Year: 2016

Interesting piece in Aeon on The New Astrology by Alan Jay Levinovitz.

Almost three decades ago, when we were developing training in business information modelling, a colleague once warned me never to forget a model was always a model, however effectively the model fitted its purpose, it wasn’t the actual world we were dealing with. I’d previously already developed concerns that even in my own engineering experience things weren’t always as objective as they appeared. It takes a lot more than maths and physics to keep 10,000 rivets flying in close formation.

As that engineering business information modelling evolved into ever more generic reference-data-based asset-lifecycle information architecture, it wasn’t hard to spot this warning applied to pretty much any model of anything we know about our cosmos. Even that brings to mind another colleague who admitted to regrets having suggested a philosophical reference(*) to one of our number, and yet another who eventually penned a skit on comparing schools of art with different schools of philosophy each modeller might happen to have read over a weekend.

One thing we know about the world is there is more than one way to look at it. All our models of reality have their limits.

The more free-thinking science-based rationality wins the war against dogma, religious or otherwise, the more dogmatic the PC acceptance that it’s the scientific way or no way. A well-formed model of well defined objects with predictable behaviour is de-rigeur even for the social sciences. Even where political dimensions of decision-making are accepted, the free and democratic expectations are that justifications meet basic rules of objective logic, and global economics is a big as it gets for our earth-bound eco-system.

This morning, before even picking up the Aeon link above, I found myself tweeting in reaction to the economic fears and forecasting coming out of the Brexit and Bremain eco-political camps.

When political economists
start using numbers,
it’s time to ignore them.
Economics isn’t a science.

I’m not the first to coin the idea of autistic economics. Our pre-occupation with arithmetic is indeed a fetish, an addiction we can’t seem to shake off. Worth a read.

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[(*) The actual reference was to Wittgenstein’s Tractatus.]

I made a link to the Dave Rubin / Steven Fry conversation a couple of days ago. I was making the connection between Julian Baggini’s piece of why simple – black and white – moral logic seems to be more popular than anything that appears more complicated or thoughtful, and linking this to some of the simplistic conclusions and “click-bait” headlines being reported around the recent ICM Poll on UK Muslim attitudes (before more thoughtful commentaries indeed appeared).

It’s a long-standing agenda of Psybertron’s that many modern world problems stem from the fact that simple stuff spreads faster than good stuff. Pure memetics – exaggerated in our world of mass communications and social media – popularity driving us towards lowest common-denominators. And it’s true in all fields, from would-be pure scientific forms of rationality through the socio-economic-political “sciences” – even democracy itself – to the more artistic ends of culture.

When I originally made the link I was using primarily a transcript extract posted here, but since then I’ve watched the whole thing – it’s only 11 minutes long. As an active humanist / atheist / secularist – indeed a board member of the UK Rationalist Association – I was intrigued when it was pointed out that early on in the conversation, he announces :

“ I’m not a rationalist, I’m an empiricist [when it comes to clear thinking].”

 

 

He goes on to elaborate what he really means by clear thinking based on experience. After reminding us of the history of the enlightenment and free-thinking movements, and the original enlightenment aims of the founding the US, he points out important ironies at the heart of the project.

Ironies where the narrow (PC) rational view turns empirical common sense on its head.

The highest levels of social justice are found in the democratic states with constitutional monarchies. The best proper functioning secular arrangements are not necessarily found in states with clear separation of church and state. The Orwellian un-personing of famous persons (eg the Rhodes statue, Thomas Jefferson) when new generations learn of their historical immorality by modern standards. Topics of debate and trigger words becoming taboo and speakers no-platformed when they failed to fit simple agendas.

He is railing against the deep infantilism of the new (PC) rationality. Life is complicated.

Towards the end he’s  expressing the a further irony of “victimhood” …

“We’ll start feeling sorry for you when you stop feeling sorry for yourself.”

… he also goes on to attack that other holy cow of the freedom of expression, the right to mock.

“Don’t mock unless you value.”

