PZ Myers. 2004 Sep 26. The sanctimonious bombast of George Gilder. <http://pharyngula.org/index/weblog/the_sanctimonious_bombast_of_george_gilder/>. Accessed 2008 Dec 01.
Posted on M00o93H7pQ09L8X1t49cHY01Z5j4TT91fGfr on Sunday, September 26, 2004
The sanctimonious bombast of George Gilder
Yesterday, I was reading a good article in the October 2004 issue of Wired: "The crusade against evolution", by Evan Ratliff. It gives far more column space to the voices of the Discovery Institute than they deserve, but the article consistently comes to the right conclusions, that the Discovery Institute is "using scientific rhetoric to bypass scientific scrutiny." Along the way, the author catches Stephen Meyer red-handed in misrepresenting Carl Woese (by the clever journalistic strategem of calling Carl Woese), and shows how the DI's favorite slogans ("Teach the controversy" and "academic freedom") are rhetorical abuses of the spirit of the ideas behind them. It's darned good stuff. I should probably say more about the good article, but I'm still picking magma out of my ears after reading a one page insert in the article -- a ghastly, ignorant broadside by George Gilder that prompted a personal eruption. I've calmed down now, so I can tear it apart more delicately than I might have yesterday.
I'm still a bit peeved at the fool, so I'm going to remonstrate against him first—but maybe later I'll say more about the Ratliff article.
Biocosm
The technogeek guru of bandwidth utopia defends intelligent design and explains why he is a believer.
Here's the start of our problem. Gilder can actually be called a "technogeek guru", that is, somebody with some amount of credibility among people who like technology. He doesn't deserve it. He's a con artist. He's a glib slinger of five-dollar words, but he really doesn't understand the concepts beneath them. When I read his babbling version of biology below, it's clear that he has about the same depth of understanding of the field as your average sixth-grader—in other words, he can crib from the encyclopedia.
Our high schools are among the worst performers per dollar in the world -- especially in math and science. Our biology classes, in particular, espouse anti-industrial propaganda about global warming and the impact of DDT on the eggshells of eagles while telling just-so stories about the random progression from primordial soup to Britney Spears. In a self-refuting materialist superstition, teachers deny the role of ideas and purposes in evolution and hence implicitly in their own thought.
Mr Gilder has apparently never even looked at any American high school science curricula. There is no anti-industrial propaganda anywhere to be seen, nor is there anywhere any criticism of capitalism. Our schools churn out eager consumers.
Teachers do also try to squeeze in a little science, though. Yes, global warming is real, and yes, insecticides can cause damage to organisms at all levels of the ecosystem. I think it's good that some of that gets taught, and more should be taught. The only anti-industrialist attitude here is the one that denies the existence of substantial problems, rather than recognizing them and trying to overcome them.
Mr Gilder also makes the first of his many errors about evolution here. I do not deny that I personally possess ideas and purposes; I do deny that the cheerios I had for breakfast possess them, but that does not refute my first assertion. Similarly, evolution is a process that led to me, that did not require thought to occur. Bacteria evolve without a shred of thinking. It does not diminish my brain power to see that my distant ancestors had less of it.
The Darwinist materialist paradigm, however is about to face the same revolution that Newtonian physics faced 100 years ago. Just as physicists discovered that the atom was not a massy particle, as Newton believed, but a baffling quantum arena accessible only through mathematics, so too are biologists coming to understand that the cell is not a simple lump of protoplasm, as Charles Darwin believed.
Wow. So the Intelligent Design creationists are going to prove Darwin wrong and throw all of pre-ID biology on the ash heap of history, just as Einstein did to Newton and all of pre-Einsteinian physics? I guess Gilder doesn't understand the history of science, either, since that didn't happen.
Gilder is also dead wrong on what Darwin thought about the cell. Although nobody of his time knew much about what was going on inside the cell, they did have microscopes and knew that there was considerable complexity in there. The late 19th century was actually a period of intense discovery in cell biology, with the advent of subcellular staining techniques and better microscopy that led to observations of such things as chromosomes and organelles like the Golgi apparatus.
Biologists 'came to understand' that cells were more than a lump a century or two ago. And no, the Discovery Institute had nothing to do with it. Since that complexity is only now just beginning to dawn on the panjandrums of the DI, it says far more about how far behind they are than anything about modern science.
Aww, but now look: here's the part where little Georgie recites a bunch of big words he learned.
It's a complex information-processing machine comprising tens of thousands of proteins arranged in fabulously intricate algorithms of communication and synthesis. The human body contains some 60 trillion cells. Each one stores information in DNA codes, processes and replicates it in three forms of RNA and thousands of supporting enzymes, exquisitely supplies the system with energy, and seals it in semi-permeable phospholipid membranes.
If a little kid had written that, I'd be impressed; coming from a "technogeek guru", though, it's pathetic. Everything is just a teeny-tiny bit off. Cells don't actively store information in DNA, as his sentence implies, and it's just wrong to say they store it in "DNA codes". Real biologists are pretty careful to avoid using the term "replication" when they mean "transcription." I have no clue why he's singling out three forms of RNA. And the end of his sentence is just running off the rails into confusing referents: cells supply the system with energy? What system? And they seal what in membranes? Energy? Reading that stuff, I can sort of imagine where Gilder got these impressions, but I can also see that he's just stacking words he doesn't understand well into his own little tower of Babel.
Since it is Gilder, though, he also has to somehow slide his buzzword biology into his stock of computer cliches. Voila!
It is a process subject to the mathematical theory of information, which shows that even mutations occurring in cells at the gigahertz pace of a Pentium 4 and selected at the rate of a google search couldn't beget the intricate interwoven fabric of structure of a human being in such a short amount of time. Natural selection should be taught for its important role in the adaption of species, but Darwinian materialism is an embarrassing cartoon of modern science.
Just a hint, George: you should never accuse others of being an embarrassing cartoon.
As for the substance of his comment, it's a lie. This mysterious "mathematical theory of information", which, I suspect, Gilder understands about as well as he does cell biology, says no such thing.
What is the alternative? Intelligent design at least asks the right questions.
OK, what questions? Curiously, after announcing that the one thing ID does right is ask good questions, he doesn't tell us a single question that it asks.
In a world of science that still falls short of a rigorous theory of human consciousness or of the big bang, intelligent design begins by recognizing that everywhere in nature, information is hierarchical and precedes its embodiment. The concept precedes the concrete.
Ouch. Poor George. That was the early 19th century view of the world, the one that was shaken up by a true revolutionary, Darwin. Darwin demonstrated exactly the opposite: that nature operates by throwing up concrete instances without thought, and then natural processes winnow out the less successful, again without need for thought. What Gilder is admitting here is that intelligent design begins by accepting a demonstrable falsehood.
The contrary notion that the world of mind, including science itself, bubbled up randomly from a prebiotic brew has inspired all the reductionist futilities of the 20th century, from Marx's obtuse materialism to environmental weather panic to zero-sum Malthusian fears over population. In biology classes, our students are not learning the largely mathematical facts of 21st-century science; they're imbibing the consolations of a faith-driven 19th-century materialist myth.
Ah, and he dredges up the old creationist caricature of evolution, that it is a purely random process. Whenever someone tells you that it is, it's a flashing indicator that he doesn't know what he is talking about. Evolution is not random, although components of the process are.
His conclusion is drivel. Evolutionary biology is highly mathematical, and in fact many of the concepts in statistics that we take for granted and that were developed in the early 20th century were driven by evolutionary biology and genetics. The Discovery Institute is not proposing to improve or make more quantitative the teaching of biology; quite to the contrary, they are proposing to dilute it with unverified garbage, and they certainly have no concrete observations or results to add.
