Ed Brayton is a journalist, commentator and speaker. He is the co-founder and president of 
Once more into the breach, dear friends. Some have wondered why I didn't bother to critique the arguments Vox Day made in his Powerpoint presentation in this post the other day. The answer is that nearly all of those arguments strike me as pointless and irrelevant.
I don't much care about arguments over whether theism or atheism causes wars (though for the record I actually agree that the "religious causes wars" argument tends to be overblown and exaggerated) or whether most criminals are theists or atheists. Such questions have nothing to do with the validity of either position at all.Even if was true that theism or atheism caused wars or anti-social behavior, that does not mean that either position is true or untrue.
In fact, I started reading through those arguments the first time and just clicked out of the file out of boredom before getting to the slide that someone mentioned in the comments about the relative size of amphibian and mammalian genomes, so I missed the one argument that might actually have some bearing on the truth of something relevant (the theory of evolution).
So someone left a message that said the following:
Oh, but you missed his powerpoint slides! Full of refutations you (yes you!) can use the next time a new atheist tries to pick on you for being religious.Such as: amphibians have greater genome size than mammals, therefore Dawkins is "incorrect to imply that Darwinian natural selection entails increasing complexity."
To which I replied:
Ai yi yi, I missed that one. The proper response would be "OR.....the mere size of a genome is not the proper measure of complexity."
And Vox seized on that response and seems to want to talk about this particular issue, so let's have at it, shall we? First, here is the quote from Dawkins that he is responding to:
"However statistically improbable the entity you seek to explain by invoking a designer, the designer himself has got to be at least as improbable. God is the Ultimate Boeing 747. The argument from improbability states that complex things could not have come about by chance. But many people define 'come about by chance' as a synonym for 'come about in the absence of deliberate design'. Not surprisingly, therefore, they think improbability is evidence of design. Darwinian natural selection shows how wrong this is with respect to biological improbability."
And here is the text of Vox's reply to it:
Dawkins makes several errors here. First, he confuses the specific mathematical probabilities that are utilized in the anthropic principle which underlies the aforementioned argument from improbability with an imprecise and casual sense of the word "improbable". Second, he fails to define "complexity", which serves as the basis for his non-specific, non-mathematical concept of probability. Third, unless his undefined concept of complexity does not concern information, Dawkins is incorrect to imply that Darwinian natural selection entails increasing complexity, as can be seen by comparing the informational complexities of the various stages in the assumed evolutionary progress from fish to amphibian to mammal.
I'm going to leave aside the issue of the anthropic principle for now because it is the last two arguments that draw my interest here. The second argument applies just as well to Vox because he, too, does not define complexity as he is using it - and the sense in which he is using it, we shall see, is clearly wrong. Which brings us to the third argument.
The basis for his third argument is a graph in the next slide which shows that the average size of a fish genome is 1.93 PG (picograms), the average size of an amphibian genome is 18.14 PG and the average size of a mammalian genome is 3.37 PG. That fact, he claims, means that "Dawkins is incorrect to imply that Darwiniam natural selection entails increasing complexity."
Ladies and gentleman, the straw man has entered the building -- carrying a red herring, with a non sequitur in his back pocket.
First of all, the claim that natural selection can and does build up complexity is simply not the same as the claim that natural selection leads to a perfectly linear progression in complexity in all species at all times. That is a ridiculous caricature of Dawkins' position that Vox invents because it's much easier to shoot down than the position he actually takes.
Secondly, as I indicated in my comments, a mere measure of the size of a genome cannot possibly be a measure of actual complexity. And he had no reason to pick amphibians, he could have picked something far more obvious -- like an onion, which has a genome size of about 17 PG, compared to the human genome, which is about 3.5 PG.
So does this mean that an onion is more complex than a human? Of course not. What it almost certainly means is that in the onion lineage there have been several instances of whole genome duplications. This is not at all unusual; polyploidy is quite common in plants (less so in animals, but certainly not uncommon).
So if you had one copy of a book and you compared it to seven copies of the same book -- the same exact information in exactly the same order -- would you say that the second one is "more complex" than the first one? No, because it's the same information copied over and over. There's nothing new there.
Of course, with multiple copies of a genome, what actually ends up happening is that the extra copies undergo rampant mutations without natural selection to cull them out, so you rapidly end up with gibberish -- as if in the six other copies of the book, the letters just randomly rearranged themselves so they no longer form words and sentences. But that would also not mean that the second example is more complex than the first.
Clearly what is important here is not the mere size of a genome, but the amount of functional complexity -- that is, the actual coding of traits going on. And there simply is no question whatsoever that the process of mutation and selection can develop new and functional complexity -- new traits that did not exist before -- in organisms.
One simple proof of that we've seen recently is Richard Lenski's brilliant experiment on E. coli bacteria, where they have been able to observe the development of an entirely novel trait -- the ability to metabolize citrate -- in the lab. And because they had frozen samples of this bacteria every 500 generations, they were able to go back and compare the genomes before and after this trait appeared and pinpoint the specific mutations that took place, and the order in which they took place, in order for that new trait to develop.
This is how evolution -- mutation and selection -- develops functional complexity. Gene duplication and whole genome duplication can also be an important input to the evolution of new traits, especially gene duplication. This is part of the evolutionary toolkit. And it may well be that some particular section of one of the genome copies in onions and other organisms later gets coopted to serve an actual function in the coding sequence for that organism (thus the fact that we often discover that some small portion of what was previously believed to be junk DNA -- because it once was -- actually has some function), which of course begets the ridiculous creationist argument that takes the form of "A ha! That sequence has function, so everything that has ever been called junk DNA also has function!"
The point of all of this is that Vox's argument depends upon a straw man version of Dawkins' argument that is so ridiculous it could fairly be described as cartoonish, and on a conception of evolutionary complexity that totally misunderstands the relationship of genome size to actual functional complexity. And no, that reality is not going to change no matter how many times he mentions his high IQ or his membership in Mensa.
