The best scientific method (Bayesian form of H-D)

S.You ask, God's. He says that's the only one that works. You ask Him what it means, and He tells you. Easily done by randomization, which takes all this and puts it into a random error term, taking it out of the picture except as an obscuring factor. But, with a large enough sample size, that is reduced so we can see clearly. "no idea" is of course too strong, just as prove is too strong. If we could do all of this, the plausibility of Jehovah's reality would be confirmed, and made more plausible. Then, on we go to more tests, as He directs. Well, yes, in the prior plausibility estimate, although done properly, the accumulation of prior plausibility estimates from more authoritative sources would lower the value considerably. As things now stand in my experience, the prior plausibility of Santa Clause is so low as to make the study of the hypothesis a waste of time. And they would say that the evidence suggests the existence of the supernatural in anyone not biased to interpret it in some, any, other way. But, diligent application of H-D science will tell who is biased. Be specific. I've worked harder than anyone I know to understand, practise, teach this method. But, I'm still learning. Dickcissels for Jehovah, mosquitos for Satan, Irish Wolfhounds for men. Whether anyone will think it plausible that these "creatures" were created by the one I've identified, is another matter. Depends on their personal biases, and their applied epistemology. Hear! hear! And, in years to come, perhaps we will see that prayer experiments, done with the underlying hypothesis that the power is coming from a spiritual being named Jehovah, will consistently work. But that will never happen if experiments on that hypothesis are discouraged. Demons are living beings composed of something like or actually dark matter, normally invisible to us but able to make themselves visible at will. They are malignant, intelligent, lying, with an agenda of making humans behave in ways that are painful to Jehovah, the God who created both demons and humans. They have great powers, perhaps derived from zero-point energy. They may have weight. Make a testable prediction from the hypothesis, as I have predicted that prayer experiments including "deliver us from evil" will be more effective than prayer experiments excluding that request. It's the most self-consiously H-D journal I know of, so of course it presents anecdotes as well as experiments. The PEAR scientists publish there. Not in a convincing manner. Looked like ad hoc nit-picking to me. Nothing more hateful than to have it told you that the most loving father you ever could have is out there wanting you to come looking for Him, so that He could come get you. And then you ignore the opportunity. But now that prayer is in the refereed scientific literature, and given that it costs so very little, why not include it? "simply" pray for a cure? Give me a break. Only to the dogmatically opinionated. If the data makes the hypothesis only a little more plausible, that is neither huge nor gargantuan. [qs] All of this is in the dogmatic opinionation mode. Lots of nothings, absolutely no ways, no reasons, conclude, doing anything. You just don't get it, do you? H-D science operates between these two extremes. Ditto He has will, makes choices, but is just and abides by rules that are laid down. Until He decides to change those rules. God is a shepherd, a father, a counselor, a judge, a warrior, not all-powerful, all-knowing, omni-present. Astrology is easy to beat, when you can pin it down. Jehovah has pinned Himself down though, in giving very specific directions for how to do he experiments He proposes, like tithing and prayer.Of course, if making corrections according to the directions does not reverse the failure of experiments, then the evidence falsifies the hypothesis. But repeating the experiment using clearly forbidden methods, getting negative results does not falsify. Yes, Yeshua and His father are on speaking terms. I did this rather formally for about five years, through the late 1970's. After that, I keep a seat-of-the-pants tally going on in my mind, and ask God about it. At first, I only got about 30% of my prayers answered. But, I learned. Well, I should modify that: there was a year, a honeymoon year I called it, when I ran 100%, at least in my experiments. God was proving Himself. Later on, after I agreed that He had done that job well, it dropped dramatically, got realistic. Still enough to not "despair," because I did not "see the hand of the Lord in the land of the living." But the 85% is just an guestimate. Take the statement to be, "After 35 years of studying how to pray effectively, I still make requests and nothing I can see happens. But what does happen is normally regarded as amazing by those looking in.Hope you'll choose the life of the hypothetico-deductive, but at least now you have a choice.Stephen

