This is right. Virtually everyone who shows up at Pharyngula and starts marveling at how much blind faith evolutionists have ends up boiling his argument down to "Please explain how something -the universe - came from nothing. Ha ha! Good luck doing that without God!"
People forget that the proper response is "I have no idea. What does that have to do with evolution again?"
I was going to make some remark about how some evolutionists are apparently working to promote that misconception, when I remembered that, no, it's not evolution in specific, it's science. Some scientists argue that science as a whole disproves the existence of God or renders him unnecessary or doesn't require him or whatever -- it's not specifically a problem of evolution, just a question of a kind of radical materialism that can be the consequence of seriously considering why the scientific method has proven to be so amazingly effective.
The reason that evolution is such a sticking point is that it specifically contradicts something that the Bible says -- namely, that the earth was created in six days. Of course, in the very next fucking chapter there's an account that doesn't mention the number of days at all, and has everything created in a different order, so... six-day creationists are still idiots, based strictly on the Bible. I will grant them that the six-day creation story is more memorable and more aesthetically appealling, but it's not the only account of creation in the Bible. It's not even the only account of creation in the first two chapters of the Bible.
Then there's the "inherit the wind" fallacy: If the world was created in six days, and the sun was created on the fourth day, how do you measure the first three days (and much of the fourth)? Could they not have been 25 million years, in fact? And how did that lady Caine married come about, without it being incest? Hmmm?
I am really tired of being told that Christians don't accept evolution (I certainly don't *believe* in evolution) just because the bible thumpers don't.
In fact if one day God did choose to intervene directly, that would say nothing about the validity of the theory of natural selection. It would only show that God chose to step in and intervene at that time and in that particular place.
that is: take that, William Jennings Bryan. And another, for the t.
The evolution-hatin' comes from a very deep problem -- fear of uncertainty. There are interpretive problems with the Bible -- it isn't exactly clear on all fronts. Certain parts are, but lots of it isn't clear at all. It requires interpretation. It's interesting what people are willing to forgo in order to pretend that the Bible is clear, and doesn't require them to do any extra thinking.
It's the same sort of folk who think "plain meaning" is the solution to all Con Law problems. There isn't a plain meaning of the Bill of Rights or of Genesis. It requires thought.
If the Bible is false, where did the firmament come from? Without it, the waters above the firmament would come pouring down on us and it would be Noah's Flood all over again.
The most influencial current evolutionary thinkers are atheists. This isn't going to help things in Kansas, but a correct understanding of Evolution is deeply incompatable with belief in God.
Many people believe in directed evolution where God puts his thumb on the scale to get mankind intelligence or moral capacity. If you believe this, you can't correctly understand human intellegence and moral capacity. Because, human intelligence and moral capacity were produced by evolution, not God.
So, for example, there is a reason why treatment of people out of our group (iraqi civilians) is so much worse than the treatment of people in our group (us soldiers). Fucked-up things happen in wars. And they probably have an evolutionary origin. Which doesn't mean you can't avoid either wars or the fucked-up behavior, but you have to work at it.
Alex Tabarrok is correct when he says if God comes to earth and starts shooting lightning bolts then evolution may be proved incorrect. God could put dinosaur bones in the ground just to trick us. It would be retarded. But, if we have a retarded God, we have a retarded God.
But, without Him saying something to the effect that He hid some dinosaur bones for giggles, wouldn't it be equally reasonable to assume, were there to be said lightening shooting, that both God and dinosaurs coexisted for a time (before the extinction)?
Joe -- I could equally argue that pure materialists lack the capacity to fully understand human intelligence and moral capacity, and I would be able to marshal the same empirical evidence for such (none) as you can for your contention.
I don't think you could have a retarded God, not because God is good, but because goodness is the essence of the dvine. If you're going to believe in God at all, everything that is good points, in some small way to, or rather it provides a glimpse of God.
If the Bible is false, where did the firmament come from? Without it, the waters above the firmament would come pouring down on us and it would be Noah's Flood all over again.
Explain THAT, mister so-called "scientist"!
The problem with this reasoning is that the word "firmament" actually has no meaning, as nobody has ever seen it except in the Bible. Therefore, your interpretation of the creation myth depends on your definition of this peculiar word.
I think it means "sugary nougat", but that's a minority interpretation.
Could it be that those behaviors you mention are influenced by biologically encoded traits that are a result of evolution, but also by the development of human civilization, which has a logic all its own? After all, biological evolution is ultimately based on complex chemical interactions, but no one denies that biological evolution has its own logic that is not simply determined by the laws of chemistry -- and so on, all the way down.
So it's possible that in order to understand human beings, we need to understand their social life, and we need to engage with previous attempts to understand that social life (such as, say, Christianity) on their own level, rather than making this short-circuit of pretending that it's wholly determined by some "lower" level.
I agree that culture profoundly affects people. Biology isn't destiny. People don't have to act badly even during wars.
But, just as multiple languages doesn't mean there can't be a deep biological structure allowing people to speak and understand languages that constrains and affects language, I think there are deep biological structures that constrain and affect our moral beliefs. And these deep structures were formed by evolution.
The Robbers cave experiment shows how quickly group identities are created and how much such identities affect moral reasoning. The existance of group identities and the fact that such identities affect moral reasoning is biologically determined. This doesn't mean culture can't affect the creation of group identities and what care is due people outside the group.
I didn't deny that biology was a factor, but it just doesn't seem particularly helpful to act as though the fact that our behaviors are influenced by biology is some kind of Astounding Insight That Changes Anything -- we've always known, in some general way, that hunger, greed, sex, etc., all influence our behavior.
And that experiment you cite does not mention biological factors at all, which further proves my point that we can and should understand human behavior at a level of abstraction above the insights of evolutionary biology, and furthermore, that claiming that the fact of evolution provides some kind of ace in the hole for sociological analysis is a category mistake.
It seems to me that the case against evolution has been made all the more dire by the second wave in the empirical case for evolution: genetics. So long as evolutionary science was bolstered primarily by a necessarily incomplete fossil record, it was sufficient to deny the provenance of evolution by ridiculing the concept of mans coming from monkeys; or by bluffing, in some sense, that the case could be made if only the fossil record were more complete.
But with the advent of genetics, the empirical case for evolution is sufficiently compelling that traditionalist Christians can't common-sense it away. One could argue that this has been the situation since the description of DNA, but much in the way that computers weren't a reality until the 90s, it's only within the last few years that genetics have become something more significant, more real, than a way to mess around with fruit flies and hybrid flowers.
More importantly, applications of genetic science threaten fundamentalist understandings of human nature. It's not so much that evolution threatens Genesis as it is that science now threatens the Holy Spirit, the divine breath nostriled into clay, in new and compelling ways. The rearguard action against science has taken the form of an attack on evolution because that's the way you put Biblical tenets on the same page with science—by indoctrinating children so that they will refuse the facts once they finally reach the (college-level) courses at which they are introduced.
I think hunger, greed, and sex are evolutionally determined but culturally mediated. The bible gives an alternate non-evolutionary explanation for hunger, greed, and sex that I don't believe.
Joe, I guess I just don't understand what's gained by the reference to evolution in explaining such matters, in practical terms. (Nor do I understand what would be gained by reference to God, in practical terms -- that is, it's indifferent.)
The Bible does not attempt to provide any one explanation for the phenomena that you say it does. Nor does the Christian tradition. If you're thinking "Christians believe we're greedy because of the fall," then you're just factually incorrect.
Finally, if in any sense it is true that evolution provides an Astounding, Indispensable Insight into human social life, the social theory that takes it into account will still be indifferent to the existence of God, as are all scientific theories. You can take it that extra step and say that it disproves God, but again, that's a category mistake in my opinion.
I do think it's funny (funny sad) that so many religious people think science is out to get them, when if you look at scientists, there are all types.
I know one astronomer who thinks of every observation he makes as "less room for god", but then at the same time, i know others who do what they do precisely because it is an opportunity to observe and understand god's majesty, and many who are relatively indifferent. I presume it's the same with biologists.
There will always be room for god, even if evolution and plate tectonics and radioactive dating leave no room for a 7-day creation. And there will always be room to reject god. Because science doesnt address the question of god.
I was at a dinner not too long ago when some very smart philosophers seemed to agree that the best argument for theism involved complexity, and that seems right. Insofar as "the theory of evolution" provides a non-theistic explanation for a kind of complexity that otherwise might be evidence for God's existence, evolution seems to be a threat to (at least a certain kind of) theistic belief. (Of course, there are other kinds of complexity to be explained, etc. etc.)
I mean, you could say that you believe in evolution guided by God, but that's sort of like believing that objects fall to the Earth because of gravity and also little demons pushing them.
Given the failure of the scientific community to fully account for the gravitational force and to clarify its relationship with the other fundamental forces, I don't see why the "little demons pushing them" theory is consistently dismissed out of hand.
Labs, even setting aside the issue of whether theism is to be established by "argument"--in your last sentence, a lot depends on what we mean by "guided." God as the Prime Mover is surely compatible with a fully scientific belief in evolution. And it seems Christian free will doctrine also contemplates situations in which God, even as omnipotent and omniscient, can create and begin but not control events.
Maybe it's true that science in general and evolution in particular are a threat to a "god of the gaps," but the god of the gaps isn't the one you should be believing in anyway.
I thought one of the assumptions of "science" which can never be proven is that the universe exists and that it has order - there are physical laws which govern what happens.
The question is whether these assumptions can still be assumed if God came down and apparently breaks some of the laws.
