Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

An Alien God (Eliezer Yudkowsky, about Evolution)

lesswrong.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 39 posts

Re: An Alien God (Eliezer Yudkowsky, about Evolution)

#11

Post by MikeCapone »

rizzn wrote: post #10
MikeCapone wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have no idea what you two are talking about. Are you ambiguously trying to argue for creationism? If so, could you point me to those "good arguments"? I've never seen them.

Methinks you haven't looked. I went to seminary briefly before deciding to go back to being a coder, and my favorite courses were apologetics and the courses having to do with creationist theory. They didn't teach creationist theory as the absolute definitive truth, they tought it as a plausible element to many Christian worldviews (in many variants, including Deism, Intelligent Design, Young Earth, and others). If y…

Ok, thanks for clarifying what you were saying.

Re: An Alien God (Eliezer Yudkowsky, about Evolution)

#12

Post by _bfhp »

yters wrote: post #8
electromagnetic wrote: post #2

Technically you don't need multiple Gods, you need a God that's an economist. If rabbits can't run, the foxes will kill themselves off because there's a near infinite demand but extremely limited supply. I suppose if the 'one true god' was an economist, all religion got it wrong and our ancestors have been worshipping pure evil for the past few millennia.

Well, an economist and a sadist.

That's being redundant.

Re: An Alien God (Eliezer Yudkowsky, about Evolution)

#13

Post by Alex3917 »

electromagnetic wrote: post #2

Technically you don't need multiple Gods, you need a God that's an economist. If rabbits can't run, the foxes will kill themselves off because there's a near infinite demand but extremely limited supply. I suppose if the 'one true god' was an economist, all religion got it wrong and our ancestors have been worshipping pure evil for the past few millennia.

I'm pretty sure your comment is just a string of meaningless words, and yet I feel compelled to upvote it in case future generations decide that this was some sort of watershed moment in human thinking.

Re: An Alien God (Eliezer Yudkowsky, about Evolution)

#14

Post by Dove »

"Foxes seem well-designed to catch rabbits. Rabbits seem well-designed to evade foxes. Was the Creator having trouble making up Its mind?"

I suppose the author thinks God must be either pro-rabbit or pro-fox? That seems odd to me. Calvin and Hobbes argue a lot--just think of how self-defeating that is. How short-sighted of Bill Watterson to have overlooked that he could have assigned them milder temperments. Why all the villians and heroes in novels? Why all the weapons and defenses in the video games? Why all the contrasting elements in the painting?

The engineer sees nonsense in creating one thing to foil another, but it is no mystery to the artist. Sometimes the conflict is what makes each part what it is, what makes it great. The desired rabbit-fox population equilibrium could be achieved with lower effort, but that presumes the wrong goal. The artist creates for the joy of the thing itself. One can delight in the rabbit because he is fast, and the fox because he is cunning.

It is not the cruelty and conflict of nature that are alien to Christianity; famine and war and lion and sword and boil and rot and death are never far from the heart of that story. What Christianity would find so alien is the idea that life is about personally surviving and avoiding pain and embracing pleasure. That God is some sort of fool or underachiever for creating a jungle instead of a zoo.

Re: An Alien God (Eliezer Yudkowsky, about Evolution)

#16

Post by MikeCapone »

Dove wrote: post #14

"Foxes seem well-designed to catch rabbits. Rabbits seem well-designed to evade foxes. Was the Creator having trouble making up Its mind?" I suppose the author thinks God must be either pro-rabbit or pro-fox? That seems odd to me. Calvin and Hobbes argue a lot--just think of how self-defeating that is. How short-sighted of Bill Watterson to have overlooked that he could have assigned them milder temperments. Why all…

Did you stop reading after a couple of paragraphs? The author is an atheist, and uses the supernatural as metaphor to introduce his subject. He states quite clearly that he believes that evolution by natural selection is quite sufficient (even necessary) to explain what we can observe and that no god or gods are necessary.

Re: An Alien God (Eliezer Yudkowsky, about Evolution)

#17

Post by MikeCapone »

des wrote: post #15

I love this: "Evolution has no foresight, it is simply the frozen history of which organisms did in fact reproduce."

