Title Author Date

Criticisms of Dembski's latest opus Wilson , David Aug 19, 2004

I was flattered, but rather taken aback, to see myself described by Mark Perakh as an "expert" in fields pertinent to the paper William Dembski recenty posted at the URL http://www.iscid.org/ubb/ultimatebb.php?ubb=get_topic;f=6;t=000533 . While I do have a sufficiently strong background in all the fields necessary to follow the mathematics of the paper, it would be an exaggeration to call me an expert in any of them.

It also not clear to me whether the errors I found in the paper are of any real importance. Although Dembski does refer to the property which my counterexample disproves as one of "the requisite properties we have come to expect from an information measure", he makes no use of it at all. Also, judging from Shalizi's criticism, the failure of Dembski's "variational information" to satisfy this property doesn't appear to have prevented it from having found wide application as the Rènyi information divergence of order 2. Finally, as far as I can see, there is no intuitively compelling reason why it should be required to have this property.

In short, while the errors are ones which I should be embarrassed to have made myself, they aren't any more embarrassing than some which I actually have made myself on occasions. Thus, athough it's certainly worth pointing them out, I shouldn't be inclined to make much of a fuss about them.

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Title Author Date

Criticisms of Dembski's latest opus Perakh, Mark Aug 20, 2004

Dear David:

Thank you for your response to my essay. Your modesty which
manifests itself in your reluctance to accept the mantle of an expert is
commendable and is in a sharp contrast with Dembski's self-praise (he
refered to his own paper as "admirable."). I take the liberty, though, to
quote your words, "I do have a sufficiently strong background in all the
fields necessary to follow the mathematics of the paper" (it relates to
Dembski's new paper on "variational information"). This description fits
the definition of an expert, so that a characterization of your
qualifications as those of an expert seems to be sufficiently justified.
Indeed, you were prompt in noticing and showing the error in Dembski's
derivations and so far Dembski has neither acknowledged nor countered your
comments, so perhaps he has to accept your critique. We'll see if he will react to
your critique in the future. I agree with you that there is no need to
make an exessive fuss regarding the (not very consequential) error in
Dembski' paper that you noticed, but in my view no excessive fuss has taken
place. Indeed, you considered it worth your time and effort to point out
Dembski's error, and in my essay I naturally pointed to your analysis. I do
not at all enjoy spending time and effort on debunking the torrent of
Dembski's literary output, but I believe it is something that has to be done
if we value science as a pursuit of truth. The issue here is not whether or
not Dembski's error has a significant effect on the fate of his variational
information (which in fact is just Renyi divergence of the 2nd order known
before). If you have followed the disputes between Intelligent Design
advocates and their opponents, you must know that the ID advocates regularly
acclaim Dembski's work as an allegedly rigorous mathematical foundation of
ID, and in doing so they constantly praise Dembski in superlative terms
while disdainfully rejecting the critique. They often resort to ad hominem
attacks, misrepresentation of the arguments of their opponents, and to
invidious comparisons of their opponents to the Nazis, Soviet communists,
Salem judges, and Taliban, as has been documented on this website.
Dembski's publications, with their often sophisticated mathematical
appearance, more often than not contain little substance, and therefore it
is, unfortunately, a necessary effort that is aimed at revealing the actual
level of his competence, and your critique was a helpful contribution to
this worthy goal, even if no excessive fuss would be justified (but in fact
did not occur). Or would you rather prefer letting the ID advocates
celebrate their alleged breakthroughs unfettered, without critique revealing
the emptiness of their conceptual system?

Best wishes,

Mark Perakh.

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Title Author Date

Criticisms of Dembski's latest opus Wilson , David Aug 24, 2004

Mark Perakh wrote:

I take the liberty, though, to
quote your words, "I do have a sufficiently strong background in all the
fields necessary to follow the mathematics of the paper" (it relates to
Dembski's new paper on "variational information"). This description fits
the definition of an expert, so that a characterization of your
qualifications as those of an expert seems to be sufficiently justified.

This usage of the term "expert" is certainly reasonable, and I am quite happy to identify myself as an expert in that sense. However the term is also rather vague. If I see someone described as an "expert in information theory" (for instance), I would normally take it to mean that he or she was either performing research in information theory of sufficient quality to be publishable in a reputable peer-reviewed journal, or capable of performing such research at short notice. I would certainly not claim expertise of that calibre in any of the areas covered by Dembski's article.

I agree with you that there is no need to
make an excessive fuss regarding the (not very consequential) error in
Dembski's paper that you noticed, but in my view no excessive fuss has taken
place.

Oh, yes. Since you have done no more than refer your readers to an article of mine in talk.origins, I quite agree that you have not at all exaggerated the importance of the error. I am sorry if my remarks gave the impression that I thought you had.

Related Articles: Dembski goes mathematical

Title Author Date

Criticisms of Dembski's latest opus Perakh, Mark Aug 25, 2004

I appreciate David Wilson's remarks. It looks like there is hardly any serious disagreement between myself and David Wilson, except, perhaps, for some subtle nuances in the interpretation of a few terms.

Mark Perakh

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