Tag: mailvox

Mailvox: education and the evolutionist

MD regurgitates the common mantra of the evolutionary faithful:

You are an educated man and know as well as me that evolution has been verified in countless experiments.  I agree that the precise details of the mechanism are still open to debate.  Since you are essentially making money out of the poor uneducated civilians of your own deeply divided culture, I expect that this E-mail
may not make it to the multitude.  Until then, any
pretensions you have as a serious philosopher – until you spell out your
objections to the actual EVIDENCE of evolution, must be viewed
suspisciously.  Being an intelligent fellow, I know you know this already; hey ho.
First, I note what appears to be a popular use of the adjective “countless”, which in its most common usage apparently means “zero”.  A few days ago, I noted how spin is the hallmark of the weak argument; when someone uses the word “countless” it is often a flashing sign of where a little research will probably prove fruitful.

Second, it is because I have educated myself on the subject over the years that I am aware that there is not a single experiment or study that verifies evolution by natural selection.  Richard Dawkins very nearly admits as much in his homage to the faux science, The Greatest Show on Earth.  Strictly speaking, evolution by natural selection is not even truly scientific, because it is first and foremost a logical argument, which necessarily renders it philosophy rather than science.  At this point, there is less actual scientific evidence for it than for my hypothesis concerning the neural atypicality of atheists.

This isn’t the first time such a claim has been made. Last time, I even asked for any scientific papers that supposedly contained such evidence; after reading the first ten on the list provided, it was readily apparent that none of them contained any such thing and the individual who provided the list of papers had simply done a search for references to “natural selection”. But, for example, showing that guppies become smaller under certain predatory pressures and that this result is “consistent with evolution by natural selection” is very, very, very far from evidence that the guppies have evolved into something other than a guppy.

As I mentioned over one year ago, “I have read seven of Richard Dawkins’s ten books, two of Stephen
Gould’s, a random assortment of books by other authors including Charles
Darwin, Marc Hauser and Daniel Dennett, around 50 published papers
which relate to natural selection in some way, and more than 20 years
worth of magazines such as Natural History and New Scientist.  This doesn’t make me any sort of expert on the subject. But I should think it tends to indicate that I am not completely
uninformed about it. And it’s certainly ironic to be repeatedly
accused of ignorance when not having read any economists from Turgot to
Tobin or theologians from Tertullian to Craig ever seems to prevent
credentialed Cult of Darwin members from opining authoritatively on
economics or theology.” 

How many of the champions of evolution who claim I don’t know what I’m taking about with regards to evolution can claim to have read as much on the subject?  How many have even read On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life? And how many of the biologists who don’t hesitate to spout off on economic matters can claim to have read even half as deeply in the field of economics?

I have repeatedly spelled out my objections to evolution and the actual evidence for it.  First, the evidence doesn’t exist.  Second, the historical timelines that purportedly support it are dynamic.  Third, evolution is a complete failure as a predictive model.  Fourth, it is scientifically and technologically irrelevant; where is the evolutionary engineering.  Fifth, theoretical epicycles are increasingly appearing.  Sixth, it is a repeated failure as an explanatory model.  Seventh, there is a long track record of scientific fraud attached to it.

I have no pretensions of being a serious philosopher.  Quite the contrary, I am merely an intellectual dilettante who takes even his most cherished beliefs with a grain of salt.  But even if I did have such pretensions, my skepticism concerning the Theorum of Evolution by (probably) Natural Selection, Biased Mutation, Genetic Drift, and Gene Flow would not be a strike against me, it would be a mark in my favor. Regardless, I have no problem with my opinions and assertions being viewed suspiciously. If you can find the flaw in the argument, that’s great. Point it out to me, I won’t hesitate to agree and either revise or recant the argument, so long as the flaw is actually there.

That being said, if there is a book on the subject of evolution that an evolutionist feels is missing from my education on the subject, then by all means, I encourage them to send me an epub.  I will read it.  I may even review it.  Of course, there is always the possibility that in doing so, I will point out the obvious errors it contains.

