Troll "Researchers" and the Creationists
in [Cryptography]
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From: Tom St Denis on 19 Jul 2010 07:50 Since there isn't much actual cryptography going on lately I felt I should share a recent observation I made. Compare the style of writing of people like Adacrypt, GlobeMaker, David Scott, MKS, etc to something like this: http://www.answersingenesis.org/articles/arj/v1/n1/mars-testament-catastrophe Notice any similarities? I do. The both seem to not understand what they are criticizing and put it in some form of "us vs. them" mentality. For example, their use of "evolutionist" as some form of derogatory slur (they're implying a blind and wilful obedience to a doctrine as opposed to a genuine understanding and acceptance) is very similar to DS's terms for research cryptographers. Their implied "conclusion precedes explanation" research style is similar to all cipher designing trolls, they start with the premise that their idea is right and then flail around with what little understanding they bothered to sort out to try and support their conclusions. They both also have a "small world" view of things. Take Ada for instance. He clearly doesn't understand what asymmetric vs. symmetric means in the crypto world. In his understanding of cryptography there is only one way to do things (symmetrically) and anything else is obviously not cryptography. Similarly, people can prove that Mars isn't 6000 years old (basically because the geological processes involved for a planet that size can't be completed in 6000 years) but since their world is so small as to not include basic physics (radiometric dating is a LIE!!!) it's obviously just bunk. Their writings both have a mention of adversary in a non-pleasant fashion, whereas academics tend to disprove, correct, amend, etc, other peoples conclusions and theorems, trolls tend to attack the actual person writing the things they don't agree with. In the creationist mind it's not their theories against reality, it's them against the heathen secularist personally. Similarly, DS has a grudge against Wagner, MKS against everyone, Adacrypt against [lately] Rivest et al., etc... Food for thought.... Tom
From: Pubkeybreaker on 19 Jul 2010 09:49 On Jul 19, 7:50 am, Tom St Denis <t...(a)iahu.ca> wrote: > Since there isn't much actual cryptography going on lately I felt I > should share a recent observation I made. > > Compare the style of writing of people like Adacrypt, GlobeMaker, > David Scott, MKS, etc to something like this: > > http://www.answersingenesis.org/articles/arj/v1/n1/mars-testament-cat... > > Notice any similarities? I do. The both seem to not understand what > they are criticizing and put it in some form of "us vs. them" > mentality. The Dunning/Kruger result is quite relevant here. From Wikipaedia: The DunningKruger effect is a cognitive bias in which an unskilled person makes poor decisions and reaches erroneous conclusions, but their incompetence denies them the metacognitive ability to realize their mistakes.[1] The unskilled therefore suffer from illusory superiority, rating their own ability as above average, much higher than it actually is, while the highly skilled underrate their abilities, suffering from illusory inferiority. This leads to the perverse situation in which less competent people rate their own ability higher than more competent people. It also explains why actual competence may weaken self-confidence: because competent individuals falsely assume that others have an equivalent understanding. "Thus, the miscalibration of the incompetent stems from an error about the self, whereas the miscalibration of the highly competent stems from an error about others. Kruger and Dunning proposed that, for a given skill, incompetent people will: tend to overestimate their own level of skill; fail to recognize genuine skill in others; fail to recognize the extremity of their inadequacy; recognize and acknowledge their own previous lack of skill, IF they can be trained to substantially improve. It all stems from ignorance and incompetence. And in many cases, the ignorance appears to be WILLFUL. Which makes it contemptible.
From: Tom St Denis on 19 Jul 2010 09:54 On Jul 19, 9:49 am, Pubkeybreaker <pubkeybrea...(a)aol.com> wrote: <snip> > Kruger and Dunning proposed that, for a given skill, incompetent > people will: > > tend to overestimate their own level of skill; > fail to recognize genuine skill in others; > fail to recognize the extremity of their inadequacy; > recognize and acknowledge their own previous lack of skill, > IF they can be trained to substantially improve. > > It all stems from ignorance and incompetence. And in many cases, the > ignorance > appears to be WILLFUL. Which makes it contemptible. Ah very true. Given that the bias is not trade related I guess it's not surprising to see it across domains. Tom
From: Pubkeybreaker on 19 Jul 2010 10:02 On Jul 19, 9:54 am, Tom St Denis <t...(a)iahu.ca> wrote: > On Jul 19, 9:49 am, Pubkeybreaker <pubkeybrea...(a)aol.com> wrote: > <snip> > > > Kruger and Dunning proposed that, for a given skill, incompetent > > people will: > > > tend to overestimate their own level of skill; > > fail to recognize genuine skill in others; > > fail to recognize the extremity of their inadequacy; > > recognize and acknowledge their own previous lack of skill, > > IF they can be trained to substantially improve. > > > It all stems from ignorance and incompetence. And in many cases, the > > ignorance > > appears to be WILLFUL. Which makes it contemptible. > > Ah very true. Given that the bias is not trade related I guess it's > not surprising to see it across domains. > > Tom If you think this NG is bad, you should see the looney-tunes in sci.physics and sci.math. Many of them seem to suffer from Narcissistic Personality Disorder as well as willful ignorance. I don't know who is worse: JSH, Archie Plutonium, or adacrypt. One problem with the Internet is that it gives a public voice to kooks, cranks, and loons who previously only scribbled with crayons at home.
From: Tom St Denis on 19 Jul 2010 10:18
On Jul 19, 10:02 am, Pubkeybreaker <pubkeybrea...(a)aol.com> wrote: > On Jul 19, 9:54 am, Tom St Denis <t...(a)iahu.ca> wrote: > > > > > > > On Jul 19, 9:49 am, Pubkeybreaker <pubkeybrea...(a)aol.com> wrote: > > <snip> > > > > Kruger and Dunning proposed that, for a given skill, incompetent > > > people will: > > > > tend to overestimate their own level of skill; > > > fail to recognize genuine skill in others; > > > fail to recognize the extremity of their inadequacy; > > > recognize and acknowledge their own previous lack of skill, > > > IF they can be trained to substantially improve. > > > > It all stems from ignorance and incompetence. And in many cases, the > > > ignorance > > > appears to be WILLFUL. Which makes it contemptible. > > > Ah very true. Given that the bias is not trade related I guess it's > > not surprising to see it across domains. > > > Tom > > If you think this NG is bad, you should see the looney-tunes in > sci.physics > and sci.math. Many of them seem to suffer from Narcissistic > Personality > Disorder as well as willful ignorance. > > I don't know who is worse: JSH, Archie Plutonium, or adacrypt. JSH because he's a cross-discipline troll. I'm just glad he stays out of comp.compression and c.l.c. > One problem with the Internet is that it gives a public voice to > kooks, cranks, and > loons who previously only scribbled with crayons at home. I stay out of sci.math because it's basically broken down by 90% spam/trolls 5% problems I don't understand [nor have time to really learn how to solve, but probably should just for general academic sake] 5% homework I don't care to read/understand 3% funny math jokes sci.physics is even further outside my comfort zone. You know what surprised me? There is no musicology groups [as far as I could tell last I checked]. There are groups for everything else except people who study music ... weird... What would be nice is if the people posting to eprint would also start discussions here. I'd gladly join in those [and I suspect people like you and the other regular lurkers would too] making sci.crypt a bit more scientific ... Though I can't say I blame them, last time I tried to contribute free material I had crazy people calling my house [and my parents house] at 3am saying they were going to kill me for being a paedophile. ... fun. Tom |