"Stephen Harris"  wrote 

> > I think I see where some of the conceptual confusion
> > may lay.  I looked back at the your post that preceded
> > my last post and found therein two different
> > interpretations of the word "chance."  (I wish I'd
> > seen this the first time I read it.  This shows how
> > confusing this subject is.)
> >
> > These are your words:
> > 1) . . . the adjective that describes the lack of
> > pattern . . .
> > 2) "The unknown and unpredictable element in
> > happenings . . ."
> >
> > Note that these two interpretations involve two
> > very different meanings.  The first, 1), involves
> > phenomena that lack order (order being symmetry
> > [pattern] over time and/or space).  The second
> > involves lack of knowledge.  Now here's the thing.
> > Very often something that lacks order will be
> > unpredictable.  And very often something that is
> > unpredictable will be lacking in order.  But this
> > is not necessarily the case, certainly not always.
> > We can have phenomena that is ordered and not have
> > knowledge of it.  Likewise we can have phenomena
> > that lacks order but we can have knowledge of its
> > arrangement.  Whatever the case, we can't employ
> > these different interpretations interchangeably.
> > As I'll further explicate below, this is a main
> > source of the confusion with genetic drift.  (You
> > may have noticed that in what you quoted of me below
> > that I went to great lengths to avoid this confusion
> > by way of employing the word, "chaotic," to
> > differentiate it from, "chance."  I did that for
> > this very reason.)
> >
> 
> Perhaps we can agree to chalk this up to confusion
> about the meaning of terminology. 

We just cleared up the confusion by way of differentiating 
between chance, which is not causal, and chaotic, which is 
causal.  (You could have made this claim before, but not 
now.)

> For instance
> I think the selection of natural selection is antithetical
> to the concept of randomness so NS doesn't
> include any random process such as genetic drift
> "part and parcel".

Well then your dispute is not with me, your dispute is with 
Charles Darwin's description of NS. (In other words: checkmate.)

> Also most people use chaos to mean not calcuable
> because of insufficient information.

This is how I defined chance above.  (You are displaying 
the problem: an inability/unwillingness to differentiate 
between chance and randomness.  This is the epitome of the 
gambler's fallacy.)

> So there is your usage
> of chaotic causation and equating it with randomness.
> And chance as "lack of knowledge" thus unpredictable.
> 
> The standard usage is that chaos is not predictable
> due to lack of information (initial conditions and so on).
> So it seems to me this topic suffered from inaccuracy.

Now you're making a semantic argument.  I could care less 
what word we use just as long as we don't use the different 
meanings (1 and 2 above) interchangeably so that we can 
avoid being drawn in by the psychological pull of the 
gambler's fallacy.

Jim
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