Mailvox: defenses of dishonesty

RobertT writes:

So anyone who has ever worked for wages at an hourly wage is inherently
dishonest? That makes sense. How else do people get paid, except for
their time? That concept is as old as time itself. Service businesses
aren’t selling a product, they’re selling their time. And they generally
get a contract before doing anything just to make sure there are no
misunderstandings. This is how I work and my clients worship the ground I
walk on.  I don’t think much of attorneys either as a group, but maybe this is a little bit over the top.

No, there is nothing inherently dishonest about working for wages at an hourly wage.  But there is a fundamental distinction between ““billable hours” and fees charged “based on the time they’ve supposedly put in rather than concrete results” and working for hourly wages.  The distinction is based on the difference between wages, which are paid by an employer who has the power to provide oversight and manage performance, and fees, which are paid by a client who is completely at the mercy of the fee-charger.

Fees of this sort are deceptive because they are based on a fundamental falsehood, which is the labor theory of value.  They are primarily the result of government intervention in the economy, which creates artificial shortages that permit the government-protected fee charger to force the client to purchase the fee charger’s time rather than the service he actually wishes to charge.

Fee chargers often resort to a deceptive defense, by claiming that they must charge for their time because they don’t know exactly how long it will take to provide the service.  This defense is belied by the fact that products and services in markets permitted to be competitive are delivered despite the fact that their time-cost is unknown.  For example, when I sign a book contract, I don’t know how long it will take to write the book anymore than a lawyer knows how long it will take to resolve a legal case.  I therefore assume part of the risk; the longer I take to write the book, the more my compensation per hour will be reduced.

The fee charger, on the other hand, not only structures the arrangement so that his client assumes all of the risk, but also leaves the client at his mercy because the only hard limits on his time cost are his conscience and the client’s solvency.  Even if the fee charger has a conscience and bills the service in the actual amount of time required to perform it, this doesn’t change the fact that the nature of the structure is intrinsically corrupt.

Logos doesn’t even attempt a defense, but tends to concur:

I’m a lawyer, and I admit that I hate just about every lawyer I’ve come
into contact with. I’m still naive enough to try to make good arguments
and win cases, but lawyers I work with abhor the possibility of closing
a matter early or letting me get credit for winning it (I even have to
fight to sign my name on my own work product, which is damn good). It
makes me sad because we are supposed to be in a noble profession that
fights for the rule of law against all who would threaten it, especially
government.

I actually have an amount of sympathy for those lawyers who entered the profession without understanding its corrupt and corrupting nature.  Neither pre-law nor law school really explicate the truth for them, but rather give it to them in small doses so that only the most perceptive law student could put into any kind of coherent perspective.  One of my best friends is a lawyer, he was fired from his first law firm due to his unwillingness to bill nonexistent hours, and he is generally a man of good conscience.  But even he sees the problematic aspects of the system.  Those individuals of good will who chose to become a lawyer may well be bothered by the genuine hatred and disdain which so many people feel for them, but then, no doubt there are nice, good, honest bankers too.  So long as he is an officer of the court, a lawyer is a sworn agent of the legal system and cannot credibly disassociate himself from it.

And finally, robwbright attempts to get lawyerly, which is always unwise when dealing with a superintelligence armed with facts and logic, at least outside the courtroom.

Now, Vox said something I find a bit ironic.  “if one doesn’t know
the difference between written law and case law, and understand how the
latter trumps the former, it’s not even possible to have an informed
opinion on the issue.”

Vox, if you’re going to rant about
something, at least get the terminology right, or YOU risk appearing as
if it’s not even possible for you to have an informed opinion about it.

By
“written law”, I assume you mean statutory law. However, that’s not a
normal/common way to say/describe it, because case law is also most
certainly written. Perhaps I misunderstand your meaning of “written
law”, but that’s not my fault, as your term “written law” is not
precise. Common law might be referred to as “unwritten law”, but that’s
not case law, either.

And no, case law most certainly does NOT
trump statutory law in any court in which I have practiced (2 states, 7
counties, District Court of Appeals, State Supreme Court, Federal
District Court and Court of Appeals).