Geez, isn't the answer clear? We already observe phenomena that is not explained by our current scientific laws. The scientific response is not to throw all of our current understanding out the window.
Given the failure of the scientific community to fully account for the gravitational force and to clarify its relationship with the other fundamental forces, I don't see why the "little demons pushing them" theory is consistently dismissed out of hand.
It may be true the universe doesn't exist, and it may be true the universe does not operate according to physical laws. Neither of these are very interesting from a scientific perspective are they? Scientists do not dismiss the demons theory but rather give it little thought because it doesn't go very far in a scientific way.
I was fucking joking. The "demons pushing things" theory was just made up on the spot by Fontana, and I decided to mock the normal argumentative strategies of "intelligent design" advocates ("Darwinism doesn't explain absolutely everything to the greatest possible level of detail, so let's revert to being Christians!").
Interesting, Ogged. I've always taken the most interesting kind of theism to be one in which God is thought to explain things. As the gaps get smaller, etc. etc. Do you have a particular sort of alternative in mind? Like a form of life, or something?
I mean, you could say that you believe in evolution guided by God, but that's sort of like believing that objects fall to the Earth because of gravity and also little demons pushing them.
I don't think so because presumably the theory of gravity, when it comes, will be one of necessary relationships. Evolution, on the other hand, as I understand it, operates on randomn variation and natural selection. I don't see why one couldn't hold the belief that evolution was guided and not contradict any scientific theories with that belief.
I'm using it to imply that there is no means of predicting that a mutation will take place or what that mutation will be. I think that's correct, but, I'm not a biologist.
"Random" is one of those words (like "life") people use all the time that are really very difficult to define.
I was wondering if there is such a thing as guided randomness, or if the guiding part would negate the random part?
Me, I imagine a God who created the Universe as it is, time, space, randomness, ordered with incredibly wonderful rules, but who is free to break any of the rules at any time.
I can't prove it though. Can't disprove it either.
Well, you can predict random things. I can pretty well predict that a coin flipped 1000 times will come up heads around 500 times. That doesn't mean it's not random.
jeez, i can't type lately. 44 should have been "there is chaos"...
45:
Wolfson, you can approximate with fair certainty, not predict. But anyway, a coin-flip has a very low degree of randomness, seeing as how there are only 2 options.
Perhaps the key difference between random and chaos is order. An air molecule in a room with no breeze is random. There's no way to predict what particular molecules are doing. However, introduce a flow of air, and now your knowledge increases because you have a better idea of what the molecules are doing. The action of the molecules is now chaotic. In a way, the breezy room is more ordered than the still room. It's like bumper cars versus the freeway.
Wolfson, you can approximate with fair certainty, not predict.
This is a subtler distinction than my crude mind can grasp, I fear. I'm pretty sure that I can make all sorts of predictions about the results of coin tossing.
I have a question, to which I do not have an answer, just a suspicion of one: Where in the metaphysical scheme of things does mathematics fit?
We have all established long ago that my philosophical training is pitiful, and much of what is in my memory is probably erroneous but as I recall the Plato texts of my youth the object "rock" has a dual reality: Form and Substance, no?
Now when I extend this thought to mathematics and ask whether maths "exists" in an objective sense, I begin to get an idea of how a bootstrapping universe and a God could co-exist.
Is the distinction being drawn here (by someone, I think different people are drawing different ones) between all possible outcomes of an event having the same probability, and all outcomes of an event having unknown probabilities?
I have, for instance, once tossed a coin and come up heads 16 times in a row. (that sentence is awkward, but I can't fix it and keep it aesthetically pleasing. Weiner?) Which is to sort-of demonstrate that any "prediction" of the outcome of a coin-toss, were it to come true, is basically being lucky. There is no reason to deny, given idealized conditions, that the coin could come up heads 1000 times. (It doesn't, probably due to chaotic effects.)
"Chaotic effects"? Do you not think that each coin toss is random, and that they're independent? Is it not, granting that, sufficient to show that heads don't come up 1000 times in a row very frequently simply because the odds of that happening are (1/2)**1000 (9e-302), aka, not very likely at all? What are these idealized conditions, a hell of a lot of time? You're right that there's no reason to deny that it will ever happen, but 1. your demonstration is bollocks and 2. to conflate being lucky and knowing how to determine the expected value of a random variable is also bollocks.
On the other hand, Michael, if you really do think that predicting the number of times a coin will come up heads in a sequence of flips is just being lucky, I have an idea for a game we can play if we ever meet in person. It goes in rounds. Each round will consist of one hundred coin flips. If the number of heads is between 45 and 55, inclusive, you give me $5. If it's between zero and ten, or 90 and 100, I'll give you $5. Otherwise, no money will change hands.
Yes, but w/d, you seem to have liked everything Nick Cage has ever done. So your taste is suspect. (I'm not edumacated enough to even guess at what play is being referenced.)
I think Tom Stoppard is the worst kind of panderer, flattering the upper-middlebrow tastes and liberal arts educations of his audience members with cloying allusions masquerading as profound insights.
I know what you mean, Ben. I hate contrarian opnions for the sake of themselves; I tend to have your exact reaction when it comes to people who seem to get off on maligning great works.
But not every contrarian opinion is a pose. Tom Stoppard's work literally makes me angry, because I believe that he is faking it, and I hate fakes.
In general, it's hard for me to endure artists who fall all over themselves to show everyone how smart they are, and Stoppard is the epitome of that in my mind.
Nothing is suspect about "I think", I just don't "think" the statement can be shown to be false, ever. But then I ll agree that that is the nature of opinions in distinction to theories.
FWIW: I have the same instinct. For my taste he "tells" more than he "shows".
No one noted any problems with my claims about his acting ability (which isn't to say omission equals agreement). His role choice is incredibly poor. I've admitted somewhere that I don't even think I have good taste in music, I'm not ready to admit that I don't have good taste in film.
Anyhoo, didn't mean to raise so many hackles. Though I guess I expressed my opinion rather strongly from the outset. I've had this argument with virtually every single theaterlover I know, so it's very likely that I'm wrong about him, and I just am not getting something about his work.
ok, 56, wasn't quite clear as I wasn't thinking correctly about the coin toss. I'll iterate what I said upthread that the coin-toss is random, and hope that appeases any conflation of what I meant.
The point i'm trying to make is that there is no necessary operator for the predictability of the coin. apoligies if i'm not being clear enough about that. So what to call the random interactions that occur to make a coin toss both a) impossbile to predict per single toss and b) display general behavior over enough tosses. Maybe you don't like the word "luck"; I think it a fair word when talking about randomness, even though it may be contrary to our normal use wherein "luck" implies something which is special.
That you think I would play your game at 62 suggests that you might not be being the most charitable reader.
I'm awfully fond of Stoppard; whether or not he's fraudulent, I find him incredibly funny. (I admit I haven't seen any of his plays performed, only read them.)
Of course I don't think you would play that game. But there is no interaction that makes coin tosses display predictable behavior over many iterations, and you're right that I disapprove of the term "luck" here, precisely because it's contrary to our normal use of the term.
austro, in general, philosophy of math divides into realists, idealists, and nominalists.
Within realism, there are two subjects, realisim in ontology (numbers exist!....somewhere.) and realism in truth-value (math is true and tells us real things about the world).
Within nominalism, there are two types, traditional and nihilistic. Traditional nominalists believe mathematical entities are linguistic constructions. Nihilistic nominalists believe that mathematical entities are just fictions: they don't exist. That is, there is no truth value to be associated with math.
(Michael Dumitt, I believe, is the most famous proponent of this)
Idealism is the position that mathematical entities exist in our minds. They are realists in truth-value, but anti-realists in ontology.
I have to say at the outset that I find her work deeply offensive and can never work out why. So again a dubious statement. What I do admire, though is her use of language: "Sprachkünstler" would be the German expression for her. I get the impression that she starts with a moral and gets lost in the language such that the piece itself becomes a pose. I wonder if that is Stoppard's vice too?
continuation, I know that doesn't get to the metaphysics question, but, that's going to depend on where you stand with respect to realism. It's further complicated when you consider there are three more positions with respect to the relationship of math and philosophy of math. (philosophy first, philosophy last-if-at-all, and philosophy as interpreter of math) disagreed about by three more groups (intuitiionists, predictavists, and naturalists).
Oh wait -- I thought Ben was talking about my response, then my "hey, I'm not really saying, I'm just saying" backpedaling. But it looks like he's referring to Stoppard.
you could call it that -- but I sort of like the play, and it surprised me in that stoppard gets the non-clever parts really right. So he demonstrates that he can dramatize human emotion -- without the pretentious one-liners -- while at the same time delivering the one-liners in other situations. And he acknowledges that being clever isn't the point of drama. Plus, I like self-hatin' artists.
So you could also call it, I don't know, a dual accomplishment too.
I think the most interesting claim so far (besides the Stoppard-hatin') is Fontana's "the most interesting theism is the one the explains things." If that's right then it's really clear to me that theists should abandon biology for cosmology just as fast as they can, and run anthropic fine-tuning arguments. Or should we be looking to theism to explain a different kind of thing? If so, what?
Agreed, baa. Probably because I was in the middle of emailing him, I emailed him my response rather than posting it, but here's what I wrote.
By they way, I don't have a good answer to your question about religion. I've asked Jesuits about this, and best as I can tell (or explain), it's not so much that they believe the literal claims of the Bible, but that they act as though the claims are true (this is my gloss, not what they say). I think this is part of what "bearing witness" means: you make the religion true by living a life and making a world that is rooted in it, or, by believing, you make true. As for "explaining," well, none of them gave any indication that they use religion to explain in the sense that one explains the fossil record with the theory of evolution, but they certainly use it to explain, in the sense of come to terms with, things like birth, death, love, etc.