He's also mangling history again. The majority of the 19th-century biologists who advanced evolution were Christians, just as the majority of modern biologists in the West also happen to be Christian; evolution is a concept independent of one's religious beliefs, or lack thereof. The ideas of the early evolutionists were not consolations or rationalizations for materialism, but were often made reluctantly and only because the evidence was compelling, as they were contrary to the widely held belief in a Divine Plan. The only myth here is the creationist delusion that evolutionists were all gleeful atheists cobbling up stories to support their beliefs and corrupt Western Civilization.
I really feel sorry for the deluded saps who take investment advice from this blithering ignoramus. That he has been successful at all in the past just demonstrates the truth of the adage that a rising tide floats all boats, even the leaky dinghy skippered by the town drunk.
This article still stings poor old George—he's still whining about it in July 2005.
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"...they’re imbibing the consolations of a faith-driven [...] myth."
There's that evil "faith" stuff again. I'm glad that this hard-nosed rationalist recognizes it for how bad it is.
The more we can get that bad wicked faith stuff out of the world, the better off we'll all be. :D
Really, Paul, it's so nice to be able to read real-time critiques of people like this on your site. I got to meet Ralph Nader a few years back, and the first thing I said to him was "Thank you for doing this."
I know how easy it is to spout gibberish, and tear things down, and spread darkness, and to gather a following of brainless fools.
I know how hard it is to reason, and build, and do real science, and create light against the darkness.
And I know how much work it is to maintain a blog like yours, what a true labor of love it is.
So: PZ Myers, Thank You for doing this! - And on Sunday, too! :D
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Just to be annoyingly picky, PZ, erupted magma is called lava. I think it qualifies as that even in the ear canal.
But seriously, it's important not to take the idiots personally. It raises your blood (magma?) pressure and shortens your life expectancy.#: Posted by on 09/26 at 11:00 AM -
That was a truly great takedown. Thanks.
#: Posted by Andrew Brown on 09/26 at 11:14 AM
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Wouldn't it be nice if Mr. Gilder and his ilk wouldn't sink to methods of superstitious materialism come November 2nd and count instead on supernatural methodologies to get Bush reelected?
Don't vote. That's materialism. Take those naturalistic blinders off George! Practice what you preach! Show your faith in the super natural alternative and pray your vote into the system. -
Yeah, but Karen, this stuff is still simmering and bubbling hotly deep within the vent.
Hank, I know it's Sunday. This is how atheists worship. -
PZ: I have no clue why he’s singling out three forms of RNA.
Perhaps that shows how young you are, and/or that GuruGeek George's preternatural wisdom derives from advanced age (as does mine!) .
Back in my high school biology class (in 1966), we learned about The Three Kinds of RNA: transfer, messenger, and ribosomal.
Sure, things have moved on a bit since then, but clearly GuruGeek George is more interested in The Big Picture than in the nagging niggling little details.#: Posted by on 09/26 at 11:27 AM - That's what I meant by being a bit off. I knew right away that he must be thinking of rRNA, tRNA, and mRNA, but in the context of what he's talking about, those little factlets add nothing at all. Those are human categories for the function of certain subsets of RNA, nothing more.
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What about Meyer and Carl Woese? What did Meyer claim and what did Carl Woese state? Curious minds wanna know
#: Posted by on 09/26 at 11:53 AM
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Meyer claimed a recent Woese article in Microbiology and Molecular Biology Reviews argued that "the Darwinian emperor has no clothes". So Ratliff called Woese. Here's the reply:
Woese scoffs at Meyer's claim when I call to ask him about the paper. "To say that my criticism of Darwinists says that evolutionists have no clothes," Woese says, "is like saying that Einstein is criticizing Newton, therefore Newtonian physics is wrong." Debates about evolution's mechanisms, he continues, don't amount to challenges to the theory. And intelligent design "is not science. It makes no predictions and doesn't offer any explanation whatsoever, except for 'God did it.'"
Note that Gilder suggests the same bogus interpretation of Newton vs. Einstein that Woese finds absurd. -
Where did Meyer make that claim?
#: Posted by on 09/26 at 12:43 PM
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In the Ratliff article. That's a direct quote:
Meyer says the conclusion of Woese's argument is that the Darwinian emperor has no clothes.
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Atheists worship on Sunday?
Is that sorta like Chomsky's perfectly grammatical, nonsense sentence, "Colorless green ideas sleep furiously?"#: Posted by on 09/26 at 02:42 PM -
Maybe that requires some explanation.
Remember Mark Twain's lines about how the missionaries went to Hawaii to teach the natives that it was a sin to work on Sunday, only to discover the natives didn't work on any day? (And then, after hammering at the foundations of their civilization for 25 years, the natives had learned enough sin from the missionaries to require salvation . . .).
Anyway, I though atheists would worship at the altar of knowledge every day. Granted, one day a week would be enough to stay ahead of DI, but most atheists don't stop thinking just because they're ahead, do they?#: Posted by on 09/26 at 02:47 PM -
What I want to know is how you managed to get the October issue of Wired already. Neither of the bookstores I visited this morning had it.
#: Posted by Glenn Branch on 09/26 at 04:29 PM
- Hah, Glenn, Minnesota isn't quite the primitive backwater everyone thinks it is!
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I've been waiting a long time to read something like this - nice work, PZ. And at last Gilder makes the connection between anti-environmentalism and anti-evolutionism clear:
The contrary notion that the world of mind, including science itself, bubbled up randomly from a prebiotic brew has inspired all the reductionist futilities of the 20th century, from Marx’s obtuse materialism to environmental weather panic to zero-sum Malthusian fears over population...
There's a lot of work yet to be done there, I think, but the program is clear - discredit the foundations of modern biology and you've discredited ecology while you're at it - so much for the ecological drama on the evolutionary stage. An important step in moving towards ending environmental regulation.#: Posted by on 09/26 at 05:37 PM -
Tell me, does the sidebar at least mention that Gilder works for the DI, and is therefore just giving us another hackneyed piece of the official party line?
#: Posted by Steve Reuland on 09/26 at 08:35 PM
- Sorry, is this guy defending the use of DDT??? Have I gone back in time to the 1950's?
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believe it or not, quite a few right-wingers defend the use of ddt. apparently, the long-term survival of animals (including us) which would be adversely affected by ddt is less important than finding a quick and easy way to prevent malaria rather than looking for a more ecologically friendly method. oh no, that might mean they have to actually think.
#: Posted by on 09/27 at 05:12 AM
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Actually, I think that there's more to the DDT issue than that - it's a stick to beat the environmentalists with. You can make (to the uninformed) the case that the campaign against the use of DDT in malaria control indicates the skewed values of greens - they value birds and bugs more than human life. And you can lay the millions of malaria deaths since the restriction of widespread DDT use right at the feet of the environmental movement. Hard to resist, if you're used to using rhetoric rather than facts.
#: Posted by on 09/27 at 09:54 AM
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The pro-DDT wing also implicitly assumes that if we had kept on using it, there'd have been no build-up of immunity because, you know, it was The Perfect Pesticide (on the contrary, "Darwin's Finches" mentions that even while it was in use, some mosquitos were adapting to it).
#: Posted by on 09/27 at 11:46 AM
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For a technogeek, he is missing a lot of recent scientific information, accessible to the average reader of Scientific American, let alone Science News, or even Science. We've known about catalytic RNA since 1981, guide RNAs since 1989 or so, regulatory small-molecule binding RNA since 1998, and small micro RNAs since about the same time. I had 80-100 high school students at my lecture about the RNA world last Saturday, all of whom are more savvy than Mr. Gilder, and no doubt followed it better than he has demonstrated. I am reminded of the saying that it is better to be quiet and thought a fool than to speak and remove all doubt.
#: Posted by on 09/27 at 03:45 PM
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Gilder said, incoherently:
Each one stores information in DNA codes, processes and replicates it in three forms of RNA and thousands of supporting enzymes, exquisitely supplies the system with energy, and seals it in semi-permeable phospholipid membranes.
