he actually expounded on it, you could figure out what he is referring to.

> >> The fitness landscape of evolutionary biology is a discernible set of
> >> alternative possibilities and as such a subset of Hilbert space of the
> >> universal wave function in quantum mechanics.
> >
> > Speculative, but no more speculative than some of the ideas that the physicist/cosmologist
> > Steven Carlip takes seriously. You could ask Erik Simpson about them if you want to know more:
> > he seems to think the world of Steven Carlip.

> I for one have no idea what it means. How about you?

Hilbert space is so vast, it can include descriptions of infinite varieties of phenomena.
Have you never heard that its use is indispensable for quantum mechanics?
I haven't studied the universal wave function, though, so I can't help you there.

> >> Due to entanglement the
> >> wave function of the universe represents a single integrated information
> >> state that is equivalent with a universal consciousness (based on
> >> Tononi’s IIT). Universal wave function (platonic abstract objects) and
> >> universal mind (consciousness) are co-dependent in a strange loop: The
> >> universal wave function “lives” in the universal mind, and the universal
> >> mind is based on the integrated information of this wave function. This
> >> unifies Neoplatonism with objective (monistic) idealism and
> >> (panen)theism. Spacetime emerges from entangled quantum information and
> >> thus from universal consciousness.”
> >
> > This looks like a lot of what goes on in the Sadhu Sanga group. "swamidass" [see url above] seems to ring a bell.
> > Their leaders think of the Vedas with the same reverence as evangelical Christians think of the Bible.

> That has nothing to do with Joshua Swamidass, I assure you.

Or Deepak Chopra? He has quite a bit of influence on the leaders of Sadhu Sanga,
but I haven't figured out why.

> > But not all evangelical Christians are creationists, and although Bechly may have
> > absorbed some things from Sadhu Sanga, it doesn't mean he subscribes to all the ideas
> > of the people who run the group.
> >
> > You've led me on a wild goose chase by letting me think Bechly is a creationist, John.

> Never said he was.

Then what the hell did you mean by claiming you could read between the
lines of anything in EN&V, and discern where the sympathies of people who publish there lie?
You even insulted me by baselessly claiming that I bend over backwards to avoid seeing it.

The starting point for that kafluffle was your claim, near the beginning of this post,

"But nobody should take anything published on EN&V seriously."

> I merely said it's curious that he attacks common
> descent so often, given that he talks in his manifesto about all the
> evidence for it.

Again, how about some documentation, or at least a clear description of his attacks?
I can only go on the things I see.

> > He may very well have published in Evolution News because he found a sympathetic ear
> > for some of his ideas, and will take any reasonable opportunity to disseminate them.
> > EN editors might like the way he does not go along with some of the
> > prevailing "conventional wisdom" about biota.

> No, he's a big wheel in the ID movement, one of the few who actually
> publishes real science in real journals. Perhaps the only paleontologist
> other than Kurt Wise.

In what way is he a "big wheel"? Writing a bunch of treatises for Evolution News does
not equate to being one. Analogy: being a leading mathematical researcher does not make
one a big wheel in the American Mathematical Society.

> > Who knows, he might publish an article in Evolution News challenging the "consensus"
> > that birds are dinosaurs.

> He might. He seems to challenge just about any ideas of evolution. But
> why the scare quotes? It *is* the consensus.

You have a broader definition of "consensus" than I do. There is a consensus on
the existence of continental drift, for example, because the evidence for it is
overwhelming in a way that the evidence for birds being theropod dinosaurs is not.
It certainly wasn't overwhelming when the "big wheel" Henry Gee pompously declared, "The debate is over."


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

PS I'm glad you were so flame-free (almost) in this post. It's going to really pain me to have
to set you to rights in reply to the post that I piggybacked this one on. Tomorrow, time permitting.

[John Harshman]

On 6/24/21 6:48 PM, peter2...@gmail.com wrote:
> On Thursday, June 24, 2021 at 6:16:06 PM UTC-4, John Harshman wrote:
>> On 6/24/21 11:59 AM, peter2...@gmail.com wrote:
>>> I have documented my reasons for calling Harshman's insinuations about Bechly being a creationist
>>> "guilt by association." Here is the post where I showed how weak Harshman's case was.
>>>
>>> _________________________excerpt _______________________________________________
>>>
>>> On Sunday, June 13, 2021 at 3:46:42 AM UTC-4, John Harshman wrote:
>>>> On 6/12/21 8:54 AM, erik simpson wrote:
>>>>> On Saturday, June 12, 2021 at 2:08:53 AM UTC-7, John Harshman wrote:
>>>>>> On 6/11/21 10:02 PM, erik simpson wrote:
>>>
>>>>>>> I do not dismiss Bechly's review out of hand, but I don't find it useful, and it's pretty obvious from both
>>>>>>> its tone and its provinance where his sympathies lie.
>>>
>>> Not obvious at all, unless John is quoting a highly non-representative portion of his manifesto.
>>>
>>> Keep reading.
>>>
>>>>>> It's actually hard to tell where his sympathies lie. He's said on
>>>>>> occasion that there is very good evidence for universal common descent,
>>>>>> and yet he continually tries to cast doubt on any particular examples,
>>>>>> including human relationships to chimps.
>>>
>>> "human relationships to chimps" is too vague. It could include a belief that
>>> chimps are descended from australopithecines. Heterodox, yet still within
>>> scientific respectability.
>
> And there are a number of respectable scientists who take the hypothesis seriously,
> without necessarily endorsing it. One is the utter dearth of chimp fossils more than
> a million years old, when last I visited this theme.

Why harp on this when it's clearly not relevant. At least, if that
wasn't clear before it should be now.

>> You keep misunderstanding simple and, I would think, obvious sentences.
>
> It's amazing how, on the one hand, you have claimed thousands of times
> that I am not being clear enough [a claim that Erik Simpson turned into an outright scam]
> and on the other hand, to imagine that the specific meaning of a highly
> ambiguous sentence must be obvious to me.
>
> Worse yet, you didn't take my perfectly reasonable example as a sign that
> maybe, just maybe, you weren't clear enough and should try to explain
> yourself unambiguously.
>
> You did try, and fairly well, but you really should have left out your baseless preamble.
>
>> I mean he casts doubt on whether humans are related to chimps by
>> descent, not on particular scenarios of relationship.
>
> What do you mean by "related to chimps by descent"?
> Did Bechly actually claim that chimps and ourselves have no common ancestor,
> not even one as far back as the Mesozoic era???

No, he never actually makes claims. He just doubts claims. He debunks
evidence.

>>>>>> He's all over the place.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> But nobody should take anything published on EN&V seriously.
>>>
>>> What I read in his manifesto suggests that you are being very narrow-minded.
>>>
>>> Keep reading.
>>>
>>>>> It's the first thing by Bechly that I've ever read. It struck me that he sounds like Glenn in casting doubt generally,
>>>>> but a highly educated Glenn, if you can imagine it.
>>>>>
>>>> Try this:
>>>> https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/t/questions-for-gunter-bechly-and-swamidass-on-unbelievable/13822
>>>>
>>>> Quoting from Bechly's web site manifesto:
>>>>
>>>> “I am convinced that the evidence strongly points towards a combination
>>>> of old earth and common ancestry with saltational development.
>>>
>>> IOW, not a creationist at all.
>
>> Yes, that's not a creationist statement. I'm contrasting that with his
>> frequent attacks on common descent elsewhere.
>
> How about documenting one, for a change?

I'll have to look. I'll get back to you.

>>> Read Gould's chapter "Return of the hopeful monster"
>>> (IIRC, in The Panda's Thumb) if you think saltation has anything to do with creationism.
>>>
>>>> The latter I see as quantum computations based on entangled DNA that
>>>> collapses into non-random adaptive macro-mutations, which because of
>>>> their survival value populate and propagate more branches of the wave
>>>> function. Intelligent Design is instantiated not by supernatural
>>>> interventions within spacetime but by fine-tuned initial conditions,
>>>> fine-tuned laws of nature, and a fine-tuned fitness landscape.
>
> By the way, the last sentence sounds like something Kenneth Miller, or
> even Mark Isaak, might write.

