Blackjack or Royal Flush?
Since I will be in Las Vegas this weekend, I thought it would be a good chance to talk a little probability and how it relates to evolution.
Transhumanists believe that an intelligent technology-creating species was the inevitable result of evolution. It was in the cards, so to speak. They might allow for freak events like supernovae and meteor impacts that set us back to zero, but the trend towards intelligence is inexorable. I claim that there is no way to prove that such a trend exists and that therefore we must accept the null hypothesis which is that we are a fluke just like all other species.
Let's say that you want to gamble for 1 hour in Vegas. According to the great and powerful Wizard of Odds, the chance of being dealt a blackjack is about 1 in ~20.7 which means you will on average be dealt about 3 blackjacks during 1 hour of gambling (assuming 1 hand every minute). This isn't a guarantee but it is pretty likely.
If, however, you play Poker, the chance of being dealt a royal flush is 1 in 649740. You would be very lucky to be dealt a royal flush in one hour of gambling. Indeed, many poker players never see a royal flush their entire lives. It isn't impossible, but it is so unlikely that it is essentially zero.
If we say that the time that life has to evolve on our planet (about 10 billion years before the sun consumes the earth) is equivalent to one hour of gambling, then the Transhumanist position is that we are like a blackjack where as my position (and the position of accepted science) is that we are a royal flush.
Most people will say that Portobello Mushrooms, Bradford Pear Trees, and Naked Mole Rats are like royal flushes since the set of possible organisms is so vast, the chance that any specific organism will evolve is vanishingly small. So the null hypothesis is that we must also be just as flukish as any other species.
I think this blackjack vs. royal flush analogy is useful for understanding my differences with the Transhumanists. My next argument in my ongoing Refutation of Transhumanism is to show that intelligence is not inevitable.
Transhumanists believe that an intelligent technology-creating species was the inevitable result of evolution. It was in the cards, so to speak. They might allow for freak events like supernovae and meteor impacts that set us back to zero, but the trend towards intelligence is inexorable. I claim that there is no way to prove that such a trend exists and that therefore we must accept the null hypothesis which is that we are a fluke just like all other species.
Let's say that you want to gamble for 1 hour in Vegas. According to the great and powerful Wizard of Odds, the chance of being dealt a blackjack is about 1 in ~20.7 which means you will on average be dealt about 3 blackjacks during 1 hour of gambling (assuming 1 hand every minute). This isn't a guarantee but it is pretty likely.
If, however, you play Poker, the chance of being dealt a royal flush is 1 in 649740. You would be very lucky to be dealt a royal flush in one hour of gambling. Indeed, many poker players never see a royal flush their entire lives. It isn't impossible, but it is so unlikely that it is essentially zero.
If we say that the time that life has to evolve on our planet (about 10 billion years before the sun consumes the earth) is equivalent to one hour of gambling, then the Transhumanist position is that we are like a blackjack where as my position (and the position of accepted science) is that we are a royal flush.
Most people will say that Portobello Mushrooms, Bradford Pear Trees, and Naked Mole Rats are like royal flushes since the set of possible organisms is so vast, the chance that any specific organism will evolve is vanishingly small. So the null hypothesis is that we must also be just as flukish as any other species.
I think this blackjack vs. royal flush analogy is useful for understanding my differences with the Transhumanists. My next argument in my ongoing Refutation of Transhumanism is to show that intelligence is not inevitable.
I completely agree with everything you say here, but I'm still a transhumanist. Most transhumanists are concerned with something called existential risk, a scenario where all of humanity is wiped out due to a technological disaster. In fact, the organization I work for, the Lifeboat Foundation, has a strong transhumanist bent but still concurs with your argument that progress is not inevitable.
Even Ray Kurzweil accepts that there is a decent chance we may wipe ourselves out before the transhumanist future comes to pass, he just underemphasizes it.
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I love your blog. You have a great way of presenting your topic.
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This blog is a real contribution to the debate. I think you are right on.
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