Gpuccio: The Case of the Starry Sky is Bad Faith

[Timothy_Horton]

Not sure where to put this since most of the threads discussing gpuccio’s FI calculations have been locked. Gpuccio is back at UD today bragging about how he thrashed all the scholars at PS who tried to refute his FI claims.

Gpuccio: "I was really surpised by Hunt’s tornado argument. Is it possible that he does not understand?

Yes, I suppose it’s possible. Because I believe he is, after all, in some good faith. So, he does not understand.

By the way, my final confutation of the tornado “argument” is here, at #614.

Frankly, Swamidass’ starry sky was much worse. And not in good faith, IMO.

Perhaps it’s easy to state falsities, or even frank lies, when you have some dozen fanatics ready to tell that you are right, or at least to stay silent."

Does anyone really wonder why he bailed out here and left his underlings Bill and Giltil to defend his FI nonsense?

[Jordan (Jordan Mantha)]

I was just observing the thread, but I certainly didn’t get the impression that he exactly knocked it out of the park regarding FI. He presented his case but it seemed like there were serious challenges.

What I find more shocking is:

Frankly, Swamidass’ starry sky was much worse. And not in good faith, IMO.

Perhaps it’s easy to state falsities, or even frank lies, when you have some dozen fanatics ready to tell that you are right, or at least to stay silent.

We (moderators) intentionally cleared out the thread so that it was only a defined few people who could engage with @gpuccio specifically to allow him space to engage. That’s the first time we’ve done that to that extent I believe. I don’t know where this talk of bad faith and lies came from, that’s not very cool.

[swamidass (S. Joshua Swamidass)]

For reference, @gpuccio is referencing this exchange: Gpuccio: Functional Information Methodology.

@Timothy_Horton

Gpuccio is back at UD today bragging about how he thrashed all the scholars at PS

Please provide a link.

@Jordan

I don’t know where this talk of bad faith and lies came from, that’s not very cool.

Well, @Jordan, it has to be hard for him. At UD he has a lot of people who totally agree with him and seem as their hero. For most people, we want to save face after exchanges that doesn’t go well.

For what it is worth, I do not think he was acting in bad faith or being dishonest. It really seems he is buying what he is selling. If that is true (and I think it is), how should he make sense of a group of scholars (including Christians and atheists) that were in uniform agreement about several mistakes he made? That is his challenge.

Look at how he describes the situation he perceives at PS:

Perhaps it’s easy to state falsities, or even frank lies, when you have some dozen fanatics ready to tell that you are right, or at least to stay silent.

Undermining this narrative, these fanatics have no trouble calling me out when they think I am making a bad argument. That is certainly not the situation. So where does he get that idea from? Well, there is the cognitive dissonance, which really needs to be resolved, but also this:

@Timothy_Horton

Gpuccio is back at UD today bragging about how he thrashed all the scholars at PS who tried to refute his FI claims.

@Timothy_Horton

Does anyone really wonder why he bailed out here and left his underlings Bill and Giltil to defend his FI nonsense?

Well, it turns out that he intends to describe us, but he is really describing his situation at UD. This is classic projection. I think we should let it go for now. It normally takes a while for people to work their way out of the thicket when they are in a situation like this. He needs time.

Instead, I recommend we focus on our common ground: Gpuccio on Common Descent. @gpuccio is a respected member of ID who argues for common descent. If we can make his case clearer, with support and explication, I am sure that will important for many people in their camp to understand.

[swamidass (S. Joshua Swamidass)]

Frankly, Swamidass’ starry sky was much worse. And not in good faith, IMO.

For reference, let’s pull that example. I said there is more than 1000 bits of Functional Information in the starry sky.

@swamidass

What is the object? The starry sky? You mean our galaxy, or at least the part we can observe from our planet?

What is the function?

I said the information is the positions of visible stars in the sky. The function of this information, for many thousands of years, was navigation (latitude and direction), time-telling (seasons), and storytelling (constellations). Any change that would impact navigation, time-telling, or storytelling, or create a visual difference would impact one or all these things.

