If our society has stopped evolving toward perfecting our survival, instead it selects toward an aesthetic ideal. Material wealth is the measuring stick, and success in this realm is mostly governed by privilege, personality, looks and, occasionally, fashionable skills. It is survival of the prettiest, the boldest and the most charming.
The only problem with these ideals is that they are artificial, they are only relevant within a human perspective of the world, a perspective somewhat warped by our vastly overdeveloped brains. These measures mean nothing to our environment and the elements that shape it.
Deciding if evolution is over is akin to fearing the “end of the world”. The end of the world is not the issue, only the end of human life upon it. We needn’t question if evolution has finished, only if it has finished with us. Our only fear should be that, as a species, we may already be beautiful and dead.
“It’s true: Since the 1980s, it has been possible – in principle – to resolve resource allocation problems algorithmically, by computer, instead of needing a market. Markets are wasteful: They allow competition, much of which is thrown on the scrap heap. So why do they persist?”
Manfred shrugs. “You tell me. Conservativism?”
Gianni closes the book and puts it back on the shelf. “Markets afford their participants the illusion of free will, my friend. You will find that human beings do not like being forced into doing something, even if it is in their best interests. Of necessity, a command economy must be coercive – it does, after all, command.”
We cling to our concept of free will like blood. Declaring one is without free will is akin to admitting you don’t have a sense of humour, it is effectively saying you aren’t human. For what are we without free will – robots; actors; performing monkeys?
Philosophy has wrestled with free will vs determinism for as long as there has been philosophy. In more recent times science has pitched in on the debate too. Physiologist Ben Libet, who died in 2007, conducted a number of experiments in the 1970s on the timing of neural events. His measurements demonstrated that when the decision to perform an action is made, the beginnings of the action occur before the corresponding activity in the consciousness centre of the brain. These findings seem to suggest that the conscious mind, the area we regard as our decision making centre, is actually nothing of the the sort. It is subconscious processes that make all our decisions; the only role of the consciousness is to retrospectively justify these decisions to ourselves.
Our sense of free will, if Libet’s experiments are to be believed, is nothing more than an illusion. It is just another bi-product of our massively over-sized brains. The Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen paradox in quantum mechanics seems to back up this conclusion, I burbled excitedly about this realisation in a post two years ago. But even if we had something more accessible than conceptual psychology or quantum mechanics to prove this point, would we ever be able to accept it?
My answer: who gives a toss? We are certainly the only animal who believes in, or cares about such a concept. The dog I questioned on the matter was very clearly disinterested in the subject, and I suspect his may be the right attitude. Does it really matter whether we have free will, or only the illusion of it? Our actions will still be the same either way. Whether we have a strong grip upon the rudder of destiny, or we are just socks thrown around in the washing machine of chance, our lives will still be the same – messy, chaotic and surprising.
Believing in free will is akin to believing in God. We are welcome to do so, but it’s probably ever-so-slightly nutty of us. If the concept makes us feel better about ourselves, and we can pretend we are more important than all the other bundles of matter in the cosmos, it doesn’t cost us anything, and it doesn’t do us any harm, does it?
Um, yes, I think it probably does do a lot of harm. But that’s another post.
1. The Weak Anthropic Principle definition: the universe is built the way it is because if it were any other way we wouldn’t be here to observe it.
2. The Strong Anthropic Principle definition: the universe is built the way it is so as to create and support life.
3. The Very Strong Anthropic Principle definition: the universe is built the way it is so as to create and support us.
In its weak form it makes for some interesting scientific philosophising. But take it two steps further and we’re talking intelligent design. This is how thin the line is between religion and science.
What I love most about the anthropic principle though is the underlying implication, in all its forms, that our reality, with its universal constants, linear time and perfectly balanced physics, is very, very unlikely in purely statistical terms. Which further implies that it is probable the creation of the universe (via big bang, bearded super-being, spaghetti monster, or whatever crazy theory you subscribe to) was not a one shot attempt, instead must have taken many attempts to get it right.
