From the marine parks thread:

http://www.ozpolitic.com/forum/YaBB.pl?num=1192441509/222#222


Quote:

I think I established that was greedy reductionism on your part.

PJ keeps insisting that he has established that my argument is somehow greedy reductionism. But he has merely insisted it repeatedly without being able to justify the claim, as an excuse for not being able to counter my arguments. I even went to the trouble of posting a definition of greedy reductionism and pointed out that my arguments do not fit the definition.

Please explain it all for us here PJ.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greedy_reductionism

Greedy reductionism is a term coined by Daniel Dennett, in the book Darwin's Dangerous Idea, to distinguish between what he considers acceptable and erroneous forms of reductionism. Whereas reductionism means explaining a thing in terms of what it reduces to, greedy reductionism arises when the thing we are trying to understand is explained away instead of explained, so that we fail to gain any additional understanding of the original target.

For example, we can reduce temperature to average kinetic energy without denying that temperature exists, so this is good reductionism. In contrast, when we consider the question of why clicking on a hyperlink takes us to one website and not another, any answer that says that it all comes down to electrons and that hyperlinks don't really exist is a greedy attempt to explain away the problem without solving it.

I have countered your arguments if you can call them that. And I think you will find that I put up the defefintion of greedy reductionism. Also if you look back to the thread in question you will find that your argument degenerated into a one (short) sentence denial.

You didn't counter my arguments. You called them greedy reductionism because you couldn't counter them. Now you can't even show that they are greedy reductionism.

No, all that shows is you can't argue with an idiot. Why don't you go and get some scientific training for a few years and then we might be able to have a meaningful debate.

This is far simpler than science. This is a simple diversionary tactic. You couldn't counter my actual arguments, and greedy reductionism was your excuse for not doing so.

If you aren't going to explain the alleged greedy reductionism (which you haven't managed yet), why even respond to this thread? You are just digging yourself deeper into a hole.

I explained in in the earlier thread, it's just that your too thick to understand. If you want to further the debate then why don't you get a copy of the paper Ray Hilborn refered and do a point by point critique (instead of doing a greedy reductionism job) .

Maybe you just shouldn't use big terms like this if you can't back it up.