There are about 9,000 visible stars in the sky (low estimate). Keeping things like visual acuity in mind (Naked eye - Wikipedia ), we can compute the information. However, even if there are just two possible locations in the sky for every start (absurd) and only half the stars are important (absurd), we are still at 4,500 bits of information in the position of stars in the sky. That does not even tell us the region of sky we are looking at (determined by season and latitude), but we can neglect this for now.

@gpuccio

I wll briefly answer this, and then for the moment I must go.

What makes the current configuration of the stars specific to help navigation, time telling or story telling? If the configuration were a different random configuration, wouldn’t it be equally precious for navigation, time telling and storytelling?

There is no specific functional information in the configuration we observe. Most other copnfigurations generated by cosmic events would satisfy the same functions you have defined.

@swamidass

A new configuration would not be equally precious for telling the stories we have now. We would have different constellations, and therefore different myths about these constellations. My function is to tell this specific (specified!) stories, not any old stories you might want to come up with in place of them. So no, a new configuration would break the storytelling function.

Remember also, that some configurations (e.g. a regular grid or a repeating pattern) are useless for navigation or time-telling. Very quickly, we would get over 500 bits with a careful treatment, well into the thousands if not millions of bits.

@gpuccio

But you are doing exactly what I cautioned about. You are defining the function as a consequence of an already observed configuration.

If the configuration were different, we woukld be telling different stories.

Are you really so confused about the meaning of FI?

The function must be defined independently You can define the function as “telling stories about the stars”. You cannot define the function as “telling storeis about the stars in this specific configuration”.

How can you not understand that this is conceptually wrong?

@swamidass

No, I’m just using a particular definition of function, which parallels yours in biology. If you don’t want me to use my definition, I am not sure you can use yours.

@swamidass

It seems you are defining function by the already observed configuration of proteins in extant biology. This does not take into account the configurations that would produce the same high level functions, but we just don’t see because it is not what happened.

If these are the rules, you are breaking them. Right?

@swamidass

It is subjective how we define function. I chose a definition of function that paralleled yours in biology, so I am not sure how you can object to me “breaking the rule” while breaking yourself with your own definition!

Yes, this highlights the problems with using FI as a way of determining if something is designed or not.

And I will let @gpuccio have last word on this:

@gpuccio

This is bad. Frankly, I would probably not even answer this kind of arguments, if they did not come from you.

I don’t know if you really believe that the stars in the sky exhibit high values of FI, or if you are only provoking (without any good reason, IMO).

If you really believe that, there is proibably no purpose in continuing any discussion about FI.

If you are provoking, it’s not a good sign just the same.

However, here is a brief answer.

The simple rule I have described (and which is rather obvious in any possible serious discussion about FI) is that we cannot use the observed bits to define the function. The function must be defined undependently from the knowledge of the observed bits.

So: “a configuration of stars that favors storytelling” is valid. But probably almost all possible configurations would do that.

While “a confifuraion of stars where the first has these celestial coordinates, the second these other ones”, and so on for all 9000 visible stars, is not valid.

[Timothy_Horton]

@Jordan

I don’t know where this talk of bad faith and lies came from, that’s not very cool.

I’d wager it’s a case of good old-fashioned sour grapes.

[Timothy_Horton]

@swamidass

Please provide a link.

It’s here.

[colewd (Bill Cole)]

@swamidass

Well, it turns out that he intents to describe us, but he is really describing his situation at UD. This is classic projection. I think we should let it go for now. It normally takes a while for people to work their way out of the thicket when they are in a situation like this. He needs time.

I think this is right as it takes time to work through ideas. The tornado discussion is a very complex one and I think it is valuable to try and work through it without passion or prejudice. I gave him an out that @Art agreed with. He did not take the out and I salute him for that whether he is right or wrong. I think this discussion is converging with Physics and Boltzman’s equations. If Boltzman’s equation is bogus as Einstein claimed that is really important to flush out.

E. G. D. Cohen

The Rockefeller University, 1230 York Avenue, New York, New York 10065, USA

Abstract Boltzmann’s Principle S = k ln W was repeatedly criticized by Einstein since it lacked a proper dynamical foundation in view of the thermal motion of the particles, out of which a physical system consists.