The Real Thing contains much less of the bothersome stuff for me, but generally his work is characterized by what appears to me to be a facade of cleverness and literary allusion. One of the most frequent audience responses that I heard from Jumpers, a play of his that was recently revived on Broadway, was "I liked it, but I don't think I really got it." This in particular rubs me the wrong way because I get the impression (and this is only my impression, not based on anything but my own intuition) that Stoppard wants it that way. The feeling I get is that he wants to be admired for the brilliance of whatever conceit is operating in whatever play we're watching, and he wants us to realize in no uncertain terms that He Is Smarter Than We Are. However, he makes the audience members themselves feel very clever when they do get his jokes and allusions. Everyone's flattering everyone else, aren't we all a bunch of clever, self-congratulatory folks all in a room together.
This, to me, is the very opposite of what I believe drama should be. This is going to sound like a sermon, but here goes: drama, in my opinion, should be an experience in which we, the audience and the players alike, explore something we didn't want to explore, or arrive at conclusions we'd rather not arrive at, or remember things we'd rather not remember, or face aspects of ourselves or our lives or the world around us that we'd rather not face -- all with the knowledge that the thing we finally did explore or arrive at or remember or face was inevitable, and we are better for having gone through what we did.
The feeling I get from Stoppard is that he knows that this is what drama should be, but doesn't have the skills to bring us there, so he constructs these elaborate mirrored halls that are dizzying and sometimes enormous fun but at the end of it all say very little while (and this is the annoying part) purporting to say very much indeed.
it seemed to me that "the real thing" makes the very point you are making, Joe. We open on a scene of a break-up that we (or I) enjoy witnessing, because the characters are so clever, the dialogue witty -- it is smarter than anything we would ever come up with, and the characters are have such cool heads.
Then it is revealed that was a scene in a play. We are introduced to the writer of the play, and several actors, who proceed to sleep around with each other. Besides the writer, nobody talks like the characters in the first scene, and he is revealed to be a fraud who understands neither himself nor anyone else. The various break-up scenes are disturbing. In hindsight, the first scene looks childish and inauthentic.
Parts of the play feel a little contrived, but some of the scenes, the "real" parts, work -- in my opinion -- leaving me to believe there is a real dramatist there, behind all the punning and jerking-off.
Everyone's flattering everyone else, aren't we all a bunch of clever, self-congratulatory folks all in a room together.
A lot of people say precisely the same thing about the (early) Simpsons. Which is to say, I have no vantage point from which to comment on Stoppard, but The Simpsons is one of the great cultural achievments of the last 30 years.
OK, I'll look like a dork (and a pretentious one at that). Here's some rumination on the meaning of faith. Two points. One, take it as stipulated that faith is not useful for predicting events: two the context of this comment was a discussion of Fear and Trembling:
Kierkegaard's accomplishment is to give a sense of what faith could mean for a human life. We do not require faith to know the moral law, to recognize it as binding, or to be motivated by it, on this Hegel and Kierkegaard (and Kant, and Aristotle) are united. Faith thus seems practically impotent – it does not change the actions of the faithful man. So what does faith do? I think Kierkegaard argues that faith is precisely faith in the importance of our individuality, faith that in some way not easily discoverable by reason, our small lives ... [are] of absolute importance. Ethics debars us from treating others (and, I suppose, ourselves) as means, but it does not teach us what kind of ends we are, or why our uniqueness is important. That's why a commitment to ethics is completely compatible with existential angst – you know what you're required to do, you do it, but the whole damn thing feels like a burden, like a shadow, like a joke. If you had faith, you'd live like a burgher, not like a stoic – because you wouldn't be trying to make ethics do a job it wasn't up to.
But isn't (in fact, wasn't) Kierkegaard's faith also compatible with existential angst? I think I've made this point before, though I'm not an expert on Kierkegaard: for him, it truly is a _leap of faith_ because it doesn't guarantee anything; otherwise, it would be knowledge.
It's surely true that for most practitioners of a religion, "faith" is something solid, and performs the function you so well describe. But I'm just not sure that that's what it is for Kierkegaard, or if it's how we should understand faith in itself, so to speak.
But isn't the existential angst more characteristic (to remain in Fear and Trembling mode) with the Knight of Infinite Resignation than that of faith? The picture of the K of IF he gives at one point is burgherly—his wife will have pot roast, or whatever, for him, by virtue of the absurd.
In the infinite resignation there is peace and rest; every man who wills it, who has not abased himself by scorning himself (which is still more dreadful than being proud), can train himself to make this movement which in its pain reconciles one with existence.
Contrast with the Knight of Faith, who is both resigned and (absurdly) faithful.
Now we will let the knight of faith appear in the role just described. He makes exactly the same movements as the other knight, infinitely renounces claim to the love which is the content of his life, he is reconciled in pain; but then occurs the prodigy, he makes still another movement more wonderful than all, for he says, "I believe nevertheless that I shall get her, in virtue, that is, of the absurd, in virtue of the fact that with God all things are possible." The absurd is not one of the factors which can be discriminated within the proper compass of the understanding: it is not identical with the improbable, the unexpected, the unforeseen. At the moment when the knight made the act of resignation he was convinced, humanly speaking, of the impossibility.
It's the two--resignation and faith--together that are absurd, the it's the absurd that gives us the angst.
I was going to quote the passage that I was thinking of here, but it's rather long; you can find it by searching for "I candidly admit that in my practice".
I know we've already moved on to Christian existentialism, but there's something incomplete in my explanation above, and that is that the problem isn't clever banter and such -- that's cool. But The Simpsons isn't trying to toss of the epigrams while simultaneously bloviating on, say, astrophysics and the existence of God and the significance of radical politics etc. etc., all of which come off as an attempt to be oh so very important. The Simpsons is just trying to make us laugh.
That's a wonderful passage. Two things. One of the things Kierkegaard is doing there is making it clear what faith is not: poetry, genius, etc. The emphasis on the "pedestrian" is supposed to remove those tempting errors from our mind. Second, these lines:
I have not found any such person, but I can well think him.
And,
It is supposed to be the most difficult task for a dancer to leap into a definite posture in such a way that there is not a second when he is grasping after the posture, but by the leap itself he stands fixed in that posture. Perhaps no dancer can do it–that is what this knight does.
In the description of the man himself, there's the absurd impossibility of the man. So yes, you're right that there's nothing angsty about the idealized Knight of Faith, but the idealized Knight of Faith is not us, not any one of us:
They make the movements upward, and fall down again; and this too is no mean pastime, nor ungraceful to behold. But whenever they fall down they are not able at once to assume the posture, they vacillate an instant, and this vacillation shows that after all they are strangers in the world. This is more or less strikingly evident in proportion to the art they possess, but even the most artistic knights cannot altogether conceal this vacillation.
That is a great passage: the part that always sticks in my mind is the bit about calf's head.
Pause briefly on whether the point is a correct one about Kierkegaard. What do you think about the idea of faith as being faith in the meaning/purpose of actions you are nonetheless required to do. Some people think faith is about science. That's absurd. Other that it is about moral action. I think that's tempting, but wrong.
I'm leery of almost-utilitarian questions about faith. What's it good for? Do I need it? Should I pick some up? I'm not sure that that's how you're asking, so not a criticism, but a demarcation. I am, however, confused by your "nonetheless."
I am tempted to read 118 & quotations therein as saying that, insofar as we actually do not attain perfect faith, we experience moments of angst before attaining faith again--but not that faith and angst go together. In my vacillation I am precisely not faithful—the vacillation isn't an attribute of faith.
This is conceptually exactly the same as Heidegger's authentic/inauthentic distinction, and the solution is the same: we're not one, then the other, depending on our mood, circumstance or effort: we're always both--and what Kierkegaard calls (or is translated as) "vacillation" is one way to put that, but one of Heidegger's real moves forward is the concept of "equiprimordiality," which is his term for things that are co-existing, co-constitutive of something, and not reducible to one another or to something else. So agan, you're right that vacillation isn't faithful, and neither is angst, but they always go together.
If that's the case, then I don't see how the passage about the ideally faithful man is enlightening (or why "vacillation" is a useful translation, though that of course depends on what Danish word he uses) at all, unless Kierkegaard thinks that they always go together for us, but not necessarily—how could he think him, given that equiprimordiality?
Well, how would you describe equiprimordiality if you didn't already have the concept? (I might just be reading too much Heidegger into K here, so consider that point provisional.)
In any case, looking at your 121 again, there might be some ambiguity in how we're using "faith." There's "faith" as a thing to have or state to be in, and there's leading a life of "faith" which is much more about the process and striving. Vacillation doesn't go with the former meaning, but can go with the latter (is, in fact, a part of it).
Faith in god does have utilitarian benefits. It makes you happier. On average. It didn't make Kierkegaard happier, but that makes me think he was doing wrong. I was going to say "what good does reading Kierkegaard get you?". But, now we know.
The professor for whom I first read Kierkegaard, a fresh-faced young doctor named Martin somethingorother, had been, according to a guy who was at that time working for the bookstore my mom was managing in CA and who had known him in his previous life as a PhD student at Chicago, involved in some complicated and messy love triangle for a while.
56: "For instance, once a coin I was tossing came up heads 16 times in a row"? "For instance, once I tossed 16 heads in a row" (except that sounds like something Vlad the Impaler might do)? "For instance, once I was tossing a coin and it came up heads 16 times in a row"? It's a toughie, but I'm pretty sure "For instance" should be at the beginning.
