He seems very surprised. I guess it’s something he’s never experienced before.
Chopra has a little story to tell. It seems colobus monkeys have discovered that eating charcoal absorbs some of the irritating toxins in their diet, so the monkeys have been chowing down on the stuff for several generations. This is cool and clever, but not at all surprising — organisms adapt and take advantage of their environment all the time. But Chopra being Chopra has to put a very weird spin on it.
He argues that the behavior isn’t genetic, because it’s too recent — not quite right, novel mutations have to arise sometime, but in this case I agree with him that it isn’t likely to be genetic, because it spread more rapidly through the population than genes do. Then he claims that it can’t have been by chance, because, he claims, monkeys don’t eat random stuff. There, of course, he’s wrong — it’s practically a hallmark of monkeys that they are curious and try all sorts of things. What he then tries to do from this fallacious exclusion, though, is leap to an amazing conclusion.
What we are witnessing is an intelligent discovery on the part of creatures who stand far below Homo sapiens on the evolutionary chain, and that discovery is being passed on from mother to child without genetic adaptation. To me, this means that quite a blow has been struck for intelligence being innate in the universe. It suggests that evolution itself has never been random but is guided by the principle of intelligence — not “intelligent design,” which is a red herring supplied by religious conservatives. The intelligent universe is a cutting-edge idea, not a throwback to scripture. As a theory, it gives us a much more elegant explanation for many things that are clumsily explained by falling back on randomness to explain every new development in Nature.
Monkey discovers new material in its habitat, charcoal left by human fires. Monkey eats some. Monkey discovers it has soothing effect on its guts. Monkey eats more, more monkeys watch and learn, habit spreads through population.
That’s it. That’s the simple story. From this, Chopra invents this bizarre idea that an intelligent universe is pushing clever ideas into monkey brains, and is guiding ‘evolution’. It’s a crazy claim spun out of a fairly straightforward observation of entirely natural behavior by some monkeys.
Chopra doesn’t know what evolution is.
At the moment, evolutionary theory refuses to abandon the notion of random selection, and geneticists cling stubbornly to the doctrine of random mutations to explain why new things appear in the unfolding story of life. We all have a stake in this argument, however. Seeing the red colobus evolve before our eyes cannot be denied. It didn’t happen randomly, and their new discovery represents a quantum leap forward in their survival. There’s much to think about here, since we want to know how early humans made their first discoveries and passed them on to us. Rather than saying that a larger brain made intelligence possible, why not say the opposite, that intelligence dictated a larger brain so that it could expand? Life moves forward inexorably, no one doubts that. Now it’s up to us to explain the hidden forces behind evolution, in hopes that we can tap those forces and guide our own future.
The colobus story is not an example of evolution at all — it involves no changes in, or transmission of, heritable traits in a population. It is explainable entirely in terms of simple behavioral plasticity, and requires no intervention by an external intelligence, challenges absolutely nothing in evolutionary theory, and doesn’t demonstrate any hidden forces. If he were to try and present such a fable at a scientific meeting, he’d be laughed out of the room.
The only mystery here is why newspapers like the San Francisco Chronicle continue to publish his drivel. Is someone under the misapprehension that he is a respected or even credible thinker? He’s a loon.
An earlier woo-meister did something similar awhile back.
What is “random selection” BTW? Some sort of Russian roulette-ish mechanism that’s been introduced into evolutionary theory, while no-one was looking?
Obviously someone without a clue about evolution. There is no chain. Monkeys are close relatives to humans. They are social animals capable of learning, just like the apes and humans. No surprise they learned something. Maybe if he got his head out of the woo…
Even more disgusting, the New York Times “Well” blog by Tara Parker-Pope is shilling for him.
http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/04/13/dr-deepak-chopra-on-reinventing-the-body/
“Re-inventing the Body”, my ass. Speaking of my ass, can he help me re-invent it to be 3 sizes smaller?
Why do people line up to fawn over the Dalai Lama as a great humanitarian even though his record of charity is less consistent and successful than that of thousands of unsung philanthropists? Because famous, wealthy people, for ego and “difference”, praise him. That’s it; his nonsense gets printed because he has famous followers, this wins him many more none famous ones, and he happens to couches his woo in synthetically liberal terms which appeal to the paper in question. The only differences between him and any other parasitic clergyman are rhetorical.
Just listened to the Rationally Speaking podcast for this week, and Deepak with his fuzzy thinking got a mention.
All hail Deepak – King of the deepity!
So remember kids, when you grill out this season use Deepak Charcoal brand briquettes. A smooth flame of burning stupid that lasts for hours.
“The only mystery here is why newspapers like the San Francisco Chronicle continue to publish his drivel.”
And Huffington Post. And his book publishers. And…
I remember some nonsense about the “Hundredth Monkey” Effect in New Age Woo a few years ago, that sounds very similar to this. But, we have a similar problem in physics – people read Stephen Hawking’s books, which are watered down to the point of almost inaccuracy, and think they are physicists. Mostly the math is left out, and they come up with a descriptive theory, which can predict nothing. They somehow construe postdictions (“my theory predicts dark matter and energy, and black holes, too!”) as support for their theory. This is just a LOT easier than actually understanding the math.
Honestly, I can’t see how anyone takes this clownshoe seriously.
It doesn’t excuse their publication of Chopra’s nonsense, but the Chronicle’s sfgate.com is also the home of cartoonist Mark Fiore, who recently won the Pulitzer Prize for such efforts as “Science-gate”.