It doesn't. Why would yo think so?

>>> Sounds like the butterfly effect. Not a hint of creationism here.
>
>> Agreed. That's not why I posted it. But it sounds like something a lot
>> weirder than the butterfly effect, which has nothing to do with quantum
>> computations or "entangled DNA", whatever that is.
>
> Maybe if you found where he actually expounded on it, you could figure out what he is referring to.

That *is* where he actually expounded on it.

>>>> The fitness landscape of evolutionary biology is a discernible set of
>>>> alternative possibilities and as such a subset of Hilbert space of the
>>>> universal wave function in quantum mechanics.
>>>
>>> Speculative, but no more speculative than some of the ideas that the physicist/cosmologist
>>> Steven Carlip takes seriously. You could ask Erik Simpson about them if you want to know more:
>>> he seems to think the world of Steven Carlip.
>
>> I for one have no idea what it means. How about you?
>
> Hilbert space is so vast, it can include descriptions of infinite varieties of phenomena.
> Have you never heard that its use is indispensable for quantum mechanics?
> I haven't studied the universal wave function, though, so I can't help you there.

So you don't have any idea either. We are agreed.

>>>> Due to entanglement the
>>>> wave function of the universe represents a single integrated information
>>>> state that is equivalent with a universal consciousness (based on
>>>> Tononi’s IIT). Universal wave function (platonic abstract objects) and
>>>> universal mind (consciousness) are co-dependent in a strange loop: The
>>>> universal wave function “lives” in the universal mind, and the universal
>>>> mind is based on the integrated information of this wave function. This
>>>> unifies Neoplatonism with objective (monistic) idealism and
>>>> (panen)theism. Spacetime emerges from entangled quantum information and
>>>> thus from universal consciousness.”
>>>
>>> This looks like a lot of what goes on in the Sadhu Sanga group. "swamidass" [see url above] seems to ring a bell.
>>> Their leaders think of the Vedas with the same reverence as evangelical Christians think of the Bible.
>
>> That has nothing to do with Joshua Swamidass, I assure you.
>
> Or Deepak Chopra? He has quite a bit of influence on the leaders of Sadhu Sanga,
> but I haven't figured out why.

It does sound like Deepak Chopra. Are you just supposing that
Indian-sounding names ought to go together?

>>> But not all evangelical Christians are creationists, and although Bechly may have
>>> absorbed some things from Sadhu Sanga, it doesn't mean he subscribes to all the ideas
>>> of the people who run the group.
>>>
>>> You've led me on a wild goose chase by letting me think Bechly is a creationist, John.
>
>> Never said he was.
>
> Then what the hell did you mean by claiming you could read between the
> lines of anything in EN&V, and discern where the sympathies of people who publish there lie?
> You even insulted me by baselessly claiming that I bend over backwards to avoid seeing it.

That's not an insult, and again, his statement says he isn't a
creationist, but he often acts like a creationist, as in the article
under discussion.

> The starting point for that kafluffle was your claim, near the beginning of this post,
>
> "But nobody should take anything published on EN&V seriously."

Certainly true. They're not explicitly creationist, but they're
anti-evolution. The general line of articles is that scientists are
idiots. Close enough.

>> I merely said it's curious that he attacks common
>> descent so often, given that he talks in his manifesto about all the
>> evidence for it.
>
> Again, how about some documentation, or at least a clear description of his attacks?
> I can only go on the things I see.

Have you tried looking for things he's written?

>>> He may very well have published in Evolution News because he found a sympathetic ear
>>> for some of his ideas, and will take any reasonable opportunity to disseminate them.
>>> EN editors might like the way he does not go along with some of the
>>> prevailing "conventional wisdom" about biota.
>
>> No, he's a big wheel in the ID movement, one of the few who actually
>> publishes real science in real journals. Perhaps the only paleontologist
>> other than Kurt Wise.
>
> In what way is he a "big wheel"? Writing a bunch of treatises for Evolution News does
> not equate to being one. Analogy: being a leading mathematical researcher does not make
> one a big wheel in the American Mathematical Society.

He's all over the place. Just because you don't habitually encounter
him, don't judge his position on that.

>>> Who knows, he might publish an article in Evolution News challenging the "consensus"
>>> that birds are dinosaurs.
>
>> He might. He seems to challenge just about any ideas of evolution. But
>> why the scare quotes? It *is* the consensus.
>
> You have a broader definition of "consensus" than I do. There is a consensus on
> the existence of continental drift, for example, because the evidence for it is
> overwhelming in a way that the evidence for birds being theropod dinosaurs is not.
> It certainly wasn't overwhelming when the "big wheel" Henry Gee pompously declared, "The debate is over."

The non-overwhelmingness of the evidence is strictly your opinion, and
your opinion is not relevant to whether there's a consensus. I don't
know what your definition is. But almost all scientists in relevant
disciplines agree. The holdouts are few. Isn't that consensus?

[John Harshman]

On 6/24/21 6:48 PM, peter2...@gmail.com wrote:

>>>>>> It's actually hard to tell where his sympathies lie. He's said on
>>>>>> occasion that there is very good evidence for universal common descent,
>>>>>> and yet he continually tries to cast doubt on any particular examples,
>>>>>> including human relationships to chimps.

>> I mean he casts doubt on whether humans are related to chimps by
>> descent, not on particular scenarios of relationship.
>
> What do you mean by "related to chimps by descent"?
> Did Bechly actually claim that chimps and ourselves have no common ancestor,
> not even one as far back as the Mesozoic era???

Here's a commentary on one of his statements on human evolution:

https://sensuouscurmudgeon.wordpress.com/2019/05/02/gunter-bechly-has-a-new-podcast/

What do you think?

[peter2...@gmail.com]

It badly undermines your case against Bechly. It's a hatchet job by someone who writes
like some of the worst anti-creationist fanatics in talk.origins. In fact, it reminds me of the
kind of writing I expect from the worst *creationists*. We are told something off the bat
that only someone with a low IQ would think is being supported by actual statements by Bechly
that are quoted in the article "Günter Bechly Says Darwinism Fails Again":

"Günter was claiming that a new humanoid species found in the Philippines somehow disproves the idea that we evolved from an ape-like ancestor."

Here's the link to that article:
https://sensuouscurmudgeon.wordpress.com/2019/04/19/gunter-bechly-says-darwinism-fails-again/

I defy you to find a statement anywhere in that article that even remotely supports what is said about it up there.

The writers of the two articles are ignorant, or prey on the general ignorance of anti-creationists, of the
fact that "Darwinism" and "neo-Darwinism," as used by Bechly, do NOT mean evolution, or common descent.
The parting shot in the article I've linked explicitly alleges that they do:

"So there you are, dear reader. According to Günter, Darwinism has failed once again. That means you can rejoice in the certain knowledge that you ain’t no kin to no monkey."

Instead, the terms refer to the theory whose two great pillars are individual mutations and competition WITHIN
populations.

Bechly, like any thinking scientist without an agenda, can see that there is nothing in these pillars that could possibly
have predicted e. g. that prokaryotes would give rise to eukaryotes, or that the lowly cell would evolve
into animals, or that some animals of the Cambrian would eventually give rise to a species that is
capable of plumbing the deepest mysteries of the universe. It cannot even give a "hindsight is 20-20"
explanation of how it could have happened.

Just look at some of the polemic spewed by the jerk who wrote the article that I have linked:

"What’s Günter claiming here? If we’re not yet certain about how Homo luzonensis got to the Philippines, then what? The intelligent designer — blessed be he! — created them there, with no ancestors? "

I'd love to see any anti-ID participant in talk.origins try to defend a Yes answer to the last question as something
Bechly believes, just based on what's in the linked article. I sure hope you don't try, John.

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

PS John, please try to find something written by a thinking scientist that supports your hypothesis that Bechly
is a closet creationist.

