The Dilbert Blog

2011-04-03T15:59:00.000-07:00

I mentioned Scott Adams’ blog on evolution last week, so that is as good a place to start as any. Adams also discusses his views on evolution in a book called “The Dilbert Future”, but since I have not read it, I’m going to confine myself here to two postings (here and here) on how “fossils are bullshit.” I’m also going to skip the opinions voiced in his comments section, although I may get back to them.

Adams rejects “Intelligent Design or Creationism or invisible friends of any sort”, so he does not fall into creationist camp, and apparently does not even believe in any kind of intelligent designer as a way of explaining the diversity and functionality of life. Moreover, despite his dismissive comments that evolution will be “revised in scientific terms" within his lifetime, his second post seems to suggest that his problem is with the way evolution is communicated to the public, rather than any actual problem with the theory; he even implies that he accepts evolution as a scientific fact:

"What I’m saying is that the evidence for evolution that is available to the casual person of interest, including most students, is simplified to the point of being misleading, false, or useless. In other words, the popular argument for evolution is bullshit, independent of the underlying reality of evolution or the evidence available to experts in the field.”

He also blames this misinformation on scientists, who he says are either not clearly communicating the evidence for evolution, or oversimplifying it. Adams’ concerns about miscommunication are certainly valid; however, it is not clear why he is so determined to place the blame for this on scientists, who generally have their views filtered through the media and public school system. Curiously, Adams seems to acknowledge this, even though he still inexplicably places primary blame on scientists, rather than the outlets which communicate their findings to the public:

“When you factor in the simplifications the media adds to the mix, and the uncorrected errors in textbooks, the honest errors of interpretation, the rare but publicized frauds, and the scientists looking to make names for themselves by discovering missing links, it would be a frickin’ miracle if the evidence I see for evolution wasn’t bullshit. The system virtually guarantees it.”

Adams’ biggest problem with evolution itself seems to be that the picture of human evolution currently emerging is not consistent with what he thought it was supposed to be, or at least what he learned about it in school. What he does not do is explain exactly how these new findings hurt evolutionary theory; he just seems to imply that the fact that his education painted a different picture means that the science itself is fucked up:

"Apparently evolution is more complex than imagined, and there were lots of ape-people varieties wandering around at the same time. Some had modern features that they weren’t supposed to have. The so-called modern features apparently popped up and disappeared more than once, and in more than one species.”

Adams provides hyperlinks to two different articles on human evolution which he claims illustrates his point. Both hyperlinks are broken, but Yahoo News helpfully gave me a list of articles, one of which is probably the one Adams originally linked since it came out a few days before his post.

Adams seems to be getting distracted by the complex details of human evolution, and missing the big picture which has remained clear and fairly consistent for most of a century: specifically, as we trace hominids (humans and fossil primates which are most similar to them) back through time, we get a general loss of modern human-like features, and a general acquisition of more and more non-human ape-like features. Period.

Ardipithecus is more chimp-like and less modern human-like than Australopithecus, who is less modern human-like than Homo habilis, who is less modern human-like than Homo erectus who is less modern human-like than Homo heidelbergensis, who is less modern human like than the first Homo sapiens...and this is the order in which these forms show up chronologically. The little complications and complexities alluded to in the article do not shift the big picture. All these forms appear within the last seven million years, after the first apes and well after the first monkeys…EXACTLY in the chronological order expected if evolution is real.

The “messy bush” of human evolution, or the fact that different hominids co-existed, do not change this big picture. Yes, several different Australopithecines co-existed, and some may have co-existed with early Homo…but the less human Australopithecines still showed up first, and the early species of Homo (H. habilis) they coexisted with have fewer human-like features than later members of the genus. Yes, Homo habilis and Homo erectus may have co-existed too…but Homo habilis still shows up first. Why is the messiness a problem? You can coexist with sisters and cousins at the same time as with parents and grandparents…the important thing is that your parents and grandparents showed up BEFORE you.

Adams notes that recent findings have determined that…

“Tools were used before brains got bigger, we walked upright at the same time we did a lot of tree swinging, etc.”

