Aren't Science vs. Creation Debates......rather pointless?

[IATIA]

Birds?  Whales?

They can't name notes......

Do we know that for a fact?

[drfuzzy]

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Now, I wonder why you didn't want this thread to stray off topic into perfect pitch? Is is possibly because you did no research into the subject and didn't know what the fuck you were pontificating about? I have a doctorate in music. Perfect/absolute pitch studies have been quite popular for the last thirty years or so.  In a nutshell, it has been found that the vast majority of humans have the ability to identify pitches, but if they don't have cognitive labels to hang that knowledge on early - while they are forming language - the ability is almost never gained in adulthood.  There have been studies on the curricula that attempt to teach it, but no results that rule out a pre-existing ability gained in an early life environment.  
http://discovermagazine.com/2001/dec/featbiology    Diana Deutsch is the current leader for cognitive tonality studies.
"Certain genes may help some people acquire perfect pitch more easily than others, but Deutsch's findings suggest that almost anyone can learn to label notes—provided they start young. Children who don't learn to do it by the time they learn the rudiments of language may never gain the ability."
It's also clearly understood - - dozens of studies - - that tonal language speakers develop perfect pitch at a much higher rate than speakers of non-tonal languages.  http://www.nytimes.com/1999/11/05/us/stu...guage.html
'What it means to me is that people have a very accurate memory for musical pitch,'' said Dr. Daniel Levitin, a cognitive psychologist at McGill University in Montreal who has studied perfect pitch. Louis Svard gives a 2013 overview of absolute pitch studies here: http://www.themusiciansbrain.com/?p=190

My younger brother has absolute pitch at a very high level. A door can squeak and he can tell you what pitch it was. He clearly had the predisposition, but gained that skill by listening to me press piano keys and name the notes. I have it at a much lower level than he does, because I was 4 years old before I started assigning names to pitches.  

Since you apparently like to brag about how you are "better" than people who are "born-with-it", you will obviously trot out your superiority to someone else for the sake of stroking your own ego.  Perhaps if you read up on your subject, instead of pulling "facts" out of your ass, you might actually sound intelligent.

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I hit a nerve somewhere.  I really don't appreciate your tone.

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 Plus you're all talk, I can find numerous of tests testifying to the same stuff you mention everywhere, and I was even part of a California study which 'of course' testified to the same thing.  My point is, there are exceptions and statistical outliers. - I was I think only one out of two that actually passed their exam with flying colors that also had no early training in perfect pitch and music in general.  I actually stayed quite in close touch with the professor doing those studies too since you accused me of "not doing any research".

I've actually walked the walk learning perfect pitch and been part of a couple studies. So if you want me to respect your 'doctorate in music', then you should respect what I accomplished as well and also sound professional in your responses. It's hard to take you seriously when you have lines like, " Perhaps if you read up on your subject, instead of pulling "facts" out of your ass, you might actually sound intelligent," and "Is is possibly because you did no research into the subject and didn't know what the fuck you were pontificating about?"  Those are lines an arrogant, whiney teenager would say - not an educated professional.

And I hate to say it, but I have a master's in music too, and those degrees are a lot easier to come by than in most scientific fields. I have a second masters but in computer science and it was a lot harder.  Anyway to show my "walk", feel free to check out http://www.prolobe.com and it has oodles of concrete statistics there under two usernames I had: maestroanth and curiousgeorge.  You should maybe try that program yourself sometime too instead of finding more studies by psychologists with questionable musical skills to quote, but I think your mind is already set.

If you are still angry and want to argue about this, then there is a forum there too on that site where you can post so it's not off-topic.

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Well, you did hit a nerve.  Your tone was the bragging posturing was the same as I run into all the time - guys talking your ear off about how they're geniuses and better than everybody else, but when you put them through a tryout, they can't even sight-read the easiest example.  Then they try to yell at you because "I don't need any of that stuff, just let me play, you're an elitist snob".  He was followed by a "brilliant" singer who brought a high soprano accompaniment, when she's a contralto, and tells me to "just play what's there, I'll make it work".  I did, she couldn't, and she was cussing me out for being incompetent.  So yeah, your post sounded like #3.  I apologize for my tone, I should have just posted the research.

Computer science is a challenging field.  My Masters in Music wasn't a cakewalk though.  I had to present two recitals, go through 8 hours of comps, and write a Thesis, in addition to the coursework.  I will look at your site.  I'm always up for a provable new twist in music psychology.  

Your assertion that music notation is a man-made construct is irrelevant to perfect pitch, as you are well aware, if you have been doing the research you describe.  Pitch identification can be accomplished by many different methods.

