rationalskepticism.org

Jayjay4547 wrote:
In that passage you demonstrated the unerring bias of authoritarianism in science, away from signal and towards noise.

In this passage you have demonstrated the vacuous wibble of peudoscientific Creationists who are desperate for the veneer of scientific legitimacy without ever conforming to how and why science works.

Jayjay4547 wrote:The discovery of the Floris hobbits was arguably the most unexpected discovery in human origins since the Taung child.

What the fuck are you wibbling about now?

Do you think that other hominid finds were expected? So sediba, for example, when it was found everyone just went 'yeah, knew it was gonna happen'?

You do love making up a load of bollocks and pretending it's fact, dontcha?

Jayjay4547 wrote: It was so unexpected that there were several attempts to make out that the fossils were one or other kind of sports of nature.

Non-sequitur.

Whether something is expected or not expected, this doesn't mean that gibberish follows.

Of course, your rendition of history is basically just you prattling on about some nonsense.

Jayjay4547 wrote:What was unexpected was that hominids with such small brains had existed so recently and so far from the most similar hominids. That went against the preconceptions of human origins.

You really do talk a load of tosh, JJ. What the fuck has floriensis got to do with 'human origins'? Whether you're talking in numptyism about the hominid family or H sapiens, neither's origin is impacted by the existence of floriensis.

Floriensis was unexpected because the trend over millions of years in hominid evolution was towards a whole slew of morphological characteristics, such as increasing brain size, and this species bucked that trend.

But the mechanism by which that occurred isn't 'surprising' as it's been known about for decades and has been observed in dozens of species: insular dwarfism.

Another surprising thing about floriensis is how recently it lived - 60-100kya

But none of this has to do with preconceptions about human origins. You really should work for one of those rag magazines that makes every occurrence an amazingly sensational click-baity formulation.

Jayjay4547 wrote:What is unexpected, is signal.

Wha?

Jayjay4547 wrote: And what you were doing in your original passage above, was denying that signal;

Oh here we go. JJ makes up another term to play as a babushka.

Jayjay4547 wrote: you were expressing distance between early ancestors and the Flores hobbits. And you did so partly by using the scientific sounding language “had different scaling in essentially all their anatomical features.”

Scientific sounding language?

You're off your tree chap. I wrote it in plain English so I didn't lose you again like the last time I used technical jargon.

Jayjay4547 wrote:So, the comparative pics I put up were aimed at questioning the extent of that scientific sounding language.

Which I already pointed out is fucking hilarious. Like some pics are going to resolve this compared to actual measurement. And what are those pics?

One made up curiosity, one misidentified species, and the skeletal remains of the type specimen that turned out not to be very typologically useful.

And just by eye-balling these, JJ thinks he can alight on some world-shattering insight... even while not being aware of what it is he's looking at. The hubris, oh the hubris.

Jayjay4547 wrote: Look you, it’s not insolent for a layman to post images, nor is it to pretend to special expertise.

What are you wanking yourself off over now? Having a good tug are we?

I never used the term 'insolent' - I never expressed *any* such notion in the slightest, so don't fucking lie like that again JJ, or I will report you for willfully mischaracterizing me.

In fact, I said quite the opposite: there's absolutely no problem whatsoever sharing resources widely found on the internet, but putting up pics rather requires that you know what it is that's contained in those pics, and you clearly don't. That's not because you're a 'layman' - it's because your motivation is purely ideological, so you cherrypick whatever you want without even bothering to check to see whether you're right: that's why, for example, you've put up entirely the wrong species and built such a mountain of bullshit on it.

Jayjay4547 wrote: I do it in the hope that the viewer will think to himself “Well Floris hobbit does look to have had a similar body plan to Australopithecus, maybe that 'different scaling' Spearthrower was on about, was pretentious bullshit”.

Well, I have to say that you really must be smoking crack if you think that's the outcome.

Similar body plan? THEY'RE BOTH FUCKING HOMINIDS you drongo! Of course they've got similar body plans!

And given that comparative anatomy and species identification doesn't occur even among experts by looking at a single picture, how is it you think that non-experts are going to achieve this?

Nah, in reality you're blagging a load of bollocks again.

The different scaling cannot be apparent in a picture, that's a moronic notion which shows you don't have a fucking clue what you're talking about.

And let's just suppose momentarily that there was some value in using 3 pictures to compare scaling (wut?) the conclusion you've drawn in ignorance is laughably inept. The africanus specimen is a 2 or 3 year old CHILD JJ - how abjectly fucking clueless can you be while continuously pretending to be authoritative?

Talk about not know your arse from your elbow!

Jayjay4547 wrote:In one of your later posts you pointed out that what I had labelled as Australopithecus sediba was actually the Taung child. I apologise.

You apologize?

What for JJ? An apology would suggest you'd done it on purpose and got caught!

Of course, in reality this blows your whole schtick out of the water, doesn't it?

Given how you'd warbled romantically about leaving in shame if you'd been shown wrong about one picture of a hominid, this is a test case for whether all that was just hot air... and of course, as I predicted, you barely even blink an eye and just continue pretending you have credibility.

So despite your numerous protestations about your special insight into the very essence of the animal, you're now on record showing yourself incapable of recognizing the sex, the species, and the age of these animals!

Jayjay4547 wrote:Here is a revised copy of that pic, with a valid image of A.sediba and corrected labelling in red.