Percy,In that closed thread, you asked, Here is my history with peer review. With my bird work, I kept running into the most unreasonable, subjective rejection, in seminars, discussions, letters, etc. But, as a graduate student,I got some stuff published in modest little journals like Bird Banding. At my thesis defense, a committee member did not want to pass me, and his main argument was that no respectable journal would publish my work. Rob van der Vaart, editor of Acta Biotheoretica, was on my committee, and said that his journal had already accepted it. He didn't wink at me, but could have, because this was the first I had ever heard of the journal. MacArthur, at Princeton, later took me aside and said that the work was too obscurely published, and that I should put it all down in a book, one of his monographs. I did, and the rest is history. Meanwhile, I did get some papers past peer review, in evolution, American Naturalist, and they just disappeared. MacArthur warned me that the peer review system was just so much gas. One exception, the article with Chris Smith. That became a classic. But, my Dickcissel work, and food chain dynamics work, both of which are fairly well known today, were all invited papers. No peer review. And the work that was so boringly framed that it would get past the peer review system, for the most part, just never got read and understood.Now, I got some interesting prayer results in the early seventies, and tried to share them in discussion with my colleagues at K-State. Nothing. Meanwhile, great grant proposals were getting turned down, on bird ecology, for non-sense, sneer review reasons. So, I knew that it was a waste of time. I didn't want, especially, the sort of reputation and stuff that peer review (boring) success brought, anyway. I wanted, and want to be remembered the way Newton is today. And I could see that sucking up to peer review would never get me there. So, I retreated to my kitchen table research.My only job here, of course, is not to persuade those who need peer reviewed studies to believe anything. I agree with MacArthur. Those people are on their way out of history. But, I want to encourage anyone who really wants to know the truth, and will do what research they can themeselves, following proven methods (take the H-D on the internet, if you like). So, I tell my story. Now you know, as do others. You can repeat the experiments in a few minutes, and find out for yourselves.I really do hope this helps. As I say, you guys or your parents paid $200,000 to educate me. What I learned about applied epistemology, there and in testing has really, really improved my life, which is extraordinarily rich. Works for others, as well.Stephen

This message is a reply to a post by Abshalom, in post 17, in the closed thread, Hypothetico etc., where he asks, These, and those that follow, are good questions. I, of course, am still learning and wondering myself about these things. But what I have so far is this:What is true in evolution, according to Jehovah, is this: first, whenever reasonable, Jehovah creates in small, baby steps, over as much time as possible. "He who makes haste with his feet, sins." The theory of evolution asserts that the formation of biologic diversity took a long time. This is correct.Second, man made in God's image reflects that image in artificial selection. Jehovah does His "creating" through a similar process, preserving the key role of heritablility and moving through an "all things work together for the good" series of steps. The theory of evolution asserts that, in general, adaptive advantage drives the accumulation of new, useful genes in the species population.Third, in some cases, Jehovah actually leaves the process alone, much as He gives free will to men, letting natural selection sort out genetic variability. He allows this to happen, as I have understood it so far, to make some point, to teach inquiring men and women something about the consequences of their choices. See below.Fourth, the "evolutionary stable strategy" (ESS) of modern ecologists is true. Once a given phenotype has reached some sort of adaptive mountain peak, it can be and often is maintained without further intervention by Jehovah. The only intervention is prevention of Satan from driving that phenotype to extinction, as he is wont to do.Now, evolution, He said, is limited to avenues of development that proceed, adaptively, uphill. Natural selection means that a genetic change that is not, without willful, artificial intervention, adaptive, gets scarcer, not more frequent. Even genetic changes that, when added to by other genetic changes will give a positive fitness, get extinquished or stay too rare, unless they themselves are adaptive. Then, of course, they never realize their potential. Looking at an adaptive "landscape" and viewing evolution as climbing adaptive mountains, you see that you can only reach peaks that are accessible by common routes that are uphill every step of the way. This is complex and limiting. But, with artificial selection, you can pick a peak, and head straight for it, going uphill and down, and cutting across the sides of intermediary peaks, not being pulled by a steep slope headed up in a peripheral direction.I'm going to post this, because I haven't figured out how to get your next question before us, while keeping it. So, more later.Stephen