[John Harshman]

On 6/25/21 5:21 AM, peter2...@gmail.com wrote:
> On Thursday, June 24, 2021 at 10:36:07 PM UTC-4, John Harshman wrote:
>> On 6/24/21 6:48 PM, peter2...@gmail.com wrote:
>>>>>>>> It's actually hard to tell where his sympathies lie. He's said on
>>>>>>>> occasion that there is very good evidence for universal common descent,
>>>>>>>> and yet he continually tries to cast doubt on any particular examples,
>>>>>>>> including human relationships to chimps.
>>>> I mean he casts doubt on whether humans are related to chimps by
>>>> descent, not on particular scenarios of relationship.
>>>
>>> What do you mean by "related to chimps by descent"?
>>> Did Bechly actually claim that chimps and ourselves have no common ancestor,
>>> not even one as far back as the Mesozoic era???
>> Here's a commentary on one of his statements on human evolution:
>>
>> https://sensuouscurmudgeon.wordpress.com/2019/05/02/gunter-bechly-has-a-new-podcast/
>>
>> What do you think?
>
> It badly undermines your case against Bechly. It's a hatchet job by someone who writes
> like some of the worst anti-creationist fanatics in talk.origins.

Doesn't he in fact write rather like the typical article in Evolution
News, and rather like Bechly?

> In fact, it reminds me of the
> kind of writing I expect from the worst *creationists*. We are told something off the bat
> that only someone with a low IQ would think is being supported by actual statements by Bechly
> that are quoted in the article "Günter Bechly Says Darwinism Fails Again":

> "Günter was claiming that a new humanoid species found in the Philippines somehow disproves the idea that we evolved from an ape-like ancestor."
>
> Here's the link to that article:
> https://sensuouscurmudgeon.wordpress.com/2019/04/19/gunter-bechly-says-darwinism-fails-again/
>
> I defy you to find a statement anywhere in that article that even remotely supports what is said about it up there.

Shouldn't you be looking at the cited article by Bechly?

> The writers of the two articles are ignorant, or prey on the general ignorance of anti-creationists, of the
> fact that "Darwinism" and "neo-Darwinism," as used by Bechly, do NOT mean evolution, or common descent.
> The parting shot in the article I've linked explicitly alleges that they do:
>
> "So there you are, dear reader. According to Günter, Darwinism has failed once again. That means you can rejoice in the certain knowledge that you ain’t no kin to no monkey."
>
> Instead, the terms refer to the theory whose two great pillars are individual mutations and competition WITHIN
> populations.

I don't think that's what Bechly means by Darwinism.

> Bechly, like any thinking scientist without an agenda, can see that there is nothing in these pillars that could possibly
> have predicted e. g. that prokaryotes would give rise to eukaryotes, or that the lowly cell would evolve
> into animals, or that some animals of the Cambrian would eventually give rise to a species that is
> capable of plumbing the deepest mysteries of the universe. It cannot even give a "hindsight is 20-20"
> explanation of how it could have happened.

But Bechly does have an agenda, quite clearly. He's a saltationist. He
interprets everything through that lens. Have you read him on whale
evolution? And in some of his writings he seems to go farther than mere
saltationism.

> Just look at some of the polemic spewed by the jerk who wrote the article that I have linked:
>
> "What’s Günter claiming here? If we’re not yet certain about how Homo luzonensis got to the Philippines, then what? The intelligent designer — blessed be he! — created them there, with no ancestors?"
>
> I'd love to see any anti-ID participant in talk.origins try to defend a Yes answer to the last question as something
> Bechly believes, just based on what's in the linked article. I sure hope you don't try, John.

What do you think he means? Was it just an innocent question, or does he
imply that he knows the answer?

> PS John, please try to find something written by a thinking scientist that supports your hypothesis that Bechly
> is a closet creationist.

That isn't my hypothesis. I find it hard to reconcile different things
he has said. You asked for examples, and I have you one, which you could
easily have traced to Bechly's actual article. Did you? Note also that
Bechly's article was immediately seized upon by creationists as support
for their ideas. Bechly doesn't seem to have complained about that.

Again, I'm not saying he's a creationist. I'm saying that his behavior
is odd. One might speculate he's being careful not to upset the big
tent, but I don't really know why he frequently attacks support for
common descent.

[peter2...@gmail.com]

On Friday, June 25, 2021 at 9:26:05 AM UTC-4, John Harshman wrote:
> On 6/25/21 5:21 AM, peter2...@gmail.com wrote:
> > On Thursday, June 24, 2021 at 10:36:07 PM UTC-4, John Harshman wrote:
> >> On 6/24/21 6:48 PM, peter2...@gmail.com wrote:
> >>>>>>>> It's actually hard to tell where his sympathies lie. He's said on
> >>>>>>>> occasion that there is very good evidence for universal common descent,
> >>>>>>>> and yet he continually tries to cast doubt on any particular examples,
> >>>>>>>> including human relationships to chimps.

> >>>> I mean he casts doubt on whether humans are related to chimps by
> >>>> descent, not on particular scenarios of relationship.

Particular scenarios of relationship are all I see being doubted in the two Sensuous Curmudgeon
articles linked below. If what you wrote back here has any merit, John, I would have expected at least
one of the articles to support it, but neither does that. Both allege it though, in a way that is devoid of credibility.

> >>>
> >>> What do you mean by "related to chimps by descent"?
> >>> Did Bechly actually claim that chimps and ourselves have no common ancestor,
> >>> not even one as far back as the Mesozoic era???
> >> Here's a commentary on one of his statements on human evolution:
> >>
> >> https://sensuouscurmudgeon.wordpress.com/2019/05/02/gunter-bechly-has-a-new-podcast/
> >>
> >> What do you think?
> >
> > It badly undermines your case against Bechly. It's a hatchet job by someone who writes
> > like some of the worst anti-creationist fanatics in talk.origins.

> Doesn't he in fact write rather like the typical article in Evolution News,

I almost never read Evolution News. But the articles I've looked at in the last three years
aren't remotely like the rabid ranting of the article you've linked, or the article I linked below.

About a third of those articles are in the "Top Six" that Ron Okimoto links from time to time.
They aren't especially well written, but when I issued a challenge for
anyone to refute anything in them, there were no takers. Much to my surprise, Ron O
even washed his hands of ever trying to criticize their content, even though he had
posted all kinds of pejorative adjectives, etc. about them.

That's your cue to write, "That's not the way I recall it" without sticking your neck out a millimeter
to tell us how you recall it.


> and rather like Bechly?

With that attitude, I expect you to ignore the scientific content of Bechly's article on that Ediacaran enigma,
*Dickinsonia*, when I finally do my series of posts in s.b.p. about what kind of organism it is.
Your attitude is what has kept me delaying the OP for it, again and again.

> > In fact, it reminds me of the
> > kind of writing I expect from the worst *creationists*. We are told something off the bat
> > that only someone with a low IQ would think is being supported by actual statements by Bechly
> > that are quoted in the article "Günter Bechly Says Darwinism Fails Again":
>
> > "Günter was claiming that a new humanoid species found in the Philippines somehow disproves the idea that we evolved from an ape-like ancestor."
> >
> > Here's the link to that article:
> > https://sensuouscurmudgeon.wordpress.com/2019/04/19/gunter-bechly-says-darwinism-fails-again/
> >
> > I defy you to find a statement anywhere in that article that even remotely supports what is said about it up there.

You ducked the challenge:

> Shouldn't you be looking at the cited article by Bechly?

I read the things that that boilerplate of an article quoted from him. If whoever wrote it picked the wrong quotes
to forward the agenda of The Sensuous Curmudgeon, then theirs is the kind of article you should never want to use
to cast doubt on Bechly's commitment to common descent.

Yet you used it. What fraction of your reading outside talk.origins is NOT like those two articles?

> > The writers of the two articles are ignorant, or prey on the general ignorance of anti-creationists, of the
> > fact that "Darwinism" and "neo-Darwinism," as used by Bechly, do NOT mean evolution, or common descent.
> > The parting shot in the article I've linked explicitly alleges that they do:
> >
> > "So there you are, dear reader. According to Günter, Darwinism has failed once again. That means you can rejoice in the certain knowledge that you ain’t no kin to no monkey."
> >
> > Instead, the terms refer to the theory whose two great pillars are individual mutations and competition WITHIN
> > populations.