He can’t really be that stupid, can he?
So when humans discovered that drinking the fermented juice of certain grapes causes a good-feeling, light-headed effect, and that behavior was spread throughout the population, our woo-addled friend Oprah… erm… I mean Chopra sees it as evolution?
What a mooncalf.
I hate to say it but I really think that Sam Harris is right when he points out the left-wing lunacy as well as the right-wing lunacy out there. The right-wing lunacy with religion is proved more than enough, whereas the left-wing lunacy involves just as much woo and “religion” and “alternative thinking” in mysticism – as long as it isn’t Western-based.
Deepak is the perfect example. He can be as stupid and woo-like as he wants to be because he represents a “wiser” and “non-Western” way of thinking/religion. It upsets me – as a liberal and a centrist in some areas.
I think the left has as much to do about shirking off that stupid attitude as the right does with their religiously inspired idiots and nutjobs, unfortunately.
I know it’s a sensitive issue in liberal circles, and the proof is that Sam Harris is the only one being absolutely vocal on this subject. And most of the time, he gets flamed for it by our own side, which is kinda sad.
Deepak may not be a violent nutjob like the guys in “Hutaree”, but he just as much of a bloody idiot as they are when it comes to cosmology and other areas of philosophy and science.
If only biologists had been studying culturally transmitted behavior among primates for decades. Oh wait, they have.
No, No, No!!!
Why even give Deepak Chopra attention when he’s already proven himself to be a total fool.
Here is theoretical physicist Leonard Mlodinow schooling him on some of the quantum mechanics jargon he profusely utilized for the 45 minutes of the lecture before this moment.
He shut up with all the quantum mechanics lingo after this ;)
But I doubt he’ll stop trying to make money lying to people with the “lab-coat-scientist” type schtick.
btw, PZ I really enjoy your lectures on youtube etc… and It sucks that I missed you over here in Dublin a few months ago, hopefully soon again ;)
Don’t forest fires produce charcoal? In which case, isn’t it likely that this cultural knowledge is older than the monkeys’ first contact with human generated charcoal? It may just be that the monkeys have now found a more reliable source.
Was that same Intelligent Designer teaching blue tits how to find milk in bottles (Wikipedia) or was it something else?
I guess chopraboy is the 101 monkey.
Chopra is using the equivalent of Star Trek techno-bable to explain science. It is disappointing that journalists confuse science with a sci-fi story line. A meaningful explanation of reality needs more than just making things up. Unfortunately if it sounds good in a sound byte it is good enough for the media.
Wow, both you and Orac covered different idiocies by Deepcrap Chopra
“Rather than saying that a larger brain made intelligence possible, why not say the opposite, that intelligence dictated a larger brain so that it could expand?”
Why does “intelligence” need larger brains to “expand” in?
The scary thing is the Deepak has a medical degree and actual medical qualifications, and if he hadn’t become a New Age gur-woo he could be practising medicine upon an unsuspecting public.
On balance, it’s better than he’s a woomeister that we can ridicule and refute. Such is the Wisdom of this cruel yet jocular Universe.
Honestly, I can’t see how anyone takes this clownshoe seriously.
Well really, if the shoe fits, the woomeisters wear it.
So when humans discovered that drinking the fermented juice of certain grapes causes a good-feeling, light-headed effect, and that behavior was spread throughout the population, our woo-addled friend Oprah… erm… I mean Chopra sees it as evolution?
I can’t wait to evolve by drinking Red Bull to quench my thirst, seeing as I’ve never tried it before! I must have evolved hundreds of times by now!
Hello DeFact, campfire, burned food, monkey hungry… not all that hard.
Why am I not surprised that Deepshit is unfamiliar with “Monkey see; monkey do.”?
I can’t see it’s really wrong to use the word “evolution” to refer to changes through time other than “changes in, or transmission of, heritable traits in a population”. Restricting to changes in heritable characteristics is really a technical usage in biology. The sense of the word that you get in “stellar evolution” or the “evolution of a dynamical system” in maths (or even, though thing itself might be bollocks, “spiritual evolution”) has just as much historical validity.
Where Chopra fucks up* is treating the two senses as if they were the same.
*OK, *one* of the places he fucks up.
FTW!
As for the old silly “hundredth monkey phenomenon” that somebody mentioned here: I agree, it was rubbish. For those interested: it got a nice beating here: Amundson, R. (1985). The Hundredth Monkey Phenomenon. Skeptical Inquirer, 9, 348-356. as well as: Amundson, R. (1987). Watson and the ‘Hundredth Monkey Phenomenon’ Skeptical Inquirer, 11, 303-304.). And indeed Chopra’s article seems to look in roughly the same unscientific direction…
Somebody mentioned above that scientists have looked into the phenomenon of “culture” in non-human animals. Indeed, and it is a complex and fast-growing field by now. For this particular phenomenon in monkeys I would still recommend the now classic “Sherry, D. F., & Galef, B. G. (1984). Cultural Transmission Without Imitation: Milk Bottle Opening by Birds. Animal Behaviour, 32(3), 937-938.” – which refuted the claim that the spread of milk bottle opening in british tits is a phenomenon that is on par with human culture. I would be surprised to see anything else going on in these monekys.
If this mysterious force is so intelligent, why do the monkeys need the charcoal in the first place ?