[maestroanth]

Testhgh

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I hit a nerve somewhere.  I really don't appreciate your tone.

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 Plus you're all talk, I can find numerous of tests testifying to the same stuff you mention everywhere, and I was even part of a California study which 'of course' testified to the same thing.  My point is, there are exceptions and statistical outliers. - I was I think only one out of two that actually passed their exam with flying colors that also had no early training in perfect pitch and music in general.  I actually stayed quite in close touch with the professor doing those studies too since you accused me of "not doing any research".

I've actually walked the walk learning perfect pitch and been part of a couple studies. So if you want me to respect your 'doctorate in music', then you should respect what I accomplished as well and also sound professional in your responses. It's hard to take you seriously when you have lines like, " Perhaps if you read up on your subject, instead of pulling "facts" out of your ass, you might actually sound intelligent," and "Is is possibly because you did no research into the subject and didn't know what the fuck you were pontificating about?"  Those are lines an arrogant, whiney teenager would say - not an educated professional.

And I hate to say it, but I have a master's in music too, and those degrees are a lot easier to come by than in most scientific fields. I have a second masters but in computer science and it was a lot harder.  Anyway to show my "walk", feel free to check out http://www.prolobe.com and it has oodles of concrete statistics there under two usernames I had: maestroanth and curiousgeorge.  You should maybe try that program yourself sometime too instead of finding more studies by psychologists with questionable musical skills to quote, but I think your mind is already set.

If you are still angry and want to argue about this, then there is a forum there too on that site where you can post so it's not off-topic.

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Well, you did hit a nerve.  Your tone was the bragging posturing was the same as I run into all the time - guys talking your ear off about how they're geniuses and better than everybody else, but when you put them through a tryout, they can't even sight-read the easiest example.  Then they try to yell at you because "I don't need any of that stuff, just let me play, you're an elitist snob".  He was followed by a "brilliant" singer who brought a high soprano accompaniment, when she's a contralto, and tells me to "just play what's there, I'll make it work".  I did, she couldn't, and she was cussing me out for being incompetent.  So yeah, your post sounded like #3.  I apologize for my tone, I should have just posted the research.

Hmmm....we may have more common ground than you think actually because I know those types and they piss me off. Those PP musicians are often terrible because they have their heads so far up their @$$ for so long. I had a PP neighbor that was that arrogant and cocky (this was before I even really knew what perfect pitch was) and he'd name notes of everything and consider himself this great musician. Well, I was baffled because he didn't have much theory skills and I had to ear train chords and intervals and he didn't even know what those were and wouldn't help me. His philosophy was, "if you had perfect pitch like me, you wouldn't need those things..", which didn't make sense to me since chords and intervals is fundamental how we hear notes as music.

Later, I learned that the key center actually was confusing my objectivity on naming interval cues. With no one to train with me, I finally found prolobe on the web 14 years ago which really helped me sort out what I was hearing in key difference cues and what I was hearing as intervals cues. Then I drilled everything hardcore memorizing it all and I really started to excel.

Of course, after about a semester of hard work, I went back to my neighbor and told him that I was able to memorize all the notes, intervals, etc. by ear even perfect pitch. He was ghastly offended and was like, "So you think you learned perfect pitch like I have? That's not possible. You have to be born with it. I think you just learned really good relative pitch." - he acted like it was this superman pedestal impossible to reach. In turn, I was offended and I told him I knew the difference and told him to come over so I can show him.

Anyway, he did, we named pitches equally well on the piano and plucking strings, so we needed something more, and I threw him on the final level of prolobe where you had to name crazy random note chords all in random timbres and he failed horribly while I shined since I worked hard on all that crap. I told simply him that see, even your perfect pitch needs practice now and then. Oh maaannn, he was pissed being humbled like that in HIS turf and was coming up with excuses why "I still couldn't have it since I wasn't born with it, or the program must be faulty, etc." He just couldn't accept the evidence in front of his eyes.

All it did for me is leave a nasty pit in my stomach realizing that people will just "believe what they want to believe" for sake of tradition, religion, or their egos even in the face of direct evidence of reality. It's bizarre. And makes me sick.

[drfuzzy]

Testhgh

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 Well, you did hit a nerve.  Your tone was the bragging posturing was the same as I run into all the time - guys talking your ear off about how they're geniuses and better than everybody else, but when you put them through a tryout, they can't even sight-read the easiest example.  Then they try to yell at you because "I don't need any of that stuff, just let me play, you're an elitist snob".  He was followed by a "brilliant" singer who brought a high soprano accompaniment, when she's a contralto, and tells me to "just play what's there, I'll make it work".  I did, she couldn't, and she was cussing me out for being incompetent.  So yeah, your post sounded like #3.  I apologize for my tone, I should have just posted the research.

