Talk:Evolutionary Informatics Lab

=Disclosure=

I am the "Thomas M. English" identified as a former affiliate of the lab. Before you interpret that negatively, please read the source supporting the statement that I was with the lab. The "Tom English" who appeared at the Panda's Thumb to bash ID and explain that he was standing up for Marks' academic freedom was indeed I. My pre-controvery opinion that there was no ID content at the website is documented at Talk:No free lunch in search and optimization.

Certainly Dembski is still trying to achieve his ID ends, but the Dembski-Marks collaboration seems to be trying to develop legitimate means. Marks is a brilliant engineer, and I definitely have not ruled out the possibility that he and Dembski will generate results that I can use (even if Dembski abuses them).

It was impossible to adequately discuss the controversy in Marks biography, due to restrictions on sources for biographies of living persons. Here blog sources are OK under certain circumstances. Note that I clearly identified the bloggers and the slants of the blogs.

I'm doing my utmost to abide by WP:NPOV. I ask that you do the same. ThomHImself (talk) 09:42, 3 April 2008 (UTC)


 * Given your advocacy on behalf of Marks documented in this article, I do not think that we can take your claims of dispassion at face value. I am therefore tagging this article for WP:COI and would request that you cease editing it per that policy. HrafnTalkStalk 11:51, 18 April 2008 (UTC)
 * From talk:Robert J. Marks II:
 * "My efforts to persuade people to treat Marks fairly have damaged my professional reputation. You cannot make a case against me under WP:COI when I am so clearly acting against my own interests."
 * "I haven't updated my vita recently. I am not a member of the IEEE. I have never met Marks. We have never collaborated. The extent of my participation in the Evolutionary Informatics Lab was to lend my name in protest of what I regarded as Baylor's infringement on his academic freedom. You will find comments in no forum in which I called for anything but fair treatment of Marks or neglected to state in strong terms my opposition to ID. Thus I may use the sources you consider damning to document my longstanding NPOV. Marks is the only person I know of who is mistakenly called an ID proponent. Calling on you to stick by the standards laid out in WP:BLP is nothing but a continuation of my call for fair play."
 * "My Wiki contributions related to Marks are not only here, but in the articles on the lab, evolutionary informatics, and no free lunch in search and optimization. In the article on the lab, I listed myself as a former affiliate, despite the fact that it is detrimental to my reputation. In the articles on the lab and no free lunch in search and optimization, I pointed out how the use of active information is related to the Dembski's past use of specified complexity. All of the inadequately sourced material I removed from this article per WP:BLP is in the article on the lab."
 * "If you contact Mark Perakh, he'll tell you that he knows from personal communication with me that when I joined the lab, I planned on posting a new 'free lunch' theorem that would have severely undermined the work of Dembski and Marks. I intended to hold Marks to the principle that adversarial scholars must stand up for one another's freedom of expression. I was not able to complete the proof before Dembski and / or Marks unethically revised the paper containing data that had been shown bogus. (This incident should be reported in the article on the lab. There are only blog sources to draw upon, so it can't appear here.) That was when I left the lab. So there is further evidence that I am acting ethically, and am not giving Marks a pass."
 * ThomHImself (talk) 22:44, 18 April 2008 (UTC)


 * Tom, I'm not doubting your anti-ID-nonsense bona fides, just your objectivity on Marks himself. I don't know if this is because of some subconscious '(1) I don't like ID; (2) I like Marks; so (3) I don't want to believe Marks is an IDer' thing, or some other reason. Whatever the reason, it is clear (both from your comments here & documented in the Perakh article) that you are a WP:COI when it comes to Marks' reputation, and his involvement in ID. HrafnTalkStalk 06:56, 19 April 2008 (UTC)


 * I started revising. It is true that the lede does not itself ned references; it is also true that science blogs is a quotable site for many purposes. The problem i have with this article is that I am not sure that details on the current view of the people who were once associate with that site are appropriate here. The main contents ofthe article should be the controversy over the removal of the site. DGG (talk) 16:58, 20 April 2008 (UTC)


 * Glad to see you're involved. The debate over active information is an important part of the controversy (over 19 thousand hits in a Google search restricted to the past year). Many people, including reporters for printed newspapers, have assumed that Baylor removed the website because the content was intelligent design theory. You can see at Talk:Robert J. Marks II that Hrafn has attempted to support his synthesized claim that Marks is an ID proponent by appealing to an authority's opinion that active information functions essentially as the complex specified information of ID theory. I introduced the opinion of that authority, Mark Perakh, here to balance the opinion of Mark Chu-Carroll. At any rate, whether active information is complex specified information in disguise is highly relevant to the issue of whether Marks is trying to advance intelligent design theory, or is trying to move in a new direction.