Such rudimentary examples of cultural transmission (yes, I think that’s a fair label for learned behaviors that are passed down through generations) have been observed before in Chimps; I don’t know about monkeys but it wouldn’t be surprising.
There is definitely a powerful interaction between cultural adaptation and biological evolution. There is no doubt but that human physiology depends on culture — cooking food, hunting with tools — to be successful and would not have evolved its present form without it. And of course, our capacity for culture is itself a feature of our neurobiology, and has shaped it in turn.
And now, we intentionally shape the evolution of our domesticated plants and animals. Perhaps of ourselves one day.
So there is something there, Chopra just blunders around and misses it.
I’m guessing Chopra became confused after observing the behavior of organisms vastly more intelligent then himself.
So, whaddaya know, monkeys have memes too.
Wait till Ray Comfort tells him about the banana…
I’m no scientist, but if the intelligence was already there why go to the enormous cost of developing a bigger brain, and over what enormous period of time?
These have to be the two dumbest things I’ve heard all week:
The central tenet of all evolutionary theory is the notion of non-random selection. He might as well criticize religion for refusing to acknowledge the existence of God. Sheesh…
And don’t even get me started on the contention that monkeys don’t eat random stuff. heh…
What he failed to note was Mrs. Monkey talking to her young son after witnessing some dangerous behavior: “…and if Bobo ate charcoal, I suppose you would, too?”
Um, this would be hilarious…if there weren’t so many people who take this junk seriously.
“Rarely is the question asked, is our Deepak learning?”
I think the left has as much to do about shirking off that stupid attitude as the right does with their religiously inspired idiots and nutjobs, unfortunately.
Really? When was the last time you saw a Democrat try and legislate Chopra’s absurd crap? Ever?
And when was the last time you saw a Republican try and legislate fundy Christian absurd crap? Yesterday? This morning?
Centrism is what gave us ‘negroes are 3/5ths of a person’ so let’s not go claiming immunity from moronic woo due to the political half assery that is centrism.
This is where Chopra has failed his lunatic constituency:
Chopra has proposed something that is amenable to refutation. He really shouldn’t do that.
More specifically, his idea forms the basis of testable statements…hypotheses that predict some observations to the exlusion of others. All one would have to do to corroborate Chopra’s idea is reject three null hypotheses: 1) that knowledge is being passed in the form of learning from parent to offspring, 2)that knowledge is being passed in the form of genetic predisposition from parent to offspring,and 3) no knowledge is being passed at all, but rather is acquired anew by each generation.
The experiment implied would require one to quantify charcoal use in baby Colobus monkeys that were born and raised by charcoal using mothers[Treatment 1], that were born and raised by non-charcoal using mothers [Treatment 2], that were born from non-charcoal using mothers, but raised by charcoal using mothers (or whatever surrogate you could use for a monkey–I don’t know jack about monkey family dynamics)[Treatment 3], and that were born from charcoal-using mothers but raised by non-charcoal using mothers [Treatment 4].
Easy.
However, even if the hypothesis of cultural learning were corroborated, and the “intelligent universe” hypothesis were destroyed, the Deepak Chopras of the world close their eyes, place fingers in ears, and sing “wooooooooooooooooo”…still, it would be fun to confront that jackass with some evidence and watch him bury his poor little head.
I’m sure if Chopra watched me make coffee he would be mystified by process and write a paper full of woo about the transcendent quantum fuzziness of making water turn brown and tasty.
Looks a little like this to me.
crap… #42 was posted to the wrong damn thread.
I have no excuse.
OK, Deepak always used to talk about things he knows nothing about, we all knew that, but now the thing he knows nothing about is *my* thing… which really gets on my nerves.
I mean srsly, there are *so* many examples of animals learning new behaviours from each other. This new one isn’t even that impressive. What about the fanous Imo, the Japanease macaque, who taught her group-mates to wash sweet potatos in the sea? (Well, technically, they learned from watching her, she didn’t teach them, but you get the point).
This guy should really start doing just a little bit of research before building a whole crazy theory around one rather ordinary (albeit cool) discovery. But he won’t, of-course. In which case, can everybody else *please* stop listening to him?!
I guess that would be a no, too.
(sigh)
I believe the scientific explanation that would be understood by a person of Chopra’s intellect is, “Monkey see, monkey do.”
I’d have to wonder about some of the toxins in the charcoal; it’s pretty likely that it contains various highly reactive compounds generated by pyrolysis. Could be that the monkeys will develop cancer several years hence.
You’re all missing the point – the monkeys are eating charcoal to get rid of *toxins* in their diet! If monkeys do it, we should all worry about getting rid of toxins in our diets! Toxins, I tell you! Why isn’t Orac writing about this?
[/snark]
Deepak? Nah, give me a six-pack instead!
Pardon me if this question seems ignorant, and I think I already know the answer. Not to mention I feel like I have a better grasp on evolution than Choppy, but could the charcoal lead to a change in diet and thus possibly speciation, etc.? No intelligent universe out there, just could we possibly be witnessing the beginning of an evolution of diet which could lead to physical evolution?
A quantum leap eh? So somewhere, after this monkey ate charcoal, an atom (or molecule), as a direct result absorbed a photon with an appropriate wavelength. Wow, that’s significant, cause that doesn’t just happen every day does it?
Well, in the interest of pedantic accuracy, Tom Harkin more or less fits the bill. Maybe not Choprawoo specifically, but he has pushed to legislate New Age woo.
