1000 monkeys typing randomly has nothing whatsoever to do with evolution.
For evolution you need at the very least an evaluation function and some kind of mutation./dev/urandom isn't evolution, it's just randomness.
And this is exactly why Wikipedia is a lot like evolution - because of your point #2 - the editors and the peer review process take the roles of the evaluation function and the elimination of the unfit.
And it is just like evolution because, as you point out, there's only one article on a given topic, not thousands. That is a difference, but not a problem. Having many individuals of a species is necessary because it makes mutations possible (throughh re-combination of genes and also through random mutations) whereas a Wikipedia article can "evolve" in place.
"Complexity" as you are using the term is a vague, nonscientific concept. Errr, what?
In what sense is an amoba more complex than a human? If humans are more complex than amobas in all senses, then we have a definite order here. Order, according to Korzybski, is the basic fact we need to build a (scientific) theory.
Is there anything that rules out the possibility that God could set up a universe with the appropriate physical constants such that evolution is possible? Just the entire body of natural science, yes. Why do you ask? Wherever we look, we find that we can explain things without using god as a non-explanation. Which makes it highly likely that our ancestors simply invented him to explain what they did not yet understand. Also the fact that no animals show any kind of religion or even respect for ours indicates that the whole religion thing is a human invention.
If the evidence for "fiction invented by humans" is so strong, and the evidence for "totally the truth" so slim, it does not rule it out, strictly mathematically speaking, but the probability is fast approaching 1/infinity, which equals zero.
He could even go so far as to arrange it so that all the seemingly "random" events of evolution are pre-ordained to give him a particular result he wanted, if He so chose. Sure, but what kind of stupid game is that your imaginative all-powerful, eternally-wise being is playing there? Making it impossible to spot him and yet throwing you to burn for all eternity if you don't believe, even though every rational thought process (and, according to your logic, rationality is something he provided) leads to the result that faith equals insanity?
Of course, none of the above would explain how God himself came to exist, but that might be an argument for another day... No, that is the most important argument! If christianity is correct regarding the psychology of deities, and Yehova was himself created by some other creator(2), shouldn't we all stop wasting our time praying to Yehova and dedicate all our churches to that creator(2), who by definition is more powerful than Yehova? Because, you know, if he has the same psychology as his creation (i.e. we assume the "created in his own image" goes up the chain) then you will burn in some hell(2) that is equally more awful than the christian one.
(note that I'm an atheist myself, but I see the original poster's point) I don't. I see insane rambling by someone who just doesn't want to give up his faith even in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary, so he draws the ultimate trump and says "my faith is not subject to evidence and falsification". And with that he joins the ranks of the many people who are Jesus or Napoleon, or speak with angels or walls or have some other kind of mental problem.
To be a little more precise, what distinguishes faith from plain old knowledge is not that there are good reasons for one but not the other. No, what distinguishes faith from knowledge is that one can be proven to be true or false, whilst the other removes itself from that field.
Knowledge can be examined, researched and if found lacking, abandoned or improved upon. Faith is a matter of... well, faith. It's entirely circular.
Anyway, what I observe more and more lately is a blithe dismissal of religion simply because faith is supposedly belief contrary to evidence. Actually, I dismiss religion because it's an abomination and incredibly damaging to mankind and society. Imagine a world without crusades and suicide bombers, so abuse Lennon's words a little.
The fact that religion has no basis in fact and evidence is simply the reason why it should be entirely abandoned instead of refined and improved, as I'd suggest with faulty knowledge.
But it's circular and unhelpful to conclude that i'm irrational for having faith because faith is by definition irrational. Actually, that's not circular, just trivial. If faith is by definition irrational, then you are irrational, yes. That's not a circular argument unless you want to complete the circle - that you have faith because it is irrational.
But putting god "back in there" is exactly the scam of the ID/creationist crowd.
Evolution has no need for a god (any god), it works just fine without. As Nietzsche so eloquently put it: A thing with no external interactions does, for all intents and purposes, not exist. If god doesn't interact with the world, he is non-existent. So unless there is any evidence of a "guiding hand", we can still assume the god hypothesis to be very, very unlikely.
