Evolution and Wisdom of Crowds
Tuesday, 2007-10-23; 08:29:00
Rob Brown has an interesting essay positing that perhaps the traditional cause-and-effect view of fundamentalist religion causing the rejection of evolution might actually be backwards. His hypothesis is that perhaps, to some extent, evolution is so hard to understand and counter-intuitive that it causes the position of rejecting evolution.
In that vein, instead of trying to explain something that seems to strike at the heart of fundamentalist religion, Brown contends that other counter-intuitive things similar to evolution should be explained first. He gives three examples: Wikipedia, prediction markets, and recommendation systems.
Directly from Brown:
(via digg)
In that vein, instead of trying to explain something that seems to strike at the heart of fundamentalist religion, Brown contends that other counter-intuitive things similar to evolution should be explained first. He gives three examples: Wikipedia, prediction markets, and recommendation systems.
Directly from Brown:
While I am not suggesting that counter-intuitiveness is the only reason people reject evolution, I would instead suggest that the two factors -- fundamentalist religion on the one hand, and the conceptual difficulty of evolution on the other -- are propping each other up. If one were to fall, so might the other. But removing the influence of religion is nearly impossible. It is deep in the culture, so short of physically moving someone to a different environment, it can't simply be removed, and it can't easily be argued away.
Removing the conceptual difficulty of evolution-like concepts, though, might be a much lower hanging fruit that has been largely ignored.
(via digg)
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