> I don't think that's what Bechly means by Darwinism.

Then you support the hypothesis that he is a closet creationist. In fact, the way you breezed past
the parting shot of the article without acknowledging its existence even suggests that you are sold on it.

> > Bechly, like any thinking scientist without an agenda, can see that there is nothing in these pillars that could possibly
> > have predicted e. g. that prokaryotes would give rise to eukaryotes, or that the lowly cell would evolve
> > into animals, or that some animals of the Cambrian would eventually give rise to a species that is
> > capable of plumbing the deepest mysteries of the universe. It cannot even give a "hindsight is 20-20"
> > explanation of how it could have happened.

> But Bechly does have an agenda, quite clearly. He's a saltationist.

That's a topic for another thread, having nothing to do with what we are discussing/debating here.
And so you have not addressed what I wrote about "any thinking scientist without an agenda,"
and I'll even strengthen it: those two pillars cannot support the claim that anything on the same level
of organization as chimps could be expected to emerge in less than 100 gigayears anywhere in our universe.
The pillars are just too rudimentary.

> He interprets everything through that lens.

The two articles we have linked put the lie to that claim. Have you read EITHER of them?

> Have you read him on whale
> evolution? And in some of his writings he seems to go farther than mere
> saltationism.

What are your sources for them? More articles from "The Sensuous Curmodgeon"?
Did you ever read an article by Bechly that wasn't filtered through an article by that kind of source?

> > Just look at some of the polemic spewed by the jerk who wrote the article that I have linked:
> >
> > "What’s Günter claiming here? If we’re not yet certain about how Homo luzonensis got to the Philippines, then what? The intelligent designer — blessed be he! — created them there, with no ancestors?"
> >
> > I'd love to see any anti-ID participant in talk.origins try to defend a Yes answer to the last question as something
> > Bechly believes, just based on what's in the linked article. I sure hope you don't try, John.

> What do you think he means? Was it just an innocent question, or does he
> imply that he knows the answer?

Get real. The parting shot I quoted above answers this unequivocally. Looks like your memory
can't take you from one two-liner to another when your sympathies lie with the prize jerk who wrote
the second article and gives no clue to his/her identity.

> > PS John, please try to find something written by a thinking scientist that supports your hypothesis that Bechly
> > is a closet creationist.

Looks like you don't even know of an article by a thinking scientist that does that.

> That isn't my hypothesis.

Yes, it is. See what I wrote above about it. [keyword: sold]

I've snipped the disingenuous things you wrote in support of your denial.
I want to see you try to extricate yourself from the corner into which you have painted yourself.


Peter Nyikos

PS Don't claim that I am trying to read your mind. I am just "putting two and two together" where
your public persona is concerned.

[John Harshman]

On 6/25/21 5:21 AM, peter2...@gmail.com wrote:

https://evolutionnews.org/2017/11/what-another-rewrite-of-the-human-origins-story-how-about-a-rethink-instead/

"So, that makes eight important discoveries this year that all were
announced as challenging established theories of human origins, thus
requiring a major rewrite of the story. One is tempted to ask the
question, how many more major rewritings do we have to endure until a
major rethinking is considered? The current consensus is refuted by more
and more evidence. But in spite of all this conflicting evidence, the
holy cow of Darwinian evolution of humans from ape-like ancestors may
not be questioned. Why? Because that would challenge the ruling
scientific paradigm of naturalism. God forbid!"

How do you interpret that?

[peter2...@gmail.com]

Once some of the context is restored, it becomes obvious that you are not supporting that
hypothesis, but only the totally distinct claim (which Bechly himself admits in his manifesto)
of Bechly being a saltationist -- and not an exceptionally bold one at that.

> https://evolutionnews.org/2017/11/what-another-rewrite-of-the-human-origins-story-how-about-a-rethink-instead/
>
> "So, that makes eight important discoveries this year that all were
> announced as challenging established theories of human origins, thus
> requiring a major rewrite of the story. One is tempted to ask the
> question, how many more major rewritings do we have to endure until a
> major rethinking is considered? The current consensus is refuted by more
> and more evidence. But in spite of all this conflicting evidence, the
> holy cow of Darwinian evolution of humans from ape-like ancestors may
> not be questioned. Why? Because that would challenge the ruling
> scientific paradigm of naturalism. God forbid!"
>
> How do you interpret that?

I interpret it as being cherry-picked. The paragraph *immediately* preceding it runs:

"The so-called “braided stream network model of reticulate gene flow,” favored by the authors of the new study, basically implies that all fossil Homo taxa belonged to the same interbreeding biospecies as modern Homo sapiens. That fits surprisingly well with the observation by critics of Darwinian evolution that the fossil record does not show a gradual development from apes to humans, but instead either clear apes or clear humans, with a distinct morphological gap between these two groups of fossils."

You have only painted yourself further into the corner. We have here, in the plain text of the above
paragraph, a strong case for the thesis that "Darwinian evolution," "Darwinism," "neo-Darwinism" etc.
have nothing to do with any denial of any really substantial chunk of common descent, the way
Bechly uses them.


Also, if you take the bother to read the rest of the article, you will see that it is NOTHING
like the rabid ranting in The Sensuous Curmudgeon that you seem to be perfectly happy with.

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

PS Although it seems that I have neutralized all the poisoning of the wells you
did in connection with Bechly's article on *Dickinsonia*, Friday is not a good time
to begin a thread on it. But come Monday, I hope to find the time to begin it -- in sci.bio.paleontology, of course.

[John Harshman]

Not sure what counts as "not an exceptionally bold one". And it isn't
clear what Bechly thinks would require saltation. As is the case with
progressive creationists, he's all over the map. Sometimes he cites
stasis within species as requiring saltation to explain, other times he
talks about the Cambrian explosion of phyla.

But my point wasn't about his actual beliefs but about his puzzling
actions, which often seem to deny evolution altogether, even if it were
saltation as some level or other.

>> https://evolutionnews.org/2017/11/what-another-rewrite-of-the-human-origins-story-how-about-a-rethink-instead/
>>
>> "So, that makes eight important discoveries this year that all were
>> announced as challenging established theories of human origins, thus
>> requiring a major rewrite of the story. One is tempted to ask the
>> question, how many more major rewritings do we have to endure until a
>> major rethinking is considered? The current consensus is refuted by more
>> and more evidence. But in spite of all this conflicting evidence, the
>> holy cow of Darwinian evolution of humans from ape-like ancestors may
>> not be questioned. Why? Because that would challenge the ruling
>> scientific paradigm of naturalism. God forbid!"
>>
>> How do you interpret that?
>
> I interpret it as being cherry-picked. The paragraph *immediately* preceding it runs:
>
> "The so-called “braided stream network model of reticulate gene flow,” favored by the authors of the new study, basically implies that all fossil Homo taxa belonged to the same interbreeding biospecies as modern Homo sapiens. That fits surprisingly well with the observation by critics of Darwinian evolution that the fossil record does not show a gradual development from apes to humans, but instead either clear apes or clear humans, with a distinct morphological gap between these two groups of fossils."

But that doesn't fit at all, does it? Reticulate evolution doesn't fit
saltation in any way, and there isn't a distinct gap between Homo and
other hominins -- or at least nobody can agree about where it lies. Nor
does that change the meaning of the following paragraph, where Bechly
encourages rejection of the idea that humans have apelike ancestors. How
do you make sense of that?

> You have only painted yourself further into the corner. We have here, in the plain text of the above
> paragraph, a strong case for the thesis that "Darwinian evolution," "Darwinism," "neo-Darwinism" etc.
> have nothing to do with any denial of any really substantial chunk of common descent, the way
> Bechly uses them.

Not at all. This isn't about Darwinism, etc., at all, but about the
pattern of relationships. Bechly is coming close to denying that we have
apelike ancestors. But if we don't, what is his alternative? He never
mentions one.

