Does Evolution Preclude Teleology?
Noah, as always, has provided excellent commentary that tends to push a discussion toward clarity. I’ll try to respond within the structure that he’s laid out.
First, I am making a fact claim. My fact claim is this: The findings of the modern synthesis of evolutionary biology (MES) do not demonstrate that the universe is not unfolding according to a divine plan that privileges human beings. An informal specification of what I mean in my claim by “does not demonstrate” is not restricted to something like “does not demonstrate it because it’s possible that everything we believe we observe through sense data is an illusion” or things of that ilk, but instead is closer to the sense of “does not make it obviously unreasonable to believe it”.
Some claims I am not making include:
• There is compelling evidence of a divine plan that privileges human beings made available to us by the structure or result of evolution through natural selection (for convenience, “evolution”).
• There are no other findings or observations external to the MES that render untenable a belief in a divine plan that privileges humans.
• Darwin’s work has not undermined many beliefs that many people have held about their religious views and their place in the universe.
• Quantum mechanics (QM) demonstrates that there is irreducible uncertainty (i.e., “true randomness”) in the physical universe.
Note that I am neither asserting nor disputing the truth any of these claims in the context of this argument, merely stating that neither my fact claim nor the reasoning by which I produce it depends on any of these statements.
Let’s start with a simple observation. It seems kind of crazy (or at least to be a violation of common sense) for an omnipotent deity who desires some outcome to get there through a process that unfolds over time. If you’re all-powerful, and you want the universe to look like X, why would you have eons of change to get there? Why wouldn’t just create things the way you wanted them on the first day? In fact, any observable change of any kind creates this problem. In the case where a deity initiates or sustains a process of change for the purpose of achieving a desired end-state, this seems illogical: we should be in a world of complete stasis. I’ll call this “the argument from change.”
An omnipotent deity would therefore have to desire (again, assuming our rationality can comprehend an omnipotent being) that all changes that actually take place happen for reasons other than their causal effectiveness in creating some desired end-state. But many changes that we observe around us seem to be what we intuitively believe to be evil – the classic case is a tortured and suffering child. How could a God that comports with our idea of benevolence actively desire every evil act in the universe? As everybody knows, this is the problem of evil.
Note that both of these objections to a divine plan are independent of evolution. Both are objections that could be (and were) raised long before Charles Darwin was born. So, for us to say that the MES rules out a divine plan that privileges humans, we must assert that there is some incremental knowledge provided by the MES that rules out such a divine plan that was not available to us prior to Darwin. The argument that “it just seems crazy that your Flying Spaghetti Monster would act through such a haphazard process” may or may not be valid objection to a belief in a divine plan, but it doesn’t require knowledge of evolution; it’s just a special case of the argument from change. Further, the point that it seems hard to reconcile an omnipotent and benevolent deity that chooses to act through a plan that incorporates what seems to a normal person to be evil also doesn’t require knowledge of evolution; we are all aware of many seemingly evil actions – that must be willed by any purported omnipotent deity – independent of any knowledge of evolution.
So what then is the unique contribution of the MES in this regard? I was confronting in my original post the frequently-made argument that the structure of the process of evolution is inherently undirected, or goalless, and therefore it can not be that this is a mechanism used to create any specific outcome such as humans, and therefore evolution makes belief in such a divine plan unreasonable. I did this by walking methodically through an example of a genetic algorithm (GA), and showing that the fundamental evolutionary operators of selection, crossover and mutation can comprise a goal-directed process.
The arguments that have been proposed by my various interlocutors for why this does not tell us much about evolution in nature are all variants of the idea that there are differences between a GA and evolution in nature that are relevant for the philosophical argument, and that these differences mean that evolution in nature is actually goalless. I’ll subdivide these arguments into two sub-types: (1) evolution in nature is more complex than the GA example, and (2) the pseudorandom steps in the GA correspond to “truly random” events in nature.
I’ll take the first sub-type first. All of these were addressed, at least at a high level of abstraction, in the original post, but I’ll try to go into a little detail on each. One of these arguments is that the GA will tend to home in on a “local optimum” in the solution space and not make the kind of huge changes that we see over time in evolution. But this is demonstrably false. Consider the simple case of the mutation rate, which was set in my example to 1 mutation per 10,000 genes per generation. In a limit case, if we set the mutation rate to 10,000 mutations per 10,000 genes per generation, we would, in effect, just be picking genomes arbitrarily out of a hat, and would by definition never be trapped in a local optimum. More realistically, by varying mutation rate (and actually more importantly, crossover probabilities) a specific instantiation of a GA can be made more or less “greedy” – trading speed of convergence on a solution off against the probability of premature closure on a local optimum. There is a large body of research on this. Another of these arguments is that the fitness landscape in nature is not some pre-defined factory production rate, but a constantly moving target created by the interaction of all parts of nature. But what determines fitness for any particular genome at any particular moment in the GA is a module of code that runs a simulation of the factory to estimate output for various genomes. This module of code could be anything that establishes fitness. It can be arbitrarily complex, can be in part or in total determined by reference to the existing genomes, and can create a different fitness landscape in every generation. It still remains a deterministic set of code. Another of these arguments is the idea that there are multiple parallel lineages in natural evolution. But of course one key virtue of the structure of a GA is that, mostly because of crossover, it will tend to create exactly this effect, termed “implicit parallelism”. As you watch a GA step through generations, you can see it developing clusters of genomes of particular types that represent, roughly, the examination of multiple high-fitness regions of the search space in parallel. I’ve yet to see a convincing example of a difference between my GA example and natural evolution that invalidates my argument.
The second sub-type of argument is much more interesting. The basis of it is the belief that if we accept QM, we must believe that many events in the physical universe are non-deterministic, i.e., “truly random”. That is, that there is no amount of information about physical laws plus initial conditions that can ever allow us to predict them reliably. Therefore mutation rates and crossover probabilities, as well as various other physical processes that will determine the environment in which evolution will operate, are unknowable in advance, and therefore the path that evolution will take is truly unknowable.
One big complication to this argument is that, despite repeated assertions in public debates, there are alternative interpretations of QM. What is normally termed the “causal interpretation” is the side of the argument that disputes the inherently non-deterministic nature of QM: in simple terms, the idea that there are so-called hidden variables that we just don’t yet know. So we need to consider two cases: deterministic and non-deterministic QM.
The case of deterministic QM is simple. As per the prior discussion, if the so-called “random events” in the evolutionary process are really pseudorandom, then while their complexity means that scientists appropriately proceed as if they are truly random, a being with sufficient knowledge of physical laws and initial conditions could predict them reliably, and therefore evolution can be consistent with a divine plan. If you dispute this by saying that this is what we mean in normal speech by “random”, then the consistent application that principle would apply to all kinds of events, such as, for example coin flipping. So without any knowledge of evolution we would have to say that all kinds of physical processes have random elements, and therefore no unfolding of the universe could be completely predictable. But of course this means that the same argument against divine planning would apply without evolution, and therefore the MES is not what would make belief in a divine plan unreasonable.
The case of non-deterministic QM follows a parallel line of logic, with a twist. Imagine that have current science, absent any good theory of evolution or genetics. From the time of the Big Bang through today there would have to have been an enormous number of events that were “truly random”. How can there be any kind of plan, never mind and kind of divine plan that privileges humans, unfolding in this case? How could something like a point-mass at the time of the Big Bang unfold into some pre-determined or desired structure that we have now, billions of years later. Note that we’ve said nothing about evolution here. That is, one could make the argument that QM makes belief in a divine plan untenable, but the MES does not add any incremental uncertainty. This is a specific point that I was very careful to make in the original post. If you think that there could be some kind inherent structure built into physical laws that sat hierarchically above the “truly random” events and caused them to cancel one another out around some underlying direction of in principle predictable change…well, since we’ve established that the process of evolution doesn’t impart additional in principle unpredictability, then what is evolution but precisely an example of this?
So in sum, there are many arguments that point out contradictions between our view of logic plus observed reality on one hand, and any conception of a divine plan that privileges humans designed by a God that just about anybody would want to worship on the other. The argument from change and the problem of evil pre-date the MES, and would continue to exist if the theory of evolution is someday overturned by new scientific discoveries. The problem of how any kind of divine plan could operate in a non-deterministic universe also exists independently of any unique characteristics of the MES. We can’t credit the MES with any of these arguments. The processes that define evolution don’t provide any relevant incremental knowledge that makes such a belief in a divine plan less logically warranted.
I’ll draw a bight line between everything up to this point in the post, which is a clarification of a fact claim that I am prepared to defend, and what follows, which is more speculative.
What I find interesting is that if one were to ask how could a divine plan ever be consistent with non-deterministic QM, the obvious way you could do this would be to have some kind inherent structure built into physical laws that sounds a lot like evolution. If one were to posit non-deterministic QM, then, the irony is that all else equal, the incremental effect on our beliefs of the discovery of the MES should actually be to make the idea of a divine plan more plausible rather than to make it less plausible. Note that I am not arguing that this is compelling evidence of design, or that we can read this into the evolutionary algorithm, or that this observation is in any way relevant to the practical execution of science, or that there is anything in this specific observation that has anything to do with privileging humans.
I do think that it is quite fair to say that this progress of science has demonstrated that numerous religious beliefs and just-so stories held to be true by many people are wrong. That is, in my view, the element of truth to Coyne’s perspective. Again, ironically (and again speculatively) science has pushed careful consideration of the purported nature of God to describe something a lot like what Augustine and Aquinas put forward. They described God as acting through laws or processes. In about the year 400, Augustine described a view of Creation in which “seeds of potentiality” were established by God, which then unfolded through time in an incomprehensibly complicated set of processes. In the 13th century, Aquinas — working with the thought of Aristotle and Augustine — identified God with ultimate causes, while accepting naturalistic interpretations of secondary causes. Neither Augustine nor Aquinas was a proto-Darwinist: Augustine, for example, thought species were immutable. What is striking about both of them, however, is their insistence on understanding and incorporating the best available non-theological thinking into our religious views. It is hard for me to imagine either feeling theologically threatened by the MES. The Catholic Church has formally accepted it as consistent with that faith.
Jerry Coyne has argued that the MES makes “real religion” as actually practiced untenable. But if so, he’s reading, for example, Augustine, Aquinas and Pope Benedict out of the Christian religion. That’s a pretty idiosyncratic definition of Christianity. I guess Jerry Coyne wants religion to be, literally, more Catholic than the pope. But a theologian might be tempted to say that this progress of science hasn’t threatened religious belief, but rather helped to perfect it
For the sake of argument, let’s stipulate that that the universe is unfolding according to a divine plan that privileges human beings.
Now what, Jim?
— Tony Comstock · Sep 11, 08:27 PM · #
But, Tony, that’s not an argument that Jim has made.
— Kate Marie · Sep 11, 09:27 PM · #
Jim: Instead of practically begging the Darwinists to give you a slim, tiny hope that God somewhere, somehow exists, you should challenge the scientific validity of Darwinism directly.
Specifically, neo-Darwinism can be broken down into four main ideas:
(1) life can be produced “by chance” in a soup of chemicals,
2) life can come from non-living matter,
3) random genetic mutations and environmental pressures can explain the creation of new species, and
4) there is a logical evolutionary continuum (known as “common descent”) between apes and humans.
Literally 150 years after Darwin published On the Origin of Species, there is still ZERO evidence for the first 3 tenets, and surprisingly little evidence for the final one.
We should stop making excuses and admit that Darwinism isn’t a science anymore; it’s an ideology.
— Todd White · Sep 11, 09:31 PM · #
“My fact claim is this: The findings of the modern synthesis of evolutionary biology (MES) do not demonstrate that the universe is not unfolding according to a divine plan that privileges human beings.”
If this is all that Jim is claiming, it’s so trivial, I wonder why anyone feels a need to argue over it one way or the other.
So let’s talk about something interesting instead. Let’s posit a universe that is unfolding according to a divine plan that privileges human beings.
Let’s further posit that a part of this divine plan is that oral sex, even between husband and wives, when taken to the point of orgasm is not a part of this divine plan (you did read that link I gave you, right KM?)
Now what?
— Tony Comstock · Sep 11, 09:33 PM · #
The findings of the modern synthesis of evolutionary biology (MES) do not demonstrate that the universe is not unfolding according to a divine plan that privileges human beings
I think that you have proved this. You have sketched a “divine plan that privileges human beings” that is not inconsistent with the MES. However, the context of the argument makes it sound like more is at stake. Specifically, do you believe the stronger statement that the case for a universe unfolding according to a divine plane that privileges human beings is neither weakened nor strengthened by the MES?