Some more quotes I wrote down from the posts in the sequence (http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Evolution):

We are simply the embodied history of which organisms did in fact survive and reproduce, not which organisms ought prudentially to have survived and reproduced. --Eliezer Yudkowsky, An Alien God

Mutation is random, but selection is non-random. This doesn't mean an intelligent Fairy is reaching in and selecting. It means there's a non-zero statistical correlation between the gene and how often the organism reproduces. Over a few million years, that non-zero statistical correlation adds up to something very powerful. --Eliezer Yudkowsky, An Alien God

"Don't think that, in the political battle between evolutionists and creationists, whoever praises evolution must be on the side of science. Science has a very exact idea of the capabilities of evolution. If you praise evolution one millimeter higher than this, you're not "fighting on evolution's side" against creationism. You're being scientifically inaccurate, full stop. You're falling into a creationist trap by insisting that, yes, a whirlwind does have the power to assemble a 747! Isn't that amazing! How wonderfully intelligent is evolution, how praiseworthy! Look at me, I'm pledging my allegiance to science! The more nice things I say about evolution, the more I must be on evolution's side against the creationists! But to praise evolution too highly destroys the real wonder, which is not how well evolution designs things, but that a naturally occurring process manages to design anything at all." --Eliezer Yudkowsky, The Wonder of Evolution

"One grad student can do things in an hour that evolution could not do in a billion years." (Yudkowsky: "According to biologists' best current knowledge, evolutions have invented a fully rotating wheel on a grand total of three occasions.") --biologist Cynthia Kenyon, in Evolutions Are Stupid (But Work Anyway)

"Individual organisms are best thought of as adaptation-executers rather than as fitness-maximizers." -- John Tooby and Leda Cosmides, The Psychological Foundations of Culture.

Re: An Alien God (Eliezer Yudkowsky, about Evolution)

#18

Post by Eliezer »

MikeCapone wrote: post #17
des wrote: post #15

I love this: "Evolution has no foresight, it is simply the frozen history of which organisms did in fact reproduce."

Some more quotes I wrote down from the posts in the sequence ( http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Evolution ): We are simply the embodied history of which organisms did in fact survive and reproduce, not which organisms ought prudentially to have survived and reproduced. --Eliezer Yudkowsky, An Alien God Mutation is random, but selection is non-random. This doesn't mean an intelligent Fairy is reaching in and selecting.…

Only the first sentence is from Kenyon.

Re: An Alien God (Eliezer Yudkowsky, about Evolution)

#19

Post by MikeCapone »

Eliezer wrote: post #18
MikeCapone wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some more quotes I wrote down from the posts in the sequence ( http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Evolution ): We are simply the embodied history of which organisms did in fact survive and reproduce, not which organisms ought prudentially to have survived and reproduced. --Eliezer Yudkowsky, An Alien God Mutation is random, but selection is non-random. This doesn't mean an intelligent Fairy is reaching in and selecting.…

Only the first sentence is from Kenyon.

True, my mistake. Will correct it.

Re: An Alien God (Eliezer Yudkowsky, about Evolution)

#20

Post by losethos »

I know! Let's ask God!!

God says... similitude ruminate stirred discontent baseness enquirers Ruler detain astonishment fear understanding intermitting behold EVEN deepness saved deemed shape benefits shrink clasped dispersed according WHICH honestly Unchangeable contradictory Speak antecedent UNDER deserters fifteen ascending enemy exiled unhesitatingly sure sake parts henceforth proprietary astrologers instruction dispraisest incensed medium preserve contrary Three seasonably injustice Vindicianus tells Begotten fed promises thorns prairienet seven satisfied insult bodies huge intoxicated INCLUDING equity produced Give separate cogo hurtful embrace frequent similitude Unto stable USE hers governors challenged fatherless unrighteous slow powers invisible talents alteration longed unshaken greatly stealing bubbling blesseth IF Dispenser interpose allotted thundered lesson Whether adoption Godhead Rejoiceth Alas always talented Kentucky vanquished parted decline Substance using entrusted rational slower abler likeness gladsome diminish too envenomed kindly inhabitants stir overthrew discovering indulgent Jacob towardliness appears labourers recollect they armed member domain allegorically burn surrounded Then anointings spread or washing sakes stage putrefied distilled unfailing withdrawing fears sweetened

Post reply on HN