2,657 thoughts on “Elon Musk Thinks Evolution is Bullshit.

  1. I note that phoodoo has spectacularly failed to support the assertion in the thread title. And that even if it was really true(that Elon Musk thinks evolution is bullshit), then what? Who gives a shit?

  2. Even if this were a simulation, I don’t see how anything but omnipotence could ever produce organisms like we see around us other than by evolutionary processes. Possibly directed, but probably at least mostly set to occur via natural selection (or close simulation thereof), for who could really coordinate the massive complexity of life, aside from an omnipotent deity (those are scarce, at best)?

    Besides that, life has the ordering and adaptations that would be expected from natural selection, and not what you’d expect from intelligent design (unless it was trying to make everything look undesigned, of course). So while in one sense Musk’s (derived) simulation notion would nix evolution by natural selection in the sense that it’s really about competing organisms (and is instead about competing algorithms or the like), clearly life would have had to appear via simulated natural selection.

    But what of that? None of the physics would be “real” either, it would be simulated physics. That’s a given.

    Glen Davidson

  3. Rumraket:
    I note that phoodoo has spectacularly failed to support the assertion in the thread title. And that even if it was really true(that Elon Musk thinks evolution is bullshit), then what? Who gives a shit?

    Did phodoo even read the full article? He has a history..

  4. Mung:
    There’s an article?

    Obvious troll is obvious and doesn’t know what article means.

  5. Rumraket: Suppose this really is a simulation. Then what?

    Suppose the designer joined the game once.
    What would that look like I wonder?

    😉

    peace

  6. Musk’s co-founder of PayPal Peter Thiel says this about ‘evolution’ in his Zero to One (2014):

    “Progress without planning is what we call ‘evolution’. Darwin himself wrote that life tends to ‘progress’ without anybody intending it. Every living thing is just a random iteration on some other organism, and the best iterations win.

    Darwin’s theory explains the origin of trilobites and dinosaurs, but can it be extended to domains that are far removed? Just as Newtonian physics can’t explain black holes or the Big Bang, it’s not clear that Darwinian biology should explain how to build a better society or how to create a new business out of nothing. Yet in recent years Darwinian (or pseudo-Darwinian) metaphors have become common in business. Journalists analogise literal survival in competitive ecosystems to corporate survival in competitive markets. Hence all the headlines like ‘Digital Darwinism’, ‘Dotcom Darwinism’ and ‘Survival of the Clickiest.’

    Even in engineering-driven Silicon Valley, the buzzwords of the moment call for building a ‘lean startup’ that can ‘adapt’ and ‘evolve’ to an ever-changing environment. Would-be entrepreneurs are told that nothing can be known in advance: we’re supposed to listen to what customer say they want, make nothing more than a ‘minimum viable product’, and iterate our new way to success.

    But leanness is a methodology, not a goal. Making small changes to things that already exist might lead you to a local maximum, but it won’t help you find the global maximum. …

    Darwinism may be a fine theory in other contexts, but in startups, intelligent design [clarify: *NOT* the DI’s ‘strictly scientific theory’] works best.”

    He then goes on to ask:

    “What would it mean to prioritize design over chance?”

    Then again, Theil is religious, while Musk is an atheist/agnostic. Musk is rather doltish and shallow when it comes to human existence in the case of religion/spirituality/worldview. When asked “Can science and religion co-exist?” Musk impishly replied: “Probably not.”

    “I get up every day and try to live life to the fullest because each day is a gift from God.” – Muhammad Ali

    Atheists come across as such shallow, depraved, confused people, whose negative impact is always superseded and outlived by humanity. But are they all without hope of recovery? Thankfully no.

  7. Rumraket: Maybe he had a giant orgy?

    You can tell a lot about a persons psyche by where their mind goes when they imagine

    peace

  8. Gregory: Atheists come across as such shallow, depraved, confused people, whose negative impact is always superseded and outlived by humanity.

    This was said, immediately following a large serving of word salad.

  9. fifthmonarchyman: You can tell a lot about a persons psyche by where their mind goes when they imagine

    Well at least I actually have an imagination. I haven’t had my personality and creativity drilled out of me with endless bible recitation.

