Dude. You read the wrong books.

I keep hearing that this somewhat well-known computer scientist, David Gelernter, has given up on Darwin. Dude. We moved on past Darwin over a hundred years ago. Just the fact that you think Darwin is still part of the science is revealing how little you know. We know where Darwin was wrong, and where he was heading in the right direction, and how much he didn’t know, and we recognize that he was important in setting us off on an interesting trail, but we’ve learned so much more since then.

So where did Gelernter get this wrong impression that it’s all about “Darwinism”? It’s because he read the wrong books.

Stephen Meyer’s thoughtful and meticulous Darwin’s Doubt (2013) convinced me that Darwin has failed. He cannot answer the big question. Two other books are also essential: The Deniable Darwin and Other Essays (2009), by David Berlinski, and Debating Darwin’s Doubt (2015), an anthology edited by David Klinghoffer, which collects some of the arguments Meyer’s book stirred up. These three form a fateful battle group that most people would rather ignore. Bringing to bear the work of many dozen scientists over many decades, Meyer, who after a stint as a geophysicist in Dallas earned a Ph.D. in History and Philosophy of Science from Cambridge and now directs the Discovery Institute’s Center for Science and Culture, disassembles the theory of evolution piece by piece. Darwin’s Doubt is one of the most important books in a generation. Few open-minded people will finish it with their faith in Darwin intact.

Just once I’d like to read that one of these creationists started by taking a college-level course in evolutionary biology, and read core textbooks in the field, rather than that they jumped right in with clueless ideologues who don’t understand the science, but are sure it’s wrong, and have produced silly polemics that bamboozle the ignorant. The thing that Berlinski, Meyer, and Klinghoffer have in common isn’t that they understand the basics of evolutionary biology, it’s that they don’t…and they overcome their ignorance with remarkable pomposity and pretentiousness. I’ve read those books, and they’re terrible. The authors ooze self-regard and are remarkably oblivious of the subject they’re opining on.

I didn’t go into science with “faith in Darwin” in the first place, so there was nothing to dismantle. It’s telling that they think evolutionary biologists are engaged in a faith-based enterprise — it’s purest projection.

So what arguments impressed Gelernter? The usual creationist nonsense: the fossils are missing! (Yeah, we know — we never expected a flawless representation of every living creature in the fossil record, since we can see right now in the here and now that most dead things rot and leave no trace). And then he makes an argument from bad math. You would think a computer science guy would know about the Garbage In, Garbage Out principle, but his whole argument is based on trivial, simplistic notions of how molecular biology works, so of course it’s total trash. He makes the old creationist combinatorial argument.

It’s easy to see that the total number of possible sequences is immense. It’s easy to believe (although non-chemists must take their colleagues’ word for it) that the subset of useful sequences—sequences that create real, usable proteins—is, in comparison, tiny. But we must know how immense and how tiny.

The total count of possible 150-link chains, where each link is chosen separately from 20 amino acids, is 20150. In other words, many. 20150 roughly equals 10195, and there are only 1080 atoms in the universe.

Oh god. So tired. This is such a stupid argument. Yes, if you have a specific target string in mind, it’s remarkably unlikely that you’ll get it by pure chance. If you’re blindfolded and shoot a gun at the side of a barn, making a hole in it, it is unlikely that you’ll hit that same hole if you fire a second time. That is not an argument that it was impossible to put the first hole in that specific spot, however. It is not an argument that you can’t possibly shoot the side of a barn.

That attempt to argue that the number of possibilities is larger than the number of atoms in the universe is also silly. Here’s another string of 150 characters:

Call me Ishmael. Some years ago—never mind how long precisely—having little or no money in my purse, and nothing particular to interest me on shore, I…

Do you realize that there are more characters here than there are relevant amino acids — 26 letters, space, and some assorted punctuation? The total count of possibilities of putting that sentence together was more like 30150, or far more than the number of atoms in the universe, so I don’t understand how Melville could have put it together. Then there are those millions of other books, that each start with a different combination of 150 characters, as if there is a whole vast range of different possible combinations. I give up. Literature is clearly a lie. It never happened.

That’s so obviously a bullshit argument, yet Gelernter makes it, as if it is somehow trenchant. Hint: Only creationists think it’s meaningful. Evolutionary biologists see it as a non-problem, and that creationists who make it are notably ignorant, just as professors of literature will shoo away any crackpot who comes to their door with a bizarre claim about the numerology of Herman Melville’s paragraphs.