Given that robwbright quite clearly understood the precise distinction I was making between the two distinct types of law, a distinction that the average layman does not even know exists, this is nothing more than a shallow attempt at rhetorically undermining my point while appealing to his own authority.  I used the term “written law” because I am not addressing an audience of lawyers here, and there is absolutely no need to resort to legal jargon in order to make clear the difference between the statutory laws that are written and passed by the elected legislatures, (which is what most people understand the law to be), and the non-laws that are the set of existing rulings which made new interpretations of law and can be cited as precedent, and which the lawyers in the system agree to mutually pretend are “case laws” possessed of a standing intrinsically superior to the legislative laws.

The fact that robwbright’s objection is a trivial and deceptive one can be shown by the U.S. legal jargon “black letter law”, which means “well-established case law”.  After all, statutory law is printed in black letters too… so how can anyone possibly know what “black letter law” is?  It could be statutory law, it could be case law, it could be regulatory law, right?  If we are to accept his lawyerly logic, we must assume that any judge or lawyer who uses the term “black letter law” risks appearing as if it’s not even possible for them to have an informed opinion about it.  I trust this demonstrates how feigning ignorance and confusion is a counterproductive means of attempting to rhetorically undermine an opponent, particularly when one is attempting to establish oneself as a trustworthy authority.  Henceforth, I will use the terms “legislative law” for “written law” or “statutory law”, and “interpretive rulings” for “case law”, in the interest of precision and clarity.

He then appeals to the authority of his own experience in claiming that interpretive rulings do not trump legislative law in any court in which he has practiced.  However, I have personally witnessed interpretive rulings repeatedly trump legislative law in several Minnesota and Federal District Courts, and there are no shortage of similar examples I could cite.  But since I cannot expect to win competing appeals to personal experience with a lawyer on this subject, I will have to do better than that.  Which, as it happens, is simple enough, based on logic and legal history.

Being a lawyer, robwbright must know that interpretive rulings always trump legislative law at the court’s discretion, otherwise it would not be possible for “the set of existing rulings which made new interpretations of law and, therefore, can be cited as precedent” to be so often used by the Supreme Court and other courts for the purpose of overturning legislative laws.  If we are to accept his reasoning, it is impossible for a legislative ban on abortion to be overturned… except by a subsequent action on the part of the relevant legislature.

Mailvox: certainly self-comlimentary

BB affects to be surprised:

I found this site by accident. This discussion of evolution is certainly on a low level for a site that is so deeply self-comlimentary. I am always surprised that people refuse to accept biological evolution because of its supposed implausibility, yet easily accept the idea of spontaneous human appearance. God, in this view, did not need to develop, but just “is.” The plausibility of God goes unquestioned. Said another way, the argument is that man evolved is unsupportable, but the idea that God is and was forever, self-conceiving, is logical.

By the way, I believe in God.

I suggest you apply the same argument to God and man. But I readily admit that doing so will not answer the Question that you and I both have. The old question of something out of nothing.

Color me dubious.  An affectation of disinterest, followed by a nonsensical naked assertion, followed by a complete strawman.  And notice how quickly the “defense” of evolution rapidly transitions to its scientific plausibility to a philosophical attack on God.  What I find amusing is how the Neo-Darwinian faithful continue to insist that evolution is every bit as probable no matter how much the necessary complexity is observed to have increased. 

The recent recognition – long expected by me and others – that genetics are much more complex than previously understood and that junk DNA is somehow involved in the process, to say nothing of the toppling of the “tree of life”, all significantly increase the improbability and necessary time scales of evolution by natural selection.  And yet, there hasn’t even been any attempt to account for these additional complexities, partly because evolutionary biologists are both relatively innumerate and logically challenged, but mostly because the so-called science is little more than an article of willfully blind faith.

Mailvox: the big questions

LA queries:

I had a question–do you have an opinion on the movie Airplane!?
 The
humor on this movie has always escaped me.  I’ve always found many
comedy movies to be fairly stupid but I can always suspend disbelief,
put aside logical problems in a decent sci fi or comedy movie, and find
some way to enjoy the humor even if it isn’t my normal cup of tea.
 But this movie has always been the one film I cannot stand.
 Anyway,
a friend that reads Vox Popoli and I were having a spat about it and it
made me curious if you enjoyed it or if you ever saw it, and whether
you care one way or another.

