Get ready for it: the next battle will be over Stupid Design.
All the little details are perfect, like the mangled “facts” they’ll use to support it, the arguments from consequences, and the scientists conceding legitimacy in some domain to it.
The Discovery Institute’s new strategem
“FEMA-like creator” was worth a long, loud snort.
It’s funny because it’s true.
At least, the stupid “design” flaws are true. (I’m still waiting for creationists to explain the flounder.)
Somebody beat the cartoonist to it :
http://www.theshrubbery.com/udn/
Simple Chinchillazilla.
It’s really a beautiful, elegant theorem:
All data is assessed through a DoesThisFitMyAPrioriBeliefThatGodExists/IsBenevolentAndLoving filter, and assigned one of two values based on the results:
1. If yes, the conclusion is Goddidit/Exists/LovesUs/HatesHomos.
2. If no, the conclusion is GodWorksInMysteriousWays/WhoAreWeToDareToQuestion/Understand/TryToComprehendHim.
Like Steve, I recalled the Unintelligent Design Network, who clearly have priority here. Still, like kemibe, I really enjoyed the “FEMA-like creator”.
William Dembski has actually argued for “stupid” design.
Need I add that he argued it stupidly?
Is that going to inspire all those little evangelical kids who need to believe in creationism? I ask you.
A “stupid” creator. You know what? I didn’t come up with it. I never said it at all. ;-)
“Some scientists claim that hydrogen, because it is so plentiful, is the basic building block of the universe. I dispute that. I say there is more stupidity than hydrogen, and that is the basic building block of the universe.”
-Frank Zappa
“the stupid “design” flaws are true.”
Not entirely. People do not only use 25% of their brain.
“Access to 25% of your brain”
Is that based on the “You only use 10% of your Brain myth” and what, precisely, does it mean? Every part of your brain is used at some point in time, the 10% myth is false and I think the statistic he used here is false.
Oh how dare claim the Big Sky Daddy was just stupid when he did his design. All of this is not the result of Big Sky Daddy’s stupidity (Which is still more brilliant than Einstein!) but because of the rank EVILNESS of all of us.
BIG SKY DADDY! PLEASE FORGIVE US! Or at least in just divine stupidity, forget about all of this.
Maybe Creationists only use 25%
As super-liberal as I am, I actually don’t read Ted Rall’s stuff when browsing through all the other editorial cartoons on Yahoo! News. But this one is actually pretty good. I’ll give his poor artwork a pass.
I don’t know. You must admit there are many “gaps” in evolutionary theory that remain unexplained to this day. A stupid designer would seem to fit perfectly into those gaps. And if he ceases to exist when the gap is closed, well, isn’t that just proof of his stupidity, for defining himself by gaps in the first place? It seems to me there is even more evidence in the fields of geometry and astronomy. For example, wouldn’t a smarter creator have made pi exactly three? It would save a lot of work. And why did he put all the really cool planets so damn far away?
I think Behe’s latest is exquisitely stupid design, what with malaria being impossible to evolve via RM + NS +, which nevertheless seems to conflict with intelligent life being the entire purpose of evolution, according to Behe.
I suppose the idiot savant God just got carried away making mosquitos and malaria, and natural disasters (perhaps a supervolcano is what nearly wiped out intelligent Homo), that he just didn’t think of what it would do to his main purpose.
More reasonably, let’s note that people make god in their own image, and with IDists not being very bright, or learning how to become stupid later in life (Behe, apparently also Gonzalez) after having been mediocre talents, of course their god is going to be a halfwit, at best. This god will also have to be magical, however, because he has to do what they don’t understand, like create, produce just the right mutations simultaneouly, whatever.
Their god has never actually been intelligent, or he could have made humans strictly out of matter (which he also purportedly made), but had to make (endow, send forth, etc.) souls instead in order to magically fill in the gap between his inability to be a good engineer and his inexplicable production of organisms which look like they were constrained by evolutionary processes. We’re supposed by O’Leary to be “materialists” (a virtually meaningless term philosophically, and even scientifically in this quantum age), yet theirs is the God who tinkers around with molecules in the most material way, yet needs to add telic entities to human bodies in order to complete the deal.