(Or even: is strengthened?)
I believe that the case for a divine plan is weakened by the MES, in fact substantially so. I could defend this belief by pointing out that the case for a divine plan is part of a long intellectual tradition that made claims that were directly contradicted by Darwin and the MES. Also, many modern and historical opponents (mostly Christian) of Darwin and the MES reject it on the explicit grounds that it weakens the case for a divine plan, so I could defend my belief by appealing to their authority. If you believe that the case for a divine plan is not weakened by the MES, can you explain why these or other contrary arguments are in error?
— cole porter · Sep 11, 09:47 PM · #
“I believe that the case for a divine plan is weakened by the MES, in fact substantially so.”
The readily observable miseries and absurdities of life clearly indicate that if there is a “divine plan” it is the product of a consciousness so utterly incomprehensible to us that surely it must be capable of transcending any of the natural phenomena we observe that would tend to rule out just such a guiding consciousness and whatever plan this consciousness might have; ie such a consciousness can never be excluded, let alone understood.
Of course that means that science will never stop people from making strong truth claims (that’s how you people talk, right?) about what God want us to do and especially what God doesn’t want us to do.
So let’s cut the crap. Let’s stipulate that that the universe is unfolding according to a divine plan that privileges human beings. What do I do now? What stock should I buy? Should I donate to the Heiffer Project? Pick up hitchhikers? Have threesomes with my wife and our au pair?
— Tony Comstock · Sep 11, 10:16 PM · #
And it’s not Eric Clapton.
— Tony Comstock · Sep 11, 10:26 PM · #
Shorter Manzi:
I AM NOT A MONKEY!
— matoko_chan · Sep 11, 10:35 PM · #
Wait, is there an Eric Clapton version?
The canonical answer is that we should try our best to understand and live according to the divine plan. You must have a more interesting idea, but now that you mention it I am curious if that’s Manzi’s answer also.
— cole porter · Sep 11, 10:48 PM · #
Jim,
Great job laying this out – it’s a damn important piece of information to be aware of. There’s this tendency among modern atheists/skeptics to try and make evolution (intellectually) do way, way more than it’s capable of doing. No, evolution does not disprove the existence of God, or even the existence of plan and purpose in nature. At most it challenged a very narrow religious doctrine or view of history.
Tony,
You do what scientists did the moment most of them believed evolution was true: You continue your investigations in light of what you now accept the truth of. Even Aquinas realized that he couldn’t just stop at the five ways (which is precisely why he didn’t), and that, of course, there was more to the story than the beginnings laid out by Aristotle.
You say that Jim’s point is so simple that it’s hard to believe anyone is arguing about it. All I can say is: Tell that to Coyne, among others. As for talk about the evil present in life, that’s a whole other subject as Jim points out. But frankly, right there the theists seem to have the edge in my most humble view.
— Crude · Sep 11, 10:48 PM · #
Jim, I am happy to accept that you are making a very narrow claim and that you have supported it to my entire satisfaction – but I have two quibbles about the GA analogy.
The first (this quibble is against your interlocutors, rather than you) is that the two arguments against the analogy are weak. They are certainly not the main arguments.
Additional complexity and random or pseudo-random make no difference to the outcome of a GA only the efficiency by which it achieves its goal – which brings me to my second quibble.
The obvious argument against your analogy is that a GA has a goal by definition. The goal is defined in terms of a fitness function and the GA proceeds towards that goal. What is the equivalent of a fitness function in real-world evolution? Where is the evidence for it?
[I don’t think the answer will substantially change your argument at all, but it seems like an important point that you have overlooked.]
As to your argument itself – count me among those that find the result uninteresting except, maybe, as a smackdown to Coyne’s smackdown.
Religion has made a lot of claims over the years and the vast majority of them have been resolved as either ‘false’ or ‘unsupported’. The remainder – per Noah’s post yesterday – are ‘unsupportable’.
If our conclusion is that ‘it is not unreasonable to believe that there is a non-being that has no influence and for which there is no evidence’ what’s the point?
And who is going to explain our conclusion to the people who object to oral sex between a man and his wife (per Tony)?
— Kevin Lawrence · Sep 11, 10:50 PM · #
“You do what scientists did the moment most of them believed evolution was true: You continue your investigations in light of what you now accept the truth of.”
My investigation? What the hell are you talking about?
— Tony Comstock · Sep 11, 10:55 PM · #
The findings of the modern synthesis of evolutionary biology (MES) do not demonstrate that the universe is not unfolding according to a divine plan that privileges human beings
Allow meh….if evolution is part of the “divine plan that privileges humans” then why are we not the evolutionary dominant species on the earth?
Homosapiens sapiens is not dominant in bio-mass, #reps of related DNA, survivability, genetic variability or any of the evo fitness metrics. There is an inconsistancy for you.
Thought as evidence? Big whup.
The selfish genes don’t care about thought or speech or any of those things, except as incidental fitness enhancers.
I object to your use of the word “never” as well, as in your hypoth can NEVER be disproven.
If a physical process exists in nature it can be reverse-engineered, given time and tools.
You can’t really believe this line of argument……I think you are just giving affirmative action to antique conservative failmemes while you can.
— matoko_chan · Sep 11, 10:59 PM · #
Strike the “privileges humans” and I can agree.
Otherwise this is just a souped up version of i-am-not-a-monkey.
In your hypothesis, there is no reason to believe that homo sap. isn’t just a small part of an even grander and/or more incomprehensible divine plan.
Perhaps we are just an early intermediate evolutionary stage on the way to homo sapiens transhumanicus or homo sapiens cyberneticus?
Or perhaps there will be an (also planned im sure) global thermonuclear war that leaves only cockroaches surviving who eventually evolve big social brains……or not?
Perhaps they just dominate earth with bio-mass and DNA reps?
It is the privileged thing Dr. Coyne and I find unacceptable.
Discard it please.
— matoko_chan · Sep 11, 11:13 PM · #
Matoko,
I think if you string together the same assortment of buzzwords and catchphrases another thousand or so times, you might just get your point across.
Play it again, Matoko. And again. And again.
— Kate Marie · Sep 11, 11:15 PM · #
Tony,
If we’re going to posit all those things, then the obvious answer to “Now what?” is to act in accordance with the divine plan.
So why is your question any more interesting than Jim’s argument, which was only ever a slap down of Coyne’s overreaching claims?
— Kate Marie · Sep 11, 11:18 PM · #
Coyne said nothing about a quantum world “divine plan”.
He said biological evolution demolishes the concept of a creator that privileges human life.
He said nothing about any other sort of creator.
Manzi’s argument is just i-am-not-a-monkey blinged out with genetic algorithms and twistors and electrotweeks.
FAIL.
— matoko_chan · Sep 11, 11:28 PM · #
Investigations, Tony! This isn’t a hard concept to figure out, don’t make it more difficult than it has to be.
You keep on learning, reading, considering, and reflecting on ideas related to the subject. In this case, the being and purpose in question. Just like coming up with evolution didn’t mean, well hell, we’re done with biology now! It meant continuing to examine the world in light of the new paradigm, learning more, etc.
Matoko-chan,
Adults. Speaking. Hush.
— Crude · Sep 11, 11:31 PM · #
kk…let me dumb this down for katemarie and crude.
The findings of the modern synthesis of evolutionary biology (MES) do not demonstrate that the universe is not unfolding according to a divine plan that privileges human beings.
Yes! they! do! Because according to the findings of MES human beings are neither privileged or finished.
ie homo sap. is still evolving, and homo sap. is not dominate as measured by MES metrics.
— matoko_chan · Sep 11, 11:37 PM · #
Crude, please give me the source of your temerity (I could use a little more) that gives you the nerve to offer advice on how to conduct my “investigations”. I’ve done more investigating than you could do in ten life times.
KayEm, well that’s it, isn’t it. Bring on the priests please, as I am humble enough to admit I have no capacity of my own to even guess at what The Plan is or how to Live In Accordance with The Plan.
— Tony Comstock · Sep 11, 11:53 PM · #
Really, Matoko? You know, now that you put it like that — in a completely fresh and original formulation devoid of stalememes (hey, look at me, I can do it, too!) — I still think you’re wrong.
Why are you assuming privileged means “dominant” according to MES metrics?
— Kate Marie · Sep 11, 11:54 PM · #
Unless the priests say that Living In Accordance with The Plan means I cannot go down on my wife and make her come. If that’s The Plan than I am happy to live in defiance of The Plan and and will count myself as an enemy of The Consciousness who has (in it’s infinite and mysterious wisdom) decided that this is The Plan.
— Tony Comstock · Sep 11, 11:57 PM · #
Thanks for sharing, Tony.
— Kate Marie · Sep 12, 12:08 AM · #
Some people are zealots about not vaccinating their children. I think my passions are eminently more reasonable.
— Tony Comstock · Sep 12, 12:10 AM · #
What an amazing shell game Manzi must be playing. Any time you respond to his argument – why, that’s not the argument he was making!
The contribution of the modern theory of evolution is pretty simple, and obvious to everyone, it seems, but Manzi and his ilk. The contribution is this: when asked, by the God-defending theist “if there’s no God, then where did all this life come from?” the modern theory of evolution makes it possible to truthfully answer something besides “hrm, I don’t know.”
That’s the contribution. Summed up by Dawkins when he said “evolution has made it possible to be an intellectually-fulfilled atheist.”
— Chet · Sep 12, 12:12 AM · #
Any luck with that credit score, Chet?
— Tony Comstock · Sep 12, 12:14 AM · #
…what?
— Chet · Sep 12, 12:20 AM · #
Last we chatted you had concerns about your credit score preventing you from getting a job. I was inquiring if you had any luck cleaning it up. Or maybe your credit score preventing you from getting a job is a part of The Divine Plan that Privileges Human Beings Except for Chet Who Comments on TAS.
— Tony Comstock · Sep 12, 12:24 AM · #
I went back to school, so I guess I obviated the issue? For now, anyway.
— Chet · Sep 12, 12:28 AM · #
Tony,
If by “The Plan” you mean the one holy and apostolic Catholic Church, then I think your passions can be accomodated. Here is the Catechism on ths subject of “The Love of Husband and Wife”:
2362 “The acts in marriage by which the intimate and chaste union of the spouses takes place are noble and honorable; the truly human performance of these acts [including going down on your wife?] fosters the self-giving they signify and enriches the spouses in joy and gratitude.” Sexuality is a source of joy and pleasure:
The Creator himself…established that in the [generative] function, spouses should experience pleasure and enjoyment of body and spirit. Therefore, the spouses do nothing evil in seeking this pleasure and enjoyment. They accept what the Creator has intended for them. At the same time, spouses should know how to keep themselves within the limits of just moderation.
— Jeff Singer · Sep 12, 12:34 AM · #
I’ve got a priest from Notre Dame Seminary who says different. Now what?
— Tony Comstock · Sep 12, 12:35 AM · #
I think Father Joe says it’s okay (although manipulate sounds more like finger-banging,) but only if I’m eating a creampie
“Qualifications are always important to the way the Catholic Church approaches situations. Certainly other forms of sexual expression are deemed immoral, and yet, even here there are qualifications. Oral sex is frowned upon, however, if it is a component of foreplay that makes possible sexual intercourse, and the semen are not misdirected, moralists would make an allowance for it. Similarly, while masturbation is usually deemed sinful; even authorities from the old manual tradition contended that a man could sexually manipulate his wife immediately at the end of sexual intercourse so that she could achieve orgasm– completing an element of the initial act. Of course, in both these cases there still exists an openness to life and a possibility of conception.”
And it looks like I can kiss being on the receiving end, which is ironic. Prior to meeting my wife I wasn’t really that into receiving oral sex. Not that I’d turn it down, but it wasn’t a big deal. But the way she does it. Well that’s a different story!
Fucking plan. Wish I’d never heard of it!
— Tony Comstock · Sep 12, 12:45 AM · #
Jim,
I thought this was your point all along, but your proof (it didn’t really need proof) was so extensive it confused and distracted people. I know that the proof was the fun part, but I suggest you do what they do on some contracts, which is preface the complicated legal language with a plain language section saying what the legal languge is suppsosed to mean. I think they call this something like a “narrative.” I say this without any snark at all.
Of course you complicated post provide a lot of people the chance to ride thier hobby horses around, which was fun.
— cw · Sep 12, 01:01 AM · #
All while you watched from the safety of your hollow tooth.
