Is it "Deceptive" to say the GAE is "Consistent With" Evolution?

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I’ve already given you the context.

That context is important. If some one claimed the evidence is inconsistent with X, and was wrong, what better way to correct it than say that the evidence is consistent with X.

These don’t make any sense, and I can barely follow what you mean. E.g. I think you mean “the murder evidence is consistent with the defendant committing the murder.” But I have no way to logically parse “the defendant is consistent with the murder evidence.”

That is is exactly what someone might say. A report was given about an accident, e.g. “car A rear-ended car B.” And the damage to car A is consistent with the report. In such a case, we would certainly say that the report was consistent with the damage.

But your whole framing is wrong here too:

Of course not, because “consistent with” is not a statement about positive evidence, but about negative evidence. “Consistent with” means there is no negative evidence against it, not that there is positive evidence for it. That is literally what it means.

My claim is: the evidence is consistent with both models either with or without de novo creation; either way can be consistent with the evidence.

There is an immense amount of positive evidence for this claim. So to say that there is no positive evidence for my conclusion about these models, this claim, would be false. My analysis is grounded in an immense amount of established science.

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You did all the hardwork already.

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It never seemed that way to me.

From the perspective of a mathematician, this is vacuously true. That does not make it deceptive, although some people might find it confusing.

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I understand the context. The context is not communicated through the shorthand phrase, “X is consistent with Y” where X is a non-observation.

A non-observation is consistent with anything.

X being inconsistent was arrived at through presuppositions that are observable. The hypothesis presented is inherently unobservable. The presuppositions were rewritten. I don’t think a non-observation qualifies as being meaningfully consistent with a scientific theory. In the same way, “The unobservable Celestial Teapot is consistent with gravitational theory.” Is it? How could you possibly know?

A more clear alternative statement, “No evidence supports the murder was committed by the defendant.”

Or conversely, “The forensic evidence shows the murder was committed by the defendant.”

Would you agree that the shorthand phrase is ambiguous at best?

Could the phrase suggest the damage was not caused by the reported car accident? Again, I think it’s ambiguous.

I have no way to logically parse what you mean by “consistent with.”

“Genetic drift is consistent with modern evolutionary synthesis.” [Positive exists, negative does not]
“Magical inheritance is consistent with modern evolutionary synthesis.” [Non-observation, neither positive nor negative]
“Our findings are consistent with modern evolutionary synthesis.” [Negative exists, positive does not]

All three statements are true–one describes consistency with positive evidence, one describes consistency through non-observation, and the third describes consistency through negative evidence. Any of these examples could be misinterpreted. The third example “Our findings” could be positive, negative, or neither.

What are H 0 and Ha here for a real A&E pair that interbred with extant hominids?

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I think that is more or less where we landed (I hope).

Ambiguous is likely the better word.

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Depends on the mass and orbit of the teapot in question. But yes, certain types of celestial teapots are consistent with gravitational theory. We have finite resolution in detecting the gravitational effects of massive objects, and one could presumably calculate what is the most massive object that would result in a detectable effect on the orbits of other planets. Any teapot lighter than that would be undetectable.

The idea of people positing hypotheses which are supported by little or none positive evidence but are also not ruled out is not uncommon in particle physics. There are many exotic particles and interactions which are hypothesized in published papers because they’re mathematically elegant and/or their existence could possibly solve some other conundrums in physics. Theorists have to work hard to make sure that their pet theory is consistent with existing experimental data before an experimenter would be interested to build an experiment to attempt to verify or disprove it. A considerable amount of time and resources are devoted to verifying such “consistent but unproven” theories. In fact some theories, like string theory, might never be verifiable in practice because of the practicalities involved.

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I don’t think we can measure the mass or observe the orbit–by definition of what it is :wink:

Definitely–I am hoping to illustrate that “consistent with” may be adequately interpreted in a number of ways. Any particular audience–say the Celestial Teapot Society–might take “consistent with” to mean ‘positive evidence for.’ Really we just mean, “hasn’t violated any physical laws yet, but also hasn’t been demonstrated.” Unfortunately, if a member of the Celestial Teapot Society has to dig into the literature to find that out, they are likely walking away with the wrong interpretation.

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I’ll point out that all this is addressed directly in the book, and even if what you are saying were true, it would not indicate deceit on my part. Your insistence on accusing me of deception is concerning. I’m not inclined to respond much more.

As for “observability”, the hypothesis is not intrinsically unobservable. That just is not true. Rather, everyone was convinced the evidence ruled it out, but that just wasn’t so. The fact that it seems intrinsically unobservable now just goes to show how convincingly I made my case.

Yes, there was (and is) a strong presupposition that evidence of AE would be visible in DNA. This presupposition is false. It honestly seems like you are struggling with letting go of this presupposition. With out that presupposition clouding our view, “consistent with” does not entail positive evidence. Perhaps give it some time and it will eventually sink in.

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Okay–is there any scientific observation that has or could be made to support or reject the hypothesis of introgression with N = 2?

I can assure you, I am tracking.

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Let’s settle on “unintentionally deceptive”. You should know that “consistent with x” is a formula commonly used to imply “evidence for x”. For that reason, if that isn’t what you mean, you should avoid that phrasing. That’s just good writing.

