Since the Oozer Zealots don’t read or think, typing any more, is pointless. Maybe a picture will sum the whole thing up.
Now- The numbers might change a little by the year 3005 — we’ll never know…. But if you don’t accept the basic premise of this graph, you are either hopelessly stupid or hopelessly egotistical. You may pick one or both. But you certainly are no scientist.
’nuff said.
OK Orac… LETS HAVE SOME FUN….
(call it evolution, EB, I don’t care what you call it… I’ll call it “life stuff”)
If you had to guess Orac…. 1000 years from now how much more (or less) will we know about all this “life stuff” than we do today????
There’s no wrong answer. (OK I lied 😉
P
Boring?
YES
Whereas I’m so nice I even provide phrases like “he dismissing all else” just to make everyone else feel better about themselves and their own intelligence! lol
What’s interesting to me is the conception Paul seems to have, of the meaning of ‘we don’t know jack’ (about the beginnings of life).
Any such general or vague statement (say A1) is ultimately to be understood relative to another case of knowledge (say A2), that the speaker has (or claims to have), which, in the speaker’s mind, can be compared to A1, in order to provide some meaning to it. What else can A1 mean, otherwise? It’s too vague: Jack compared to what? What jack? Which jack?
So, A1 = “we don’t know jack about evolution”,
A2 = ?
Certainly A2 cannot reside in a scientific conception, since evolution is as firmly established as any other scientific theory; Paul’s making the implicit claim that A1 is *less* certain than A2. If A2 cannot be naturalistic, therefore, it must be super-naturalistic, and must be *more* sure than most of science. This leaves very few options open. Paul MUST be a creationist, in order for ‘we don’t know jack’ to make any sense. This seems to contradict his statements to the effect that “All I’m saying is that we’ll know more about science in a thousand years”.
He is, therefore, making an implicit claim for creationism. Otherwise he’s speaking nonsense. Either of these seem about as likely.
Mark did you read your own link?
“British scientists have now found that it is almost impossible to mate those in the Tube with the ones still living above ground, thus suggesting that they have become a new species1 (or almost so)”
So you “almost” had a point. LOL
If you had to guess…. 1000 years from now how much more (or less) will we know about all this “life stuff” than we do today????
However much more there is, I’m pretty certain you’ll still dismiss it all as “jack” with a wave of the hand and a cute picture…
>>>Paul MUST be a creationist, in order for ‘we don’t know jack’ to make any sense
Heater, You don’t know jack.
OK OK OK OK OK
I’m a bible thumper. You’ve outted me. I didn’t even know I was a bible thumper but by golly I am! I called Kevin and we arranged weekly prayer services on Wizbang. You are all required to attend and give testimonials.
Now? How does that make your theory any better?
[Note to any people who may be religious. The “bible thumper” stuff was not meant to offend. It was to mock them, not you. -P]
Apparently a few of you don’t get the reference.
You Don’t Know Jack
It’s a game people.
RE: Paul’s post (March 28, 2005 03:27 PM)
>> [From Orac – March 28, 2005 03:11 PM] What if there were a nuclear war that destroyed most major economies and plunged the world back into a Dark Age. What if a meteor hit the world?
Any thing can happen! Do you realize how stupid you look making this argument? “Evolution (or whatever term you pick) must be true because we might have a nuclear war.” Yeah, that’s pure science dude.
Paul,
Not to nitpick (OK, I’m nitpicking), but you have taken Orac’s observation completely out of context. Orac was talking about the potential loss of scientific data that could be instantaneously obliterated by catastrophic (natural or man-made) events. Such a loss could contribute to our misunderstanding of the world as we know it since it would contribute to diminution of our collected scientific knowledge. That would be a valid point that does not incorporate some direct attribution to support/refute evolution per se. He was challenging your premise of an inevitable projected expansion of what is “known”. I don’t know where you came up with your twisted interpretation.
Back to your regularly scheduled oozers vs thumpers dialogue.