In fact I’d say, like Psybertron, Fry is defending proper human rationality from a too-narrow, too-abstractly-objective, poor-substitute, PC-version of scientistic rationality.

True scientific rationality is of course ultimately empirical – evidence-based and repeatably testable. The difficulty is what kinds of “experience” count as evidence when you are outside the controlled lab of repeatability. Human life is not a repeatable experiment.

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More from Psybertron:

Causation – It’s Complicated

The Court Jester

Our Addiction to Weary Rationale

 

As a fan of Dennett, this is an interesting review of Content and Consciousness Revisited, with Replies by Daniel Dennett. Just baffled that whilst “revisiting” his 1969 and 1991 works it obviously refers to later work by others, but not later works by Dan himself.

Dennett does not engage with the details of Mandik’s argument but instead responds by reiterating his view of consciousness as ‘fame in the brain’ and contrasting it with his ‘known by the King’ caricature of the higher-order theory. As Dennett construes higher-order theories, they rely on a Cartesian model of the mind and “an unanalyzed res cogitans, [as] the thinker of those thoughts”

“Dennett’s challenging and influential attempts to solve the mind-body problem have rightly earned him notoriety. Though I can highly recommend the book [Content and Consciousness Revisited] I do wish there had been more interaction between Dennett and the authors, perhaps even the inclusion of some philosophers more critical or skeptical of the feasibility of Dennett’s project (as I would be). But then again, critics abound and it is nice to see Dennett’s ideas being explored, refined, and connected to contemporary interdisciplinary endeavors in the cognitive sciences, including by Dennett himself!”

What I don’t accept is that Dennett “holds” a Cartesian duality view of consciousness – obviously he uses such a model – as in “it’s a caricature” – to talk about the relationships between it’s parts, but the whole point is mind is not independent of matter. They’re co-evolved patterns (in patterns) of information.

BTW as the reviewer admits “critics abound”. As I said in the Fisher – Logic of Real Arguments post below, the prevailing meme is to destroy the arguments of others by analytical methods – death by a thousand cuts.

“Careful with that knife, Aristotle!”

“Don’t cut your own throat with that razor, Ockam!”

“Critical thinking” is a mugs game, shooting fish in a barrel. Sure, it allows you to check where political charlatans are pulling the rhetorical wool, but it does nothing to establish and understand a model of the real world. My top take-away from the Fisher work was they key virtue in argumentation being “Charity”. Dan’s equivalent messages are “Hold your definition” and “Rappaport’s rule”: All argument and debate should focus on establishing statements of understanding and agreement – refining definitions and articulating detailed analytical differences can come later. Agreeing to disagree is not progress, it’s simply putting of the real debate.

And … pushing the metaphors to their limit … the same is true in integrative thinking in the social “sciences” of politics and economics – and (say, topically) The Problem with Islam. In the politically correct rush to “be objective” and “look scientific” these disciplines allow “critical thinking” to trample the work of Mary Parker-Follett, original guru to the gurus of management gurus.

And, full circle, integration based on values is a virtue.

Interesting piece by @deeveebee in the Grauniad.

And the selective case Peter Whoriskey in the Washington Post.

 

The Logic of Real Arguments is the title of a Cambridge University reference work by Alec Fisher, first published in 1988. I’m reading the 2004 second edition in response to a request from Lee Beaumont to help with some Wikiversity course material on clear thinking. The best basis of good real-life decisions is of course my main topic so I was intrigued to read a title I’d not come across before.