Abshalom, this continues your post 17 on the "Hypothetico ..." closed thread. Actually, a few days before I discovered this post, I was talking with a friend, and Jehovah told me that the story I was telling him was an example of classical evolution, without the random mutation of genes producing a useful protein. Here's the story:It comes from a Bird Watch Newsletter which I published in the mid-seventies, called "The Meek Shall Inherit the Earth." The basic idea is that, when we view a species group, such as "sandpiper-like birds" or "sparrows" or "raptors," we see a range of sizes, with the larger species having exotic plumages apparently adapted to territorial or aggressive behavior. The hypothesis is that the competitive struggles within that species group have an aggressive component, that selects for larger body sizes than are adaptive for the food requirements of the niche. The "rat-race" continues because the optimal body size is always "bigger" not some "large" size. There is no ESS. The pressure is always to get bigger than others in your species, so you can win the fights. But, this leaves smaller species at an ecological advantage in the scrample competition for the resources, because their body size is still well adapted to feeding. Such species, when the rat-race has carried one species to a body size that is large enough, invade the niche, meekly flee from aggressive assaults from the big bullies that once had most of that niche to themselves, and survive because they are too numerous to be effectively driven away by aggression. This pushes the bullies to even larger body sizes, but smaller population sizes, as they limit themselves to aspects of the niche appropriate to individuals their size. This process goes on and on, through natural selection, each species succumbing to the bullying, aggressive strategy entering into a process that makes them bigger and bigger, and rarer and rarer, until they are so rare that a perturbation in the environment takes them to extinction. Like Calif. Condors (big raptors, that win fighting over downed prey), and Whooping Cranes (big "sandpipers", that win fighting over optimal territories), Ivory Billed Woodpeckers, Harris' and Golden Crowned Sparrows, perhaps others. So, genetic units entering into this aggressive rat-race evolve themselves into ultimate extinction, while the species that find it adaptive to stay meek persist indefinately. They are an evolutionary "source" species, that produces evolutionary "sink" populations. They inherit the earth. They are boring on the life lists of bird-watchers, but persist. I do not know the status of Cope's Law, where species in the fossil record are supposed to generally increase in size over time, but perhaps that is a reflection of this process. And Jehovah told me that this reflects natural selection. He said it is similar to people who eschew His guidance, and then "fall" into Hell. He did create Hell, to balance Heaven, and provided a clear set of directions how to get the one, and avoid the other. Those who think they can do it on their own then "go to Hell" without any help from Him. Entropy gets the job done just fine, just as natural selection drives aggressive species to being too large and rare to survive. There are, He said, natural consequences, and when He steps aside, natural selection.But, He was quick to point out that random genetic changes do not ever produce useful proteins. ("Ever?" I asked. "Never." is the response I heard.) He said that, if there were real scientists out there, they could do this experiment. Set up chemostats with bacterial populations. Feed with an exotic organic compound unlike anything digestible or metabolizable by the bacteria. Irradiate one, pray for another, leave a third alone. Look for adaptation to use the new energy source. The prayed for population will show evolition, and there will be a new gene or genes producing the proteins needed to process the strange food source. The irradiated one, with lots of random mutation, will never "find" such genes, nor will the control.He said that in the case of species evolving themselves to extinction, He lets it go because it demonstrates His message that meekness is good epistemological strategy, if you want to survive. Without God having to do anything about it. Those species that go into "sink" evolution experience no new genetics, only the modification of frequencies of control genes.Insofar as evolution supposes that there is random production of new genes that produce useful proteins, it is wrong.But you go on: We have both authority and free will. When we bombard species with mutagens to produce random mutations, we are allowed to do so. Satan also is allowed to do this, and has. I hear this: Jehovah, through His spoken word, and by the power of the Spirit, creates genetic changes that produce new, useful proteins. I sense that, for the sake of love, the Father includes the Son in the task as well. But, the genes that were produced that accomplished all macro-evolution were engineered. Flies, at least, were produced by artificial selection by Satan, just as the breeds of dogs were our business. Satan could have been, before His fall, responsible for many other species, operating as Jehovah's messenger. I hear that this was the case. Dinosaurs also were produced by Satan, after the fall. Can Satan produce new, useful genes? Yes, sort of. The kinds of proteins that his genes produce, however, are in many ways similar to those produced by God. We'll understand this better as we explore genetic engineering. That's the best I can do right now. As you might have guessed, many others were supposed to be getting into this, and providing bits and pieces to add to mine. We all prophesy in part. It is not something that anyone should do alone, successfully. I come to this forum calling others to wake up and do what they were created to do. Including you. Because you were supposed to be getting the parts of answers that I am missing. But, if I call you up, and you don't do it, then Jehovah will tell me what you might have had for me. Later. Maybe when that happens, I can post that as well.Life is good.Stephen