Paul, there are a few other examples like the one I linked to as well (like this — but this is my favorite simply because of who is saying it. This isn’t a line of debate anyone who has looked into the data actually uses anymore. If you are going to argue against evolution at least update your arguments.
While you don’t have to agree with AIG, I’d suggest you read their Arguments we think creationists should NOT use FAQ. Although I believe they are completely wrong, I’ve found AIG to be the most honest of the anti-evolutionary groups. They believe in the literal interpretation of the Bible and work very hard to make it work. They claim nothing else, really. (Sure, they fool themselves from time to time, but who doesn’t do that?)
Paul,
The point here is that, very often, we hold presuppositions that we don’t know about ourselves; we see tham only after analysis. Your implicit presupposition seems to be that you expect a degree of certainty from a scientific theory that no scientific theory can give you. Even geometry can give you a probability of 1, only if we accept certain axioms in the system.
But science is not deductive, as geometry is. Evolution is, as of now, if I may make up a number (wish I had a pretty picture too…) 99.9999% certain.
Now no scientist would ever *expect* more from evolution than this, it would seem absurd!
If you do expect more, it would seem that you require evolution to live up to super-naturalistic standards. Which it will never do. Not in the year 3005, or 10005 or 100005. Never.
You’re not talking within the domain of science.
>Not to nitpick (OK, I’m nitpicking), but you have taken Orac’s observation completely out of context.
Yeah I know– but turn about is fairplay.
Basically the debate has gone like this today:
Paul: We don’t know jack compared to what we will know in (oh) 1000 years.
Oozers: You’re a bible thumper!
Paul: No, I’m really not.
Oozer: Yes you are! You are a bible thumper in disguise!
Paul: No I’m really not… now can we get on with the debate?
Ozooers: Well we might not know more in 1000 years because so a war or something! (SO we must know everything today ~implied)
Paul (as you noted I said this via sarcasm) OK OK Absent war, space aliens eating us and other dooms day scenarios, can we discuss how much we are likely to know in 1000 years????
Oozers: You’re a bible thumper.
—–
The nuke war thing was a red herring. They just won’t admit we are academically still children. So I mocked them…. so sue me.
Paul:
Point taken.
As the old man Socrates said:
I know nothing except the fact of my ignorance.
I see that you are not arguing against modern evolutionary biology, but merely bringing up the point that some people argue for the rigid correctness of current ideas with a decidedly religious fervor.
But most of all I am saddened by a trend I am just beginning to discern among my colleagues. I sense that some now wish to mute the healthy debate about theory that had brought new life to evolutionary biology.
-Stephen Jay Gould
It’s not a good idea to get too full of ourselves, after all we have only been around these parts for a hundred thousand years or so…and alot has gone on in the past 4.6 billion years.
Nobody has a patent on truth.
Over and out.
Exactly, Heater. Nothing in science is really proved, we just get data and a consensus people who have reviewed, analyzed and argued over the data. Even Relativity and QM haven’t been ‘proved’, in fact we know that one or the other is at least somewhat wrong. As Brian Greene says:
The problem is this: There are two foundational pillars upon which modern physics rests. One is Albert Einstein’s general relativity, which provides a theoretical framework for understanding the universe on the largest of scales: stars, galaxies, clusters of galaxies, and beyond to the immense expanse of the universe itself. The other is quantum mechanics, which provides a theoretical framework for understanding the universe on the smallest of scales: molecules, atoms, and all the way down to the subatomic particles like electrons and quarks. Through years of reasearch, physicists have experimentally confirmed to almost unimaginable accuracy virtually all predictions made by each of these theories. But these same theoretical tools inexorably lead to another disturbing conclusion: As they are currently formulated, general relativity and quantum mechanics cannot both be right. The two theories underlying the tremendous progress of physics during the last hundred years — progress that has explained the expansion of the heavens and the fundamental structure of matter — are mutually incompatible.
>If you are going to argue against evolution at least update your arguments.
WHAT! We’ve learned new stuff???? Can’t be… Everyone here says we already new it all! I’m shocked, just shocked!