— Tony Comstock · Sep 12, 01:08 AM · #
This genetic algorithm stuff actually really hurts your case. Suppose we come across a genetic algorithm factory constructed and set into operation by an unknown person for unknown reasons. We can observe the selection mechanism and the current “winners” of the algorithm. Some of the winners were colored red, but there were not really significantly more of them colored red than any other color, and nothing apparent in the selection mechanism was inherently favorable to red entities. I would say that, yes, this demonstrates that the creator of this factory did not have a plan that privileged the creation of red objects, at least given the definition of “does not demonstrate” that you’ve provided.
Nor do I see how this changes if the factory creator happens to be God himself. Even if it were true that a Deist God created our Deterministic world with a goal in mind, and even though it is true that I am replying to your post now, and this would imply that God knew that I would do so when He set events in motion, and even that God could do otherwise if He wanted, it would still, given all that, be “obviously unreasonable to believe” that my decision to post a comment here was a privileged part of God’s divine plan.
Given that there seems to be nothing in natural selection that is inherently favorable to humans, given the small space of evolutionary time that has been occupied by humans, given the immense size of the Universe that remains beyond human reach, given the great diversity of organisms other than humans that natural selection also favors, and given the great similarity between humans and other primates, the humanity’s privileged place in the divine plan really does seem obviously unreasonable to believe.
This of course does not rule out that intelligence/complexity/goodness or whatever might have a special place in some divine plan.
— Consumatopia · Sep 12, 02:03 AM · #
“I am making a fact claim. My fact claim is this: The findings of the modern synthesis of evolutionary biology (MES) do not demonstrate that the universe is not unfolding according to a divine plan that privileges human beings.”
It’s hard to imagine a more meaningless statement. If you think Coyne was ruling this possibility out it may be in the sense that I do: as a matter of theory/principle you are correct, but applying Occam’s razor, among the infinity of things that can be true based on your theory, it’s reasonable to rule out a designer as ultimate cause based on the fact that it’s so exceedingly unlikely and non-simple.
You rule out exceedingly-unlikely-but-possible explanations all the time (e.g. my dog ate my homework), so let’s go ahead and rule this one (deism, in effect) out too.
— Steve C · Sep 12, 02:10 AM · #
TC-
Are you implying that I take no risks, that I just sit back and criticise, that I don’t fully participate? I rode my hobby horse too. The points I made were subtle, and I’ll admit, more clarifications than passionate stands, but I did my part. I also managed to insult Todd White. I wasn’t even trying and I think it was mostly defensivness on his part because, as a creationist, he had no evidence to back of his claims, which is understandably embarassing, but still he did get huffy and that’s got to count for something, right? So don’t give me this “safety of your hollow tooth” BS (you like that line, don’t you?). I’ve paid my dues. We all bring our own, unique gifts to the table, and all of them together make the meal, such as it is. RIght? RIght?
— cw · Sep 12, 03:56 AM · #
For those of you talking about Coyne ‘ruling out a designer’, you may want to re-read what the man himself has said.
“Likewise, as I’ve said ad nauseum, not every form of faith is incompatible with science. In my New Republic article, I claim that pure deism (which accepts a hands-off God who doesn’t intrude into the workings of the Universe) is absolutely compatible with science.”
So even Coyne is admitting that God’s existence is not ruled out by science – hell, he’s ceding the existence of God (so long as that God does nothing, other than apparently function as an Ultimate Cause) is ‘absolutely compatible with science’. So the only thing he’s arguing is that science rules out guidance, intention, teleology, etc. Which, it more and more seems, everyone here is willing to admit is incorrect.
So, science doesn’t rule out the existence of God. Nor does science rule out the existence of a plan, purpose, guidance, etc. Instead additional arguments are needed: appeals to philosophy, Occam’s Razor, etc. But those arguments are, as Manzi as pointed out time and again, nothing new – they’ve been argued back and forth for centuries or longer. For my money, the theists have the stronger argument by far – you’ll disagree, and that’s quite alright.
Manzi was right. Coyne was wrong. Yes, you can still be an atheist and make atheistic arguments. Just stop pretending evolution proves theism or teleology wrong, or really contributes all that much aside from disputing a pretty narrow, if popular religion-specific historical claim.
— Crude · Sep 12, 04:35 AM · #
Nice discussion we’ve got going…
To ask one quick question: I have no idea why you speculate that non-deterministic QM would make P(Theism | MES) > P(Theism | not-MES). In particular, I have no idea what the “inherent structure” is that you think would be supported by QM + MES.
— Justin · Sep 12, 05:19 AM · #
“(you like that line, don’t you?).”
cw: hollow tooth
Chet: credit score
Jim Manzi: idiosyncratic communities
Poulos: panties
JA/Sargent: rights humper, hump the hypothalamus, humping in general
KM: oral sex (especially between women)
Noah: sexy movies
Sailer: mongrel races
That’s all I can think of right now.
RE: Theist have a better case
Duh.
— Tony Comstock · Sep 12, 11:15 AM · #
One more. Popped in my head while making coffee
Noah: excellent side dishes
And of course, since I mentioned coffee
Sanjay: home-roasted coffee
— Tony Comstock · Sep 12, 11:38 AM · #
evolution proves theism or teleology wrong
It doesn’t.
It merely proves the concept of privileged humanity being part of the plan is wrong.
And that is what Coyne said.
Manzi et al keep trying to convolve the concept of teleology with with teh “specialness” of homo sap.
The concepts are seperable, however..
If there is a plan, then bilogical evolution MUST be a part of the plan, and biological evolution simply does not favor homo sap.
Like I said before, conservatives grasping at the naked blade of truth.
Science is the handle of the sword.
This thread is an excellent example of why only 6% of scientists are republicans.
I wonder if that is survivable.
— matoko_chan · Sep 12, 01:30 PM · #
lulz…..#42 again.
why, its almost like someone is trying to tell you guyz something.
— matoko_chan · Sep 12, 01:32 PM · #
mako: substrate
— Tony Comstock · Sep 12, 01:32 PM · #
Shorter Matoko: Like I said before
— Kate Marie · Sep 12, 01:37 PM · #
“why, its almost like someone is trying to tell you guyz something.”
Reading this I can’t help thinking of Sailer & Co’s “being out-bred by inferior races” and someone else’s (cw maybe?) “Always think you’re going to be in the driver’s seat.”
Personally, I do believe that human beings have a special and privileged place in the universe – most especially me. Squaring that with some of the other things I observe and believe is no small trick, but I manage.
Ayjay: Whatever gets you through the night
— Tony Comstock · Sep 12, 01:38 PM · #
Tony,
Seriously, do you have a problem with the fact that I’m Catholic and a woman? Because you really don’t know anything else about me …
— Kate Marie · Sep 12, 01:39 PM · #
KM, not so much the Catholic and woman thing, and more the judgmental hypocrite situational ethic and morality thing. But you know what they say, we hate most in others what we hate in ourselves.
— Tony Comstock · Sep 12, 01:43 PM · #
Tony,
Then stop it with the quips that seem to concentrate on my sex and my religion and start with all your evidence about how I’m a “judgmental hypocrite.” I’m sure you have lots.
— Kate Marie · Sep 12, 02:23 PM · #
KM, in a nutshell: I understand many of the positions you’ve expressed here to be based in your understanding of The Divine Plan, an understanding gleaned from your adherence to the Catholic Faith. But based on your comments here at The American Scene, when What You Want to Do comes in conflict with The Plan as espoused by The Church, you do Whatever the Hell You Want to Do; most memorably to me, two different standards on the morality of enjoying oral sex for its own sake (ie to the point of orgasm, and not as a facilitation of coitus); sinful when practice Between to Women (this is in line with the tenants of your faith) and not sinful when practiced between a Husband and Wife.
If I have misunderstood your position, I welcome your clarification and apologize for needling you.
— Tony Comstock · Sep 12, 02:52 PM · #
What I find most interesting is that there are two women who reguarly comment here. Matoko comments all the time about everything, Kate Marie almost only comments about Matoko’s comments. Why not Chet, KM? Why not Freddie? Why choose Matoko for your white whale?
Then again, do we ever really “choose” our whales?
— cw · Sep 12, 03:56 PM · #
“Manzi was right. Coyne was wrong.”
Emphasis on was, once the argument somehow moved in a direction from whether natural selection is evidence against a divine plan to whether natural selection is evidence against a divine plan that privileges human beings, then this was no longer the case.
And while evolution doesn’t rule out theism, it does force arguments for theism to retreat to subjective grounds like qualia and aesthetics. Which is kind of an annoyance for orthodox and fundamentalist sects that are grounded primarily in external authority (either a clerical hierarchy or ancient scripture).
— Consumatopia · Sep 12, 04:15 PM · #
“a divine plan that privileges human beings”
Whether by divine plan or random chance, we seem to be the only species in the known universe that has the capacity to intentionally alter our environment, apprehend those changes, and then project (as least some of) the consequences into the future. From a practical standpoint, I think that does put us in a privileged position and come with certain moral responsibilities (unless it really is the mice.)
My reservation about the whole Plan Idea is that in a way that sort of similar to people seem to be able to muster high levels of moral outrage about abortion, but are rather tepid the various plights of wanted children, unborn and born both, these Plans That Privilege Human Beings almost invariably turn out to be Plans That Privilege Some Human Beings Over Other Human Beings.
Of course that doesn’t mean that’s what Jim’s doing. But like his pet idiosyncratic community/conservative libertarian fusion idea, he’s got a pretty high threshold to overcome to convince me that His God’s Divine Plan isn’t a Plan to Put a Boot on My Neck and the Necks of People I Love. Hence my “Okay, let’s say there is a plan. Fine. Now what?”
I am counting the days till this latest vogue for atheism runs its course.
— Tony Comstock · Sep 12, 04:52 PM · #
most memorably to me, two different standards on the morality of enjoying oral sex for its own sake
Really, when have I commented to that effect, Tony? Can you cite a comment of mine to that effect? I don’t remember ever commenting on the morality of oral sex here. You seem obsessed with provoking me to comment on it. I can only conclude it’s because of assumptions you’ve made about me because I’m Catholic.
I’d ask you, in any event, to show me the money (cite where I’ve commented on oral sex) or kindly refrain from constantly associating me with oral sex in the comments here.
— Kate Marie · Sep 12, 05:01 PM · #
CW,
Almost everything you’ve said is incorrect.
First, Chet is a particular favorite of mine. I guess you haven’t been paying attention.
Second, while it’s true that Matoko comments about everything, it’s also true that she makes the same comment all the time, regardless of the subject matter.
As for Matoko being my white whale . . . what can I say? From hell’s heart I stab at her, bub.
— Kate Marie · Sep 12, 05:06 PM · #
One more time, this time with feeling!
If I have misunderstood your position, I welcome your clarification and apologize for needling you.
— Tony Comstock · Sep 12, 05:10 PM · #
Tony,
I’ve never stated any position on oral sex. You keep trying to get me to comment on a paper that you had me read — and which I did read, in good faith. I’ve asked you to clarify exactly what you wanted me to say about it. You haven’t done so. If what you’re trying to get me to say is whether I agree with the Catholic Church’s teaching on oral sex, then just ask. I must say, however, that I have no idea why you think that’s a relevant question. I have never supported any position I’ve argued here by saying, “We should do this, or not do this, because the Catholic church says so.”
So, yes, as far as I can tell, you have misunderstood my position, but beyond that, I have no idea what my “position” has to do with any argument I’ve ever made here.
Thank you for your apology.
— Kate Marie · Sep 12, 05:19 PM · #
Perhaps Mr. Manzi can explain why his statement is interesting. Science has not demonstrated non-existence of a divine plan. OK. Science also has not demonstrated non-existence of God. And also that under the surface of Mars does not live a civilization of blue penguins. So? Again, I submit that Coyne did not say “demonstrate” but “demolish.” I would say, science has not demonstrated the blue penguins conjecture to be false, but it fairly well demolished it, if you take Occam’s razor seriously. Same with the divine plan.
— phasearth · Sep 12, 05:58 PM · #
I just wanted to pop back in here and note that, in fact, these are all behaviors that we have observed in other species. The human phenomenon of cognition is unique, but only in so far as we do it better than other species; we’re not doing anything qualitatively different.
— Chet · Sep 12, 06:33 PM · #
Kate Marie,
About ten years ago I made a film about how people visualize God; what sort of picture people have in their mind when they pray or imagine what it might be like to stand in God’s presence; and how people’s images of God were changed by the Civil Rights movement, from a Sistine Chapel, stern faced graybeard to something more encompassing of the vast diversity of humanity and encompassing of the inscrutably of the human experience. One passage has stayed with me above all other part of the film, and for me functions as the fulcrum of the narrative.