I’m starting with little hope of finding any magic bullet, but the book itself starts well. Formal logics are relegated to an appendix, so the author can launch in with what really needs to be known – it starts epistemological. In summary:

• Don’t worry about definitions of terms until later – (“hold your definition” as Dan Dennett would say) – they will ultimately be worked out in the process. Just follow your intuition and common sense understanding of reason.
• Grasp the outlines of what is being argued, like definitions, we can refine and add qualifications later. There are methods and frameworks but real argumentation is not mechanical or algorithmic, it’s always more complicated.
• Not only are the actual assertions, premises, reasoning and conclusions often entirely implicit in real natural language arguments, but interpreting any of these also depends on understanding the apparent but implicit and subjective intentions of whoever is making the case. Implication and intent are always ambiguous, so always default to charity with respect to the quality of the argument. Assume the best, aim to agree where possible. Analyse and test on that basis.
• [Aside – one of Fisher’s references is Stephen Toulmin’s (1958) The Uses of Argument. Toulmin’s (1990) Cosmopolis and (2001) Return to Reason have been influential on my own journey.]

So far so good.

In fact it seems inexorably to be leading to my own conclusion, that no amount of careful – even formal – logical argumentation will be 100% right outside of an artificially bounded control volume under laboratory conditions. ie never in real life arguments. No real argument can be completely consistent.

Gödel already tells us this.

The bad news is most of the rest of the book is analytical. I guess that figures, if your objective is to teach students what’s wrong. So-called critical thinking aimed at dissecting the arguments of others. Lots of classic examples – Galileo’s included – to analyse and hone those cutting skills, but so far no obvious alternatives for what makes a “good” real-life decision-making rationale?

One example of Fisher’s classic examples is A J Ayer’s logical refutation of Descartes mind-matter duality. Obviously he was right to refute it since Cartesian duality is obviously wrong, and it’s a good example to understand how Ayer demonstrated that. Proving people wrong, finding fault with the arguments of others is easy. Unfortunately Fisher’s own conclusion is worrying.

“[Ayer’s] absolute division between science and philosophy is a mistake.”

Well no. Ayer makes no such error, what he actually says is:

“[The manner] of conceiving the distinction between mind and matter is at fault. In short our problem is not scientific but philosophical”

Clearly what Ayer intends “in short” is nothing “absolute”, more:

… not [wholly] scientific but [also at least in some part] philosophical.

Whatever happened to charity, Mr Fisher?

Anyway, after more examples, including Popperian and Kuhnian bases for good scientific arguments, Fisher concludes with what has been his main focus from the start – the philosophy of his Assertability Question, which asks:

What …. would justify me in asserting C? or

What would I have to know or believe to be justified in accepting C?

It’s about epistemology. It’s about – what. It’s not about – is. It’s not about – is C true or false?

It does not ask anything about proving truth or falsity.

Which probably explains why the formal logical tools and methods are relegated to an appendix. They are merely tools in the hands of the wise. Tools (knives & files, like Aristotle’s analytic knife and Okham’s razor) contain constraints, but no intrinsic wisdom. We murder to dissect.

Which is pretty much the conclusion of this three-way discussion on The Limits to Logic from 2014 (5th talk lower down). Logic is a useful tool for testing consistency, but is never sufficient for a complete rationale – Gödel again – and even when demonstrating inconsistency, it can’t actually help you decide if the assertions, the conclusion or the underlying model & premises are necessarily wrong.

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Post Notes:

It’s complicated:

And this (apparently serious?) summary of how to interact with philosophers, seems to cover some of the same key ground – especially the broad agreement BEFORE detailed analytical dissection. And charity – make the effort to understand the philosopher’s actual motives and avoid presumptious (accidental) ad-hominem criticism.

(This is just a collecting post so far for material coming out of the ICM Poll reported on by Trevor Phillips. He will be broadcasting tomorrow, Wednesday, but so much has already been said, so many selective click-bait headlines, I wanted to capture a few inputs for some more considered writing afterwards. This is me thinking out loud for now.)

Black & White Morality? – Just yesterday, before picking-up the ICM Muslims Poll story, I picked-up on the article by Julian Baggini on how people like their morality to be simple, even though reality, in action, is inevitably more complex. (I started to add post-notes to that, now being brought forward here, and below.)

It’s Complicated? – Of course the just complicated enough reality has been a “memetic” theme of mine as long as I can remember, but I posted specifically on that quite recently.

