Saturday, Aug 30, 2008
I'm ignorant about quantum physics, but do we even know that there is such a thing as chance?
That's a deep question that I'm not capable of answering. I know what Gould means by chance. He means if a meteor crashes into Earth, things change. The deeper question of whether we live in a truly deterministic universe, so the crashing of the meteor was inevitable, is not something we're arguing here.
But are we sure randomness exists?
We know that genetic mutations are in effect random. For purposes of evolutionary analysis it makes sense to think of them as random. Are you asking the question: When I flip a coin is it not the case that given the force my thumb imparts and local atmosphere conditions and so on, that makes it inevitable how it's going to land?
I'm being spacier. Is flipping a coin truly an example of chance? The coin is going to land either on heads or tails or on its side. It's not going to turn into a fish.
A statistician's definition of chance is: Given what we know, we cannot say anything more about the outcome of a coin toss than that the chances are 50/50 each way. That's a practical definition of chance. It doesn't get into any of the deeper questions you're asking. For purposes of this conversation, I think that's enough.
Maybe. The flipping of the coin is an example of chance, but maybe in the bigger picture it doesn't matter if only one of two things happens.
In that sense, chance is swamped by the larger patterns of evolution. I think it doesn't matter if our own lineage got wiped out 3 million years ago because powerful forces were moving various lineages in the direction of higher intelligence -- powerful Darwinian forces, I want to qualify that. I'm not talking about something mystical or divine intervention. The nuts-and-bolts appreciation of natural selection makes it very likely that on this planet you would get a roughly human level of intelligence.
I buy your argument. But I'm also a nihilist. I'm not sure that I bought your claim that barbarians are pro-evolutionary with regard to history and culture.
If you were a nihilist I'd think you'd love barbarians.
Genghis Khan is cool, but I have a bleak view of human nature. Consider the Khmer Rouge: They wiped out the best in their culture -- how anti-evolutionary can you get?
But that reign got wiped out. They're no longer the governing ideology of Cambodia. There is no doubt that history is full of horrible catastrophes. I'm not saying history is a wonderful process by any means.
If I thought like Gould, I'd say that it was only a toss of the coin that some Khmer Rouge doesn't become a global force -- and all of us who wear glasses end up in death camps.
My argument is: So long as there are lots of states around the world, cultural evolution in the long run works against highly repressive states. In the long run they cannot be very prosperous and thus powerful -- and that's especially true as new information technologies come along. And to be prosperous you have to give your citizens broad access to those information technologies. But in the book I do say that as the world approaches a global level of organization, it is conceivable that a single political reign could take over the world. We need to pay very close attention now to what sort of forces do obtain global power.
Then the end result of evolution could be Armageddon between one global power of enlightened people wearing glasses and a global Khmer Rouge?
Or the divine plan could be to get an intelligent species at least to the point where it gets to make the choice whether good or evil prevails.
To be devil's advocate, couldn't evil be the divine point?
Yes. One thing that seems clear to me is that if there is a God, it is not an omnipotent and infinitely good God. As I say in the book, I've ruled out that possibility. And certainly given the amount of evil that is built into natural selection ...
Do people ask you if you believe in God?
Not on an everyday basis. My mother used to ask me.
Do you have a public stand?
My public stand is that my private beliefs are irrelevant to this book in the sense that this book argues for evidence of higher purpose solely on an empirical basis. It talks about the facts on the ground. Now, as for my private beliefs, I do believe that there is more than meets the eye. I do suspect that there is some larger point here that we as mere humans do not entirely understand. I don't go to church. There's no particular theology that seems to make complete sense to me.
Is fundamentalism taking over the world, or does it just seem that way?
I think rapid social change often indicates a backlash that is in some sense or another fundamentalist. And I think that's probably what's going on today both in the United States with Christian fundamentalists and in the Islamic world and elsewhere.
Does it stand to reason that the Divinity would give us instruction books (i.e., the Bible or Koran)?
It depends on the type of divinity. I personally only have the vaguest clues on what type of divinity may be out there, if there is one. Certainly if it was a benign divinity that wasn't just playing some huge practical joke on life on earth, you might hope there would be clues. You know, I guess in a sense my book is partly about trying to find clues about what the whole point of this exercise is.
But you don't know yet?
There are suggestive clues. For example, I argue that it's in our own self-interest to care for people around the world -- in other words, a certain type of moral enlightenment. It sure didn't used to be the case that people considered all human beings worthy of at least minimally humane treatment. This is a recently developed view. I argue that history favored it all along.
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