Oh I guess NOW we know it all… Right?
(if you don’t get that point then I can’t help you)
———————
>>>Evolution is, as of now,… 99.9999% certain.
Heater… Heater… Oh come now Heater….
99.9999% ????
Oh come on…. Turn off Mister Rogers and join us in the real world.
But most of all I am saddened by a trend I am just beginning to discern among my colleagues. I sense that some now wish to mute the healthy debate about theory that had brought new life to evolutionary biology.
You can say that again
OK New Rules:
Since the debate is now one of quantity… I want every one record.
If you are going to say I’m wrong that we will learn exponentially more about “all this life stuff” in 1000 years. How much will we learn in 1000 years???
Alternatively you can tell me what percentage of the whole picture we have today?
Heater takes the field for the religious evolution zealots with “We know 99.9999%”
Commissar you can play again too if you give me a number and don’t whine.
AnoymousDrivel,
Paul was clearly misrepresenting what I said because he know it shows that his premise is not necessarily a valid one. He latched on to my examples simply because he couldn’t address the underlying point. My fault there; given Paul’s inability to defend his points without resorting to straw man arguments and nonsequiturs (among other logical fallacies), I should have chosen my examples more carefully.
But, to answer Paul. My guess is that scientific knowledge about biology will probably expand in 1000 years. So what? That wasn’t my point. My point was that the expansion of human knowledge is not inevitable, and there are scenarios in which knowledge might not expand that much or might even contract. Indeed, European civilization went through just such a period for several hundred years after the fall of the Roman Empire. (They didn’t call it the Dark Ages for nothing.) Your premise appears to be that knowledge of biology will definitely expand considerably. That is a flawed premise, because it’s not necessarily true.
>>>Evolution is, as of now,… 99.9999% certain.
Heater… Heater… Oh come now Heater….
Paul, you’re missing the point. The number isn’t important. As I said, “if I may make up a number…”.
The point here is, no sane scientist would doubt that the evolutionary theory is an *excellent* theory; it explains a *lot* very elegantly. If it isn’t 99.9999, it’s 99.01, or 98.988767614. Whatever, it doesn’t matter. The exact figure is a red herring.
Ooops. Looks like while I was typing my last comment that Paul discovered a new logical fallacy: The false dilemma.
Paul,
It’s time to distort what I was saying, obviously. You quote me thus:
(i) “We know 99.9999%”
What I said was:
(ii)”Evolution is, as of now,… 99.9999% certain”
a) As I said, the exact number doesn’t matter. I doubt you could even compute that number.
b) There’s a HUGE difference between (i) and (ii). Think about it.
I don’t know the context of the Gould quote, but this always happens. Science may be objective but actual scientists aren’t. The reason why science works is all these scientists get paid to criticize each other and then some young guys come along and throw the kings off their mountain.
(I simplify, of course, but you get the idea.)
Some ID arguments are actually interesting, and some have even been published in real science journals, but they tend to fall into two categories: 1. “looked into it, nope it isn’t a problem” and 2. “yep, we’re working on that one”.
While some scientists may sound like they are preaching the “religion of evolution”, many do not. On the other hand, all IDers and Creationists have a very specific agenda based on their religion and faith. When IDers come up with real arguments scientists actually look into it (if only to get them to shut up, but still…) — the system seems to work. Hell, the system has worked wonders throughout the past several hundred years — it’s amazing what we know now.
>Paul was clearly misrepresenting what I said because he know it shows that his premise is not necessarily a valid one.
No I was mocking you. “We might have a nuke war…” Get real
=========
>>The point here is, no sane scientist would doubt that the evolutionary theory is an *excellent* theory; it explains a *lot* very elegantly.
Heater you missed me earlier.
EZs (evolution zealots) LOVE to say their theory(ies) is “elegant.”
OOOOKAAAY The creationist say simply “God did it all.”
Now since that is considerably more elegant than what you believe, are you going to switch sides?
As I said earlier, If we are scoring on elegance, the creationists win by a mile.