...but provides absolutely no explanation for how this hurts evolutionary theory, again beyond the fact that it wasn’t what he learned in school. Tool use probably proceeded our brains becoming enlarged…but increasingly complex tools generally coincide with increasingly enlarged brains, and that’s the point. Moreover, seeing evidence of both tree swinging AND upright walking in the earliest hominids is exactly what we SHOULD expect from evolution; a period of transition between two lifestyles, when both are being utilized. Again, the arboreal features (like the opposable toe of Ardipithecus) are lost in LATER hominids.

Adams also seems to suggest that “fossils are bullshit” because scientists claim to be able to precisely identify a particular fragmentary hominid fossil as being our direct ancestor. Since the reality is that advocates of phylogenetic analysis (which is to say, most modern paleontologists) scrupulously avoid saying this, Adams is criticizing a straw man. We don’t state definitively that we are descended from a particular individual like Lucy…and we don’t need to. The pattern in the fossil record gets the picture across regardless of whether or not we can point to a particular individual as being our direct ancestor. A dark-skinned American who knows that his family has been in the country for at least several generations, and who possesses genes common in East African populations, can probably infer that they are descended from a population living in East Africa within the past five hundred years (and he probably has a good idea how they got here). He does not have to go to a slave cemetery and point to the bones of their direct ancestor to make the case.

Finally, Adams offers one final (and very peculiar) statement:

“My other argument about evolution is that time is an illusion, which makes evolution nothing but a point of view with some utility, and not a feature of reality. But that’s a different argument.”

I wonder if that means that Adams isn’t sure if his parents and grandparents existed before he was born, or if we can be sure that Jamestown was founded before Chicago. If evolution doesn’t work because “time is an illusion”, genealogy and history are in just as much trouble.

All in all, Adams’ objections to evolution (at least as outlined here) are fairly vague. He talks about evolution, or at least the fossil evidence for it, as being “bullshit” while simultaneously saying the evidence is fine and that it is simply being mis-communicated, and seems to be blaming real evolutionary science for not matching up with whatever fucked up and outdated distortion he got through the public school system and press.

LNJ

Hello.

2011-04-01T20:31:00.000-07:00

Most of you reading this are probably already know that I have been maintaining two other blogs: Paleo Errata (also hosted by blogspot.com), and the more recent House of Bones (hosted by labspaces.net). Paleo Errata is now pretty much retired for reasons I've explained in my last post there, and my blogging attention will now be divided more constructively between House of Bones and Flying Blind.

Like House of Bones, Flying Blind is intended to be a more focused blog, as opposed to my less focused ramblings over at Paleo Errata. While the purpose of House of Bones is to explain particular subjects relating to vertebrate paleontology to the scientific community outside the field, Flying Blind will be an exploration of opposition to evolutionary theory. I have dealt with this in Paleo Errata as well (and plan to discuss it to some extent at House of Bones), but want to focus on it more intensively here. This is largely for purposes of self-education on antievolutionist arguments and tactics, something I've wanted to become more knowledgeable and informed on for some time. My posts on Flying Blind will mostly be responses to specific individual posts, books, or statements by antievolutionists, from as wide a variety of backgrounds as possible. I will also discuss comments on antievolutionism by supporters of the theory, and developments in various attempts to undermine evolution in public schools (if it is possible to undermine something that is almost never taught effectively in the first place).

The name of this blog is partly a play on Richard Dawkins' term "Blind Watchmaker" to describe the constructive process of natural selection, and partly an indictment of opponents of evolution who are supremely confident in the fundamental flaws of the theory without seeming to have much of an understanding of how the theory works, what it claims, or what the evidence for it actually is. This arrogance is especially frustrating in the case of those who do not fall so tidily into the Bible-thumping ignoramus camp. It's easy to laugh at the religiously motivated and marginally retarded absurdity of Ray Comfort and Kirk Cameron. However, it is rather more disconcerting when an apparently intelligent and non-religious person like Scott Adams states that "fossils are bullshit" and that human evolution "looks" and "smells" like bullshit, without presenting any kind of detailed analysis of the fossil evidence which has convinced the overwhelming majority of paleontologists and anthropologists that we evolved from other species of primates.

I don't expect to sway any opponents of evolution here, and that isn't the purpose of the blog. When I started Paleo Errata, my friend Bill Parker told me that I should be writing first and foremost for myself, and that is exactly what Flying Blind is for. This is my personal diary on the antievolutionist movement, as I try to familiarize myself with its workings, and clarify my responses to its arguments and tactics.

You are welcome to read over my shoulder.

LNJ