Or to put it another way, how could the designer be responsible for Behe, O’Leary, Dumbski, Berlinski, and DaveTard, without being unfathomably and inscrutably both wonderfully magical and stupefyingly retarded? Think of their God as being Dumbski with an added component of omnipotence and a much greater intelligence, but with the same limitations of imagination, poor learning, and prejudice. That’s the IDist God, incompleteness, stupidity, and deficit which somehow magically produces everything.
Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/35s39o
If you had been sitting around for an eternity with nobody else your age to talk to, you would be pretty screwed up too.
Of course, it IS perfect satire of the ID movement- even the fake fact that we only access 25% of our brain. Unlike commenter @#12 above, I do view Ted Rall’s comics regularly. His satire, though often vicious, and sometimes over the top, is frequently perfectly nuanced and right on the money. This particular comic has been on the door of my office since November 17, 2005, so I’m actually a little surprised that the visitors here had not seen it before. And since he published it more than a year and a half ago, I’m not sure if the “shrubbery” website referenced by Steve @#3 really does pre-date it, but Ted Rall’s cartoon is certainly more concise (and funnier!).
For the folks who are wondering where the “only use 10% of your brain” myth comes from, my understanding is that the notion originated after people read an exceedingly simplified account of how a fellow named Phineas Gage recovered from a blasting accident which sent a rod through his brain in the 19th century.
#13 For example, wouldn’t a smarter creator have made pi exactly three?
If pi were equal to exactly three, cab rides would be very cheap. Calculus would be trivial (and algebra very easy). Gravity wouldn’t be any stronger but it’d be more efficient. Thus astroids would be a greater problem but as physics would fit into a video game screen they’d be easier to deal with. Sunsets would be prettier of you like chrystalized light but uglier of you like soft lingering light. Sex would be intense but shorter. Sugar would be nowhere as sweet and food for the most part would be bland and lumpy.
On the whole we are better off with pi equaling pi. If pi were just a smidgen longer though, things would be pretty much the same only heavier, more tiring, and somewhat annoying.
Oddly enough whatever value you chose for pi, the Lisbon Earthquake of 1755 will always occur but in some of the values (pi = e^(-i) for example), the churchgoers are wearing funny hats when they die.
@woozy:
I don’t know what any of that meant but I found it pleasantly amusing, like some kind of mathematical parody. Now there’s an idea for a story…
It is an urban myth all right, and it seems hard to pinpoint where it came from.
Some speculations are that it derives from debates on phrenology or Lashley’s theories and experiments on “mass action” (where apparently he removed ~ 60 % of a rat cortex and it could still learn some stuff).
Others are that it may come from misquotes of Einstein or quotes of James.
It is an urban myth all right, and it seems hard to pinpoint where it came from.
Some speculations are that it derives from debates on phrenology or Lashley’s theories and experiments on “mass action” (where apparently he removed ~ 60 % of a rat cortex and it could still learn some stuff).
Others are that it may come from misquotes of Einstein or quotes of James.
+10 points for cleverness, -5 points for “only use X% of brain” error.
I detest Ted Rall. I hope he has a conversion to Republicanism or Islam or something soon. We’d be better served with him on the other side.
#19
Thank you, Ithika.
All it meant was to be amusing as parody. There is a current idea going around that universal constants are very precise and diverse that they had to have been deliberately chosen by an intelligence as any other combination would have been a very different universe (supposedly one that would be unstable and died in a nanosecond, or one that would consist only of hydrogen).
I believe, but I don’t know for sure that this was Rob was satirizing about when he suggested a “smart” god would make pi =3.
The problem, and conversely the difficulty of refuting, with this type of reasoning, is you have to put yourself outside the universe into some meta-universe where the universe is being “made”. We have utterly no frame of reference for conceiving it so we have no idea what “probability” or anything else could play in it.
Imagining a universe with other laws of physics is almost, but not quite, as hard as imagining one where the laws of mathematics don’t hold.