It's not that it must, it should. It sounds better--as the transition it ought to be at the beginning, and there's no reason to have it interrupting the rest of the sentence.
Much though I'm loathe to do it, I agree in part with baa. I know of Nonzero; I have read Nonzero; you, sir, want no part of Nonzero. It was not a good book.
by indoctrinating children so that they will refuse the facts once they finally reach the (college-level) courses at which they are introduced.
This happened to a friend (I should probably not say at what large Texas public university that is about to employ me she was teaching): At the beginning of the course, one of her students said to her, "I'm not allowed to learn anything about evolution."
That would explain why I was able to find Nonzero for less than $2 somewhere a few years ago. To a certain extent it's become one of those books I feel I should read because it's been on my shelf for so long now. Baa and SCMT, what are your reasons for avoiding it altogether instead of reading it and then knowing for myself why I dislike it (assuming, as I'm reasonably sure I will, that I really will dislike it)?
Robert Wright is one of those people with whose ideas (presented in reviews/articles by others) I generally disagree, but feel I should know something about.
For my part, it's because the book's aim was too ambitious by 4/5ths. It's the same sort of application of novel-to-the-masses theory to cultural anthropology that you see in Gladwell. In both cases the argument is necessarily floppy, and in both cases, it's not clear if that's because the author is communicating with a mass audience or because the author only sort of understands the material himself. The difference, I think, is that in Gladwell (I've not read Blink), it's pretty clear that he's stitching together anecdotes, while Wright seems to think he is both attempting and succeeding at something more.
Moreover, he could have made his point in three pages, and had the best of the anecdotes in another ten.
Don't even pick it up, it's one of the 40 most dangerous books of the century!
Seriously, though, my main problem with Wright isn't wrongness; it's that he's a goofus. And a classic my theory explains everything goofus at that. I do think non-zero sum games help explain the evolution of cooperation, and I do think that ev. bio is an important tool for exploring human behavior. Wright himself is the problem; skip him and go directly to the source.
Thanks for the link. I'm going to put Wright at the bottom of a different list (books I'm not sure I should have bought) and replace him with Axelrod. I do have an interest in (inevitably failed) attempts to explain everything, but there are so many other things I should be doing.
Two books -- this and this. -- which are more mind expanding than Robert Wright, and which touch on the some similar themes. (and are much, much, more fun to read on the beach)
This book is a good history book for science fiction fans. Chapters on the big bang, galaxy formation, solar system formation, origins of life on earth, evolution of animals, human evolution, a bunch of chapters on human history, then chapters on the near and far future. You have to love a history book that ends with space colonies.
This is right. Virtually everyone who shows up at Pharyngula and starts marveling at how much blind faith evolutionists have ends up boiling his argument down to "Please explain how something -the universe - came from nothing. Ha ha! Good luck doing that without God!"
People forget that the proper response is "I have no idea. What does that have to do with evolution again?"
Posted by Cryptic Ned | Link to this comment | 06-21-05 6:18 PM
I was going to make some remark about how some evolutionists are apparently working to promote that misconception, when I remembered that, no, it's not evolution in specific, it's science. Some scientists argue that science as a whole disproves the existence of God or renders him unnecessary or doesn't require him or whatever -- it's not specifically a problem of evolution, just a question of a kind of radical materialism that can be the consequence of seriously considering why the scientific method has proven to be so amazingly effective.
The reason that evolution is such a sticking point is that it specifically contradicts something that the Bible says -- namely, that the earth was created in six days. Of course, in the very next fucking chapter there's an account that doesn't mention the number of days at all, and has everything created in a different order, so... six-day creationists are still idiots, based strictly on the Bible. I will grant them that the six-day creation story is more memorable and more aesthetically appealling, but it's not the only account of creation in the Bible. It's not even the only account of creation in the first two chapters of the Bible.
Posted by Adam Kotsko | Link to this comment | 06-21-05 6:30 PM
Then there's the "inherit the wind" fallacy: If the world was created in six days, and the sun was created on the fourth day, how do you measure the first three days (and much of the fourth)? Could they not have been 25 million years, in fact? And how did that lady Caine married come about, without it being incest? Hmmm?
Take that, William Jennings Bryant.
Posted by text | Link to this comment | 06-21-05 6:36 PM
I am really tired of being told that Christians don't accept evolution (I certainly don't *believe* in evolution) just because the bible thumpers don't.
In fact if one day God did choose to intervene directly, that would say nothing about the validity of the theory of natural selection. It would only show that God chose to step in and intervene at that time and in that particular place.
Posted by Abby | Link to this comment | 06-21-05 6:39 PM
"Please explain how something -the universe - came from nothing. Ha ha! Good luck doing that without God!"
Easy. It came from Ned. Who needs God when you have Ned.
Posted by ogmb | Link to this comment | 06-21-05 6:41 PM
that is: take that, William Jennings Bryan. And another, for the t.
The evolution-hatin' comes from a very deep problem -- fear of uncertainty. There are interpretive problems with the Bible -- it isn't exactly clear on all fronts. Certain parts are, but lots of it isn't clear at all. It requires interpretation. It's interesting what people are willing to forgo in order to pretend that the Bible is clear, and doesn't require them to do any extra thinking.
It's the same sort of folk who think "plain meaning" is the solution to all Con Law problems. There isn't a plain meaning of the Bill of Rights or of Genesis. It requires thought.
Posted by text | Link to this comment | 06-21-05 6:48 PM
If the Bible is false, where did the firmament come from? Without it, the waters above the firmament would come pouring down on us and it would be Noah's Flood all over again.
Explain THAT, mister so-called "scientist"!
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 06-21-05 6:50 PM
not to mention the unexplainable cherubim and seraphim. Where do the cherubim fit into your phylogenic nomenclature, Mr. Bill Nye The "Science" Guy?
Posted by text | Link to this comment | 06-21-05 6:54 PM
The most influencial current evolutionary thinkers are atheists. This isn't going to help things in Kansas, but a correct understanding of Evolution is deeply incompatable with belief in God.
Many people believe in directed evolution where God puts his thumb on the scale to get mankind intelligence or moral capacity. If you believe this, you can't correctly understand human intellegence and moral capacity. Because, human intelligence and moral capacity were produced by evolution, not God.
So, for example, there is a reason why treatment of people out of our group (iraqi civilians) is so much worse than the treatment of people in our group (us soldiers). Fucked-up things happen in wars. And they probably have an evolutionary origin. Which doesn't mean you can't avoid either wars or the fucked-up behavior, but you have to work at it.
Alex Tabarrok is correct when he says if God comes to earth and starts shooting lightning bolts then evolution may be proved incorrect. God could put dinosaur bones in the ground just to trick us. It would be retarded. But, if we have a retarded God, we have a retarded God.
Posted by Joe O | Link to this comment | 06-21-05 6:58 PM
But, without Him saying something to the effect that He hid some dinosaur bones for giggles, wouldn't it be equally reasonable to assume, were there to be said lightening shooting, that both God and dinosaurs coexisted for a time (before the extinction)?
Posted by text | Link to this comment | 06-21-05 7:03 PM
Joe -- I could equally argue that pure materialists lack the capacity to fully understand human intelligence and moral capacity, and I would be able to marshal the same empirical evidence for such (none) as you can for your contention.
Posted by text | Link to this comment | 06-21-05 7:05 PM
I was assuming that God admitted to hidding the dinosaur bones because it is funnier that way.
Posted by Joe O | Link to this comment | 06-21-05 7:13 PM
the real kicker is when we find out He really said "sore-shins" -- out of concern over jogging injuries.
Posted by text | Link to this comment | 06-21-05 7:22 PM
sorry for that one.
Posted by text | Link to this comment | 06-21-05 7:22 PM
I don't think you could have a retarded God, not because God is good, but because goodness is the essence of the dvine. If you're going to believe in God at all, everything that is good points, in some small way to, or rather it provides a glimpse of God.
Posted by Abby | Link to this comment | 06-21-05 7:29 PM
am really tired of being told that Christians don't accept evolution
By who are you told this? Christians or non-christians?
Posted by Michael | Link to this comment | 06-21-05 7:33 PM
goodness is the essence of the dvine
sez who?
Posted by Michael | Link to this comment | 06-21-05 7:34 PM
He could be one of those nice, sweet-dispositioned retards, with a weird sense of humor.
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 06-21-05 7:49 PM
If the Bible is false, where did the firmament come from? Without it, the waters above the firmament would come pouring down on us and it would be Noah's Flood all over again.
Explain THAT, mister so-called "scientist"!
The problem with this reasoning is that the word "firmament" actually has no meaning, as nobody has ever seen it except in the Bible. Therefore, your interpretation of the creation myth depends on your definition of this peculiar word.
I think it means "sugary nougat", but that's a minority interpretation.
Posted by Cryptic Ned | Link to this comment | 06-21-05 7:55 PM
God could put dinosaur bones in the ground just to trick us.
But we already know He did.
Posted by ogmb | Link to this comment | 06-21-05 7:58 PM
Joe O,
Could it be that those behaviors you mention are influenced by biologically encoded traits that are a result of evolution, but also by the development of human civilization, which has a logic all its own? After all, biological evolution is ultimately based on complex chemical interactions, but no one denies that biological evolution has its own logic that is not simply determined by the laws of chemistry -- and so on, all the way down.
So it's possible that in order to understand human beings, we need to understand their social life, and we need to engage with previous attempts to understand that social life (such as, say, Christianity) on their own level, rather than making this short-circuit of pretending that it's wholly determined by some "lower" level.