In this passage we hear testimony from Sonny; an African-America lay preacher, a Southerner, and a veteran of some of the toughest fights of the struggle for racial equality. Sonny recounts finding himself at the bedside of a childhood friend who is dying of HIV/AIDS.
Sonny’s faith had sustained him through the Civil Rights struggles, but now his faith was an obstacle, because as sure as he was that God was with him in the marches, he was no less sure that God condemned his friends homosexuality, and that far worse awaited his friend when death finally released his body from the agony of his last days.
Not exactly an outlook from which to provide comfort to a dying man.
Of course Sonny had, as people sometimes do, a deathbed conversion. In his agonizing over his dying friend, he realized that he did not get to decide who got to go to heaven, that he did not know the mind of God, or apprehend God’s “divine plan.”
Upon seeing the footage for the first time, my response up to this point was, “Big fucking deal. Your friend is dying, and so you’re revising your faith to accommodate the needs of the moment.” An unremarkable, if human thing to do.
But Sonny continued, that not only did he not know who did or didn’t get into heaven, who God did or did not love, that it was a pretty safe bet that God loved a whole bunch of people who could be legitimately regarded as Sonny’s enemies; I remember him naming George Wallace and Newt Gingrich.
As I said, this passage became the fulcrum of the narrative – the idea that the call is to let go of knowing, and instead embrace love. That’s a Divine Plan I can get with, even if I have my doubts about whether there’s any plan at all.
And maybe that’s what Jim’s talking about.
— Tony Comstock · Sep 12, 06:49 PM · #
“I just wanted to pop back in here and note that, in fact, these are all behaviors that we have observed in other species. The human phenomenon of cognition is unique, but only in so far as we do it better than other species; we’re not doing anything qualitatively different.”
You mean there’s a chimp version of Equifax? Damn!
— Tony Comstock · Sep 12, 06:52 PM · #
Tony,
An eloquent comment and a moving story.
I’m not sure, though, whether you think my Catholic faith requires me to believe either that God doesn’t love Sonny’s friend, or that any human being can know who is going to heaven. Embracing love is a good thing, and there’s certainly nothing about it that’s antithetical to Catholicism.
I will confess that while I’m a big fan of love, I will not disavow the importance of judgment — and I’m not talking about Sonny’s friend, but about your earlier allusion to judgmental hypocrites. Anyway, I think the two things, love and judgment, are complementary to each other. Here’s a passage from an article of Roger Scruton’s that I like:
“We are moral beings, who judge one another and ourselves. We live under the burden of reproach and the hope of praise. All our higher feelings are informed by this—and especially by the desire to win favorable regard from those we admire. This ethical vision of human life is a work of criticism and emulation. It is a vision that all religions deliver and all societies need. Unless we judge and are judged, the higher emotions are impossible: pride, loyalty, self-sacrifice, tragic grief, and joyful surrender—all these are artificial things, which exist only so long as, and to the extent that, we fix one another with the eye of judgment. As soon as we let go, as soon as we see one another as animals, parts of the machinery of nature, released from moral imperatives and bound only by natural laws, then the higher emotions desert us. At the same time, these emotions are necessary: they endow life with meaning and form the bond of society.
Hence we find ourselves in a dangerous predicament. The emotions that we need cannot be faked; but the vision on which they depend—the vision of human freedom and of mankind as the subject and object of judgment—is constantly fading. And in these circumstances, there arises the temptation to replace the higher life with a charade, a moral conspiracy that obscures the higher life with the steam of the herd.”
— Roger Scruton, “Kitsch and the Modern Predicament,” City Journal, Winter 1999
— Kate Marie · Sep 12, 07:44 PM · #
“I will not disavow the importance of judgment”
Oh heavens no. I would never advocate for that! That would be insane! A couple of essay on judgment:
Accentuate the Positive, Eliminate the Negative?
Freedom’s Just Another Word for Nothing Left to Lose?
Also, I’m the most judgmental person I know. More than you could ever hope to imagine being. Seriously.
— Tony Comstock · Sep 12, 07:57 PM · #
Uh, well, yeah, there is. Chimpanzees, capuchins, and other primates can remember individuals they observed treat others unfairly and refuse to co-operate with those individuals in the future, or even punish them:
— Chet · Sep 12, 08:01 PM · #
KHatemarie is emblematic of the devolution of conservative intellectualism…like Brockman says in The Third Culture….she comments on comments…..exclusively. She never address the subject matter of the post…being incapable, on empirical observation.
Indeed, the traditional American intellectuals are, in a sense, increasingly reactionary, and quite often proudly (and perversely) ignorant of many of the truly significant intellectual accomplishments of our time. Their culture, which dismisses science, is often nonempirical. It uses its own jargon and washes its own laundry. It is chiefly characterized by comment on comments, the swelling spiral of commentary eventually reaching the point where the real world gets lost.
Indeed, this is also what Dr. Manzi is reduced to….comments on Dr. Coynes’ comments on Wrights Book.
— matoko_chan · Sep 12, 09:12 PM · #
And chimps dance, and chimps worship ……google waterfall displays.
— matoko_chan · Sep 12, 09:14 PM · #
Dr. Manzi…is a culture (ie conservative culture) which dismisses science survivable?
Perhaps it was in the 18th century…..perhaps even in the 20th….I do not think it is in the 21st.
— matoko_chan · Sep 12, 09:17 PM · #
Chet is talking about cheater detection.
It is part of the evolution of cooperation.
— matoko_chan · Sep 12, 09:21 PM · #
Indeed, this is also what Dr. Manzi is reduced to….comments on Dr. Coynes’ comments on Wrights Book.
LOL! Um, Matoko? Just exactly what is it that you think you’re doing? What you are doing is commenting on Dr. Manzi’s comments on Dr. Coyne’s comments on Wright’s book.
— Kate Marie · Sep 12, 09:28 PM · #
P.S. There is nothing either in Dr. Manzi’s argument nor in any of my comments that is dismissive of science. What I find striking is that many of the self-professed Champions of Science on these posts have appeared to react as if their faith — or shall I say their sense of “intellectual fulfillment”? — has been threatened. If you think Dr. Manzi’s point is trivial, that’s your prerogative, but in that case, what’s all the fuss about?
— Kate Marie · Sep 12, 09:51 PM · #
“P.S. There is nothing either in Dr. Manzi’s argument nor in any of my comments that is dismissive of science. What I find striking is that many of the self-professed Champions of Science on these posts have appeared to react as if their faith — or shall I say their sense of “intellectual fulfillment”? — has been threatened. If you think Dr. Manzi’s point is trivial, that’s your prerogative, but in that case, what’s all the fuss about?”
A little more than a year ago down in Australia there was a dust up over Bill Henson’s provocatively cropped nude photos of teenagers. Henson’s defenders said “What are you getting so upset about? If you see something unwholesome here, that’s in your mind.”
It was bullshit then and there, it’s bullshit here and now.
— Tony Comstock · Sep 12, 10:06 PM · #
Except, Tony, that I don’t think Jim’s post is really analogous to provocatively cropped photos of nude teenagers. Do you? Several people on this thread have said, basically, “If that’s your point, it may be correct, but it’s trivial.” Call me crazy, but I don’t get all riled up about points that I consider trivial in the way I might about photos I consider indecent, offensive or exploitive.
P. S. I read the posts you linked to and I like your brand of judgmentalism.
— Kate Marie · Sep 12, 10:23 PM · #
— Tony Comstock · Sep 12, 10:26 PM · #
6% of scientists of scientists are republicans.
68% of post baccs are democrats.
Do the math KHatemarie…..if you can.
— matoko_chan · Sep 13, 12:19 AM · #
Have threesomes with my wife and our au pair?
The answer to that is always yes.
— TW Andrews · Sep 13, 12:27 AM · #
And I am commenting on Dr. Manzi’s post.
I SAID I agree with Dr. Coyne….biological evolution does not preclude teleology, just the “i-am-not-a-monkey”/“privileged homo sap.” part of Manzi’s teleology.
Thought, speech w/e, are side-effects, not goals.
If the Real Most High designed evolution as a part of a system that privileges homo sap. , then evolution must privilege homo sap. as well…..to be consistant.
It simply doesn’t.
KHatemarie is always commenting on my comments or Chet’s comments or Tony’s comments.
She almost never comments on the actual post.
— matoko_chan · Sep 13, 12:39 AM · #
Sure. Genetic algorithms cannot contain hidden teleology. Any teleology must be explicit in the fitness function. In the case of evolution, no human-privileging teleology is present in natural selection. Ergo it cannot be consistent with a human-privileging plan.
— Chet · Sep 13, 12:43 AM · #
A link to an idiosyncratic community governed in accordance with its understanding of The Divine Plan.
I wonder if an ADA has ever left a card in the mailbox of a business in order to discourage them from selling Lotus Notes.
— Tony Comstock · Sep 13, 02:00 AM · #
And I am commenting on Dr. Manzi’s post.
Exactly. You’re commenting on Dr. Manzi’s post — which you described as a comment on a comment. Do the math … if you can.
If the Real Most High designed evolution as part of a plan that privileges homo sapiens, then evolution need only produce homo sapiens; it needn’t “privilege” homo sapiens — though you still haven’t defined what you mean by the term privilege. What if the Real Most High defines “privileging” as producing a creature capable of knowing Him?
I don’t know how they do things in the rarefied world of Substantial Substrate (though apparently they don’t bother with spelling), but defining your terms comes in pretty handy down here among us mortals, bub.
— Kate Marie · Sep 13, 02:09 AM · #
Well, no. Again, there’s no possibility of hidden teleology in a genetic algorithm. If you want a GA to do something, to produce something specific – to operate with a purpose – then that purpose has to be explicitly loaded into the fitness function. You see that in every GA application – the desired result is loaded into the fitness function. It has to be! How else could you select from each generation except by comparison to that explicit purpose?
Natural selection selects by fitness, by survivability – not towards human-ness, or even towards human-like intelligence. Ergo it’s inescapable that human evolution is a contingent accident. Rewind time, reset the conditions of the early Earth and allow evolution to proceed again, and humans would not have evolved.
Then He got lucky. There’s absolutely nothing in evolution that made human evolution inevitable. It’s a happy accident that we exist at all. Now, I’m guessing, but I suspect that luck isn’t how you believe God gets things done. “God doesn’t play dice”, etc. That’s why Coyne is substantially correct – evolution demolishes a teleological view of human evolution.
Anyway, are we even capable of “knowing” God? Seems like every time inconsistencies in the whole “God” business are pointed out, God is defended as an ineffable, inherently unknowable thing. If God’s plan was to evolve something that could know him – the motivation for an infinite being to care about being known by inferior ones is, of course, always left unstated – hasn’t that been a failure?
— Chet · Sep 13, 03:26 AM · #
A link to an idiosyncratic community governed in accordance with its understanding of The Divine Plan.
Yearning For Zion?
— matoko_chan · Sep 13, 03:47 AM · #
Chet,
First, I have to give credit where it’s due. You have behaved like a human being on this thread, and — miracle of miracles — it has made me far more willing to read what you have to say without prejudice. It’s almost enough to make me believe in a Creator. :)
Second, as Sanjay pointed out elsewhere, most people who believe in God believe both that God is omniscient and that God operates outside/independent of time. It’s not really “playing dice” if you know what number is going to come up; you’re not really relying on luck if you already know all the contingencies.
— Kate Marie · Sep 13, 04:11 AM · #
KHatemarie….let me try to explain this one more time.
There is no MES payoff for “being able to know and love god”.
The payoff is in DNA copies of the “privileged” organism and genetic variability and biomass.
Most successful at spamming copies of itself is evolutionary privilege.
It is simply irrelevant that humans think and talk and…..worship(lol) to the selfish genes.
As for the devolution of conservatism intellectualism……well…think of it as choosing teams.
Your side gets Leon Kass, my side gets Steven Pinker.
You get James Dobson, we get Scott Atran.
You get G-Dubya……we get Barack Obama.
Do you understand now?
The emergence of the Third Culture is going to kill off the GOP….well that, and secularization, and the demographic timers on old white people.
— matoko_chan · Sep 13, 04:33 AM · #
You see that in every GA application – the desired result is loaded into the fitness function. It has to be! How else could you select from each generation except by comparison to that explicit purpose?
I would put this another way. If the deity wanted human beings to serve as the zenith of creation, why not create a fitness function that directly favors human beings? Thinking that humans are a privileged part of the divine plan is like thinking the Devil put dinosaur bones in the ground to trick us—it’s logically possible, but obviously unreasonable.