Schrafinator,You note, Precisely. If this is found to be impossible, then there is little point in doing the experiment at all, since "hearkening to God's voice" is so foundational to the recipes in the scriptures. If you cannot hear God speak, and explain what He meant by various passages containing commands, you might as well toss the whole Bible out. It has reportedly been done anectdotally many times. Doing it scientifically, formally, would then be a simple matter of repeating these efforts under the scrutiny of a professional scientist. Let's say that you ask 100 people whether they believe in Santa Claus, and give weights to their replies by their reported experience in geography, and any other statistic (age?) that would make them a more trustworthy authority. Chosen at random, you would get some children, who would say, "Yes." They get a value, .9999, weighted however, rather low, let's say by age, 1, 2, 3, etc. The adults say, "No" so we give them a value, say, of .00001, weighted by their ages. The products of the numbers times the weights, added together, divided by the sum of the weights, gives us some sort of estimate of the prior plausibility. This estimate has been calculated giving the benefit of the doubt to the idea that the idea might conceivably be true in some sense. Most adults would give a value considerably less than .00001, probably zero. But, exact or accurate values of prior plausibilities are not important, since the process is asymptotic at the posterior plausibility end. All that matters here is that a value has been obtained that is very close to zero. Hence, there are better hypotheses to spend our time on. I say, and have said, that you are biased against belief in the supernatural because that is a part of the supernatural's agenda for you. The demons that are supposed to exist work hard at convincing you that they don't exist. To use a natural example, suppose you want to know the truth about the mineral mercury, but take no precautions to keep the mercury you are studying out of your brain. Exposing your brain to mercury makes you "mad as a hatter" and perhaps unable to think clearly about mercury's properties, to study them. Well, we agree that I cannot explain it to you. Nor, when I thought as you thought, could anyone explain it to me. But, I was taught that there are an infinite number of explanations for any finite set of data points, and that explanatory power was bad epistemology. Prediction power, on the other hand, by-passed explanation. That the various studies I have cited have predicted surprising (hence, controversial) outcomes makes their underlying theoretical structure more plausible. Understanding comes from close examination of these studies, repeating them both professionally and personally, not explaining anything. Is this an ad hominem? And, aren't there rules here about comments like this? Or, are those rules only for creationists?My "good faith" is this. You deserve a choice, and God, as your judge, needs clear evidence of your own responsibility for your fate. I have given you a choice, as best I could, of steps you could try, to learn something of value. Say, "I choose life." Pray, "deliver me from evil, and talk to me about how to tithe." Inform yourself about what is written in the bible. Study strong inference, H-D methodology, and Bayes' Theorem, and apply them to your ideas about evolution and creation. If you choose not to do these things, and there are bad consequences to that choice, it's on you. All on you.Stephen

Tamara,Thanks for your comment! Right to the point. I may be a crank, but that in no way diminishes my points about bayesian scientific method refuting certain aspects of evolutionary thinking, especially those that dishonor Jehovah. Moreover, Percy's repeated claim that I don't answer his and other's charges about evidence is simply not true. They repeatedly ignore the peer-reviewed evidence that I cite, pretending that it doesn't exist or isn't applicable. I remind them of my presentation of that evidence, and try to explain more fully how it is applicable in the H-D framework, and they then accuse me of repeating myself making empty claims.No, Percy is a typical evolutionist. He will ultimately do all he can to censor baysian H-D science, with strong inference, because that scientific methodology demonstrates that evolution as a theory is as wrong as Newton's mechanics. Apparently and practically right, but basically wrong. Percy and others do not want that to be true. Or, if it is true, they do not want it well known.I personally (being a crank?) see no difference between telling a person that they might be influenced by a demon and telling them that they might have a virus. For the one, say a prayer, for the other, take vitamin C. Nothing personal. It wasn't their idea to "catch" either the demon or the virus, although they could have washed their soul or hands a bit more often. Any evidence presented by the demon possessed, or the viral infected, is still quite valid and interesting. Opinions? Well, who cares about anyone's opinions? So most of those responding here have the opinion that I am crazy? What does that say about truth? I try to make my opinion about methods and truth of a little value by presenting my credentials, something none of my critics have dared to do. But, in the end, it's the evidence, stupid. Read the sites on H-D methodology, apply them to prayer studies and bible codes and theomatics, and soul weighing. Maybe there is controversy, but to say "no evidence" is simply dishonest.Anyway, you are clearly on the side of truth here, and willing to stand up to some of the heat that those who hate the truth will put on you. Good on you.Stephen