Posted by Adam Kotsko | Link to this comment | 06-21-05 8:00 PM
The waters above the firmament were recently found on Mars.
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 06-21-05 8:24 PM
I agree that culture profoundly affects people. Biology isn't destiny. People don't have to act badly even during wars.
But, just as multiple languages doesn't mean there can't be a deep biological structure allowing people to speak and understand languages that constrains and affects language, I think there are deep biological structures that constrain and affect our moral beliefs. And these deep structures were formed by evolution.
The Robbers cave experiment shows how quickly group identities are created and how much such identities affect moral reasoning. The existance of group identities and the fact that such identities affect moral reasoning is biologically determined. This doesn't mean culture can't affect the creation of group identities and what care is due people outside the group.
Posted by Joe O | Link to this comment | 06-21-05 9:17 PM
I didn't deny that biology was a factor, but it just doesn't seem particularly helpful to act as though the fact that our behaviors are influenced by biology is some kind of Astounding Insight That Changes Anything -- we've always known, in some general way, that hunger, greed, sex, etc., all influence our behavior.
And that experiment you cite does not mention biological factors at all, which further proves my point that we can and should understand human behavior at a level of abstraction above the insights of evolutionary biology, and furthermore, that claiming that the fact of evolution provides some kind of ace in the hole for sociological analysis is a category mistake.
Posted by Adam Kotsko | Link to this comment | 06-21-05 9:29 PM
It seems to me that the case against evolution has been made all the more dire by the second wave in the empirical case for evolution: genetics. So long as evolutionary science was bolstered primarily by a necessarily incomplete fossil record, it was sufficient to deny the provenance of evolution by ridiculing the concept of mans coming from monkeys; or by bluffing, in some sense, that the case could be made if only the fossil record were more complete.
But with the advent of genetics, the empirical case for evolution is sufficiently compelling that traditionalist Christians can't common-sense it away. One could argue that this has been the situation since the description of DNA, but much in the way that computers weren't a reality until the 90s, it's only within the last few years that genetics have become something more significant, more real, than a way to mess around with fruit flies and hybrid flowers.
More importantly, applications of genetic science threaten fundamentalist understandings of human nature. It's not so much that evolution threatens Genesis as it is that science now threatens the Holy Spirit, the divine breath nostriled into clay, in new and compelling ways. The rearguard action against science has taken the form of an attack on evolution because that's the way you put Biblical tenets on the same page with science—by indoctrinating children so that they will refuse the facts once they finally reach the (college-level) courses at which they are introduced.
Posted by Kriston | Link to this comment | 06-21-05 9:49 PM
25: . . . at which the facts are introduced.
Posted by Kriston | Link to this comment | 06-21-05 9:51 PM
I think hunger, greed, and sex are evolutionally determined but culturally mediated. The bible gives an alternate non-evolutionary explanation for hunger, greed, and sex that I don't believe.
Posted by Joe O | Link to this comment | 06-21-05 10:30 PM
Joe, I guess I just don't understand what's gained by the reference to evolution in explaining such matters, in practical terms. (Nor do I understand what would be gained by reference to God, in practical terms -- that is, it's indifferent.)
The Bible does not attempt to provide any one explanation for the phenomena that you say it does. Nor does the Christian tradition. If you're thinking "Christians believe we're greedy because of the fall," then you're just factually incorrect.
Finally, if in any sense it is true that evolution provides an Astounding, Indispensable Insight into human social life, the social theory that takes it into account will still be indifferent to the existence of God, as are all scientific theories. You can take it that extra step and say that it disproves God, but again, that's a category mistake in my opinion.
Posted by Adam Kotsko | Link to this comment | 06-21-05 10:39 PM
I do think it's funny (funny sad) that so many religious people think science is out to get them, when if you look at scientists, there are all types.
I know one astronomer who thinks of every observation he makes as "less room for god", but then at the same time, i know others who do what they do precisely because it is an opportunity to observe and understand god's majesty, and many who are relatively indifferent. I presume it's the same with biologists.
There will always be room for god, even if evolution and plate tectonics and radioactive dating leave no room for a 7-day creation. And there will always be room to reject god. Because science doesnt address the question of god.
Posted by robin | Link to this comment | 06-22-05 2:06 AM
I was at a dinner not too long ago when some very smart philosophers seemed to agree that the best argument for theism involved complexity, and that seems right. Insofar as "the theory of evolution" provides a non-theistic explanation for a kind of complexity that otherwise might be evidence for God's existence, evolution seems to be a threat to (at least a certain kind of) theistic belief. (Of course, there are other kinds of complexity to be explained, etc. etc.)
I mean, you could say that you believe in evolution guided by God, but that's sort of like believing that objects fall to the Earth because of gravity and also little demons pushing them.
Posted by FL | Link to this comment | 06-22-05 6:54 AM
Given the failure of the scientific community to fully account for the gravitational force and to clarify its relationship with the other fundamental forces, I don't see why the "little demons pushing them" theory is consistently dismissed out of hand.
Posted by Adam Kotsko | Link to this comment | 06-22-05 7:27 AM
Labs, even setting aside the issue of whether theism is to be established by "argument"--in your last sentence, a lot depends on what we mean by "guided." God as the Prime Mover is surely compatible with a fully scientific belief in evolution. And it seems Christian free will doctrine also contemplates situations in which God, even as omnipotent and omniscient, can create and begin but not control events.
Maybe it's true that science in general and evolution in particular are a threat to a "god of the gaps," but the god of the gaps isn't the one you should be believing in anyway.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 06-22-05 7:31 AM
I thought one of the assumptions of "science" which can never be proven is that the universe exists and that it has order - there are physical laws which govern what happens.
The question is whether these assumptions can still be assumed if God came down and apparently breaks some of the laws.
Geez, isn't the answer clear? We already observe phenomena that is not explained by our current scientific laws. The scientific response is not to throw all of our current understanding out the window.
Posted by Tripp | Link to this comment | 06-22-05 7:59 AM
Adam,
Given the failure of the scientific community to fully account for the gravitational force and to clarify its relationship with the other fundamental forces, I don't see why the "little demons pushing them" theory is consistently dismissed out of hand.
It may be true the universe doesn't exist, and it may be true the universe does not operate according to physical laws. Neither of these are very interesting from a scientific perspective are they? Scientists do not dismiss the demons theory but rather give it little thought because it doesn't go very far in a scientific way.
Posted by Tripp | Link to this comment | 06-22-05 8:07 AM
Tripp,
I was fucking joking. The "demons pushing things" theory was just made up on the spot by Fontana, and I decided to mock the normal argumentative strategies of "intelligent design" advocates ("Darwinism doesn't explain absolutely everything to the greatest possible level of detail, so let's revert to being Christians!").
Posted by Adam Kotsko | Link to this comment | 06-22-05 8:48 AM
This seems as good a place as any to reiterate my proposal for a vacuum cleaner called "Maxwell's Demon".
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 06-22-05 8:50 AM
Interesting, Ogged. I've always taken the most interesting kind of theism to be one in which God is thought to explain things. As the gaps get smaller, etc. etc. Do you have a particular sort of alternative in mind? Like a form of life, or something?
Posted by FL | Link to this comment | 06-22-05 11:17 AM
I mean, you could say that you believe in evolution guided by God, but that's sort of like believing that objects fall to the Earth because of gravity and also little demons pushing them.
I don't think so because presumably the theory of gravity, when it comes, will be one of necessary relationships. Evolution, on the other hand, as I understand it, operates on randomn variation and natural selection. I don't see why one couldn't hold the belief that evolution was guided and not contradict any scientific theories with that belief.
Posted by Michael | Link to this comment | 06-22-05 11:31 AM
Michael,
Interesting thought. What does "random" mean?
Posted by Tripp | Link to this comment | 06-22-05 11:35 AM
I'm using it to imply that there is no means of predicting that a mutation will take place or what that mutation will be. I think that's correct, but, I'm not a biologist.
Posted by Michael | Link to this comment | 06-22-05 11:42 AM
Random events can be predicted can't they? Look at Las Vegas.
Posted by Tripp | Link to this comment | 06-22-05 11:49 AM
Proof that Vegas isn't really random.
Posted by Michael | Link to this comment | 06-22-05 12:02 PM
"Random" is one of those words (like "life") people use all the time that are really very difficult to define.
I was wondering if there is such a thing as guided randomness, or if the guiding part would negate the random part?
Me, I imagine a God who created the Universe as it is, time, space, randomness, ordered with incredibly wonderful rules, but who is free to break any of the rules at any time.
I can't prove it though. Can't disprove it either.
Posted by Tripp | Link to this comment | 06-22-05 12:22 PM
if the guiding part would negate the random part?
yes.
This is chaos, which exhibits predictable tendencies on a large enough scale. Vegas might be chaotic.
Posted by Michael | Link to this comment | 06-22-05 12:27 PM
Well, you can predict random things. I can pretty well predict that a coin flipped 1000 times will come up heads around 500 times. That doesn't mean it's not random.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 06-22-05 12:38 PM
I think Vegas is both random and chaotic with the odds in the house's favor.
The first question I want to ask God is "what is up with the universe?"
Posted by Tripp | Link to this comment | 06-22-05 12:41 PM
The first question I want to ask is, "Why are you such a little bitch, God?"
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 06-22-05 12:45 PM
Because your grammar sucks, Apostropher.
Posted by God | Link to this comment | 06-22-05 1:12 PM
Ok, that was me; God didn't really post here. Also "God comments on Oy" in the recent comments bar is really pleasing.
