Found a link to this on Slashdot.org a little bit ago, and found it very interesting. Though, not in the way I'd originally hoped. Read the whole paper at the link first, then my response below.

 

(Note: Round 2 is now available. See comments from Karmatics.com here, and my response to them here.)

 

Does ideological dependence on evolution cause the rejection of sound logic?

Or is it the other way around?

 

Posted by: Ben Johnson

 

Happening upon a reference to a paper at Slashdot.org which related the concept of “Wisdom of Crowds” to the rejection of evolution by the ‘religious masses’, my interest was quickly engaged as it is with unfortunate infrequency these days that “something new” comes down the pike. Reading in the abstract that the author had cited Wikipedia as an example of successful evolution, I at first bit my lip. “Oh no, not another fundamentalist-atheist with their eyes wide shut…” but, I decided, the summarizing journalist is likely neither trained in nor well-equipped to effectively relate the finer points of this subject. Certainly there seemed the potential for the author to be a man possessing not just intelligence, but wisdom as well. So I clicked the link.

 

And so I easily ignored the obvious false dilemma with which the author chose to start his paper. “Every body needs a good hook to get people reading” I thought… Unfortunately my willing suspension of disbelief could only last but a few sentences more before I came to the sinking realization that the author was making some very fundamental mistakes in his reasoning processes.

 

I have to admit that I was initially caught a bit off guard by the piece. Reading through the first paragraph, correlating the ‘since this’s’ and the ‘then that’s’ in my mind, I was surprised to come to the end and find, unfortunately, that most of the ‘since this’ parts of the argument had no ‘then that’ conclusions. And with corresponding frequency, the ‘then that’ conclusions had no ‘since this’s’ to point to them. I re-read it again. No better. And again – it was starting to get worse. “Maybe I just need to read the whole thing”, I thought. Maybe he’ll tie it together later on, or at the end, in a glorious climax of reason and rationale. Or not.

 

Conventional wisdom says that the primary reason why so many people do not accept Darwin's theory of evolution is that they find it threatening to their religious beliefs. There is no question that religion is a big part of the reason behind the large number of people who reject evolution.  

 

This is certainly true. Being what may be described as the type with religious belief myself, I can verify that it is, unfortunately, in fact generally true.

 

But I am convinced that just as often, the cause and effect is reversed: people hold onto their fundamentalist religious beliefs because evolution by natural selection… is so counter-intuitive to so many.

 

Now I am going to presume, for the sake of conversation (and due to specific language of the author later in his piece), that he is here referring to the religious beliefs of Christianity. Now the author has asserted that, effectively, because evolution is counter-intuitive, people with religious belief reject it. I find this conclusion highly ironic, since Christian claim to hold all sorts of positions which they, by their own admission, initially found counter-intuitive. Would the author conclude that of all the major religions in the world, the only one that does not require a person to ‘do’ anything to attain heaven, is not counter-intuitive? C.S.Lewis indeed noted that “Human beings, all over the earth, have this curious idea that they ought to behave in a certain way, and can’t really get rid of it.” There is no logical conclusion that: If an idea is counter intuitive, then ‘religious’ people will reject it. Oh, and this gem:

 

[Evolution by natural selection is] the strongest argument against an Old Testament-type creator.

 

I first of all would be very interested to receive the author’s opinion on what exactly differentiates an “Old Testament-type creator” from a “New Testament-type creator”. I’m unfortunately left to conclude that he threw in the modifier “Old Testament-type” so that he would sound like he had some knowledge of Christianity to those who have even less. Secondly, presuming he is referring to what may theistically or deistically be thought of as God, there is no logical conclusion that: If evolution: then God doesn’t exist. The author fails to understand that the method by which certain chemical systems formed on a certain planet has no relevance to whether or not there exists some kind of super-natural power. One part deals with details within the bounds of chemistry, the other with the mode by which chemistry came to exist. Also by his statement, the author apparently has either never heard of or fails to grasp such ideas as Panspermia or Biologos.

 

I arrive at this conclusion in a somewhat roundabout way.

