Faux Fu

Saturday, March 01, 2014

Randomness is a Little Scary!

Yes, and what if all the splendor of the universe is a result of random chance? And what if all creation is the result of a simple algorithm? That's Darwin's Dangerous Idea as explained by Daniel Dennett.

It's a little mind-boggling, and unsettling. We instead like to invent grand narratives and Big Daddies. Randomness is a little scary.

And when you see the beauty of the world, the incredible complexity that can arise from simplicity, it does seem miraculous.  But then think about billions and billions of years. That's a lot of time for random chance to do it's work. And natural selection is sort of an invisible hand.

Darwin, most of us can only take in a little bit of Darwin at a time. But the Darwinian world-view blows all other ideas, cosmologies, etc. out of the water.

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