I thought it’d be funny to deadpan a discussion of what such a universe would be like. (In actuality, it is a totally nonsensical idea, of course.)
I figured if pi were to be a rational (and an integer at that) I figured such a universe need not have irrational numbers at all. Hence every value can be precisely “tuned” into every other. “Atoms”, as in, discreet elementary units of measurement could exist.
In mathematics there is a concept of “metric systems” which are, in laymen’s terms, methods of measuring spaces. I’m not going to get into that but, but a mildly interesting one is the “taxi cab” geometry in which the distance between points is measured by how many rectangular street blocks a taxi cab must travel to get from one point to another rather than by measuring the distance of a straight line. This sounds ridiculous but it’s actually valid mathematics. Martin Gardner once noted that in taxi-cab geometry all circles are squares. (Making pi = 2? That actually is bad math but it’s the type of joke mathematicians like to make.) Anyhooo…. without irrational numbers (and thus square roots would all be rational) and with “atoms” the “measure” of such a “universe” wouldn’t be “taxi-cab”-esque. Hence my comment about taxi-cabs being cheap. (The quickest way between two points is … a taxi-ride.)
From then on most of my jokes were based on a pixelated world. More and longer paths between points means more paths of the same gravity. Hence asteroids. But a pixelated world means video game rules! Chrystaline light defraction but fewer complex molecules! (Bear in mind I’m only joking and talking out my ass.)
If pi were irrational but “bigger” that mean circles would have bigger area “inside them” than they do. Hence everything would be denser and heavier (or lighter and less dense I suppose, denpending on whether you use pi to get the circle or the circle to get pi).
The comment of the Lisbon earthquake was just an out and out joke. The Lisbon Earthquake was a turning point in the “age of enlightenment”. Just as the scientific method was coming to force and developing true rational detachment, there was a huge Earthquake in Lisbon on a Sunday Morning when most of the populace was at church. Tens of thousands of people died. The greatest percentage of casualties were wealthy church goers as the churches were the largest and most vulnerable of structures. The population least killed were the homeless and indigent who for the most part were passed out in the sun. This was the first time the question “If God is the cause of everything why did he allow a tragedy that punishes the ‘rightful’ so heavily to occur” was really put to the test.
This had a profound influence on Voltaire and was one, of many, inspirations for “Candide” his satire of the philosophy “this is the best of all possible worlds”. In ridiculing Rob’s idea that the world would be better if pi = 3, and ridiculing my idea that we live in the world with the best value of pi, and ridiculing the idea that the universe would be worse off with other value of universal concepts, I thought I’d pay homage to Candide by suggesting we can never escape the Lisbon Earthquake and the questions of “God’s intent” which it rose.
The “silly hats” was just to give it an absurdist touch.
pi = e^(-i) was a reference to the equation e^pi*i = -1, and so pi = e^-i would just be … weird.
Likewise, if the two great mathematical constants pi and e were equal… well, that’d be impossible, wouldn’t it?
Oops… meant
“of such a “universe” would be “taxi-cab”-esque”
Woozy, you are far too much in love with yourself. Literature used as a fluff for your personality is just a little much.
And abusing mathematics isn’t?
Apologies, although I don’t quite understand the offense.
Um, what’s the difference between using literature and Simpson quotes (which I also do)?
#25
I enjoyed woozy’s satire and also his explanation of it.
Woozy, thanks for the comments AND the explanation. Didn’t know about the Lisbon earthquake. I’m geeky enough to appreciate math humour, just not geeky enough to have taken it very far in school.
Thanks for the complements.
My mathematical explanations may have been a bit over the top though.
Perhaps I should have sufficed to say, I was making up stuff about how absurd it is to try to imagine other universes where mathematical values are different.
I *did* however want to point out the Lisbon earthquake and “the best of all possible worlds” though.
I’m not sure what “using literature as a personal fluff” being “too much” means though. Candide is far enough from mainstream to require explaination but nowhere near obscure enough to fall into the category of erudactic pretensions. At least I think it is. If someone made an illusion to Huckleberry Finn or Shakespeare or Stanlislaw Lem or Plato or any other “great book” that several would have read but nearly all would have heard of, I’d think that be reasonable. But it’d be pretentious not explain the reference. Perhaps quoting something *really* erudite would be pretentious, but anyone can read the cliff-notes for Candide. Apologies anyway.