NOW- Got a better line?
ooops sorry heater- Unlike you guys have no reason to misquote you.
OK you pick the number and what it represents. (confidence, known knowledge, you pick)
Mark read your link, have to agree with Paul, did you actually read it.
Also, please come back to me, when those mosquitos turn into something that isn’t a mosquito anymore.
Paul said: “If we are scoring on elegance, the creationists win by a mile…NOW- Got a better line?”
Why yes, I do. Evolution is more elegant, and is not absolute bull. That is, it’s supported by massive amounts of evidence. Why are we going through this again? Why? WHY? It’s been settled many years before.
MARK MARK MARK
You said:
“While some scientists may sound like they are preaching the “religion of evolution”, many do not. On the other hand, all IDers and Creationists have a very specific agenda based on their religion and faith”
If I’ve said it once I’ve said it 1000 times. In order to believe EITHER theory you must take a leap of faith… the difference is the religious people will admit it.
My problem is (as it is evidence by my replies) is that the so-called scientists are often more zealous than the real religious.
I say something as simple as “We’ll know a lot more in 1000 years” and some jackass says “Not if we have a war.”
It surpasses real debate and becomes stupidity.
Actually, Paul, elegance in theory means elegance in showing how to justify the observable. Creationists have a really hard time with the simple fact that fossils of simple creatures have been found the older layers of earth and as you move up you can see a pattern of increasing complexity. Is God trying to trick us? Did something happen during the Flood to cause smaller creatures to be buried first, the opposite of expected results? What exactly is going on here?
For evolution, the answers are elegant.
BTW, science is the quest for finding natural causes for natural phenomena. Saying Apollo pulls the sun across the ski may be elegant, but it isn’t science, even if we didn’t know what we now know. Check out the Parable of the Beekeeper.
And which side has more zealots?
They’ve been plenty of (real) religious people come thru here and make a few comments and leave. The evolution zealots pounce in droves.
Just an observation.
Posted by: Paul at March 28, 2005 04:32 PM
Alternatively you can tell me what percentage of the whole picture we have today?
I have it on good authority that it is 42 though some speculate 43. Nimrods, I tells ya’… 43, pffft.
PS – Follow the link only if you don’t mind reading spoilers. Traverse at your own peril.
>Actually, Paul, elegance in theory means elegance in showing how to justify the observable.
“It’s in the bible”
I’m not a creationist but if the issue os one of elegance….
>For evolution, the answers are elegant.
OK how did we get here– in 100 words or less.
Paul,
You have a central question. It isn’t quantifiably answerable; however, we *can* express a degree of confidence in the answers:
1) Will we know more a thousand years from now about human origins?
Answer: Why, yes, obviously, assuming that we don’t all die from a diet of rotten gorilla colon.
This leads to the question: “How much more will we know?” And there’s no simple answer to this. We’ll come to know a LOT more, but quantifying it is impossible (and fully unneccesary, and probably misleading).
From the answer to (1), you seem to conclude that the current theory (whatever it is, let’s say it’s “evolution”), is weak.
That’s not a valid move. By that reasoning, everything we know, by definition, is weak, just as weak as evolution.
You need to show that evolution is weaker, right now, in March 2005, than its rivals. It isn’t. It’s so very strong, right now, compared to ID, say, that we may express a very high degree of certainty in it. Say 99.99 %.
In saying this, we are NOT saying that we know 99.99% of everything.
We’ll probably know a heck of a lot more chemistry and physics a thousand years from now, too, but nobody calls organic synthesis ‘just a theory’, because no one fears that they’ll be thrown into hell for believing it. Some people think they are in hell when studying it, but that’s different…
AD I get it w/o the link…. Too chicken?
====
Ok boys and girls, it’s been fun.. I’m probably done.
Dorian if you answer me, take a second to email me, I may or may not check this thread again.. I do have a life you know.
