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Moderated Obama birth certificate CT / SSN CT / Birther discussion

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Robert Prey said:
[qimg]http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/picture.php?albumid=808&pictureid=6632[/qimg]
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I see. Your hypothesis is based on blithely accepting whatever false information that pops into your inbox that supports your bias.

welcometomadhasign400.jpg


The real sign.
 
Dcdrac said:
Ms zebest is nto an expert though that has been established, she is not qulaified to make any judgements about electronic documentation as has been pointed out by people here who are so quailified.

No amount of hand waving will change that Mr Prey
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Fallacious reasoning. An Appeal to Authority: (argumentum ad verecundiam) Appeals to authority are always deductively fallacious; even a legitimate authority speaking on his area of expertise may affirm a falsehood.

Nonetheless, if Zebest is not an expert then why would she be named as tech advisor for Adobe Books? A tech adviser, after all, must know more about the subject than the author.

The idea is, don't fall into that Jay Utah line of fallacious reasoning. But deal with the Evidence.
 
Robert Prey said:
Fallacious reasoning. An Appeal to Authority: (argumentum ad verecundiam) Appeals to authority are always deductively fallacious; even a legitimate authority speaking on his area of expertise may affirm a falsehood.

Nonetheless, if Zebest is not an expert then why would she be named as tech advisor for Adobe Books? A tech adviser, after all, must know more about the subject than the author.
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Now you're just making it too obvious.
 
Dcdrac said:
Jean-Claude Tremblay Adobe expert has declared the document is not a forgery.

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2011/04/29/expert-says-obamas-birth-certificate-legit/

His profile here

http://groups.adobe.com/people/39326/profile
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You are late to the party, and need to get up to speed on the debunking of the debunkers:

"Noting that Obama doubters were claiming the birth certificate was a fake, Winter wrote, “But a leading software expert says there’s no doubt about its authenticity, and he dismisses claims of fraud as flat-out wrong.”

The controversy traces to a Web story by Fox News reporter Jana Winter two days after the White House released the birth certificate, titled “Expert: No Doubt Obama’s Birth Certificate is Legit.

“I never said that,” Tremblay insists. “Winter called me and talked to me for about five minutes on the telephone, and she never said she was going to quote me. Then she misrepresented what I said.”

“For me, what I have seen does not prove that it is legit, nor that it is a fake,

“I’m not a detective specializing in the forgery of electronic documents,” he wrote on his professional website. “I am an instructor in graphic design software working to help people work faster, better and smarter.”

http://www.wnd.com/2011/06/314041/
 
It still doe snot detract Riobert that the birth certificate is not a fake.

Your so called expert is not an expert at all and has been shown to be not an expert
 
The point has been made RP you know nothing about PDFs the person you cite as an expert is not one and has been shown to know nothing about how PDFs work.

The law is not on your side as numerous cses have been pointed to at which all the birthers lost.

You have failed to show that you are even handed you refuse ot ask for Mitt Romney's or Joe Arapio's birth certifcates to be verfied.

You have failed fullstop.
 
Robert Prey said:
Slurs and ad hominems noted. I take it you decline the challenge. Why am I not surprised? Channeling the unquestioned, indefatigable computer expert Ms. Zebest, she awards you, professor, the grade F for Fail.
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Slurs and ad hominems noted. Sorry, but pointing out that a self-proclaimed expert is no expert is not an ad hominem attack no matter how much you fervently try to make it so.

It's not a "challenge" -- it's yet another obvious Birther attempt to shift the burden of proof in the face of embarrassing and obvious failure. And you've fallen for it, naturally. Of course, the courts don't fall for it. That's why Mara Zebest's bluster and handwaving never make it beyond the bulletin board at the Maricopa County sheriff's department.

Zebest's first offering was an attempt to show that the Obama PDF was anomalous for the features she named. Little did she know it would turn into an exercise showing how little she new about PDFs. As I've lectured you for months now: an anomaly is a departure from expectations. Whether an anomaly has meaning depends on whether one's expectations are properly informed. Hers aren't, so her "anomalies" are simply examples of normal behavior.

And again Zebest's demand for replication are just Zebest's Ignorance 2.0. She's still trying to parlay the notion again that there's something wrong with the Obama PDF, not something wrong with Mara Zebest's understanding of computer science. After having fallen flat on her face, she stands up, brushes herself off and willy-nilly invents a whole new test for document authenticity, with no basis in science or practice, and now demands that this and only this is the litmus test for Obama's PDF.