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I think it's also important to remember that humans aren't "more evolved" than any other species that currently exists today. We might have branched off from our ancestors at a later time than some species, and earlier than other species. Even so, it's only useful to compare our complexity to historical species in our lineage, and not current species in just any group.
Posted by: catgirl | March 19, 2010 9:44 AM
Amphibians and mammals have both been evolving for exactly the same amount of time. On what basis does Vox assume one is more complex than the other?
Posted by: Alan B. | March 19, 2010 9:53 AM
Also note that we have our good friend "Alternate Splicing" which kind of makes comparison of genome size by mass an astoundingly stupid endeavor. Of course knowing about polycistronic mRNA's would require some actual understanding of molecular biology. Clearly that's asking too much from someone attempting to make a biology based argument. Honestly, I've never even seen genomes compared by mass done once. Maybe Mega-basepairs, but ...mass? Really?
Posted by: Bob the Biologist | March 19, 2010 10:02 AM
Does the prick really think that Richard Dawkins doesn't know biology? That Dawkins has never read legitimate papers on genetics and had discussions with top experts in the field?
What Day offers is the typical yappage that will convince no one who actually knows anything about the topic, but sounds plausible to those who know little. There is a fortune to be made doing that. Ask Oprah.
Posted by: Doug | March 19, 2010 10:05 AM
I haven't actually read any papers that discuss the overall complexity of organisms. How is this usually measured? Total number of unique proteins? Total number of proteins and functional RNA? Total number of interactions between all proteins, RNA, DNA, and small molecules?
Posted by: Jackson | March 19, 2010 10:05 AM
And speaking as a person currently working on a PhD in mathematical biology - having worked as a biochemist - he is also using the completely wron measurement of the genome! Genome sizes in the literature are reported in base-pair lengths (to avoid the polyploidy issue in part - but also, how do you get pg? You isolate DNA from millions of cells and then quantify it (usually by measuring UV absorbance to get concentration) then back calculate to how much DNA was in each cell - there's some fairly large error bars on that! However counting base pairs has almost no error, because counting is *easy*!)
I notice that weight measurements are used in some of the papers that show up - although I still argue that sequence length is really a much better measurement, and if anyone wants to argue 'information content', then the entropy of that sequence is more important than its length (see 'Shannon Entropy' on wikipedia). Here's some sequence lengths from microbe to other critters and plants:
from: http://dwb4.unl.edu/Chem/CHEM869N/CHEM869NLinks/chemistry.about.com/science/chemistry/library/weekly/aa061598a.htm
Streptomyces coelicolor (bacteria) genome = 8 Mb
Plasmodium falciparum (malarial parasite) genome = 25 Mb
Mus musculus (mouse) chromosome 11 = 45 Mb
Oryza sativa (rice) genome = 441 Mb
Gallus gallus (chicken) genome = 1,200 Mb
Homo sapiens (human) genome = 3,000 Mb
Nicotiana tabacum (tobacco) genome = 4,434 Mb
Triturus cristatus (crested newt) genome = 18,600 Mb
Fritillaria assyriaca (butterfly) genome = 124,900 Mb
Protopterus aethiopicus (lungfish) genome = 139,000 Mb
Now - (1) how much information do the sequence lengths represent? Who knows? How the information is encoded makes a difference. Biologically, that information is *not* just how long the sequence is - and not only because of 'junk DNA' that doesn't seem to have a purpose, but also because the mechanism of regulation differs from organism to organism, and part of the DNA not used for coding proteins is used for that regulatory process (in many, though not all, organisms).
(2) Does greater genome complexity reflect greater organism complexity? Not necessarily - a lot of complexity can be packed into a single genome by fiddling with gene regulation. As an example, in a population of microbes, it makes sense to have a lot of variation so the population can respond to varying conditions (sure, a lot of individuals die, but who cares about *them*?) This can be done by trying to code for all the possible scenarios (creating a huge genome) or by allowing very flexible gene regulation so there is a lot of individual variation, but nearly identical genomes. Both strategies exist, and both are reasonably successful.
(3) the complexity of the environment probably has some impact on genome size. Notice how large the malarial parasite genome is - but like many diphasic parasites (the ones we care about anyways...) - P. falciparum has to switch from a mammalian host (us) to an insect host (mosquito) and back again - two radically different environments, so a large genome to carry the information for not just the two environments, but also the rules to change back and forth. The mouse's genome is not even twice that size, but the environment from one mouse to the next is not all that different over their species range.
Note - item 3 is just me *guessing* - I haven't seen a study comparing genome length to environmental range, though I'd kind of like to after writing this...
Finally - the mathematics of what's going on is fairly well understood, and some very good models are starting to show up in the literature. I just attended a pair of colloquia (by the smae person, one in our bio department and the other in the mathematics department) discussing evolution rates and how to detect co-evolution (as, for example, when parasites evolve alongside their hosts).
cheers-
Eric
Posted by: Eric Riley | March 19, 2010 10:13 AM
People have to realize that how much you score in an IQ test has only a passing resemblance to actual intelligence. But, more to the point, it has been demonstrated that excessive self confidence is very detrimental to performance in intellectual tasks.
(Bob, mass is how we compared genomes before we could sequence them, because you can determine it very cheaply and accurately. Sure it's still used.)
Posted by: mikka | March 19, 2010 10:13 AM
So if you had one copy of a book and you compared it to seven copies of the same book -- the same exact information in exactly the same order -- would you say that the second one is "more complex" than the first one? No, because it's the same information copied over and over.
Actually, I think the answer is "it can be." Under Shannon 'number of repeats' requires additional bits to represent. Similarly under Kolmogorov the shortest description for "X, repeat 6 more times" is going to be longer than the description "X" in most languages. Genetically, repeated genes can lead to different amounts of a protein being produced. This can be important to development, so again the number of repeats can carry important information. Seven copies is different than one copy in a meaningful way.
Now, whether seven copies have more "complexity" is really a different question, and as you say, Vox doesn't say what he means by that word.
