From: Tom St Denis on
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
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 Dunning–Kruger 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
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
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
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