Posted by FL | Link to this comment | 06-22-05 1:13 PM
jeez, i can't type lately. 44 should have been "there is chaos"...
45:
Wolfson, you can approximate with fair certainty, not predict. But anyway, a coin-flip has a very low degree of randomness, seeing as how there are only 2 options.
Perhaps the key difference between random and chaos is order. An air molecule in a room with no breeze is random. There's no way to predict what particular molecules are doing. However, introduce a flow of air, and now your knowledge increases because you have a better idea of what the molecules are doing. The action of the molecules is now chaotic. In a way, the breezy room is more ordered than the still room. It's like bumper cars versus the freeway.
Posted by Michael | Link to this comment | 06-22-05 1:19 PM
Wolfson, you can approximate with fair certainty, not predict.
This is a subtler distinction than my crude mind can grasp, I fear. I'm pretty sure that I can make all sorts of predictions about the results of coin tossing.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 06-22-05 1:25 PM
I have a question, to which I do not have an answer, just a suspicion of one: Where in the metaphysical scheme of things does mathematics fit?
We have all established long ago that my philosophical training is pitiful, and much of what is in my memory is probably erroneous but as I recall the Plato texts of my youth the object "rock" has a dual reality: Form and Substance, no?
Now when I extend this thought to mathematics and ask whether maths "exists" in an objective sense, I begin to get an idea of how a bootstrapping universe and a God could co-exist.
Go easy, please.
Posted by Austro | Link to this comment | 06-22-05 1:28 PM
Is the distinction being drawn here (by someone, I think different people are drawing different ones) between all possible outcomes of an event having the same probability, and all outcomes of an event having unknown probabilities?
Posted by washerdreyer | Link to this comment | 06-22-05 1:28 PM
I can make all sorts of predictions about the results of coin tossing.
And salad tossing, too.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 06-22-05 1:30 PM
The trouble with probability spaces is that they tend to collapse in a manner no one understands properly.
Posted by Austro | Link to this comment | 06-22-05 1:33 PM
I have, for instance, once tossed a coin and come up heads 16 times in a row. (that sentence is awkward, but I can't fix it and keep it aesthetically pleasing. Weiner?) Which is to sort-of demonstrate that any "prediction" of the outcome of a coin-toss, were it to come true, is basically being lucky. There is no reason to deny, given idealized conditions, that the coin could come up heads 1000 times. (It doesn't, probably due to chaotic effects.)
Posted by Michael | Link to this comment | 06-22-05 1:36 PM
There is no reason to deny, given idealized conditions, that the coin could come up heads 1000 times. (It doesn't, probably due to chaotic effects.)
It does, if you're a playwright looking for a trite image in an insubstantial fraud of a play.
Posted by Joe Drymala | Link to this comment | 06-22-05 1:39 PM
"Chaotic effects"? Do you not think that each coin toss is random, and that they're independent? Is it not, granting that, sufficient to show that heads don't come up 1000 times in a row very frequently simply because the odds of that happening are (1/2)**1000 (9e-302), aka, not very likely at all? What are these idealized conditions, a hell of a lot of time? You're right that there's no reason to deny that it will ever happen, but 1. your demonstration is bollocks and 2. to conflate being lucky and knowing how to determine the expected value of a random variable is also bollocks.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 06-22-05 1:41 PM
Not that Joe is thinking of any play in particular, I'm sure.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 06-22-05 1:41 PM
re 56: The trick is to do the thousand coin tossings a thousand times and then to try to make "true" statements.
Posted by Austro | Link to this comment | 06-22-05 1:42 PM
I read that play a couple of weeks ago and liked it, care to elaborate?
Posted by washerdreyer | Link to this comment | 06-22-05 1:43 PM
On the other hand, Michael, if you really do think that predicting the number of times a coin will come up heads in a sequence of flips is just being lucky, I have an idea for a game we can play if we ever meet in person. It goes in rounds. Each round will consist of one hundred coin flips. If the number of heads is between 45 and 55, inclusive, you give me $5. If it's between zero and ten, or 90 and 100, I'll give you $5. Otherwise, no money will change hands.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 06-22-05 1:44 PM
Yes, but w/d, you seem to have liked everything Nick Cage has ever done. So your taste is suspect. (I'm not edumacated enough to even guess at what play is being referenced.)
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 06-22-05 1:45 PM
62.
With a little extension you could turn that into a primer in barrier option valuation, acutally.
Posted by Austro | Link to this comment | 06-22-05 1:48 PM
I think Tom Stoppard is the worst kind of panderer, flattering the upper-middlebrow tastes and liberal arts educations of his audience members with cloying allusions masquerading as profound insights.
Posted by Joe Drymala | Link to this comment | 06-22-05 1:49 PM
Many, many people disagree with me on this. I'm not saying I'm right. I'm just saying it's my opinion.
Posted by Joe Drymala | Link to this comment | 06-22-05 1:49 PM
Ah, the supercilious contrarian opinion. Very hip and probably works wonders at parties.
Ahem. Please ignore vitriol. I don't actually detest you, Joe, and I am ignorant as to Stoppard.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 06-22-05 1:52 PM
SCMT,
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 06-22-05 1:53 PM
Joe, the trouble with that there is no way of showing that you are wrong. So, of course, the statement is suspect.
Posted by Austro | Link to this comment | 06-22-05 1:53 PM
I know what you mean, Ben. I hate contrarian opnions for the sake of themselves; I tend to have your exact reaction when it comes to people who seem to get off on maligning great works.
But not every contrarian opinion is a pose. Tom Stoppard's work literally makes me angry, because I believe that he is faking it, and I hate fakes.
Posted by Joe Drymala | Link to this comment | 06-22-05 1:57 PM
Actually I have read R&CAD and I didn't like it, but I wasn't capable then (not to imply I am now) of making real aesthetic judgements about it.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 06-22-05 1:59 PM
In general, it's hard for me to endure artists who fall all over themselves to show everyone how smart they are, and Stoppard is the epitome of that in my mind.
Posted by Joe Drymala | Link to this comment | 06-22-05 2:00 PM
I liked Arcadia.
Posted by Joe O | Link to this comment | 06-22-05 2:03 PM
Also, Austro, what's suspect about "I think"? Do you suspect that I don't actually think that?
Posted by Joe Drymala | Link to this comment | 06-22-05 2:03 PM
Nothing is suspect about "I think", I just don't "think" the statement can be shown to be false, ever. But then I ll agree that that is the nature of opinions in distinction to theories.
FWIW: I have the same instinct. For my taste he "tells" more than he "shows".
Posted by Austro | Link to this comment | 06-22-05 2:07 PM
Pl-rkw-rt, aka -r--l W--nb-rg, liked Arcadia a lot. I never saw it, but she's a nifty person.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 06-22-05 2:07 PM
No one noted any problems with my claims about his acting ability (which isn't to say omission equals agreement). His role choice is incredibly poor. I've admitted somewhere that I don't even think I have good taste in music, I'm not ready to admit that I don't have good taste in film.
Posted by washerdreyer | Link to this comment | 06-22-05 2:08 PM
The German language "Der Armer Alte Fritz" was certainly spellbinding... but a while afterwards one had the suspiscion one had been hoodwinked.
Posted by Austro | Link to this comment | 06-22-05 2:10 PM
It was a joke, w/d. No offense intended.
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 06-22-05 2:11 PM
Anyhoo, didn't mean to raise so many hackles. Though I guess I expressed my opinion rather strongly from the outset. I've had this argument with virtually every single theaterlover I know, so it's very likely that I'm wrong about him, and I just am not getting something about his work.
Posted by Joe Drymala | Link to this comment | 06-22-05 2:13 PM
ok, 56, wasn't quite clear as I wasn't thinking correctly about the coin toss. I'll iterate what I said upthread that the coin-toss is random, and hope that appeases any conflation of what I meant.
The point i'm trying to make is that there is no necessary operator for the predictability of the coin. apoligies if i'm not being clear enough about that. So what to call the random interactions that occur to make a coin toss both a) impossbile to predict per single toss and b) display general behavior over enough tosses. Maybe you don't like the word "luck"; I think it a fair word when talking about randomness, even though it may be contrary to our normal use wherein "luck" implies something which is special.
That you think I would play your game at 62 suggests that you might not be being the most charitable reader.
Posted by Michael | Link to this comment | 06-22-05 2:14 PM
I'm awfully fond of Stoppard; whether or not he's fraudulent, I find him incredibly funny. (I admit I haven't seen any of his plays performed, only read them.)
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 06-22-05 2:15 PM
No hackles raised here. But on the same topic, do you feel the same way about Elfriede Jelinek? If so, I have a theory.
Posted by Austro | Link to this comment | 06-22-05 2:16 PM
I have never read her work.
But I'd love to hear the theory, anyway.
Posted by Joe Drymala | Link to this comment | 06-22-05 2:20 PM
Of course I don't think you would play that game. But there is no interaction that makes coin tosses display predictable behavior over many iterations, and you're right that I disapprove of the term "luck" here, precisely because it's contrary to our normal use of the term.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 06-22-05 2:21 PM
austro, in general, philosophy of math divides into realists, idealists, and nominalists.
Within realism, there are two subjects, realisim in ontology (numbers exist!....somewhere.) and realism in truth-value (math is true and tells us real things about the world).
Within nominalism, there are two types, traditional and nihilistic. Traditional nominalists believe mathematical entities are linguistic constructions. Nihilistic nominalists believe that mathematical entities are just fictions: they don't exist. That is, there is no truth value to be associated with math.