 

No doubt.

 

I have long been fascinated with systems that tap into the " wisdom of crowds" -- systems that, in fact, have much in common with Darwinian evolution.

 

The author here makes his first praxeological error in mis-assigning the cause and effect. The “wisdom of crowds” idea is of an effect observed, not some kind of pre-existent, nebulous, force that exerts its own will through masses of people.

 

…I see the same sort of resistance to them as I see to evolution. The arguments against them are remarkably similar.

 

And therein lies the rub; as the arguments against them are indeed superficially similar, but differ in a very fundamental way.

 

This hypothesis, if borne out, suggests that advocates of reason… might consider a different tact if they wish to convince more people to reconsider their fundamentalist, anti-scientific beliefs.

 

True. Although the author unfortunately doesn’t give us any hints on how to convince those who don’t accept evolution on reasons that are neither ‘fundamentalist’ nor anti-scientific. And how could we miss this precious thing:

 

moderates, atheists, and the science minded

 

Listed as the like as the sole-proprietors of reason? This is one step away form the author defining a person as reasonable by whether or not they conform to his personal stereotypes.

 

1. Wikipedia:

 

I have spent a lot of time debating with intelligent people…

 

I have to ask, were all of these people either moderates, atheists, or the ‘science-minded’?

 

            [they] simply reject that Wikipedia can be accurate or reliable

 

Arguing that Wikipedia “can’t be” reliable does certainly seem doomed to failure since I seriously doubt their ability to see the future with regard to any major changes made to the site by its owners. However, a study later mentioned by the author does tend to support an argument that Wikipedia may not be as reliable, if only in some correlation to its greater volume (irregardless of whether one considers it accurate and reliable enough for a certain specific use).

 

Comparing it to evolution, an edit of Wikipedia might be considered equivalent to a genetic mutation.

 

This is where the bottom completely falls out of the author’s argument in two ways. Firstly, Wikipedia was designed so that people would edit it. Wikipedia will not work without edits. A genetic replication, on the other hand, is setup so as to work without mutations. A mutation is a mistake, a process failure, in the natural chain of events. A mistake or accident in Wikipedia would be something like a bogus page redirect, a loss or scrambling of data on a server, etc. In order for Wikipedia to improve in the evolutionary sense which the author appears to be referencing, a data error on a server hard drive would have to improve the accuracy and/or reliability of a notation.

The second way the author’s assertion is specious, is that even if we ignored his gross equivocation of the term evolution, the improvement in Wikipedia would only be analogous to micro-evolution, that is, change within a species. Evolution only is ever contested (at least by non-fundamentalists) on the grounds that it claims to provide a method for macro-evolution. To make the author’s analogy work, people making edits and additions to Wikipedia would have to change it into a different (and superior some would add) website. Such as an auction site, on line retailer, or whatever one would consider different and a superior fit for the internet enviornment. The author then goes on to draw several sweeping conclusions which are based on this faulty presupposition.

 

Every time we see a person or animal that suffers from a severe birth defect we see the cruelty of the process, but we also recognize that such a mutation will probably not survive more than a generation or two due to the power of selection.

 

If the author believes what he says – “such a mutation will probably not survive more than a generation or two”, then he shows an even poorer knowledge than mine of how traits are promulgated throughout a species. Depending on, among other things, whether or not the genes responsible for certain traits are dominant or recessive they may not show up in the next generation at all.

 

Likewise, when we see glitches in Wikipedia (whether due to vandalism, someone pushing an agenda, or just bad writing), we are seeing the "random" part of the process in action. Again, we generally see that selection kicks in rapidly, and the glitches disappear.

 

The author is making another praxeological error here. A person making an edit to Wikipedia is neither random nor accidental, irregardless of his intention or the content of the edit. The author is arbitrarily assigning a positive value to a ‘correct’ edit by calling it selective, and arbitrarily assigning negative value to an ‘incorrect’ edit by calling it a glitch, where as every edit is selective. An edit is done on purpose, with intention, and as the result of various intellectual processes. The ethics or the factualness of the edit is another matter entirely. And again, Wikipedia is intended to have ‘correct’ edits contributed, as well as ‘incorrect’ edits also contributed (which by design will be corrected by subsequent ‘correct’ edits). This is how Wikipedia is intended to work. Genes are not intended to mutate, and later have that mutation fixed by yet another mutation.

