Alan_Crowe comments on But There's Still A Chance, Right? - Less Wrong

44 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 06 January 2008 01:56AM

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Comment author: Alan_Crowe 07 January 2008 04:27:59PM 1 point [-]

Rather that estimating a probability, it would have been more interesting to ask "What emotional need are you trying to meet with this?"

If Mr Still-a-chance yearns for "souls go to heaven and meet God" why does he care about evolution? Isn't the soul the magic, special sauce that converts an ordinary animal body into a human? How does denying evolution help him?

Meanwhile, 20000000 years in the future, a multi-generation interstellar space ship has set up a colony on a distant planet with existing biology. The colony collapses but man does not go extinct, and 100000 years later they have re-established a civilisation of sorts.

They find that man is not an animal. His biology is entirely distinct. Which goes well with their myths of a double fall, from the sky to the ground and from the golden age to barbarism, but what really do they gain when they find that they do not have genealogical ties to the animals around them. Why is our far future Mr Still-a-chance the 2nd so pleased?

I find myself unable to imagine how Mr Still-a-chance would have answered, which piques my curiosity