Your overall point is still dead-on: Democrats trying to legislate in favor of New Age crap is an anomalous event. Republicans trying to legislate their conservative Christian agenda is a central component of what they do.
To Nautilus @49:
Change and behaviour, and specificaly in diet, can lead to speciation (there is a nice example with a new specie of flys that started eating apples). I doubt, though, that eating charcoal whould have such a major effect. It’s not like they’re changed all their diet, or are eating at a different place than the non-charcoal eating monkeys.
P.s., to standard curve – I’d hate to stand by Chopra on that, but “quantum leap” does have the meaning of a sudden, major change, as oppose to graduate and incremental. It’s not his trminology that was wrong, it’s his ideas.
And boy is that edge ever dull.
Someone needs to send an article on mirror neurons to Deepak… Sheesh!
What an idiot. Selection is precisely the part of evolution that isn’t random.
I wasn’t talking about legislation, but about cultural acceptance.
You don’t know me, but please don’t assume that I’m not vitriolic against the right-wing lunatic evangelicals. I am absolutely without patience for them and their stupidity.
But there is absolutely a general left-wing acceptance of “non-Western” woo in left-leaning culture at large. As has been pointed out in comments here, Huffpo definitely caters to that at times. Deepak doesn’t appeal to the right; he appeals to the left (or self-identifying left). He doesn’t appear on Michael Savage, but on Oprah, Larry King, and other media which the right would consider “leftist” (though I’m not sure they are, many do think they are at least a little left-of-center).
I think it has a lot to do with the left’s penchant for all things anti-colonial – a fine idea on many levels which I actually tend to agree with. But let’s call a spade a spade. The left isn’t known for its criticism of Islam, and Harris gets blasted quite a lot by our side for doing it. The left isn’t known for its criticisms of Hinduism or other “non-Western” religiousness or Woo. I understand why, but I think it is a mistake. I’m on the left too, on a ton of issues. I’m pro-choice, I’m pro-equal rights, I’m pro-gay marriage, I’m pro-national health care WITH a public option, I’m against every single intrusion of religion into public life. I hate creationism and I don’t want it anywhere near our schools or anywhere else because it’s complete and utter bunk. I think that Sarah Palin is a complete nutjob and a dumb blonde (and I’m blonde), and I even was a guest post writer for a Sarah Palin parody on the front page of LGF a few months ago. I think that the Tea Parties are inherently racist, xenophobic, and essentially fascist.
And yet, I simply point out that there is madness on the left as well – madness that we should very well deal with on an equal level and not put up with – such as being against vaccines, crystal magic, Deepak, woo, and a whole lot of other nonsense like Homeopathy, and I get flamed for it as if I’m saying that we are worse than the right.
No thank you, I won’t stand for it. I don’t apologize for my statement and I don’t think that I deserved such a reaction. You take it however you want, but I’m right. And my pointing out that people on the left flame anyone who points this out is proven yet again. There is madness on the left as well as the right, and I think we should set an example and deal with it just as much as we deal with the idiots on the right while the right sits around and does nothing at all.
He known in some circles as “Sixpack” Chopra. After a sixpack of brew you become fucking genius.
@ tamar
Thanks, by change in diet I was meaning possibly more acidic vegetation, or different insects and animals that they would typically avoid. If they figure out that the charcoal soothes, which they have, then they may put 2 and 2 together and try out somethings in their environment that they usually wouldn’t eat.
I know this would also depend on the abundance of charcoal. Which would involve natural fires and human involvement. We should proably teach Chopra to make charcoal, if he can do it, then we teach the monkeys.
Here’s a thought–if the universe is so incredibly smart, why didn’t the monkeys do this a lot sooner, say, by making fires?
And he woos and ahhs over the fact that red colobus monkeys learned the trick, and black colobus monkeys did not. Yet it’s not culture, evolution, or, well, brains that he credits, it’s the “universe,” which doesn’t give a damn about black colobus monkeys, only about red ones.
Which, I guess, is convenient for him, because apparently the universe gives this ignoramus a whole lot of rewards for writing brainless rubbish, so it’s all good.
As for why red colobus monkeys learned it now, not 10,000 years ago when humans were already making fire, it’s almost certainly the high increase in humans and much greater availability of charcoal that makes it a useful cultural trait.
Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/mxaa3p
You’ve got to admire those who go for the prime-cut, grade A, pure unadulterated bullshit…er, I mean spirituality.
I guess when you’ve published several dozen quack-books, and then NPR of all organizations lets you hawk your fantastic bullshit on a world stage, understanding evolution or quantum physics or reincarnated wood fairies or whatever is a non-issue; it’s all in the presentation. What are lies when they’ve made you wealthy, like the virtuosic liar Mr. Chopra? They’re great, that’s what. Makes me want to print up subversive anti-Chick-tract-type things, title them something like “Save Your Brain! Put Down This Book!”, head to the bookstore, and put those things in Mr. Chopra’s books… Man, I can’t stand that guy.
I would like to see a massive publicity campaign calculated to utterly destroy Chopra and all of his nuttiness, using him as an example of how fucking idiotic this whole newage garbage heap has become.
Uri Geller was effectively put out of business by James Randi (and allowed me some guilt-free Schadenfreude), but not without cost because these assholes abuse the law with malicious suits when they are attacked – something for which Chopra is notorious.