The Pitfalls of Islamaphobia? – Douglas Murray commenting on Trevor Phillips piece in the Sunday Times ahead of his own documentary on the ICM Poll findings. The PC problems with seeing a reaction to multiculturalism as hate-driven, phobic, Islamophobic. Islam really does have some problems worth us all addressing.

Post-Multiculturalism? – @KenanMalik’s considered tweeting on what the poll really seems to say (copy pasted below for now.) And Malik has now posted his own piece.

Safe Spaces in Academia? – Also yesterday, Jonathan Haidt and Stephen Fry both on what’s wrong in the “safe spaces” saga. [More on Stephen Fry and Rationalism here.] Part of the simplistication problem, the tendency to want to keep controversial complicating factors out one’s own debate. No one has a right “to be platformed” by anyone else, but no-one should be banned or no-platformed simply for having a view controversial – even offensive – to your own debate. Managing a debate agenda is a crucial right and need, too many different variables in one time and place is everything and nothing, chaotic and ultimately regressive. All very sad because it is of course, nothing whatsoever to do with what the idea of safe space was originally meant to be in academia. The very opposite in fact: A space insulated from the real world, so that you now can experiment in that learning environment with the riskiest ideas (and substances) without hurting anyone else now or yourself later in the real world. The more controversial the better the learning opportunity.

Mediaeval Practices? – as progress – eg Halal meat in Asda – and a lot more on LGBTI issues. Surely most UK / EU supply chain meat has been dual (halal certifiable) for some decades? Is US intensive beef production any more humane than traditional halal? How much in practice is halal symbolically ceremonial, rather than actual butchery practice? And more.

Normal? – a PC elephant in the room is making any distinction between respect for universality of rights, and what is considered normal in public behaviour. I’m a straight, atheist, white, guy – but none of those is normally front and centre in my daily life. Unlike concern for our human ecosystem in thought and action, which is. Normal. Normally front and centre. A difficult word for PC reasons. Normal in the many statistical senses of average expectations, and normal in the sense of some normalising tendency towards that norm. Even the existence of any norms. A level playing field doesn’t imply a uniformly flat distribution of reality. Tough one for some regressive lefties, that one, even some of the less regressive. (Here a classic example – Germaine Greer no less, gets into confusion between stereotypically “normal” gender and reality of transgender individuals.)

Western Values? – have been the PC elephant all along. Simply contrasting “British” or Western” or “UN Universal Human” rights and values against aspects of Islamic (and other) religious tradition and practice is seen as bigotted and racist by many. Even today we see news of Saudi, and all members of the Muslim Cooperation Organisation, rejecting any overt reference to LGBTI rights in a UN context. Hat-tip to @AMDWaters for retweeting many links on these issues. Complicated by the fact that the UN declaration on freedom of thought and expression which includes freedoms of religious expression is often annoyingly abbreviated to “Freedom of Religious Expression.” With good reason, I am allowed to criticise your religion and reject its practices where I deem they fail to meet universal human rights. It’s the goodness and the reason that matter. Values. Universal human values cannot be couched in detailed statutes and case law covering every example. Making everything explicit legal is not helpful.

All Truth is Good? – but not all truth is good to say. African proverb. Hat-tip to @DavidGurteen. What you believe deep down, cannot always be what is overtly expressed in every situation. That’s not hypocritical, it’s normal to layer reality. See “normal” above. And see Maajid Nawaz on Muslim attitude to gays. Have been struck before by gay inconsistencies in Islam. T E Lawrence made references in 1916 to men using each other to comfort and slake their lusts. My own experience of hairy-arsed construction workers in Balochistan in the 1980’s included a surprising number of gay couples, surprisingly camp too. Today I know (ex-)Muslim gays. Taqiya? It’s only a big deal if someone chooses to make it so, and then you challenge their motives. And East meets West again today in Baloch.