It’s also so much easier to see the variations extant in biological paragraphs, too. Pick a gene, any gene, and go into the molecular biology databases, and you can find different versions of the sequence in different species and even different individuals within the same species. We have a record of all kinds of random permutations of the equivalent of that introductory paragraph, and they’re all functional — it’s as if Melville published a typo-ridden edition of Moby Dick, and the typos varied in each subsequent edition, but they were all still readable, and no one complained at the sloppiness. As if the code was so slack that we could accept novel versions of the text and new readings could evolve from the differences.

This myth of fundamental errors in evolutionary theory persists in the creationist community, though, because creationists only read other creationists. Gelernter reads Meyer and Berlinski and Klinghoffer, and thinks he now understands evolutionary biology, despite never ever reading anything in the field. Now other people will read Gelernter and think, because he’s a big smart computer scientist, that they have learned something about real problems in the field, instead of the echoes of the same old bullshit plopping out of assholes for the last 60 years.

My recommendation to everyone is that if you think you have some insight to contribute, that you think you are well-informed enough to criticize the field, put Meyer’s awful book down and get down to the basics first. Read Futuyma’s Evolution textbook, or Herron and Freeman’s Evolutionary Analysis. They’re too expensive? (They are.) Get an old edition, that’s good enough, and the price plummets as you get further from the current edition, but the evidence is still solid. Still too expensive? Download Felsenstein’s Theoretical Evolutionary Genetics, it’s free.

None of them are a light read, but you must be a brilliant person if you think you’ve completely demolished evolutionary theory, so I’m sure you can cope with the real thing, rather than those misrepresentations pushed by the frauds at the Discovery Institute. You might be horrified to discover that they don’t anguish over missing fossils or build bogus arguments based on misunderstandings of probability theory, and your simple-minded critiques are totally irrelevant to the science.

In other words, fuck off, David Gelernter, you arrogant clown.

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Jeez, I’m beginning to have some sympathy for all those people tangled up in the Epstein mess — that man inveigled himself into the New York science scene rather deeply, and I was tangentially involved with another character who was the recipient of Epstein’s beneficence. John Brockman was my agent, too. I published in a few of his annual question books, he got me a good advance on The Happy Atheist, I met him a few times in his office, he was always professional and cordial. He is a terrific agent. But also…

John is also the president, founder, and chief impresario of the Edge Foundation, which has earned a stellar reputation as an eclectic platform for conversations that involve scientists, artists, and technologists. There is more than one Edge Foundation, though: There is the one meant for public consumption, with its “annual question”—e.g. “What are you optimistic about?”—answered by famous intellectuals and thinkers; and one meant for private consumption by members of Brockman’s elite network. The former exists primarily online. The latter has a vibrant real-life component, with sumptuous dinners, exclusive conferences, and quite a bit of travel on private jets—it functions as an elaborate massage of the ego (and, apparently, much else) for the rich, the smart, and the powerful.

Over the course of my research into the history of digital culture, I’ve got to know quite a lot about John’s role in shaping the digital—and especially the intellectual—world that we live in. I’ve examined and scanned many of his letters in the archives of famous men (and they are mostly men), such as Marshall McLuhan, Stewart Brand, and Gregory Bateson. He is no mere literary agent; he is a true “organic intellectual” of the digital revolution, shaping trends rather than responding to them. Would the MIT Media Lab, TED Conferences, and Wired have the clout and the intellectual orientation that they have now without the extensive network cultivated by Brockman over decades? I, for one, very much doubt it.

Lately, John has been in the news for other reasons, namely because of his troubling connections to Jeffrey Epstein, the so-called financier who reportedly hanged himself earlier this month while facing federal charges of sex-trafficking. Epstein participated in the Edge Foundation’s annual questions, and attended its “billionaires’ dinners.” Brockman may also be the reason why so many prominent academics—from Steven Pinker to Daniel Dennett—have found themselves answering awkward questions about their associations with Epstein; they are clients of Brockman’s. Marvin Minsky, the prominent MIT scientist who surfaced as one of Epstein’s island buddies? A client of Brockman’s. Joi Ito, the director of the elite research facility MIT Media Lab, who has recently acknowledged extensive ties to Epstein? Also, a client of Brockman’s.