I think this one's explainable by simple forgetfulness. By the time he'd got to the word 'enzymes', he'd forgotten he was talking about cells; the rest of the sentence makes sense (well, as much sense as Gilder ever makes) if you assume that the subject of the sentence is 'enzymes'.
So not only is he too pig-ignorant in matters biological to know it, this journalist-of-sorts isn't even competent at the one set of skills he should be good at: writing English and proofreading it. Perhaps that's beneath the dignity of a true guru and thoughtless ignorant babbler.#: Posted by on 09/27 at 04:52 PM - It still doesn't work. "Enzymes" is plural; he's using the singular verb "supplies", and by the time he goes haring off into "seals it in semipermeable membranes", we're off on the planet Uranus with the cosmic space-bats.
- Aww, he just likes those big technical, bi-uh-logical words. I remember doing an essay in 8th grade on cell histology and using the term "semi-permeable phospholipid bilayer" about 2 dozen times because it made me sound sciency.
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Hate to intrude on your little sneer-fest, but is this how you serious scientists do science?
Why not debunk Gilder's 'ideas' and be done with it? Why the contempt? D.I. is a pretty trivial challenge compared with the near-universal antagonism that greeted 19th Century evolutionists. Yet you react to disagreement with all the fervor and tendentiousness of the theologians who disputed Darwin. Think about it.
Lest there be any confusion about motive, I am an atheist and evolutionist myself. You'll need other reasons to sneer at me.#: Posted by Alan Sullivan on 09/28 at 06:36 AM -
Intelligent Design is not about science. The science on this issue is done, and ID is dead. The people who continue to peddle it and are actually making headway politically deserve the contempt.
Gilder is a dishonest hack who is using his money to corrupt the way our kids are educated...and you think our fervor in opposing him and his ilk is misplaced? How can an atheist and evolutionist suggest that we be less enthusiastic in our disgust with theocrats and creationists? - If Creationism was merely an issue of debunking poor biological/cosmological hypotheses, it would be a long-forgotten relic of the evangelical resurgence of the 20's, rather than a powerful and pervasive quasi-political lobbyist movement. Don't be fooled; a hearty sneer is the least they deserve.
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Awesome. I'm taking a class on rhetoric and composition, and my first essay assignment is to find, critique, and, one hopes, reconstitute a badly written paragraph into something approaching sense. Gilder's article is a prime piece of nonsense just perfect for my essay--except for the sense part, but I'm sure I'll think of something.
Thank you, Discovery Institute!#: Posted by on 09/28 at 01:53 PM -
I am, as usual, late to the party, partly because my employer continues to expect me to actually do stuff for them and partly because I'm working up a series of posts on Jack Krebs' talk at KU the other night. But I'd like to note something here.
Gilder's argument is one we've heard before and will undoubtedly hear many, many more times: throw out some big numbers and then introduce some version of the "trade secret" idea -- the geological column is a jumble; evolution is mathematically impossible; whatever -- implying that there's a huge flaw in the science that the scientists have somehow kept from the public, the "trade secret" of geology/biology/whateverology.
"Bogus" doesn't begin to describe how bad this is. It's an out-and-out conspiracy theory. If we teach this, why not "teach the controversy" of whether the Apollo astronauts really went to the Moon? The "controversy" of whether the Holocaust ever happened? Or, for that matter, the "controversy" over the Nation of Islam's bizarre version of human origins and history?
The tragedy here is that Gilder has written some genuinely inspiring material during his career. But now he's headed down a blind alley. Once you start in on the historical sciences, where do you stop? And what stops you? As a Christian, I'd ordinarily hope the answer is "your conscience." But the people pushing this stuff aren't letting their consciences interfere with their brand of Christianity. It's a power grab, and they want power more than they want to be virtuous -- a religious motivation we associate more with a presently-notorious competitor of Christianity.
And, on that ironic note, I'll shut up.#: Posted by Jay Manifold on 09/30 at 06:13 PM -
For a cute little story about how Gilder is as accurate in the financial world as he is in the biological, see http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig3/bonner5.html
And he apparently hasn't learned his lesson in the financial arena, either...#: Posted by Jim Lippard on 10/02 at 04:49 PM -
While I agree that Gilder is spreading pernicious nonsense here, it is also pernicious nonsense to imply, as other posters above do, that the modern environmental movement's selected hobby-horses are as well supported by modern science as is the theory of evolution. Just as it's illegitimate for Gilder to play on people's skepticism of environmentalism in an attempt to parlay that skepticism into distrust of evolution, it's illegitimate for environmentalists to implicitly claim anything along the lines of "Darwin was right, therefore we should sign the Kyoto agreement."
And frankly the stuff about DDT posted here is mind-boggling. So it's due to *intellectual laziness* that no low-cost, bird-friendly alternative to DDT exists, and for the millions who die of malaria every year, that's just too bad? The fact that mosquitoes adapt to DDT over time is an argument against its use? (Gee, let's just write off all antibiotics then!) Yeesh.#: Posted by on 10/05 at 12:41 PM -
Oh, I missed this gem from above:
believe it or not, quite a few right-wingers defend the use of ddt. apparently, the long-term survival of animals (including us) which would be adversely affected by ddt is less important than finding a quick and easy way to prevent malaria rather than looking for a more ecologically friendly method. oh no, that might mean they have to actually think.
Talk about your "sanctimonious bombast!"#: Posted by on 10/05 at 12:44 PM -
You can make legitimate arguments against an article, but why do you feel the need to insult the author? Do any of you actually know George Gilder? Have any of you spent 19 years living in the same house as him? I doubt it since I probably would have seen you there. I'm his daughter, and though this probably means that you shall discredit anything I write as being brainwashed into, but I have no problem with people questioning what he believes (or for that matter what I believe), or saying outright that he is wrong. I have told him that he is wrong on many occasions (not on this particular subject but others), so I won’t grudge you the chance to do the same. It is the personal attacks that I find incredibly offensive. First of all they make you sound younger than me, and I’m still a teenager, and secondly don’t make your argument more convincing, just petty.
The thing about my dad is that he fervently believes what he says, and he does do tremendous amounts of research (I know you all will find that hard to believe but he does). He can’t put everything behind something that he knows nothing about, and he is one who does put everything, and I mean everything behind what he believes in. He is not a con artist, and he definitely not a dishonest hack (that phrase grates at me the most since he is one of the most honest people I know). Dad is an idealist, and sometimes he is so wrapped up in the ideal that he loses track of anything else, and I think that is what causes the problems here. I don’t know much about Biology, my subject’s Art History, and outside of my high school class I haven’t touched on the subject, but my two sisters would probably know better than I. I’m sure you will be happy to hear that two other Gilders are being let loose on the world of Science, my eldest sister has just finished a book on the history of physics (I can just see the eyes rolling, but don’t judge what you haven’t seen, she is far more intelligent than I at least) and my other sister is studying to become a doctor (her senior thesis was trying to figure out a cheaper way to cure sleeping sickness, seeing as the medicines available are far too expensive for the average person).
So please, argue away, question away, but don’t throw insults around like 13 year olds. Now you are free to insult me for being an idiotic brainwashed little girl who will defend her father’s every move. Oh joy.#: Posted by on 10/11 at 10:46 AM -
Nobody is prejudging you or your sisters; you three might be geniuses who are going to revolutionize your chosen fields of study, for all I know, and I say that with complete seriousness.
We are judging your father by what he has said. He may be a wonderful human being and you may be lucky to have him as a father, but I'm sorry to say that, as a biologist or a competent critic of the sciences, he's an uninformed poltroon. The fervency of his beliefs does not excuse the fact that in this essay he has pontificated with false authority on a subject of which he is palpably ignorant. And that is a kind of dishonesty. -
Nannina, I grew up in Texas and Alabama with a lot of really warm and wonderful people who thought that skin color was the best indicator of worth.
They raised me, they came to elementary school to see my little projects, they took me to movies, we went for long drives in the country together, we laughed at the dinner table, we did all the stuff happy families do.
