Re: [asa] Evangelicals, Evolution, and Academics - Passive Voice correction

On Mon, May 19, 2008 at 2:57 PM, Gregory Arago <gregoryarago@yahoo.ca>
wrote:

> Just an added point. Dave Wallace's post shows how the use of evolutionary
> assumptions (i.e. what he calls an "analogy for biological evolution")
> exploits the passive voice. In fact, I count 9 times passive voice is used
> in his short message, aside from the mysterious 'something exists/occurs'
> verbs. Apparently the absence of human agency in computer programming and
> constitution writing has reached astonishing proportions!!!
>
> Please take this with a grain of salt Dave. :) But I've noticed a common
> tendency in evolutionistic language to use passive voice. Have you ever
> wondered why that is?
>
> Gregory
>
> **
>

It has nothing to do evolutionary thinking. It is what happens when you are
in large organizations where the agents are hard to identify and often hide
under a cloak of anonymity. As computer programs have gotten more and more
complicated the intentionality has decreased as we by necessity have had to
abstract more and more away. With the new multi-core computers you will see
more multi-threaded applications and even more unintended consequences will
occur. As such, identifying the agent becomes more and more impossible.

I will note in passing as a computer designer that the design of life has
almost *nothing* to do with computer design. The analogies made by ID are
just plain bogus. You are concerned about the hegemony of biology into other
fields but I have not seen nearly the hegemony of ID has made into my field.
Biological and evolutionary descriptions are properly circumscribed to avoid
the grotesquely bad analogies made by the ID community. So, yes, biologists
use Kolomogorov complexity and information theory but at least they get the
definitions right. Just to be sickeningly obvious let me state that computer
programs are not in the biological sense evolutionary except of course when
genetic algorithms are used. In which case they are evolutionary by design.
:-)

What I find passing strange is that I need to be so pedantic with you when
all of the rest of us can easily transistion between evolution qua
biological evolution ane evolution qua ordinary change. Depending on the
context we put in the appropriate definition. For example, if the term
"stellar evolution" is used then that means ordinary change. Common descent
with modification simply makes no sense in that context. That's how you
figure out what we mean, context. Don't fall into the whole po-mo
decontextualization trap. You don't need to read this PoS book or that, it's
just straight reading comprehension.

Many times you have tried to get on my case for being an electrical
engineer. It's not like a particular vocational specialization makes one
able to understand these issues. The same critical thinking skills apply
generally. The only real difference is the amount of time and expertise
spent on a particular subject. So, as an outsider I read and then learn
from those experts. If I was blowing smoke I would be quickly called on it
by the domain experts on this list. You will recall when I made several
nomenclatural errors recently. David C. noticed and he called me on it. If
you spend the time and effort to actually learn the subject area the domain
experts will respect you for it. If you had done that you would have
realized that most of us actually agree with you that evolutionary biology
has been misapplied in other fields . This has resulted in such abominations
as social darwinism. Real darwinism actually disproves social darwinism, but
that's a different story. And you don't have to be an engineer to do this.
See how fellow sociologist of science Harry Collins was able to be an
accepted part of the scientific community in his piece entitlted:

Scientists Know Better Than You -- Even When They are Wrong:
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=scientists-know-better-than-you

*You also found that gravitational wave physicists had a hard time
> distinguishing you from one of their own in a written test.*
>
> I thought it's my duty to put myself through this test and see if anybody
> can tell. I'm not claiming my interactional expertise is really good enough
> to pass for a physicist, so I had to put brackets around it. There were no
> mathematical questions allowed. But they did involve some pretty damn
> difficult questions, which I'd never encountered before and which really
> gave me a fright. And it turned out I could work out the answers.
>

I find Allan's list to be perfectly understandable. While some of us can
debate the boundaries I don't see any of us having problems with his
definitions that are clearly designed to be understandable by a lay
audience. Allan, did any of your church class have any problem with
understanding the definitions?

The other part of large organizations that force passive voice is because
they are bureaucracies. The quintessential (non) apology of such an
organization is: Mistakes have happened.

Rich Blinne
Member ASA

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Received on Mon May 19 20:21:23 2008