Not to put a fly in the punchbowl, but evolution is not āundirected randomnessā.
Thereās a pretty well understood mechanism going on here.
You mean to me that Jesus did NOT walk around with a gun and the dinosaurs?
Humanās preference for narrative over reality is pretty much universal.
But Iāve noticed that those who sneer at this tendency are often merely sneering at the preference of one narrative over another.
After all, what is āmeaningā if not narrative?
And utterly devoid of any meaning, the preference of life over death is simply the preference of one meaningless arrangement of atoms over another.
Beware the person of no narrative.
The mechanism is undirected randomness, the result is that which works.
Sigh, the dominant neophobe gene.
I guess the only hope is that they get left behind when we head for the starsā¦
What might require analytic and reflective thought isnāt (just) overriding cognitive systems that govern intuition, but overriding the norms of oneās upbringing and peers.
Well duh. Tribalism is one of the things that clearly made us successful as a species; overriding that is incredibly hard. Thereās considerable evidence that, for instance, a political policy that is closely associated with a specific party is automatically opposed by supporters of other parties, regardless of the merits (or otherwise) of the policy itself.
Good! Now just stop believing in everything else, and weāll be getting somewhere.
rather than have a internet.argument over semantics, maybe itās more interesting to note my (and others) immediate objection to calling evolution random as what this study is saying.
also, tautological post is tautological.
Bull.
Itās all taught (#3) . The question of where we come from is a unique to human concept, and the answer is created by humans as well. Whether itās a real god, or a mythological story, or quantitative evidence, itās all a conceptual narrative as far as the mind is concerned. The rest is how you were taught to learn; accept what you are taught vs. question things and discover. Just ādisbelievingā evolution is not the same as questioning it, itās just not accepting it based on your limitation of learning.
I cant read the actual article, but Iām curious as to the test used to determine cognitive style. I mean, is it just āsmart people believe evolutionā and ādumb people donātā? (thatās a waaaay oversimplification). If itās just the fact that you canāt or donāt or canāt be bothered to learn about evolution you are likely to prefer a simpler answer, the correlation to evolution is kind of arbitrary. It would be the same for physics(LHC), medicine(vaccines), rocket science(moon landing), or basically anything that is hard to understand.
No he had a spear.
Spear-Gun?
Made this same basic argument a couple of years ago on this very BBS.
Ah! Indeed! But has anyone noticed how creationist theories are themselves evolving? In order to accomodate new information? I think youād be hard-pressed to find anything in nature that adapts so quickly to new circumstances as the creationistsā explanations do when confronted with contradicting factsā¦
Ah yes, which facts prove the theory of evolution.
I think that we have had no impetus to comprehend such scales and timelines would be more accurate.
Our defining trait and success has been our sociability, the larger the group/ tribe has become the more successful we have become. We have also self domesticated, driving our the most aggressive/ least sociable aspects from the group. Basically, chasing Grog out of the tribe for continuing to shit by the fire and being a general ahole.
Successful?
Concentration of wealth. Warming planet. War. Antibiotic resistant disease. Etc.
Our success might just lie in our future ability to destroy ourselves suddenly. No other species has managed that without outside help.
Yes, as compared to other apes and animals on the planet. There are a few good things you could add to that list also.