> Also, if you take the bother to read the rest of the article, you will see that it is NOTHING
> like the rabid ranting in The Sensuous Curmudgeon that you seem to be perfectly happy with.

I actually don't. That wasn't a quote-mine at all, and the only reason I
suppose that Bechly wasn't supporting separate creation of humans is
that he said in his manifesto that he agrees with common descent. What I
can't understand is how to reconcile those two bits of writing.

> PS Although it seems that I have neutralized all the poisoning of the wells you
> did in connection with Bechly's article on *Dickinsonia*, Friday is not a good time
> to begin a thread on it. But come Monday, I hope to find the time to begin it -- in sci.bio.paleontology, of course.

Please stop with the pretentiousness and delusions of grandeur. This
conversation will go better if you leave all that inside your head.

[peter2...@gmail.com]

I wasn't speaking in general, but only about the one instance that you documented below.

<snip for focus>

> >> https://evolutionnews.org/2017/11/what-another-rewrite-of-the-human-origins-story-how-about-a-rethink-instead/
> >>
> >> "So, that makes eight important discoveries this year that all were
> >> announced as challenging established theories of human origins, thus
> >> requiring a major rewrite of the story. One is tempted to ask the
> >> question, how many more major rewritings do we have to endure until a
> >> major rethinking is considered? The current consensus is refuted by more
> >> and more evidence. But in spite of all this conflicting evidence, the
> >> holy cow of Darwinian evolution of humans from ape-like ancestors may
> >> not be questioned. Why? Because that would challenge the ruling
> >> scientific paradigm of naturalism. God forbid!"
> >>
> >> How do you interpret that?
> >
> > I interpret it as being cherry-picked.

...as far as alleged creationist tendencies are concerned, which was the point of
you posting the paragraph in the first place. The paragraph does seem to tending in
that direction, in isolation. However, its context paints a very different picture, one of
saltationism:

>> The paragraph *immediately* preceding it runs:
> >
> > "The so-called “braided stream network model of reticulate gene flow,” favored by the authors of the new study, basically implies that all fossil Homo taxa belonged to the same interbreeding biospecies as modern Homo sapiens. That fits surprisingly well with the observation by critics of Darwinian evolution that the fossil record does not show a gradual development from apes to humans, but instead either clear apes or clear humans, with a distinct morphological gap between these two groups of fossils."

> But that doesn't fit at all, does it?

I have no idea why you think that. Note how Bechly talks about the genus *Homo* as being all one
interbreeding biospecies. The natural inference from this, and what he writes later in the paragraph,
is that he considers Homo sapiens to be the result of a saltational event from the ape *Australopithecus.*

Have you ever seen a claim from Bechly that australopithecines were humans, or not apes?

It would seem that you have not seen any such claim, because when I raised the possibility
that chimps are descended from australopithecines, you could not produce a claim
by Bechly to the contrary.

> Reticulate evolution doesn't fit
> saltation in any way,

You didn't read the paragraph carefully enough. Reticulate evolution refers to events within the
genus *Homo*; it actually puts the saltation from apes to humans into sharper focus.

> and there isn't a distinct gap between Homo and
> other hominins

In your opinion. Bechly seems to disagree.

> -- or at least nobody can agree about where it lies.

You are losing sight of the issue here, and now you continue:

> Nor does that change the meaning of the following paragraph, where Bechly
> encourages rejection of the idea that humans have apelike ancestors.

You are implicitly alleging that "Darwinian evolution" in the following paragraph
must refer to common descent and not to gradualism.

On what grounds do you allege that?

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

PS I haven't forgotten about the dispute that I thought it would pain me to continue, back when you were more
disarming than you are here. But even so, I had other priorities Friday and today.

[John Harshman]

But isn't that an odd claim? What's saltational about the small step
from Australopithecus afarensis to Homo habilis?

> Have you ever seen a claim from Bechly that australopithecines were humans, or not apes?

No. I have no idea where he draws the line between "clear apes" and
"clear humans". And the fact that we can't have any real idea until he
tells us is because there's no huge gap as he implies.

> It would seem that you have not seen any such claim, because when I raised the possibility
> that chimps are descended from australopithecines, you could not produce a claim
> by Bechly to the contrary.

I don't see the relevance of that possibility.

> > Reticulate evolution doesn't fit
>> saltation in any way,
>
> You didn't read the paragraph carefully enough. Reticulate evolution refers to events within the
> genus *Homo*; it actually puts the saltation from apes to humans into sharper focus.

What saltation? Where in the record is that huge gap?

>> and there isn't a distinct gap between Homo and
>> other hominins
>
> In your opinion. Bechly seems to disagree.

How about you? Do you think there's a distinct gap, and if so, where do
you put it?

>> -- or at least nobody can agree about where it lies.
>
> You are losing sight of the issue here, and now you continue:
>
>
>> Nor does that change the meaning of the following paragraph, where Bechly
>> encourages rejection of the idea that humans have apelike ancestors.
>
> You are implicitly alleging that "Darwinian evolution" in the following paragraph
> must refer to common descent and not to gradualism.
>
> On what grounds do you allege that?

So you think that Bechly is really saying that we evolved from apelike
ancestors, just saltationally rather than gradually. I suppose that's a
possible reading, but it's at best highly ambiguous.

> PS I haven't forgotten about the dispute that I thought it would pain me to continue, back when you were more
> disarming than you are here. But even so, I had other priorities Friday and today.

I've forgotten what dispute you're talking about, so feel free to forget
yourself.

[peter2...@gmail.com]

I finally get around to some unfinished business: Harshman's recent lie and his subsequent
attempts to cover it up.

On Wednesday, June 23, 2021 at 3:31:07 PM UTC-4, John Harshman wrote:
> On 6/23/21 7:31 AM, peter2...@gmail.com wrote:
> > John, you are telling a 100% documented lie below, in the sense of "lie" that almost everyone
> > agrees to be a lie: a falsehood that you know to be a falsehood when you utter it, delivered
> > in a completely non-jocular manner. The lie, shown in context below, was:
> >
> > "That's just your inability to read."

> I've missed the documentation of the lie. Could you present it again?

Here comes a simpler documentation.

> > On Tuesday, June 22, 2021 at 7:41:06 PM UTC-4, John Harshman wrote:
> >> On 6/22/21 11:57 AM, peter2...@gmail.com wrote:

> >>> John cleverly took advantage of the context to make it seem like
> >>> he was claiming to have argued science with Dr. Dr. Kleinman
> >>> without either stating or directly implying to have done so.
> > .
> >> That's just your inability to read.

This lie refers to the following excerpt.

> >>> On Thursday, June 17, 2021 at 4:45:17 PM UTC-4, John Harshman wrote:
> >>>> On 6/17/21 1:31 PM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
> >>>>> On Tuesday, June 15, 2021 at 8:26:57 PM UTC-4, in https://groups.google.com/g/sci.bio.paleontology/c/y_NKDdJixf8/m/OTHAv28TAgAJ
> >>> John Harshman wrote:
> >>>>>> On 6/15/21 3:52 PM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
> >>>
> >>>>>>> It is your behavior on talk.origins that is very much political. To take just one of many
> >>>>>>> examples: you never tried to argue science with Dr. Dr. Kleinman, and confined yourself
> >>>>>>> to personal attacks. Your excuse for that was that nobody could convince him that he is wrong.
> >>>>>> You apparently know little of my interactions with Kleinman.

Absent from that one-line general statement of yours was any reference to what I had written in the preceding
three lines. In everyday life, when person makes such a general statement in such a context, people often
get the impression that he is denying what had been stated. That is what I meant by
"made it seem like [you were] claiming to have argued science with Dr.Dr. Kleinman...,"
and it was a lie to say that this displays any inability to read; the opposite is the truth.