Of course I read the AIG site I linked to. If you are looking for someone watching one kind of creature evolving into another right before our eyes, I can’t help you out. There is a great deal of evidence in the fossil record of this happening, but you can’t say “this fossil is the father of that fossil” etc., etc. What you can do is date the fossils, look for similar features and notice a progression. There are many, many examples of that. Proof? No. But pretty solid evidence.
The fact that we have observed one species evolve into another at all, even at the most technical level, I found to be fairly interesting. Once you have a split as documented it doesn’t take much imagination to picture further changes as time goes on.
Oh, btw, I agree with Paul’s assessment that knowledge increases over time, obviously, but why should this lead to some nihilistic view that what we understand now is worthless or too incomplete to make any decisions? It’s almost like saying you should never buy a computer because in a few years there will be much more powerful computers for the same price. True, but so what?
Ok. The funny thing is that IDists and Creationists usually arent even talking about the theory of Evolution, even when they think they are.
The theory of evolution isnt about all the ooze and much as much as its about speciation and diversification…like the old example of the giraffes necks getting longer over time due to selective pressures.
Evolution isnt about what created life, or how it started…its about how it has changed over time.
Creationists get all ruffled about ideas that conflict with a literal interpretation of Genesis. Basically, they feel that a small group of Bedouin pastoralists had all the answers about 3000 years ago, and that ideas that have been discovered more recently are all bunk. See what happens when people get dogmatic?
Creationists (who are generally Christian) also overlook the fact that their religion isnt the only one that has a complex, and very old, mythological tradition. Many cultures have them, and some are even older than the Judeo Christian stories.
Paul’s point is basically that we dont know everything, which is true. We know some good things now, but soon we will know more. Ideas change pretty quickly…just read an anthropology or biology book from 1950.
When Tu-chai-pai made the world, the earth was the woman, the sky was the man. The sky came down upon the earth. The world in the beginning was a pure lake covered with tules…
-Beginning of Diegeno Indian Creation Myth
Steven Hawking might have other ideas about the origin of earth. Does it matter?
And don’t be the guy who burned down the library at Alexandria. We know a lot. Your graph is at best misleading.
Say we measure knowledge by pages written (this is a horrible metric, but something’s better than nothing). In 1000 years, there will be at least 100 times as many pages (of new material) published. But the interesting question is whether any of those pages will provide data which , for instance, causes us to cast Einsteinian relativity by the wayside? What about quantum theory? Evolutionary biology? Germ theory? Atomic theory? Newton’s theories?
You’ll note that some of those theories have conflicts of various sorts. Newton’s theories have been updated, rewritten, and supplanted in different ways, but there are excellent reasons for the continued dominance of Newton, despite the fact that relativity explains the universe better.
Similarly, modern evolutionary biology isn’t what it was in 1859, when Darwin and Wallace published. It isn’t what it was when Dobzhansky said “Nothing in biology makes sense except in light of evolution.” It isn’t what it was a year ago.
Those statements are correct, and had you said that, you wouldn’t look quite so silly.
Evolution is the grand unified theory of biology. Physicists are still working on their grand, unified theory, and every new discovery in string theory or astrophysics is (rightly) taken by the public as a sign of the strength of the fundamental principles of modern physics. New data come in (more and more pages generated), but the amount by which earlier theoretical work is changed decreases. The big questions get answered, and the problem is working out the details.
Your graphic is bogus because it lacks a metric, and you don’t distinguish the nature of knowledge.
When we find life on other planets, and understand how it has changed through time, we will increase our knowledge greatly. The amount of new knowledge relating to life on earth will be relatively small. We are likely to find that life on other planets evolves through natural selection and other well-understood processes, but if they don’t, that adds data without eliminating any existing knowledge.
I’ve put 100 papers a week into the Evolution Project. Those are new data, but they don’t undermine the principles of modern biology. I’ve put nothing into the Non-Evolution Project. You’ll just have to trust me that there hasn’t been anything to put there. That means that lots has been published which supports modern biological theory (doesn’t prove, that’s not what we humans do) and nothing has come along and refuted it.
It isn’t just the quantity of knowledge that changes, but the type.
josh wrote:
Your graphic is bogus because it lacks a metric, and you don’t distinguish the nature of knowledge.
