Why Evolution Implies the Supernatural

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > Why Evolution Implies the Supernatural

rudatron: May 31, 2011; by Fluffdaddy

Beliefs are not independent events, they can influence each other (induction). This will screw up your math.
Beliefs are not subject to selection pressure, because they are not encoded genetically. Patterns of thought/kinds of intelligence are - each of which will imply a 'family' of beliefs. This will also screw up your math.
The claim that most of our beliefs are true (and thus a ~special mechanism~ is needed) contradicts the previous claim that there is no natural mechanism to determine truthfulness (why there wasn't an option 5). How would you know, either way?
A false belief can still result from the right kind of intelligence/thinking with bad information - you cannot necessarily use the possibility of false conclusions as a reason for rejecting the argument-form that produced them. It has to be evaluated on its own terms - which means dealing with metahpysical naturalism/parsimony

You can't dodge metaphysics, the person you're copying from is dumb, and so are you.

# ¿ Aug 16, 2015 11:33

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# ¿ May 15, 2024 12:16

rudatron: May 31, 2011; by Fluffdaddy

The point about induction is that your argument about how unlikely it is to have a lot of true beliefs doesn't work out - the same reasoning that leads to one true belief will lead to others (that is, the conditional probability of having a true belief goes up the more true beliefs you have). You treated them as independent events as a part of an argument that this result was unlikely, and therefore there must be a supernatural intervention. Remember also that beliefs themselves are not coded genetically (well, human beliefs generally aren't) - intelligence, or kinds of thinking is. That is what is subject to selection pressure. Your model wasn't just simplistic, it is totally undermined by how intelligent life actually evolved. Moreover, this:

quote:

Most of our beliefs are true, in my estimation, because they conform to what our senses tell us when they are tested, and because I reject the notion that we do not perceive the world accurately through our senses. You also reject this notion, in practice if not in theory, because you typed a response, rather than rejecting it as an inaccurate perception. This does strongly suggest some differentiation between beliefs and actions, because your beliefs may well be that our senses are inaccurate, but you nevertheless acted as though they were.

Contradicts this:

Effectronica posted:

That's the point of the argument- there's no known natural mechanism to determine truthfulness of beliefs, and, besides, it's also fairly unlikely because our beliefs are not all true.

All natural selection has to do is pressure organisms to tend to judge accuracy based on what they directly perceive, and your argument for the necessity of the supernatural falls apart (because you are basing it on how unlikely it is).

edit: The other big problem is the leap from the unlikeliness to the existence of the supernatural - go outside and read any number plate, the odds of that exact number plate having showed up is incredibly unlikely. But it still happened, because you had to have a number plate show up. Yet no one claims supernatural intervention here.

Did you make this thread because you honestly believe this, or are you just trolling? I seriously hoping it's the latter, for your sake.

rudatron fucked around with this message at 15:40 on Aug 16, 2015

# ¿ Aug 16, 2015 15:30

rudatron: May 31, 2011; by Fluffdaddy

Effectronica posted:

The vast, vast majority of this has been addressed elsewhere in the post that you eagerly scanned for opportunities to deliver an intellectual smackdown. What's left is, essentially, a misunderstanding of the argument. We are not dealing here with a singular event, such as seeing a particular license plate. We are dealing with a large number of events. If you saw that every license plate in a parking lot was arranged by order of their last digit, you would assume that this was highly unlikely to happen by chance, and that they were deliberately arranged. Since you can see that the vast majority of beliefs people hold about the world are true, and that these true beliefs include ones where empirical testing is unlikely to ever occur, and that largely instinctual beliefs are similarly likely to be true, then it seems entirely likely that there is some unknown force or process which acts to promote the formation of true beliefs about the universe. Now, this has pointed out another possibility, but I'll leave that to other people to root out.