 

2. Prediction Markets:

This example, too, falls victim to the same general misconception as the previous. So rather than rehash those mistakes, let’s look at some other things.

 

Prediction markets turn out to be remarkably accurate, typically more accurate than any individual expert can predict…

 

While this may be true of prediction markets, when used as an analogy in the context of evolution and its’ alternatives, it is found internally contradictory. Supposing an omniscient and omnipotent designer vs. naturalistic evolution, the above is equivalent to saying that the creativity which conceived of classical and quantum physics, atoms, photons, and everything else from a blank slate could not achieve preferable results to what various chemical processes did by accident. To simplify, this would assert that infinite power, infinite creativity, and infinite knowledge are collectively incapable of making something better suited for its’ environment than various finite chemical processes.

 

Imagine that lots of random people come in and make bad guesses… those experts who consistently predict badly will tend to eventually pick another line of work

 

Here again, the author makes a praxeological error of ‘random people’. The people he specifies are not acting randomly, but purposefully, and with specific goals in mind. The author is confusing anonymity and autonomy with randomness, in his attempt to equate this with evolution. This example also, by definition, does not fit the model of random mutations. This example is equivalent to saying that mutations which do not find themselves beneficial will eventually choose to stop occurring.

 

Evolution, of course, has similar equilibrium-seeking behavior.

 

Here the author has either generalized the meaning of the word equilibrium to the point of uselessness, or has just plain stopped making sense. Is the author asserting that evolution seeks not substantive change, but the lack of change, i.e. equilibrium? This is akin to arguing that an increase in entropy (from amongst its various flavors) causes ‘faster’ evolution.

 

But as long as there is a statistical difference, a suboptimal earlobe is an unstable situation, waiting to be corrected.

 

Statistically speaking, a single statistical outlier would be (if the system were seeking any type of equilibrium one might find so defined in a dictionary of some sort) brought back towards the mean, not the mean brought towards the outlier, if as the author contends evolution “has…equilibrium-seeking behavior”. In fact, what the author seems to be referring here to as an equilibrium state in the prediction market, is simply a state most closely resembling actuality. He is defining the equilibrium state with a specific conceptual goal in mind and a preference for an attenuation of input that distracts from that goal. Evolution has no ‘goal’, conceptual or otherwise, and it cannot proceed without exaggeration of the status quo.

 

3. Recommendation systems:

Again, the author falls victim to the same fallacies as before, so again let’s look at some other things.

The point, of course, is that this system is very evolution-like, in that lots of messy data, with very little apparent "intelligence," processed by a simple iterative algorithm, can find sophisticated equilibria with a great deal of precision. Looking directly at the raw data, such as at an individual user's set of ratings, would indicate a lot more slop than is apparent in the final model. The system doesn't "know" that a movie is a science fiction movie, any more than natural selection "knows" why a particular mutation in the DNA increases the chance of an animal surviving to adulthood. Nonetheless, it works, against all intuition.

No wonder the author is a bit confused. Let’s break this paragraph down.

The point, of course, is that this system is very evolution-like, in that lots of messy data, with very little apparent "intelligence," processed by a simple iterative algorithm, can find sophisticated equilibria with a great deal of precision.

This can be further broken down into

‘The evolution system processes low-intelligence/messy data in a simple way resulting in a precise “sophisticated equilibria”.

