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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."
Actually it's largely an American thing.
I brought this subject up several times in a conversation with europeans. Those who don't follow slashdot and similar sites hadn't heard about the concept of "intelligent design" at all, and needed it explained. And all of them went "WTF?" at the explanation.
The vast majority of the population hasn't even heard of ID. All the religious arguments I participated in (and there were quite a few) always revolved around the existence/inexistence of a deity, evolution wasn't brought up even once.