Richard Dawkins made a major breakthrough for atheism and we need the same thing for skepticism, since so many self-described “atheists” swallow plenty of woo themselves. Some highly-articulate spokesperson needs to be found and mainstreamed so s/he is sought after by media outlets the way Richard is.
If anyone could do this, it would the good Doctor Myers. I think he needs to write a book along the lines of “The God Delusion” to make this happen, though. I lived to see the day when smoking was finally put in its place – not in the back of the bus but off the bus entirely – and long to see chakras and chopras at last become as uncool as they deserve to be!
@56
Flamed? Seiously? Somebody disagreed with you. Perhaps we should point you towards the fainting couch?
Argh! Selection IS NOT RANDOM! Why don’t these superstitious fools GET THAT?
Working title for PZ’s breakthrough opus: “How Oprah Ate My Brain, or The New Age Ain’t Nuthin’ but Sewage!”
Once this comes out and begins to change the world’s consciousness (there’s that word again) with Deepak as the first to fall we could add another verb to the language: to chopra someone; to expose a fraud so completely that s/he is never heard from again unless it’s as the target of vicious humor.
Newspapers are businesses. They print what sells.
I like the idea of ‘chopraing’ someone, but be careful– he may choose to smite us with another earthquake if we take his name in vain. You know how he is.
By the way, I agree completely with Summer Seale (56) and think mikerattlesnake (63) is being a putz.
Calling Chopra a loon is still far from the mark. Especially after reading this.
His problem is with the way he sees things. For him, the universe is a deliriously enchanted place. He’s mired in delusional thinking, in the strictest psychiatric sense.
But is it too late for him?
He sure does love that word “quantum” doesn’t he?
Yes… I imagine for him the universe is something like this.
I think Chopra suffers from a gigantic ego. He makes millions of dollars and is fawned over by the press and the lovers of woo. He actually believes he understands evolution and quantum mechanics without ever studying them. Maybe he actually believes the “intelligent universe” allows him to understand these things without bothering to actually learn anything.
It’s maddening when actual scholars in the fields tell him he’s wrong, and he brushes it off with, “science is a religion and you just won’t accept new thinking on the subject” meme.
I wish he’d shut the fuck up.
That’s right out of 2001 Space Odyssey — the guiding obelisk as the external catalyst getting the primates brain clicking. Why do we have to have an external guiding hand (skyhook)!? Makes for great fiction (thank you Arthur and Stanley) but not reality.
Don’t chickens have “sand in their craw”? Some stones have been found with dinosaurs that were in the gut to help digest food. How did they know to eat rocks?
I’m just waiting for the day Deepak gets up on Oprah’s show and says “Well, I’ve reached my wealth target and am retiring. So now I can say that it’s all been a scam, I just made this stuff up as I went along. Thank you to everyone who fell for my rap and made me rich.”
Rather than saying that a larger brain made intelligence possible, why not say the opposite, that intelligence dictated a larger brain so that it could expand?
Uh, because it’s mindbogglingly stupid? If the whole universe is intelligent, and that intelligence precedes the increase in the size of the brain, why would it need a larger brain? And once it makes the brain bigger, where does the intelligence come from to fill it up, if it isn’t the larger brain that produced the intelligence? Arghh, my brain hurts just trying to make some semblance of sense out of Chopra’s babbling.
Just jumped in to ask why the monkeys ate toxic materials in the first place.
I take it Chopra assumes that the theory of evolution by natural selection states that only humans learn, and all other animals are automatons controlled by their genes? Total misunderstanding here…
#68 hznfrst
Thank you. =) I also agree with your post #62. It is very well said.
I expect that much of their diet — leaves, for example — is mildly poisonous. Many plants produce toxins in their leaves to avoid being eaten.
I remember a documentary in which some South American monkeys (I can’t remember which kind) were eating clay to absorb some of the toxins from the leaves that formed much of their diet.
Uh, Deepers old boy, if I’m not mistaken, this modern, coal-chompin’ monkey stands on a branch right next to us, on the same level in the canopy of the evolutionary tree. It’s not our ancestor, it’s our cousin. That Chopra still thinks we are the crown of creation and that all selection is for increasing intelligence and complexity is evident in his post. Maybe he can dig up that whole mystical hundredth monkey trope while he’s on the subject . . .
People eat charcoal, mainly to prevent flatulence. Um, would monkeys care about…
You neglected to point out that he has full immunity against that horrible disease.
Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/mxaa3p
Nobody flamed you. They disagreed with your implication that the problem is as serious on the left as it is on the right, for the state reason that the leftist woomeisters have far less political influence.
Deepak Chopra discovers…learning
Well, he’s observed it (second hand).
Where’s the evidence he’s doing it?
There is no “evolutionary chain”. There is no “above” and “below”. The length of evolutionary history is precisely the same for every living thing on earth; 3.8 billion years.*
How can one be licensed to practice medicine without an understanding of biology?
*MST. Half an hour later in Newfoundland.
But there is absolutely a general left-wing acceptance of “non-Western” woo in left-leaning culture at large.
This is BS. Go to dailykos.com and see how much “general acceptance” there is of this stuff. And many who do accept this stuff have libertarian leanings or consider themselves apolitical or anti-political — they may not be right wingers or authoritarians, but there’s nothing particularly “left” about them, and certainly not “left-wing”, which is an explicitly political term.
The right-wing lunacy with religion is proved more than enough, whereas the left-wing lunacy involves just as much woo and “religion” and “alternative thinking” in mysticism – as long as it isn’t Western-based.