So does this mean there are parallel universes; earlier attempts to get the chemistry right and/or later attempts to improve on the mess made this time around? I read a lot of comic books, so I’m saying YEAH! but I can understand how to many people this idea may take a little getting one’s head around. But, if you follow the latest in string theory, which you’d be forgiven for not doing, you might accept that parallel worlds are actually one of the simpler explanations for the way the universe fits together.
So occam’s razor alone might suggest that there is another world out there where I am the one reading these words off the screen, and you are the one who posted them. In which case, I’ll leave it up to you to try and make a salient point out of this. Thanks.
Richard Dawkins – evolutionary biologist, popular science writer, professional atheist and all round very clever person. I’ve read a number of Dawkins’ books; he is a very entertaining writer. He talks knowledgably about biology and general science and delights in the hypocrisy and irrationality of the modern religions. He also invented one of my favourite pseudo-sciences – memetics. In theory he should be my hero, today he’s going to be the opposite. Mister Dawkins, j’accuse – you are the man who gave atheism a bad name.
I hate organized religion as much as the next son of an evangelist. It is no secret that irrational belief has done more damage to human society than anything else in history. We spent 1,000 years in the “Dark Ages”, when an out of control hyper-meme called ‘Christianity’ almost extinguished the wisdom of the Ancients Greeks, and probably successfully eradicated many more fragile ideologies (we have no way of knowing). The amount of blood shed in religious wars, and the amount still to be shed, appalls me, but no longer surprises me. Organised religion is the worst of tribal mentality, and we of the Age of Reason should be above that.
Richard Dawkins writes upon this subject in his most recent book, The God Delusion. He correctly points out that the human mind is vulnerable to certain types of memetic viruses, those that play on our fear of death, the unknown, and our arrogance as a species. Religions are the most sophisticated and resilient of these memes. But there is hypocrisy to his message, because while he writes eloquently of atheism, he doesn’t acknowledge that he has his own belief system, one that he clings to as desperately, and espouses as vocally, as any evangelical Christian.
Richard Dawkins has been the loudest prophet of Darwinism the world has ever known. He is Saul level. He has been perhaps the most significant single influence in the current popularity of the Theory of Evolution since Darwin himself. He calls Evolution a science, but this is a common misconception. It is a faith.
Darwin’s great theory is most probably right on the mark, there is a lot for evidence for it. But Evolution is not the kind of theory that can be conclusively proved in the same way gravity, heliocentricism, or a round earth can be proved. You cannot make a prediction of a state that can be measured after time t, which can then be tested at time t to see if it meets the prediction. The fossil record is very incomplete (representing less than 1% of all species who have lived on our planet), so if you were to look at time t for a fossil, it is very unlikely you would find it there.
The Theory, while a wonderful idea, and a beautifully elegant explanation for the question of how we got here, does not fit the bill of a conventional scientific theory. It also still has a few gaps in it’s explanation, gaps that requires a faith they will one day be filled. Evolution is a wonderful, elegant and popular idea, but we still have to choose whether we believe it or not.
In The Origin of Species, Darwin worried that Evolution was without sufficient proof, but held tightly to the belief that one day the fossil record would provide it. But Dawkins simply believes the theory to be ‘the truth’, i.e. beyond questioning, which is why his writings, entertaining though they are, always remind me of theological conversations with my Dad, who dismisses any viewpoint that doesn’t include the existence of God as simply irrelevant. Evolution is Dawkins ideology, and he suffers the same problem. Dawkins is an Evolutionary Fundamentalist.
But one advantage an Evolutionary Fundamentalist has over a Christian Fundamentalist is that Dawkins’ belief is in line with the zeitgeist right now, just as Creationism was only 90 years ago (prior to the Scopes trial in 1925). So he will sell a lot of books, because he is telling us what we want to hear. Whereas I won’t. But it’s nice to think that, what would have got you burned at the stake a 1000 years ago, can make you a multi-millionaire these days, so good on him.
Faith is the great cop-out, the great excuse to evade the need to think and evaluate evidence. Faith is belief in spite of, even perhaps because of, the lack of evidence.
rss feed
