Internet Commentator

Planet of the Rolexes

In a typically eye-catching manner, Daniel Dennett explains to Nicholas Humphrey who suggests that "we've evolved to regard consciousness as a wonderfully good thing in its own right — which could just be because consciousness is a wonderfully good thing in its own right!" what is wrong with that statement:

Think about what this "in its own right" could mean. Are we to imagine the possibility of creatures that had consciousness (that wonderfully good thing in its own right) but were oblivious, somehow, to their good fortune? Would they be deeply wrong not to treasure it? Would they leave less descendants than cousins who somehow began to get an inkling of how wonderful consciousness actually was? What would be wonderful about it if they were ill-equipped to enjoy it? (Imagine the Planet of the Rolexes—inhabited only by tortoises that happened by cosmic coincidence to be born with exquisite Rolex watches embedded in their shells. But they don't tell time, have no need to tell time, and often scrape off their Rolexes in the course of mating. Dumb tortoises! If only they knew what they had! But in what sense would they be wrong?) If wonderfulness must co-evolve with the capacity and disposition to appreciate and exploit it, then it isn't wonderfulness "in its own right." Is it?

Incentivised Alarmism

Iain Murray reveals the slanted presentation of climate change made by many of those who research that subject and notes the incentives which apply:

Overall, the billions of dollars we spend on researching climate change reveal that the world is getting slightly warmer as a result of man’s activities. Whether this is anything to worry about is something voters and their representatives have to decide on the basis of full information. We should bear in mind that much of these scientists’ funding is dependent on voters being scared.

Doom-mongers

Peter Gordon speculates as to why "doomsday tomes" remain stubbornly popular.

1. Some people have a puritanical nature and expect that they will have to pay for their material comforts.

2. Others may be uncomfortable with (or suspicious of) the fruits of market successes but are attracted to Kyoto-style economic planning.

3. With the demise of socialism, many may have intellectual capital on hand which they would rather use than discard.

Agnosticism and Quantum Fairies

It is a frequent irritation to me to come across declarations of agnosticism. It is often characterised as the reasonable sceptical view in contrast to "arrogant" atheism which is characterised as a kind of belief system analogous to religion.

In the latest example of this, Luke Lea has a post over at Gene Expression relating his embarrassing faux pas at Panda's Thumb and parading his "sceptical" agnosticism. I thought I'd explain why this view of agnosticism is a fallacy.

Agnosticism refuses to make its mind up between theism and atheism until all the evidence is in. Well as much of that evidence as you will ever need is in already. There now is a perfectly reasonable hypothesis which is consistent with all known facts to explain how life, the universe and everything evolved and which doesn't depend on a Creator. Those who accord equal weight to the two following propositions:

1. That there is a God
2. That there isn't a God

are looking at this the wrong way around. They assume the question to be open in the first place, that there is an equal onus on proponents of each case to make that case.

Try two alternative propositions. Let us imagine a type of fairy. It flutters around waving its wand, right behind you, but if you turn around to look, it becomes invisible. Further, any attempt to observe it at all, including by hidden camera, produces the same effect. We can call them "quantum fairies". So, examine the opposing propositions

1. That quantum fairies exist
2. That quantum fairies don't exist.

Nobody seriously argues that the onus is on those who subscribe to Prop. 2 to "prove" that quantum fairies don't exist, yet agnostics implicitly assume that a similar burden of proof applies to atheists.

Just So

I am unpersuaded by Sam Shuster's theory on why men fart more than women:

Could extreme fear have launched a fart from the primitive hunter of sufficient intensity to delay, if not repel, an attack from a dangerous beast? And was the associated odour, no doubt developed for this purpose, on a par with the repulsive efficacy of the skunk? The selective evolutionary advantage to a successful hunter of a loud repulsive fart is easily understood.

Of course, it occurs to me that such a hunter, prone to sonorous, malodorous flatulence, can hardly include stealth in his armoire of skills. He may indeed put himself at a "selective evolutionary" disadvantage to a more successful hunter possessed with the modicum of continence sufficient to stalk and kill his prey without startling the creature.

Dawkins

One of the very first blog posts I did was about my disappointment with Richard Dawkins whose clarity of thinking on matters scientific deserts him when he ventures into politics. Mark Humphrys has written an excellent open letter to Dawkins:

I'm saying that your perfectly correct liberal-left beliefs - hating Bush, opposing Israel, reading the Guardian, thinking Robert Fisk is a fine journalist, believing that the war on Islamism is going badly, and so on - that all these beliefs are a product of meme competition rather than logic and evidence.