 * If you see any point in which I seem to be deviating from NPOV, please let me know. ThomHImself (talk) 22:32, 20 April 2008 (UTC)

Hrafn, thanks for your generous remarks above. The real concern in WP:COI is deviation from WP:NPOV. My point of view is not in the article. I first became aware of the EIL back in June 2007, when someone added material about it to no free lunch in search and optimization. Dembski had been acknowledging Marks in his papers, and while Marks had never openly endorsed ID, I suspected that he secretly embraced it. When I went to the EIL website to read the papers by Dembski and Marks, which did not include the paper responding to Haagstrom's work, I fully expected to find that Marks had finally revealed his true colors. But the papers violated my expectation. I found active information to be novel and interesting -- worthy of further discussion and peer review (and perhaps rejection). For technical reasons, I believe the definition should be modified. You might be interested to know that the analyses of ev are Avida are incorrect. The use of random search as the baseline in computing active information makes sense only if the researcher chooses from all possible deterministic algorithms. But almost all deterministic search algorithms require more information to describe than the known universe is believed to register. As a practical matter, humans do not write programs that come anywhere close to using all of the memory of a modern digital computer, let alone all the "memory" of the universe. The upshot is that there's pragmatic bias in selection of search algorithms that is nothing like a manifestation of "intelligence," whatever that is, and Dembski and Marks have failed to take it into account. The error in their computations of how much information researchers added with their choices of algorithms is large. If Dembski and Marks should get a peer-reviewed publication, I will blast their work with a peer-reviewed publication of my own.

I hasten to add that it appears to me Dembski and Marks made an honest mistake. Several investigators of "no free lunch" beside myself have noted that almost all theoretically possible instances of modest-sized problems are physically impossible. To my knowledge, I'm the only investigator to publish a note (buried in a discussion section) that an even larger fraction of theoretically possible search algorithms does not "fit in the universe." Forgive my apparent arrogance in saying that not many people in the world would catch the error. Five years ago, I would not have either.

Do you understand that Perakh does not say that active information is the same thing as complex specified information? He is saying that Dembski and Marks are pursuing the same ends that Dembski did previously. And I agree. But it is fallacious to conclude that Marks shares Dembski's purpose in pursuing that end. Dembski is trying to circumvent U.S. law with subterfuge. His objective is to get a "proof" for the existence of Designer (thinly veiled God) into public-school science classes. If you've read Marks slide presentation on Genesis and science, you know that he emphasizes that one can know that the God of Genesis brought the universe into existence as described in Genesis only by faith, not by proof ("wisdom," in the scripture he quotes at the end). On the basis of evidence I have uncovered while working on Wiki articles, not any personal attachment to Marks, I have gone from suspecting he was a covert ID supporter to believing he is an honest creationist.

Here are my ulterior motives (which I don't think have led me to deviate from WP:NPOV): I encourage scriptural literalists to embrace honest creationism rather than dishonest (by design) intelligent design theory. I believe that most people likely to be seduced by IDists are scientifically naive, but honest, and that the best way to undermine the ID movement is to expose its subterfuge, and to appeal to the honesty of the target audience. The great American televangelists did not fall because adversaries attacked their preaching, but because they were revealed to be indecent. There will always be people whose belief systems leave them no option but to insist that science show scripture correct. U.S. law prevents the ones who are honest about what they believe and why they believe it from passing their views off as science in public schools. To lump creationists like Marks with the "liars for God" is not only unfair, but counterproductive.

Incidentally, I am not aware that even Dembski has associated active information with ID. I have a hunch that he and Marks have an agreement that their collaborative work is not to be treated as ID theory. If you can provide evidence to the contrary, I would appreciate it. Tom ThomHImself (talk) 06:18, 21 April 2008 (UTC)


 * I am well aware that CSI and AI are defined to be very different qualities -- (approximately) the former as an inherent quality of a designed artifact (e.g. a watch), the latter as a quality of something that can be abstracted to a search algorithm. However, despite their more-or-less orthogonal definitions, they just happen to intersect at a very specific point -- that they are both claimed to be qualities that (1) cannot evolve endogenously (but rather need to be "front loaded", "fed in" or whatever other metaphor is being employed) (2) are needed for life-as-we-know-it to exist. Given that these two points were the sole utility of CSI (no use of the concept was ever made except in anti-evolution arguments), and given that we have evidence that these points are being emphasised by Marks for AI, it is not unreasonable to link them, unless and until some non-anti-evolution use is found for the latter. HrafnTalkStalk 13:33, 21 April 2008 (UTC)