But they were just flat-out wrong about race. Eventually I came to know it, and to like that part of them less.
Here's the difference between your family and mine: My parents never “fervently believed” in their racist views. They went out on the streets and tried to convince others that they should hate black people. They never got up in public and sneered at the people who thought those with dark skin were the equals of those with light skin. They never tried to stop the gradual progression of rights allotted to black people.
All those years of slavery and brutality against black people in the Deep South, do you think the white people who did that stuff walked around cackling nastily all day long, rubbing their hands together thinking up new wickedness? Do you think they beat their kids and kicked puppies in their spare time?
Nope. They were (mostly) good people. Just like you and me. Just like your father. But they also happened to be wrong, dead wrong, bad wrong, about this one thing.
Your dad is no doubt a wonderful father. And he is welcome, just as we all are, to believe in anything that catches his fancy. But as a PUBLIC voice against real science, he is a true villain, and he really and truly hurts the people around him. - Argh. Correct the statement in the fourth paragraph of the previous post to read "They NEVER went out on the streets and tried to convince others that they should hate black people."
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I never said dad couldn't be wrong. I just was saying that to insult him personally was out of line. He is not a dishonest hack, and he is not a con artist, and to that I was replying that he fervently believes in what he preaches, you can't be those things if you actually believe what you're saying.
I have absolutely no problem with your disagreeing with him, just do so politely. We often lose track over the internet of common courtesy, that's all. You don't need to tell me that you're sure he's a wonderful father, I already know that, I never thought you thought otherwise, you can say you don't believe what he wrote in that article (though I must say he explains it much better in person, and that isn't his best work), but don't say he doesn't do research, and don't insult him personally. It undermines your argument, and annoys me to no end.#: Posted by on 10/11 at 03:44 PM - Your father is simply and utterly wrong. I will believe he is not a dishonest hack when you politely explain to him that he was out of his depth, was making claims that are patently false, and he then publishes a retraction.
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Your nits and picks add up to the contention that in the Universe there is no evidence of mind or ideas. After reading your critiques, I could say that I see what you mean. But I will try to answer some of your objections.
I have perused several biology texts and I assure you that they contain entire chapters full of the environmentalist and anti-industrial cant that is pervasive on this site.
Global temperatures are cooler than the average over the last three millennia. Greenland was green and Iceland was populous. The entire period from 600 to about 1100 was warmer than the present and decisively warmer than the little ice age ending in around 1900, from which we are recovering still today.
DDT has never been shown to inflict harm on humans or birds. The expert on the subject was Gordon Edwards, who compiled the ornithological record over decades. He used to drink a glass of DDT before each of his many speeches presenting all the available data to a world so intoxicated by the ideas of Rachel Carson that it would rather permit the malarial deaths of some 500 million children over the decades than admit the error of its chemophobic fears. Don't froth like the phobics and pretend you are scientific.
Capitalism has little to do with consumers, who exist in all systems; capitalism gives freedom to producers and inventors.
Your point about Darwin's recognition of some intricacy in the cell is on target and my "simple lump of protoplasm" was hyperbolic. Thank you for the correction. However, Darwin had no clue about the informational complexity of the cell and it is silly to suggest that he did. Similarly Newton had no idea about the complexity of the atom. I do not suggest that Newtonian physics was crudely wrong, except at the sub-atomic level. Similarly I do not deny that evolution exists and is important. I assert that ideas and structures also exist and are real and primary rather than epiphenomenal. I do not understand the source of these physical laws and ideational structures. Nor does anyone else. The Intelligent Design movement simply wants to keep the issue open to science rather than allowing superstitious materialists to stultify it in dogma.
No, in four hundred words, I did not explain the intricacies of the cell. I tried to summarize some of the complexities. The wording of that sentence, condensed from my original paragraph, was not impeccable. But your series of inane rhetorical questions do not bring further clarity to the subject.
I have spent decades studying and writing about Claude Shannon's information theory in telecommunications and computing. My source in biology was Hubert Yockey's excellent book, Information Theory and Molecular Biology (Cambridge U. Press, 1992). Check it out.
My 26 year old daughter's book, currently titled The Age of Entanglement, will be published next year by Knopf. It tells the history of the theory of quantum entanglement, a phenomenon denied fervently by many of the greatest physicists of the Twentieth Century, including Einstein, but demonstrated empirically in recent decades. It is now the foundation of the ongoing project of quantum computing. Like many of the great enigmas of science, entanglement remains unexplained. The dogmatism expressed by you and your followers on this page is religious in spirit. It would close off many of the most intriguing questions of science including the still highly contentious subject of evolution.
Thank you for provoking Nannina's beautiful indignation. She too has books in the works.
Best,
George Gilder#: Posted by George Gilder on 10/15 at 09:10 AM -
Good smack down, George.
These loopy college professors get straight A's in every subject except for common sense.#: Posted by on 10/15 at 10:20 AM -
I have debated every last issue given by the "creationist" above. I know many ID people try and separate themselves from creationists in general to give themselves more validity, but at the core, their debate is essentially the same.
Listing all the strawman elements in his statements would be near impossible in a short response like this. I call these types of strawman debates, "Cluster-bomb strawmen". This is because there are so many false premises involved, that one needs to take most of their time going through the attack and straightening things out so the real debate can actually begin.
One always gets to me the most. The classic attack that "evolutionists" have an anti-god agenda is used to drum-up support for their view by making it seem we are out to destroy the faithful. What is not an attack, turns into one, and the "soccer church moms" lock 'n load. This is so dishonest that it borders on criminal.
Several of my teachers who taught evolution and ecology to me in college, were not only religious, they were actually, Christian. Yes, I said it, they were Christians. Oh, the confusion of it all.
It comes down to the fact that no one can prove, or disprove, a God. We can however test for divine providence in biological systems. No such evidence has been found. ID people attempt to infer it, but fail in their logic on many points. What also gets me, is there basic argument is not really different from the arguments used before Darwin wrote "Origins". They are just now more on a molecular scale. Being in the micro world, or the macro world, changes nothing.
Because most people do not know the history of the debates at that time, these issues seem new to them. The further fact that the general public also does not know what evidence Darwin gave to show flaw in the reasoning of special creation, allows others to mislead them into believing their arguments are new, and "unrefuted".
All science asks is that we leave our prejudices at the door, and attempt to tests everything with an open mind. The problem is, empirical observation needs scrutiny, and creationists call foul when the same scrutiny is applied to their views as it is to the more mainstream views of science. The further fact that the general public does not know the ins and outs of the debate, but do have a general desire to believe in divine providence, allows ID creationists to gather a lead in popular opinion.
The sobs of the dead from the Library of Alexander can be heard if you quietly listen.
P.S. I love the call to Authority it his response. Classic!#: Posted by on 10/15 at 10:37 AM -
Here is the text of my letter to Wired regarding Gilder's bombast:
---
George Gilder's rant against evolution [Wired, October 2004] unwittingly
demonstrates why intelligent design is not science.
Gilder, evidently leaning on the work of William Dembski, claims that
the "mathematical theory of information" proves that human beings could
not have evolved. Ahem. I teach the "mathematical theory of
information" at the University of Waterloo, and together with biologist
Wesley Elsberry I have examined the intelligent design movement's
claims about information in detail -- in a book review that appeared in
the journal _BioSystems_ in 2002, in a chapter of a recent book, _Why
Intelligent Design Fails_ (Rutgers University Press, 2004), and a
longer paper available at
http://www.talkreason.org/articles/eandsdembski.pdf .
Our conclusion was that Dembski's work is based on fundamental
misunderstandings of information theory, equivocation,
misrepresentation of work in the literature, and silly mathematical
mistakes (one crucial calculation is off by about 65 orders of
magnitude). Dembski promised a response to our work in 2002, but it is
now more than two years later and the silence is deafening.