— Consumatopia · Sep 13, 04:34 AM · #
Matoko,
I understood your “devolution of conservatism” idea (and I use the term lightly) the first time. I merely pointed out that your time seems to be spent doing exactly what you describe conservatives doing — commenting on comments. But that’s okay; I rarely expect you to be “consistant.” ;)
As for the teams. What a cute idea. All your quaint little phrases and ideas are so cute; in fact, they’re so cute, you should repeat them over and over again, so that we can all have the benefit of that old Matoko magic. I like the team-meme. It’s really, really cute! ;)
Could the teams have cheerleaders? Your team’s cheerleaders could chant “We’ve got substrate, yes we do! We’ve got substrate. How about you??!!!” and my team could chant “U-G-L-Y, you ain’t got no alibi, you ugly!” Not very original, I know, but it would probably be all my poor team could come up with. :(
Hey! I have a really cute idea, Matoko . . . If you’re looking for a way to make an original contribution, instead of commenting on comments (which is what you appear to spend all your time doing), you could write a really cute book about your team, and you could call it something like “The Team-Meme: Why My Team Is Better and Way Cooler Than Your Team, Lawls!” And you could have chapter headings like “We are the Smartest People in Existance!” That would be way cute!!! ;)
— Kate Marie · Sep 13, 05:43 AM · #
You get Glenn Beck….we get Megan Fox.
;)
— matoko_chan · Sep 13, 12:09 PM · #
You get the Young Cons …..we get Will I Am and Scarlett Johansson.
— matoko_chan · Sep 13, 01:04 PM · #
Then it seems incredibly inefficient to have basically set up the universe as the ultimate 8-Ball-In-The-Corner-Pocket bank shot, instead of simply creating it in its desired state (or a few days before, ala Genesis.)
Sure, sure. The Lord works in mysterious ways. I have no response to that except to point out that Sanjay, Manzi, and the rest seem to ignore the argument from ineffability when they want to attribute motivations and plans to the Almighty, but when it comes to the rest of us asserting how those motivations and plans seem inconsistent with the putative divine character, suddenly God is beyond all our understandings.
At any rate it seems fairly likely that the laws of physics themselves constrain what can be known about future conditions of the universe. It’s not merely a measurement or calculation problem. Now, omniescent means different things to different people. If it means God can know anything that can be known, that’s still not enough for him to know the future – because it can’t be known. On the other hand, if it means God can know anything at all, even impossible things, if God is not restrained by either logic or meaning (if God can both create a stone so large he can’t lift it and lift that very stone, in other words), then I suppose He can know whatever he wants to know. But I don’t see how we could know anything at all about such a God. Literally any sort of knowledge about that figure would be impossible.
— Chet · Sep 13, 04:59 PM · #
It came to me in a vision last night: God wants Chet to have an 800 credit score.
— Tony Comstock · Sep 13, 06:05 PM · #
These comments are really incomprehensible. Are these supposed to be jokes, of some kind? Surely, of all the comments I’ve made here, there are more likely candidates for mockery than a few I made about credit reporting a couple of months ago. Maybe Kate could help you out, there.
— Chet · Sep 13, 06:42 PM · #
KM-
“First, I have to give credit where it’s due. You (Chet) have behaved like a human being on this thread, and — miracle of miracles — it has made me far more willing to read what you have to say without prejudice. “
What Matoko was trying to say (and I agree) is that you are a basically a troll, at least as far as Matoko is concerned. You main efforts here are directed at fucking with Matoko. That is troll behavior. It’s all about getting some emotional need met by creating conflict with an individual.
So, I don’t think you can be playing the colligiality card with any credibility.
— cw · Sep 13, 07:18 PM · #
“Maybe Kate could help you out, there.”
You mean Kate can get Sanjay to (finally) send me some of that coffee he’s so goddamned proud of? Kate, have you got that kind of suction with the master roaster?
— Tony Comstock · Sep 13, 08:05 PM · #
I wish, Tony.
— Kate Marie · Sep 13, 11:44 PM · #
CW,
Cry me a river.
I don’t play the “collegiality card.” I’m collegial with people who are collegial with me. Thus, I meant what I said to Chet. With people whose modus operandi seems to be to call other commenters “stupid, two digit liar“s and (without having any idea about my position on immigration and on a thread that had nothing to do with immigration) despisers of “messican anchor babies,” I am . . . not collegial, and I feel no obligation to be.
I consider Matoko to be a troll at TAS. She makes the same juvenile comments over and over again, regardless of the subject matter of the post. You have only to look at her responses to Conor’s post about the 9/12 protests — which make up over 50% of the comments to that post thus far — to see the pattern. She’s a big girl with Big Substrate. I figure she understands the law of dishing it out.
— Kate Marie · Sep 13, 11:54 PM · #
“I consider Matoko to be a troll at TAS.”
So it’s your job to keep on her tail, makes sure everyone knows that she is repeating herself and that we shouldn’t listen to her. That’s your portfolio, huh? Troll Patrol.
— cw · Sep 14, 01:20 AM · #
Troll Patrol? Hey, I like it! It even sounds Matokoesque. Apparently, your job is to police the Troll Patrol. Whatever floats your boat, dude.
— Kate Marie · Sep 14, 01:38 AM · #
Jeez. Back from the worst trip in history, then a nice week off the grid with the kids on the outer banks, and you’re still on this. More annoyingly TAS started apparently, a discussion of an awesome piece of writing, and I missed that too. OK.
I’m disappointed that I didn’t make something clear initially: I both understood Manzi to be making the limited claim he makes (again) above initially, and I agree with it.
That said his genetic algorithm example remains silly, and I am also disappointed I didn’t make the point clear. It’s nothing to do with the complexity or degrees of freedom, which Manzi has acknowledged from the start but which I don’t think relevant: I appreciate the thinking that says, look, I can solve this simple problem so let’s just figure the complicated one works the same way. [It’s a mark of just how incoherent/illiterate makoto has become that she keeps telling us Manzi is repeating the tired old “but life is too complex for evolution!” argument: Manzi’s pretty clearly brushed that off from the start, and good for him.] It’s what Manzi mentions above about the problem changing. The genetic algorithm is in some sense linear: you evaluate fitness versus a constant functional and minimize something. There’s no feedback: the functional has no dependence on the input. [Caveat: there are versions of GAs where you ramp up the problem dependent on how fit the input functions have gotten, but that’s still linear.] Evolution has a ridiculous amount of feedback: the genome changes the relevant part of the environment and so in some sense “natural selection” is wrong and the genome selects itself. [I took a seminar with Stephen Jay Gould many, many years ago and of course this was his claim to fame: starting with the explanation that Darwin is, in this profound sense, wrong, though the core of the idea is profound and strong. So the irony here is I suspect Darwin himself would agree exactly with Manzi’s analogy, but the complexity of the situation escaped Darwin.] Manzi says, well, sure, but so what, in some very very local way natural selection is always doing the linear thing in some small enough local neighborhood (NB I’m not sure that’s true and nobody else is either). So he hasn’t seen any evidence that the flaw in the analogy has bearing.
Which is silly. I mean, sure, you always have to show that you’re using a model in the realm where its assumptions work. But clearly you aren’t. Evolution as it concerns the creationist has to do with how sponges become penguins become pangolins. And clearly those three things are on nowhere near the same page as regards their fitness functions, to say nothing of the environmental changes also in the relevant timescale. So I think sticking to the local model is so obviously bogus that there’s a pretty significant burden of proof in showing why it isn’t so.
I am reminded of neural networks, where people took a crude insight from neurobiology and used it to design circuits that have all kinds of fascinating behavior and can solve some types of problems very very well. All well and good, and then for a while it became very very cool to use neural nets to “figure out” stuff about how actual brains worked. Almost all of which figuring out, of course, you could bet with glee and abandon would turn out to be bogus, and indeed that’s how it played out. Let’s not repeat that error with evolution.
The other place where Manzi is wrong — this time echoing many critics — is in discussions of QM. I can’t make quantum mechanics — or any mechanics — relevant here. God doesn’t measure anything. Hell, if He did, you still don’t need quantum: just take that vast nonlinearity mentioned above, big timescales relevant to organism generations, and any uncertainty at all makes the whole game bogus — classically. People have just been invoking quantum as some kind of black magic.
Even if you forgot that the use of QM arguments to make uncertainty is just silly. God supposedly knows the state of everything in the universe at the Big Bang, right? I mean, He made it, that’s the idea. And quantum is pretty deterministic so, game over. God isn’t worried about uncertainty. Or again, God supposedly doesn’t play in time, so He can use a later measurement (more on this below). Or again, God is all-pervading, right? So does He entangle everything? Or again, He can be in a privileged reference frame where hidden vectors can in fact be resolved: QM allows this. Or…
But I don’t even know it’s ever smart to invoke QM here: even Millman went wrong. People are thinking, geez, QM’s got something to do with bonds, bonds got something to do with DNA… it’s goofy. Uncertainty works real well for very very small things. I don’t know that uncertainty arguments apply to significant genetic changes like formation of some big Holliday junction between chromosomes — and tempting though it no doubt is for some ass to tell me I don’t know what I’m talking about, the fact that right now you have a group making headline news in science journals for wanting to put a small virus into an indeterminate state, tells you that basically all of physics feels the same way about it as me. And I know quantum arguments don’t help you a lot with the probably more critical and chance-like events which determine evolution, in which Bessie just decided to eat the mushroom on the left today or Simba thought that that particular gazelle had nice tasty haunches or Thag really, really should’ve known that the ice was too thin.
Unless you want to go all angels-on-a-hairpin and say, sure, but even Thag’s decision comes down to one photon and one neurochemical and one instant in time and then it’s all just straight-up chemistry like Netwonian pool balls. But that’s dumb because at that point you’re not just fighting God, you’re fighting evolution. You got no need for it. Evolution’s just a summary, a shortcut around vast numbers of statistical events. Sometimes the wron g bee gets lucky, and keeps getting lucky, maybe long enough for situations to change, or sometimes things get stuck in a weird local optimum, or… If you want to talk about science at the level where individual quantum events shape biomes, you don’t need evolution, and at that impossible level of precision it would be wrong or at least useless.
Basically I don’t know how to use physics arguments (and I am pretty trained to use physics arguments, and make them professionally, and the only serious arguments my wife and I have ever had, actually, have been about things like QM, so I spend way too much time thinking about this stuff) to ``disprove’‘ God’s existence. And if it’s hard to do with physics you can bet your sweet ass that anyone who says it can be done with some biological principle, is full of it.
As regarding any information I did or didn’t give about God’s motives — well, that’s mostly because the discussion puts me (and I think Manzi) in an awkward place. I’m not a creationist. I guess I’m not not one, either — that’s just not the framework — that either/or there — that makes a lot of sense to me as regards how I think the universe works, and I do in my way find it profoundly illogical. Millman got at that; I’m not Abrahamic. So it’s tricky because I basically agree that if you have to cast the question that way, then: Manzi’s assertion about evolution by natural selection not prohibiting divine design of humans as a priviliged species, is correct. But while I think it’s not prohibited by evolution I still think it’s garbage so I’m in an odd spot.
But I can offer a lot of reasons God might “work” with evolution.
The easy one is the one I gave before. God is outside time. Almost every believer thinks that. Hindu scripture has God make kala, time — in fact it is one of his forms. One of Vishnu’s thousand names is, Lord of what was, is, and shall be. Chet thinks that knowledge of the future is forbidden by physics. He’s obviously wrong. Show me a rocket moving at constant velocity through space and I can predict its motion for all time. Until it hits something, I suppose, and if I know where everything else is and how it’s moving — I’m good. There’s a misapprehension that QM fucks this up: it doesn’t. Quantum is wonderfully deterministic and states of things time-evolve nicely and I discussed above reasons why it doesn’t apply anyway. There’s no problem with logic here. An even then I’m probably doing something unnecessary because again I don’t think religion depicts God as predicting the future with certainty (which physics, again, allows). God knows the future. He’s there, and here, and in the past, because he’s outside the flow of time. This is no more illogical than the Sphere in Flatland’s moving in the third dimension. Physics, and logic, are cool with it.
But even if you wanted to say, no, God can’t play Doctor Who — tweak conditions here, pop into the future to see what you get, go back and screw with conditions again, and just keep doing it over and over until you get Jessica Biel’s hair just right — I can still come up with ways (sorta Abrahamic) conceptions of God meet up well with natural selection. I can’t do it if you read the scripture very, very literally but as I’ve discussed those people have significant problems without evolution.