Taken by itself, this lie of yours is hardly anything to dwell on. What converted it into
a whopper was your cover-up, part of which is below, and part of which appeared in my longer demonstration,
linked here:
https://groups.google.com/g/talk.origins/c/JaflLa7Zgdg/m/XNGMYLUoFQAJ


> >>>>> You explicitly said what I call "Your excuse." And I stand by what I wrote, because you aren't
> >>>>> trying to come up with a single example of you trying to argue science with him.
> >>>
> >>>> I have no interest in convincing you. Your bias against me is showing,
> >>>> and I don't see any point in trying to overcome it.
> >>>
> >>> Gratuitous insult noted: you allege bias without justification.
> >>>
> >>> What's more, the insult is almost self-defeating. Kleinman was DEMONSTRABLY biased against you,
> >>> and against evolution in the worst sort of way, and so it would seem that you had even
> >>> MORE reason to show no interest in arguing against him.


Here began one phase of the cover-up:

> >> Why does this post belong in talk.origins?
> >
> > It is all about the history of talk.origins, which your kind massively rewrites in their favor.
> > "That's just your inability to read" is a prime example of that.
>
> Considering that you grossly misunderstood the statement, it isn't an
> example of what you imagine it is.

As can be seen, I did not misread your statement; I dealt with it as written,
without trying to "read your mind" -- something you perennially criticize me for allegedly doing.


The cover-up continued with:

> >> Why does it belong anywhere at all?
> >
> > Spoken like a pathologically self-righteous jerk. Mark Isaak is the only regular who tops you in that respect.

> No Nyikos would be complete without a gratuitous attack on a third party.

Here again, someone unfamiliar with your *modus* *operandi* might think you are defending Mark Isaak,
when you are doing nothing of the sort. Your attitude towards all evidence of wrongdoing
by people in mutual "see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil" relationship with you (of whom Mark is one)
is summed up with "I don't want to hear about it." Hence your use of the word "gratuitous".


> Folks, is he getting worse, or is it my imagination?

I'm getting better at understanding your *modus* *operandi*, that's for sure.


> Perhaps a
> very long vacation would be advised?

Mark Isaak is even more explicit, claiming about once a year that I am seriously in need of professional help
when I accuse him of dishonesty, etc. and claiming to be telling this out of sincere concern for my well-being.
Hence what I wrote about his and your self-righteousness.


Peter Nyikos

[Mark Isaak]

More than once a year. Seriously: take the above post to a mental
health professional (which service I expect your university supplies),
and ask their opinion. To rub in my face if they agree with you, if for
no other reason.

--
Mark Isaak eciton (at) curioustaxonomy (dot) net
"The presence of those seeking the truth is infinitely to be preferred
to the presence of those who think they've found it." - Terry Pratchett

[John Harshman]

You have to consider that the way people act on usenet may not be the
same way they act in person. Then again, you could turn that around.
Perhaps he feels more free to be crazy here than he would in person, and
this is in fact his real personality. If so, people who interact with
him personally should be glad that he can keep it together to dissemble.
If only he could exercise that skill here too.

[*Hemidactylus*]

If only he would destress for two hours before posting through yoga or
meditation. Just trying to keep up with his interpersonal back and forth
wears me out, especially when he hits hyperdrive which is far too often.
Caffeinitis? Maybe try Sanka (Christmas in July with DrDr MW* edition):

https://youtu.be/bf5Lr7dxIFo

* Marcus Welby or the all important: https://www.merriam-webster.com

[peter2...@gmail.com]

I decided to let this thread "lie fallow" for over two weeks now, without even looking at the responses
to my last post on it. There were much more on-topic and interesting things to talk about both here in talk.origins
and in sci.bio.paleontology.

And I see I acted sensibly: there was nothing in the three posts that followed mine that required urgent attention.

I'm also getting better at understanding yours, Mark. But there are some unresolved issues about which I ask below, and
I don't expect you to try to resolve them.

> >
> >> Perhaps a
> >> very long vacation would be advised?
> >
> > Mark Isaak is even more explicit, claiming about once a year that I am seriously in need of professional help
> > when I accuse him of dishonesty, etc. and claiming to be telling this out of sincere concern for my well-being.
> > Hence what I wrote about his and your self-righteousness.

And here, on July 2, you were doing the same thing on behalf of John Harshman:

> More than once a year. Seriously: take the above post to a mental
> health professional (which service I expect your university supplies),
> and ask their opinion.

I'm much more keen on asking your opinion on whether you think you were sincere when,
four days AFTER you made the above comment, you wrote the following on the thread,
"Re: A riposte of fine-tuning":

"A reasonable person could respond to the arguments made without worrying about who wrote them.
Needless to say, such an exercise is impossible for Peter."

As anyone can see, you didn't respond to the detailed arguments above that John not only told a lie, but also attempted
to cover up for it. Instead, you acted as though you were worried mightily about the person who made the arguments.

Is that because the issue of whether John Harshman is an honest man is of absolutely no interest to you?

Or is it simply because you didn't read what I wrote before the paragraph to which you responded?


Peter Nyikos

[Mark Isaak]

Ask your therapist. And yes, I am very, very serious about that.

[peter2...@gmail.com]

And here you are, doing exactly the same thing you did before [see above], as a classic statement "defining" insanity
has it, never mind the ignorant attribution by many to Einstein:

> Ask your therapist. And yes, I am very, very serious about that.

You should stop trying to emulate "Honest, honest Iago" in Shakespeare's "Othello," even though you and
he are kindred spirits in the art of deceit. I know you far better than Othello knew Iago.

You'd have better luck trying to convince a rube to keep holding the bag in a snipe hunt for over half an hour,
with your general attitude. You might even enjoy the experience.

And I'm sure Harshman knows that, as does Hemidactylus. They would like it, however, if someone
new at lurking to talk.origins were to have the wool pulled over his/her eyes as to what manner of man you are.


And so would you, of course.


Peter Nyikos

[*Hemidactylus*]

Is it necessary to name me when you are in full self grope mode?

[John Harshman]

Should it be disturbing that Peter is playing the part of Othello?
Should someone warn his wife?

[peter2...@gmail.com]

It's for the general health of talk.origins to know where people stand.

I note that you do not deny the truth of what I wrote.


Peter Nyikos

[peter2...@gmail.com]

What should be disturbing is that you are pretending to think that
my analogy works that way. But then, this isn't the first time you've told
a whopper of a lie about what your opinion on something is.

> Should someone warn his wife?

This is a new low for you, dragging other people's relatives into
the picture in a patently insincere way. But then, you are so pathologically
self-righteous that you might think this is appropriate payback
for me having proven, beyond a reasonable doubt, that you lied and tried to cover up your lie.
In the world you and Mark and Hemidactylus inhabit, it seems to be far more despicable to prove
that you lied than it is for you to have lied in the first place.


Peter Nyikos

[*Hemidactylus*]

Can a masturbatory Penthouse letters fantasy involving multiple people
together ever hold to the binary opposition of true/false? Talk.origins and
sbp are merely separate booth with glory holes at this point.

[John Harshman]

I think you may realize, deep down, that this is really insane. At least
I hope you do.

[jillery]

On Fri, 23 Jul 2021 14:36:17 -0700 (PDT), "peter2...@gmail.com"

I note that nowhere within your self-righteous noise do you deny the
truth of what Hemidactylus wrote.


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

[peter2...@gmail.com]

You had, completely needlessly [1] inserted yourself into this thread, and here you insultingly whined about me naming you.
That seems to be a clear example of your non-binary thinking [see your own words below].

[1] Harshman is fully capable of fending for himself, and he even had an assist from Mark Isaak before
your self-insertion.

> > It's for the general health of talk.origins to know where people stand.
> >
> > I note that you do not deny the truth of what I wrote.
> >
> Can a masturbatory Penthouse letters fantasy involving multiple people
> together ever hold to the binary opposition of true/false? Talk.origins and
> sbp are merely separate booth with glory holes at this point.

Mutual masturbation is what has indeed been going on between you and Harshman and Mark Isaak,
ever since I did the post where I proved, beyond a reasonable doubt, that Harshman had
deliberately told a lie.