(Michael Dumitt, I believe, is the most famous proponent of this)
Idealism is the position that mathematical entities exist in our minds. They are realists in truth-value, but anti-realists in ontology.
Posted by Michael | Link to this comment | 06-22-05 2:27 PM
I have to say at the outset that I find her work deeply offensive and can never work out why. So again a dubious statement. What I do admire, though is her use of language: "Sprachkünstler" would be the German expression for her. I get the impression that she starts with a moral and gets lost in the language such that the piece itself becomes a pose. I wonder if that is Stoppard's vice too?
Posted by Austro | Link to this comment | 06-22-05 2:28 PM
continuation, I know that doesn't get to the metaphysics question, but, that's going to depend on where you stand with respect to realism. It's further complicated when you consider there are three more positions with respect to the relationship of math and philosophy of math. (philosophy first, philosophy last-if-at-all, and philosophy as interpreter of math) disagreed about by three more groups (intuitiionists, predictavists, and naturalists).
Posted by Michael | Link to this comment | 06-22-05 2:32 PM
Well, Michael, as an ex physicist I have a creed about numbers. e**iπ exists for me independently.
Posted by Austro | Link to this comment | 06-22-05 2:33 PM
Michael, this is exactly the kind of taxonomical guidance I' ve been looking for, thank you. Seriously.
Posted by Austro | Link to this comment | 06-22-05 2:35 PM
Joe -- you might like "the real thing" in which Stoppard sort of beats himself up for being cloying and incapable of understanding human emotion.
That is, he creates an asshole playwrite know-it-all, who in the end, doesn't get anything.
And the only clever literary allusions are made by the asshole playwrite. So we can laugh at them, and still think he's an asshole.
Still, one could call the play solipsistic, if one didn't hate that word.
Posted by text | Link to this comment | 06-22-05 2:40 PM
Yeah, text, I've read it, and I don't like it so much.
I'm told that perhaps I'd like The Invention of Love.
Again, I can't emphasize enough that the problem is probably not him, but me.
Posted by Joe Drymala | Link to this comment | 06-22-05 2:42 PM
One could also call it eating one's cake and having it too.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 06-22-05 2:42 PM
no, it may very well be him.
Posted by text | Link to this comment | 06-22-05 2:43 PM
I had a feeling you were going to say that, Ben.
Posted by Joe Drymala | Link to this comment | 06-22-05 2:43 PM
Oh wait -- I thought Ben was talking about my response, then my "hey, I'm not really saying, I'm just saying" backpedaling. But it looks like he's referring to Stoppard.
Posted by Joe Drymala | Link to this comment | 06-22-05 2:44 PM
I was in fact referring to Stoppard.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 06-22-05 2:45 PM
you could call it that -- but I sort of like the play, and it surprised me in that stoppard gets the non-clever parts really right. So he demonstrates that he can dramatize human emotion -- without the pretentious one-liners -- while at the same time delivering the one-liners in other situations. And he acknowledges that being clever isn't the point of drama. Plus, I like self-hatin' artists.
So you could also call it, I don't know, a dual accomplishment too.
Posted by text | Link to this comment | 06-22-05 2:48 PM
also also too too too.
Posted by text | Link to this comment | 06-22-05 2:49 PM
I'd like to hear what it is about stoppard that gets your goat, joe.
Especially with regard to "the real thing" as its the only one of his I've read.
Posted by text | Link to this comment | 06-22-05 2:54 PM
I think the most interesting claim so far (besides the Stoppard-hatin') is Fontana's "the most interesting theism is the one the explains things." If that's right then it's really clear to me that theists should abandon biology for cosmology just as fast as they can, and run anthropic fine-tuning arguments. Or should we be looking to theism to explain a different kind of thing? If so, what?
Posted by baa | Link to this comment | 06-22-05 2:58 PM
Agreed, baa. Probably because I was in the middle of emailing him, I emailed him my response rather than posting it, but here's what I wrote.
By they way, I don't have a good answer to your question about religion. I've asked Jesuits about this, and best as I can tell (or explain), it's not so much that they believe the literal claims of the Bible, but that they act as though the claims are true (this is my gloss, not what they say). I think this is part of what "bearing witness" means: you make the religion true by living a life and making a world that is rooted in it, or, by believing, you make true. As for "explaining," well, none of them gave any indication that they use religion to explain in the sense that one explains the fossil record with the theory of evolution, but they certainly use it to explain, in the sense of come to terms with, things like birth, death, love, etc.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 06-22-05 3:04 PM
baa-- in fact we were mainly talking about cosmological fine-tuning & the efforts to identify something "special" apart from merely improbable.
Posted by FL | Link to this comment | 06-22-05 3:05 PM
The Real Thing contains much less of the bothersome stuff for me, but generally his work is characterized by what appears to me to be a facade of cleverness and literary allusion. One of the most frequent audience responses that I heard from Jumpers, a play of his that was recently revived on Broadway, was "I liked it, but I don't think I really got it." This in particular rubs me the wrong way because I get the impression (and this is only my impression, not based on anything but my own intuition) that Stoppard wants it that way. The feeling I get is that he wants to be admired for the brilliance of whatever conceit is operating in whatever play we're watching, and he wants us to realize in no uncertain terms that He Is Smarter Than We Are. However, he makes the audience members themselves feel very clever when they do get his jokes and allusions. Everyone's flattering everyone else, aren't we all a bunch of clever, self-congratulatory folks all in a room together.
This, to me, is the very opposite of what I believe drama should be. This is going to sound like a sermon, but here goes: drama, in my opinion, should be an experience in which we, the audience and the players alike, explore something we didn't want to explore, or arrive at conclusions we'd rather not arrive at, or remember things we'd rather not remember, or face aspects of ourselves or our lives or the world around us that we'd rather not face -- all with the knowledge that the thing we finally did explore or arrive at or remember or face was inevitable, and we are better for having gone through what we did.
The feeling I get from Stoppard is that he knows that this is what drama should be, but doesn't have the skills to bring us there, so he constructs these elaborate mirrored halls that are dizzying and sometimes enormous fun but at the end of it all say very little while (and this is the annoying part) purporting to say very much indeed.
Posted by Joe Drymala | Link to this comment | 06-22-05 3:12 PM
it seemed to me that "the real thing" makes the very point you are making, Joe. We open on a scene of a break-up that we (or I) enjoy witnessing, because the characters are so clever, the dialogue witty -- it is smarter than anything we would ever come up with, and the characters are have such cool heads.
Then it is revealed that was a scene in a play. We are introduced to the writer of the play, and several actors, who proceed to sleep around with each other. Besides the writer, nobody talks like the characters in the first scene, and he is revealed to be a fraud who understands neither himself nor anyone else. The various break-up scenes are disturbing. In hindsight, the first scene looks childish and inauthentic.
Parts of the play feel a little contrived, but some of the scenes, the "real" parts, work -- in my opinion -- leaving me to believe there is a real dramatist there, behind all the punning and jerking-off.
Posted by text | Link to this comment | 06-22-05 3:45 PM
Everyone's flattering everyone else, aren't we all a bunch of clever, self-congratulatory folks all in a room together.
A lot of people say precisely the same thing about the (early) Simpsons. Which is to say, I have no vantage point from which to comment on Stoppard, but The Simpsons is one of the great cultural achievments of the last 30 years.
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 06-22-05 3:51 PM
precisely the same thing about the (early) Simpsons
Or, you know, the comments section at Unfogged.com.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 06-22-05 3:55 PM
but aren't we, though?
Posted by text | Link to this comment | 06-22-05 4:11 PM
I considered the status of the comments section already established, and not in the same category of "debatable".
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 06-22-05 4:11 PM
OK, I'll look like a dork (and a pretentious one at that). Here's some rumination on the meaning of faith. Two points. One, take it as stipulated that faith is not useful for predicting events: two the context of this comment was a discussion of Fear and Trembling:
Kierkegaard's accomplishment is to give a sense of what faith could mean for a human life. We do not require faith to know the moral law, to recognize it as binding, or to be motivated by it, on this Hegel and Kierkegaard (and Kant, and Aristotle) are united. Faith thus seems practically impotent – it does not change the actions of the faithful man. So what does faith do? I think Kierkegaard argues that faith is precisely faith in the importance of our individuality, faith that in some way not easily discoverable by reason, our small lives ... [are] of absolute importance. Ethics debars us from treating others (and, I suppose, ourselves) as means, but it does not teach us what kind of ends we are, or why our uniqueness is important. That's why a commitment to ethics is completely compatible with existential angst – you know what you're required to do, you do it, but the whole damn thing feels like a burden, like a shadow, like a joke. If you had faith, you'd live like a burgher, not like a stoic – because you wouldn't be trying to make ethics do a job it wasn't up to.
Posted by baa | Link to this comment | 06-22-05 4:11 PM
But isn't (in fact, wasn't) Kierkegaard's faith also compatible with existential angst? I think I've made this point before, though I'm not an expert on Kierkegaard: for him, it truly is a _leap of faith_ because it doesn't guarantee anything; otherwise, it would be knowledge.
It's surely true that for most practitioners of a religion, "faith" is something solid, and performs the function you so well describe. But I'm just not sure that that's what it is for Kierkegaard, or if it's how we should understand faith in itself, so to speak.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 06-22-05 4:19 PM
But isn't the existential angst more characteristic (to remain in Fear and Trembling mode) with the Knight of Infinite Resignation than that of faith? The picture of the K of IF he gives at one point is burgherly—his wife will have pot roast, or whatever, for him, by virtue of the absurd.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 06-22-05 4:24 PM
I don't think so, Ben. Here:
Contrast with the Knight of Faith, who is both resigned and (absurdly) faithful.