I thought Airplane had its amusing moments, but would not put it in my personal top 25 movies or even top 20 comedies.  I can stand it, but only in short doses; I’ve never been able to watch it all the way through.  Its humor is mostly of the sort that I consider to be too broad-based and obvious to be more than moderately funny even when done right.  I think an element of surprise, or at least unpredictability, is necessary to make something genuinely hilarious, and most of Airplane’s humor is entirely predictable, being based on stupid and unlikely misunderstandings.

As a writer once said that if the plot of your novel is dependent upon your characters being stupid, you don’t have an actual book.  In like manner, I don’t find humor that depends upon the characters being borderline retarded to be amusing.  And if a “humorous” pratfall is somehow involved, I am left colder than cold.  I simply don’t find people falling down, particularly in a theatrical manner, to be be funny at all.  When I see an adult laugh at someone slapping their forehead and falling down, or pretending to faint, I seriously wonder what is wrong with them.

But Airplane! does have its moments.  The “I speak jive” line is funny, although the actual execution of the jivespeak borders on the painful.  The surely/Shirley bit is almost Wodehousean and is done well in a deadpan manner that probably wouldn’t have worked nearly as well for anyone not named Leslie Nielsen.  And the short exchanges between Joey and the Captain are downright quoteworthy.  That being said, I looked at the list of what are supposedly the greatest quotes from the movie and noted that less than a quarter of them actually struck me as funny.

To me, easily the funniest movie ever made is Monty Python and the Holy Grail.  Other movies that I found to be funnier than Airplane! include Heathers, Weird Science, The Hangover, The Gods Must Be Crazy, The Big Lebowski, Old School, A Fish Called Wanda, Dodgeball, Grosse Pointe Blank, Notting Hill, the first two American Pie films, Stripes, The Pink Panther, and Being There.

Apple’s high water mark

All declines have to begin from a high, and with regards to Apple, it would appear to be all downhill from here.  A few weeks ago, I ranted about the way Apple’s walled garden and forced upgrade approach was being adopted by foolish technology companies.  Two of our four Kobos ended up bricked, both due to the same buggy updated firmware; I could have avoided bricking the second one were I not inadvertently forced into an unwanted update by the computer software.

Apple was able to get away with this very risky strategy due to it being run by a perfectionist, detail-oriented, technofascist.  It didn’t matter if the updates were forced, because anyone working for Steve Jobs was going to be triple-damn certain that the updates would work properly… or at least not contain any fatal bugs.  Now that Jobs is gone, it doesn’t surprise me in the least that Apple is running into the same kind of bugs that plague most of the other companies that stupidly tried to imitate it.  I received this email from a friend of mine who was so bold as to update his iPhone to iOS 6:

I updated my iphone to IOS6 last night. New
app appeared called ‘passbook’ which apparently is ‘the simplest way to
get all your passes in one place’ … except it doesn’t connect to the
itunes store. Also I found I had lost
all my playlists from my music … this also happened to a friend but his
have since automagically reappeared … mine haven’t so far!

It’s now been two days and he is still missing his playlists.  Not a big deal, hardly a fatal bug, and yet likely indicative of more serious problems to come in the future.  Meanwhile, Karl Denninger notes that Apple has forced its users to give up Google Maps in favor of its own lower-quality map software.  It’s far too soon to pronounce final judgment, but these recent events tend to bolster my expectation that the second post-Jobs era at Apple is not going to go any better than the first one did.

Mailvox: an uneven match

George: In the end, adherence to divine command theory is the province of lazy minds.

So, in the one corner, we have the irrepressible George as well as the snowflake moralist, INTJ. In the other, we have William of Ockham, St. Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, Duns Scotus, John Calvin, Immanuel Kant (arguably), and bringing up the rear, Vox Day.

I certainly don’t mind finding myself in the company of such “lazy minds”.

Is evil all you can do?

Greatheart claims that voting is the full extent of his capabilities:

God doesn’t care about my pride, He does care how I conduct myself while on this earth. He will not judge me based on how others treat me; He will, however, judge me on my behavior. My vote is the only weapon I have against the evil at work in this country, so I will use it.

This raises three questions. First, why does Greatheart think his vote is the only weapon he has? Was the vote the only weapon possessed by George Washington or by the apostles? And does he truly believe God wants men to support what they know to be evil in the name of fighting evil?