  10. Gregory: “I get up every day and try to live life to the fullest because each day is a gift from God.” – Muhammad Ali

    Atheists come across as such shallow, depraved, confused people, whose negative impact is always superseded and outlived by humanity.

    “Play hard, work hard, love hard. . . .The bottom line for me is to live life to the fullest in the here-and-now instead of a hoped-for hereafter, and make every day count in some meaningful way and do something—no matter how small it is—to make the world a better place.” – Michael Shermer

    I try to live every day to the fullest because I know I won’t get a 2nd life, so it would be extremely stupid and sad to waste the one I have. I try to do good because of how this will affect the world that other people will live in after I’m gone.

    How totally shallow and depraved and negative of me, right?

  11. Rumraket: Well at least I actually have an imagination. I haven’t had my personality and creativity drilled out of me with endless bible recitation.

    This is part of you trying to make the world a better place every day?

    Haha

  12. phoodoo: This is part of you trying to make the world a better place every day?

    Haha

    You’re having fun, aren’t you? How is that bad?

  13. GlenDavidson: I try to live each day as if this is reality, not a simulation.

    Why?

    I’m serious here.

    Is there something about objective reality that makes it more appealing than intricate simulation?

    For that matter If we lived in a simulation our entire life wouldn’t the simulation be our reality?

    Some worldviews are based on the idea that what we take as reality is really an illusion.

    Many people would find comfort if it turned out that pain and death were not fundamental reality.

    Why is this sort of thing not appealing to you?

    peace

  14. fifthmonarchyman: Why?

    I’m serious here.

    Is there something about objective reality that makes it more appealing than intricate simulation?

    For that matter If we lived in a simulation our entire life wouldn’t the simulation be our reality?

    peace

    It wouldn’t hurt to take a joke as a joke.

    Glen Davidson

  15. GlenDavidson: It wouldn’t hurt to take a joke as a joke.

    So it was a joke.
    Sorry it did not seem to be all that humorous to me.

    Do you really try and act as if our universe is a simulation?

    I’m genuinely interested in what you think since you have granted that there is no way you can know given your worldview.

    peace

  16. fifthmonarchyman: So it was a joke.
    Sorry it did not seem to be all that humorous to me.

    Do you really try and act as if our universe is a simulation?

    I’m genuinely interested in what you think since you have granted that there is no way you can know given your worldview.

    peace

    See, I can laugh about it.

    That you’re gravely serious about it isn’t really in doubt. For, you have important presuppositions.

    It gets to the issue of being relatively detached and lacking in prior commitments. Such makes an enormous difference in how these issues are understood. That, perhaps, is the most important point I could about your position, although, for yourself, I suspect it will remain deadly serious.

    Glen Davidson

  17. GlenDavidson: It gets to the issue of being relatively detached and lacking in prior commitments. It makes an enormous difference in how such issues are understood.

    Oh I agree,

    Would you say that you are relatively detached when it comes to questions like this?

    Do you think your usual responses to me here reflect a position of detachment?

    peace

  18. Neil Rickert: If you cannot tell the difference, why would it even matter?

    I’m not sure it would.

    I do know that for some folks it is a comfort to assume that what we experience in this life is an illusion.

    I’d like to understand what goes on in the thought process of folks who are subject to the real/simulation dilemma.

    peace

  19. walto: Something bothersome about being tools.

    I’m curious are you a compatibilist?

    peace

  20. Ive been thinking and it seems like the best way to quantify the probability that we have cognitive contact with objective reality given a non-christian worldview is to construct an equation in the spirit of Frank Drake.

    We could rank different reasons to not trust our perceptions of reality in order based on the size of the necessary conspiracy. Then we could come up with a back of the envelope number for each variable based on the likelihood of each scenario.

