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

Funny you should mention Salty....after reading some of Stephen's posts and having engaged him in debate in two forums, I was beginning to wonder if he shares an IP address with the salt-meister...the evidence against this however is that 1)his posts are much longer than salty's two liners 2) he quotes himself as an important authority as opposed to Grasse and Salty's usual list of long dead heroes.But you nailed it...like Salty, who also long ago published scientific work of note, Stephan lost it totally and does not appreciate much less understand science.

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OK, the women were poor, probably sluts, and good riddance. I suppose you think something similar about the people you are responsible for, that you refuse to pray the demons away from. But the proof of the pudding is in the eating.

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..or perhaps Brad McFall?

edited out duplicate post[This message has been edited by Mammuthus, 01-21-2004]

yes, but if you keep these insane people distracted by oh..say debates on EvC, they won't have the time or energy to devote to trying to kill everyone on the planet.cheers,
M

Mr.Hambre,
Thank you for setting me straight and pointing out the merits of Fretwellian Non-Methodological Ad Hoc Apologeticism. I was about to publish a paper on my observations of changes in gene expression in cell types infected with various agents as indicators of the physiological impact of said agents on the cell. I stupidly bothered to do experimental work to both observe and verify the phenomenon. Even worse, I did multiple replicates of all experiments involved in order to better support my initial hypothesis that co-factors in pathogenesis can be demonstrated and identified in response to infection.As you point out, I could have saved all the time thinking about how to test the hypotheses, getting the funding to do the experimental work, doing the experiments, repeating them, and then spending ages interpreting and slogging through the immense data set generated.
I think I will re-write the paper and title it "Demon possession of cells cause pathogenesis". My materials and methods will be 1. The Bible 2. random assertions 3. claiming that my Ph.D. makes everything I say true 4. that a huge omnipotent pink unicorn exists and commands us all....I must run along now to present this new finding to those blind non-scientific skeptics in my department who are sure to disagree since they are atheistic fools and after all are not as smart as I am since I can see a paradigm shift whether I see it or not....Fretwell will certainly be in the acknowledgements of this new paper that is sure to get an audience in such a respected scientific journal as Oui or the Bild Zeitung...I will also acknowledge him in the follow up paper "A new cure for prion pathogenesis: Excorcism"...please excuse me..gotta do the re-writes....Stockholm here I come!

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What else could I say?

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Well, if you were Stephen you would say that you therefore have concrete evidence of God, demons, and any other number of personal beliefs based on those materials and H-D

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God gives us farts to show us demons leaving, because we cannot sense the demons, and don't know how offensive they are. Otherwise, we let them back in.

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I farted in my office before lunch..my colleagues left..thus according to H-D, my colleagues are clearly demons...I will try not to let them back in...though it will be difficult since they have the key.So Percy...stop harassing poor Stephen for evidence...just eat some saurkraut and you will have all the evidence of demons you need

Hi Ned,
I like this particular skeleton since it was one floor below my old office and I passed by it almost every day. In any case, I was tired of my old avatar.

Hi Asgara,
Glad to make your day
When I read Stephen's post I could not resist...I noticed he is not responding to me anymore

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As to subjective impressions as scientific data, good Lord, no way! Who would even think of such a thing. Ok, the guys here who see some wierdness in the fertility data, have a subjective impression that somebody cheated, and conclude that it must be thrown out. Or, "no one else here agrees with" me. Well, actually, I hear that there are over 2000 persons here, and using Solomon's one in a thousand estimate, I think that we might find one or two others. So what? That's the point. They disagree, but if you read their posts, they are very busy with ad hominems, meaning that they are having problems finding what is logically wrong with what I am saying. So they have to attack the one saying it. Or stop using their subjective impressions as data.