See, this gets it so so wrong. The problem with the right wing isn’t religion per se, but how religion is used as a tool to further the right wing political agenda; woo has no such interconnect with left-wing politics.
I agree with Recovered Catholic in Post #73. Deepak insight is 42 years too late to be original.
such as being against vaccines, crystal magic, Deepak, woo, and a whole lot of other nonsense like Homeopathy
None of which has anything to do with left politics.
and I get flamed for it as if I’m saying that we are worse than the right
No one implied any such thing.
Centrism is what gave us ‘negroes are 3/5ths of a person’ so let’s not go claiming immunity from moronic woo due to the political half assery that is centrism.
Indeed, although Summer seems to be far more liberal than centrist, despite all the dinging of the “left”.
I know it’s a sensitive issue in liberal circles, and the proof is that Sam Harris is the only one being absolutely vocal on this subject.
This is ridiculous.
And most of the time, he gets flamed for it by our own side, which is kinda sad.
Harris gets flames by “our own side” for criticizing woo? Most of the time? That’s beyond ridiculous. Harris has been criticized by “our own side” for a couple of things: his embrace of Eastern practices like meditation, where he skates mighty close to woo himself, and his overgeneralizations about Muslims that skate mighty close to bigotry. Harris wrote an editorial in the L.A. Times where he actually excoriated liberals for suggesting that U.S. foreign policy had anything to do with hostility to the U.S. in the Islamic world, that it was entirely a matter of Islamic religion.
Deepak may not be a violent nutjob like the guys in “Hutaree”, but he just as much of a bloody idiot as they are when it comes to cosmology and other areas of philosophy and science.
Duh.
Perhaps consider that he is probably talking about the reason which monkeys feel impelled to try stuff and amend their behaviour when they feel better. The universal intellegence of the universe manifested in creatures seeking for their benefit. Honestly I think Deepak Chopra’s ideas are deeper than you give him credit for, some might say that you are actually inhabiting a level of consciousness lower than his, therefore you are trying to play logical games based on assumptions which are not valid at within an expanded context. My 5 year old does not know that if he doesn’t go to bed, he will feel bad tomorrow. I can’t tell him: he comes up with all sorts of reasons which make sense to him. But he doesn’t get it, and may even ridicule my logic because it does not appear consistent from his frame of reference.
By the way, I agree completely with Summer Seale (56) and think mikerattlesnake (63) is being a putz.
See, now that is a flame.
#68 hznfrst
Thank you. =) I also agree with your post #62. It is very well said.
Oh, gee, what surprise. Why don’t you two go get a room.
#87 truth machine, OM
I strongly disagree. Spend a day in San Francisco in the Haight and then tell me that there’s no left-wing woo. I used to live there and there are lots of “mystics” in left-wing circles. They don’t classify themselves as libertarians, but do classify themselves as leftists. I guess it depends which circles you hang out in, but it’s definitely there.
Another point would be criticism of Islam. A lot of times, people on the left who do criticize Islam have the instant retort of “Well, Christianity is just as bad too!” coming their way. And I agree up to a point: Christians can be just as bad. There is Christian terrorism and terrorists, and fanatics who want to create a worldwide Christian “government” in a sense. But pointing that out every time Islam is criticized doesn’t do our side any favors. My guess is that when Hutaree fanatics were arrested, almost nobody on liberal blogs was hasty to point out that Islamists are also just as bad. Did you? Naturally, I don’t know you and you may have. But my guess is that it wasn’t the prevailing sentiment. My guess is that the prevailing sentiment among left wing blogs and comments was something akin to “You see, we’re just as bad” instead of “The Islamists are just as bad too!” – sentiments which I could agree with on a fundamental level, but the difference in emphasis is definitely striking.
Also, Huffpo would probably be classified as a left-wing publication, even though they have a lot of “libertarians” commenting there as well. And as many skeptics know (not just Atheists), there is an abundant amount of woo on there from Deepak to “Vaccines cause autism” crap. I’m sorry, but yes it definitely is present in the left. And yes, the anti-vaccine movement right now definitely has bad real world consequences, most of it generated by left-wing Hollywood idiots who have no business at all budding into advances of medical science with their own woo-based “beliefs”.
#88
See my last part above. Left-wing woo can have bad real world consequences. Yes, I think right-wing religion is worse right now, but that doesn’t mean that we don’t have our problems as well. I also attribute lots of problems to the left-wing sentiment of “can’t we all just get along”, or “peace, man…peace.” – as much of a daydream as Creationism. It’s a nice sentiment, but it doesn’t work in the real world. Buck up and accept that. Maybe I’m saying this because I, like Christopher Hitchens, agree that sometimes you have to fight dirty battles for your secular values to survive. I know that this isn’t popular in left-wing circles, but I don’t really care either. Some of us have found our particular side to be a tad soft not only on woo and anything “non-Western”, but on other things such as terrorism outside of Christian sources. A handful of us want the bastards on the other side of the divide to get just as much of an ass-whooping as we want the Tim McVeighs to get theirs at the same time.
And some here might be a little blown away that I bring out these political arguments in what is a seemingly very specific story about a moron named Deepak Chopra, but I think it is very, very, relevant. I do think that the bigger picture is relevant. The bigger picture is that fundamentalists and woo-idiots are everywhere. And when people asked why he’s still supported in the media, on NPR, on Huffpo, and in other places, I responded with the reason: because his brand of woo is “acceptable” to many on the left, whereas you won’t find him in right-wing media because they have their own brand of flaming morons currently trying to dominate the conversation.