Dembski recently remarked, "I think at a fundamental level,
in terms of what drives me in this is that I think God's glory is being
robbed by these naturalistic approaches to biological evolution,
creation, the origin of the world, the origin of biological complexity
and diversity. When you are attributing the wonders of nature to these
mindless material mechanisms, God's glory is getting robbed." Do you
need any more proof that intelligent design is just religion in a lab coat?
--
When I saw Gilder's comment, "The Intelligent Design movement simply wants to keep the issue open to science rather than allowing superstitious materialists to stultify it in dogma", I burst out laughing.
Either he is blissfully unaware of the religious and culture warriors
pushing intelligent design, or he is intellectually dishonest. You be the judge.#: Posted by on 10/15 at 02:58 PM - Perhaps, George, you would like to explain the non-material methodology for scientific exploration of the causes "of these physical laws and ideational structures"? Such a thing certainly would go a long way in making a science out of the ID movement.
-
Amid the fury of invective on this page, I failed to notice that the author is a serious scientist with real scientific interests. When on the page I unexpectedly encountered my daughter, who is away at college in Europe, I responded impetuously.
I come to this issue not as a biologist (I have never taken a biology course) but as a writer (12 books) who has spent much time studying communications and networking theory as an analyst of technology. My role with Discovery (parttime) is as a technology analyst. My new book, The Silicon Eye (Norton, 2005), addresses the interface between biology and electronics. I came to see that the nature of the evolutionary problem had changed radically with the discovery of DNA, which introduced information and codes as central elements of biology.
I came to see the genetic alphabet, what I termed the adguacyth, as informational possibilities actualized in the twenty amino acids that combine in multiple sequences as proteins. In other words, the genetic alphabet defines the "W" or bandwidth of possibilities of the genetic message. Proteins embody it, resolving uncertainty in particular entropic forms.
In this sequence, genes are information first and chemistry second. The concept precedes the concrete. Time and information both travel irreversibly, entropically in a single direction.
My critics above believe that chemistry and implicitly physics came first. I encounter the similar prejudice in technology among followers of Eric Drexler who believe that nano-mechanics subsumes all chemistry and biology. But among all the Grand Challenges faced by supercomputers, the reduction of chemistry to physics, let alone biology to chemistry, is astronomically out of reach. Biological information everywhere manifests irreducible Shannon entropy (temporal) and Kolmogorov complexity (algorithmic). You cannot give up the study of the pharyngula to physicists and chemists.
An informational hierarchy is scientifically addressable and indeed is the great scientific challenge of this century. By contrast, denying the possibility of intrinsic information and restricting science to the physical layer precludes deep understanding of the substrate of ideas at the foundation of reality.
Further evidence of the precedence of information comes from physics in the phenomenon of instant action at a distance in quantum entanglement. Something happens across the universe beyond the physics of the particular photonic waves. Whether physicists know it or not, in the pursuit of quantum computing, they are now deep in the realms of non-physical sources of superpositional information.
When biology became an information science it entered my domain of information theory. My central proposition is that it takes a low entropy carrier--call it what you will, in communications it is the electromagnetic spectrum, forms of perfectly undulant light--to bear a high entropy message, such as evolutionary complexity. Making biology the ultimate science, this insight is in no way a threat to biologists, though it may challenge some of their materialist superstitions.
I believe that the universe in some way is enveloped in a noosphere of information which it decodes. You can laugh and say that to the information theorist the whole universe seems to be a communications channel. You can correctly point out that a belief in an enveloping shroud of information--an epistemic hierarchy stemming from an ergodic source--is tantamount to a belief in "God" or at least er-god, and that is as much as a confession that I am a charlatan or poltroon. My emphasis on Godel's proof as a further confirmation of the irreducibility of ultimate knowledge implies God-el, who believed he was prooving the existence of a "God." So be it.
--George Gilder#: Posted by George Gilder on 10/16 at 09:50 AM -
George,
I don't know if you're under the old fashioned creationist misunderstanding that 'information cannot increase without the input of an Intelligent Design" or not. I'll guess that you're not, but just in case.
Given that genomic 'information' has a rigidly defined metric, a generous stipulation given that no IDC apologist has produced one which does what they claim it does, such that there is a defined function D, usually called Distance:
1. D(x,y) = 0 iff x=y
2. D(x.y) is the same magnitude as D(y,x)
3. D(x,y) + D(y,z) is greater than or equal to D(x,z)
Then we know information can increase with random changes. Let's assume the converse to demonstrate:
Let I(X) be the value of the Information in genome X. Let Y be a mutated version of the genome X.
Then according to the more simplistic old fashioned claims that mutations cannot increase information
A. I(X)>I(Y)
Now let genome Y suffer a reverse mutation producing the original genome X, a back mutation it's called,
Then because no mutation can increase information:
B. I(Y)>I(X)
Taking A and B together gives
I(X)>I(Y)>I(X) which violates the definition of inequality and the definition of a metric space, meaning the original premise is clearly false.
That's a fairly simple one which Intelligent design Creationists are pretty aware of now. So they've moved those goal posts to Complex Specificity.
Where you may have been led astray was in Dembski's EF which is nothing more than a two stage flow chart
1. Is object complex? If Yes, goto 2.
2. Is object statistically unlikely to the order of 1:10^65?
If Yes, object is Intelligently Designed.
Problem being that Demsbki usually won't show anyone how he calculates either probability or complexity and he won't test the EF on objects he does not know the design status of. In some cases he has let slip how he calculated the probability. E.G. the eu-bacterial flagella, and his assumptions specifically used a process of complete random assembly all in one go from constituent components.
The actual evolutionary models put forth do not suggest this at all and instead look at modification of existing structures which provide adaptive value prior to becoming a flagella.
Thuis Dembski's asusmption of origin is invalid, and as a gifted software engineer I know you'd agree that Garbage-in Garbage-out is a rational conclusion -
( I apologize in advance for this huge long post. <insert sheepish grin here> )
George, I gotta tell yuh, as a layman (speaking for myself alone), your most recent post stinks of jargon. It smells to me like when a car salesman deliberately talks over my head, expecting me to quail away from admitting I don’t understand the terms, thereby showing myself up as an idiot — with the result that I buy whatever low-gas-mileage clunker he’s selling, purely to save face.
George, I already know I’m an idiot. Admitting to myself, years and years ago, that I was nothing more than a Well Meaning Doofus was what removed the obstacles of pride, embarrassment and prejudice from my life, and freed me to learn whatever I was capable of learning. But George, I still don’t like to have my galloping dumbness flaunted in my face by others.
I compare your posts to those of PZ Myers, and I observe that BOTH often contain terms which I don’t have the background to understand.
The difference to me is this: When I read Myers’ stuff, I feel included. I feel respected, despite my limited background in biology. I actually learn stuff. And I kinda marvel that I get to peek inside the Big Top of biology, despite knowing that I’ll never get to train the tigers or ride the elephants.
When I read your stuff, I feel very quickly that there’s some kind of line in the sand, and that you and I are not on the same side of it. You not only talk down to me, you talk away from me. “Harrumph harrumph, well, my boy, you’ll <Shannon entropy> understand when you’re <Kolmogorov complexity> older.”
The difference in approach for the two of you, Myers and Gilder, is this: Myers has, somewhere at the base of his thinking processes, this newfangled idea that knowledge is rooted in a … well, call it a “democracy of understanding.” An endeavor in which everyone can play a part, either by doing the original research, or by working to understand and use the beautiful things uncovered.
You, on the other hand, have, somewhere at the base of your thinking, the idea that knowledge is rooted in a monarchy. To you and religious people like you, some sort of imperial gatekeeper is necessary. To you, the flow of knowledge, the development of new data, and the use of any new information which is allowed to be discovered, should be controlled by … a king.
As Mel Brooks said, “It’s good to be da king!” And you want to be Da King. You want to talk down to people, the poor unfortunates who just can’t seem to understand that you’re right because you’re Da King, and they’re wrong, degrees and all, because they’re plebian rabble.