Honestly who do you guys think you are? Your entire case is simply making up new rules. New tests, new legal theories, new requirements -- all for the purpose of going after one sitting President. Why, because the candidate has already passed all the normal tests applied to everyone else, and you need something new to continue your irrational hatred.

If I were sitting on Mara Zebest's graduate student committee (and I've done dozens of those), she'd be sent back to work on her methodology. This is why real scientists with real education and real, pertinent professional expertise are accepted in court, and artists who write books on how to make pretty Photoshop pictures are not. The part that's missing from her challenge backpedaling is her demonstration that this is a valid test for authenticity. That is, she hasn't show that real scanned PDF documents would be reproducible according to her expectations while a "digital forgery" would not. She hasn't tested her new test. Hence she can't demand that everyone else use it as a yardstick.

While neither you nor Zebest seems to know what combinatorial complexity means or how it affects reproducibility, I assure you a court will know and care. And contrary to your premature attempts to write me off, I have done many experiments to study how reproducible a PDF scan and optimization exercise is. So yes, I decline to take her challenge because I already proved its invalidity weeks ago, and because (as usual) I don't fall for feeble attempts to shift the burden of proof. You responded with silence when I made those demonstrations.

You, on the other hand, haven't answered a single challenge or question I've put to you that requires you to take practical action or demonstrate practical understanding. So stop trying to hide behind Zebest and start paying attention. As I said before: try again, student.

Now if you're just going to continue stomping and whining that I won't take your little toy pseudo-expert seriously, then be my guest. I've already explained at length to everyone just how wrong she is. So as long as you continue trying to drag the discussion around in circles, you're going to be dealing with me outsmarting both her and you.
 
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Robert Prey said:
Fallacious reasoning. An Appeal to Authority: (argumentum ad verecundiam) Appeals to authority are always deductively fallacious; even a legitimate authority speaking on his area of expertise may affirm a falsehood.

Nonetheless, if Zebest is not an expert then why would she be named as tech advisor for Adobe Books? A tech adviser, after all, must know more about the subject than the author.

The idea is, don't fall into that Jay Utah line of fallacious reasoning. But deal with the Evidence.
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Use the full definition or not at all:

"Argument from authority (argumentum ad verecundiam), also authoritative argument and appeal to authority, is a special type of inductive-reasoning argument that usually is presented in the form of a statistical syllogism, which argues the case from the general to the specific. Although certain classes of argument from authority can constitute strong inductive arguments, the appeal to authority usually is applied fallaciously, either the Authority is not a subject-matter expert, or there is no consensus among experts in the subject matter, or both."

Now in this case, the Authority is the State of Hawaii - the acknowledged SME on Hawaiian State Records - and there is quite a bit of consensus on the validity of State records, and once again, I present to you Full Faith and Credit which speaks to why we accept the certification of the Hawaiian officials responsible for managing state records that the Obama BC is accurate.

Unless you can actually present documentation that would demonstrate that the State of Hawaii's records are in error there is no reason not to accept the validity of the record, and accept that President Obama is a natural born citizen over the age of 35 and thus eligible to hold the office to which he was elected.
 
Robert Prey said:
Nonetheless, if Zebest is not an expert then why would she be named as tech advisor for Adobe Books? A tech adviser, after all, must know more about the subject than the author.
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Mara Zebest's training is in graphic arts. Not computer science or the forensic authentication of documents. That makes her adept at using Photoshop, but not an expert in the underlying scientific principles. This is why no court accepts her as an expert on the subject matter pertaining to the authenticity of Obama's PDF.

She went to art school. I went to computer science and engineering school and taught there, including the programmers who work on Adobe products. I know the founder of Adobe and have demonstrated my expertise here.

The idea is, don't fall into that Jay Utah line of fallacious reasoning. But deal with the Evidence.
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That's right, keep trying to poison that well. You're not even arguing the Birther case anymore -- it's just "Get JayUtah at all costs!"

Obsess much?
 
Robert Prey said:
When are you going to state a point?
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When you answer his questions.

You implied pixels could have more than one color, trying to patch a hole in the Birther theory. Show us the basis for this.

You implied that all scanners faithfully reproduce all colors, but you won't examine a certain color to answer the question of how it would reproduce photographically.

The fact that you're dodging his questions rather than answering them suggests to me that you do indeed know the answers to them but you're afraid to say them because by doing so you'd be admitting you lost your point. Now be a good debater and accept the refutation.
 
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