Not true. The presupposition was that evidence of recent, bottleneck-of-two AE would be visible in DNA. Nobody who made that claim was thinking of your GAE scenario.

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“Consistent with” only implies positive evidence when we expect to find positive evidence, but we don’t. I headline the fact that the genetic evidence does not demonstrate or indicate AE were de novo created.

Taken as it literally means and is commonly used, Im using “consistent with” correctly and not deceptively. The issue is some stubborn preconceptions that The genetic evidence does rule out (or rule in) AE. That’s just wrongheaded.

Not true. Dennis Venema and BioLogos claimed that the evidence rules out AE ancestors of us all, even if there was interbreeding between AEs lineage and others.

They were not thinking of an AE just 6,000 years ago, because they were certain they had ruled it out going back at least 100,000 years, if not millions of years back. That’s how off they were, and they certainly made statements in print to this effect.

Yes, that argument has been solidly settled, but no need to rewrite history here. They held that the GAE was impossible. Not only that, they asserted it was settled science that it was ruled out.

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What do you mean by N=2 in this context?

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A literal de novo human pair created by God, with or without parents, who interbred with extant human populations (Ne >> 2) along any timeline.

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There are scenarios that are easy to imagine for our selves, and cite in the literature, that (1) fit that definition and (2) are ruled out by the evidence. See AIG (yes, they have models with introgression).

More importantly, when I raised this particular possibility in 2017, many people claimed it was ruled out by evidence. There was no way to know from the outset if it was ruled out by evidence or not. Clearly, common wisdom at the time was that it was a testable model, that it was tested, and had been ruled out.

And yes, we can imagine evidence that, if it turned out differently, would have solidly pushed back the date from 6,000 years to 100,000 years ago or more, or at least made the idea far less plausible. It just turns out that the evidence ended up revealing massive amounts of introgression across the globe. It did not have to be this way, but it is.

Having seen that data over the last decade, we can’t unroll the dice. We just know now that long term isolation of human populations was a myth. Some people don’t know this of course, and we can easily imagine a counterfactual world in which the data came out different. That wouldn’t be true of the hypothesis was intrinsically untestable in every respect (though all models have components that cannot be tested).

Regarding de novo creation, it was generally accepted (incorrectly) that common descent rules out de novo creation. That’s just a pure logical error. The thought experiment of the GAE demonstrates that error clearly.

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Is your hypothesis falsifiable?

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The GAE is unfalsified, not unfalsifiable, and I worked to falsify it. Others have tried to falsify it too. They failed to falsify it.

Science doesn’t work by falsifiability. Hypotheses can’t be classified as falsifiable and unfalsifiable. Any philosopher of science will tell you that is a backwards understanding of how science works, and even Popper himself backed of that definition in response to criticism.

Instead, scientists work to test and falsify their hypotheses, as did I. A characteristic of pseudoscience isn’t so much unfalsifiable hypotheses, but falsifiable hypotheses that they fail to falsify even in the face of obvious falsifying evidence.

@dga471 discussion of physics is relevant here. We just don’t know from the outset whether or not most meaningful hypotheses are testable or not. The advance of technology, moreover makes some “unfalsifiable” hypothesis suddenly falsifiable. In other cases, we are certain a hypothesis if falsifiable, but on closer inspection we find out it isn’t. Also many hypothesis are theoretically falsifiable, but only theoretically, because of practical or funding limitations. That doesn’t render them unscientific.

Just as important, it is very difficult to logically distinguish the difference between unfalsified and unfalsifiable. For example, evolution is an unfalsified theory. However, it is hard to imagine evidence that would overthrow it (while remaining consistent with what we already know). Most likely, encountering such data, we should chalk it up as an anomaly. So in that sense it seems unfalsifiable. But really it is just unfalsified.

These are the sorts of reasons that it doesn’t work to use falsifiability as a razor of determining science or not science.

Nothing I’m saying here is novel or unique. It is just basic philosophy of science.

@Philosurfer

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Core parts of GAE are unfalsifiable. For example, how can you falsify the intermixing of A&E’s descendants with POGs? How can you falsify a de novo creation of A&E?

The way you used GAE would be akin to the way a chemist might attempt to show that Jesus turning water into wine is not unsettled by science. The components of wine are water, ethanol, some acids, phenolic compounds and so on. Our clever chemist could argue that Jesus miraculously mixed all these components together in the pots to produce wine. A chemist would similarly mix those components to derive wine, so how the miracle happened would have happened is not unsettled by chemical science. People mixing ingredients miraculously is not supported by science, but the mixing process itself is in line with known chemical methods. You can’t falsify miraculous mixing, neither does it clash with established scientific methods of wine production.

To me, GAE is superfluous add-on to the evolutionary history of man. To others it is a steppingstone to reconciling their theology with evolutionary science, especially those who want a literal A&E.

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Agree to disagree.

Certain aspects are falsifiable, and others aren’t. The claim that two people 6000 years ago could be ancestral (though not exclusively so) to everyone alive 2000 years ago is falsifiable. The claim that two of those people were named Adam and Eve, were created directly by God, and lived in a special garden until thrown out later is unfalsifiable. In fact it seems unfalsifiable in principle.

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I don’t think that’s what the hypothesis claims.

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Would you care to present your understanding of the hypothesis? What parts of that do you think are falsifiable?

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