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 Hmmm....we may have more common ground than you think actually because I know those types and they piss me off. Those PP musicians are often terrible because they have their heads so far up their @$$ for so long. I had a PP neighbor that was that arrogant and cocky (this was before I even really knew what perfect pitch was) and he'd name notes of everything and consider himself this great musician. Well, I was baffled because he didn't have much theory skills and I had to ear train chords and intervals and he didn't even know what those were and wouldn't help me. His philosophy was, "if you had perfect pitch like me, you wouldn't need those things..", which didn't make sense to me since chords and intervals is fundamental how we hear notes as music.

Later, I learned that the key center actually was confusing my objectivity on naming interval cues.  With no one to train with me, I finally found prolobe on the web 14 years ago which really helped me sort out what I was hearing in key difference cues and what I was hearing as intervals cues. Then I drilled everything hardcore memorizing it all and I really started to excel.

Of course, after about a semester of hard work, I went back to my neighbor and told him that I was able to memorize all the notes, intervals, etc. by ear even perfect pitch. He was ghastly offended and was like, "So you think you learned perfect pitch like I have? That's not possible. You have to be born with it. I think you just learned really good relative pitch." - he acted like it was this superman pedestal impossible to reach. In turn, I was offended and I told him I knew the difference and told him to come over so I can show him.

Anyway, he did, we named pitches equally well on the piano and plucking strings, so we needed something more, and I threw him on the final level of prolobe where you had to name crazy random note chords all in random timbres and he failed horribly while I shined since I worked hard on all that crap. I told simply him that see, even your perfect pitch needs practice now and then. Oh maaannn, he was pissed being humbled like that in HIS turf and was coming up with excuses why "I still couldn't have it since I wasn't born with it, or the program must be faulty, etc." He just couldn't accept the evidence in front of his eyes.

All it did for me is leave a nasty pit in my stomach realizing that people will just "believe what they want to believe" for sake of tradition, religion, or their egos even in the face of direct evidence of reality. It's bizarre. And makes me sick.

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Yeah. We're all capable of using . . . anything . . . to try and pull of the "I'm superior" bit, aren't we?  I get a little sick when I'm caught doing it.    Thanks for calling me on that point.  But musicians fight this all the time, modern media makes music look easy.  On piano, it takes 7 years of constant study and practice just to get to the point of basic proficiency . . . say, playing Xmas carols for people to sing along.  I have worked for years as a professional accompanist, and I get SO tired of people saying "you get PAID for that? It's just a talent, right? You're born with it."  Well by the time I was 25 I had 19 years of regular lessons, and 6 years of intensive college lessons that required 4 hours of practice per day, so no, it's not "just a talent".  (sigh)  I get where you're coming from now - you had to work to get your skills and you have the "born with it" folks putting you down. We're in the same boat.
   I'll look at your research after my (LAST EVER HALLELUJAH!!) set of Easter Masses is over.  Peace!

[maestroanth]

Testhgh

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---

 Hmmm....we may have more common ground than you think actually because I know those types and they piss me off. Those PP musicians are often terrible because they have their heads so far up their @$$ for so long. I had a PP neighbor that was that arrogant and cocky (this was before I even really knew what perfect pitch was) and he'd name notes of everything and consider himself this great musician. Well, I was baffled because he didn't have much theory skills and I had to ear train chords and intervals and he didn't even know what those were and wouldn't help me. His philosophy was, "if you had perfect pitch like me, you wouldn't need those things..", which didn't make sense to me since chords and intervals is fundamental how we hear notes as music.

Later, I learned that the key center actually was confusing my objectivity on naming interval cues.  With no one to train with me, I finally found prolobe on the web 14 years ago which really helped me sort out what I was hearing in key difference cues and what I was hearing as intervals cues. Then I drilled everything hardcore memorizing it all and I really started to excel.

Of course, after about a semester of hard work, I went back to my neighbor and told him that I was able to memorize all the notes, intervals, etc. by ear even perfect pitch. He was ghastly offended and was like, "So you think you learned perfect pitch like I have? That's not possible. You have to be born with it. I think you just learned really good relative pitch." - he acted like it was this superman pedestal impossible to reach. In turn, I was offended and I told him I knew the difference and told him to come over so I can show him.