“+10 points for cleverness, -5 points for “only use X% of brain” error.”
That thundering whooshing is the sound of the joke passing effortlessly over your head.
Fact is, you, me, and everyone on earth only uses 25% of their brain. Why? Aliens took control of the other 75% and use it for downloading porn. If this is not true, why do we have so much robot and tentacle porn? You can’t think that is natural.
I would hope that anyone who had gone through a decent high school would recognize the Lisbon earthquake as a Candide reference, but maybe that’s being even more narrow-minded of me thinking that the only way people would know about it was through Voltaire.
woozy(I’d make a good creationist if I wanted to!): Doug Hofstadter has a picture (reprinted in Metamagical Themas, IIRC) of what the world would look like if π were 3. Have you seen it?
I won’t claim my HS was decent (quite the opposite) but I suspect it was typical in that the Lisbon earthquake and Voltaire were barely mentioned, there was no mention of any connection between the two, and Candide was not mentioned at all.
Of course I knew of it because it was referred to now and again in the novels (primarily SF) and so I eventually bothered to read up on it, so I would know what they were referring to.
#34 is very similar to my thinking:
English, in general, was my second worst subject. (And history was my worst). I think my English teacher rattled of names so the name was recognizable. Like “Spinoza” say; I’d assume everyone of us knows Spinoza was a philosopher but I’d assume by the nature of this site few of us studied philosophy and would know anything about his philosophy. I’d assume there were a few of us who went to private schools or schools outside the united states so they probably *do* know about his philosophy. And science nerds tend to also be knowledge nerds so I assume a few of us at one time thought “I’m going to sit down and figure who this Spinoza guy is”. Also in college and personal reading and talking with friends some have probably picked up references.
Hence I do not think there would be any “fluffing personality” if someone were to quote Spinoza about relevence. It be presumtious to respond to an argument “but what of Spinoza” and assume the reader what know to what you refer (although more likely such a person would actually be hoping he’s forcing the other to show ignorance so he can lord it over). It’d be fine to make a private joke obliquely refering to Spinoza and not explain it. But it’d be rude to expect people to have to get it or to respond “don’t you guys know Spinoza?” if they don’t.
About Candide, I knew it by name but didn’t know what it was about. One day at my mothers house it was sitting on a shelf and I just picked it up and read it.
About the Lisbon Earthquake. I personally have never heard anything about it except in reference to Candide but as I’ve said, I was never particularly good at history or English. However the “why would god punish the righteous and spare the wicked” illustration it provides makes a useful illustration. Particularly as we are discussing “gee, this world is great so it must have been designed” and the cartoons satire “gee, the world is dumb so it must have been ‘stupidly designed” I thought it’d be apropriate.
No, but I’d like to.
It’s kind of impossible to imagine the results of a real mathematical inconsistancy. (If one = two then … what?) Someone said that if pi = 3 than circles would be hexagons (the equilateral polygon with Parameter = 3 {Parameter, perimeter: any connection, any difference?}). Maybe but if pi actually were 3 that’d probably still be circles but space would be somehow warped. Then again there are “weird” properties of pi such as it is the probability that two integers chosen at random will have common factors. And the much noted e^i*pi = -1. Pretty much a “universe” (if one is “possible”) with such space warping would have different measuring properties. In as much as it makes any sense to say such things, I believe such a world wouldn’t have irrational numbers and would use a different “measure” than our linear measure.