Myers gives knowledge away for free, merely because he gleefully wants to share it with others. Through his blog, he’s as fun as a kitten with a ball of string.
You, on the other hand, strike me more as a dog with one threadbare bone, jealously growling away all the others. The price you exact for sharing your bone — the “knowledge” you present in your writings — is slack-jawed acceptance of your dominance. The submission of believers to the “beliefs” you present.
You’ll never lack for your kingdom, mister. Because there are plenty of people out there who want to be ruled — to have a voice of authority to tell them what to do, what to think, what war to throw themselves bodily into.
But it will be a SMALL kingdom, and the people you rule will never make you happy, because they will always be the intellectual second-raters. Whether you realize it or not, you’ll never respect them.
And whether you realize it or not, it seems to me that you come belly-to-belly with scientists in these little dominance fights (which you pick) because you want to feel their equal. You want to engage with someone you consider worthy, instead of the fawning little dogs who congregate around you: people who would eat shit on toast if you told them it was God’s own delicacy.
Admit it: What you really and truly want is to be respected by people you respect.
Erase the line, George. You know some part of you wants to — the tone in certain parts of this post are apologetic, almost embarrassed.
You don’t have to become any less a Christian, or whatever it is, to admit to being a Well Meaning Doofus like me and becoming part of a larger society of people who really care about people for their own sake, and not because they make good subjects.
Seriously, you’d be welcomed, I’d bet, even by people like Myers. Having lived and fought on your side of the line, and understanding the tricks and stratagems of the anti-science crowd, you could become an extremely able champion of science — more famous, if you care about such things, than you ever hoped. I’ll bet you’ll even find yourself growing closer with your daughters.
It’s not as if there isn’t precedent. Here’s < http://www.csicop.org/si/2004-05/new-age.html > an article about Karla McLaren, best-selling author of nine books on New Age subjects, who walked away from her little pocket of fame and admitted that she was just … wrong. She now understands that the people who really care about others on the deepest levels are the skeptics, the scientists, the realists.
It required a bit of mental housecleaning. But if a (formerly) New Age bimbo is up to it, surely you can do it too?
C’mon. If nothing else, it’ll be a hell of an adventure. And we Doofuses do love our little adventures. -
Shorter Hank Fox:
Do some effing science, George, then we can talk.
For what it's worth, I concur.
There is no science in the Gildercosm, just propaganda#: Posted by on 10/16 at 03:18 PM -
Well, if I didn't know before that George Gilder is a out and out crank, I know it now.
I only wish I had his newsletter so I'd know which stocks to short.#: Posted by on 10/16 at 04:55 PM -
Well, if anyone had any doubts that George Gilder is a poseur,
his most recent contribution removes it.
He admits he's not a biologist and has never taken a biology course;
yet has the arrogance to imply that his bizarre view of biology
is the right one; and pity all those poor benighted biologists that have
not adopted Gilderism.
His reply has all the hallmarks of crank science. Like the crank,
he introduces his own new terms (the "adguacyth", which is about the ugliest coined term I've ever seen). Like the crank, he implies that
his concepts are revolutionary. Like the crank, he derides mainstream
science (calling it "materialist superstition"). And like the crank, he
says utter nonsense such as "Proteins embody it, resolving uncertainty in particular entropic forms" and "Biological information everywhere manifests irreducible Shannon entropy (temporal) and Kolmogorov complexity (algorithmic)."
Hint to George: achieving high Kolmogorov complexity is easy; all
you need is a source of randomness. There is no mystery at all to
the Kolmogorov complexity of the genome. George'd know this if he bothered to read the critique I posted. But a poseur prefers to answer with bombast instead of substance.
And at the beginning of his nonsensical screed, he has the temerity
to complain about "fury of invective" here. George, try looking at the invective of your co-religionists at Discovery at
http://www.antievolution.org/cgi-bin/ikonboard/ikonboard.cgi?s=4171b6356055ffff;act=ST;f=9;t=1
Your buddy Stephen Meyer compares biologist Ken Miller to Himmler;
your buddies Jonathan Wells and William Dembski routinely compare Darwinism to the Soviet regime. Clean out your own stable first, George, and then maybe, just maybe, you'll achieve some credibility.#: Posted by on 10/16 at 06:07 PM - I guess since low probability events cannot happen without Intelligent Design, the sudden appearance of Mr Gilder upon PZ's departure would be an examplar of ID.
-
Jeffery:
Like the crank, he introduces his own new terms (the “adguacyth”, which is about the ugliest coined term I’ve ever seen). Like the crank, he implies that his concepts are revolutionary.
I assume that "adguacyth" is supposed to mean adenine, guanine, cytosine, and thymine. The person who's never taken a biology course thinks it necessary to invent a completely superfluous (and ghastly) term to describe the four bases of DNA, apparently in demonstration of his unique ability to discern higher truths about the genetic code than those biologists who work with it everyday.
Inventing neologisms is the surest sign of crankery. And of intellectual insecurity.#: Posted by on 10/17 at 11:24 AM -
I wasn't going to reply again. I was stupid and impetuous to do it the first time, and really shouldn't have, but now I'm really angry.
Hank Fox, where the hell do you get off saying that by following your advice my dad can have a closer relationship with my sisters and me? We have an extremely close relationship with our father, and do you know why, he has never talked down to us, every conversation I have ever had with him he has treated me as an equal never dumbing things down for me, even when I was really too young to understand. It made me feel not like a stupid little kid, but someone worth talking to. What you said was low, and it hurt.
Also for someone who doesn't like to be condescended to your little lecture to me after my first post was rather too condescending for you to be talking.
I also really want to apologize for posting on this board, it was not my place, and for that I’m sorry. Anyway it was pointless as it seemed to increase the number of personal attacks, but I’m glad at least dad got his say in. I know you still don’t agree, and that’s your right, but it is always nice to have both sides of an argument. Thank you for putting up with me, and again I am sorry.#: Posted by on 10/17 at 03:37 PM -
That Gilder guy should learn some humility. And that the thousands of experts in a given scientific field know way more than amateurs like him. But the world is full of examples where a man gets some esteem in one area, gets full of himself, pronounces on topics about which he's wholly uninformed, and looks like an ass.
#: Posted by on 10/17 at 04:50 PM
-
"Also for someone who doesn’t like to be condescended to your little lecture to me after my first post was rather too condescending for you to be talking."
Nannina, if you indeed have 'books in the works', you should get a ghost writer.#: Posted by on 10/17 at 04:53 PM -
I find it interesting that Gilder thinks that it's only the US school system that teaches about Global Warming and that DDT is harmful. All school systems not based in some obscure anti-scientific world-view teaches this - at least to my knowledge.
#: Posted by on 10/19 at 08:35 AM
- I find George Gilder's comments revealing and helpful. His notions of "information" resemble those of "global consciousness" which are scientifically problematic. His scientific background appears to place him in the category of intellectuals, including Mortimer Adler and William Buckley, who never fully grasped the scientific side of the enlightenment. Like Adler and Buckley, he's chosen to associate with like minded people rather than quality scientists.
-
The thing about my dad is that he fervently believes what he says,
So does any religious whackjob or schizophrenic. Fervent belief in something does not really mean anything about the object of the belief.
and he does do tremendous amounts of research
That's nice. What does he research? He admitted that he's never taken a biology class in his life, and his hysterical babbling shows that he hasn't researched the subject much. So what does he research? Leitmotifs in Wagnerian opera? Generative semantics? Sex scenes in bodice-rippers? Just saying that he "does ... research" isn't particularly informative, and isn't going to convince us he knows what he's talking about when he can't demonstrate it.
(I know you all will find that hard to believe but he does).
I'm sure you do lots of research in art history, and I'm not expecting you to write any well-informed treatises on the origin of the cell anytime soon.