But seven copies do under most normal definitions have more information than one. Which is real a problem for creationists, because we observe that copying/duplication mutations occur. Thus, Dembski's notion that mutation can't "add" information is completely refuted (unless you hypothesize some wierd, vague, new definition of 'information' wherein the amount of a protein produced during development does not count as information).
Posted by: eric | March 19, 2010 10:14 AM
P.S. to my post @8: I'm not Eric Riley (so don't attribute my errors to him :), and yeah, regardless of my quibble I agree Vox is merely responding to a straw man of his own design, not Dawkins' actual words.
Posted by: eric | March 19, 2010 10:21 AM
I could make an argument that an amphibian is more complex than a mammal. After all, an amphibian needs to be able to survive in two completely different stages -- the tadpole and the toad, for instance. One is a waterdwelling organism with gills, the other a semi-terrestrial tetrapod with lungs. Same could be said for butterflies and moths.
How about this, Vox: the 1975 Encyclopaedia Britannica is three or moe orders of magnitude larger than the Bible; does that mean it has a greater claim to 'truth'? Battlefield Earth has almost twice as many words as the Bible; does that make it twice as complex?
I'm an historian and even I know that arguing by mass is a piss-poor way to make comparisons.
Posted by: (((Billy))) The Atheist | March 19, 2010 10:27 AM
Mikka,
Touche, I didn't even start my undergrad until after the human genome had been sequenced so perhaps my young age is showing. Concordantly I shall reduce the sarcasm in my post by one unit of snark.
Posted by: Bob The Biologist | March 19, 2010 10:27 AM
Vox is just re-hashing stupid arguments from his book "the irrational atheist" as though no one has dealt with them yet. Why doesn't he address these dissections, posted over a year and a half ago on Evangelical Realism:
http://blog.evangelicalrealism.com/2008/06/10/tia-tuesday-consider-the-possibilities/
http://blog.evangelicalrealism.com/2008/06/17/tia-tuesday-rhetorical-friendly-fire/
http://blog.evangelicalrealism.com/2008/06/24/tia-tuesday-vox-versus-jesus/
http://blog.evangelicalrealism.com/2008/07/01/tia-tuesday-imagine-theres-no-heaven/
Links to the whole multi-part review posted here:
http://commonsenseatheism.com/?p=4613
Posted by: JRQ | March 19, 2010 10:36 AM
If I remember correctly, instead of redefining "information", they redefined "add," so that any change was defined as a loss. In this case of course evolution would be unable to anything but loose information.
Posted by: Jackson | March 19, 2010 10:43 AM
That last sentance should read:
In this case of course evolution would be unable to do anything but lose information.
Posted by: Jackson | March 19, 2010 10:45 AM
It seems like every day is Vox Day.
Posted by: Angel | March 19, 2010 10:45 AM
Yeah, I've debated with Christians like Vox Day plenty of times. It gets monotonous, as I haven't heard anything new out of an apologist for quite some time. You can expect to see the same tired, refuted arguments pop up, again and again. And if you can pin the little weasels down and refute their arguments step by step, they invariably run away. My respect for intellectual whores like Vox Day was spent a long time ago.
Posted by: Mike | March 19, 2010 11:05 AM
I think that Teddy actually thinks that his allegedly high IQ is a substantive argument in and of itself, one that can shift and dismantle all inconvenient facts and laws of the universe. I'm surprised there's room for another god in his worldview.
Posted by: Sadie Morrison | March 19, 2010 11:30 AM
Most scientists have few problems accepting mathematicians' definitions, since science philosophically presupposes the validity of mathematics (and science as anthropological practice uses the languages of mathematics extensively.)
The two main uses of "complexity" in mathematics that I am aware of are Kolmogorov Complexity and Complexity Classes. They are related; Kolmogorov Complexity refers to individual entities, Complexity Classes to groups of entities. Furthermore, Kolmogorov Complexity is related to the Kolmogorov Axioms of Probability, which has ties to Baysian inference.
Dawkins would presumably have no problems with use of such formal definitions, and his position translates nicely in these formal uses. (Creationists', not so much.)
Of course, that evolution can increase the complexity of end-product, does not mean that it always does. Something with a complex genome can drop large chunks of its genome and become much simpler. At the most extreme: in rare circumstances, an ERV can mutate back to code for an ordinary virus; in so doing, the bulk of the human genome's (uncompressed) 750 MB gets dumped, and a simple ~2kB virus goes off to evolve on its own away from its "parent".
Development of "functional" complexity is more interesting, but pretty trivial mathematically: some changes, that change Kolmogorov complexity, add function (such as the Lenski example Ed mentioned).
eric: But seven copies do under most normal definitions have more information than one.
Under most normal FORMAL definitions, anyway.
eric: If I remember correctly, instead of redefining "information", they redefined "add," so that any change was defined as a loss.
More or less. Which means that mutation from GATTACA to AATTACA and back to GATTACA is "mathematically" modeled as the loss of two units being the original: x-2u=x. Thus, either the amount of "loss" (u) is zero for every example (which is useless), or zero equals one, and therefore the existence of one God implies there is no God.
(Yes, I'm aware of finite rings. They don't strengthen the creationist position, either.)
Posted by: abb3w | March 19, 2010 11:35 AM
Re IQ, has anyone (other than prospective lovers) pointed out that Mr Day that it's not what you've got that matters so much as how you use it?
Posted by: Matty | March 19, 2010 11:36 AM
Jackson: If I remember correctly, instead of redefining "information", they redefined "add," so that any change was defined as a loss. In this case of course evolution would be unable to [do] anything but loose information.
I think they've probably redefined both. Or maybe in the case of information its more correct to say they've undefined it, since they chose to make up a useless, vague, nondefinition rather than use a definition already in the literature.
In any event, I'd thought that Panda's Thumb covered the "yes, repeats are information" subject fairly recently (and much better than I could). But I don't see it in the Dec or Nov archives, and I seem to have problems loading the Jan 2010 archive, so I can't provide a link.
