http://mashable.com/2016/06/02/elon-musk-simulated-reality/#sdLXHm2_jsqB
2,657 thoughts on “Elon Musk Thinks Evolution is Bullshit.”
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The Skeptical Zone
"I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, think it possible that you may be mistaken."
I don’t entirely disagree with you. You’ll note that I haven’t moved any of his comments to Guano just because he makes a false (and quite rude) claim. I’m simply pointing out that the rules exist and inviting him to have a discussion within those rules.
I agree that he is honest about his beliefs.
Again, I’m not enforcing the rules against his behavior, simply pointing out that he is, in fact, violating them. I would be delighted if he would demonstrate enough respect for other participants here to say “My interpretation of my scriptures is that everyone knows a god exists. You say that you don’t have such a belief. I will accept that, ad arguendo, and see where the discussion goes.”
How about it, fifthmonarchyman, are you able to park your priors by the door and consider for a moment the possibility that atheists actually do exist?
This is a moderation discussion, no? I believe Lizzie (AKA The Old Major) has given instructions about that. Is Napoleon again offering a better way?
Per Walto’s point, moved my post to Moderation.
Patrick,
Again you want to discuss moderation in other threads. You just can’t seem to follow the rules there old boy, now can you.
The difficulty here is that FMM has accepted a picture of the human epistemic/semantic condition that makes it impossible to accept this.
On his view, no one can rationally accept all three of the following:
(1) There is an objective reality.
(2) One can have justified beliefs about objective reality
(3) God does not exist.
The reason why he thinks that “atheists don’t exist” is that he thinks that (i) no atheist is a solipsist (contra (1)) and (ii) no atheist believes that none of her beliefs are justified (contra (2)).
Put otherwise, a FMM-atheist would have to be either a solipsist (not believing in an external world at all) or an absurdist (not believing that any of her beliefs are justified).
It’s precisely because none of the atheists here are solipsists or absurdist that FMM then concludes that no one here is really an atheist at all.
I have attempted on many occasions to show FMM that his error lies in his initial characterization of our epistemic/semantic condition, and that this problem simply does not arise if one begins with pragmatism.(Which is not to say that pragmatism is the only alternative to presuppositionalism!) But none of those attempts have been successful and I doubt the next one will be either.
All of the above might well be an accurate assessment, but it’s hard for me to evaluate one way or the other (I’ve not seen FMM indicate such about himself from his own statements for instance.) However, he has been pretty clear that he believes his god has stated directly that there are no atheists.
Here it is again:
Elon Musk: Phoodoo is full of shit –
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-qRWS3dbkDU
No, it is you who is mucking up the essential points.
The whole debate between evolution and Intelligent Design is about which is a better scientific theory, and observability is the court of appeals for any scientific theory. The basic claim of ID is that design in nature is an empirical truth, not a metaphysical one.
Think of it this way: there’s no incompatibility between the theory of evolution (whether the modern synthesis or the extended synthesis) and classical theism. Theistic evolution is a fully consistent, ergo rational, position for someone to hold. The quarrel that ID has with theistic evolution (e.g. Torley vs. Feser) is precisely about whether there is evidence for design in nature.
If our reality is a hyper-advanced computer simulation engineered by a post-human civilization, then those engineers are functionally equivalent to the Demiurge of Plato and Platonic theology. (The Engineers can’t be the Creator, since they themselves presumably evolved within the physical* universe that they are a part of.)
Since nothing in evolutionary theory says that there is (or isn’t) a Demiurge, one can rationally accept both.
* In some indeterminate sense of “physical”, since on this conjecture, what we call “the laws of physics” are just the parameters of the simulation.
Not quite right.
The trouble with the correspondence theory, is that it is vacuous (i.e. empty). It depends on circular reasoning, just as long as you make the circles large enough that you can convince yourself that it is not circular.
But this isn’t just a matter of “bottom up, organism first”. Even before I had such a view, the correspondence theory seemed circular.
An undefined and unknowable correspondence becomes pretty much identical to an assumed omniscient deity.