He can’t put everything behind something that he knows nothing about,
Evidently, he can indeed.#: Posted by on 10/19 at 09:34 AM -
Sigh... I know I shouldn't do this, but, I feel compelled to point a few things out about quantum mechanics to Mr. Gilder.
It tells the history of the theory of quantum entanglement, a phenomenon denied fervently by many of the greatest physicists of the Twentieth Century, including Einstein
I'm not sure that's correct. I'm no historian of science, so I don't have detail's on Einstein's beliefs, but the Einstien Polosky Rosen paper which started this whole think makes it pretty clear that the authors thought that entanglement was a prediction of quantum mechanics. And I'm unaware of any other "great" 20th Century physicist who "denied" that entangled states were a prediction of quantum mechanics. Indeed, one can find a detailed quantum mechanical discussion in David Bohm's 1951 textbook.
Like many of the great enigmas of science, entanglement remains unexplained.
Well, that's not really true. Entangled states are part and parcel of quantum mechanics. "Explaining" them is pretty easy to do if you've had a junior level quantum mechanics course. Again, Bohm's textbook has a nice discussion.
Now the interpretation of these states (and of quantum mechanics in general) is still a matter of some dicussion. But the states themselves are pretty easy to explain.
Something happens across the universe beyond the physics of the particular photonic waves. Whether physicists know it or not, in the pursuit of quantum computing, they are now deep in the realms of non-physical sources of superpositional information.
Huh? The physical theory of quantum mechanics explains exactly what happens to entangled states. It's understood perfectly, and experiments have repeatedly confirmed the predictions of the theory.
What is interesting is that we can now start thinking about exloiting this stuff (quantum computing, cryptography and communications). But the only reason we can to this is becuase the theory behind it all is so well understood, not the other way around, as you'd have it.#: Posted by Matthew Nobes on 10/19 at 10:04 AM - I think it's good that you spoke up. I have a strong suspicion that Gilder's grasp of physics is about as nonsensical as his understanding of biology.
-
I think it’s good that you spoke up. I have a strong suspicion that Gilder’s grasp of physics is about as nonsensical as his understanding of biology.
LOL...would you believe you're correct PZ? I know it was a long shot to make that wild guess, but you hit the jackpot.
The afreomentioned author is confusing/conflating the science of Quantum Mechanics with the metaphysical realm of Quantum Reality. One is a solid science which makes testable predictions and has yielded incredibly useful applications, not the least of which is the solid state and integrated circuity Mr. Gilder's entire livelihood depends upon. The other is an interesting field of metaphysics. The entire paradigm of the Copenhagen Interpretation of the Many Worlds Hypothesis could come crashing down in a heart beat and it wouldn't affect the scientific processes which are running all our PCs. -
I think it’s good that you spoke up. I have a strong suspicion that Gilder’s grasp of physics is about as nonsensical as his understanding of biology.
The trouble is trying to decipher what his grasp of physics is beneath the buzzwords. It's easy to spout off about "non-physical sources of superpositional information" it's quite another thing to make them precise in a physics sense.
But I'm pretty sure you're right. People who understand the physics typically don't use such meaningless phrases.#: Posted by Matthew Nobes on 10/19 at 11:43 AM -
Gilder wrote:
Global temperatures are cooler than the average over the last three millennia. Greenland was green and Iceland was populous. The entire period from 600 to about 1100 was warmer than the present and decisively warmer than the little ice age ending in around 1900, from which we are recovering still today.
I know that people are probably ignoring this statement because they are focusing on other areas, but I wonder what data this incrediblous statement is based on.
Regional temperatures were higher in the Medieval Warm Period (600-1100 AD) than at other periods, but it is uncertain if the global temperatures were higher (it is also uncertain if the Little Ice Age was a global phenomenon). Also it would perhaps be relevant for you to look at the average global temperatures from 1990 and on, which were (and are) higher than the average temperature of the known warm regions in the Medieval Warm Period.
To see the development of temperatures within the last 1000 years, click on the url by my post.#: Posted by Kristjan Wager on 10/19 at 12:36 PM -
I'm reminded of Gilder's claim about one day uploading our consciousness from our bodies, which is nonsense on the face of it as there is no dualistic 'ghost in the machine' to upload anywhere. I recommend reading Dan Dennett's "Consciousness Explained" as a good start towards learning more about the nature of consciousness.
#: Posted by on 10/20 at 09:24 AM
-
I guess you scientific types are not required to take courses in courtesy, and polite behavior. If you disagree with someones theories or observations, why is it necessary to slam the hell out of him personally? Then go after his daughter as well.
Sorry for the interruption....I will go back to my NASCAR site and talk to the Bubba's of this world, you guys are a bunch of A H's................#: Posted by on 10/24 at 01:35 PM - Dick have you ever actually read some of the shit the Discovery Institute puts out about evo-biologists? They compare them to Nazi's, Stalinists, etc. The ideas of the IDC'ers have been thoroughly dealt with. Ref's availible on request. I suggest you take your own advice and perhaps relay that same suggestion back to the purveyors of mythological IDC claims.
-
Ahem. How much courtesy is due to a transparent liar?
C'mon Dick, these things DO matter. They're worth a little excitement, a little anger.
How would "you NASCAR types" feel if someone said to you "That Dale Earnhardt was such an idiot. He could have won twice as many races if he'd only used molasses instead of race car fuel." -- And then went on to tell, loudly and publicly, a thousand other lies about Earnhardt and racing?
You think you'd be polite? -
Another whiny 'winger. Jeez, guy, get used to it. If people lie, they get called liars. If they say stupid things, they get called stupid. It seems to me that it is always the lunatics trying to defend the indefensible that throw these snits and demand undeserved courtesy -- 'cause they know they certainly don't have a leg to stand on as far as substance goes.
And speaking of lies: look again. No one went after his daughter. She showed up here, made a few comments, and was treated with nothing but courtesy. -
Although overwhelmed by my many fans on this page, I will try to respond, without any nonsense of one day escaping you by uploading my consciousness from my body. I regard such claims of the sufficiency of information alone as ridiculous as I regard an exclusively material view of life. Are you confusing me with my friend Ray Kurzweil, who also should not be understood too quickly?
Although not a professional in the physical sciences, I admire scientists deeply and have devoted much of my career to supporting their activities. Anyone interested in my approach to writing about physics can consult Microcosm: the quantum era in economics and technology or Telecosm: the world after bandwidth abundance. In both I attempt to tell the history and explain the physics behind the technologies of our time. My latest book, The Silicon Eye, impinges on biology, since the Foveon imager it describes began as a biological project.
Although entanglement theory began with the Einstein Podolsky Rosen paper in 1926, Einstein believed that this phenomenon entailed "spooky action at a distance" and thus disproved the Copenhagen model of quantum theory. In the early 1980s, John Bell showed that this Einstein insight could be tested, and it was, by John Clauser, Alain Aspect, and others. We are left with the concept of spooky action at a distance or with the transactional theory of two way movement of electromagnetism through time. Neither of these are simple to grasp or completely accepted by physicists. Bohm's text was indeed the most lucid exposition of Quantum Theory. Too bad he repudiated it later in the course of his development of far-fetched convolutional undulations. However, I agree that quantum theory works and is the foundation of quantum cryptography and the still very primitive ventures in quantum computing.
I am fully aware of the perils of scientists in one field barging into others. Ortega called such people "barbarians of specialization." As one of the founders of supply side economics (I wrote two books on that subject years ago), I am often amazed by the ignorance of outsiders who think they understand the feedback loops in tax policy or other economic issues on the basis of a casual acquaintance with political speeches and editorials. I obviously have nothing to contribute in biology. But the issues of materialism in science or dualism in the theory of consciousness or ideas in the process of evolution are intrinsically philosophical or even theological. Biologists should not assume that they can dismiss these fields without addressing them seriously.