Percy,Well, here you go again! I reject persuasive discussion with people who, like yourself, are not rational, only rationalizers. As I have asserted, I will be happy to engage in a rational, refereed discussion with anyone, who will agree to rules and to submit to the decisions of an outside judge, who has agreed to enforce the agreed upon rules. All with the goal of persuading you that you are wrong. But, since you do not have any noticeable intellectual integrity, I have no hope of persuading you of anything. It's like asking me to dance with a suicide bomber. I am on the lookout for intellectual suicide bombers, which I identify by asking them to define terms (they won't), and by stating rules by which they change their their minds, or otherwise spot the truth. (The bombers state that truth is what they say it is.) You said that you did not know how to define demons, nor to distinquish confirmation from proof or conclusion. It is possible for a person to be so ignorant, but not in someone who claims to be anything but a naive student.I set out certain rules that I play by, and cited websites that affirm those rules. By those rules, data confirming predictions in refereed journals that have been replicated (e.g. both prayer studies and bible code studies), however controversial, counts as evidence. If you say otherwise, you are playing by a different set of rules. If you want to claim that this evidence is not confirming of the hypothesis, according to the estabished (by independent web-sites) methodology, you may do so. It's your opinion against mine, let the reader's decide. I may lose the case in the minds of the "lurkers" but I did play by the rules I agreed to play by.This comment, is especially contemptible. My responsibility is putting the word of H-D science before others, with integrity. Granted, I heard God say that, unless others had a chance or a choice, to learn to love the truth, to learn H-D science and other methods, they would perish. So, I present it publically, to give you and others a chance to live, for His and your sakes. The point is, as Gould so aptly put it (Rocks of Ages), the Thomas problem. There are those who want to live in faith, but need scientific evidence of God to believe. Well, it's handy, and I know how to demonstrate it. I work and pray to remove the evil stumbling blocks, that would convince the Thomas's of the world that there is no way that they can scientifically prove that God and Satan are about in the world we live in. Then I show them the H-D method, strong inference, bayesian methods, and they can put their hands in the wounds, do the prayer studies themeselves, look at the Bible Codes and theomatics data themselves, until they are ready to say, "My lord and my God."My agenda is not hidden, but my responsibility is merely to show how H-D science works, and can be used to address spiritual truth questions. For you to put my efforts into some fundamentalist, evangelical context (which I repeatedly state is even worse than evolution) is both wrong and wrong spirited. Shame on you, as if you had any shame.Of course, if I am right, you do not have, and can not have, any idea of what I am saying. The demons in your mind won't let you understand and you choose not to pray to get rid of them. But, some of the lurkers will watch you respond, and will pray, and will know the truth. And I will continue to be enriched, for telling the truth where it was not welcome.Stephen

M.You have been busy, and diligent! Good for you. I admire that.The ultimate test of scientific integrity, though, for someone like yourself investing in a forum such as we have here, is for you to see if prayer modifies your "evolutionary" studies of retrovirus and prions. Prayer is on the scientific agenda, even to the point of being in the news. The entire evolution/creation debate hinges on whether the changes we see in common descent are divinely designed or "natural selection." Since the main way we might have to influence "divine design" is prayer, the responsible thing for you to do is to see whether a sincere effort to get prayer to influence the sorts of changes you are uniquely able to detect succeeds or fails.But, of course, the creation hypothesis asserts that before you can even consider such a plan, you would have to get the demons off your back. They are authors of confusion (fusion with, bondage to your existing opinions). So, that's your first prayer study. Probably not publishable, but it might persuade you personally. I know that it did me.The credential on myself, by the way, that makes me trust my opinion of me more than your opinion of me, aside from the astonishing inability you have to understand my most straightforward remarks, is the fact that I stated (in my book's preface, 1972) the method I was committed to, applied that method, and got really good results. Also, there is a sports official here in Lawrence, Charles Adams, who I ask to call intellectual "fouls" for and on me. I'll show him some of our posts, to see if he can see any basis for your remarks in my comments. My doctorate, or post-doc, or tenured post at K-State, or publications per se don't really justify much confidence in my remarks. That I taught a course on the philosophy of science throughout the seventies, and that the research I did then based on what I believed was right has so many citations today, convinces me that what I say on the subject is worthy of respect.Cheers,Stephen