Off the top of my head for example: convergent evolution is real, and real significant: even in directed evolution type experiments you use it and inform results with it. So maybe God’s not particularly interested in making us out of monkeys or whatever else but has set conditions so that evolution is very very likely to produce something of our rough lifespan and stature, and more importantly of our rough intelligence and way of seeing the world. I wouldn’t want to have to prove that but I wouldn’t want to argue against it either. So the world is set up to make something kind of mannish. I think from an Abrahamic perspective that argument would be kind of seductive: what matters is not man’s exact genetic makeup — he could’ve been a plant! — but his intellectual makeup and capabilities. That segues very nicely to Millman’s evocation of Behemoth [which gives me an excuse to send you to this ] doesn’t it? And it’s also seductive because there’s been a lot, kicking around sociobiology fronts, of trying to explain man’s moral or cultural frameworks with natural selection arguments, so again, from an Abrahamic standpoint, it suggests that God created the universe and set up evolution so as to generate man’s moral, logical framework, and it’s just luck that we didn’t also have scales, which depending on what you’re into would’ve been cool.
Tony: I know. I’m back home. Gotta order green beans next week anyway as I get my life together. Send me an address. Or stop bitching. Take your pick.
— Sanjay · Sep 14, 03:12 AM · #
Sanjay, Dr. Manzi and I have been arguing about genetic non-determinism and free will for at least a year now.
Both here and in mail.
I just pointed out his position on freewill and genetic non-determinism is inconsistant with the concept of an omniscient planner that is tweaking the MES to get humans as an outcome.
— matoko_chan · Sep 14, 03:40 AM · #
I think perfect knowledge is forbidden by physics, and I’m pretty sure that’s correct. Your rocket model will be accurate for some short period of time, but as you try to predict farther and farther into the future, the tiny errors you made in the initial measurements – ambiguity and uncertainty in your understanding of initial conditions – lead to greater and greater deviation from the model.
Like I said, if you believe God is limited to doing only what can be done and knowing only what can be known, then even God is limited in terms of his knowledge of any initial conditions, because that is a limitation inherent to the universe. If God can know the future, it can only be because he’s a God who is entirely without limit, even limits of logic or meaningfulness – a God who can have a colorless green idea – and we can’t have meaningful knowledge about such a being, so we might as well be agnostics.
— Chet · Sep 14, 03:53 AM · #
I am not assuming that Riddick believes what he is saying n/e ways.
I suspect it is a “show argument”, in the nature of a “show trial”, designed to give some shreds of intellectual dignity to the pathetic loozer team on the right.
Like Reihan…Riddick keenly feels the unfairness of it all…the low information base needs memetic representation too, they reason.
Alas, like Sir Richard said, memes are competitive, and for a meme to dominate the human brain, it must do so at the expense of other memes.
— matoko_chan · Sep 14, 03:56 AM · #
Send an address to where? My name lights up in a red, clickable link; making getting in touch with me, by phone or e-mail, a snap for anyone with sufficient substrate. But getting in touch with you? You’re Sanjay of the unclickable name. So what do I do? Pray real hard and hope an aberrant QM event changes the atoms in your neural network in just the right way that you suddenly know where to send the coffee? Talk about a divine plan!
But if you can’t bear to have comstockfilms.com in your browser history, try tony at comstock films dot com or too won too nine fife sex tree too too sex.
And I don’t need it now. I need it in about six weeks, and enough to make coffee three guys for two or three weeks. We’re going on a long boat trip, and our very lives may depend on it.
— Tony Comstock · Sep 14, 03:57 AM · #
And golly jee…..there is no satisfying KHatemarie I guess….I came up with a an entirely new thought today, one that I had never thunk before….
The welfare state is just the public option for religion.
Now I have said it twice…..sowwy.
:(
In the High and Far-Off times, O Best Beloved, Conservatives were not as they are known today. But there was one Conservative—a new Conservative—a Conservative’s Child—who was full of ‘satiable curtiosity, and that means she asked ever so many questions.
…and thought ever so many bizarre and inappropriate guerilla thoughts.
;)
— matoko_chan · Sep 14, 04:28 AM · #
Matoko,
I do believe you think you’re saying something new and original every time you comment here.
And that actually worries me, since it makes me think that perhaps my Matoko-mocking is cruel. Maybe you can’t help it. Maybe you can’t help in a way that’s similar to all those poor substrate-challenged fools whose extinction you like to envision.
— Kate Marie · Sep 14, 04:49 AM · #
nah……it doesn’t worry you.
It is just more magical (ie, wistful) thinking…..you don’t actually have the substrate to either mock me OR cogently argue against my positions, so all you can do is troll meh and pretend you’re scoring points.
— matoko_chan · Sep 14, 05:20 AM · #
Really, Matoko? You mean I’m stoooooopid? But, of course. That’s the best my team is capable of, remember?
P.S. “Wistful thinking?” LOL, but I do pity you.
— Kate Marie · Sep 14, 05:36 AM · #
But, Chet, for the fifth time or so — nobody thinks God measures anything. That’s why it’s hard to use physics. Omniscience is a bitch to model. God doesn’t measure the speed of the rocket, He knows it. He even knows things, supposedly, that you can’t measure: like the Shadow, he knows what lurks in men’s hearts and/or arse-ropes. Your argument also falls down because (1) the errors you’d have in predicting motion are at worst linear and (2) even with a measurement you could’ve forced that error down arbitrarily by making the measurement further and further apart in time, and — time, remember? Worse, the quantum you’ve been misusing would actually bite against you here: measure, say, the angular momentum of an electron in a free hydrogen atom, and once you’ve got that measurement it has no error: the allowed values are quantized. Except I suppose the error in fundamental constants but presumably God knows those and even expresses them in super-bitchen units where they’re rational. Or maybe not, what does God care if they’re rational? Granted, a bigger system has a hell of a density of states but that’s just complexity. Again, this is just an intellectual exercise because there’s no measurement: but the physics cuts against, not for, you.
Saying that giving God such vast freedom to manipulate science makes the concept of God irrelevant — “we might as well be agnostics” — is silly. Yes, if all I want to get out of meditation is how turbulence works. But the issues most people are concerned with are not necessarily ones where science is very useful: they’re issues of morality or aesthetics or emotion. I don’t think we study science for a whole lot of insight into God , and by the same token I think, well, sure, “we might as well be agnostics” when we’re trying to come up with a good model for fluid flow on a dragonfly wing, but, so what?
— Sanjay · Sep 14, 12:36 PM · #
Matoko and Chet:
If you take only one piece of advice from me in this lifetime, let it be this: Do not argue with Sanjay. He is much much smarter and more thoughtful than any of the three of us.[*] (And if you can’t see it, then I am much much smarter than you.)
Engage him, but if you haven’t learned something by the end of the discussion, then you’re not approaching it correctly.
[*] Small caveat – if my private hypothesis as to Matoko’s identity and project is correct, then remove one “much” in her case.
— J Mann · Sep 14, 02:06 PM · #
Wow, JMann. Thanks. That’s more than a little humbling, and very appreciated, especially since I’m still recovering from a lot of travel. It’s less a smart thing and more a devastatingly handsome thing, though: so much so that it clouds your judgement through the network. No, really.
Hell, I should send your ass some coffee to spite Tony.
— Sanjay · Sep 14, 02:16 PM · #
Sir Richard and Karen Armstrong piling on.
Sanjay, Dr. Riddick….your attention please?
— matoko_chan · Sep 14, 04:06 PM · #
“Saying that giving God such vast freedom to manipulate science makes the concept of God irrelevant — “we might as well be agnostics” — is silly. Yes, if all I want to get out of meditation is how turbulence works. But the issues most people are concerned with are not necessarily ones where science is very useful: they’re issues of morality or aesthetics or emotion. I don’t think we study science for a whole lot of insight into God , and by the same token I think, well, sure, “we might as well be agnostics” when we’re trying to come up with a good model for fluid flow on a dragonfly wing, but, so what?”
And Jesus answering said unto them, Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s. And they marvelled at him.
Somewhere in the vast expanse of the Atlantic ocean a man keeps watch, long hour after long hour in hostile weather. He had anticipated help with the watchkeeping, but his companions suffered misfortune; one disabled by a what seems to be a stroke, and the other taken down by seasickness. When the weather is fair, they can take their turns for a short while, but when it turns foul, they are forced to retreat to the shelter and safety of the boat’s interior.
What is it that sustains this fellow through this trial? Well a sense of devotion to his friends of course, and a profound desire to see the journey through.
But also there is the coffee, coffee unlike he has ever tasted before, which he brews, two mug-fulls at a time on a small, fourway gimbaled stove. Not only is the flavor and potency sustaining, but the knowledge of its source. For this coffee came to him as a gift, an act of friendship and solidarity from someone who is in fact a stranger. The man takes a sip, noticing how very warm the coffee is, filling his chest with heat on a raw November day.
But this cup was brewed and poured more than an hour ago, and were a thermometer inserted into the cup, the reading would show that the temperature of cup’s contents match the temperature of the wind and the rain. The man knows this, and would not argue elsewise. He is warmed by the coffee none the less.
— Tony Comstock · Sep 14, 04:13 PM · #
Sanjay:
I used to play a lot of baseball when I was kid, and very occasionally (and in my case only through dumb luck) I would hit a pitch so perfectly that the bat wouldn’t vibrate at all, it would just drive the ball exactly where I wanted it on the field. That’s what I thought about the “God doesn’t measure things, God knows things” line with regard to QM and non-determinism. Awesome. In my post, I tried to avoid creating consensus on the “is QM non-deterministic?” argument, and limited myself simply pointing out that however one answers this question, it doesn’t lead him to conclude that evolution precludes teleology.
I agree with a whole lot of what you say in your comment. The main item that I have a question for you on is to request greater clarity on this section:
I don’t think that I’m claiming that “in some very very local way natural selection is always doing the linear thing in some small enough local neighborhood”. I think I can see, though, that a natural reading of what I wrote would lead an informed reader to conclude that. Let me take a hypothetical example to make sure I understand your criticism based on non-linearity. Let’s say we have a stylized GA that, as they are typically written, has a module of code that establishes fitness and another module that generates genomes, applies the fitness module, does crossover, mutation and so forth. Why could we not have the fitness function be some arbitrarily complicated combination of rules totally independent of the genomes (e.g., generate a partial fitness value by comparing the third gene position of the genome to the fifth significant digit of the current time according to the NIST clock, and combine this with many other partial fitness values developed according to various other rules related to temperature, distribution of human hair colors in Virginia, etc. in order to develop a fitness value for each individual in the population), and information from the genomes (e.g., add the value of the twenty-second gene position of 15th most fit genome of the prior generation to the fifth significant digit of the current time, and then compare this to the value of the thrid gene position in the genome in order to create a partial fitness value, and then combine this with many other partial fitness values to create a fitness value for this organism)? I’m not clear on exactly what you mean by “still linear”, but this seems to me to be able to account, in principle, for the kinds of effects you are describing. What am I missing?
— Jim Manzi · Sep 14, 04:48 PM · #
Look, I’m not saying that God grabs a ruler to determine my height, but there has to be some means by which knowledge about the state of the universe is communicated to God. God can’t know more about the universe than the universe “knows” about itself; God can’t have a more specific and accurate model of the universe than the universe itself is. Whatever knowledge He has that exceeds the universe is merely his imagination (or perhaps knowledge about other universes or something.)
The angular momentum of elections in valence orbits doesn’t strike me as the relevant case, here.
But, you know, whatever. Let’s assume for a moment that you’re right – God knows the unknowable future. Sanjay’s figured it out where no one else has been able to. (It’s worth pointing out that almost nobody truly believes that God exists in all points in time, or that his knowledge of the future is as perfect as his knowledge of the present – otherwise, why would anyone bother with intercessory prayer? Why would the Bible contain so many instances of God changing His mind in the light of supplication or new information?) The problem is, like I said, we can have literally no knowledge whatsoever about a God whose actions are completely without meaningful limits.
I mean you can say that God hates immorality and desires us to act out of goodness and love. But God has no limits, not even limits of sense! Therefore to say that God hates immorality is no obstacle or contradiction to saying also that God loves immorality and desires us to be bad to each other. “It has to be one or the other!” you might say. Well, no – to say that it must is to put a limit on God. And your God is without limits!
Your God is a God about whom nothing can be known at all. Absolutely nothing! We are literally without knowledge of your God; ergo, we must all be agnostics (“a” + “gnosis”, “without knowledge”).
