sam0345 comments on Prediction market sequence requested - Less Wrong Discussion
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
Comments (44)
Evolution is true, in the sense that there is overwhelming evidence that men evolved from apes, and that likenesses between kinds is a literal family resemblance, the result of ancestral shared blood or sap. "Evolution" is untrue, in that use of the word "evolution" tends to be almost perfectly correlated with distaste for the implications of Darwinism, and complete disbelief in the implications of Darwinism for humans and human nature, tends to be a codeword for denial of Darwinism.
Darwinism, however, is true, for the same reasons as evolution is true, and, unlike "evolution", is not a codeword for a collection of pious politically correct beliefs. Hence Dawkins, despite his otherwise progressive beliefs, calls himself a Darwinist, not an evolutionist.
However any discussion of the difference between "evolution" and Darwinism would produce a mind killing response that makes the discussion of gender differences harmless by comparison.
Um, I'm completely unaware of any difference between evolution and Darwinism. Are you using the latter to mean "The theory of evolution is true, plus eugenics is desirable"?
Evolution was fairly popular (at least, in some places) before Darwin and arguably many modern people have a pre-Darwinian (teleological) understanding of the idea. Darwin's grandfather wrote poems about evolution before Charles was born, and some of his school mates were followers of Jean-Baptiste Lamarck. There seem to be many people that wear "evolution" as attire (presumably to identify with some "educated", "scientific", or "secular" tribe), but that don't really understand natural selection or think it stopped operating on humans some tens-of-thousands of years ago.
"Common descent", "natural selection", and "speciation through reproductive separation" are distinct elements of evolutionary theory. The idea of common descent is a lot older than the idea that effectively all biodiversity stems from variable survival and reproduction, and the formation of isolated gene pools.