Oh I see: you meant 'thank you for correcting my embarrassing mistake"

Jayjay4547 wrote:The point I wanted to present using those images is if anything strengthened by that revision...

TAAA DAAAAA!

Exactly as I predicted, because this is exactly what you did last time you were shown abjectly wrong. Even though you made an argument that was based on entirely faulty premises, the complete revision of those premises just proves you're right... even more so!

It's clownish behavior, JJ. You've become Robert Byers.

Jayjay4547 wrote:...because according to Wikipedia, africanus is regarded as an ancestral species to sediba, so the older species looks more like the Flores hobbit than does the later (admittedly, juvenile) Australopithecus.

According to Wikipedia is probably about the best you can ever hope to achieve.

Of course, what X looks like to you is about as valid and valuable as what the bloke down the pub says when you've shown yourself unable to recognize the differences between two species, between males and females of a species, and the juvenile morphology of a species.

Aren't you aware of how badly this has destroyed your credibility, JJ?

Jayjay4547 wrote:

Spearthrower wrote:
Great. So can you now explain how that contradicts what I wrote?

I added the emphasis to show where that passage addressed the signal not the noise you were trying to cloud the story with. Where you claimed difference between Flores hobbits and Ausstralopithecus, it points to similarity. And it dares (”possibly”) to suggest my inference that a small brained bipedal hominins with short canines (body plan) were able to trek so far from their African creation. That would show that they were darn good at defending themselves using hand held kinetic weapons.

How hilariously inept.

Similar is relative, JJ. Similar doesn't mean 'quite the same'. Surely the mere fact that the study shows similarities between floriensis and THREE different species should give you the inkling of a clue as to why you're talking hogwash again?

Of course, the inane gibbering is then used as support for your nonsensical contention which has been shown wrong a dozen times already.

But of course, if you put away your hubris and discussed in good faith, JJ, then you'd be able to say 'I don't have the faintest idea what this Bayesian analysis entails' and therefore can't be sure that it means what I think it means... but you can't do that because it's all hubris driving you. Regardless, whether you say that or not, it's still manifestly apparent that you don't have a damn clue. That analysis doesn't show that floriensis's anatomical scaling was the same or even very like sediba, Homo habilis and Dmanisi Man... it shows that the scaling is most similar to those species, as in, comparative to other species.

We can go into much more detail about this if you like JJ - I'll be happy to educate you about it as it's apparent you don't have even an elementary comprehension here. Or you could run off and Google something so you can pretend you've got a clue if that's what tickles your fancy, but remember that will mean your apparent knowledge is veneer-thin and you're likely to make another obvious cock up that I will immediately notice.

Jayjay4547 wrote:

Spearthrower wrote: You also talked about the wonderful democratization of knowledge the internet provides us, whereby we no longer really even need experts, so even some random dude on the internet's pontifications have just as much value as, say, someone with actual accreditation and academic and field experience, because you know, all the information is just waiting there to be hoovered up by anyone.

Yeah, yeah, I know you're trying to change the topic JJ, but it's not going to change. I am going to have fun with this because your arrogance is outstripped only by your ignorance of the topic matter.

I have no interest in changing the topic. There has indeed been a wonderful democratization of knowledge via the internet. It doesn’t mean we can do without experts but it does mean that people who rely on their expertise and the ignorance of people who disagree with them, can expect some concrete blowback.

Seriously, if you think you're being challenging, then you really do live in cloud cuckoo land.

You realize that to even discuss these subjects with you, I have to employ non-technical language just so you can understand what I am saying? When it comes to technical topics like Bayesian analysis of comparative scaling, I have to explain it in terms a kid could understand so that I don't lose you along the way.

You're not 'blowing back' anything at all JJ - you're flailing ineptly at me. You're just a self-declared expert like so many other internet cranks.

Jayjay4547 wrote:The discussion could move forward if you could present some data to support your claim of “different scaling in essentially all their anatomical feature” between A. sediba (not afarensis as you said at the top of this post, above) and Flores hobbits.

What discussion? I told you the facts which contradicted your previous assertion, you then pretended that a 3 sentence Wikipedia entry meant I was wrong, but you don't even understand the paragraph you're citing.

Again, you act like I have some responsibility to engage with you to a vastly higher standard than you engage with me. No, no such obligation JJ.

If you stopped prancing and preening and pretending you had special knowledge and asked me honestly and openly (as I've pointed out to you half a dozen times already) then I would be happy to provide some elementary education on these topics. But the way you're acting, I am not here to help you JJ. Stop pretending that I have to do something to cross the discoursive bar when you're the one setting the bar so low.

Jayjay4547 wrote:Here is an image of A. sediba compared with modern human and a chimp (?) skeletons, seemingly aimed at showing actual differential scaling.

Why is there a question mark in there, JJ? If you don't know what you're looking at, what exactly could you even hope to achieve by naive eyeballing even if that were a valid way of evaluating scaling?

Regardless, you've put a picture up.... and?

Is this your cue for me to produce an article for a scientific journal? Do you expect me to rustle up a curriculum based on this picture?

You don't say what this picture is meant to be, only that you've put up a picture. Yes, yes, we know you've worked out how to attack pictures JJ - but discussion tends to require a little more. Is there a premise you're angling at here? Are you about to leap into naive eyeballing mode and declare yourself right?