Lightening the Mood? What “some Muslims really think of what British Muslims think”. Baroness Warsi in a longer twitter conversation as Muslims take the piss out of how diverse a group is represented. Apologism some call it when humour is on the other foot. And how about this for a mockery. And here is Theos contribution – understanding how not to react is every bit as important. And follow-up from that meta-Muslim thread, after broadcast of the documentary.

 

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[Holding notes from yesterday:

Later yesterday, same story from Stephen Fry

“The regressive left, coming after language and free speech”.
“Deep infantilism in modern society …. people needed to grow up”.
“In terms of how they think, they can’t bear complexity, the idea that things aren’t easy to understand.”
“They want to be told, or they want to be able to decide and say, this is good, and this is bad, and anything that conflicts with that is not to be borne.”
(More on Stephen Fry and Rationalism here.)

And also : Jonathan Haidt on “safe spaces” in academe – the same topic that prompted Fry above. The original point of safe spaces was so students could experiment with the whackiest ideas – and substances – available, free from censure and later repercussions, and safely away from the rest of us currently leading normal lives.]

[And Post Post Note : probably not the right place to put this, but I wanted to capture it. There was a poll of UK Muslim opinion released today, with obvious click-bait headlines in various media, and the usual sarky piss-taking comments on Twitter. Be thankful for Kenan Malik digging in to the actual findings:

My original comment on the Grauniad story this morning:

“Good analysis, provided people actually read the detail behind the PC headline?”

Malik’s later analysis, latest first:

Kenan Malik ‏@kenanmalik 2 minutes ago

Much of this is similar to previous polls, suggesting issues that need confronting, but not necessarily as the headlines present them. View conversation

Kenan Malik ‏@kenanmalik 3 minutes ago

And there is a greater sense of not feeling British within the general population than among Muslims (17% vs 11%) 4/ View conversation

Kenan Malik ‏@kenanmalik 4 minutes ago

For instance,Muslims feel more strongly that they ‘belong to Britain’ than does the general population (86% vs 83%) 3/ View conversation

Kenan Malik ‏@kenanmalik 4 minutes ago

…but also a considerable sense of attachment to Britain and to social responsibility. 2/ View conversation

Kenan Malik ‏@kenanmalik 5 minutes ago

What the poll seems to show is a deep well of social conservatism, a more polarised community that most imagine… 1/ View conversation

Kenan Malik ‏@kenanmalik 5 minutes ago

…you look at the figure for the general population – which is 27% – more than double that for Muslims. 2/2 View conversation

Kenan Malik ‏@kenanmalik 5 minutes ago

Poll shows 13% of British Muslims can understand why Muslim might be attracted to radical groups. Which might seem a high figure, until… 1/2 View conversation

Kenan Malik ‏@kenanmalik 7 minutes ago

But the poll also shows only 30 per cent of general population would. In fact it’s a lower fig for gen pop than for Muslims (30% vs 34%) 2/2 View conversation

Kenan Malik ‏@kenanmalik 7 minutes ago

The Times today reports that ‘only 1 in 3 of British Muslims would tip off the police if someone close was involved in terrorism’. 1/2 View conversation

Kenan Malik ‏@kenanmalik 8 minutes ago

The poll is, as one might imagine, complex in what it reveals, and far more so than the headlines might suggest. For instance… View conversation

Kenan Malik ‏@kenanmalik 8 minutes ago

Final few tweets about the ICM/C4 Muslim poll before I get down to some proper work. The full details are here: http://www.icmunlimited.com/data/media/pdf/Mulims-full-suite-data-plus-topline.pdf …

Adil Ray ‏@adilray 6 hours ago

In 2011. We had 2.7 Muslims. 700,000 lived in local authorities where they made up more than 20%. See census.

Kenan Malik @kenanmalik

Would be interesting to check what percentage of British Muslims live in areas of more than 20% concentration. https://twitter.com/ShirazMaher/status/719458615896186880 …

Kenan Malik ‏@kenanmalik 6 hours ago

Kenan Malik Retweeted Shiraz Maher

Would be interesting to check what percentage of British Muslims live in areas of more than 20% concentration.