I was briefly part of the “public consumption” side (my alienation from his good buddy Richard Dawkins explains the “brief” part, I think), but was never invited to those “billionaire’s dinners”. Darn. I probably missed out on a chance to be photographed with Epstein.

Brockman and Epstein were deeply entangled, though.

A close analysis of Edge Foundation’s (publicly available) financial statements suggests that, between 2001 and 2015, it has received $638,000 from Epstein’s various foundations. In many of those years, Epstein was Edge’s sole donor. Yet, how many of Edge’s contributors—let alone readers—knew Epstein played so large a role in the organization?

At least one author is now distancing himself from the Brockman agency.

Yet, I am ready to pull the plug on my association with Brockman’s agency—and would encourage other authors to consider doing the same—until and unless he clarifies the relationship between him, the Edge Foundation, and Epstein. If such an explanation is not forthcoming, many of us will have to decide whether we would like to be part of this odd intellectual club located on the dubious continuum between the seminar room and a sex-trafficking ring.

Excessive networking, it appears, devours its own. Brockman is already many months too late to what he should have done much earlier: close down the Edge Foundation, publicly repent, retire, and turn Brockman Inc. into yet another banal literary agency. The kind where authors do not have to mingle with billionaires at fancy dinners or worry about walking in on Prince Andrew getting his foot massage. The un-network.

Well, to me it was always another “banal literary agency”, just a very good one.

Witness the inherent violence of the system!

Wait, what? Games can make you rethink how you look at the world? I never thought about this before, but the structure of Dungeons & Dragons implies a fallen world, in which people are picking through the debris of a collapsed civilization. It suggests that gangs of murder hobos looting the wreckage is a perfectly normal, ordinary way to see your culture.

In a nutshell, the argument is that—independent of campaign setting—the rules of AD&D imply the game takes place in the wake of some unspecified, civilization-ending cataclysm.

​For what it’s worth, classic sword and sorcery fiction tends to make this same assumption. Conan’s Hyborian Age is perhaps the most famous, taking place thousands of years after “the oceans drank Atlantis.” Clark Ashton Smith’s Zothique tales are more properly classified as Dying Earth stories, but the effect is the same: the last vestiges of humanity cling to superstition and sorcery on the Earth’s last remaining continent. Not to mention The Dying Earth itself, where technology and magic are both remnants of long dead empires, and are completely indistinguishable from one another.

Simply put, without the collapse of some ancient civilization (or several), the landscape wouldn’t be littered with ruins for the characters to go dungeon-diving in. But that assumption can hardly be called unique to AD&D. Later editions still feature plenty of ruined temples, lost cities, and dungeon delves, even if they are significantly less lethal than the old school variety.

I never noticed! I wonder if this might be a relic of a medieval way of thinking, where Europeans saw themselves living in the ruins of fallen Rome, and it was normal to live surrounded by bridges and aqueducts and statuary built in the past.

We Americans don’t have that — instead we have a history of belittling the constructions of our predecessors. Cahokia must have been built by wandering Hebrews, don’t you know, because Indians couldn’t possibly have accomplished anything. We have our own biases, though, and another game reveals that.

Would you believe Minecraft mechanics encourage colonialism? Also it’s another game where your ‘wilderness’ is sprinkled with dungeons and temples and lootable structures. This video explains the perfidious possibilities in a sandbox game.

I’ve played a bit of Minecraft, and I hadn’t thought of exploiting the villagers before, but I knew of the mechanics. The latest edition has some other curious additions: there are pillagers who will raid you or nearby villages, which lets you play the role of protector and patron, killing the bad NPCs and saving the good NPCs. It’s an interesting evolution of a game that once was kind of the digital equivalent of building ships in a bottle, or cultivating bonsai. It’s not a game unless there’s an opportunity for violence!

(Note: I am not saying D&D and Minecraft need to be policed for their violence, but only that it might be a good idea to be conscious of how the rules can create a bias towards certain behaviors.)

How many foreskins are you worth?

True story from 1 Samuel 18:25-27. This, of course, is the foundation of Judeo-Christian morality.

My wife is worth a lot more foreskins than that, but I don’t think she’d appreciate it if I went all serial killer and marched through Stevens County chopping off penis tips and bringing them back to her in a bloody sack.