It's the two--resignation and faith--together that are absurd, the it's the absurd that gives us the angst.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 06-22-05 4:39 PM
I was going to quote the passage that I was thinking of here, but it's rather long; you can find it by searching for "I candidly admit that in my practice".
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 06-22-05 4:47 PM
I know we've already moved on to Christian existentialism, but there's something incomplete in my explanation above, and that is that the problem isn't clever banter and such -- that's cool. But The Simpsons isn't trying to toss of the epigrams while simultaneously bloviating on, say, astrophysics and the existence of God and the significance of radical politics etc. etc., all of which come off as an attempt to be oh so very important. The Simpsons is just trying to make us laugh.
Posted by Joe Drymala | Link to this comment | 06-22-05 4:59 PM
toss off
Posted by Anonymous | Link to this comment | 06-22-05 4:59 PM
That was me.
Posted by Joe Drymala | Link to this comment | 06-22-05 5:00 PM
That's a wonderful passage. Two things. One of the things Kierkegaard is doing there is making it clear what faith is not: poetry, genius, etc. The emphasis on the "pedestrian" is supposed to remove those tempting errors from our mind. Second, these lines:
And,
In the description of the man himself, there's the absurd impossibility of the man. So yes, you're right that there's nothing angsty about the idealized Knight of Faith, but the idealized Knight of Faith is not us, not any one of us:
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 06-22-05 5:05 PM
That is a great passage: the part that always sticks in my mind is the bit about calf's head.
Pause briefly on whether the point is a correct one about Kierkegaard. What do you think about the idea of faith as being faith in the meaning/purpose of actions you are nonetheless required to do. Some people think faith is about science. That's absurd. Other that it is about moral action. I think that's tempting, but wrong.
Posted by baa | Link to this comment | 06-22-05 5:23 PM
I'm leery of almost-utilitarian questions about faith. What's it good for? Do I need it? Should I pick some up? I'm not sure that that's how you're asking, so not a criticism, but a demarcation. I am, however, confused by your "nonetheless."
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 06-22-05 5:28 PM
I am tempted to read 118 & quotations therein as saying that, insofar as we actually do not attain perfect faith, we experience moments of angst before attaining faith again--but not that faith and angst go together. In my vacillation I am precisely not faithful—the vacillation isn't an attribute of faith.
That's my temptation.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 06-22-05 5:31 PM
This is conceptually exactly the same as Heidegger's authentic/inauthentic distinction, and the solution is the same: we're not one, then the other, depending on our mood, circumstance or effort: we're always both--and what Kierkegaard calls (or is translated as) "vacillation" is one way to put that, but one of Heidegger's real moves forward is the concept of "equiprimordiality," which is his term for things that are co-existing, co-constitutive of something, and not reducible to one another or to something else. So agan, you're right that vacillation isn't faithful, and neither is angst, but they always go together.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 06-22-05 5:38 PM
If that's the case, then I don't see how the passage about the ideally faithful man is enlightening (or why "vacillation" is a useful translation, though that of course depends on what Danish word he uses) at all, unless Kierkegaard thinks that they always go together for us, but not necessarily—how could he think him, given that equiprimordiality?
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 06-22-05 5:50 PM
Incidentally—hot wonkette-on-wonkette action.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 06-22-05 5:51 PM
Wonkette! I haven't been there in months.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 06-22-05 5:53 PM
I'm wondering if this is Kierkegaardish of you, Ogged.
Posted by ac | Link to this comment | 06-22-05 5:57 PM
Well, how would you describe equiprimordiality if you didn't already have the concept? (I might just be reading too much Heidegger into K here, so consider that point provisional.)
In any case, looking at your 121 again, there might be some ambiguity in how we're using "faith." There's "faith" as a thing to have or state to be in, and there's leading a life of "faith" which is much more about the process and striving. Vacillation doesn't go with the former meaning, but can go with the latter (is, in fact, a part of it).
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 06-22-05 5:59 PM
I guess it kinda is, ac.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 06-22-05 6:00 PM
Want to meet the Knight of Infinite Resignation? In college, my Kierkegaard professor stole my girlfriend.
Posted by Kriston | Link to this comment | 06-22-05 6:15 PM
Actually, that's awesome.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 06-22-05 6:17 PM
It is, and you have a great girlfriend, otherwise, we could make you the Knight of Infinite Retribution.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 06-22-05 6:18 PM
Faith in god does have utilitarian benefits. It makes you happier. On average. It didn't make Kierkegaard happier, but that makes me think he was doing wrong. I was going to say "what good does reading Kierkegaard get you?". But, now we know.
Posted by Joe O | Link to this comment | 06-22-05 6:18 PM
The professor for whom I first read Kierkegaard, a fresh-faced young doctor named Martin somethingorother, had been, according to a guy who was at that time working for the bookstore my mom was managing in CA and who had known him in his previous life as a PhD student at Chicago, involved in some complicated and messy love triangle for a while.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 06-22-05 6:23 PM
Was it Martin somethingorother or Somethingorother Martin?
Posted by Kriston | Link to this comment | 06-22-05 6:27 PM
Martin Somethingorother. He wrote his dissertation on Leibniz or Spinoza under the authority of D-n G-rber and is now, I think, somewhere in Canadia.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 06-22-05 6:31 PM
OK, I'm thinking of Somethingorother Martin, who shares a similar biography.
Posted by Kriston | Link to this comment | 06-22-05 6:43 PM
Things to do before returning to the Unfogged comment section, in order of priority:
1. Re-read Fear and Trembling. (But which translation? The choices are paralyzing. I should learn Danish.)
2. Read Nonzero.
3. Re-read the Dubliners so that I can claim to have understood this comment when I first read it.
4. Sleep.
5. Eat.
Posted by eb | Link to this comment | 06-23-05 2:53 AM
Avoid Robert Wright, eb.
ogged/wolfson, I'll get back to you later
Posted by baa | Link to this comment | 06-23-05 4:48 AM
56: "For instance, once a coin I was tossing came up heads 16 times in a row"? "For instance, once I tossed 16 heads in a row" (except that sounds like something Vlad the Impaler might do)? "For instance, once I was tossing a coin and it came up heads 16 times in a row"? It's a toughie, but I'm pretty sure "For instance" should be at the beginning.
135: I know that guy.
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 06-23-05 9:26 AM
Well, he was involved in some freaky-deaky love triangle, or something.
(Why must "for instance" come at the beginning?)
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 06-23-05 9:33 AM
It's not that it must, it should. It sounds better--as the transition it ought to be at the beginning, and there's no reason to have it interrupting the rest of the sentence.
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 06-23-05 9:35 AM
Much though I'm loathe to do it, I agree in part with baa. I know of Nonzero; I have read Nonzero; you, sir, want no part of Nonzero. It was not a good book.
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 06-23-05 9:36 AM
25: Just noticed this--
by indoctrinating children so that they will refuse the facts once they finally reach the (college-level) courses at which they are introduced.
This happened to a friend (I should probably not say at what large Texas public university that is about to employ me she was teaching): At the beginning of the course, one of her students said to her, "I'm not allowed to learn anything about evolution."
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 06-23-05 9:59 AM
That would explain why I was able to find Nonzero for less than $2 somewhere a few years ago. To a certain extent it's become one of those books I feel I should read because it's been on my shelf for so long now. Baa and SCMT, what are your reasons for avoiding it altogether instead of reading it and then knowing for myself why I dislike it (assuming, as I'm reasonably sure I will, that I really will dislike it)?
Robert Wright is one of those people with whose ideas (presented in reviews/articles by others) I generally disagree, but feel I should know something about.
Posted by eb | Link to this comment | 06-23-05 2:21 PM
For my part, it's because the book's aim was too ambitious by 4/5ths. It's the same sort of application of novel-to-the-masses theory to cultural anthropology that you see in Gladwell. In both cases the argument is necessarily floppy, and in both cases, it's not clear if that's because the author is communicating with a mass audience or because the author only sort of understands the material himself. The difference, I think, is that in Gladwell (I've not read Blink), it's pretty clear that he's stitching together anecdotes, while Wright seems to think he is both attempting and succeeding at something more.
Moreover, he could have made his point in three pages, and had the best of the anecdotes in another ten.
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 06-23-05 2:33 PM
Don't even pick it up, it's one of the 40 most dangerous books of the century!
Seriously, though, my main problem with Wright isn't wrongness; it's that he's a goofus. And a classic my theory explains everything goofus at that. I do think non-zero sum games help explain the evolution of cooperation, and I do think that ev. bio is an important tool for exploring human behavior. Wright himself is the problem; skip him and go directly to the source.
Posted by baa | Link to this comment | 06-23-05 3:31 PM
Thanks for the link. I'm going to put Wright at the bottom of a different list (books I'm not sure I should have bought) and replace him with Axelrod. I do have an interest in (inevitably failed) attempts to explain everything, but there are so many other things I should be doing.
Posted by eb | Link to this comment | 06-23-05 3:42 PM
Two books -- this and this. -- which are more mind expanding than Robert Wright, and which touch on the some similar themes. (and are much, much, more fun to read on the beach)
Posted by baa | Link to this comment | 06-23-05 4:04 PM
This book is a good history book for science fiction fans. Chapters on the big bang, galaxy formation, solar system formation, origins of life on earth, evolution of animals, human evolution, a bunch of chapters on human history, then chapters on the near and far future. You have to love a history book that ends with space colonies.
Posted by Joe O | Link to this comment | 06-23-05 4:29 PM