In communications theory, it is a commonplace that Shannon entropy and Kolmogorov complexity are highest for white noise or randomness. In such cases, the concepts are relatively useless analytically, though they have prompted the use of pseudo-noise codes in code division multiple access communications systems. Are you saying that complex biological forms are random? If they are not, these concepts from information theory offer a valuable path for examining them.
As it happens, I only read one of Demski's books four or five years ago. I admire his bold effort to couch Intelligent Design in a mathematical form but it remains controversial at Discovery, where there is no party line enforced and many different views are vigorously debated. Neither I nor I would guess Demski himself imagines that he succeeded except on the level of raising important questions. However, in matters of the philosophy of science, he is far beyond dogmatic materialists who have yet to evolve to abstract thought.
The preponderance of the evidence shows that weather over the millennia has been volatile, and often warmer than today. If the little ice age was not a global phenomenon, then temperatures in the past were still warmer on average than my sources (Arthur Robinson, Willie Soon, Sallie Balunis et al) estimate. Thus today's weather becomes still less anomalous.#: Posted by George Gilder on 10/24 at 02:30 PM -
"The preponderance of the evidence shows that weather over the millennia has been volatile, and often warmer than today."
Can you perhaps give us some references to the evidence you are talking about? Peer-reviewed sources would be prefered, but any scientific analysis would be welcome.
But even if the average temperatures have been higher at some point in the past, there is also the issue of how rapid the rise in the temperatures is. The rise in temperature is happening more rapidly now than before, and if it is cause by humankind, there is no guarantee that the rise will stop anytime soon.
The leading experts on the fields related to the issue, have all come out and warned against the consequences of not doing anything about Global Warming, and you think it's anti-Capitalism at work?
I'm sorry, but that sounds like anti-scientism at work. Much like your anti-Evolution viewpoint.#: Posted by on 10/24 at 04:35 PM -
"I guess you scientific types are not required to take courses in courtesy, and polite behavior. If you disagree with someones theories or observations, why is it necessary to slam the hell out of him personally?"
Uhmmm.... because those theories and observations are doing real harm to other peoples? The theories about ID/Creationsim are doing real harm to some peoples' right to learn proper science, while the theories about Global Warming might do real harm on the world in the long run. Saying that DDT isn't harmful could endanger other people.
If people have odd theories, we would probably not say anything, but when people want to turn it into political agendas, then we not only have the right to speak up, but in some way also a duty to do so.#: Posted by on 10/24 at 04:41 PM -
George, please try to follow your own argument. It was you who uttered the fatuous statement
Biological information everywhere manifests irreducible Shannon entropy (temporal) and Kolmogorov complexity (algorithmic).
When I pointed out that achieving high Kolmogorov complexity is
trivial - all you need is a source of randomness - you replied
In communications theory, it is a commonplace that Shannon entropy and Kolmogorov complexity are highest for white noise or randomness.
thus admitting your original statement was hooey! High Kolmogorov complexity in biological systems is entirely unremarkable. So why did you pretend it was?
You go on to say
Neither I nor I would guess Demski himself imagines that he succeeded except on the level of raising important questions.
You would guess entirely wrong. Dembski [please note correct spelling]
has consistently made wild and unsubstantiated claims about the value of his work.
Now let's see if we can get some straight answers to two questions:
1. You complain about invective on this board. Do you or do you
not support Discovery Institute's Stephen Meyer's comparison of biologist Ken Miller to Himmler?
2. If no party line is enforced at Discovery, why have the most prominent critics of intelligent design (Kenneth Miller, Wesley Elsberry, etc.) never been invited to speak there?#: Posted by on 10/24 at 06:15 PM -
Willie Soon and Sallie Baliunas are Harvard professors and their essay refuting human causes of Global Warming was peer reviewed and endorsed by some 17 thousand scientists. Arthur Robinson was Linus Pauling's protege and is one of the most brilliant chemists in the world. He publishes a monthly critique of global warming and other spurious scientific claims, including the belief that DDT is harmful to humans (he shows that the DDT ban caused a massive resurgence of deadly malaria). Entitled Access to Energy, his letter is available from the Oregon Center for Science and Medicine, Box 1250, Cave Junction, Oregon 97523. It regularly publishes summaries and critiques of peer reviewed analysis of these issues.
The complexity I was discussing was informational: DNA codes. Kolmogorov complexity of codes is significant because it is a measure of their communications efficiency.
I do not believe that Stephen Meyer compared Ken Miller to Himmler. It is not like him at all. If he did, he is deeply embarrassed about it and so am I.
Various members of Discovery have endlessly debated their critics. They are scarcely allowed to appear in public without a critic at hand. Working in Massachusetts on the Discovery technology project, I do not know the details of their schedule of events in Seattle, but I suspect that under reasonable conditions Discovery would be delighted to sponsor a debate with the people you mention (Actually I think Meyer has debated Miller. I don't know who Wesley Elsberry is).#: Posted by George Gilder on 10/24 at 07:17 PM -
The Soon & Baliunas affair is remarkably similar to the recent publication by Meyer -- see what Chris Mooney and David Appell have to say about it. In both cases, we have review paper of dubious quality with no original work, published in a purportedly peer-reviewed journal with the compliance of an editor friendly to the author's bias, and both ended up repudiated by important members of the journal involved.
I see we've got another connection between the two papers: all of the authors are friends of George Gilder. -
Wait, I thought we banned DDT not because it was harmful to us, but because it was harmful to birds. You know, thinner eggshells and whatnot?
See, for example, http://tinyurl.com/3lou4
Size and shape of eggs of brown pelicans from the post-1945 era and those of kestrels, on DDT-contaminated diets showed some significant, but inconsistent, changes compared to brown pelican data from the pre-1946 era or kestrels on clean diets. In contrast, nearly all samples of eggs of experimental kestrels given DDT-contaminated diets and those of wild brown pelicans from the post-1945 era exhibited significant eggshell thinning.#: Posted by on 10/24 at 07:47 PM -
Again, George Gilder, why are you really over there?
You appear to have a sound mind, at least mechanically. You're capable of cleverness, probably even a high level of reason. You seem to care deeply about certain things.
Why fight on the ugly, false side of these issues? You have to know, on some level, that Reality itself becomes your enemy, when you start telling lies. You have to know that somewhere along the way, real people actually do get hurt by the confusion and falsehoods you and your cohorts spread. You have to know that on some level, this actually hurts YOU.
Don't you?
As I said before, it's not unknown for people to be deeply involved in such matters as you are, and to make the jump to a more reasoning frame of mind. New Age author Karla McLaren had written something like a half dozen best-selling books on New Age subjects, before starting her slow journey to understand that she was actually doing something wrong. http://www.csicop.org/si/2004-05/new-age.html
Commenting on James Randi, who she originally saw as a hated opponent, full of needless meanness toward her work, she finally said she could "see him as a deeply caring man who works tirelessly for an important cause."
C'mon, George, think about it. Start the journey.
Really LOOK at the people who are your coworkers in the career you've chosen. Are they honest? Are they generous and compassionate? Are they broadminded, thoughtful and fun?
While you're at it, take a good look at the people who follow you. Are they bright, inquisitive minds? Are they individuals? If you had to be stuck on an island with someone, are they the people you'd choose to spend great amounts of time with?
George, I still think if you started on this journey, you’d find no end of help along the way. And I still think that at the end of that journey you’d find a fame, a greatness, and a community of friends, all over the world, that would dwarf anything you have now.
George, admit it. When you were a kid, you never planned to end up where you are now, did you? You saw better things for your life. You saw yourself being a Hero someday. Someone Good.
You can still get there. It’s not too late to start on the journey to those better things you once imagined.
Do it. - BTW, George, I mentioned you briefly on my own blog today: http://www.hankfox.com
- My guess would be he's here as part of a marketing strategy for his own business or for the DI.
- I feel that I agree with George, in part, regarding the representation of a simple set of amino acids as a conveyance for information theory. While I could not figure out all of what he meant, no doubt in part due to the rich definition he holds of each of th