Please quote any of your relevant arguments that accurately responded to to the main thrust of my argument:

"The point about induction is that your argument about how unlikely it is to have a lot of true beliefs doesn't work out - the same reasoning that leads to one true belief will lead to others (that is, the conditional probability of having a true belief goes up the more true beliefs you have). You treated them as independent events as a part of an argument that this result was unlikely, and therefore there must be a supernatural intervention. Remember also that beliefs themselves are not coded genetically (well, human beliefs generally aren't) - intelligence, or kinds of thinking is. That is what is subject to selection pressure. Your model wasn't just simplistic, it is totally undermined by how intelligent life actually evolved"

Reminder, this isn't just saying the model is 'simplistic'. If if were simple, it could just be made more complex. No, the model is wrong, even at this simple scale, because the 'improbability' conclusion you're deriving of one of your cases is totally undermined by this very simple change - your model isn't simply imprecise, it's inaccurate.
The probability of plates being arranged by last digit (I assume you mean in ascending or descending order) is exactly the same probability of being ordered by any digit list (that is - random). Moreover, your response to my attack on the categorical usefulness of using an improbable event to conclude supernatural intervention is to then argue that I've numerically underestimated the improbability. Okay, but rescale the probability as much as you want, the same argument applies - the jump to a supernatural explanation is not justified, parsimoniously a natural explanation will always work better - in fact, random chance will work better than a supernatural explanation.

rudatron fucked around with this message at 23:52 on Aug 16, 2015

# ¿ Aug 16, 2015 23:46

rudatron: May 31, 2011; by Fluffdaddy

Bro Dad posted:

2/10.

Well at least that explains the reason you've basically refused to engage with anyone fairly, but I do wonder how you can call what you're doing 'trolling'. Where is the entertainment? This is kyrie-level incompetence here. If you're goal was to show up D&D, then I don't think you've actually succeeded, because you've been taken apart pretty thoroughly so far.

# ¿ Aug 16, 2015 23:56

rudatron: May 31, 2011; by Fluffdaddy

Effectronica posted:

Do you consider yourself to be an "r/atheism type", rudatron?

Do you consider me one? You're the one trolling after all. What about ShadowCatBoy? Who is of that type here, and have you successfully 'trolled' them? Though this will probably lead to an argument about what trolling is (which will be trolled, obviously) but that may not be successful.

Effectronica posted:

Inductive reasoning does not inherently lead to true beliefs. Inductive reasoning would conclude that because spiders and scorpions are dangerous, harvestmen and whip scorpions are dangerous. But this is false. Similarly, "there are no black swans" is a product of induction that is also false.

In reality, rudatron, if you saw a meaningful order in a parking lot, you would not assume that the cars had fallen into this order randomly, because it is more likely that someone arranged them into that order. This is not the case for non-meaningful orders. Furthermore, what is the natural explanation, that is, the definition that falls within the bounds of naturalism, which accounts for this, given that induction does not do what you say it does.

You're using likelihood arguments, but when challenged, fall back on absolutes. Sure, it's not necessarily true, but that doesn't really matter, just so long as its useful. This is a result of your continued stance that beliefs are selected for, when they are not - thought-forms/intelligences which create beliefs are. Put simply, the same criteria you can use to judge beliefs as 'mostly true' (and therefore intervention was necessary) can simply be selected for - therefore, the probability of having many true beliefs is on a similar magnitude to haveing a few. And actually, a random ordering has a better explanation than a supernatural ordering, because the random ordering is quantifiable - you can't quantify the probability of it being created supernaturally to compare it with.

rudatron fucked around with this message at 00:20 on Aug 17, 2015

# ¿ Aug 17, 2015 00:08

rudatron: May 31, 2011; by Fluffdaddy

Effectronica posted:

Well, I'm glad that your brain concluded I was saying that "if you see cars in a parking lot, all in order, God did it", thereby shorting out the analogy and rendering further conversation with you obviously pointless. Wow.

Furthermore, you're writing a lot of incoherent nonsense. "Truth is not necessary for natural selection"? This is a key part of my argument! You're a loving illiterate!

The 'necessary' part of your quote of me was in reference to 'necessarily true' (as opposed to it being likely to be true). The point was that some thought-forms/intelligences (like inductive reasoning) have a tendency to result in true beliefs, which means the probability of having many true beliefs isn't that extreme - if you have some, then it's much simpler to have many. This is because, again, beliefs aren't selected for, intelligences are. This means that your false-but-adaptive reasoning also falls apart - A false argument form is more likely to false beliefs than true beliefs, and false beliefs are more likely to be maladaptive than true beliefs.

I don't 'think you're really acknowledging anything anyone has said to you. Is this entertaining to you? If not, how are you trolling?

# ¿ Aug 17, 2015 00:41

rudatron: May 31, 2011; by Fluffdaddy

Wow, not even responding to me. Okay then.

