Re: [asa] Explanatory filter

David O wrote:

"Randy, I thought that's where you were going. So the point is that a highly improbable event can happen; saying something is highly improbable doesn't rule out that it in fact happened. Thus, even if Dembski et al are right and evolution without design is highly improbable, nevertheless it happened.

I don't think this is a terribly strong illustration. No one, so far as I know, denies that highly improbable events can happen -- everyone knows "improbable" doesn't mean "impossible." "

Actually, I wasn't going quite that far. I just meant it as an interesting example of our knee-jerk reaction when we see highly-improbable events. We are typically justifiably prone to think of hidden causes when we see that. Conspiracy theories abound for many if not most events such as JFK, 9/11, etc. The bat example doesn't lead us to conclude anything about the validity of Dembski's explanatory filter. Rather it provides an illustration of how to apply it. or not. We should indeed have a reaction of skepticism. Yes, I did stack the deck a bit by suggesting video editing, mainly because that is a technique that is known to produce many highly unlikely situations.

Randy
  ----- Original Message -----
  From: David Opderbeck
  To: Randy Isaac
  Cc: asa@calvin.edu
  Sent: Monday, May 26, 2008 10:32 PM
  Subject: Re: [asa] Explanatory filter

  Randy, I thought that's where you were going. So the point is that a highly improbable event can happen; saying something is highly improbable doesn't rule out that it in fact happened. Thus, even if Dembski et al are right and evolution without design is highly improbable, nevertheless it happened.

  I don't think this is a terribly strong illustration. No one, so far as I know, denies that highly improbable events can happen -- everyone knows "improbable" doesn't mean "impossible." The issue is what we can infer as likely from what we actually know. We were able to confirm that the improbable event shown in that video actually happened because there were eyewitnesses to the event and people created contemporary records of that testimony. We therefore have direct evidence, not only circumstantial evidence, of the event. If we had no such direct evidence, it would be entirely reasonable for someone to argue that the event probably didn't actually happen as apparently depicted in the video. At the very least, we wouldn't rule out a priori the possibility that the video was staged. Without more, the improbability of the event would at least leave the range of reasonable inferences to be drawn from the video open.

  Of course, we have no eyewitnesses to the entire history of evolution (yes, I know, we can witness evolution in nature today, but obviously not on the grand scale of the entire evolutionary process). This isn't to raise some false questions about the legitimacy of historical sciences, but it does, IMHO, render the range of inferences that can be drawn from probabilities concerning the history of life more open than the range of inferences that can be drawn about an improbable event as to which there is testimony from contemporaneous witnesses.

  If you think about it, we reason this way all the time in everyday life. There are lots of possible explanations for things I observe that I discard for practical purposes because they are so highly improbable. Yes, it's possible that someone poisoned the Tylenol I'm about to take, but it's so improbable that I discard it as a working hypothesis. The fact that Prado's bat really performed that unlikely feat doesn't cause me to hesitate about the long tails on the probability curve concerning my Tylenol one bit.

  On Mon, May 26, 2008 at 4:13 PM, Randy Isaac <randyisaac@comcast.net> wrote:

    Yes, Steve, you identified it correctly. It really did happen. There are a lot of fixed cameras in addition to the manned ones. When I was a boy playing baseball the ends of the bats were convex instead of concave so it would have been even less probable.

    I just thought this was an interesting object lesson about how we normally react when we encounter an extremely rare event. Probabilities are hard to quantify. Now, if only someone had specified this complex occurence ahead of time instead of commenting on it afterwards...

    Randy

    ----- Original Message ----- From: "Stephen Matheson" <smatheso@calvin.edu>
    To: <asa@calvin.edu>
    Sent: Monday, May 26, 2008 12:37 PM

    Subject: Re: [asa] Explanatory filter

      The batter was Martin Prado of the Atlanta Braves. The improbable event occurred in a game with the Mets in September of 2007. Discussion at the time centered on neither peculiar camera angles nor invisible strings, but on whether Prado's bat was oddly weighted. Personally, I think it's just an improbable event, sort of like an evangelical employing critical thought. I've ruled out chicanery, at least because that really is Keith Hernandez' voice.
      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mart%C3%ADn_Prado

      Steve Matheson

            "Randy Isaac" <randyisaac@comcast.net> 05/25/08 10:13 PM >>>

      How would we apply the explanatory filter to this video? Can we determine by probabilities whether it was edited? Or designed?

      http://www.collegehumor.com/video:1775904

      Randy

      To unsubscribe, send a message to majordomo@calvin.edu with
      "unsubscribe asa" (no quotes) as the body of the message.

    To unsubscribe, send a message to majordomo@calvin.edu with
    "unsubscribe asa" (no quotes) as the body of the message.

  --
  David W. Opderbeck
  Associate Professor of Law
  Seton Hall University Law School
  Gibbons Institute of Law, Science & Technology

To unsubscribe, send a message to majordomo@calvin.edu with
"unsubscribe asa" (no quotes) as the body of the message.
Received on Tue May 27 09:12:00 2008