Now the problems begin to become more apparent. Evolution is a passive, reactive, effect – a result. The only active aspect of evolution is that of natural selection (although in which sense the author is aware of it he is not referring to). The author’s algorithm, while accepting data passively, is implemented actively not in the sense that it exists at all, but that the author uses his own discretion to determine the appropriate number of iterations the algorithm is run before the output becomes acceptable. The independent discretion of the algorithm implementer is by his own description a necessary component of the system. Also at issue is the author’s characterization of the data as “messy” and of “very little apparent intelligence”. Now the author is missing a key distinction between accuracy and precision in data. The data he is referring to is extremely precise, but is not extremely accurate (that is not saying that it is distinctly inaccurate). It is precise because the rating is given at a precise amount i.e. 3 of 5 stars, as opposed to an imprecise rating i.e. ‘some where from 3 to 5 of 5 stars’. Also, a movie title is generally an extremely precise way to identify the movie, as opposed to ‘you know that one, about the guy, and that lady, and all that stuff that happened…’ But the data is not perfectly accurate, since the ratings are subject to change over time i.e. the person thought it was the best movie they had seen at the time, giving it 5 of 5, but since then they have seen much better, and would now only give it 4 of 5, so that the data itself cannot account for people’s constantly fluctuating preferences. This having been said, I see insufficient similarity in the comparison of data points with the mechanisms of micro-evolutional change (specifically, genetic mutation, and various and sundry mating situations and habits) since the author’s system purposefully results in organization, and the evolutionary system randomly results in improvement in environmental suitability.

The system doesn't "know" that a movie is a science fiction movie, any more than natural selection "knows" why a particular mutation in the DNA increases the chance of an animal surviving to adulthood.

This is true. It is also true that natural selection is not applied to a certain degree in one case, then to a greater or lesser degree in another case, depending on the purposeful intent towards a specific goal by an omnipotent 3^rd person, such as does the author’s algorithim.

…there are probably few atheists who reject evolution. Of course, this only shows correlation, not causation,

Correct. And as long as no sufficiently specific data is ever gathered, all it will ever remain is a hypothetical correlation.

[Evolution] would be hard not to accept, given the lack of alternative explanations for life.

The lack of alternative explanations is so obviously factually untrue, that in my view it seriously undermines the author’s credibility. It at least confirms that the author has done little to no research on alternatives, which indicate either his lack of time, lack of ability, or disinterest in considering alternatives. It also serves to highlight the essentialness evolution plays as a philosophy in the author’s worldview. Implicit in his statement is that if you do not ‘accept religion’ (with whatever contextually emotional loading that brings with it) that evolution must be accepted. Rather than being the best explanation, it seems simply to be the only one he is capable of conceiving of. The author therefore essentially asserts that evolution should be accepted not wholly on its merits, but simply in conjunction with a rejection of religion, which is not ultimately dissimilar to what he accuses the evolution-infidels of.

Removing the conceptual difficulty of evolution-like concepts, though, might be a much lower hanging fruit that has been largely ignored.

Similarly, a few doses of probability, logic, and mechanical engineering may do a few of those trained only in the biological arts some good as well.

Only then, when comfortable with these more elementary concepts, are people likely to be receptive to evolution itself… It's just good teaching -- starting with the less challenging, and moving to the more challenging, while keeping each step self-contained.

I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but this recommendation aptly describes the current 12-year public education system. I’m not saying that evolution is wrong because people don’t believe it, (although the author almost seems to equate believing it with its status as true) but that his proposed ‘fix’ is already in place. Public school has seen nothing but evolution-oriented texts for some decades now, and science and math are both taught in the orderly progressive step-by-step manner the author supports. I can’t help but be left wondering what exactly he would change?

Likewise, for someone who has been raised with the notion that all plants and animals were created by an intelligent being, the idea of evolution is just as large a conceptual leap. Even just considering the possibility is likely beyond their capability.

You can cut the irony with a knife. It reminds me of a saying I read somewhere: “before you remove the splinter from your brother’s eye, first remove the plank from your own”. Like unto it is another quote, again from C.S. Lewis: “A great many of those who ‘debunk’ traditional…values have in the background values of their own which they believe to be immune from the debunking process.” May I recommend some research in informal and formal logic for our author? No doubt with a little time investment he will find resources: starting with the less challenging, and eventually move on to the more challenging, all the while keeping each step nicely self-contained.