None of what the three of you have written even hints at the fact that I had made some
sort of accusation, or whom my accusation was directed against. This is just
one of many reasons why the behavior of the three of you is a perfect example of what your "Penthouse" paragraph is about.


That said, I must admit that the two lines of mine that you are responding to this time around
are not of the binary true/false dichotomy where my proof of Harshman's having knowingly lied resides.
The second is easier to dispose of: it assumes that you know well enough
what your emotional reaction would be to some new person believing the crap Mark Isaak wrote.
On sober second thought, I don't think you know yourself well enough to know ahead of time whether
you would be pleased by that.

The first is a different matter entirely. It is just too subjective to apply the dichotomy to it.
It all depends on whether one has the purpose of promoting general understanding of
what the people one might interact with extensively are like, or not. I certainly have that purpose.

And now I put to you the question: do you think that is a purpose worth having?

You are free, of course, to indulge in a reply which has nothing to do with my question.
After all, there has been a lot of that kind of behavior by the three of you, and your "Penthouse"
paragraph describes it, and part of it serves as an example of that behavior.


Peter Nyikos

[John Harshman]

Yes. If I recall, it all began with the strawberries, didn't it? I can
hear the steel balls rolling in your hands.

[peter2...@gmail.com]

I probably did make a mistake in using the word "despicable": to someone as amoral as yourself,
it might be far less meaningful than "insane." And "self-righteous" might even be something of a joke to you.

Accordingly, I retract the long second sentence of the paragraph to which you are responding, and replace it with:

You are so narcissistic that you probably think it is insane to correctly identify, in public, a deliberate lie by yourself.

> At least I hope you do.

Are you hoping that I will think of your statement "Should someone warn his wife?" as being eminently sane?

Or does your "this" refer to everything on this thread, with you playing the role of the Cheshire Cat
in the book, "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland"?


"But I don't want to go among mad people," Alice remarked.

"Oh, you can't help that," said the Cat. "we're all mad here. I'm mad. You're mad."

"How do you know I'm mad?" said Alice.

"You must be," said the Cat, "or you wouldn't have come here."

-- from the chapter, "Pig and Pepper."


Peter Nyikos

[John Harshman]

My hope may have been dashed, but not necessarily. It just may be deeper
down.

>> At least I hope you do.
>
> Are you hoping that I will think of your statement "Should someone warn his wife?" as being eminently sane?

You should at least be able to distinguish attempts at humor from
serious statements. It was a joke about Othello. Nothing to do with your
wife or even you, personally. Your inability to recognize humor is
perhaps another manifestation of your insanity.

> Or does your "this" refer to everything on this thread, with you playing the role of the Cheshire Cat
> in the book, "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland"?

No, it refers to your behavior in the paragraph preceding it and nothing
else. Again, your inability to read for comprehension, even when the
subject should be obvious, may be another manifestation.

> "But I don't want to go among mad people," Alice remarked.
>
> "Oh, you can't help that," said the Cat. "we're all mad here. I'm mad. You're mad."
>
> "How do you know I'm mad?" said Alice.
>
> "You must be," said the Cat, "or you wouldn't have come here."
>
> -- from the chapter, "Pig and Pepper."

I will now vanish quite slowly, starting at the tail, and my grin will
remain for some time after the rest of me is gone.

(Note: that was another attempt at humor, so don't read anything more
into it, at the risk of showing us even more crazy.)

[peter2...@gmail.com]

You haven't lifted a finger in all this time to lend credibility to your hope; no attempt at anything but a broken record routine.

> >> At least I hope you do.
> >
> > Are you hoping that I will think of your statement "Should someone warn his wife?" as being eminently sane?

> You should at least be able to distinguish attempts at humor from
> serious statements. It was a joke about Othello. Nothing to do with your
> wife or even you, personally.

I could tell immediately that it was a joke, not too different from the kind that could get you
arrested if you told it when about to pass through security at an airport.

Try telling the security guards they have no sense of humor, like you have been
alleging about me all through the last decade.

Or tell them, "I think you may realize, deep down, that it is really insane to arrest people for telling jokes."
That should really get them to thinking.


With Mark Isaak and Hemidactylus backing you to the hilt, what could possibly go wrong?


Peter Nyikos

[John Harshman]

You say that now I've told you. But can you back it up?

>, not too different from the kind that could get you
> arrested if you told it when about to pass through security at an airport.
>
> Try telling the security guards they have no sense of humor, like you have been
> alleging about me all through the last decade.
>
> Or tell them, "I think you may realize, deep down, that it is really insane to arrest people for telling jokes."
> That should really get them to thinking.
>
>
> With Mark Isaak and Hemidactylus backing you to the hilt, what could possibly go wrong?

I feel no need to join the conversation when you play all the parts
yourself.

[*Hemidactylus*]

As far as I can tell you may have broken a record. I cannot be expected to
back you to the hilt if it was a good record such as the trio known as
Rush. Mark Isaak may disagree.

Or this guy:

https://youtu.be/4vKsSGyQf-M

[Mark Isaak]

On 8/2/21 7:22 PM, John Harshman wrote:
> On 8/2/21 2:03 PM, peter2...@gmail.com wrote:

>>> [...]

>>
>> With Mark Isaak and Hemidactylus backing you to the hilt, what could
>> possibly go wrong?
>
> I feel no need to join the conversation when you play all the parts
> yourself.

It is kind of weird to realize that a homunculus of myself is living
inside Peter's head, supporting and being supported by homunculi of
Harshman, Hemidactylus, and probably jillery. I don't know whether to
be relieved or disappointed that my homunculus bears so little
resemblance to myself.

[John Harshman]

On 8/2/21 8:49 PM, Mark Isaak wrote:
> On 8/2/21 7:22 PM, John Harshman wrote:
>> On 8/2/21 2:03 PM, peter2...@gmail.com wrote:
>>>> [...]
>>>
>>> With Mark Isaak and Hemidactylus backing you to the hilt, what could
>>> possibly go wrong?
>>
>> I feel no need to join the conversation when you play all the parts
>> yourself.
>
> It is kind of weird to realize that a homunculus of myself is living
> inside Peter's head, supporting and being supported by homunculi of
> Harshman, Hemidactylus, and probably jillery.  I don't know whether to
> be relieved or disappointed that my homunculus bears so little
> resemblance to myself.
>

Depends on whether or not you would enjoy living in Peter's head. It's
certainly not my idea of fun.

[peter2...@gmail.com]

On Monday, August 2, 2021 at 11:56:14 PM UTC-4, John Harshman wrote:
> On 8/2/21 8:49 PM, Mark Isaak wrote:
> > On 8/2/21 7:22 PM, John Harshman wrote:
> >> On 8/2/21 2:03 PM, peter2...@gmail.com wrote:
> >>>> [...]
> >>>
> >>> With Mark Isaak and Hemidactylus backing you to the hilt, what could
> >>> possibly go wrong?
> >>
> >> I feel no need to join the conversation when you play all the parts
> >> yourself.

Your idea of humor may be so primitive that you didn't realize that the above
was a punch line of a satirical joke. I read long ago that amoral people
are incapable of true satire, and perhaps they can't even recognize satire
when they see it.

Then again, it could just be another case of you having no sense of humor
when the joke is on you. Your kind is like the Matthew Harrison Brady character
in "Inherit the Wind." The playrwright makes the director-type comment in the script
that this character didn't like it when the defense attorney made a joke; "He wants all the laughs for himself."

I once did a fairly long satire on Mark Isaak's juvenile attempts at deconstructing
Behe's concept of Irreducible Complexity by playing games with the word "part".
It had him going to an automobile dealership and giving the people there a hard
time by first asking for a dozen molecules of plastic and 100 atoms of iron,
and then ... well, I won't do a spoiler here.

Mark showed on that occasion that, like you, he has no sense of humor when the joke is on him.

> > It is kind of weird to realize that a homunculus of myself is living
> > inside Peter's head, supporting and being supported by homunculi of
> > Harshman, Hemidactylus, and probably jillery.

