In fact, Dembski's opponents have not asserted that Dembski and his friends are "not intelligent" or "not smart." (If I am wrong, Dembski is welcome to provide relevant references). If the opponents of ID do not specifically stress how smart Dembski and Co are, that is because there is no need to do so - Dembski and his colleagues take care of that themselves - they routinely unabashedly praise each other and sometimes themselves in superlative terms (a documented proof of that is forthcoming from Elsberry and myself).By any objective standards, the principal players in the ID movement are reasonably intelligent people. Phillip Johnson, for instance, graduated first in his law school class at the University of Chicago and clerked for Chief Justice Earl Warren. Jonathan Wells got double 800s on his SATs and was awarded a full, merit-based undergraduate scholarship at Princeton in the 1960s. Guillermo Gonzalez, though a young assistant professor, has over sixty articles in refereed astronomy and astrophysical journals. These are just a few examples off the top of my head.
New Polemic Outbursts by the Isaac Newton of Information Theory
William Dembski posted two new pieces vividly displaying his unbounded arrogance (here and here). Among other points in these two ridiculously self-confident pieces of sheer polemics, Dembski, apparently offended by the critique of his work so highly acclaimed by his cohorts, accuses his opponents of underestimating the intelligence of his co-travelers and supporters Johnson, Wells, and Gonzales. Here is a quotation from the first of the above posts:
11 Comments
Mark Perakh · 16 April 2004
Correction: The text of my post may create impression that I attributed to Dembski quoting from Koons in his latest post. In fact, I meant to say that Dembski used to quote from Koons earlier. For example, on page 21 of Dembski's Design Inference he not just quotes Koons but lists the latter among those who "contributed significantly" to his book.
Paul King · 16 April 2004
The "displacement problem" is a particularly odd idea of Dembski's. It can only come into play when we have something that is both CSI and has a viable "non-telic" explanation. But under the usual understanding CSI is identified by eliminating all "non-telic" explanations by showing that their probability of producing the specified event is below a probability threshold.
Thus we can never be in the situation where we could sensibly invoke the "problem". If we show that the event is "displaced" CSI then the "problem" is redundant. If we do then not we cannot know that the event is CSI and we cannot invoke the "displacement problem" without begging the question.
Les Lane · 16 April 2004
Education is what makes the difference between qualified crackpots and unqualified crackpots.
Mark Perakh · 16 April 2004
I agree that the displacement problem (DP) touted by Dembski as an insurmountable obstacle to evolution is a meaningless concept. In the anthology edited by Young and Edis (forthcoming from Rutgers) I wrote in my chapter that DP is a phantom. Briefly, DP a la Dembski means that, instead of accessing the available fitness landscape using a search algorithm, a larger information space has to be searched containing a collection of fitness functions (plus, perhaps, some other information) to find a suitable fitness function. In fact, there is no need to go to that "information space." In the only available biological reality, a fitness landscape is always given. The search algorithm (and, if we want to apply No Free Lunch Theorems, it always is a black-box algorithm) encounters a given landscape so there is no need to go to the "information space" in search of a fitness function -- it is always there. Algorithms start the search without any prior knowledge of the landscape and, step by step, acquire such knowledge from the landscape. Moreover, there are good reasons to expect that relevant landscapes have well defined peaks of fitness with relatively smooth slopes and are therefore well suited to be accessed by algorithms based on natural selection (details are discussed in the Rutgers anthology).
Ben Goff · 17 April 2004
I am in agreement with your position, but most of your posts are written so badley I cannnot tell which side you are on. I understand that it is difficult to write technical matters in language understood by the ordinary reader. If it was dependent on this site, I'm afraid that it evolution would not be taught.
Mark Perakh · 17 April 2004
Dear Ben Goff: Thanks for your comment. Although it is not quite clear whether you refer only to my posts of to the entire site, I am glad you share my (or our?) position, especially since you do so without being able to tell which side I am (or we are?) on and despite my (or our?) posts being so "badley written." I appreciate your inventive spelling and artistic style. Cheers!
Dick Thompson · 17 April 2004
I cerainly don't have any trouble telling which side you're in! Maybe some folks need to be cued with emoticons.
I would like to ask if there is any good online resource you know about for the Wolpert and Macready work. It sounds like a new piece of the "high ground" of understanding.
RBH · 17 April 2004
No Free Lunch Theorems:
For Optimization.
For Search.
Some dissections of Dembski's use of them:
Mark Perakh
Richard Wein
David Wolpert (Wolpert was one of the mathematicians who proved the NFL Theorems)
RBH
Mark Perakh · 17 April 2004
Hi, Dick: RBH has kindly provided several links in response to your inquiry before I set out to do the same. Hopefully you'll find whatever information you're looking for in these posts - they include Wolpert's and Wolpert-Macready's original papers (heavily mathematical), my much simpler explanation of the theorems without using math symbolism, Richard Wein's fine discussion of these theorems from another angle, and finally Wolpert's scathing dismissal of Dembski's misuse of the NFL theorems in his NFL book of 2002. Cheers, Mark
Dick Thompson · 17 April 2004
Thanks very much!
Mark Perakh · 17 April 2004
I've checked the links provided by RBH. Those to the posts by Wein and Wolpert do work OK, but the link to my post for unknown reasons is not working. Here is its URL (to be copied and pasted in your browser): www.talkreason.org/articles/orr.cfm . Mark