The correspondence theory seems to have it backward. We send space probes to Saturn to take photographs of saturn’s moons. We do not then send humans to check whether these photographs correspond to reality (whatever that might mean). Rather, we judge the photographs to be true because they were taken in accordance with our standards for photography. And, thereafter, correspondence becomes a theory of reality. The reality of the saturnian moons must be what corresponds to our photographs.
Here’s roughly, the picture of my philosophy:
We develop “standards” for our interaction with the world, and we evaluate those standards on a pragmatic basis. For a solitary agent, these “standards” might be private and personal standards. For a social species, these standard tend to be social standards or conventions, scientific and technical standards and conventions, and social norms. Knowledge, then, is in the form of knowhow, which includes knowledge of these standards. We evaluate knowledge on a pragmatic basis (rather than on the basis of truth).
Once we get to using language, we need a notion of truth to express agreement. And our truth, in effect, is conformance with the community standards. We then take reality to be that which corresponds to the statements that we accept as true.
Looking at science, I see a scientific theory as establishing empirical standards. And, in effect, it thereby constructs a correspondence that we will use to decide what is reality. This is why I see scientific theories as neither true nor false. The role of a theory is to establish the standards whereby we evaluate claims of truth. The theory itself is adopted on pragmatic grounds.
Neil Rickert,
My worry about that view is that it replaces “truth” with “warranted assertability” a la Dewey, and thereby collapses the distinction between truth and justification.
Huw Price, in “Truth as Convenient Friction”, argues that the distinction between truth and warranted assertability plays an indispensable role within our everyday epistemic practices, including science as a outgrowth of those practices.
A naturalized (indeed biologized) conception of correspondence emerges once we see that causally grounded, homomorphic mappings between an organism’s cognitive models of its environment and the motivationally salient features of that environment. In roughly Gibsonian terms, ambient affordances and cognitive representations are the relata of the correspondence relation.
I can accept that a scientific theory has its own constitutive rules that are functionally a priori relative to the theory as a whole, but that can’t be the whole story. There also need to be “coordinating principles” that bring the theory into alignment with the world’s hidden causal and modal structures such that we can have experimental results that confirm or exclude the hypotheses generated by the theory. That’s what makes theories different from myths.
On your view, it seems that the only difference between theories and myths is that theories are more useful. On my view, the reason why theories are more useful than myths is because they get a better grip on the world’s causal and modal structure.
There is a rather large difference between myths and theories that I don’t think you are not taking into account. Theories are adjusted and refined based upon peoples’ continued experiences. In other words, theories change to conform to what people think reality is. Myths are pretty much treated the opposite; people’s expectations about reality are changed to fit what a given myth supposedly indicates. This to me explains the apparent difference in usefulness.
ETA: Secondarily, I think myths and theories are designed to serve different functions. Myths are established (as Joseph Campbell notes) to try to define/explain a societies/individual’s relationship with nature and the awe of being. Most myths are therefore social defining stories or cultural defining stories. Theories, by contrast, are socially independent. They are attempts to summarize some specific characteristic(s) about nature in order to make predictions about how nature may behave in the future. Generally, they don’t even have a defining quality or component. As such, most theories are therefore natural stories or mechanistic stories.
I am not seeing that at all.
I don’t see that myths establish empirical standards of any kind. They might be said to establish social standards, but not empirical standards (such as standards of evidence).
That’s what empirical standards are supposed to do.
I don’t think it does collapse the distinction.
A statement can conform to community standards (and thus be true), without my having justification for asserting that conformance.
Apparently you have never heard of the resurrection.
I expect to spend the “afterlife” pretty much as I spend today except the internet speeds will be faster.
I agree there will be no atheists in the resurrection but then again there are no atheists now so that is not a change.
peace
I might be wrong about some things others not so much. There is no possibility that I could be wrong about my existence or God’s.
could you be wrong about that?
Not in my world. We are all inconsistent at times. That is because we are human and not God.
If you are saying that the rules of this site require me to assume that you are God I won’t be able to follow them. You are not God
How can you possibly have full knowledge of what you are saying? How could you possibly have full knowledge of anything?
Only an omniscient being can claim full knowledge
Are you claiming to be God? That would be tough to do since you just denied he existed.