Mark is cutting a really weird figure while acting like an intellectual prostitute working the
opposite side of the street from jillery. He is writing as though he could read my mind
to an extent that only a madman or a liar would claim to be able to read it [1].

Contrast this with something another intellectual prostitute, jillery, posted earlier this week:

"There must be something in the air that infects pseudo-skeptics and makes them believe they can read minds. Apparently this has happened to so many posters to T.O., I formally declare a new acronym; Yet Another Stupid Mind Reader aka YASMR, and release copyright to the public domain."

But then, Mark and jillery are just taking full advantage of something half-satirical and half-serious
that I called "The Ten Commandments of Talk.Origins" in an OP with the same title, back in November.
Specifically, there was number 6, loosely modeled on the biblical commandment against adultery:

"Feel free to join any sufficiently popular regulars in playing intellectual prostitutes
working opposite sides of the street against any unpopular schmuck."

[1] Fact is, my mental concept of y'all is behavioral, not physical. If y'all have homunculi
of me dancing in your heads, you are fantasizing in an unhealthy way.

> > I don't know whether to
> > be relieved or disappointed that my homunculus bears so little
> > resemblance to myself.

Fantasy piled on fantasy. No wonder Mark thinks I am in need of professional help.
If he thinks he is normal, then this warps his whole perception of reality.
If he doesn't think he is normal, then he is trying to drag me down to his level.

> >
> Depends on whether or not you would enjoy living in Peter's head. It's
> certainly not my idea of fun.

But making stupid comments like this, as part of a cascade of them, IS evidently your idea of fun.


Peter Nyikos

[*Hemidactylus*]

peter2...@gmail.com <peter2...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Monday, August 2, 2021 at 11:56:14 PM UTC-4, John Harshman wrote:
>> On 8/2/21 8:49 PM, Mark Isaak wrote:
>>> On 8/2/21 7:22 PM, John Harshman wrote:
>>>> On 8/2/21 2:03 PM, peter2...@gmail.com wrote:
>>>>>> [...]
>>>>>
>>>>> With Mark Isaak and Hemidactylus backing you to the hilt, what could
>>>>> possibly go wrong?
>>>>
>>>> I feel no need to join the conversation when you play all the parts
>>>> yourself.
>
> Your idea of humor may be so primitive that you didn't realize that the above
> was a punch line of a satirical joke. I read long ago that amoral people
> are incapable of true satire, and perhaps they can't even recognize satire
> when they see it.
>
> Then again, it could just be another case of you having no sense of humor
> when the joke is on you. Your kind is like the Matthew Harrison Brady character
> in "Inherit the Wind." The playrwright makes the director-type comment in the script
> that this character didn't like it when the defense attorney made a joke;
> "He wants all the laughs for himself."
>

Didn’t Harshman once make allusions to a well known movie pivoting on
missing strawberries and featuring the dad from My Three Sons? How did that
make you feel?

https://youtu.be/edQy5jBxhV8

Do you even like strawberries? What might they symbolically represent?

Point of clarification — should the thread be about two newsgroups when the
other sbp is effectively dead? And the only origins talk heret is about
your beefs with regulars of which you contain multitudes going back to
analogues on other newsgroups where you might have suffered unresolved
trauma going back decades. Didn’t I have an analogue?

Am I living rent free in your head perhaps as a squatter? I only ask for a
friend as you often mention me in your posts. Maybe I should be flattered
instead of annoyed.

[peter2...@gmail.com]

On Thursday, August 12, 2021 at 10:26:16 PM UTC-4, *Hemidactylus* wrote:
> peter2...@gmail.com <peter2...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > On Monday, August 2, 2021 at 11:56:14 PM UTC-4, John Harshman wrote:
> >> On 8/2/21 8:49 PM, Mark Isaak wrote:
> >>> On 8/2/21 7:22 PM, John Harshman wrote:
> >>>> On 8/2/21 2:03 PM, peter2...@gmail.com wrote:
> >>>>>> [...]
> >>>>>
> >>>>> With Mark Isaak and Hemidactylus backing you to the hilt, what could
> >>>>> possibly go wrong?
> >>>>
> >>>> I feel no need to join the conversation when you play all the parts
> >>>> yourself.
> >
> > Your idea of humor may be so primitive that you didn't realize that the above
> > was a punch line of a satirical joke. I read long ago that amoral people
> > are incapable of true satire, and perhaps they can't even recognize satire
> > when they see it.
> >
> > Then again, it could just be another case of you having no sense of humor
> > when the joke is on you. Your kind is like the Matthew Harrison Brady character
> > in "Inherit the Wind." The playrwright makes the director-type comment in the script
> > that this character didn't like it when the defense attorney made a joke;
> > "He wants all the laughs for himself."
> >
> Didn’t Harshman once make allusions to a well known movie pivoting on
> missing strawberries and featuring the dad from My Three Sons?

He did that several times over the years, on similar occasions. This time, he has
used it as a talisman to avoid even alluding to the fact that he has been caught
red-handed in a lie, and in misrepresenting what the lie was about.

It's been similarly used on other occasions, but at least once on behalf of someone else.
IIRC John's main sidekick, Erik Simpson, was the one in the hot seat on one occasion.

> How did that make you feel?

With you, it's all about feelings, because you play the role of an ethical nihilist
in talk.origins and also in s.b.p. on the occasions where you participate there.
Recently, you tried to mute that role when your crybaby buddy, Ron O, was talked
about, but while you did a passable job there of talking the talk of morality, I've never seen you walk the walk.

> https://youtu.be/edQy5jBxhV8
>
> Do you even like strawberries? What might they symbolically represent?

I suppose you are familiar with the simile,

"Like a drowning man grasping at straws."

Here is a similar metaphor:

"You are helping a man drowning in his dishonesty in grasping at strawberries."

So tell me, what do they represent to YOU?

No comment on any of this? I guess your cleverness only works on one opponent
of mine (or Glenn's, or Freon Bill's, or Ron Dean's or MarkE's ?) at a time.

> > [1] Fact is, my mental concept of y'all is behavioral, not physical. If y'all have homunculi
> > of me dancing in your heads, you are fantasizing in an unhealthy way.
> >
> >
> >>> I don't know whether to
> >>> be relieved or disappointed that my homunculus bears so little
> >>> resemblance to myself.
> >
> > Fantasy piled on fantasy. No wonder Mark thinks I am in need of professional help.
> > If he thinks he is normal, then this warps his whole perception of reality.
> > If he doesn't think he is normal, then he is trying to drag me down to his level.

Still no comment here, I see.

> >> Depends on whether or not you would enjoy living in Peter's head. It's
> >> certainly not my idea of fun.
> >
> > But making stupid comments like this, as part of a cascade of them, IS
> > evidently your idea of fun.
> >
> Point of clarification — should the thread be about two newsgroups when the
> other sbp is effectively dead?

News of its imminent demise are, to use Mark Twain's formula, are greatly
exaggerated. It is back on the endangered list, sure, but it was already on the
critically endangered list back in December 2010 when I worked hard to
revive it. Back then, John was helpful, and so were Richard Norman and,
later, Erik Simpson. It even got off the "threatened" list and merely became
"vulnerable" for a while. It started going downhill after Richard Norman disappeared without a trace,
but it's not on the critically endangered list yet.

> And the only origins talk here

> is about [Mark's idiotic attempts to deepsix the concept of Irreducible Complexity in ways
that nobody has ever taken seriously]

Fixed it for the benefit of readers who take dishonesty, hypocrisy, cowardice, and the coddling
the worst crybaby in talk.origins seriously.

> your beefs with regulars of which you contain multitudes going back to
> analogues on other newsgroups where you might have suffered unresolved
> trauma going back decades. Didn’t I have an analogue?

What you have is a contrast: a la-de-da attitude in at least the last six years
about all the things I mentioned when explaining my use of the "Fixed it for you" convention.
Like I said, you play the role of an ethical nihilist supremely well.

You even refuse to acknowledge the ethical nature of the code you have long lived by, "Might makes right,"
so your ethical nihilism is about as pure as they come in these two newsgroups.


Peter Nyikos