Barack Obama is certainly evil. But there is no question that Mitt Romney is also evil, in fact, it is entirely possible that he is more evil than Obama. We know how Obama will govern, mostly in absentia. Whereas neither Mitt Romney’s governance of Massachusetts nor the way in which he violated party rules and used his power to silence dissent at the Republican National Convention indicates he will be a lesser evil than Obama.

Mailvox: a requested arbitration

You know you’re dealing with a very special individual when you find yourself longing for the simple pleasure of swatting away the usual anklebiters. And what is with my critics and their absolute obsession with the human posterior? Anyhow, Corona Rabbit requested arbitration:

CR: I would like to know who deleted the CoronaRabbit posts under “True libertarians won’t vote Libertarian”.

VD: One of the blog administrators authorized to do so, who did so correctly as per the rules I established. It’s not that hard. When you are asked a direct question that is relevant to the topic at hand, then answer the fucking question. If you can’t follow a few very simple rules of this sort, you can’t be part of the conversation here.

CR: How very snappy. If you are not available to act as arbiter, then you should not have conversations on your blog. Or rather, you can, but then please rename your site to: Home Of The Ass Flies: We Suck Asses Daily.

Are you aware that I ASKED you to look at my posts, and those of Josh, in order to resolve this very thing? I stated that I was WAITING for that resolution. Here is the thing, Vox: Josh DEMANDED that I comply with the reply-rule. I saw no need to reply to his bullshit. Still, given his DEMAND, I then asked that YOU make a ruling on whether I was right about Josh being a filthy fucking play-debater.

Surely I am allowed to do thusly? Apparently, it seems, not. More than that, I was not necessary that I respond: my response to his question (the first version, before he changed it) had already been given, before he even asked. But let me give you the sequence: that is, if you actually do give a fucking damn.

[LONG AND TEDIOUS REFRAIN OF COMMENT THREAD]

So do tell me Vox, did I have to answer Josh’s “Question”? Given that before he changed the question, I kind of already had? I was under the impression that the sort of things Josh did were very big no-no’s. Tsk, tsk, tsk.

Now. Who the hell erased my last posts? I had classically cursed Nate in the last one, and was rather happy with it. Oh, and bought all the little wockers before the Lord: this is the real world, after all, where the Living God walks around. Read Lev 19 (KJV) for a refresher if you are in the mood.

I was not in the wrong here. Not 100% in the right, fine, but in terms of honesty and truth this was shameful. And do let me point out that Nate, the self-proclaimed Mr Awesome, had apparently read the posts… and then proceeded to proclaim judgement on the side of Josh. Apparenly I had managed to offend his unholiness with my lack of demonic glibness. (The act which led me to, in the absence of ANY fucking arbiter, to bring the Living God into the game.)

I am waiting for a reply. Not that I care, you understand. Not that I think you will act with any more integrity than the animals did. I would just like you to formaly chose the way of the devil. “I like my universe neat,” sayth the Lord.

THE REQUESTED VERDICT

VD: You very much need to learn to stop trying to tell other people what to do in their own house. Josh was correct. You had an obligation to answer his question and instead of doing so, launched an obnoxious and foul-mouthed series of idiotic comments. Moreover, it is utterly stupid to expect any blogger to act as an arbiter 24-7. That is absolutely ridiculous and you should be embarrassed to have even raised the point. Nor does failing to arbitrate between commenters on demand somehow transform a blog into an echo chamber. That doesn’t even make any sense.

It is 100 percent clear that you did not answer a serious and relevant question. You even admit it, you are simply attempting to justify not doing so. You claimed: “I DEEMED IT ANSWER ENOUGH. GIVEN THE CLASSICAL LOGICAL FALLACY JOSH WAS UNDOUBTEDLY KNOWINGLY COMMITTING, I SAW NO REASON TO TREAT JOSH WITH ANYTHING BUT DESERVED CONTEMPT”.

You were wrong. The various other aspects are irrelevant. You still have to answer the question. If Josh was committing a logical fallacy, you should have pointed it out to him, identified the specific logical fallacy committed, and then answered the question.