Posted by: eric | March 19, 2010 11:36 AM
My interest lies in the ideas that humans have come up with to explain who we are. Very popular is the archaic "supernatural" idea of man as a distinct and unique creation, zapped into existence by a being that defies physical reality. This idea cannot possibly be relevant to a serious scientific discussion of who we are. I don't know why scientists allow themselves to be drawn into pointless arguments with those who believe in magical origins for reality and those who cannot get past the egotistical necessity of projecting human qualities of design and consciousness onto the universe. These are mutually exclusive modes of thought. Scientists seem to think that if they state the results of research and other information in a rational form, and repeat it often enough, that the public will "get it" but the education level of the public is so low that more information is simply confusing. Many people have never learned to follow a simple analysis of how the world works; others are stuck in magical thinking, which supposedly occurs during an interval in childhood, but which in practice never goes away. Scientists are not immune from magical thinking seeping into their concepts - many aspects of nature are to us, counter-intuitive.
Posted by: dexa | March 19, 2010 11:39 AM
@eric in #8: what's worse is that you have to actually fully read all seven copies of the book to conclude that they are in fact all duplicates, in stead of having some trivial differences scattered throughout.
Posted by: Deen | March 19, 2010 11:52 AM
How you define "complexity" depends on the application. In computer science there are more or less two definitions: Kolmogorov complexity, which is the length of a program needed to describe some object in some universal computing model, and computational complexity, which is the amount of time and space resources given algorithms consume. These definitions are useful in their given domains, but I doubt they have much use when analyzing genomes.
Posted by: Tyler DiPietro | March 19, 2010 11:59 AM
@Sadie Morrison in #17: That's because to some people, all arguments are arguments from authority. Therefore, it's important to emphasize one's credentials.
In reality, of course, emphasizing your credentials is often a red flag that pseudoscience and other bad arguments will soon follow.
Posted by: Deen | March 19, 2010 12:02 PM
Creationists are often fond of comparing genomes to computer code.
Well, back in grade five I programmed a hangman game in Basic, and IIRC it took about a thousand lines to make.
I programmed another hangman game using TurboPascal in grade 12, but it only took about a hundred lines to create.
Which version of hangman was more complex? Which one contained more information? How can you tell?
Posted by: sinned34 | March 19, 2010 12:06 PM
Eric,
Rats. I was going to say that. There I was, reading Ed's post, all excited that I had something sensible to add in an evolution discussion.
Well, at least, I can offer a reference. This is the Panda's Thumb article in which I learned about increased information in duplicate copies.
Posted by: JuliaL | March 19, 2010 12:16 PM
Vox Day's powerpoint presentation may have been pointless and irrelevant, but it can't have been entirely useless since it prompted this post. Great explanation, Ed.
Posted by: Gretchen | March 19, 2010 12:29 PM
Vox is just re-hashing stupid arguments from his book "the irrational atheist" as though no one has dealt with them yet. Why doesn't he address these dissections, posted over a year and a half ago on Evangelical Realism.
No one has successfully dealt with them yet. In fact, Sam Harris has gracefully conceded a few of the arguments he made and many intelligent atheists have done likewise. Ed himself doesn't even necessarily disagree with them. As for why I don't bother responding to Duncan/ER's attempts at criticism, this is why. The guy was as clueless and dishonest as he is ignorant, which is rather impressive. Even Kelly of the Rational Response Squad made a more impressive effort and she had to throw in the towel after hitting the fourth chapter in our debate.
I'll have a response for Ed on the Improbability of Divine Complexity next week. In the meantime, I entirely agree with his statement that the eight refuted New Atheist arguments never addressed God's existence or nonexistence. However, it should now be obvious that Ed was completely incorrect to have claimed that the arguments I made in correctly refuting those seven of those eight arguments were without substance.
As for the eighth refutation, that is correct too regardless of whether Ed is right in claiming that "the size of a genome cannot possibly be a measure of actual complexity" or not. But that will be demonstrated in due time.
Posted by: VD | March 19, 2010 12:38 PM
Some of all this is beside the point, really: what Vox is doing is excoriating Dawkins for an error that creationists have made. It's the creationist argument from improbability, not Dawkins' argument, that depends on an abuse of probability and a definition of complexity not given. Notice the Dawkins quote contains the word "complex" only once, and that's where he's citing the creationist argument. Dawkins is not saying natural selection "entails increasing complexity" according to some formal measure...he's saying it provides a causal pathway between those states creationists deem "simple" and states creationists deem "complex" that destroys any conditions under which their calculations of extreme biological improbability would be valid. That Vox calls this injection of causality a confusion indicates he understands neither Dawkins' point, nor the probability calculation used by creationists in the first place. In a sense, it doesn't matter what definition of complexity is -- the argument from improbability fails regardless. Thus, Vox's mangling of genomic information is doubly hilarious -- it's preposterously wrong AND preposterously irrelevant.
Posted by: JRQ | March 19, 2010 12:41 PM
Vox, Deacon destroyed you and you ran away.
Posted by: JRQ | March 19, 2010 12:43 PM
An onion is almost certainly more complex than a human, at least in terms of it's chemistry. Most plants are.
As for being more evolved or less evolved, consider this: The generation is the metronome for evolution. Humans have a relatively slow reproductive rate, while bacteria have an exceedingly fast one. Bacteria are more evolved than humans and humans are one of the least evolved creatures on the planet.
Posted by: Michael Suttkus, II | March 19, 2010 12:46 PM
They've been refuted. You simply choose to ignore the evidence, or maybe you just don't understand it.
It really doesn't matter whether or not lizards or onions or anything are more or less complex than humans, because humans are not more evolved than any other living species. Your misunderstanding of evolutionary theory doesn't mean that it's wrong.
Posted by: catgirl | March 19, 2010 12:48 PM
@8:
damn, beat me to it.
