I've created a new website for my ebook Facing the Intelligence Explosion:
Sometime this century, machines will surpass human levels of intelligence and ability, and the human era will be over. This will be the most important event in Earth’s history, and navigating it wisely may be the most important thing we can ever do.
Luminaries from Alan Turing and Jack Good to Bill Joy and Stephen Hawking have warned us about this. Why do I think they’re right, and what can we do about it?
Facing the Intelligence Explosion is my attempt to answer those questions.
This page is the dedicated discussion page for Facing the Intelligence Explosion.
If you'd like to comment on a particular chapter, please give the chapter name at top of your comment so that others can more easily understand your comment. For example:
Re: From Skepticism to Technical Rationality
Here, Luke neglects to mention that...
It is a pity that you use creationists as an example here, since I think that this is exactly how evolutionists think and act. The evidence that you say is so strong in support of common descent is just not. Endogenous retroviruses are just not a slam dunk at all, and I say that as someone with a biochemistry degree.
The main reason that this is a really bad example is that it involves historical evidence, not empirical, and it involves origins, which is, to say the least, highly speculative due to the historical distance. While evolitionists DO have the advantage of appealing to natural preocesses, and IDists do not appeal to current processes (though they don't deny natural selection or various recombination events), the latter do contest the supposed creative ability of evolution to produce novel features, and this is eminently reasonable at this time.
Your example of self-deception with creationists is poor for many reasons. For example, you speak of the missing link tactic of creating 'two more every time one is suggested." While this is a cheap dodge, it does bring up some critical points which evolutionary believers also ignore - how similar, and by what measure, should two things be to be considered a definite link with no need to insert another? Pure morphology has turned out to be a bust when we consider molecular evidence. And the latter has shown that our assumptions about relatedness are highly speculative, if not so simple that they don't provide ANY useful relational evidence.
Like to see how missing links really work? Google for 'missing link found,' check out of the recent supposed human links found, and see how many have turned out to be spurious - nearly ALL of them. They're trumpeted from the media housetops when they're found, but no one peeps when they are, and almost universally, debunked under scrutiny. This is the corollary for your example. Evolutionary believers fail to consider counter indications seriously because it is a world view issue.
I've written a few relevant posts on this, hope it's ok to post them:
Mass Delusion - 10 Reasons Why the Majority of Scientists Believe in Evolution http://www.wholereason.com/2011/01/mass-delusion-10-reasons-why-the-majority-of-scientists-believe-in-evolution.html
Fossil evidence sends human evolution theory into tailspin http://www.wholereason.com/2007/08/fossil-evidence-sends-human-evolution-theory-into-tailspin.html
Evolutionary Trees - In Flux or Broken and Bogus? http://www.wholereason.com/2007/06/evolutionary-trees-in-flux-or-broken-and-bogus.html
13 Misconceptions About Evolution http://www.wholereason.com/2011/04/13-misconceptions-about-evolution.html
I get ruffled when IDists or creationists are paraded as examples of brainwashing or self-deception, primarily because I was an evolutionary disciple as a science major and found my way out of that system into one where I concluded for my SELF that logic and common sense indicate a designer/creator.