You know, you started this thread as a troll attempt, but the longer it goes on, the more it seems like you're losing control. You're certainly not coming off as a puppet-master here. Out of everyone posting, the one acting the most emotional has been yourself. Really, it just seems sad, I feel sorry for you.

# ¿ Aug 17, 2015 01:12

rudatron: May 31, 2011; by Fluffdaddy

Effectronica posted:

It's cool how nobody will ever ask you to define something like "thought-form" or clarify what you mean by "intelligences", because you're obviously not using the standard, colloquial definition of that word. So instead, I will ask you to show how "intelligences" are phenotypically expressed so that natural selection may act upon them.

Not at all, in fact It's fairly obvious. An intelligence - something that thinks. I'm being general because we can't be sure there aren't other types of intelligence, but human intelligence will be based on the properties of the neural network, which is the result of neurons, a certain type of cell whose structure is determined genetically. Human intelligence results from the interaction of these cells. A neural network that is capable of creating true beliefs will be adaptive over ones that aren't - an erratic kind of intelligence generally won't get very far. Why? Are true beliefs and false-but-useful beliefs specially different? Not at all, but a network that creates false beliefs is more likely to create useless or maladaptive beliefs than adaptive ones. True beliefs will in general be adaptive, to a much greater probability, hence, the selection pressure works out (Because it's not beliefs or sets-of-beliefs that are under selection pressure, but kinds of thought).

So, you see, the idea that we have many true beliefs, and that this is somehow improbably, doesn't really hold up.

But here we're being time-independent - a well-functioning intelligence may come up with many false beliefs based on poor priors or bad information, but given the circumstances, should produce better results on average than any other kind of thinking-thing.

Effectronica posted:

Well, rudatron, live your life as a vampire's victim, bloodless and undead.

Just chill dude. You're being really abrasive to people who don't really deserve it, prime example being ShadowCatboy, who I've seen a thousand times in threads like this, and not once have I ever observed them being intentionally disingenuous or unfavorable.

SedanChair posted:

You scare the poo poo out of me sometimes.

It wasn't that impressive or creative a burn - Alternately, there's no reason to be scared, he'll eventually get over whatever thing he has going on here.

rudatron fucked around with this message at 08:15 on Aug 17, 2015

# ¿ Aug 17, 2015 08:07

rudatron: May 31, 2011; by Fluffdaddy

Phyzzle posted:

There was an Interesting debate in the early analytical philosophy days over whether miracles or the supernatural are contradictory concepts.

For those talking about natural mechanisms, what would be an example of a supernatural event, as opposed to a natural but unexplained event?

It's a difficult question to answer, the easiest being that something is supernatural if it cannot be mechanistic/is arbitrary. If an ESP field existed, then you expand nature to fill that new area, and what was previously miraculous now becomes natural. The only way you couldn't do that is if there wasn't a way to mechanize the new field you're trying to cover. So the end of basic & pure cause and effect (even if this is only done by adding something to causality - such as telos).

# ¿ Aug 17, 2015 08:20

rudatron: May 31, 2011; by Fluffdaddy

Hey man, I'm not sure it's possible, but if you were to ever convince anyone, that's how you'd have to do it.

I only dodge the questions I get the waffle on. Don't take that right from me.

# ¿ Aug 17, 2015 12:33

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# ¿ May 15, 2024 12:16

rudatron: May 31, 2011; by Fluffdaddy

Well technically it's solved from pure metaphysics, you don't actually need any biology. I kind of wanted to take that tack anyway because the main argument of 'having many true beliefs must necessarily be improbable' is worth tackling. But the main issue is the jump from improbable event -> supernatural.

So suppose I pick up a rock with 'EAT poo poo ATHEISTS' written on it. I can somehow confirm that, yes, it is an absolutely natural growth, and the probability of that happening naturally is ~10e-40. What is the probability that there exists a supernatural cause with means, ability, and inclination to do something like that? Think of every possible supernatural permutation, and you'll get a lot that just won't fit. Well, what proportion? Can you prove it? Because unless you can, you can't use probability arguments at all. Maybe the probability is 10e-60, then the natural cause ain't looking so poo poo now. What is the cutoff point, how are you justifying that?

rudatron fucked around with this message at 17:23 on Aug 18, 2015

# ¿ Aug 18, 2015 17:06

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