    Off the top of my head I here is what I came up with. Forgive me if my notation is incorrect

    P of CCR =1-P(S+BB+BIV+H+LD+M+X)

    P=Probability
    CCR=cognitive contact with reality
    S=simulation
    BB=Boltzmann’s brain
    BIV=Brain in vat
    H= Evolution means our perceptions of reality must be illusions aka Donald Hoffman
    LD= lucid dream
    M= standard mental illness AKA schizophrenia
    X= unknown scenario that leads to our perceptions of reality being faulty

    What do you think? Is there something I’ve missed?

    I would think some of these numbers would be easier to come up with than others. For example we know that the probability that we are a BB is quite high and we can discover the general prevalence of mental illness in a population.

    I am interested to hear your comments.
    What do you think the approximate probability would be?

    Peace

  21. fifthmonarchyman: Ive been thinking and it seems like the best way to quantify the probability that we have cognitive contact with objective reality given a non-christian worldview is to construct an equation in the spirit of Frank Drake.

    Regardless of worldview(christian or not), the probability that we aren’t brains in a vat(for example) are simply not possible to estimate because we don’t have access to the kind of information that would give us a way to put numbers on it.

    If we were brains it a vat, that information (the one we thought we could use to estimate probabilities of being “brains in a vat”) could be fictions supplied to us by the “reality” we halluscinate, or lies fed to us by evil simulators, or “revelations” by mischievous gods. We just don’t know and we can’t know.

    There is no disproof of solipsism in any philosophy.

  22. fifthmonarchyman: Ive been thinking and it seems like the best way to quantify the probability that we have cognitive contact with objective reality given a non-christian worldview is to construct an equation in the spirit of Frank Drake.

    How would you calculate the probability that your version of the Christian worldview is correct?

  23. fifthmonarchyman:
    Ive been thinking and it seems like the best way to quantify the probability that we have cognitive contact with objective reality given a non-christian worldview is to construct an equation in the spirit of Frank Drake.

    We could rank different reasons to not trust our perceptions of reality in order based on the size of the necessary conspiracy. Then we could come up with a back of the envelope number for each variable based on the likelihood of each scenario.

    Off the top of my head I here is what I came up with. Forgive me if my notation is incorrect

    P of CCR =1-P(S+BB+BIV+H+LD+M+X)

    P=Probability
    CCR=cognitive contact with reality
    S=simulation
    BB=Boltzmann’s brain
    BIV=Brain in vat
    H= Evolution means our perceptions of reality must be illusions aka Donald Hoffman
    LD= lucid dream
    M= standard mental illness AKA schizophrenia
    X= unknown scenario that leads to our perceptions of reality being faulty

    What do you think? Is there something I’ve missed?

    As noted by others, what’s missing is the probability of ever getting the odds for most of the “alternatives.”

    The point with the Drake equation is that many of the variables might eventually have good estimates. If we’re being fooled by being in a simulation or what-not, the odds of discovering good estimates thus far appear low. The Drake equation assumes that we’re not being fooled (nothing about possibly being in a simulation, say).

    I would think some of these numbers would be easier to come up with than others. For example we know that the probability that we are a BB is quite high and we can discover the general prevalence of mental illness in a population.

    I am interested to hear your comments.

    What do you think the approximate probability would be?

    Scientifically, I’d put it at 99%+. Everything we know now seems to point to cognitive contact with reality, and science mostly isn’t going to worry about the “unknown unknowns.”

    Philosophically, I’d say consider what the science says, but unlike with science as it typically operates, we’re at least going to consider possibilities of being fooled. Sans evidence for it, and with a pretty consistent model of reality thus far, I wouldn’t really worry a lot about this all being fake somehow, but we can’t pretend that we really know that we’re not being fooled.

    Glen Davidson

  24. GlenDavidson: Scientifically, I’d put it at 99%+. Everything we know now seems to point to cognitive contact with reality, and science mostly isn’t going to worry about the “unknown unknowns.”

    Philosophically, I’d say consider what the science says, but unlike with science as it typically operates, we’re at least going to consider possibilities of being fooled. Sans evidence for it, and with a pretty consistent model of reality thus far, I wouldn’t really worry a lot about this all being fake somehow, but we can’t pretend that we really know that we’re not being fooled.

    I’d agree with that assessment but flip the language around.