Christians don't kill you. How good that you made such an encompassing statement, that makes it easy to debunk it with just one example to the contrary:
(And just in case you say "but that's an isolated case" - read the article I linked. It says: "In the late 1990s, there was a spate of murders and attempted killings of doctors who practised abortion in the United States.")
So my question is: Even if there is no God, and you are an atheist, is it possible that a world containing religious people is actually a "better" society than a world full of atheists? Magic word: Scaffolding.
Maybe religion was necessary to lift ethics into place. Nowadays, humanism and other non-religious ethics can easily replace it, and once you've got the structure build it's time for the scaffolds to go away.
Especially if they hinder more than help. Maybe 200000 AD atheists were killing more neighbours than religionists, today the roles are reversed.
a) it makes him more complex and thus more unlikely. b) it removes him from the possibility of falsification. How's that for a nice side-effect?
Your description is very accurate, though. That's what modern religion does to survive - push back their gods so they are always one step beyond human understanding. And when human understanding and exploration reaches the point where the gods were supposed to be (say, the heavens), it claims it never really meant that, or at least not literally, and pushes them another step back.
Which, to me, leads to one simple conclusion: Either your god is there, somewhere, or he doesn't exist and matter.
They are trying to sell it as "science", but until recently scientists had thought the horse to be dead after ID was disproven as a scientific theory many years ago. (disproven means not the facts it contents, but the claim that it were a scientific theory. It does not satisfy the requirements for one, most importantly the requirement of falsifiability.)
Not all religions ban the teaching of evolution. Pope John Paul II never condemned evolution. No, but the current pope is moving backwards in time with astonishing speed on this and other issues.
Background info: "Evolution, a doctrine that Pius XII only acknowledged as an unfortunate possibility, John Paul accepts forty-six years later "as an effectively proven fact." (ROA, 82) "
And then:
"(Associated Press, Nov. 11, 2005)
VATICAN CITY - Pope Benedict XVI has waded into the evolution debate in the United States, saying the universe was made by an "intelligent project" and criticizing those who in the name of science say its creation was without direction or order." "
In my experience, it's the latter. Usually a small set of people, no more than 3 to 5 which make the core of a Wikipedia article. Yes, for a Wikipedia article.
But Wikipedia has about 2 mio. articles, and it ain't the same 3-5 people doing them all. That is what TFA alleges to when it talks about "wisdom of crowds".
Mod parent up. That, exactly, is the problem. "I'll believe in X because there's a chance it might be true" only works if the probability of X being true is considerably above laughable.
It also doesn't explain why you should believe in X. And not in Y, Z, or FSM.
I personally believe in Creationism as a foundation for Evolution and can see how the "creator" might have set it's creation in motion, then set back and let it's creation go the route of evolution. You didn't think neither creationism nor evolution through, then.
Evolution starts with simple things and complexity emerges, with no plan or goal, but as adaptation to (constantly shifting) circumstances. Creation starts with the most complex being (call it god or whatever), a plan, usually a goal, and little explanation as to why, exactly, those billions of years since were necessary.
Also, Maxwell's Demon (or any god playing that role) does not actually violate the 2nd law of thermodynamics, because he's part of the system.
Or as Dawkins puts it: Who, pray tell, created your creator? Or did he evolve?;-)
Your.sig betrays you, but if it is so begging for a definition, how do you define "faith"?
Merriam-Webster says:
2 a (1): belief and trust in and loyalty to God (2): belief in the traditional doctrines of a religion b (1): firm belief in something for which there is no proof
Which, I'd say, is very much head on, especially the religious overtones and the "no proof" part.
And that's why grandparent is right. A debate between one side resting on proof and the other resting on something that explicitly excludes proof as a requirement can not have a common ground.
No, the thing is that it is not obvious that the "mass of uneducated" will not drown out the "few experts". The unintuitive thing is that, somehow, crowds are smarter than deBono made us think they are. (*)
(*) he's probably right regarding street mobs, to be perfectly honest it was others who extended his original writings to other situations of crowds and groups of people.
I know I'd stop any business relations with any OSS company bought by MS. For the simple reason of trust. MS has proven time and time again that they are a dirty company playing dirty tricks and not stopping at screwing over their business partners.
