Valentine Pontifex

Actually if what he says seems useful, than I would urge Michael to forward the reply to Wein or have the guy contact Wein himself.

Dembski is trying to take away an crediblity Wein has in the field. A strong endorsement of the FAQ by one of the developers of the NFL theorums might be handy in showing that Dembski is blowing smoke. I am usually not easily impressed by the game of saying so-and-so liked my work, but showing that even playing by Dembski's rules that the Wein's essay comes out on top neutralizes much of what Dembski said early on in his reply.

Erik 12345

Dembski is using "degrees of freedom" in the sense a physicist would. A point particle moving in a 1-dimensional world has 1 degree of freedom. A point particle moving in a 2-dimensional world has 2 degrees of freedom. A rigid rod in a 2-dimensional world has 3 degrees of freedom, etc.

A combination lock has a small number of degrees of freedom. If it is of the kind you can find on suitcases, there might 4 wheels with 10 digits each that must be aligned correctly. The number of degrees of freedom would then be 4 (one for each wheel). I doubt that there are many combination locks that have "numerous degrees of freedom".

Erik

Dr.GH

In his reply to Wein’s critique of No Free Lunch, Dembski it seems is trying to
reach a place where he can argue that there is a definable probability that can be assigned
to an event which then can be used as a multiple of the definate probability assigned to
another event, and so on, to reach some very big number that looks like it couldn’t
happen without the Hand Of God. He vaguely refers to an article by Polanyi which is
supposed to support his use of a “degrees of freedom” argument that he illustrates with a
combination lock.

Here is why I think that degrees of freedom cannot apply to Dembski’s combination lock
analogy (most clearly in the statistical sense).

The mechanical features of a combination lock aford only one degree of freedom!

The identical lock described by Dembski can be represented by a lock with a row of 30
levers which requires three levers to be depressed in order to open. This is because the
alternating combination order is mechanically obligatory. Now, the use of four tumblers
might seem to allow us to say that there are multiple degrees of freedom. The suitcase
lock is good example. Taking Eric’s four tumblers with ten positions/numbers, there are
not four locks, there is one lock with a total of 10^4 possible positions.
Because there is a mechanical link to the tumblers there is still just one lock.

The multiplication principle is defined as:
If, among k operations, the ith can be done in n[sub i ] ways, the
k operations can be done in n[sub 1] X n[sub 2] X
n[sub 3] X ... X n[sub k] ways (Mostellere et al, 1970)

What if we were to have four independent locks? Well, the number of possible
combinations is only larger by a factor of four because as lock pickers we only need to pick one lock at a time and not all four locks at once.

And this is also an example of a co-opted function counter argument to Dembitski’s ultimate goal of defending Behe’s notion of irreducible complexity. The “function” of a lock is to open or close under appropriate
conditions. This function can be used (co-opted) to retard opening or closing of other
non-lock objects.

Mostellere, Fredrick, Robert E. K. Rourke, George B. Thomas, Jr.
1970 Probability with statistical applications Reading, Mass.Addison-Wesley
Publishing Comp.

[ May 13, 2002: Message edited by: Dr.GH ]</p>

Lizard

hezekiahjones wrote:
Gosh, at the IDers' "Darwin, Design and Democracy" event last summer in Kansas City, Dembski seemed to wow the crowd. I don't think all those good churchy folks had ever heard so many big words coming so fast at them at one time before ("the Dopeler Effect").

Of course, maybe their "vast, eerie silence," fixed gazes and slack mouths during his presentation meant they were in a light trance induced by Dembski's showing a slide of a mathematical formula to whose meaning no one in the room had a clue. Maybe not even Dembski. Yet the crowd applauded thunderously when he was done.

hezekiah jones

Those of you who've read both Wein's critique and Dembski's reply will get a kick out of this ARN post:

pangloss

Consider the source. Also notice that Roland Hirsch has made another substantive post...

You'd think the guy would give up after having been made a fool of when he tried to address this topic in the past...

hezekiah jones

Roland Hirsch ... is "RFH"?

hezekiah jones

Roland F. Hirsch (RFH) writes:

The abstract reads:

So this is what these people do, sit around browsing BIOSIS and PubMed for researchers to mock? I wonder if Hirsch is doing this on the taxpayer's dime.

pangloss

I don't know, but I do know that he got some sort of big award a few years ago, and, like a good cretin, took the opportunity to bash 'Darwinism', even though he has never done any relevant research...

Typical..

I think he has retired... Or at least should have...

pangloss

Is it just me, or is 'Mike Gene' just an arrogant asshole?

<a href="http://www.arn.org/cgi-bin/ubb/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=13;t=000038" target="_blank">http://www.arn.org/cgi-bin/ubb/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=13;t=000038</a>