6 ms·

An Alien God (Eliezer Yudkowsky, about Evolution)

54 points by MikeCapone 17y ago

electromagnetic 17y ago
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.
- MikeCapone 17y ago
  I want what you're having...
  - stcredzero 17y ago
    Once, to a long, rambling post that looked like a the product of overexposure to AI and OO combined with schizophrenia, I replied: "I want that algorithm. Not the one described in the post, the one that wrote it!"
- yters 17y ago
  Well, an economist and a sadist.
  - detcader 17y ago
    That's being redundant.
- Alex3917 17y ago
  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.
joubert 17y ago
Good stuff. Just finished Dawkins' new book: The Greatest Show on Earth - should be introductory biology reading for high school students. However, still prefer his The Selfish Gene for raising my consciousness the most.
- MikeCapone 17y ago
  I have bought The Greatest Show on Earth but haven't read it yet. Dawkins is an author that I automatically buy (won't wait for it to be available at the library...). Selfish Gene was indeed life-changing for me. I you want more Yudkowsky stuff on Evolution, check out the rest of this sequence of posts: http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Evolution http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Evolution
- billswift 17y ago
  By the time I read "The Selfish Gene" I didn't really see anything that enlightening in it. "The Extended Phenotype" is the one that I found most enlightening.
  - joubert 17y ago
    I had always viewed evolution from the organism perspective. Whereas Dawkins lets you see it from the perspective of replicators. This I found an eye opener.
dfragnito 17y ago
The "natural world" we observe is not the world God created. It is a ruined version of it.
- yters 17y ago
  Yeah, wish people would critique good versions of their opponents rather than bad versions. Otherwise, no one learns anything. Both sides remain content in their arguments and assume the other side is a moron.
  - MikeCapone 17y ago
    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.
    - rizzn 17y ago
      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 you're looking for a variety of resources representing the different creationist worldviews, check the curriculum and resources at Summit Ministries. They were, at one time, loosely affiliated with Dobson's Focus on the Family organization (not sure of the current status of that affiliation), and lead by really deep thinkers in Protestant beliefs. http://www.summit.org/resources/ http://www.summit.org/resources/
      - MikeCapone 17y ago
        Ok, thanks for clarifying what you were saying.
        swombat 17y ago
Dove 17y ago
"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.
- MikeCapone 17y ago
  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.
  - goodside 17y ago
    I'm an atheist too, but Dove's point is a fair one. The fact that nature is filled with chaos and conflict doesn't conflict with the idea that it was created by a human-like mind, since humans have an aesthetic preference for stories and art that involve conflict. Presumably, God also saw it artistically pleasing that some children should live their entire lives in intolerable pain and then die before reaching their third birthday, but that's not even especially extreme by the standards of human literature.
des 17y ago
I love this: "Evolution has no foresight, it is simply the frozen history of which organisms did in fact reproduce."
- MikeCapone 17y ago
  Some more quotes I wrote down from the posts in the sequence (http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Evolution 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.
  - Eliezer 17y ago
    Only the first sentence is from Kenyon.
losethos 17y ago
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
tybris 17y ago
Took him an awful long time to say natural selection.

54 points by MikeCapone 17y ago

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.

MikeCapone 17y ago
I want what you're having...
- stcredzero 17y ago
  Once, to a long, rambling post that looked like a the product of overexposure to AI and OO combined with schizophrenia, I replied: "I want that algorithm. Not the one described in the post, the one that wrote it!"
yters 17y ago
Well, an economist and a sadist.
- detcader 17y ago
  That's being redundant.
Alex3917 17y ago
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.

joubert 17y ago

Good stuff. Just finished Dawkins' new book: The Greatest Show on Earth - should be introductory biology reading for high school students. However, still prefer his The Selfish Gene for raising my consciousness the most.

MikeCapone 17y ago
I have bought The Greatest Show on Earth but haven't read it yet. Dawkins is an author that I automatically buy (won't wait for it to be available at the library...). Selfish Gene was indeed life-changing for me. I you want more Yudkowsky stuff on Evolution, check out the rest of this sequence of posts: http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Evolution http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Evolution
billswift 17y ago
By the time I read "The Selfish Gene" I didn't really see anything that enlightening in it. "The Extended Phenotype" is the one that I found most enlightening.
- joubert 17y ago
  I had always viewed evolution from the organism perspective. Whereas Dawkins lets you see it from the perspective of replicators. This I found an eye opener.

dfragnito 17y ago

The "natural world" we observe is not the world God created. It is a ruined version of it.

yters 17y ago
Yeah, wish people would critique good versions of their opponents rather than bad versions. Otherwise, no one learns anything. Both sides remain content in their arguments and assume the other side is a moron.
- MikeCapone 17y ago
  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.
  - rizzn 17y ago
    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 you're looking for a variety of resources representing the different creationist worldviews, check the curriculum and resources at Summit Ministries. They were, at one time, loosely affiliated with Dobson's Focus on the Family organization (not sure of the current status of that affiliation), and lead by really deep thinkers in Protestant beliefs. http://www.summit.org/resources/ http://www.summit.org/resources/
    - MikeCapone 17y ago
      Ok, thanks for clarifying what you were saying.
      - swombat 17y ago

Dove 17y ago

"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.

MikeCapone 17y ago
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.
- goodside 17y ago
  I'm an atheist too, but Dove's point is a fair one. The fact that nature is filled with chaos and conflict doesn't conflict with the idea that it was created by a human-like mind, since humans have an aesthetic preference for stories and art that involve conflict. Presumably, God also saw it artistically pleasing that some children should live their entire lives in intolerable pain and then die before reaching their third birthday, but that's not even especially extreme by the standards of human literature.

des 17y ago

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

MikeCapone 17y ago
Some more quotes I wrote down from the posts in the sequence (http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Evolution 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.
- Eliezer 17y ago
  Only the first sentence is from Kenyon.

losethos 17y ago

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

tybris 17y ago

Took him an awful long time to say natural selection.