I actually wonder if anyones studied this? As a senior in college I gave my senior presentation (Math majors weren’t required to write theses and only two in my graduating class did) on p-adic numbers which is a measure on rational numbers where “size” is measured by the inverse of a number’s (considered a space point) divisability by a prime p. (I always thought musical chords were an example of this in that a note C, sounds very much like a higher C vibrating 2-times as fast but a note vibrating 1.9 times as fast sounds terrible– i.e. Low C is “closer” to a higher C, that it is to B or D) Gad, it was a long time ago but I think what impressed me was rather than deriving the Real numbers (which come about by “closing” the rationals) we derive an entirely different set of values. Also, and now I’m going a bit too deep, if one “completes” the Real numbers so that it includes the square root of negative one, you get the complete Complex plane which is also “closed” as the real numbers are closed. If you “comlete” the “closure of the p-adic rationals” suddenly the result is wide open again. If we “close” that, it’s suddenly incomplete. And so on.
If pi = 3, I wonder if the rationals would be “closed”. That’s be pretty weird but it’d make Pythagoras very happy.
#34 is very similar to my thinking:
English, in general, was my second worst subject. (And history was my worst). I think my English teacher rattled of names so the name was recognizable. Like “Spinoza” say; I’d assume everyone of us knows Spinoza was a philosopher but I’d assume by the nature of this site few of us studied philosophy and would know anything about his philosophy. I’d assume there were a few of us who went to private schools or schools outside the united states so they probably *do* know about his philosophy. And science nerds tend to also be knowledge nerds so I assume a few of us at one time thought “I’m going to sit down and figure who this Spinoza guy is”. Also in college and personal reading and talking with friends some have probably picked up references.
Hence I do not think there would be any “fluffing personality” if someone were to quote Spinoza about relevence. It be presumtious to respond to an argument “but what of Spinoza” and assume the reader what know to what you refer (although more likely such a person would actually be hoping he’s forcing the other to show ignorance so he can lord it over). It’d be fine to make a private joke obliquely refering to Spinoza and not explain it. But it’d be rude to expect people to have to get it or to respond “don’t you guys know Spinoza?” if they don’t.
About Candide, I knew it by name but didn’t know what it was about. One day at my mothers house it was sitting on a shelf and I just picked it up and read it.
About the Lisbon Earthquake. I personally have never heard anything about it except in reference to Candide but as I’ve said, I was never particularly good at history or English. However the “why would god punish the righteous and spare the wicked” illustration it provides makes a useful illustration. Particularly as we are discussing “gee, this world is great so it must have been designed” and the cartoons satire “gee, the world is dumb so it must have been ‘stupidly designed” I thought it’d be apropriate.
No, but I’d like to.
It’s kind of impossible to imagine the results of a real mathematical inconsistancy. (If one = two then … what?) Someone said that if pi = 3 than circles would be hexagons (the equilateral polygon with Parameter = 3 {Parameter, perimeter: any connection, any difference?}). Maybe but if pi actually were 3 that’d probably still be circles but space would be somehow warped. Then again there are “weird” properties of pi such as it is the probability that two integers chosen at random will have common factors. And the much noted e^i*pi = -1. Pretty much a “universe” (if one is “possible”) with such space warping would have different measuring properties. In as much as it makes any sense to say such things, I believe such a world wouldn’t have irrational numbers and would use a different “measure” than our linear measure.
I actually wonder if anyones studied this? As a senior in college I gave my senior presentation (Math majors weren’t required to write theses and only two in my graduating class did) on p-adic numbers which is a measure on rational numbers where “size” is measured by the inverse of a number’s (considered a space point) divisability by a prime p. (I always thought musical chords were an example of this in that a note C, sounds very much like a higher C vibrating 2-times as fast but a note vibrating 1.9 times as fast sounds terrible– i.e. Low C is “closer” to a higher C, that it is to B or D) Gad, it was a long time ago but I think what impressed me was rather than deriving the Real numbers (which come about by “closing” the rationals) we derive an entirely different set of values. Also, and now I’m going a bit too deep, if one “completes” the Real numbers so that it includes the square root of negative one, you get the complete Complex plane which is also “closed” as the real numbers are closed. If you “comlete” the “closure of the p-adic rationals” suddenly the result is wide open again. If we “close” that, it’s suddenly incomplete. And so on.
If pi = 3, I wonder if the rationals would be “closed”. That’s be pretty weird but it’d make Pythagoras very happy.
woozy, I’ll see if I can scan the picture.