That is what I mean by saying you are double minded
peace
Don’t kid yourself, FMM. Unless you’re 100% fundy you’re already on the secular road atheism. As Sam Harris says – “Religious moderation is the product of secular knowledge and scriptural ignorance.”
I am 100% fundy. IOW I beleive the fundamentals of Christianity are nonnegotiable
1) There is no such thing as secular knowledge. All knowledge is from God.
2) I would say that Scriptural ignorance is the cause of good chunk of the intolerance seen in atheists and religious folks. An even bigger problem is when folks know what it says and ignore it or misinterpret it because they don’t like it.
3) Sam Harris is one of the most religious folks I know of.
peace
Absolutely. I want to ask Neil does the claim that you’re wrong but you’ll never realize it mean nothing to him? And I’d also mention that equating facts of the matter with theism is the same kind of whack biz FMM is pushing. (What’s weird about your own post kn, is that you were defending peirce on truth no more than a couple of days ago. I don’t want to say you’re fickle, but, well, it’s hard to keep up with you.)
Which reminds me, admins, of something i’m curious about with respect to someone who’s…much more (let’s say) staunch. I don’t want to put anybody (else) on ignore, but is there a way to put someone on cuckoo? Is there a setting?
In other words, you’re so indoctrinated in your faith that you will persist in arrogantly and rudely denying what others tell you.
There is someone claiming godlike knowledge here, but it’s not me.
You two deserve each other. May this dispute go on for ever and ever.
Blessed are the infallible, for they shall inherit the Earth.
Funny how there’s “no possibility” and he still manages it anyhow. Now THAT is supernatural!
FMM, so you’re for killing folks who break various tenets of your religion?
Sure — because at the limit of inquiry — and not anywhere other than that — do warranted asserability and truth converge.
I’m not infallible. God’s existence is undeniable
peace
That’s what I mean be misinterpreting scripture because you don’t like what it says.
It’s ignorance of Scripture like that that leads to so much intolerance in the world
peace
come on walto. I thought you liked me 😉
peace
fifthmonarchyman,
Sorry mate, it’s you who is unable to read and understand very simple instructions. You’re not a fundy.
No it means that God is the fount and source of all knowledge by definition. So if I know anything then God exists necessarily.
I don’t intend to sound arrogant I apologize if that is your impression.
On the other hand I would hope that you understand how arrogant it sounds to my ears when you claim to know stuff based on nothing but your own intellect and sensory perceptions
I will only deny what others tell me if it is grossly inconsistent with their behavior. It would be rude to ignore all the other ways you communicate with me here and focus only on your literal words.
peace
No, my friend’s dog is. [“Minnie” = df. the fount and source of all knowledge.] So if you know anything, her dog must exist.
I wonder if you will be called out by Patrick for being arrogant and rudely flouting the rules of this site.
😉
Seriously I would hope you would get to know some real Christian fundamentalists who take the text very seriously
Check it out
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amish
In don’t think you need to be scared of these sorts of folks
peace
fifthmonarchyman,
They are backwards twats:
http://abcnews.go.com/Business/story?id=7187712
I can see why they appeal to you. And you might want to read your holy book.
So to you your friends dog is God. I told you you weren’t an atheist
peace
OK . . . whereas by my lights, “conforming to community standards” is justification, not truth. That’s why I was worrying that you’re conflating them. In my picture, a statement can conform to community standards and thus actually be justified even if I am mistaken about whether it is justified.
Truth, qua correspondence, is something else again.
And when I say “truth qua correspondence”, that is not to say that I have anything against deflationary treatments of truth, whether redundancy or prosentential or whatever. (By the way, Walto, I recently read a very fine essay arguing that Peirce’s treatment of truth influenced Ramsey. I can’t give a citation, because it’s for a forthcoming anthology I refereed for publication.)
What I think Sellars was right about is that there has to be something in our cognitive capacities that detects and tracks features of the environment, and that the right sort of deployment of those capacities is essential for any grasp of objectivity
For any creature to have a satisficing or mostly-adequate cognitive grip on an object as an object, as distinct from its own subjective takings, it needs to be able to compare and contrast its own embodied perspective on the features of its environment with those of another creature.
