Luke, while I agree with the premise, I think that the bogie man of machines taking over may be either inevitable or impossible, depending on where you put your assumptions.
In many ways, machines have BEEN smarter and stronger than humans already. Machine AI may make individual or groups of machines formidable, but until they can reason, replicate, and trust or deceive, I’m not sure they have much of a chance.
The lack of responses and negative scores on my comment show me that (1) it is easier to vote down a post than post a reasoned response, and (2) it is easier to scoff at opponents and think them fools than confront one’s own self-deceptive behaviors, the very purpose of Luke’s post.
No doubt evolution is a simplified rules set, but in empirical tests, as well as in historical interpretation of data, it has many failings which, as Luke has pointed out for certain creationists, is something that evolutionary believers shy away from, hiding in self-deception in order to keep their beliefs safe.
But this is not a post about creation/evolution—my point was that his use of creationists was a poor choice because (a) creationism is believed by a majority of Americans, and so will turn them off from his main point, and (b) the idea that the idea is settled scientifically is dubious, since origins science is more interpretation than demonstrable fact, and both sides of that debate have strong ideological reasons to believe and scientific reasons to doubt that they ignore.
One more thing. If you want a wider audience to access the point you are making (remember how many people are creationists here in the US), you should use a more accessible and universally accepted example, like the Japanese soldier one you used. If you want a contemporary example, choose something there is more agreement on or people with miss your point—it’s like calling your opponent a Nazi—you already lost the argument even if you are right.
I suppose if you are only addressing the skeptical audience, you could use such an example, the way I could use the example of atheists who ignore the obviousness of God’s existence as witnessed in creation if I were talking to Christians. But if I am trying to also reach atheists, perhaps I would use a different example.
It is a pity that you use creationists as an example here, since I think that this is exactly how evolutionists think and act. The evidence that you say is so strong in support of common descent is just not. Endogenous retroviruses are just not a slam dunk at all, and I say that as someone with a biochemistry degree.
The main reason that this is a really bad example is that it involves historical evidence, not empirical, and it involves origins, which is, to say the least, highly speculative due to the historical distance. While evolitionists DO have the advantage of appealing to natural preocesses, and IDists do not appeal to current processes (though they don’t deny natural selection or various recombination events), the latter do contest the supposed creative ability of evolution to produce novel features, and this is eminently reasonable at this time.
Your example of self-deception with creationists is poor for many reasons. For example, you speak of the missing link tactic of creating ’two more every time one is suggested.” While this is a cheap dodge, it does bring up some critical points which evolutionary believers also ignore—how similar, and by what measure, should two things be to be considered a definite link with no need to insert another? Pure morphology has turned out to be a bust when we consider molecular evidence. And the latter has shown that our assumptions about relatedness are highly speculative, if not so simple that they don’t provide ANY useful relational evidence.
Like to see how missing links really work? Google for ‘missing link found,’ check out of the recent supposed human links found, and see how many have turned out to be spurious—nearly ALL of them. They’re trumpeted from the media housetops when they’re found, but no one peeps when they are, and almost universally, debunked under scrutiny. This is the corollary for your example. Evolutionary believers fail to consider counter indications seriously because it is a world view issue.
I’ve written a few relevant posts on this, hope it’s ok to post them:
Mass Delusion − 10 Reasons Why the Majority of Scientists Believe in Evolution http://www.wholereason.com/2011/01/mass-delusion-10-reasons-why-the-majority-of-scientists-believe-in-evolution.html
Fossil evidence sends human evolution theory into tailspin http://www.wholereason.com/2007/08/fossil-evidence-sends-human-evolution-theory-into-tailspin.html
Evolutionary Trees—In Flux or Broken and Bogus? http://www.wholereason.com/2007/06/evolutionary-trees-in-flux-or-broken-and-bogus.html
13 Misconceptions About Evolution http://www.wholereason.com/2011/04/13-misconceptions-about-evolution.html
I get ruffled when IDists or creationists are paraded as examples of brainwashing or self-deception, primarily because I was an evolutionary disciple as a science major and found my way out of that system into one where I concluded for my SELF that logic and common sense indicate a designer/creator.
But isn’t the latter exactly what you are doing with Pascal’s wager? Underestimating the existence of God’s probability so that you may retreat back to ‘tiny probability’?