When you buy OSS, you have two reasons. One is it could simply be the best product of its kind around. The other is that you trust the OSS project to not play bait-and-switch, let's-not-renew-your-license, look-at-that-smallprint, that-requires-the-extended-warrenty or any of those other games on you because it knows you can simply take the code and go elsewhere.
MS, on the other hand, hasn't been about developing good products, or being a reliable partner, not for many years. The whole company is about playing dirty games and doing it better than you.
Unfortunately, you americans insist on bullshit being a major export product, so we've had the dubious "luck" of having pro-ID cover organisations being set up during the past years, and we've had the first politician questioning the place of evolution theory in school and if creation shouldn't be taught as well. Sounds familiar? Well, she was essentially asked to see a shrink by all but the most stupid (and/or bought) media, but we know the game, don't we? That was an initial test, and the result was that the ID lobby needs to work a little more before they can introduce the idea properly (and not on a lazy sunday afternoon).
The interesting thing is that there is absolutely nothing in either of the standpoints that cannot coexist with the other. Err... I'm actually lost for words. You are seriously saying that evolution (things change into whatever is most appropriate at that moment, with little regard for past or future) and design (things are as they are because they were intentionally made that way) are not diametrically opposed theories?
Well, there's just the small, unimportant, inconsequential matter of intent.
Also, a total reversal of roles, look:
I've seen no strong theology that would rule out that evolution did not happen. Creationism is about a supernatural force overseeing things--it says nothing specific about how things actually happened. (And, I think, most theologists will agree that Genesis is highly metaphorical.) No, creationism isn't about that at all. The very point of it is that it starts with something complex, in fact the most complex things of them all - the creator.
Evolution, on the other hand, claims that complexity emerges during the process of evolution, which starts with very simple things.
I really see no way for two theories to coexist if their claimed starting points are exact opposites. If you can't even agree on that, everything down from there is either dishonesty or an intentional scam of one theory to not have its core assumptions examined too closely.
MS Office is the company standard. But, me and my team use OpenOffice for all official (i.e. released to the company at large) documents. Here the work-philosophy is simple: Work in.odt, export as.pdf
One too many company secrets leaked to everyone due to Word and Excel being very, err... generous with information.
Up to now it was pulling a quick one, but with this it has turned into a full-scale abuse.
It will be interesting to see if the ISO fixes this problem (e.g. by withdrawing P status from all the abusers) or not. If ISO decides to do nothing, the only rational reason is to not have to admit that the vote was almost fixed - and that means there is corruption at the highest levels of the organisation.
but I don't see how putting these 2 people, scum though they may be, in prison is really going to help anyone... I agree. 2 bullets would be a lot cheaper.
I do not want the disabled people in my society to be treated this way. Luckily, most people in my society agree with me, and there is a way for a society to collectively make rules for itself. They're called laws. And I happen to disagree and not want those laws. For the moment, the consensus is with you. But I can still hope it'll change. It does all the time, on all kinds of subjects.
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1000 monkeys typing randomly has nothing whatsoever to do with evolution.
/dev/urandom isn't evolution, it's just randomness.
For evolution you need at the very least an evaluation function and some kind of mutation.
And this is exactly why Wikipedia is a lot like evolution - because of your point #2 - the editors and the peer review process take the roles of the evaluation function and the elimination of the unfit.
And it is just like evolution because, as you point out, there's only one article on a given topic, not thousands. That is a difference, but not a problem. Having many individuals of a species is necessary because it makes mutations possible (throughh re-combination of genes and also through random mutations) whereas a Wikipedia article can "evolve" in place.
In what sense is an amoba more complex than a human? If humans are more complex than amobas in all senses, then we have a definite order here. Order, according to Korzybski, is the basic fact we need to build a (scientific) theory.
