Linguist Noel Rude on George Will and the secular creationists

_{Denyse O'Leary

January 2, 2016

Creationism, Culture, News}

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Rude on Will’s conflation of progressives and creationists:

Will is an atheist and dumb about Darwin. But he brings up an interesting point. There is a difference between design by central planners and design by the cooperative efforts of multitudes of individuals. Thomas Sowell (don’t know where he stands on Darwin) waxes eloquent on this. He asks: What is more intelligent–a small cadre of experts or millions of individuals making decisions in their own self-interest?

Creativity arises from individuals–not committees. The goal of groups is stability, and stability is opposed to creativity. Scientific breakthroughs come about via individuals. Great art and literature are the inspiration of individuals. Composers compose and orchestras perform–not so much the other way around (though I do love jazz). There is also the matter of self-interest. On average no one is better motivated to care for your family than you. Yes, the utopian cares deeply–about “humanity” or “the environment” or “the Planet” or “the greater good”. He doesn’t care about you.

Chance and necessity have no self-interest. Sand dunes and glaciers do not want to survive. Chaos does not want to … take that back … I think chaos does want to survive. Desire, however, taken for granted by the Darwinist, functions best on the individual level. If I am not for myself, who will be for me? The central planners? A clique of specialists?

Let’s check out our local dystopia for answers to what happens when we depend on central planners.

Here’s the original post.

Comments

Mung: That is why I advocate keeping the talent local and sending only the dweebs to Washington, far, far, away. A problem with this is the dweebs in Washington are the ones who make policy.mike1962_{January 4, 2016
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Will is just going with the premise that creationists (assuming also ID people) are naive when they see complexity and assume a designer. But the analogy breaks down because individuals are intelligent agents as well. The reason central planning doesn't work is because central planners don't have access to all the information they need to centrally plan. It's impossible as Hayek showed. So an intelligent agent, knowing this fact, could plan a system ahead of time that allows for decentralized choices.geoffrobinson_{January 3, 2016
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That is why I advocate keeping the talent local and sending only the dweebs to Washington, far, far, away.Mung_{January 3, 2016
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The problem you, and Mr. Sowell, are ignoring is Talent. Talent is VERY rare, and the key mistake of the original late 19th Century proponents of solving everything with panels of "eminent experts" is that there are NEVER enough eminent experts to go around. And if you attempt to run human-mediated systems as large as the Soviet Union using a stacked series of Regional Planning Authorities, each of DECREASING talent and motivation, then you get something guaranteed to fail. So, yeah, the guys like the Manhattan Project who get first dibs can in fact pull together HUNDREDS of REALLY smart, REALLY organized people. And such projects can produce amazing results faster than you can say "Jack Robinson". But then there are all the other panels of "also-ran experts" who run things like the US Veterans Administration. Clearly hundreds of independent, profit seeking individuals will either do a better job or go bankrupt. On a slightly different point, if you look at any range of products from different designers (e.g., early 20th century automobiles), the designs are radically different. But if you look at Life on Earth, the designs of the key systems are VERY similar. And the way you get multiple systems with consistent designs is to have a SINGLE Designer, even if detailed design and production are left up to assistants. But I kinda figure that any Being who can spend several billion years lining up the collision that FLAWLESSLY produced the Earth-Moon system don't need Assistants.mahuna_{January 3, 2016
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Jim Smith: You say: "In any case, ID doesn’t require a central planner." as a comment to this interesting statement: "Will is an atheist and dumb about Darwin. But he brings up an interesting point. There is a difference between design by central planners and design by the cooperative efforts of multitudes of individuals. Thomas Sowell (don’t know where he stands on Darwin) waxes eloquent on this. He asks: What is more intelligent–a small cadre of experts or millions of individuals making decisions in their own self-interest?" OK, I think this is a very important point. And I fully agree with you. The point is, design generated by the sum total of many, maybe contrasting, individual designs, even with the contribution of non design components (for example, random factors), is still design. Absolutely. Language is a good example. It evolves as the result of many individual contributions, which are absolutely acts of design. But a lot of complex non individual dynamics are also implied in the final results. Is that intelligent design? Yes, it is. A design system is any system where the conscious cognitive and purposeful representations of one or more conscious agents are the origin of specific forms imprinted on material objects. For example, I can draw a house on paper, but while I do that I can involuntarily spill my ink. The final form will be the result of my drawing and of the random unintentional spilling. But it is a design system just the same, because I have consciously acted to output the form of a house, contributing to the final result, even if it is not at all a good drawing of a house.gpuccio_{January 3, 2016
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The analogy between a creator and a central planner is not valid. You can't understand the creator by analogy to anything in the physical world. The fine tuning of the physical universe to support life and the beginning of the physical universe indicate a transcendent intelligence outside the physical universe designed and created it. A consciousness outside time and space will not have much in common with anything physical. So the analogy between a creator and a central planner is not valid. Earthly central planners cannot look at all of space time in one glance. Discarnate consciousness can because it is outside of time and space and is not limited by time and distance. In any case, ID doesn't require a central planner. The design process of life could be decentralized, like the way automobiles are designed with different teams working on different parts and companies and divisions of the same company competing against each other. Natural selection, a decentralized process, might not be able to produce designs, but it can identify good designs and eliminate bad designs. And ID does not dispute micro evolution by means of natural selection.Jim Smith_{January 3, 2016
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