Mailvox: the bonfire of the brights

MP writes of an amusing run-in with his intellectually superior atheist boss:

I’ve been following your blog for several months now after reading The Irrational Atheist, and have recently come across a particular situation which I feel will not only provide you with quite possibly severe bouts of hysterical laughter, but also, rather worrying food for thought.

My boss falls under the category of what I would like to describe as an Unread Atheist, an Atheist who has not read The God Delusion, God Is Not Great, End of Faith and other select works in ego-fondling, nor has he done further research into the field. He just plain doesn’t believe and feels that everyone that does is a moron. Now, this is not to mean that in contrast, a Read Atheist is one who is a well-read and intelligent person, it would just mean that via High-Pope Dawkins, First-Saint Hitchens and Court-Jester Harris, that this Read Atheist believes that they have some form of misguided ammo to make a convincing case against God’s existence.

While having post-work talks about all sorts of miscellanea, my boss led it into atheism. Generally, I remain quiet, as you can only imagine the general drivel that he could come up with; ‘Religion causes war’, ‘They don’t believe in science’, ‘Big Bang made the Universe’, ‘The Vatican Deathstar opposes gay contraception in Zimbawania, because they think the Earth is 2,000 years old’ and ‘Jesus never created the Big Bang because I read half of Thus Spoke Zarathustra once’. But then, it happened…

“The European Economic Crisis is the Vatican’s fault and it could be fixed if they weren’t so greedy, all they need to do is sell everything that they’re hiding in their treasury and catacombs and Europe would be back to normal”

I’d like to think that this is one of the most idiotic things that either of us have read, but I honestly don’t even know where to begin with tackling the problem. What do you have to say on this matter?

I say do the math. Vatican City’s assets are estimated to be worth between $1 billion and $3 billion in total. Total global debt now over $190 trillion, about one-quarter of which is European debt. So, I would ask him how $3 billion is going to pay off $47.5 trillion in debt. It may be a hard lesson for some to learn, but not believing in God doesn’t magically make you smarter. Or, as we first learned from the example displayed by Richard Dawkins, particularly numerate.

Mailvox: logical or empirical?

691 doesn’t do the math:

What you cite as a logical blunder is not a logical error at all. Maybe an empirical error. It’s entirely logically possible for a $1 decrease in spending to lead to a $3 decrease in revenue, resulting in a $2 increase in the deficit.

The deficit, the change in debt levels, is the difference between two numbers: spending and revenue. Does the extra debt come from (relatively) higher spending or (relatively) reduced revenues? You claim that spending and borrowing have increased, which would imply that each $1 in extra spending is leading to less than $1 of extra revenue.

But citing debt levels alone is not sufficient to prove your case.

Very well, let’s look and see if what he’s saying is, in fact, logically possible. I pointed out that the debt doubled from $5 trillion to $10 trillion in four years. 691 is claiming that “it’s entirely logically possible for a $1 decrease in spending to lead to a $3 decrease in revenue, resulting in a $2 increase in the deficit.”

There are two ways to show 691’s criticism is incorrect. First, his statement can only be true if the multiplier effect on government spending can be 3x or more. But is that the case? No, it is not.

“For U.S. annual data that include WWII, the estimated multiplier for defense spending is 0.6-0.7 at the median unemployment rate. There is some evidence that this multiplier rises with the extent of economic slack and reaches 1.0 when the unemployment rate is around 12%. Multipliers for non-defense purchases cannot be reliably estimated because of the lack of good instruments.”
– Macroeconomic Effects from Government Purchases and Taxes,
Robert J. Barro and Charles J. Redlick, NBER Working Paper No. 15369 (September 2009)

So, because the unemployment rate never reached 12 percent, the G multiplier cannot possibly have reached 1.0, much less the required 3.0, and therefore it was, as I previously wrote, logically impossible for the post-crisis governments to simultaneously produce large deficits and cut spending.

Concerning the second method, even if we plug in his numbers, we can see they don’t work on an empirical basis either. We’re not dealing in hypotheticals here. What X decrease in annual spending could lead to a 3X decrease in revenue to create a $1.25 trillion deficit? There would have to be a $625 billion decrease in spending as well as a $1.875 fall in revenue to produce it. However, there was a $535 billion INCREASE in spending to go with a $419 billion fall in revenue, thereby providing an empirical illustration of the logical absurdity of his position.