If the evidence for "fiction invented by humans" is so strong, and the evidence for "totally the truth" so slim, it does not rule it out, strictly mathematically speaking, but the probability is fast approaching 1/infinity, which equals zero. He could even go so far as to arrange it so that all the seemingly "random" events of evolution are pre-ordained to give him a particular result he wanted, if He so chose. Sure, but what kind of stupid game is that your imaginative all-powerful, eternally-wise being is playing there? Making it impossible to spot him and yet throwing you to burn for all eternity if you don't believe, even though every rational thought process (and, according to your logic, rationality is something he provided) leads to the result that faith equals insanity? Of course, none of the above would explain how God himself came to exist, but that might be an argument for another day... No, that is the most important argument! If christianity is correct regarding the psychology of deities, and Yehova was himself created by some other creator(2), shouldn't we all stop wasting our time praying to Yehova and dedicate all our churches to that creator(2), who by definition is more powerful than Yehova? Because, you know, if he has the same psychology as his creation (i.e. we assume the "created in his own image" goes up the chain) then you will burn in some hell(2) that is equally more awful than the christian one. (note that I'm an atheist myself, but I see the original poster's point) I don't. I see insane rambling by someone who just doesn't want to give up his faith even in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary, so he draws the ultimate trump and says "my faith is not subject to evidence and falsification". And with that he joins the ranks of the many people who are Jesus or Napoleon, or speak with angels or walls or have some other kind of mental problem.
Knowledge can be examined, researched and if found lacking, abandoned or improved upon. Faith is a matter of... well, faith. It's entirely circular. Anyway, what I observe more and more lately is a blithe dismissal of religion simply because faith is supposedly belief contrary to evidence. Actually, I dismiss religion because it's an abomination and incredibly damaging to mankind and society. Imagine a world without crusades and suicide bombers, so abuse Lennon's words a little.
The fact that religion has no basis in fact and evidence is simply the reason why it should be entirely abandoned instead of refined and improved, as I'd suggest with faulty knowledge. But it's circular and unhelpful to conclude that i'm irrational for having faith because faith is by definition irrational. Actually, that's not circular, just trivial. If faith is by definition irrational, then you are irrational, yes. That's not a circular argument unless you want to complete the circle - that you have faith because it is irrational.
Yes, he has not yet reached the middle ages.
But putting god "back in there" is exactly the scam of the ID/creationist crowd.
Evolution has no need for a god (any god), it works just fine without. As Nietzsche so eloquently put it: A thing with no external interactions does, for all intents and purposes, not exist. If god doesn't interact with the world, he is non-existent. So unless there is any evidence of a "guiding hand", we can still assume the god hypothesis to be very, very unlikely.
Actually, this is where religious fanatics and microsoft fanboys meet: It's not a bug, it's a feature... :-)
No, that was the "Stupidity of Crowds", also well-documented.
The problem is knowing when you're on the "wisdom" and when you're on the "stupidity" road.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/2816973.stm
(And just in case you say "but that's an isolated case" - read the article I linked. It says: "In the late 1990s, there was a spate of murders and attempted killings of doctors who practised abortion in the United States.")
Maybe religion was necessary to lift ethics into place. Nowadays, humanism and other non-religious ethics can easily replace it, and once you've got the structure build it's time for the scaffolds to go away.
Especially if they hinder more than help. Maybe 200000 AD atheists were killing more neighbours than religionists, today the roles are reversed.
It also happens to do two other things:
a) it makes him more complex and thus more unlikely.
b) it removes him from the possibility of falsification. How's that for a nice side-effect?
Your description is very accurate, though. That's what modern religion does to survive - push back their gods so they are always one step beyond human understanding. And when human understanding and exploration reaches the point where the gods were supposed to be (say, the heavens), it claims it never really meant that, or at least not literally, and pushes them another step back.
Which, to me, leads to one simple conclusion: Either your god is there, somewhere, or he doesn't exist and matter.
They are trying to sell it as "science", but until recently scientists had thought the horse to be dead after ID was disproven as a scientific theory many years ago. (disproven means not the facts it contents, but the claim that it were a scientific theory. It does not satisfy the requirements for one, most importantly the requirement of falsifiability.)
Background info:
"Evolution, a doctrine that Pius XII only acknowledged as an unfortunate possibility, John Paul accepts forty-six years later "as an effectively proven fact." (ROA, 82) "
And then:
"(Associated Press, Nov. 11, 2005)
VATICAN CITY - Pope Benedict XVI has waded into the evolution debate in the United States, saying the universe was made by an "intelligent project" and criticizing those who in the name of science say its creation was without direction or order." "
But Wikipedia has about 2 mio. articles, and it ain't the same 3-5 people doing them all. That is what TFA alleges to when it talks about "wisdom of crowds".