Posted by: andrew | March 19, 2010 12:55 PM
Vox Day wrote:
Except I didn't say one word about the "improbability of divine complexity." I didn't say one word about the existence of God, which I consider utterly irrelevant to the subject I actually did discuss. What I addressed was your ignorant and silly claim about natural selection and genomic complexity. Do try to stick to the subject.
Posted by: Ed Brayton | March 19, 2010 12:56 PM
Sticking to the subject is a serious problem for people like Vox Day. I was arguing with a creationist the other day about irreducible complexity, and when asked for evidence, he brought out the "Dawkins is a meanie" card. Never did get anything more than vague handwaving out of him.
Posted by: Mike | March 19, 2010 1:20 PM
It's so fun to take anti-science blather like Vox Day churns out and compare it to the real science. So you see stuff like this
Just try reading that out loud. Look at how complex that phrasing is! "...First, [dawkins] confuses [x] with [y] that are used in [z] which underlie [q] from [t] with an imprecise and casual sense to "the word 'improbable'"
When I see writing like this I get the feeling the author is trying to make the readers eyes skim past the paragraph. This kind of writing neither encourages or survives close examination. When you get down to the details with evolution, it gets more interesting, information becomes knowledge and leads to deeper understanding.
The only depth you can pull out of Vox Day's writing is his ignorance, or intellectual dishonesty.
Posted by: debaser | March 19, 2010 1:51 PM
Here's your Creationist Maths Question of the Day:
According to a Creationists' definition of complexity, how many copies of Sarah Palin's Going Rogue would you need in order to equal the complexity of James Joyce's Ulysses?
Posted by: James Sweet | March 19, 2010 2:02 PM
It's the creationist argument from improbability, not Dawkins' argument, that depends on an abuse of probability and a definition of complexity not given.
You clearly have no idea what you're talking about, JRQ. There is no abuse of probability involved; Dawkins doesn't even dispute the probability calculations of the astrophysicists, which is why he turns to multiverse theory in order to accomodate them. As for Deacon, he destroyed nothing; I responded to his criticisms until it became obvious to everyone that he was a dishonest moron. I encourage everyone here to read his highly amusing attempts at criticism.
They've been refuted. You simply choose to ignore the evidence, or maybe you just don't understand it.
No, Catgirl, they have most certainly not been refuted, as many of the more intelligent atheists have accepted. Including, for example, Sam Harris. He wrote: "I wouldn't be able to quantify this, but I freely admit that religion is not the only explicit cause of war and it probably is not the main cause." He's correct. It's not the main cause, nor is it the secondary or tertiary cause.
Except I didn't say one word about the "improbability of divine complexity." I didn't say one word about the existence of God, which I consider utterly irrelevant to the subject I actually did discuss. What I addressed was your ignorant and silly claim about natural selection and genomic complexity. Do try to stick to the subject.
Come on, Ed. Don't ignore the forest for the trees. I have zero interest in information and genomic complexity except in how it relates to the Dawkinsian argument. You are, after all, responding to the slide entitled "The Improbability of Divine Complexity". And I may well concede the point; what may or may not have escaped you is that you have just succeeded in refuting Dawkins yourself. Interestingly enough, that's exactly what the previous critic who addressed my refutation of the overall Ultimate 747 did as well.
As for the claim that these arguments are irrelevant, please keep in mind that two of them happen to be the self-described central arguments of the books The End of Faith and The God Delusion. If atheists are now retreating from these New Atheist debacles, then I have been successful.
So Ed, I understand that you believe genome size is unconnected to both information and complexity, but how many of those eight New Atheist arguments do you agree with? I am pleased to see that you at least reject the ludicrous Religion Causes War contention.
Posted by: VD | March 19, 2010 2:06 PM
Not trying to Godwin the thread, but is there any truth to the rumor that Edward Tufte opened Auschwitz for Kitties after seeing VD's PP?
Posted by: Onkel Bob | March 19, 2010 2:07 PM
Vox Day wrote:
Of course you have zero interest in it; you don't know a fucking thing about it. I have pretty much zero interest in debating the existence of God with your or anyone else. But your belief in God and your vitriol toward atheists does not excuse shitty arguments against evolution.
Posted by: Ed Brayton | March 19, 2010 2:22 PM
dexa @21: I don't know why scientists allow themselves to be drawn into pointless arguments with those who believe in magical origins for reality...
Because fundamentalists vote. And participate in local government, where they may, for example, set H.S. Biology curricula for the next decade. Both activities impact us and our kids. So the conversation is worth having.
Note also that scientists 'as scientists' don't really have an issue with 'those who believe.' Most scientists in fact belong to that group. :) Believers who want to change the way science is taught or performed based on their own sectarian beliefs - yes, we have a problem there. But outside of that, we don't professionally care how you spend your Sunday mornings (Fridays after sundown, Saturdays, whatever).
Posted by: eric | March 19, 2010 2:40 PM
Ah. So when Vox made a slide with an irrelevant plot of genome size, he actually meant to make a slide showing the probability of divine complexity. Well, that clears things up.
Posted by: Joel | March 19, 2010 2:45 PM
You didn't answer the question, Ed. How many of the eight New Atheist arguments refuted in the slideshow do you agree with? I'm not looking for a debate with you or anyone else, I'm simply asking you where you stand on those eight positions. You can hardly claim to be uninterested in them considering your previous complaint that my arguments were insubstantial.
Furthermore, you should note that I correctly anticipated the probable failure of natural selection as a mechanism for evolution several years before the vast majority of professional biologists. It is hardly a "shitty argument" to correctly recognize that the theory of evolution by natural selection rests upon a logical contention rather than scientific evidence. Since you admittedly know far more about the science than I do, it can't have escaped your attention that a number of academic biologists who subscribe to the theory have publicly admitted as much and are now attempting to rectify the situation.