Shiraz Maher @ShirazMaher

Important points from @adilray this morning pointing out that @Channel4 poll only quizzed Muslims living in areas of 20% density or more. 1/

Kenan Malik ‏@kenanmalik 8 hours ago

Not that they thought it should be ‘encouraged by society’. 2/2

Kenan Malik ‏@kenanmalik 8 hours ago

Correction to previous ‘Muslim poll’ tweets. Should have said Pew poll found 39% of US Muslims think ‘homosexuality should be accepted’ 1/2

Kenan Malik ‏@kenanmalik 8 hours ago

It would be unfortunate if the debate around this poll, as already seems to be happening, ignored the wider context. 15/ View conversation

Kenan Malik ‏@kenanmalik 8 hours ago

Or of different social policies in different Western countries. The likelihood is that it is a combination of all three. 14/ View conversation

Kenan Malik ‏@kenanmalik 8 hours ago

The differences could be the result of different countries of origins, of the different developments of migrant communities… 13/ View conversation

Kenan Malik ‏@kenanmalik 8 hours ago

The differences between attitudes of British, French and US Muslims can plausibly be attributed to a number of factors. 12/ View conversation

Kenan Malik ‏@kenanmalik 8 hours ago

According to Pew poll 39% of US Muslims think ‘homosexuality should be encouraged by society’ 7/ View conversation

Kenan Malik ‏@kenanmalik 8 hours ago

According to Ifop poll, 81% French Muslims think women should have equal rights, 38% support right to abortion, etc. 6/ View conversation

Kenan Malik ‏@kenanmalik 8 hours ago

Here, for instance, is an Ifop poll of French Muslims: http://www.ifop.com/media/pressdocument/343-1-document_file.pdf … And a Pew poll on US Muslims: http://www.people-press.org/files/2011/08/muslim-american-report.pdf … 5/ View conversation

Kenan Malik ‏@kenanmalik 8 hours ago

The social attitudes of British Muslims tend to be far more conservative than those of Muslims in many other Western countries. 4/ View conversation

Kenan Malik ‏@kenanmalik 8 hours ago

In 2013, for instance, there was a YouGov/University of Lancaster poll for @lindawoodhead: http://cdn.yougov.com/cumulus_uploads/document/mm7go89rhi/YouGov-University%20of%20Lancaster-Survey-Results-Faith-Matters-130130.pdf … 3/ View conversation

Kenan Malik ‏@kenanmalik 8 hours ago

This is not the first poll to have shown the deep social conservatism of British Muslims. 2/View conversation

Kenan Malik ‏@kenanmalik 8 hours ago

On the ICM/C4/Trevor Phillips Muslim poll �” I will write something properly on this soon. In the meantime a few quick thoughts. 1/

I don’t have any proper data on this, but from personal experience British Muslims were more liberal on these issues 25 years ago. 10/ View conversation

Kenan Malik ‏@kenanmalik 8 hours ago

British Muslims, on the other hand, seem to have become more conservative on such social issues. 9/ View conversation

Kenan Malik ‏@kenanmalik 8 hours ago

Over past 25 years, people of most faiths in Britain have become more liberal on issues such as homosexuality and women’s rights. 8/  View conversation

…. probably should have tagged and storyfied that!

And here Douglas Murray in The Spectator unpicks what Trevor Phillips has learned about Islamaphobia from the survey.]

 

 

Yes, but?

Fascinating piece from Julian Baggini in the Grauniad today.
Not yet had chance to read the underlying academic reference material linked, but so many points consistent with experience.

Simple beats complicated, and that’s fine, …
… but not where popularity determines the measure of trust in knowledge, decisions in outcomes.

Being decisive, holding strong and clear views is fine, …
… but the holding of them should not be dogmatic.
“Strong views, lightly held” is the mantra I’ve picked up from Johnnie Moore and friends.

More later.