That means it needs to construct a metarepresentation that compares its own action-guiding, affordance-detecting representations at work in its perceiving and acting with its action-guiding representations of the other creature’s action-guiding, affordance-detecting representations at work in its own perceiving and acting.
Only by doing so can it filter out irrelevant differences and motivate the elimination of relevant differences, with the system geared to minimize incompatibilities in the metarepresentation, so that both metarepresentations (mine of me and you, yours of you and me) can guide coordinated action, in which we agree to undertake different actions in order to accomplish a shared goal.
That’s basically my version of Davidson’s triangulation argument. I want to put a lot more explanatory power in the subpersonal cognitive machinery in order to explain how the triangulation actually happens. But the upshot is that only in these conditions can any creature make the objective/subjective/intersubjective distinction necessary for the kind of objectively valid knowledge we unproblematically take ourselves to have.
It’s not MY definition. I just looked it up.
She is a wicked cute puppy, but me?– I think it’s a really stupid fallacy to think that knowledge can depend on the definition of a word.
I have seen factory farms and I have seen the animals of the Anabaptists.
If you are animal lover you have much bigger fish to fry than you’ll find in the Amish.
I do need to read it more but I know it well enough to confirm that members of the New Covenant are never commanded to kill anyone.
peace
me too.
Good thing knowledge depends on God and not on some definition.
peace
fifthmonarchyman,
They’re not the worst out there. How godly.
http://www.answering-christianity.com/sami_zaatri/jesus_and_the_law.htm
I see your problem you are consulting a Muslim apologist to understand what the Bible says. Do you not see the foolishness in that approach?
This is someone who not only thinks the bible is hopelessly corrupted so that you can’t trust what it says but who also thinks that God is right to command the death of infidels in today’s world.
That is exactly what I mean when I say misinterpreting the scriptures because you don’t like what they say.
peace
That is not it at all.
By the way, why in your worldview is it wrong to treat a dog like a cow but not wrong to treat a cow like a cow?
peace
But everyone really believes in dog.
You just deny it.
Glen Davidson
I especially liked that bit “in today’s world”, which presumably exists to give all the biblical slaughter of infidels a cachet of legitimacy. As if a few thousand years is supposed to have changed God’s mind.
But on the other hand, it’s good to know that FMM doesn’t want to slaughter us. Assuming he believes there’s actually such a thing as an infidel.
Exactly,
everyone believes that knowledge has a source we only argue about what that source is. It’s silly to deny that
There are no atheists just folks who have different ideas about who God is.
peace
Don’t you think that the Bible is fiction?
You can’t have it both ways if it’s just stories no infidels were ever really harmed.
nope God’s mind never changes.
He never commanded a member of the New Covenant to kill anyone ever.
peace
I suspect there’s a miscommunication somewhere.
I say that my desk is 30 inches in height. That may happen to conform to community standards (i.e. be what you would measure if you came to check). But if I assert that as a guess, without having actually measured it, then where’s the justification?
There’s a difference between “what the statement expresses is conformant with community standards” and “I myself applied community standards in coming to believe that statement.”
I’m not scared of them, but every decent person should detest them for their culture of protecting child abusers and rapists from justice.
Members of their cult are shamed out of reporting serious crimes to the secular authorities. Children and women who have been sexually assaulted by a relative are required by the elders to forgive their rapists and continue to live with them, or else the victim is shunned and driven out of the only community they’ve ever known while the criminal remains safe in the eye s of the church (as long as he prays for forgiveness).
Of course they’re a fitting example of a lovely christian lifestyle.
Lord god, encouraging rapists in his protection for at least two thousand years.
Oh that does my heart good. I really needed something to lighten the day I’ve had.
Put someone on cudkoo … I’m still giggling out loud.
Thank you, m’dear.
Funny, then, that the kind of intolerance which actually leads to murdering people is always seen in the folks with a copy of scripture in one hand and their weapons of torture and death in the other hand.
What the fuck are you doing wasting time here, fifthmonarchyman?
You’ve got about a billion of your own kind to straighten out about their “ignorance of scripture”.
Go on, get busy. Scoot!