Anyway, he did, we named pitches equally well on the piano and plucking strings, so we needed something more, and I threw him on the final level of prolobe where you had to name crazy random note chords all in random timbres and he failed horribly while I shined since I worked hard on all that crap. I told simply him that see, even your perfect pitch needs practice now and then. Oh maaannn, he was pissed being humbled like that in HIS turf and was coming up with excuses why "I still couldn't have it since I wasn't born with it, or the program must be faulty, etc." He just couldn't accept the evidence in front of his eyes.

All it did for me is leave a nasty pit in my stomach realizing that people will just "believe what they want to believe" for sake of tradition, religion, or their egos even in the face of direct evidence of reality. It's bizarre. And makes me sick.

---

Yeah. We're all capable of using . . . anything . . . to try and pull of the "I'm superior" bit, aren't we?  I get a little sick when I'm caught doing it.    Thanks for calling me on that point.  But musicians fight this all the time, modern media makes music look easy.  On piano, it takes 7 years of constant study and practice just to get to the point of basic proficiency . . . say, playing Xmas carols for people to sing along.  I have worked for years as a professional accompanist, and I get SO tired of people saying "you get PAID for that? It's just a talent, right? You're born with it."  Well by the time I was 25 I had 19 years of regular lessons, and 6 years of intensive college lessons that required 4 hours of practice per day, so no, it's not "just a talent".  (sigh)  I get where you're coming from now - you had to work to get your skills and you have the "born with it" folks putting you down. We're in the same boat.
   I'll look at your research after my (LAST EVER HALLELUJAH!!) set of Easter Masses is over.  Peace!

Ya, I totally hear you. What you describe is half the reason I switched paths to computers instead because I just cannot stand the music major "culture". Most miserable, insecure, cutthroat, jealousy-ridden people ever, ugh. When I switched I was very pleasantly surprised how much "happier" people were in a science vs. Art degree. My best friend who was in music also switched to medical field and he noticed the same thing.

Wow, you worked that hard to get where you are and you still get the, " You mean I should have to pay to enjoy your talent?!" Music majors don't get respect by even outside people as well as colleagues. My best advice is to be kinda a dick and ask for money coldly up front.

[comet]

yes. "science" is not a "thing". so it can't debate anybody.  What we need is rational atheist and rational theist to say it is ok to believe god did it through evolution.  As an atheist, I say, I don't believe in your god, but if he's there he did it through evolution.  The debate point becomes "god" again and not evolution.  But only the top 15%ers would understand that. and the other 85% think we are odd. As a point of fact the numbers say they are correct. 

[Meandering Atheist -J-]

Evolution vs creationism debates are very important! We may all know that evolution is right, but we do need to know why it is right. The best way to learn about that is to hear someone challenge it. Most of us don't want to be believing in things without knowing why those things are true. I know that some theists showed up to watch Ham wipe the floor with Nye, and left shaken, and at some point I'm going to be that theist. Not with evolution, but maybe with something else I believed to be true. Putting beliefs through the test is fun, and at the very least it's entertaining and informative to know why I'm right.

Being right and not knowing why is about as useful as being wrong.

[rexbeccarox]

Evolution vs creationism debates are very important! We may all know that evolution is right, but we do need to know why it is right. The best way to learn about that is to hear someone challenge it. Most of us don't want to be believing in things without knowing why those things are true. I know that some theists showed up to watch Ham wipe the floor with Nye, and left shaken, and at some point I'm going to be that theist. Not with evolution, but maybe with something else I believed to be true. Putting beliefs through the test is fun, and at the very least it's entertaining and informative to know why I'm right.

Being right and not knowing why is about as useful as being wrong.

(bold mine)

Hahahahahahaha! Who was "left shaken" by that "debate"?

[Meandering Atheist -J-]

(bold mine)

Hahahahahahaha! Who was "left shaken" by that "debate"?

I think you overestimate how much people know about evolution and creationism. I know of people (adult people) who when asked if they believe in evolution respond "I don't know - I just haven't thought about it I guess." There are plenty of people who's first experience outside of their echo-chamber was that debate, and I'm sure some of them now have doubts.

[Whateverist]

The Nye-Ham debate might have exposed some kids there for the first time to a straight representation of how evolution works and what it is.

To me, this is the benefit of debates. The audience at home can think about what's being said, learn some things, and maybe be brought round to a more rational way of thinking. This is the intended target.

If you remove that audience, for example in a private debate with an entrenched theist, there is probably no point at all.

I'll give you that but it doesn't get at what I dislike about debate.  Too often it seems an exercise in sophistry where blowing smoke is esteemed as highly as useful analysis so long as it plays to the crowd.  Just give me an honest conversation any day.