Your God is no more applicable to any of those issues than models of fluid dynamics. We can’t know God’s position on any issue of morality because, as you’ve defined Him, he must always be firmly on every side of the issue – even the mutually exclusive sides. (“That makes no sense”, you reply, but again – you’ve posited a God who cannot be limited even by what makes sense.)
— Chet · Sep 14, 08:06 PM · #
The dinosaurs lasted much, much longer than people (or large mammals) have. Evolution, seemingly, had settled on them as the most fit large land animals. It’s only through a bizarre fluke that objects colliding in the outer solar system unleashed the large object which plummeted into the Yucatan and brought the dinosaurs to an end. There was nothing unfit about them and there’s no way we’ve improved on them from a fitness standpoint. If it weren’t for that catastrophic impact, the world would still be full of dinosaurs and small mammals today. The idea that there was a divine plan for a vast, vast stretch of dinosaur history, punctuated by a brief (and as far as we know, very temporary) period of mammal history (which in turn has the tiniest sliver of an afterword populated by human beings) — and that the whole point of the entire thing was the tiny, tiny, tiny bit which featured humans — honestly, it’s just transparently silly. Yes, you can invent tortuous lines of thought to support the obvious — science doesn’t “RULE OUT” the possibility that some big magic guy (a kind of dumb and disorganized deity, apparently) planned all this from the beginning just to arrive at that miniscule bit of human history toward the end. But seriously, why would you want to? It just makes you seem foolish. Haven’t you anything better to do? I mean, really. Yes, “in theory,” a lot of things can’t be absolutely ruled out. Unless you’re an author of fantasy fiction and you’ve thought up a particularly entertaining or amusing one, why waste so much time saying “yeah but you can’t prove it AIN’T so!” Yeah, you can’t prove there isn’t an invisible giant teapot orbiting the sun either. So? Don’t you have enough common sense to recognize when something is, in sane terms, vanishingly unlikely, and therefore not worthy of churning out multiple long wordy essays about algorithms and whatnot? What a misuse of mental resources.
— Mike Cagle · Sep 14, 08:31 PM · #
Very quick @ Chet: You’ve misepresented what I’ve said. I just made a comment about time. I don’t think I made the equivalent comment about morality or logic: in fact I implied the opposite. I think you’ve grossly misrepresented the mainstream position on Biblical thought but it’s not my bailiwick so I’m not going to argue it.
@ makoto: I can’t imagine this being of interest except to makoto, @Manzi will follow in another post, those uninterested in inside baseball can skip ahead. It’s a fast day so I can type while the fam eats dinner.
OK, I went to the WSJ link. More on that shortly.
I don’t much like you. But I waste a lot of effort trying to help people out – I’m a public servant and I am probably seriously misguided. And I try to be a professional and considerte of people in science. And I think I owe you one serious answer. This is it. I would like to believe you’ll read it carefully and thoughtfully.
Some time past before my break Chet, in his usual asinine way, insisted that my credibility vis-a-vis scientific issues was crumbling while “everyone” agreed with his much more informed view. Obviously that’s stupid and I blew it off; that’s how Chet talks, and I’ve got some years on me and a fair idea what my scientific credibility is or isn’t, and how it comes across, and many of the readers here are quite perceptive, so Chet’s 180 degrees off. But let’s suppose I’d thought Chet might be right or even 1/3 right. What would I do?
The answer is, I’d stop posting here, pretty much immediately, and permanently. I’m a professional, I have fora where I’m expected to know a lot of science well. If for whatever reason — maybe genuine ignorance, maybe constraints of trying to write for a certain audience, whatever — it looked like I was writing in a way really ignorant of science here, and people connected that writing to me — it would hurt me professionally, badly. Nothing I might say here is in any way worth that. It’s a no-brainer. That’s one reason I don’t really weigh in on blog posts in my areas of expertise unless someone says something so obviously, thoroughly wrong (as with Chet’s physics) that it’s a safe brush-off, or someone stays at a sufficient level of technical description (as with Manzi) that I can work that the way I do routinely. I’d rather post on political or literary blog items where I’m not supposed to know a lot and can safely say something dumb.
OK. I pointed out a bit ago that you’ve repeatedly and often now accused Manzi of using the Intelligent Designer’s ``the eye is so complicated, it must have been designed’‘ trope. That accusation is amazing because not only has Manzi not used it, he’s used pretty much the opposite: he’s arguing from a simple problem and saying, look, the complicated problem is still at heart the same thing. And he and I have been arguing about that, and he’s devoted a lot of his blog post to reiterating that point, and still you make the error. Honestly: what do you think that does to your credibility? Which is why my general, honest thought about makoto — what I think of you — is, ``so wrapped up in political hatred that she can’t read. Functionally illiterate.’‘ I use those words precisely and thoughtfully. So I blow off what you write because I generally doubt anything you’ve seen means what you think it means. Illiteracy, after all. I try to translate, so “I’ve been arguing this in mail with Manzi for a year” becomes, “I’ve been sending Manzi annoying emails,” for example.
So: you tell me about “Sir Richard and Karen Armstrong piling on.” And, honestly, I guffawed. I mean: I’ve read some Karen Armstrong, and so my immediate thought is, boy, it’s very, very unlikely that she’s supporting makoto’s side of the argument. Mind you, I’m not sure why I care what she has to say about biology — if I find out that I think one thing and Armstrong another about what natural selection is, I don’t think that that inspires me even slightly to question my views — but OK. I went to WSJ and this is what I read:
Karen Armstrong says, natural selection really constrains our perseption of the divine: that certain ideas of what God is must be altered or discounted in light of it. Which is, actually, something Manzi explicitly stated himself above (he got it from a comment I made to his original post, and he didn’t credit me because he’s a fucking engineer, but still). So he (and I) are 100% with Armstrong. Then she actually goes on to say that (1) great (and pre-Darwin!) Christian thinkers have paved the way for reconciling natural selection and evolution — wow, it’s like she’s rading Manzi! — and (2) that for her natural selection strengthens, rather than weakening, a vision of the divine, and she deliberately likens her sense of divinity to the science of natural selection. Armstrong is piling on, all right. She’s piling on you. Not on Manzi. How are you reading it so wrong? The WSJ even gave you a helpful headline. The only nubbin you have is, she concedes that man isn’t evolution’s end product — but she doesn’t say anything about that, just that assertion, and again, Armstrong isn’t exactly a biologist.
On to Dawkins. Dawkins tells us that natural selection removes the need for God, that you don’t have to invoke a divine explanation for the rise of diverse biological life. Which, again, Manzi explictly says. All good. No piling on from Dawkins here. He goes on to say, so God’s got nothing to do (which seems a little hard-headed: surely there’s stuff to do in the Universe besides evolving things? And there’s a difference between saying you don’t need God to explain the diversity of life, and that God has been proven not to cause the diversity of life, which Dawkins does not say. The best he can say is, why would you have a smart God twiddling his thumbs? But it’s “all but ruled out.” Not “ruled out.”) So again, Dawkins seems not really at odds with Manzi except in that, sure, Dawkins is a pretty hard-ass atheist.
So you misread. Again. And again. And again. And I think you’ve rendered yourself almost unable to think clearly.
Should you care what I think? I dunno. Probably not. You aren’t reading this seriously and even if you are you aren’t really, as far as I can tell, able to read, for all effective purposes. But, well, if you really see the world that left/right tribally (which is dumb), then, I bat for your team. I’ve been lucky at a few things and I even know a couple people who carry some weight on that team. And if you really want to play at science, well, I’ve been lucky at that game too, and often, and I’ve had the honor of some great mentors and students. It’s probably doing you real, irrevocable damage if guys like me think, not worth listening to her. And mostly I’m a generally happy guy with an incredible wife I don’t deserve and nice kids: I think I’m about as happy and well-adjusted as they come. So it probably should bother you I say, I agree with Kate whats-her-name: I pity you. No, really: I read your shit, and think, damn, here’s someone who should be able to work her brain, and isn’t. And it saddens me. Fer real.
OK. Post your snot-nosed, snarky, no-caps answer with lots of “teh internets” in it. But if you do yourself damage, my conscience is now clean.
— Sanjay · Sep 14, 09:10 PM · #
Why is this debate even interesting? It’s an argument without a resolution because it is rooted in unprovable assumptions.
Why don’t those who argue for theology just assert that their concept of ‘God’ is the intelligent creator of their souls, and leave it at that. Then we can argue without or not the soul actually exists, which is equally as pointless.
— D. Archangel · Sep 14, 09:28 PM · #
Sanjay,
Not only do I agree with J Mann that you’re much smarter than just about everyone else who writes here, but I also think it’s obvious that you’re devastatingly handsome, as well.
And I don’t even want any coffee.
— Kate Marie · Sep 14, 09:39 PM · #
@Manzi:
Thanks for responding.
We’ve gone over this ground a couple times and I’m not being clear, apparently. Let me lay out a sequence. First I’m going to discuss a practical objection to the effect that the kind of modification you’re proposing undermines your case. Then I’m going to delve whether or not you could make an adequate model. Then if I do this right I’ll come back to, how does that affect your case?
OK: here’s the practical problem. When you were using the factory lights analogy the code was being designed to produce a particular thing. No surprise, that was your point: you can make a particular thing you want, solve a problem, with evolutionish means. Natural selection does that too and the dung beetles’ horns get bigger and bigger incrementally (say). But with the kind of example you’re givning me below, what exactly is it you’ll make? Nothing, right? Nothing predictable. Because you’re using some weird functional dependent on the genes themselves and who knows what it’ll produce. There’s not a lot of market for algorithms that produce just plain something, so it’s not something the GA does. You’re beginning to outline a way you can set into motion a process, but with no real sureness where it ends up or ability to design a particular thing. To which the people sniping at you here and at Sullivan’s will, I imagine, say “thank you.” You’re undermining your own example.
And the funny thing is you still haven’t captured the complexity of the feedback. Not by a bit. So let’s look at what a good model has to do. For one thing, it’s nor enough to make the functional dependent on the input (group). I mean, yes, that’s feedback, and yes, that kind of feedback occurs in evolution. But the functional form itself is very highly dependent upon the input: so, oh, if the third gene poition is such-and so, then the fifth and eight gene positions matter, but if not, then they don’t, and oh by the way the twelfth and tenth gene positions have to covary, and … that is to say, the environment part of environmental selection is surprisingly minimal (most of the time. Then something crappy happens, a meteor hits the earth, whatever, and the rules change). SJG used to illustrate that by talking about how different types of animals — a thrush, a snail, a spider, say — view my backyard, and what “environmental selection” means to each. Or by noting that you and your dog don’t typically harbor the same ticks for long: they are specialized for very different thermal/humidity environments and don’t compete. Now, reading through all the genes and making a selection functional is still a Turing machine, right? You can make that algorithm. NB I’m really talking here, still, about short-timescale events in some ways. If I put your nose on sideways it might have a very slight effect on your environmental fitness and maybe that would be reflected long term in whether or not you pass on your genes. But, well, probably most of the women around you would find it very, well, unappealing and because of that effect — where the selection is not something enironmental but something in the genes of the other people in the pool — external to you but still in the input — is likely to in short term play hell with your reproductive success. So that fitness function depends on each genome individually and on the cluster.
Of course it gets worse. A real flaw in what you present is that the selection functional is the same for all the inputs. But that’s not how it works. This little hummingbird here gets clever and instead of getting better at harvesting flower X — for which he and his fellows are competing — decided to start using flower Y. So suddenly you really can’t apply the same functional to all the group: different mambers get different ones. Of course you could model this with a sufficiently complex functional (if this gene and this gene then apply this selection, if this gene and this one then apply this other selection) but it gets messy because you almost have the result in hand before starting to cover all your bases. And guess what, speciation is a mess, and maybe the hummingbird breeds back into the general population, and some of his descendents can’t use flower Y, and some can… this is why speciation is such a holy war in biology even though (non-goofy) biologists agree on the general mechanism of natural selection. What the input then does — well, it doesn’t resemble what happens with some simple GA even if you have a high mutation temperature. Things can change ridiculously rapidly, or go to weird non-optimal solutions — all kinds of weird things crop up in the real fossil record. And that’s the timescale, and the kind of process, you need to address.
Can you still incorporate all that feedback? Well, in theory. In practice there’s a lot of slugging going on in the literature with clever programmers trying to do just that.