Even Richard Dawkins has now admitted in his latest book that natural selection is no longer the done deal it was once considered and we all know what tends to happen to scientific theories once cracks in the wall of this sort begin to appear. Evolution may still turn out to be true, but the natural selection probably won't be the mechanism. Now, you can certainly console yourself by saying that I don't know a fucking thing about it, but ask yourself this: how is it possible for someone who admittedly knows less about the science than you do to correctly anticipate developments in that science?
Posted by: VD | March 19, 2010 3:01 PM
I'm not looking for a debate with you or anyone else, I'm simply asking you where you stand on those eight positions.
Right -- he comes here to try to contend with refutations of his arguments, and brags about all the arguments he allegedly won (without actually citing a link to the arguments he invites us to review), but he's not looking for a debate.
Furthermore, you should note that I correctly anticipated the probable failure of natural selection as a mechanism for evolution several years before the vast majority of professional biologists.
Given that the "vast majority of professional biologists" still accept natural selection as a mechanism for evolution, I find your claim laughably stupid. But I'll at least be respectful enough to demand a reference to your "correct anticipation."
It is hardly a "shitty argument" to correctly recognize that the theory of evolution by natural selection rests upon a logical contention rather than scientific evidence.
No, it's not a shitty argument -- it's a shitty falsehood.
Since you admittedly know far more about the science than I do, it can't have escaped your attention that a number of academic biologists who subscribe to the theory have publicly admitted as much and are now attempting to rectify the situation.
Which "academic biologists?" Got any references to prove this laughable claim? (And why do you confine yourself to "academic" biologists? Are there "non-academic" biologists whose work you wish to discount? Or are you referring to tenured hacks like Behe who haven't done any actual work since they came out as cdesign proponentsists?)
...but ask yourself this: how is it possible for someone who admittedly knows less about the science than you do to correctly anticipate developments in that science?
What developments have you "correctly anticipated?"
Posted by: Raging Bee | March 19, 2010 3:14 PM
Posted by: Jody | March 19, 2010 3:52 PM
I doubt even Larry Moran would agree with that statement.
Posted by: Eamon Knight | March 19, 2010 4:03 PM
One link and my comment goes in to moderation? One friggin' link?!
The irony of having moderation on a libertarian's blog never fails to amuse me. And by "amuse" I mean "bother".
Posted by: Modusoperandi | March 19, 2010 4:06 PM
This time, with no link...
VD "No...", "You...", "You..." etc.
Hey! Vox Day is here! Can I play with your sword?
I'd say more, but I have nothing to add to this conversation. With you here, that makes two of us.
Posted by: Modusoperandi | March 19, 2010 4:08 PM
"Even Richard Dawkins has now admitted in his latest book that natural selection is no longer the done deal it was once considered and we all know what tends to happen to scientific theories once cracks in the wall of this sort begin to appear."
Natural selection is still the predominant mechanism of how traits get fixed in a population and will continue to be so barring some major upheaval (though being a firm believer in the fallibility of science, I wouldn't rule that out). Dawkins was probably talking about neutral drift, which we now know plays the predominant role at the molecular level and probably plays some role at the phenotypic level.
Posted by: Tyler DiPietro | March 19, 2010 4:23 PM
So, basically this all boils down to
VD: But we can't know for sure.
EB: It's close enough for me
VD: But we can't know for sure.
EB: Who cares, it's still good enough for me
VD: XYZ, ergo, we can't know for sure
EB: XYZ is wrong.
VD: XYZ minus one! Ergo, we can't know for sure
EB: XYZ minus one is one less stupider than still stupid
VD: But we can't know for sure
EB: I believe not, for sure.
VD: No proof, so, your belief is wrong!
EB: I'm rubber, and you're glue.
VD: Goddamnit. But we still don't know for sure
I'll borrow a page from the most well known poet of the LBC when I say, "yiggity yizzawn, bizzle dizzle. wake my ass up when it's time make this bitch recognize," profound words that mean:
EB: You're right, we can't know for absolute sure. But I don't care and really don't want to change my answer, Regis.
VD: Oh snap, really? Well, I'll go be with my friends that agree then, deuces nokka.
B: Old argument is really, really old, not matter how much you polish it to be new. Next up on Wacky TV: One Hand Clapping.. Silence, or mental masturbation???? We'll explore, after the jump!
If you want to read all the most impressive (and utterly well thought out) mechanisms of God's existence which we can't truly refute, read most of the books by Frank Herbert (not just Dune.)
VD: There are scientists in history that can accept unabashedly their wonder at the beauty of god's existence while experiencing the frustration of lack of scientific proof in a graceful fashion. All this delving into concepts of which you wish to remain ignorant whilst using as a tool is an affront to his will in creating your inquisitive mind.
L2Genomics nub
Posted by: Buffoon | March 19, 2010 4:29 PM
Vox Day wrote:
Holy shit. If you really think that natural selection is not the primary (though hardly exclusive) mechanism of evolution and that scientists are now admitting that, you are truly delusional in addition to being a fucking moron.
Posted by: Ed Brayton | March 19, 2010 5:12 PM
Buffoon appears to be as delusional as Vox Day. His characterization of this exchange doesn't bear even the faintest resemblance to arguments made by either one of us. Where the hell he's getting "we can't be sure" from as a characterization of anything Vox has said is quite beyond me.
Posted by: Ed Brayton | March 19, 2010 5:14 PM
Funny. I read Richard's latest book, and I didn't find a damned thing about some refutation of natural selection. Do regale us with a citation, Vox.
Posted by: Mike | March 19, 2010 5:17 PM
Eric wrote: "Seven copies is different than one copy in a meaningful way."
Maybe. If a particular gene's copies occur directly after it, that's likely to be more meaningful than if the copies are found in a remote part of the genome that isn't really functional.
In a computer code analogy, it's the difference between putting seven copies of a for loop one after the other in the body of the program (so it is executed seven times), and putting six copies at the end of the file, commented out (so they are never compiled, let alone executed).
Posted by: Jon H | March 19, 2010 5:33 PM
It seems VD's (what an appropriate short cut for his name) lack of understanding of probability is matched in scale only by his sense of self worth.