[Mercer (John Mercer)]

@swamidass

Well, it turns out that he intends to describe us, but he is really describing his situation at UD. This is classic projection.

Yes. Since he is accusing you of lying, that means that he is acting in bad faith.

@swamidass

I think we should let it go for now. It normally takes a while for people to work their way out of the thicket when they are in a situation like this. He needs time.

Normally, people never “work their way out of the thicket,” no matter how much time you give them.

[cwhenderson (Curtis Henderson)]

@Mercer

Normally, people never “work their way out of the thicket,” no matter how much time you give them.

Agreed, based on his follow-up comments at UD, he seems to be perfectly content ensconced in his thicket.

[colewd (Bill Cole)]

@cwhenderson

Agreed, based on his follow-up comments at UD, he seems to be perfectly content ensconced in his thicket.

Everyone lives in some level of a Thicket. Josh is just trying to get them to talk and share ideas. I have seen it work it just takes time.

[cwhenderson (Curtis Henderson)]

@colewd

I have seen it work it just takes time.

I would have more faith in gpuccio if it wasn’t for his blatant misrepresentation of the interaction.

[colewd (Bill Cole)]

@cwhenderson

I would have more faith in gpuccio if it wasn’t for his blatant misrepresentation of the interaction.

Can you be more specific.

[Timothy_Horton]

@colewd

Can you be more specific.

Bill you’ve been reading and responding to his comments at UD. You know damn well what gpuccio is falsely claiming about his interactions at PS.

[colewd (Bill Cole)]

@Timothy_Horton

Bill you’ve been reading and responding to his comments at UD. You know damn well what gpuccio is falsely claiming about his interactions at PS.

I simply asked for clarification to understand Curtis’s view. You do not have a monopoly on truth as much as you wish you had.

[Timothy_Horton]

@colewd

I simply asked for clarification to understand Curtis’s view. You do not have a monopoly on truth as much as you wish you had.

Your knee-jerk denial of empirically observed facts won’t make the facts go away as much as you wish they will.

[colewd (Bill Cole)]

@Mercer

Yes. Since he is accusing you of lying, that means that he is acting in bad faith.

And now Tim is accusing gpuccio of lying. Bad faith cuts both ways.

[cwhenderson (Curtis Henderson)]

@colewd

Can you be more specific.

@Timothy_Horton shared probably the most caustic of gpuccio’s posts, but there are others. He essentially offers accusations of bad faith arguments and lies. It seems a very poor response to the platform he was given to exchange thoughts exclusively with professional scientists, and not “some dozen fanatics”. If he really thinks that the dozen fanatics either tell @swamidass he is right or stay silent, then he hasn’t sampled much of the PS site!

Frankly, I would characterize gpuccio’s response as unchristian, but I don’t know if that is relevant for him.

[cwhenderson (Curtis Henderson)]

@colewd

And now Tim is accusing gpuccio of lying

Do you prefer the phrase “misrepresenting the facts”?

[Timothy_Horton]

@colewd

And now Tim is accusing gpuccio of lying. Bad faith cuts both ways.

Please retract this falsehood Bill. I never accused gpuccio of lying. I said he’s posting false claims at UD about his interactions here at PS which he is. He may very well believe what he writes but that doesn’t make his statements less false.

Gpuccio on the other hand did specifically use the word “lie” when describing inputs from PS folks.

Your knee-jerk defense of anything and everything to do with ID-Creationism is pathetic.

[Rumraket (Mikkel R.)]

It is depressing to see how Gpuccio and some of his resident followers here seem to be revealing themselves more as salesmen and advertisers(propagandists? for lack of a better term), willing to state almost anything they believe will sell their product, than as people who are genuinely interested in the truth.

I find it nothing short of fantastic that there are people who will allow themselves to continue to to declare stuff like there have been no good responses to Gpuccio’s methods.

It’s challenging to keep taking people who say such things seriously in light of the interactions that have taken place here recently.