I think the graph is meant to be facetious Josh.
RE: Paul’s post (March 28, 2005 05:02 PM)
AD I get it w/o the link…. Too chicken?
LOL. Nah, but how often can I a) use that answer and b) have such a short response mean so much? It has as many levels as the Earth has geologic strata.
I’m afraid this oozer won’t get pinned down to a particular number (excepting of course the universally applicable “42”) since it’s a silly exercise. I liken it to the mind-boggling curiosity of “How many pieces of string does it take to reach the Moon?”.
I have more “faith” that science does a better job of explaining my existence on our big blue marble than anything that any religion has to offer. I don’t need to bang people over the head with my zealotry because it has no impact on my “beliefs”. I’ll continue to analyze what science presents and evolve along with its expanding knowledge all the while discarding the most frivolous and disproven. Some eureka moment may turn everything on its head and we’ll reanalyze under a new paradigm. I’ll let the thumpers think whatever they want and we’ll all coexist until one of us wants the other’s steak dinner or mating area. Then, of course, we’ll engage and only one will leave the prairie alive. It’s that evolution “survival of the fittest” thing.
Paul – you’ve been clearly caught in several logical fallacies on this very post (non sequitur, straw man, and the false dilemma), and you’ve even managed to imply things and then deny them – not quite the same as lying, but close. Then, when people point out the fallacies, you appear to either
a) mock them
b) resort to more logical fallacies
At no point in this entire post have I seen you address the fallacies, nor your misquotes, correct the implied falsehoods, or even come up with any concrete evidence for your points. It’s just amazing, actually.
If you’d like, I can come up with definitions of each of the above, along with examples of them throughout your posts. However, I’m not sure it’d do any good (much like this debate is doing nothing to further science, evolution, ID, or creationism), so let me know if you’ll actually answer them rather than just resort to mocking and I’ll be more than happy to post again.
I doubt that the graphic is facetious, but it doesn’t matter. The argument is the same regardless of the graphic.
Knowledge will increase, but all knowledge isn’t equal.
Any metric Paul puts on knowledge would be flawed. This is the massive hole in his argument, and his graphic is perfect at illustrating the error.
ADrivel wrote:
I’ll let the thumpers think whatever they want and we’ll all coexist until one of us wants the other’s steak dinner or mating area.
Thats what it all comes down to…
lol
I want people to know me 🙁
I think the graph is meant to be facetious Josh.
Oh, clearly biting satire. Or is it irony? A pun? Observational humour? Zany madcap humour? In any event, Bravo!
Sure, we’re all laughing WITH him, not AT him… 😉
Josh:
The post is catagorized under “humor” so I wouldnt take it all too seriously.
I dont know how you would actually put a “metric” on knowledge like that…
I guess what I see is a basic point, that being the fact that in the future we should have a greater udnerstanding of evolutionary biology, anthropology, genetics, etc. That is, assuming that we dont nuke ourselves. The assumption is that we continue to study and investigate those fields.
Paleoanthropology is a good example. Sure they have some good finds and ideas about the australopithecines, but the samples are limited, and chronologies can radically change with new finds when the data set is so small. We have interesting ideas about human origins, but by no means are they definitive…
Pauls graphic is meant to be humorous. He’s saying that he thinks we will “know more” in the future, and hopefully we will. I dont care about getting into the technical faults of a humorous graph, personally. Dont worry about it…you seem to have a good grasp on evolutionary ideas. Paul is just saying that we havent nailed it all down, and I agree with that.
Paul, your chart would be meaningful if it showed our level of knowledge one thousand years ago as well. At the relative scales you represent, it would have to be a negative number.
What happened to the other thread where we were supposed to provide answers in the approved Pauline format? I spent an hour writing something up, and then *poof* the thread was closed.
I want people to know me 🙁
I have never forgotten you.
Ben:
You know its been a while since I’ve seen high quality zany madcap humor. Oh, the good old days.
a.m.