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Evolution and the 'Wisdom of Crowds'
An anonymous reader writes "An essay by a developer of recommendation systems makes a case for why so many people have trouble grasping Darwin's theory of evolution. Downplaying its conflict with religion, the essay suggests that evolution is in a specific class of "equilibrium seeking" concepts that tend to be extremely counterintuitive to most people. The hypothesis is supported by the observation that so many people reject the notion that evolution-like systems such as Wikipedia, prediction markets, and recommendation systems can actually be effective. Particularly fascinating is the description of his surprisingly simple algorithm for competing in the Netflix prize contest."
>why so many *Americans* have trouble grasping Darwin's theory of evolution
maybe because the education system is not as good as other developed/ing countries?
and consumerism is taught at young age?
its easier to manipulate a nation of dumb asses than run a democracy where people have a voice and they can make good decisions due to good education
Not just Americans, but most people across the world don't believe in evolution. Or are you deluded enough to think that America is *the* religious nation on the planet?
What I always find interesting about Darwin's theory of evolution is that the word "evolution" is used in a completely different sense from other, quite common, usage of the same word.
For example, there is the evolution of the motor car, which has a designer (humans), who progressively refine the design intentionally (with occasional progress caused by random events) according to their own changing requirements.
Then there is the evolution of the computer, which similarly has a designer with specific goals in mind where randomness and bolts of lightning into a soup of modems, motherboards and RAM chips generally doesn't have a beneficial effect.
Compare Darwin's evolution, which has absolutely no designer and is completely random. Given the above examples, the word "evolution" seems a poor choice to describe Darwin's theories, perhaps it should instead be called "Darwin's theory of random mutation".
"Well, let's not forget Stalin, Hitler, Communist China, and others. Shining examples of people not controlled by "nutjob" religious ideas, eh?"
Let's just say if it was not for people killing weaker or inferior people, we would not be as smart or intelligent as we are today, that fact must be faced. That evolution performs a natural slow eugenics. While both atheists and christians accuse each other of "atrocities" if it wasn't for those "atrocities" many of us would not exist. History is more complicated then "oh you killed, so you are a bad person!" In this fucked up universe, we are pitted against one another for resources to survive and prosper, and I hope one day competition will be not be needed because technology and inferior minds will slowly and peacefully eliminated by having them die off or seen as mentally ill and therefore going in for personality reconditioning.
The will of man is nothing more then the will of glorified bacteria, feeding his feral hunger. I don't know about you but I've had enough of both atheists and christians and their stupidity, why not go and make real advances in science and technology and change the LANDSCAPE of human behaviour? That is the only fucking thing that will change thus god damn world for ffs.