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List of topics being drawn on for nuggets |
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Sunday, 18 March 2012 17:42 |
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These are the one-liners the Contrarian intends to expand on over time.
DARWINISM
- Darwinism is a fairy story; to accept it you have to believe in magic.
- Natural selection isn't a force, it's more like friction; it's offers a little resistance to the flow of harmful mutations entering the gene pool.
- How efficient is natural selection at eliminating harmful mutations? 100% would involve magic. Anything less would involve extinction. Likely value 1-2%. So where's the mechanism?
- Darwin didn't discover evolution, he merely dumbed it down so natural selection could account for it.
- Natural selection can't account for the origin of species, all it could lead to is all creatures varying gradually within a single species.
ADAPTATION
- Add a stone and a kitten to a pile of stones. Which is better adapted to its environment? Does adaptation mean anything?
- Evolution is living creatures becoming more independent of, not more adapted to, their environment; eg symbiosis.
- Is the Internet us "adapting" to electricity? Is symbiosis "adaptation" to the environment?
- Adaptation is the lowest common denominator of all possible mechanisms of evolution. What would distinguish the best mechanism from all the others?
- Adapting living creatures to their environment is the least you can ask of evolution. Shouldn't we ask more?
MUTATION
- Mutation followed by natural selection is like saying you can make a big mountain out of a small mountain just by shaking it and taking away some of the fastest-moving stones. But avalanches make a mountain smaller, not bigger.
- You can't evolve new living creatures just by damaging the old ones.
- Beneficial mutations are like unicorns: Everyone's heard of them but no one's ever seen one.
- If what made changes to genes beneficial was something other than mutation, how could you tell?
CONSCIOUSNESS
- If consciousness exists it must have evolved. If consciousness can evolve, you don't need natural selection.
- Define ambition as craving some kind of conscious experience, then physicalists can't be ambitious.
- Without consciousness, science is meaningless. Without science consciousness is just fine.
- All there is to account for consciousness is matter and physical processes, and life and living processes. Now, what's the account?
DETERMINISM
- A determinist isn't qualified to judge whether or not there is free will.
- To a physicalist, doing science must seem like one test tube of chemicals exercising judgment on another.
- Which responses will a determinist presenter value more, those bounced back by other people's brain chemistry or those cycling through their consciousness experience and free will?
SELF
- A human being isn't merely a doorstop. Or merely a pianist. Or merely a genius. Or merely... What sets the limit to our ultimate potential?
- You can't be any more conscious or creative than evolution can make you.
- The only contribution you can make to the evolution of our species is to passively suffer eithor random mutation or natural selection?
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