I’m just pointing all of this out because I think it more than answers that question first posed in a few comments at the top, as well as the question asked by PZ at the bottom of his post. That’s the reason that the SF Chronicle publishes Deepak’s crap: because they know that a lot of people in SF like to hear it.
And in case anyone missed my long post above, and just for the record: Yes, I’m a liberal, an Atheist, and a Skeptic.
he comes up with all sorts of reasons which make sense to him. But he doesn’t get it, and may even ridicule my logic because it does not appear consistent from his frame of reference
You, your 5 year old, and Deepak Chopra have a lot in common.
Bwahahahahahahahaha….
I needed a good laugh today. Deepak is from the shallow end of the intelligence pool.
Then he claims that it can’t have been by chance, because, he claims, monkeys don’t eat random stuff.
Chopra has apparently never observed the young of another primate species, humans, who will put just about anything in their mouth.
Hhahahah. Good one Brent. You were kidding, right?
So ignorance is a higher understanding… deeper.
Do you want to try again?
Except here Deepak is the moody 5 year old and the scientists are the adults. The differene is, however, that the 5 year old will eventually learn.
Insane Clown Posse’s “Miracles” is at least a little more honest than Chopra, though no less easier to swallow:
I’ve seen miracles all around me,
stop and look around
it’s all astounding,
water, fire, air and dirt,
fucking magnets: how do they work?
I don’t want to talk to a scientist,
ya’ll motherfuckin’ lying and getting me pissed
Also, Chopra makes the above argument in the same style that he was criticized over by Shermer and Harris in the ABC debate on the “Future of God”: he spouts scientific words without really knowing what they mean. He misuses them but sounds smart to his laymen audience. Good examples: throwing around words like “random selection” (although selection isn’t random) and “quantum leap forward”. Well, he said quantum, which sounds vaguely scientific, so he must know what he’s talking about!
I strongly disagree
Bully for you. You conflate woo with “left” and then say that woo is something of the left; it’s circular reasoning.
See my last part above. Left-wing woo can have bad real world consequences. Yes, I think right-wing religion is worse right now, but that doesn’t mean that we don’t have our problems as well. I also attribute lots of problems to the left-wing sentiment of “can’t we all just get along”, or “peace, man…peace.” – as much of a daydream as Creationism.
I find that paragraph almost as stupid was what Chopra wrote. Again, the problem with the right wing is not religion per se — religion is found across the political spectrum; it is how religion is used as a political tool. And “can’t we all just get along” and “peace, man…peace” not only aren’t factually erroneous claims contrary to science, which is what Creationism is, but they aren’t at all representative of “left” thought — you are taking hippy-dippyism (Haight-Ashbury? give me a break — what decade, or century, are you in?) and using it as a caricature of “the left”. You’re clearly an assclown and I’m tired of you.
My mother’s into this bullcrap. And the secret. Because of her, we’re now stuck here in canada as the high-tech business dies and we go back to cutting down trees and grubbing minerals out of the ground. Fuck.
I’m kind of new here and haven’t read that many comments. What do you mean that Harris “skates close to woo”? Waht is woo?
Re: 56, 68, et al.
Listen, #56, you were only partially right. Some woosters do tend to vote leftist, but most are relatively apolitical. Simply mentioning this somewhat aggressively is not “flaming” you.
However, weeping into your teacup like that not only gets your pearls wet, it is poorly tolerated here. If you wanted flaming, you are about to get it i 3… 2… 1…
To the guy who asked about why monkeys eat toxins, the colobus monkeys are almost entirely folivores, that is, they eat leaves (this is actually unusual with monkeys). They have to eat a lot of them (just like cows have to eat a lot of grass) because there isn’t all that much of nutritional value in leaves that is digestible by mammals (and colobus have help from bacteria just like cows do). They try to eat young leaves as much as possible because young leaves don’t have as much of the alkaloids that plants uses to defend themselves from folivores. Often it is difficult to get enough of the young leaves, so they have to eat older leaves that are only just survivable in the quantities that colobus eat them. It’s a war. Plants develop more toxins, folivores develop better tolerance to poisons. The charcoal eating gives them a slightly larger diet breadth that could, in severe circumstances, result in survival rather than starving (or being poisoned) to death.
When I lived in the area several decades ago, the Comical (or the Confused) was called that for a reason. Sounds like the reason still applies, albeit the loons have probably changed.
Woo is generally ideas that are based on metaphysical nonsense.
Homeopathy. Crystals. Chiropractors. All the “therapies” and disciplines that claim to alter the body or mind, that have very little basis on evidence.
Meditation isn’t woo. It’s probably a healthy thing to do for one’s psyche or whatever. But does it alter your intelligence or further connect you to a quantum consciousness that will bring you wealth, eternal happiness and a higher plane of evolution, etc….
No. That’s woo.
“quantum leap?” Has he been watching old television shows?
Help!!! He’s on the Dark Side!!! Rather than letting himself be guided by the Force, he wants to rule it! AAAAAAAAAAAAARGH!!!
