gjm comments on Rationality Quotes Thread September 2015 - Less Wrong

3 Post author: elharo 02 September 2015 09:25AM

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Comment author: CCC 05 October 2015 09:25:59AM 0 points [-]

...what does the bacterial flagellum have to do with anything? I think I am missing some important context here.

But the problem is giving good enough reasons for accepting that in a particular case. "It looks like it couldn't have evolved," or "It looks like it didn't have human sources" are not good enough.

Well, the simplest argument for accepting some revelations would be that later events, unknown and unknowable at the time of the revelation, were later shown to be true (for example, predicting the time and place of a volcanic eruption or other natural disaster)

Comment author: gjm 05 October 2015 01:32:33PM 1 point [-]

"The" bacterial flagellum (actually there are different kinds and I think only one kind is relevant here) was a leading example used by proponents of "intelligent design", who claimed it was a complex system that couldn't possibly have evolved incrementally.

Comment author: CCC 06 October 2015 09:45:17AM 0 points [-]

Thanks. A brief googling suggests that biologists have figured out how it could have evolved from similar organs with different functions, which seems to neatly solve the issue.