Also, it would be like those obnoxious World of Warcraft quests. “Bring me X body parts from this animal!”, and then you go slaughtering and most of your kills don’t even have that body part. I still remember having to kill zebras for their hooves, and finding most didn’t have any.

My connection to Jeffrey Epstein

Blake Stacey had to remind me.

It’s kind of a wacky roundabout connection, but there it is. I was sued by a crackpot name Stuart Pivar for $15 million (It happens. I’m getting more than a little tired of the bullshit) because I’d pointed out that this guy’s self-published pseudoscientific book, Lifecode, was complete garbage. He didn’t like that, and he had lots of money — he was some kind of rich septic tank magnate — so he blustered and threatened and threw lawsuits at me, which he eventually dropped at the last minute when I didn’t back down. It was unfortunate, too, because I’d just done a couple of interviews with major newspapers when he withdrew, taking with him all interest by the press in the story.

Now Mother Jones interviewed Pivar about Epstein, in one very strange rambling conversation (at the end he threatens to sue over the interview if it is at all misleading, so I suspect MJ decided to go with a literal, complete transcript of everything Pivar said). And there’s my name! Yikes!

Some evidence of the tension between Pivar and Epstein is lying in public view. In August 2007, Pivar sued a science blogger named P.Z. Myers and Seed Media Group, which hosted his blog, alleging defamation. Myers had lit into Pivar’s work, calling him “a classic crackpot.” In his complaint, Pivar made a point of mentioning by name two prominent members of SMG’s board: Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell. The lawsuit was later dropped.

I should have known — Seed Media Group was based in NY, was tightly focused on connecting science and media, and of course Epstein and his crony, Maxwell, would have been attracted to it, and it could well have been the recipient of Epstein money. So yeah, some of those blogging fees I was paid back then could have been stained with the Epstein taint, although I knew nothing about him at the time, never met him, and darn, never got invited to fly on the Lolita Express or visit his private island for sexy times. So while you might be able to draw a connection between us, my name would be in tiny print with only a thin red thread to tie us together.

Of course, when you read the Pivar interview, you have to take into account the fact that he really is a delusional kook. He says this, for instance, which is kind of nuts.

I’m a scientist, and I saw all the incredible, wonderful things he did for science, which nobody’s managed to have the intellect to understand.

In Pivar’s case, no, we did understand his “science”, and it was trash.

By the way, one additional thing I have to bring up is that lately a number of the scientific associates linked to Epstein have been slinging a bit of mud as a distraction. In particular, they’ve tried to accuse the late Stephen Jay Gould of also being guilty of playing around with Epstein. Unfortunately for them, and the New York Times’ reputation for fact checking, Gould has a rock solid alibi.

That’s really dirty pool, NYT. You should be ashamed.

An additional fact: Seed definitely got some funding from Epstein!

Now have to go wash my hands.

One down

David Koch is dead.

One more malignant, poisonous criminal whose sole contribution to history is bringing the end of civilization a little closer is gone. Jane Mayer’s review of a book documenting the Koch brothers’ perfidy is appropriate reading today.

“Kochland” is important, Davies said, because it makes it clear that “you’d have a carbon tax, or something better, today, if not for the Kochs. They stopped anything from happening back when there was still time.” The book also documents how, in 2010, the company’s lobbyists spent gobs of cash and swarmed Congress as part of a multi-pronged effort to kill the first, and so far the last, serious effort to place a price on carbon pollution—the proposed “cap and trade” bill. Magnifying the Kochs’ power was their network of allied donors, anonymously funded shell groups, think tanks, academic centers, and nonprofit advocacy groups, which Koch insiders referred to as their “echo chamber.” Leonard also reports that the centrist think tank Third Way quietly worked with the Kochs to push back against efforts to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement, which could have affected their business importing oil from Canada. Frequently, and by design, the Koch brothers’ involvement was all but invisible.

Others have chronicled the cap-and-trade fight well, but Leonard penetrates the inner sanctum of the Kochs’ lobbying machine, showing that, from the start, even when other parts of the company could have benefitted from an embrace of alternative energy, Koch Industries regarded any compromise that might reduce fossil-fuel consumption as unacceptable. Protecting its fossil-fuel profits was, and remains, the company’s top political priority. Leonard shows that the Kochs, to achieve this end, worked to hijack the Tea Party movement and, eventually, the Republican Party itself.

He will be remembered. Unkindly.