 * I'm not playing the adversary here, OK? CSI is measured on an event in the material universe. D&M define three "information" quantities in terms of random search algorithms and a problem instance. When a material process implementing an algorithm obtains a solution, that's an event in the material universe. Endogenous information is defined as the log-probability (logarithm of the probability) that blind search solves the problem. Exogenous information is defined as the log-probability that some other random search algorithm solves the problem. By definition, "active_information = endogenous_information - exogenous_information." If you reread your point (1), perhaps you can see why it confuses me. Active information is not produced by evolution. Loosely, it is how much better an evolutionary algorithm works than blind search does. More precisely, it is the logarithm of how much more likely you are to solve the problem with the alternative algorithm than with blind search.


 * Algebra gets you "exogenous_information + active_information = endogenous_information." Here it looks as though active information is added to the information of the search algorithm. That leads to the question "Where does the information come from?" But I doubt this is a valid question. I just showed that there was nothing mystical in the original equation. I think that if a single algebraic operation leads to something apparently mystical, there must be something wrong with the interpretation of the terms. The culprit, I suspect, is the convention of referring to a probability as "information" after taking its logarithm. That's not conventional.


 * In 1996 I published an argument that the NFL theorems did not apply to biological search. In connection with that, I indicated that I wasn't so sure that modeling biological evolution as search was such a great idea. Now I know it sucks. As soon as you agree that evolution works to find a solution (achieve an end), you have given D&M all the teleology they could ever hope for. It is essential to understand that D&M might develop a legitimate analysis of goal-directed evolutionary algorithms, but that they should be slapped down immediately when they claim that biological evolution is analogous. Making what biological evolution has in fact achieved into a "target" it had to "hit" is fallacious. Jason Rosenhouse has made some nice observations about this.


 * As I said above, I think D&M's analyses of ev and Avida are deeply flawed. And I think it was technically wrong and tactically stupid for them to immediately re-frame Dembski's prior attacks. They should have published theoretical characterizations and positive applications before attacking other researchers' work. But what if D&M should eventually give legitimate demonstrations of problems with the two simulations? Personally, I have problems with both as models of biological evolution. I see evolutionary targets. So I really don't care if D&M eventually manage to bash them. It would force simulation modelers to think more carefully about what they're doing. From my perspective, there's nothing to be afraid of in what they're doing. Unfairly maligning their work is more likely to backfire than giving it careful analysis and detailing dispassionately where it goes wrong.


 * Back in September, I told Marks outright that I saw his work with Dembski as "dual use," and he did not object. (I also told him that I thought he misstepped naming a "lab" without having gotten approval from Baylor. He got no kid-glove treatment from me.) But he did say that there was "one, and only one, way" in which the work "smacks of ID." He said it would lead ultimately to questions about the source of information. Again, I believe that Marks will always proclaim outside of scholarly circles that the answer is the God of Genesis, and Dembski will almost always hiss that it is an unidentified designer. That is one of the differences between a garden-variety creationist and an IDist. Marks has attended some revival meetings under the Big Tent, but I don't think he's a convert. ThomHImself (talk) 09:28, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

Odd nature: Please discuss here before deleting again
Here's the place. ThomHImself (talk) 03:29, 24 April 2008 (UTC)


 * I wouldn't blame him if he doesn't, given your long-winded, unilateral and tendentious method seen above. BTW, I agree with his reversion; your versions violate the undue weight clause of WP:NPOV in my view. FeloniousMonk (talk) 14:57, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

WP:COI notice
ThomHImself, given your admission here and the fact that you are edit warring since your changes to the article have been rejected by the community, I am giving you notice to comply with our policy on conflicts of interest, WP:COI, and restrict your editing to this talk page and not the article proper. If you continue to disrupt this and related articles through edit warring and specious BLP filings, I will seek to stop the disruption through the means provided at WP:DE. FeloniousMonk (talk) 15:06, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

I'm rather confused by his latest changes (the ones FM reverted). They feel somewhat POINTy. Guettarda (talk) 05:13, 25 April 2008 (UTC)