But once you do that, well: I challenge you to give me an example of incorporating that level of path-and-input-dependece into your algortihm (bearing in mind that the original example doesn’t have any) and have any remote idea what the algorithm will produce. To which you can shrug and say, well, sure, but maybe God can work that out. And indeed maybe He can. But it still leaves you without a good example of a process resembling the one He’s got to grapple with, where you can actually say there’s a plan. You don’t have something which serves the function the original example served for you, and that example threw out the parts of evolution which make he kind of change the ID’ers are interested in, possible, so it’s no good. Better to proceed without the example.
@Kate Marie
The smart is because I don’t really exist, I was designed by Manzi with a genetic algorithm. SkyNet and I are totally going to screw you guys.
— Sanjay · Sep 14, 09:48 PM · #
I don’t doubt your credibility, sanjay, or your physics chops.
And I have great mentors already, tyvm.
The standing argument Riddick and I have is whether science will ever be able to model/reverse engineer organic processes like evolution and consciousness.
He has said NEVER to me on more than occasion….how should I interpret that other than a variant of the complexity argument?
I notice you do not object to my synopsizing his argument as I-am-not-a-monkey, the argument of homo sap. being somehow an evolutionary “goal” of some biological tweaker/planner.
He says we can’t DISPROVE that now…like cw and consumatopia said, sure guy.
But we will be able to soon….only two codons to go for RNA inna tube..7 years I think the article said.
I think the arguments against Dr. Manzi’s position are coherence and consistancy….but that is just me.
I suppose the biological tweaker/planner doesn’t need to be either coherent or consistant. ;)
I was genuinely interested in what you thought of SirRichard and Armstrong. I meant pilin’ on the god/evolution discussion, not on either Riddick or you personally.
I think DNA is the unification theorem for biology…it is beautifully, brutally selfcontained. It is mathematically coherent. I love EGT, Maynard-Smith’s book in particular.
I’m a Tegmarkian….
Our most successful models are not mathematics approximating physics, but mathematics approximating mathematics.
I don’t see the world in left and right….I see it in haves and havenots, and since I am focused on science that means haves and havenots in IQ and education….unfortunately, the right is bulked up on havenots and bleeding haves.
I see the world as Pythagoras versus Kylon….the right has chosen Kylon for sure.
Also I am aspergers positive.
I don’t get nuance, or why I offend people so much, and I don’t relly care.
I’m mostly curious.
And snot-nosed.
;)
— matoko_chan · Sep 14, 10:22 PM · #
Sanjay:
Thanks for the reply.
Here’s the disconnect, as I see it. You say of the example in my comment:
I don’t think that’s true at all. There might be a “weird” functional dependence on the genes, but that doesn’t make it unpredictable. In my example, with complete information, I would know that in generation 1 the 15th most fit genome would have the following values in all of tis gene positions, and knowing all of the partial fitness values for each genome in generation 2 that don’t depend on this information (as I think we’ve agreed), I simply apply the information about the gene positions for this organism in generation 1 to complete the fitness values for all organisms in generation 2, and so on through as many egenrations as I want. I don’t see how this changes the argument at all.
You then say:
Check. You may not remember that I’ve made a huge deal about the importance of epistatic interactions in making the practical predictability of a GWAS for conditions that are dependent on lots of genes questionable, to put it mildly. But once again, as we move from practical predictability to in principle predictability, I don’t see that this affects the argument at all. It just means the rule set gets incredibly complex. In fact, I’m sure you caught that, in my original post, I was positing what we would call epistatis in the underlying relationshps between switch settings, to address this question implicitly.
You then say:
Once again, just another product of normal physical processes, also in principle predcitable.
You give several more such compelling examples, and then conclude with:
But this, as far as I can see, is precisely consistent with what I was saying in the post. Here’s what I said:
I agree, in other words, that there is no functioning model that I can point, or that any scientist could reasonably point to as being on the horizon of scientific knowledge that could do this (though we could never, of course, rule out that it might be done someday). But I don’t agree at all that any of the complexities that you have identified show that ??in principle” a sufficiently-informed being could not do this.
As to whether the argument would be more persuasive without the example – that could be true, I don’t know. But I went through it for a very specific reason. I believe that too much of the politcial and philosophical discussion of the implications of evolution operates at way too high a level of abstraction, and I wanted to make it a lot more concrete, where I feel more progress can be made. (But hey, I’m a frickin’ engineer – LOL)
— Jim Manzi · Sep 14, 10:54 PM · #
“I believe that too much of the politcial and philosophical discussion of the implications of evolution operates at way too high a level of abstraction, and I wanted to make it a lot more concrete, where I feel more progress can be made.”
This afternoon, while contemplating how vital procuring a supply of Sanjay’s beans might be in my upcoming endevour, I wondered if I hadn’t misread what you were driving at, or more accurately, why you were driving at it.
— Tony Comstock · Sep 14, 11:53 PM · #
Actually, Jim, one more thing I should’ve mentioned (I’m mulling what you wrote): without those crazy nonlinear feedbacks in the selection, Darwin doesn’t work. When White up there is saying, evolution doesn’t explain speciation or rapid changes in the fossil record — he’s right, and that’s where IDers bite. He’s very, very right — if you limit the selection process the way Darwin conceived it and the way you did in your original example. Nobody’s has a lot of luck simulating or rationalizing anything that looks like those processes, using a nice clean linear separation of gene and environment. So I have a problem which is also significant: in the world where your example works well, evolution doesn’t, so you’re not really showing me a way to think about evolution and divine design as compatible because in your design evolution’s a crock. This problem is an inversion of a point you’ve made about some of your critics, where they invoke ideas which hurt creationism, but frankly hurt the whole idea of divinity so badly that it’s silly to say that the problem is an evolution one. Your example can be pushed so as to create trouble for where you want to be.
— Sanjay · Sep 15, 12:06 AM · #
Incidentally, Jim, I apologize if in fact what you’d like to say you are is a fucking mathematician, although really if that’s the case you should be thanking me for the promotion.
— Sanjay · Sep 15, 12:11 AM · #
I’m sorry if I did so, but if that’s true then I don’t understand your comment about time. Maybe you could elaborate?
There’s absolutely no way Dawkins would not be at odds with Manzi’s position:
_My fact claim is this: The findings of the modern synthesis of evolutionary biology (MES) do not demonstrate that the universe is not unfolding according to a divine plan that privileges human beings. _
and if you think otherwise, it’s because you’re not familiar enough with Dawkins and his work. (Manzi continues to be wrong, on this – evolution does demonstrate that it is not unfolding according to a human-privileging divine plan, because genetic algorithms can’t contain hidden teleology, only explicit teleology, and we’ve all agreed that explicit teleology doesn’t exist in natural selection.)
At long last, based on his evasions, the conclusion is pretty obvious. Manzi’s position is nothing more than the engineer’s inability to grapple with a universe where chance plays a significant role.
— Chet · Sep 15, 02:06 AM · #
the conclusion is pretty obvious, to those who believe the conclusion is pretty obvious, ad hominem, etc.
this will go nowhere. too many still believe that formal-operational intelligence is forever and ever the apex of human cognition, and so that all non-logical arguments are necessarily illogical. so, we will continue to talk past one another. c’est la vie.
but for what it’s worth, here’s a good summing-up from Discover magazine, back in ’98:
— brooks · Sep 15, 02:49 AM · #
Manzi is either dishonest or disingenuous here, in his conclusion: “Neither Augustine nor Aquinas was a proto-Darwinist: Augustine, for example, thought species were immutable. What is striking about both of them, however, is their insistence on understanding and incorporating the best available non-theological thinking into our religious views. It is hard for me to imagine either feeling theologically threatened by the MES. The Catholic Church has formally accepted it as consistent with that faith.”
MES is consistent with the Church’s position as long as one accepts an immortal human soul:
“It is by virtue of his spiritual soul that the whole person possesses such a dignity even in his body. Pius XII stressed this essential point: if the human body takes its origin from pre-existent living matter the spiritual soul is immediately created by God (“animal enim a Deo immediate creari catholica fides nos retinere inhet”; Encyclical Humani generic, AAS 42 [1950], p. 575)
Consequently, theories of evolution which, in accordance with the philosophies inspiring them, consider the mind as emerging from the forces of living matter, or as a mere epiphenomenon of this matter, are incompatible with the truth about man. Nor are they able to ground the dignity of the person.”
So Manzi should make it clear that one can accept MES and teleology, along with a specific religious doctrine (Catholicism) as long as one is willing to be a Cartesian dualist when it comes to the human mind and human consciousness. Of course, since modern neuroscience has pretty much eviscerated that belief (you still can find a handful of panpsychists like David Chalmers) you end up back where you started.
— Gary · Sep 15, 02:58 AM · #
Gary – I don’t think that Cartesian dualism is necessary – perhaps soul != consciousness?
Secondly, all this talk about the deity’s plan unfolding over time reminds me of the scriptural passage that God sent his son “in the fullness of time”, a passage which I recall Pope John Paul II meditating upon.
— Steve · Sep 15, 04:37 AM · #
If one reads the Spanda Karikas or Pratyabhinyahrdyam of Kashmir Shaivism, it is easy to see how “intelligent design” is a functional description. Since all is prana at the essence and prana itself is “intelligent” (or, at least (most) conscious) there is enough room for all that is in or out of our philosophy or religion.
The problem occurs when we assume a Creator God who built this organic mechanism like a computer sim and then left us to our stumbling ways.
Many quantum physicists tell us that the more they learn, the more is does seem like there is an intelligent force behind it. Then they tell us that force seems equivalent to the dance of Shiva.
I highly recommend a reading of Kashmir Shaivism.
— blaze · Sep 15, 04:02 PM · #
blaze, imho the problem is that the xian concept of god is immature…umm…. underdeveloped.
sufism, hindu-ism and buddhism all incorporate universalism. The concept of universalism is antipathic to evangelical xianity, and antipathic to the concept of man as the center of the universe and the pinnacle of creation.
In sufism the universe surrounds and incorporates us; wahdat al-wujud, the unity of existance and maarifa, the Invisible World.
Stu Hamerhoff and Sir Roger Penrose are quantum physicists that postulate a “platonic substrate” existing on the border of the quantum and classical worlds.
Roger Penrose’s Road to Reality may be THE preeminant text on QM in the world.
The new domain of Social Brain Research is exploring concepts inherent in buddhism and sufism and hindu-ism……there is no peer-to-peer mapping for these concepts in xianity that I am aware of.
— matoko_chan · Sep 15, 06:34 PM · #
Well, blaze, I sort of come from something similar though I’m Iyengar by past and disposition. So, yes, personally I see God as very intimately involved in creation, effectively responsible for forms, and don’t see a problem with evolution by natural selection. But it’s difficult to couch that in terms that are useful for the ID/Abrahamic framework. I don’t see God ``working through’‘ evolution and that seems goofy to me. But I’ll defend the possibility.
Mike Cagle makes a mistake which hits on something that is very, very helpful when one thinks about evolution. There’s good reason to say, well, the dinosaurs weren’t particularly fit (nice paper from September last year, can’t remember if it’s Science or Nature, will look it up if other people can’t and there’s interest) relative to their competitors. Stuff gets lucky, and gets stuck. IDers rather dumbly size on evolution’s being a theory not a law as some suggestion that it’s not well-supported or proved, which is very wrong. But something like the Law of Universal Gravitation gives you an exact number you can calculate and predict. The theory of evolution is more like a good rule of thumb: you can guess that when there’s a lot of this creature in an evolutionary niche and that other one is disappearing, then there’s some reproductive advantage. But there’s no guarantee you’re right; that is a profound misunderstanding of evolution. It’s in practice hard to use and the best you can generally do is rationalize ex post and hope you’re not in a weird situation. Evolution isn’t very good, usually, for saying who is and isn’t ``fit,’‘ it’s much more good for trying to find relationships among living things and is a good tool for rationalizing results.
— Sanjay · Sep 15, 06:52 PM · #
I’m disappointed, after all of this discussion I still don’t know how many angels can dance on the head of a pin.
— KennyBoy · Sep 15, 11:12 PM · #
It’s up there in the title of the post!
— Chet · Sep 15, 11:16 PM · #
Primitive!!
That is the word….the christian concept of god is mechanistic and primitive…..it just hasn’t evolved.
;)
— matoko_chan · Sep 15, 11:45 PM · #
hehe, and now we are fullcircle to the title of Wright’s book.
Allow meh a rephrase…..the christian concept of god is mechanistic and primitive….it just hasn’t evolved enough.
lulz.
— matoko_chan · Sep 16, 12:51 AM · #
for blaze, via my friend Spock.
— matoko_chan · Sep 16, 01:28 PM · #