From owner-biophys@hgmp.mrc.ac.uk Tue May 1 02:56:17 2001 Return-Path: Received: from localhost (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by mercury.hgmp.mrc.ac.uk (Postfix) with ESMTP id 635C817B8B for ; Tue, 1 May 2001 02:56:16 +0100 (BST) Received: from localhost (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by mercury.hgmp.mrc.ac.uk (Postfix) with ESMTP id 22E9517AC6 for ; Tue, 1 May 2001 02:56:14 +0100 (BST) Received: from niobium.hgmp.mrc.ac.uk (niobium [193.62.192.41]) by mercury.hgmp.mrc.ac.uk (Postfix) with ESMTP id 05F9A17B8C for ; Tue, 1 May 2001 02:56:10 +0100 (BST) Received: (from news@localhost) by niobium.hgmp.mrc.ac.uk (8.9.3+Sun/8.8.8) id CAA18834 for biophys-list@hgmp.mrc.ac.uk; Tue, 1 May 2001 02:56:10 +0100 (BST) X-Authentication-Warning: niobium.hgmp.mrc.ac.uk: news set sender to using -f X-Newsgroups: alt.atheism,alt.athiesm,alt.sci.physics,alt.talk.creationism,bionet.biophysics,harvard.course.physics11a.q-a,sci.bio.paleontology,sci.physics,talk.atheism Subject: Re: The "Science" of John Boatwright From: doldridg@istar.ca (Dave Oldridge) References: <3ae8b06a.109420557@nntp.we.mediaone.net> <3AE8B9E2.A73DB51B@mediaone.net> <1127_988344536@GANDALF> <3AE9B280.8406B3B2@mediaone.net> <3AEADE18.6CDCEC04@mediaone.net> <3aeafab8.259537105@nntp.we.mediaone.net> <3AEB1B0F.5D8C32D3@mediaone.net> <3AEC8193.FA637652@mediaone.net> <3AEC80E6.B2458DB@hvc.rr.com> <3AEC975E.37157E09@mediaone.net> <3AECB09B.83C68B85@mindspring.com> <3AED2DAD.810FE326@mediaone.net> <3AEDEF7F.7E7B31E5@mediaone.net> Organization: The Human Race Message-ID: User-Agent: Xnews/4.01.30 Followup-To: alt.atheism,alt.talk.creationism Lines: 156 Date: Tue, 01 May 2001 01:50:38 GMT X-Complaints-To: abuse@ca.inter.net To: biophys@hgmp.mrc.ac.uk Sender: owner-biophys@hgmp.mrc.ac.uk Precedence: bulk George Hammond wrote in <3AEDEF7F.7E7B31E5@mediaone.net>: >Mr J R N Austin wrote: >> >> On Mon, 30 Apr 2001, George Hammond wrote: >> >> > Mark E. Daly wrote: >> > >> > > PS: I find it funny that a master degree in Physics is writing about >> > > Psychology word associations. You do know that English and all >> > > languages have no mathematical bases at all. Let me take a guess, >> > > you can't get a job or accepted into any reputable school. >> > >> > [Hammond] >> > Too bad you're not intelligent enough to understand Factor Analysis, >> > or physicist enough to understand that FACTOR ANALYSIS is the >> > only known scientific method that can actually prove the existence >> > of "Gawd". >> > You have a BS in physics... apparently you have half a brain... >> > half a brain is apparently not enough. >> > Any competent physicist can see that if you take all 4,000 >> > adjectives >> > in the dictionary (in any language) that refer to human personality, >> > and administer them as a self report checklist to 20,000 people, and >> > compute the 4000x4000 correlation matrix, and find that the 13 >> > eigenvectors of that real symmetric matrix form a GEOMETRIC CUBE in >> > eigenvector space .... that that is a SIGNIFICANT and MEANINGFUL hard >> > science discovery. >> > I'm physicist enough to recognize it, and i'm not going to sit here >> > and >> > listen to some candyass no nothing tell me different. >> > Science has KNOWN about this empirical fact for 50 years, and they >> > couldn't figure out WHY a CUBE EXISTED until i came along and told >> > them. THE HUMAN BRAIN IS CUBIC for chrissakes. do you think a bunch >> > of research psychologists are going to figure that out... NO, it takes >> > a PHYSICIST to recognize it.... and I've discovered it and published >> > it in the peer reviewed academic literature (Hamond 1994). > > >> >> It looks to me like this cubic property would only apply to the part of >> the brain involved in selecting adjectives. The parts of my brain that >> regulate body temperature or control my fingers as I play the guitar >> probably have a quite different geometry, or do you know different? > >[Hammond] >Christ.... an intelligent question. Who are you, the >president of the University? > Just to bring you up to speed, Psychometry has a 100 year >history involving thousands or researchers, at least a half >dozen of them world famous (Sir Francis Galton, Sir Charles Pearson, >Sir Ronald Fischer, Sir Cyril Burt, Hans Eysenck, R.B. Cattell, >L.L. Thurstone etc. etc.) > It began with the discovery of the IQ test between 1900-35, and >then went into Personality measurements 1935-2000. These tests >use extensive "psychology questions" such as: > >Do you count your change when you buy something? >Do you examine dollar bills to see if they are counterfeit? >Do you frequently look at women's behinds? >Would rather read a book or go to a party? >Do you get pissed when people answer you "why"? >Would you rather just do things than talk about them? >etc, etc > >In 100 years, millions upon millions of these questions have >been invented by people who think they know something about >"psychology". Point is, it doesn't matter whether they do or not, >because you can "find out" what's in the question by giving >a list of them and asking the people to answer -5 to +5 say >as to how much it applies to them. > Then you take the scores from say 200 tests each having >say 50 of these questions, and you compute the 50x50 >"correlation matrix" of the questions. Then using well >known linear algebra and a computer, you compute the >eigenvalues and eigenvectors of the matrix. > To make a long story short, after 100 years of this, >and millions and bazillions of questions, they have discovered >that: > > Even though the questions may vary all > over the lot, the eigenvecors which are > found in the matrix are always the > same. > >Finally, to squelch any argument that the eigenvectors >actually depended on the questions, somebody suggested that they >go through a dictionary and pick out every adjective in the >English language that had any relation to psychology (such as >shy, bold, hidebound, aggressive, friendly, suspicious, sneaky, >daredevil, cautious, stingy, garrulous..... etc. etc). There are >about 4,000 such adjectives in most languages. > Turns out, when they factor analyzed these on thousands of >people, they got THE SAME EIGENVECTORS, regardless of what >language, what country, or how many adjectives (this has been >confirmed over thirty years of testing). > The 4-main eigenvectors turn out to be E,N,P,g (g=IQ). I was with you up to here...but when I was doing Factor Analysis of psychometric variables for a living back in 1967-68, the scientists I was doing it for concluded that intelligence (whatever we actually mean by it) was a vector in six-space not four-space). That is to say: IQ is a measure of the absolute value of a six dimension vector. This was done by taking the tests then used to measure IQ and inter-correlating them in the manner you suggest and using Jacobi rotations to pull out the eigenvectors (I ran Thurstone's data for a check on the programs). Of course what took 5.5 hours to run back then on an IBM mainframe now runs on my desktop in a a few minutes. >There is virtual universal agreement about this. In fact, >the only real question is: What causes them? > This is where Hammond came into the picture in 1994 when >he published the discovery that the 4-eigenvectors come from the >4-dimensional structure of space vis a vis the 3-Axis geometry >of the brain itself. Hammond will obviously win a Nobel Prize >for that some day. > Meanwhile, a few years later Hammond discovered that that discovery >leads trivially to a scientific proof of Gawd. > And that's who you're talking to, and who everybody is making fun of >on the Internet. Well, if you cannot explain your theory to people, they are apt to dismiss it out of hand. And frankly, I do not see how the structure (any structure) of human personality is necessarily evidence of God (and I am a believer not an atheist). Perhaps you can show me the logic here. Certainly those who tried in the past did not have Factor Analysis (or what is termed today Principle Components Analysis as a tool. Thurstone was probably the first researcher to have equipment that even rendered it possible on a small scale. What causes you to characterise your result as "cubic?" Are the eigenvectors of near-equal length? That would do it for me, I suppose, the vector being the "diagonal" of a hypercube based at the origin of its coordinate system. >> Jez. >> >> > NOW, it is only a trivial ONE STEP from there to a scientific proof >> > of >> > the existence of GAWD.... and I'm the one who has discovered it. That's nice. But what IS this step? I fail to see, as I said, how the shape of human personality leads inexorably to the conclusion that there is a God or to any really STRONG conclusions about Him. -- Dave Oldridge ICQ 1800667 ============================================================================= ================= Paradoxically, nearly all real events are highly improbable --me, 2000AD .