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You have dramatically increased your tendency to attack people on this board personally or in groups (i.e. your frequent ugly people references) at the same time accusing everyone else of being engaged in ad hominems. That you do not see how hypocritical this is is rather stunning. If you were a somewhat more introspective person you would either desist in this hypocrisy or acknowledge it. It is getting harder and harder to take you seriously. But you amuse me greatly so I will continue to challenge you whether you change your posting style or not.By the way, just because you may have been a "scientist" at one point or had a career in science does not make you a genius. Like every other discipline, there are lots of lousy, average, and good scientists...and every crank that ever lived has always said that they are "real scientists" and all others are idiots...how about being a little more original?I also noticed you criticize the peer review system. I am not surprised that fear the scritiny of other scientists. All the grapes must be sour for you old boy.

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"for" demons, not "of" demons. Because the people praying were Christians, going in some measure we suppose by the rules for praying against demons (deliver us from the evil one) is in the Lord's prayer. But, more importantly, it confirms Jehovah's reality, is evidence for, not of, Jehovah, who in turns warns us about demons. But try to understand my H-D point. Let's say that my estimate of the plausibility for demons was .6 before the study and was .61 after. Then the study is evidence for demons, but weak evidence. I've said over and over that it is only in combination with so much other evidence for, not of, demons, that the plausibility is now so high in my mind. Bayesians can even use anecdotal evidence, which is just common sense.

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This entire post is an example of what is wrong with your way of thinking Stephen. 1. You cannot estimate the plausibility of demons because they cannot be observed (directly or indirectly), tested, or falsified. You have yet to address this point and it is one of the critical stumbling blocks for you in all the various forums and debates your have participated in. 2. The so called scientific method you claim to employ indicates that merely having an idea makes the idea more plausible. You even claim that the prayer studies "confirm" the existence of Jehovah (no somehow away from demons?) when at first you were talking about mere plausibility. 3. You completely ignore counter evidence i.e. that the prayer studies have been shown to have no effect. You also ignore the fact that if they had shown an effect this would not support your claim that demons exist as this was not the hypothesis that was being tested by these studies. 4. You desparately wish to include anectodal evidence in your musings. However, science precisely excludes anecdotal and other measureable or non-reproducible "evidence" because it is completely useless. That is the only way to remove experimental artifact and personal bias from science and it is exactly what you and other creationists wish to include.You wish for us to accept that merely because YOU believe that demons are involved in prayer studies and that prayer studies have been conducted (ignoring the fact that these studies did not test for the existence of demons) this somehow makes the existence of demons more plausible. Yet you fail to show how this type of reasoning would allow us to distinguish demons from gremlins, pink unicorns, invisible apes, dead jedi's or anything else I could come up with in my imagination. How is this in any possible way useful?If your evidence of 1. Jehovah's existence 2. existence of demons is so obvious why are you unable to demonstrate that methodological naturalism can test or falsify them? Why do you feel the need to support your beliefs with science in the first place? If MN fails to support your beliefs does that weaken them? Finally, a question that Mr. Hambre has brought up frequently, give a single example of a scientific discovery or supported scientific theory that has had to rely on anything but methodological naturalism.

I noticed you avoided my post entirely as you have attempted to evade every criticism.

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I have clearly and repeatedly asserted that evidence is to be evaluated objectively, and that subjectivity has its only place in the construction and evaluation of the prior plausibility of your hypothesis.

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But you keep hearing me say that subjective evidence is useful in evaluting the posterior plausibility of the hypothesis, as compared to the prior plausibility. What's the matter with your comprehension? Have you done your prayer experiment yet? You seem afflicted with a demon called wishful thinking.

