Eliezer: It’s still not at all unusual to see serious biologists advocating magical thinking. Evolutionary theory as conveyed in the undergraduate biology curriculum is extremely elementary, and it’s easy to graduate without even mastering what is covered, not to mention without making single step inferences from it. Most biologists know no more about modern evolutionary than that plus the results of reading and for the most part believing either Gould or Dawkins. You can’t assume that scientists are familiar with the sub-fields of their discipline, nor that they don’t believe themselves to have some special expertise in those subfields due to their working in a related field. Of course, relative to the general population they do have special expertise in the related subfields, just not relative to specialists in those subfields working 50 or 100 years ago.
All: It seems to me that Caledonian is evolving into a troll. He’s not there yet, but I suggest that a warning may be in order.
Eliezer: It’s still not at all unusual to see serious biologists advocating magical thinking. Evolutionary theory as conveyed in the undergraduate biology curriculum is extremely elementary, and it’s easy to graduate without even mastering what is covered, not to mention without making single step inferences from it. Most biologists know no more about modern evolutionary than that plus the results of reading and for the most part believing either Gould or Dawkins. You can’t assume that scientists are familiar with the sub-fields of their discipline, nor that they don’t believe themselves to have some special expertise in those subfields due to their working in a related field. Of course, relative to the general population they do have special expertise in the related subfields, just not relative to specialists in those subfields working 50 or 100 years ago.
All: It seems to me that Caledonian is evolving into a troll. He’s not there yet, but I suggest that a warning may be in order.