Posted by: dean | March 19, 2010 5:37 PM
Vox has been shown this numerous times:
http://evolutionlist.blogspot.com/2007/10/rm-ns-creationist-and-id-strawman.html
But he's still not getting it.
Posted by: Rich | March 19, 2010 5:47 PM
I don't know if you've noticed, but Ed is not really a libertarian. He seems like more of a plain old-school liberal. (As in, not "progressive," just liberal.) NTTAWWT.
Posted by: Juice | March 19, 2010 5:54 PM
Vox has had trouble with stochastic processes in the past. I believe this short clip shows the sort of hurdles Vox would like NDE to jump over:
http://video.adultswim.com/the-office/psychologist-tim.html
Posted by: Rich | March 19, 2010 6:07 PM
One of the more interesting questions about Vox is whether he actually thinks he has won all these arguments he gets in, or whether he knows he is dodging the arguments and ignorant. I've seen him do this with other sciencebloggers as well: he'll ignore all substantive arguments, won't reply when he is outclassed, etc.
All he has to do is put on a show huffing and puffing and playing a "my dick/brain/whatever is bigger than yours" and his followers will buy it. I suspect he knows he isn't arguing everything, but then he could be too delusional or stupid to know better.
Posted by: N | March 19, 2010 6:45 PM
Juice "I don't know if you've noticed, but Ed is not really a libertarian. He seems like more of a plain old-school liberal. (As in, not "progressive," just liberal.) NTTAWWT."
Really? I'd always assumed he was plush and covered in felt. I mean, the sticks jutting out of his wrists are a dead giveaway that he's secretly a Muppet.
I can't be the only person who noticed.
Posted by: Modusoperandi | March 19, 2010 7:01 PM
On the seven copies of an identical book thing: even if all the books are completely identical, word for word, and not a trypanosome VSG thing, remember that quantity of gene product is certainly at least as important as presence/absence. Polytene chromosomes, anyone?
Posted by: snurp | March 19, 2010 8:43 PM
Also, the complexity of Vox Day's cells, based on weight of total cellular nuclear DNA:
skeletal muscle cells>neurons>sperm>red blood cells
Posted by: snurp | March 19, 2010 8:58 PM
And why are we so married to nuclear DNA, anyhow? If your mitochondria or chloroplasts are your primary ATP source, shouldn't we add their genome size on when contemplating complexity? And what about organisms that have bacteriomes? Should the aphid genes directly necessary to Buchnera aphidicola's survival be added to its "total complexity count," and vice versa?
I'll stop spamming the post now. I'm just confused as to how this slide is supposed to work on any level.
Posted by: snurp | March 19, 2010 9:07 PM
"If you want to read all the most impressive (and utterly well thought out) mechanisms of God's existence which we can't truly refute, read most of the books by Frank Herbert (not just Dune.)"
So, who wants to tell Buffoon that Frank Herbert converted to Zen Buddhism (a religion that does not preach the existence of a creator-god) as an adult?
Posted by: D. C. | March 19, 2010 11:04 PM
Jeez, I come to Dispatches to read about botched drug raids, Tom Izzo, and the implications of Kelo and find myself reading Pharyngula. I'm confused.
Not that I'm complaining, of course. This post and the ensuing comments are both entertaining and informative, which is why I keep coming back here.
Posted by: chris | March 19, 2010 11:05 PM
Vox Day? A walking, talking illustration of the Dunning-Kruger Effect, or in his case, Dunning Kruger Syndrome.
Bertrand Russell pegged Vox Day years before Vox Day was even born. Russell said:
Posted by: Ed Darrell | March 19, 2010 11:40 PM
I wonder if Dawkins himself displays a similar level sanctimony and vulgar expressions of contempt for his interlocutors as is evident in comments here?
Posted by: Amalek | March 20, 2010 6:58 AM
Posted by: socle | March 20, 2010 7:51 AM
Vox is too modest to mention that he actually did try to address my analysis of his book, at least at first. Unfortunately, his efforts in that regard weren't too successful. For example, if you follow Vox's link above, you'll see that he tried to paint me as "deeply dishonest" in how I reported his arguments. In my reply, however, I was able to document that he was actually misquoting me in order to create a false impression that I was misquoting him. What's worse, his post had cut and pasted my original quote, so he can't claim that he somehow failed to notice what I actually said. He knew he was misquoting me, but he accused me of misquoting him anyway. To prove that I was dishonest.
Each of our exchanges seems to have left Vox less willing to address the substance of my remarks, and more likely to try and dismiss me with empty ad hominem slurs. Finally he bailed out completely, despite his earlier promises. I can't really speculate why, but I just thought I'd close with this quote:
Posted by: Deacon Duncan | March 20, 2010 9:22 AM
Vox Day talking out his ass again? No! You don't say!
This guy has made such a career of it that Ex-Lax wants to bottle the fucker.
Posted by: Aquaria | March 20, 2010 9:57 AM
Deacon Duncan "He knew he was misquoting me, but he accused me of misquoting him anyway."
He didn't know. It was a simple mistake. He accidentally hit the wrong buttons on his mouse.
Posted by: Modusoperandi | March 20, 2010 12:37 PM
Amalek - Dishonesty and willful ignorance deserve contempt. And Richard Dawkins has no connection to this blog.
Posted by: Taz | March 20, 2010 2:20 PM
"He didn't know. It was a simple mistake. He accidentally hit the wrong buttons on his mouse."
Oh, you sir win an internets.
Posted by: Rich | March 20, 2010 3:31 PM
Why is it even an issue that Dawkins' didn't rigorously and mathematically define "complexity" and "information" in a popular science book? This paragraph is from The God Delusion. It's enough for him in this argument to show logically speaking that the idea of complexity in the creationist argument regresses to a creator which must by the definitions of the creationist argument be more complex than what he's created. Given the astonishing complexity of the known universe, God would have to be that much more astonishingly complex. All this talk about Kalmogorov, Baysian inference, information theory, complexity, statistics, probability, etc is fairly irrelevant because the argument is one of logic. The creationist argument presupposes that anything complex must have been designed by a more complex designer. Dawkins simply shows the logical fallacy of the argument in which complexity is pushed back a step and remains unexplained. What form that complexity takes mathematically is beside the point.