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You are not particularly consistent. Now you claim that the evidence has to be objective yet whine like a baby that science excludes the most subjective "evidence" of all i.e. anecdote. You also seem to be unable to grasp what testing a hypothesis means. Even if the prayer study works (which it has not), this in no way addresses the existence or non-existence of demons. The testable hypothesis is merely that prayer has X effect on Y. You then state in several posts that such studies "confirm" no less the existence of Jehovah and demons. I tested the hypothesis that nuclear insertions of mitochondrial genes can be retrieved and clearly identified from woolly mammoth fossils and found evidence strongly suggesting that this is true..according to you I now have evidence that demons like toast and Jenifer Lopez movies. There are no logical connections between the studies you cite and the conclusions you draw. You add your personal unsupported beliefs to the conclusions of studies that do not even address your points and claim then that somehow that makes you ramblings scientific. It would appear that Percy is not the one with a reading comprehension problem but rather you have a general comprehension problem.

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By the way, I'd like to see these discussions gradually become centralized in a single thread. It could be here, or it could be in the H-D isn't what it used to be according to Stephen ben Yeshua thread.

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I will try to confine my discussion of the topic to whichever thread you wish. Right now it is split between at least two threads here and the Free for All.Since Stephen seems to have ignored "H-D isn't what it used to be according to Stephen ben Yeshua" we can address the issues in this thread where he has been active.cheers,
M

I am wondering about this evasion as well. He continues to bring up H-D in other posts yet fails to address a thread that is an open invitation to explain why he claims to adhere to Popper but says things that are in absolute contradiction to H-D.

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When I read your opening to this thread, you asserted that I claimed that something, demons I think, could be proven or were proven by H-D science. This despite my repeated and emphasized statement that science, especially H-D science, cannot prove anything.

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I asserted it because you consistently use the term "confirmed". Also,I am not asking you to prove anything. My criticism is ultimatley that you link a testable hypothesis to a non-testable hypothesis. In your response to Percy above you claim that prayer studies make supernatural entities more likely. This is false. The prayer studies go with the null hypothesis that prayer has no effect and looks for a rejection of that null hypothesis. Even if a positive effect was seen, this says nothing about the supernatural anymore than a study that says thinking hard about a complex math problem increases your chance of solving it. All the study would indicate is that prayer has an effect on a particular outcome. One would then need to test what the source of that effect is, a typical MN application of a now non-supernatural effect. Not simply claim that it "confirms", makes more plausible or any other constellation of words you chose to use claiming it makes Jehovah or demons likely.

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I don't know about you, but frankly, I love doing science more than I love all the discoveries. It's the discovering process. And it never ends, no matter how plausible some theory gets, it can still be proved wrong, we still can get a whole different view.

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Depends. I am actually more pleased when an idea I have is supported by the experiments that I perform. I guess this is part of the discovery process. I also enjoy watching accepted hypotheses tumble down (which seems to be slowly occuring in prion biology).

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The only problem is, you have to have the imagination to play with semi-plausible ideas.

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I do it all the time. I have had plenty of hypotheses get tanked by the evidence. I am also in the middle of one study that could overturn some accepted dogma about the end Pleistocene extinctions. You win some you lose some. However, unlike your "semi-plausible" ideas, I can test and falsify mine, don't require anecdote for support, and anyone can reproduce my experiments.

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I'm sure you are making a mistake taking the codes critics seriously

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Funny actually. I would say you are making a big mistake by ignorning the critics so stubbornly. Maybe if you heard what they actually have to say you would see why nobody is buying the studies.

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I have studied the critics way more than you have examined the original paper and the replies to the critics.

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That seems unlikely as you have merely dismissed the critics as idiots rather address the criticisms.

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But, I daresay that if you asked people who "believe" in demons what happened to the plausibility in their minds for demon's existence when they heard of the studies, many would say that it increased. Be an interesting study.

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This is circular reasoning. If you ask people who believe in anything if they like any statements made supporting their beliefs do you really think they will say no? Do you think they care if it is wrong? Will they beleive more or less if some aspect of their belief is called into question? That is why it is a belief and not science. It is immune to counter evidence and accepting of evidence that is either unrelated or fraudulant.You go out and find me a mammal with a genome that is closer genetically to a plant than other mammals and I will drop evolution like a hot potato. Evolution is falsifiable..your assertions are not..they are not science.