    Supposing — as indeed seems correct — that we cannot rule out as logically coherent possibilities that we’re in a simulation, brains in vats, being deceived by evil spirits, etc. — what does that entail?

    From what I can tell, all that shows is that naive realism is not a necessary truth, since it is logically possible that naive realism is false. We cannot be deductively certain that we have any cognitive contact with objective reality.

    Nevertheless, the balance of reasons in favor of critical direct realism — that we are epistemically unmediated, causally mediated contact with physical objects in space and time, though never infallibly so — seems to be much stronger than any of its competitors. So while we cannot be certain of critical direct realism, we are nevertheless justified in accepting it.

    Now for the semantic flip: there’s a nice argument, parallel in C. I. Lewis and Wittgenstein, that “certainty” and “knowledge” are contraries. (This is in sharpest possible contrast to the Descartes-Locke tradition that identifies “knowledge” and “certainty”.) On the Lewis/Wittgenstein argument, we can only be certain where doubt is unintelligible. But if we take our best knowledge to always be fallible, then doubt is always intelligible in any putative instance of knowledge.

    I would reverse Glen’s point above — instead of saying “we can’t pretend that we really know that we’re not being fooled”, I would say that we can never be certain that we’re not being fooled, but we do indeed know(for the time being) that we’re not.

    (Apologies for what is surely a semantic quibble!)

  25. I think this is apposite and perfectly captures the response to people who argue for the truth of solipsism (and incidentally christian presuppositionalism).

  26. Rumraket,

    Rumraket, would you mind providing a link to where you found that excellent comic? I might have use for it in the future and would like to be able to credit its creator. Thanks.

  27. Rumraket:
    I found the best one yet: http://existentialcomics.com/comic/70

    Absolutely brilliant.

    I always wanted a free will that didn’t respond consistently with the information coming into my senses–that is, basically deterministically. I mean, why respond appropriately to sensory data?

    OK, I suppose the “free will” people will insist that it’s only certain “spiritual” aspects or what-not are delinked from the causal chain. But get real, that’s so ad hoc and reeking of confirmation bias as to hardly matter. The truth is that we need our responses to be consistently causally linked both for our purposes and for social interactions. We don’t want to act non-consistently for the most part, and we don’t.

    Glen Davidson

  28. Neil Rickert: Your formula depends on a bunch of probabilities that we cannot even estimate.

    The same goes for the Drake equation. It’s just a useful way to get a handle on the issue. And we can whittle down the estimates as more information becomes available.

    newton: How would you calculate the probability that your version of the Christian worldview is correct?

    The probability is 100% that the Christian God exists the probability that my particular worldview is correct would be less than that.

    peace

  29. Rumraket: the probability that we aren’t brains in a vat(for example) are simply not possible to estimate because we don’t have access to the kind of information that would give us a way to put numbers on it.

    The same goes for the probability of extraterrestrial life. That does not stop us from speculation and from using a handy equation to guide that speculation.

    peace

  30. fifthmonarchyman: The probability is 100% that the Christian God exists the probability that my particular worldview is correct would be less than that.

    Oh, don’t be modest!

    FWIW, I make the probability that the Christian God (as you seem to understand that term) exists precisely zero. So we even each other out!

  31. fifthmonarchyman: The same goes for the probability of extraterrestrial life

    You think that’s the same thing as assigning a probability to being a brain in a vat?

  32. GlenDavidson: Scientifically, I’d put it at 99%+. Everything we know now seems to point to cognitive contact with reality, and science mostly isn’t going to worry about the “unknown unknowns.”

    I’m not sure how you can say that.

    Boltzmann’s Brains for example are a scientific idea based on the principle of thermodynamics and mental illness is certainly a scientific concept.

    peace

  33. walto: You think that’s the same thing as assigning a probability to being a brain in a vat?

    I think the two ideas are both speculation not based on any solid evidence.

    peace

  34. walto: FWIW, I make the probability that the Christian God (as you seem to understand that term) exists precisely zero. So we even each other out!

    not really I’ve God’s revelation on my side. So I win.

    😉

    peace

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