Also, as others have pointed out, this (and many creationist arguments) are extremely anthropocentric. The world on the other hand is decidedly not anthropocentric. The idea that humans are the most highly evolved creatures in the world is not only a misreading of evolution, but it's essentially meaningless. I don't really know how you can say a human is more complex than an amphibian or that x organism is more or less complex than y organism. Each organism is well evolved and complex enough for its own environment and way of life.
Posted by: Ryan | March 20, 2010 3:54 PM
Which version of hangman was more complex? Which one contained more information? How can you tell?
Posted by: sinned34 | March 19, 2010 12:06 PM
If they describe the exact same game, the Kolmogorov complexity is technically equivalent up to a fixed additive constant. For plain Kolmogorov complexity, this quantity is bounded from above by log x + c, while prefix Kolmogorov complexity is bounded from above by log x + 2 log log x + c, where c depends on the model but not the actual object (x). BASIC has lots of GOTO statements, for instance, that can considerably lengthen the program, so the constant will be large.
In the Shannon picture, the "information" is relative to the ensemble of messages transmitted from sender to receiver. So if you're sending one version of hangman, it has a given entropy measured by -sigma(p log(p)), where the p's are the probabilities of the possible messages in the ensemble, and the "information" is represented by how much this quantity is reduced by the negative log-likelihoods of individual messages.
Posted by: Tyler DiPietro | March 20, 2010 4:25 PM
Ignorance of genomics? Thank G_d there have been no mindless regurgitations of Lewontin's Fallacy here as the sight of a grown man reduced the an extended phenotype of the ethnic interests of the Fallacy's inventor would be unbearable for me. Funny thing, when more than one loci is tested, the Fallacy is exposed as just that. Lack of faithism? We cannot be so lucky. Humanism is a faith. By observing the behavior of its proponents one would be tempted to think that they tacitly believe they will enjoy some cosmic reward for what will in the result in the liquidation of ancient nations, peoples and cultures. But were it so, yet there will be no such reward, as their teleology, and its alleged consequences (the 'elevation' of all incarnations of Man to the 'exalted' state 'intellectual' dilettantes and pleasure seeking consumers), is a delusion. Sorry, the individual, as the evolved unit of reproduction of our species, does as life commands, he passes along his own genes, and can most consistently expect to be aided in that by those most closely genetically related to him, as they also share more of his unique genes and gene frequencies than relatively genetically distant people. And if he does not, he can expect to be driven into the ground by people(s) not so tender-minded. Self-evidently, all else being equal, a more cohesive group will out-compete a less cohesive group for finite resources in the (often unconscious) effort to boost their respective reproductive fitnesses. And should that surprised? The genetic continuity of one's group is a real life interest, however humble, however unsexy, and the sense of moral superiority and temporary bit of status one is rewarded with for paying lip service to the faithism de jure is not. And ironically, as our wages are leveled with that of the Third World, and our nations, at the catastrophic cost of social fragmentation and environmental degradation are flooded with the bottomless seas of the Third World, our elites recite the platitudinous drivel of liberal humanism as it augments and justifies their own clutch on power.
neo-liberalism + cultural Marxism = elite power
And those that aid them in that, are reduced to dishonorable, hypocritical dupes and squalid traitors.
Posted by: Amalek | March 20, 2010 5:14 PM
VD, #38:
Teddy, Teddy, Teddy. If I didn't know you were such a closed-minded, pinheaded, obstinate, misogynistic, hateful douchetard, I would know all I need to know about you from the fact that you somehow thought an 18-button mouse was a good idea, and found some company stupid enough to build it for you.
Posted by: Brian X | March 20, 2010 6:40 PM
Jackson wrote:
"I haven't actually read any papers that discuss the overall complexity of organisms. How is this usually measured? Total number of unique proteins? Total number of proteins and functional RNA? Total number of interactions between all proteins, RNA, DNA, and small molecules?"
You need a common understanding of a term's meaning if subsequent conclusions and inferences are meaningful right Jackson? That applies to proponents as well as critics of anything.
Posted by: Paul Williamson | March 20, 2010 7:05 PM
Amalek @76;
Meh. I preferred your speech in the original German.
Posted by: Modusoperandi | March 20, 2010 7:34 PM
Amalek - At least in the orginal German it sounded as if it made some kind of sense (to non-German speakers). - Dingo
---
PS: Yours meds may need some adjustment. Seek professional advice.
Posted by: DingoJack | March 20, 2010 7:46 PM
Paul Williamson wrote:
A simple "I don't know either" would have been more clear and just as useful.
Posted by: Jackson | March 20, 2010 10:06 PM
Amalek, what?
Posted by: Jody | March 20, 2010 10:25 PM
Amelek - I could write a random word generator that would produce as much meaning as your last post.
Paul Williamson - It is the creationists that seek to use vague definitions of complexity to undermine the theory of Evolution. Scientist who do actual work in the field have concrete evidence of changes that lead to what any unbiased observer would call a more complex organism. They don't seek to categorize that organism as more complex because that is irrelevant to the theory. In other words, if creationists want to use complexity as an argument against evolution it is incompetent upon them to define the term.
Posted by: Taz | March 21, 2010 12:09 AM
Taz, I'm reasonably certain than you meant "incumbent", but your chosen word is so much better.
Posted by: Modusoperandi | March 21, 2010 12:29 AM
Modusoperandi - You are correct on both counts.
Posted by: Taz | March 21, 2010 12:31 AM
And my IQ is way up in the 90s! I can't even imagine what it must be like trapped in Vox's giant noggin.
Posted by: Modusoperandi | March 21, 2010 2:13 AM