John Edser wrote:

>>>>TH:-
>>>>But can we go further and say 
>>>>'what isn't genetic drift (in the most broad sense of the word)
> 
> 
>>>BOH:-
>>>Well, we could use a diffusion model, in which drift wouldn't be drift.
>>>Sorry, I couldn't resist.  To translate, selection would be the 
>>>difference between the expected allele frequencies at two times points.
> 
> 
>>>JE:-
>>>Typically BOH replaces testable reality
>>>with just his "expectations" of it.
>>>In simple terms such an absurd event 
>>>is termed: propaganda. The master was Stalin.
>>>He turned reality into his "expectations" and
>>>millions perished.
> 
> 
>>BOH:-
>>John, please read up on simple probability theory before you write 
>>another post ridiculing expectations.  They have a precise mathematical 
>>definition, which you seem to be totally unaware of.
>>As for testability, you might like to read up about a wonderful subject 
>>called "statistics".  It's used to fit models to data, which is an 
>>esential component of testing hypotheses.  One of the things you can do 
>>is to estimate expected values (e.g. of allele frequency changes).
> 
> 
>>JE:-
>>Once again BOH asks us to replace a testable 
>>reality with just his expectations of it. 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> BOH:-
> This is just a sematic game.  
> 
> JE:-
> No, it is your "game" of misrepresentation.

No, your statement confuses two uses of the word "expectation".  I was 
using the word in a technical sense, which I then tried to explain. 
Your senetence seemed to use the non-technical sense of the word, which 
is a different matter.  Your sentence implies that in replacing the real 
world with something else, I am not making any allowance for the fact 
that the real world may be different.  This is not the case, and the 
implication in your sentence comes purely from the different uses of a 
word.  In that sense it is purely a matter of playing with semantics.


> 
> BOH:-
> The expectation is of a random variable, 
> not of reality.
>   
> JE:-
> Which makes your attempt to replace
> a testable Darwinian reality with 
> such an estimate, even more absurd.
> 
The only "Darwinian reality" is the real world.  In our theories we have 
to replace the real world with something simpler, otherwise we cannot 
understand it.

Bob

-- 
Bob O'Hara
Department of Mathematics and Statistics
P.O. Box 4 (Yliopistonkatu 5)
FIN-00014 University of Helsinki
Finland
Telephone: +358-9-191 23743
Mobile: +358 50 599 0540
Fax:  +358-9-191 22 779
WWW:  http://www.RNI.Helsinki.FI/~boh/

Journal of Negative Results - EEB: www.jnr-eeb.org
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