Mod parent up. That, exactly, is the problem. "I'll believe in X because there's a chance it might be true" only works if the probability of X being true is considerably above laughable.
It also doesn't explain why you should believe in X. And not in Y, Z, or FSM.
Evolution starts with simple things and complexity emerges, with no plan or goal, but as adaptation to (constantly shifting) circumstances.
Creation starts with the most complex being (call it god or whatever), a plan, usually a goal, and little explanation as to why, exactly, those billions of years since were necessary.
Also, Maxwell's Demon (or any god playing that role) does not actually violate the 2nd law of thermodynamics, because he's part of the system.
Or as Dawkins puts it: Who, pray tell, created your creator? Or did he evolve?
Your .sig betrays you, but if it is so begging for a definition, how do you define "faith"?
Merriam-Webster says:
2 a (1): belief and trust in and loyalty to God (2): belief in the traditional doctrines of a religion b (1): firm belief in something for which there is no proof
Which, I'd say, is very much head on, especially the religious overtones and the "no proof" part.
And that's why grandparent is right. A debate between one side resting on proof and the other resting on something that explicitly excludes proof as a requirement can not have a common ground.
No, the thing is that it is not obvious that the "mass of uneducated" will not drown out the "few experts". The unintuitive thing is that, somehow, crowds are smarter than deBono made us think they are. (*)
(*) he's probably right regarding street mobs, to be perfectly honest it was others who extended his original writings to other situations of crowds and groups of people.
The last part is the crucial one.
I know I'd stop any business relations with any OSS company bought by MS. For the simple reason of trust. MS has proven time and time again that they are a dirty company playing dirty tricks and not stopping at screwing over their business partners.
When you buy OSS, you have two reasons. One is it could simply be the best product of its kind around. The other is that you trust the OSS project to not play bait-and-switch, let's-not-renew-your-license, look-at-that-smallprint, that-requires-the-extended-warrenty or any of those other games on you because it knows you can simply take the code and go elsewhere.
MS, on the other hand, hasn't been about developing good products, or being a reliable partner, not for many years. The whole company is about playing dirty games and doing it better than you.
True until recently.
Unfortunately, you americans insist on bullshit being a major export product, so we've had the dubious "luck" of having pro-ID cover organisations being set up during the past years, and we've had the first politician questioning the place of evolution theory in school and if creation shouldn't be taught as well. Sounds familiar? Well, she was essentially asked to see a shrink by all but the most stupid (and/or bought) media, but we know the game, don't we? That was an initial test, and the result was that the ID lobby needs to work a little more before they can introduce the idea properly (and not on a lazy sunday afternoon).
Well, there's just the small, unimportant, inconsequential matter of intent.
Also, a total reversal of roles, look: I've seen no strong theology that would rule out that evolution did not happen. Creationism is about a supernatural force overseeing things--it says nothing specific about how things actually happened. (And, I think, most theologists will agree that Genesis is highly metaphorical.) No, creationism isn't about that at all. The very point of it is that it starts with something complex, in fact the most complex things of them all - the creator.
Evolution, on the other hand, claims that complexity emerges during the process of evolution, which starts with very simple things.
I really see no way for two theories to coexist if their claimed starting points are exact opposites. If you can't even agree on that, everything down from there is either dishonesty or an intentional scam of one theory to not have its core assumptions examined too closely.
MS Office is the company standard. But, me and my team use OpenOffice for all official (i.e. released to the company at large) documents. Here the work-philosophy is simple: Work in .odt, export as .pdf
One too many company secrets leaked to everyone due to Word and Excel being very, err... generous with information.
Kick them out and wait if they show up to sue. When they do, haul them into a meeting. Problem solved. :-)
Up to now it was pulling a quick one, but with this it has turned into a full-scale abuse.
It will be interesting to see if the ISO fixes this problem (e.g. by withdrawing P status from all the abusers) or not. If ISO decides to do nothing, the only rational reason is to not have to admit that the vote was almost fixed - and that means there is corruption at the highest levels of the organisation.