The underlying theory of moral psychology seems to be basic “trolleyology“. Decisions look simple – they look like arithmetic and logic – until you have to actually think about acting on one yourself. Agency changes everything.

 

Attended an interesting event at Teeside Sceptics in the Pub last night, to hear Jonathan McLatchie talking on “The Case For Intelligent Design”.

His case – that the best description for evolution involves “intelligent cause” as well as random events – is entirely scientific, though obviously the quality and validity of the science is impossible to judge in a single – at times highly technical – presentation.

[Post Note : Audio recording here on YouTube.]

Though not part of his case, it is worth noting that McLatchie is a christian theist, and indeed runs an “apologetics-academy” ministry proselytising Christianity over atheism, islam and judaism, aiming to arm Christianity with scientific tools. In that environment he’s no stranger to controversial debate and vitriolic reaction and accusations of bigotry. He freely admits that his intelligent cause mechanism is indeed the Christian God, though in the context of the evening’s topic it was not appropriate to attempt all the theological arguments about how such an agent god would actually intervene in the workings of nature, nor in any creationist cosmological first cause. He’s clearly armed and ready for such debates however. If you were a cynic you might easily see his scientific case as personally motivated by these aims and the density of technical detail as some kind of smokescreen.

Giving his science the objective benefit of doubt requires some tough science as well as subtle philosophical understanding of what can actually be known about what exists. The fact that the average scientist is happy to throw rocks at philosophers is unlikely to prove helpful.

The basic argument – that “some” intelligent cause must exist – is that evolutionary events must meet some criteria of “complex specificity” of outcome within constraints of probability and time available in the design space. If it can’t meet these, there must be something directing the probability better than random chance. (So far the argument says nothing about how, simply that it must be.)

For what it’s worth I actually believe that. That is I believe the logic and I believe there is already evidence of evolution directed by intelligence. This does of course beg questions of what we mean by intelligence, as well as the evidence for it.

There are many classic Climbing Mount Improbable examples postulated and studied, starting with William Paley’s watchmaker and the complexity of the human eye, and including (so-called) sub-optimal designs in the arrangement of retinal blood supply and the routing of the laryngeal nerve around the aorta.

McLatchie’s evidence uses the case of bacterium flagella, also an established case-study with established controversy but where McLatchie believes his arguments have already rebutted criticisms made to date. We were certainly in no position to further that highly technical scientific debate in any detail on the night.

There were questions around the logic:

1. Questions of our “anthropic” perception of improbability, all the way from cosmogeny to complex design. All I will say for now, is that the two extreme anthropic arguments are too easily dismissed and there are more subtle and more significant anthropic effects to be recognised. Science however continues to be (literally) ignorant of epistemology.
2. Questions around the availability of alternative amino-acid & protein manipulation mechanisms that might reduce the improbability. Not much more I can add on this topic.
3. Questions of how the size of the design space is always narrower than the theoretical number of permutations, due to permutations already consumed in, and in new constraints created in, the objects and patterns already arisen by prior evolution. Several of the audience raised different versions of this question, but they were never really acknowledged as significant.
4. Questions of how “intelligent cause” may in fact be in those prior-evolved natural patterns, rather than in any supernatural external agent. This wasn’t addressed directly, but the question of the intervention between intelligent consciousness and physics was, and was dismissed with the “but science can’t explain that anyway”. McLatchie admitted to being a Cartesian dualist – seeing his god in the stuff of super-physical consciousness. Here I differ. For me consciousness and free-will are already explained by natural science. They are simply denied by greedy reductionist materialist physicists, who indeed not only fail to explain, but regularly dismiss such things as a non-existent or epiphenomenal illusions because (obviously) they can’t explain them. No prizes for guessing who’ll be proven wrong here.

Anyway, interesting stuff. The science needs working though by those that can, but it won’t change the facts. It will evolve a better definition of intelligent design, without the need for any supernatural god.

[Post Note: a subsequent event which demonstrates that deniers are dumber than intelligent designers .]

[Post Note: And, controversial fiction, but it makes you think.]