[From Bruce Abbott (950612.1015 EST)]
Rick Marken (950611.1430) --
Bill Powers (950609.1600 MDT)
Probably the least important "scientific" argument of all goes like
this:
"Thousands of brilliant people have believed in my position...To say
that this position is wrong is to say that all these people have been
wrong, all of this time. That is so unlikely that we have to assume it
can't be true.
Bruce Abbott (950610.2105) --
This is not an argument _I_ ever offered
Bruce Abbott (950609.1335 EST) --
What does seem apparent is that people in EAB who have looked at these data
don't seem to find them particularly surprising, so I'm guessing that there
is some fairly straight-forward way reinforcement theory can handle the
data.
You have employed selective citation to give a misleading impression. The
two sentences that immediately follow the one you quoted show that I am not
making the sort of argument Bill presents at all:
What does seem apparent is that people in EAB who have looked at these data
don't seem to find them particularly surprising, so I'm guessing that there
is some fairly straight-forward way reinforcement theory can handle the data.
Or perhaps no one has really examined the question closely enough to discover
that it can't. Perhaps it _seems_ that it can when thought about on a purely
verbal level.
Compare with:
"Thousands of brilliant people have believed in my position, including
Nobel Prize winners and other people of impeccable scientific
credentials. To say that this position is wrong is to say that all these
people have been wrong, all of this time. That is so unlikely that we
have to assume it can't be true. Do you really think that you can find
some flaw that these skilled scientists have not already considered and
dealt with? Are you saying you are right, and all these thousands and
thousands of scientists are wrong?"
To see more clearly how these arguments differ, let's boil both versions
down to the bare bones:
My argument:
(a) People in EAB who have looked at the ratio data believe that they can
be accounted for by reinforcement theory.
(b) They may be right, or they may be wrong.
(c) Before we state that it cannot, we ought to do some checking.
The kind of argument to which Bill P. refers, applied to this specific case:
(a) People in EAB who have looked at the ratio data believe that they can
be accounted for by reinforcement theory.
(b) Because so many believe so (including noted scientists), they can't
be wrong.
Perhaps I'm missing something, but these don't look like the same argument
to me. Not even close.
Regards,
Bruce