Uncongenial (to me) speculation by a successful science writer---artificial creation

[Martin]

In my humble estimation Rudy Vaas has gone off the deep end in a very serious way:

http://arxiv.org/abs/0910.5579

 

And I think he is a force to be reckoned with because he is an editor of a German equivalent of Scientific American called "Bild der Wissenschaft". He has academic credentials as well (university faculty, Philosophy of Science, at Giessen)

and he writes and edits books, that get published.

 

So I think international public attention will be paid to his ideas, which have become very speculative---and gone way beyond what can honestly be said to be empirical testable science.

 

Unless I'm mistaken, he is no longer doing professional Philosophy of Science but is peddling a kind of "mind candy" which appeals to the imagination.

 

My feeling is that this is out of the bag. It is out, whether I post about it or not. So we might as well get used to it. Other people who don't have quite as much in the way of credentials or communication skills may have already broached this. Maybe there will be an "immune response".

 

I'm disappointed in Rudy because in the past he has written articles which I thought were intelligent and helpful---both academic papers and illustrated magazine popularizations.

 

He's talking about some kind of secular intelligent design.

Edited October 30, 2009 by Martin

[moth]

i didn't read the pdf, but from the abstract "Our universe might be understood in terms of vast computer simulations and could even have been created and transcended by one "

isn't he just ripping off the hitchhikers guide to the galaxy?

[Martin]

i didn't read the pdf, but from the abstract "Our universe might be understood in terms of vast computer simulations and could even have been created and transcended by one "

isn't he just ripping off the hitchhikers guide to the galaxy?

 

What you quote is far from being the main point of the article. I guess I'm feeling especially grouchy about this. Read the full article, or not, as you please.

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Merged post follows:

Consecutive posts merged

i didn't read the pdf, but from the abstract "Our universe might be understood in terms of vast computer simulations and could even have been created and transcended by one "

isn't he just ripping off the hitchhikers guide to the galaxy?

 

Moth, thanks for taking the article seriously enough to read it (as by now I'm sure you have). I think this article by R. Vaas is just one of several signs that are pointing to a trend----one that I find disturbing, but that is just my private reaction and of no particular consequence.

 

I should just shut up about my own chagrin at this paper and try to discuss it objectively.

 

You are quite right about the connection with Douglas Adams' satire. Adams is wonderfully funny. The trouble with Vaas is he is encouraging readers to consider as sober possibility what has been around for some time in the form of science humor and fantasy.

 

What stands out for me (which he does not label as such) I would call "secular creationism."

 

BTW your mentioning Douglas Adams reminds me that another fiction writer, Kurt Vonnegut, had some fun with secular creationist fantasies. The title that comes to mind is "The Sirens of Titan", but this goes 40 years back and my memory of it is quite vague. Dark humor. Comic paranoia.

 

Maybe the best way to deal with Vaas is to laugh at him!

Edited October 31, 2009 by Martin
Consecutive posts merged.

[iNow]

Okay, let me preface by saying that I am not familiar with any of Vaas' work prior to this, so have nothing by which to compare it. However, that may very well be a good thing, allowing me to review the article in a "raw" state unbiased by my previous feelings regarding his contributions.

 

 

My overall take is this... He does a fine job of drawing attention to the weaknesses in Smolin's cosmological natural selection idea. He articulates well the arguments against that idea, and lays them out orderly. However, I found none of his criticisms to be fatal, nor do I feel that any of the gaps he identified cannot be filled with a bit more time and empiricism. Additionally, he seemed to focus solely on Smolin's articulation of the theory, without referencing the supplemental and supporting work done by others.

 

Unfortunately, his argument struck me in much the same way that creationist arguments against biological evolution strike me... Just because there are gaps in our approach using natural selection does not mean the approach itself is wrong and consequently requires artificial selection.

 

Continuing this point, I was also reminded of creationist tactics when he jumped from "CNS has these gaps" to "cosmological artificial selection can fill those gaps." I really disagree, and part of the challenge I have with his strategy is how he never actually tries to answer the first cause question, he simply displaces it. This is especially apparent in his reference to "cosmic engineers." My immediate thought was, "Okay, great... How does positing such entities really help us? Where did they come from? It's an infinite regress over again."

 

Reinforcing my perception here, he then goes on to state, "CAS can be seen as a kind of creation out of something – in contrast to a divine creation out of nothing, a world-making ex nihilo." So, again... He must use as his starting point the concept of "something" already being there, which is itself argumentatively rather weak since he never addresses the origin of that "something." That is the assumption on which his entire argument rests, and it is an enormously weak assumption... to the point of being fatal to his idea.

 

Vaas acknowledges the issue of infinite regress which I mentioned above, but he seems to have satisfied himself that the "first" or "original" universe question is answered, and that the answer is explained by "natural consequences." In short, he is essentially using cosmological natural selection itself as the basis of his cosmological artificial selection argument. For that reason alone CAS cannot be said to be a better alternative to CNS, and how a bright gentleman such as himself could miss such an obvious flaw really surprises me.

 

 

In sum, the cosmological artificial selection argument doesn't seem to bring anything to the table except for extraneous and unnecessary assumptions. While I was glad to see him return to less flawed discussions toward the end of the paper when he addressed the end of the universe and the various open possibilities around that idea, I cannot overcome the core of the article which essentially argues that we should accept the cosmic engineer idea "just because."

 

He admitted it himself in the article when he commented, "Critics might object that CAS is creationism or intelligent design in new clothes (and in certain respects it actually is)." That's not an argument based on reality... In short, he makes the mistake at starting in step 2 in the below, and further makes the mistake of assuming it to be step 1.

 

 

 

 

[moth]

doesnt cosmological natural selection also suffer the same infinite regress problem? if this universe sprang from a black hole in another universe that sprang from a black hole in another ... how and where did the first black hole arise? neither CAS or CNS get us any closer to understanding the origin they just push it back one (or more) steps.

 

sorry if i'm just being dense here. maybe someone could point me towards more papers as i'm not too good at finding them on my own. thats why i enjoy scienceforums so much, all these new (to me) ideas.

[tar]

Martin,

 

I read the article and thought it was good. I must have taken something wrong though, because I thought Vaas was more or less arguing that Smolin’s

CNS was enough to explain almost everything, and CAS MIGHT be able to explain those things that CNS didn't.

 

However both seem to go pretty far afield, and certainly the title of the article suggested "Hitchhiker's guide" and CAS itself is rather "Matrix" like.

 

Flights of fancy, to be sure.

 

I personally don't find it required or even possible to take a point of view that is outside our universe. If it is pertinent to this universe, then it is IN this universe, and we can find evidence of it, or infer it, or deduce it, or figure it out in some way. If it is not in our universe then not only won't we ever know of it, but it doesn't matter to us. It can not, and will not effect us.

 

Regards, TAR

 

P.S. Still possible is that we figure out the conditions required for the Big Bang to have occurred, and from that we might learn our universe is more than we thought, and be able to understand a bit more about ourselves from it, but it would still be "our" universe.