PutAHelmetOn
Recovering Quokka
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User ID: 890
PutAHelmetOn
Recovering Quokka
17d ago
I agree with the first half of your post mostly. For quite some time I've taken to saying "Law of Natural Selection" and "Theory of Evolution." You correctly explain that Natural Selection is tautological. But then you go on to use the phrase "Theory of Natural Selection" and criticize its consequences and adherents. Should I read this as "Law of Natural Selection" or "Theory of Evolution?"
It's true that as a tautology, Natural Selection is completely separate from evidence. Similarly, Peano Arithmetic (the mathematically smug way to say counting numbers) is a tautology, completely separate from evidence. It is only an empirical observation that apples and rocks and such obey the laws of arithmetic. That 2 applies placed next to 2 apples makes 4 apples. We could find out tomorrow that apples and rocks don't follow counting rules, but that should not shake our faith in counting rules: it just means reality works differently than intuition suggests. This is what happened when we discovered the cosmic speed limit and found that velocities do not combine using addition as we thought! Likewise, whether or not life on Earth was shaped by Natural Selection is simply an empirical matter, albeit not reproducible because we're talking about the past, so it's just guesswork.
As for what Natural Selection as a tautology explains, this gets into what I think the value of Darwin is. The second half of your post is completely incomprehensible to me - right about when you start to talk about "divine creation." Now i am not familiar with what people thought in 1800. I learned in school that Origin of Species was some kind of groundbreaking thing, and you seem to imply that when you say society worships Darwin. So, I am kind of guessing at the value of Natural Selection.
The value of Natural Selection is exactly that it is a tautology, that it so obviously dissolves the mystery of how you can bootstrap so much complexity in an organism without an intelligent designer. Without understanding Natural Selection, someone who knows the complexity of biology could quite reasonably hypothesize a kind of intelligent creator. If we tell him, "No that's silly, there's no God, it's simply tautological that complex creatures come from nothing" he would laugh at us! Imagine these exchanges:
"Why do the fundamental constants seem so fine-tuned?"
"Well, it's tautological of course."
"Why is entropy always increasing with the arrow of time?" "Well, it's tautological of course."
They are silly! If evidence is how you show your work in empirical matters, then tautologies (math theorems) are how you show your work in logical matters. We can immediately see how obvious Natural Selection is, but it's not immediately obvious to me that we should say there is an intelligent designer, or why the fundamental constants are the way they are.
PutAHelmetOn
Recovering Quokka
21d ago
My read is: avoid a two-flavor pair if either flavor on its own would be good enough. This means the answer can't contain vanilla, since vanilla by itself is the tried and true.
The best answer would be something silly, like peanutbutter-pistaccio, but thats not an option.
If it doesn't contain vanilla, then between e and d the last problem is decide if mint or coffee will work best with the caramel.
The prompt only gives info about mint in the presence of chocolate chips (no info on whipped cream) and about coffee in the the presence of whipped cream (no info on chocolate chips)
At this point, I reread the prompt which says "what of" not "which of" so multi answers are allowed: e and d are tied.
If I had to tiebreak, I choose e because the word "sometimes" feels less frequent to me than "less commonly." But really the wording is ambiguous.
I must be missing something.
You're right that there's no single "Theory of Evolution" - rather there is a "Theory of Evolution by Natural Selection" and also "Theory of Evolution by ..." and also... I call "Theory of Evolution by Natural Selection" just "Theory of Evolution" because I rarely hear anyone talk about the other theories.
And again, I'm afraid I don't understand the second half of your post about tautologies. How can you start from (only) a tautology and reach a non-tautological explanation? Your example with the math notation confused me too. Did you mean to give an example of an unsound implication? It seems to me that you're writing a lot of sentences, but I don't see any main idea in your post.
I feel like you didn't address my point about apples and velocity. Take a math equation that describes motion:
speed = distance / timeIsn't that tautological? Take the following claim: If I put 1 apple on a table and my friend puts 1 apple on the table, now there are 2 apples on the table because 1 + 1 = 2. Is there no value to these?More options
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