;-)
Speaking of five-year-olds, I’ve often thought that Deepak comes across as a spoiled five-year-old clamoring for attention (well, I thought six-year-old, but whatever.) You think of all the hard working people out there who are humbly doing their part to further genuine exploration, and then this ass comes along and makes grandiose bullshit claims to set himself up a guru of deep thought and a pioneer on the cutting edge of science, and he’s gotten rich off it. Obviously, this is proof that dishonesty is innate in the universe.
Thanks Stevie…dac9. I feel better now knowing that I’m woo-less. I do like meditation. It does counter anxiety, at least for me.
Wiki up Trofim Lysenko, Stalin’s version of “Tupac” Chopra. He destroyed Soviet biological science for a generation.
http://www.alternet.org/story/46196/
…
Meditation isn’t woo. It’s probably a healthy thing to do for one’s psyche or whatever. But does it alter your intelligence or further connect you to a quantum consciousness that will bring you wealth, eternal happiness and a higher plane of evolution, etc….
No. That’s woo.
http://www.alternet.org/story/46196/
Monkeys do eat random crap, including crap. The little buggers pick up everything, put it in their mouths, and give it a taste. It is what they do. The older ones have learned what to not bother with any more, but they will try anything new, and the little ones try everything because it is all new to them. Seriously, it’s practically a nervous tic.
Which makes it seem odd that monkeys haven’t been eating charcoal all along. If Mister Dee’s view of evolution is right, why is this charcoal-eating a new phenomenon? Why wait?
It seems to me that the chances of any random monkey chorfing down bad-tasting charcoal are slim. But if the poor mutt had a gyppy tummy at the time, and the charcoal helped reduce nausea, the old nausea/taste-aversion mechanism would kick in in reverse, and the little guy would then think that charcoal tasted good.
Many animal behaviors are cultural and are learned. Evolution then acts upon the bodies of the animals–in a few generations, monkeys who like charcoal and who can excrete its bad elements will outnumber those who can’t handle it. Whereas those with more cast-iron stomachs will not need to eat charcoal in the first place. Speciation may occur.
Does Chopra not even think?
He allows the universe to do that for him.
Which explains a lot.
Menyambal.
Fires are infrequent in the wild. Man made fires in proximity to most species is a fairly new phenomena.
brett.bazant #94 wrote:
And how would it look any different, if materialism is true? How do you know?
If you (and Chopra) are triumphantly pointing to monkey see, monkey do as evidence for an intelligence manifesting itself, then your assumption is now a falsified hypothesis. Chopra’s argument might make sense if, instead of monkeys, we had evidence that some form of life which should not be able to learn, did learn. Starfish doing a tapdance to “The Good Ship Lollypop,” say, after watching some Shirley Temple movies through a cruise ship window. The fact that he’s putting this case of behavioral plasticity in great apes into that sort of category, means that a prediction didn’t work.
You’re not thinking deeply enough.
Summer Seale #96 wrote:
I agree; I have all sorts of liberal, new-agey friends who don’t think this sort of Chopra-woo is anything at all like religion, because it’s based on science, and doesn’t try to “force” anyone to believe. Same shit; different package.
And it encourages and advances the general cultural imperative to believe in the supernatural, because doing so is a sign of depth, sophistication, openness, emotional maturity, and the ability to LOVE!!!
Can we give Deepak Chopra a one-way ticket to Sedona, AZ? He’ll have fun hanging out with the crystal-gazing morons.
I think poor Mr. Chopra missed this.
Parrots eat dirt!
Perhaps his subscription to Highlights for kids has expired.
Can we give Deepak Chopra a one-way ticket to Sedona, AZ? He’ll have fun hanging out with the crystal-gazing morons.
Katharine, don’t forget the “Vortexes!”
Why should they have? I doubt that Islam has any relevance to the Hutaree story.
Your guess involves a strawmen who don’t even get the point. This was not a story in which the relative values of Christianity and Islam were laid out for comparison; it was a story about religiously motivated idiocy against the government.
The problem is, really, that the left is “inclusive”, while the right is “exclusionary”. This leads to the specific sort of crazy being very specific and narrow on their side, while our side has similarly dangerous and insane people. They just get lost in all the damn noise from the semi-insane. Personally, I think its about time for someone to make a party that divorces itself from some of the overly wacko elements on the right. Trying to shove them all in the same camp has led us to a party that can’t function without going right of center, and even then, can’t seem to function well enough to actually “do” anything without someone pushing them to do it and a lot of hand wringing about how uncertain they are about whether it will work or not. The other side doesn’t have this handicap. Their handicap is being too bloody narrow minded/completely mad to realize that doing the same thing over and over, won’t produce different results, no matter how often they attempt to implement it.
Monkeys are not the only ones that eat other than actual food:
http://www.highlightskids.com/Science/Stories/SS1201_parrotseatDirt.asp
@126:
Of course they aren’t. Why, just a moment ago, I consumed a hot dog, Pizzaria Pretzel Combos, and finished it up with a grape fruit roll up and a Mountain Dew. Only 5% of that meal was comprised of what scientists call “food”.
Hit the spot, though.
How did “truth”machine ever get an OM? All I ever see from him is bad-tempered name-calling of anyone he disagrees with. He sounds like a kid in his Mom’s basement getting his kicks by being a potty-mouth. Well, to each his own, but rudeness for its own sake doesn’t impress me.
Yes, I know that humans making charcoal is a fairly recent phenomenon in evolutionary terms. But we have been making fires long enough for our own digestive systems to adapt.
The monkeys in wherever it is have probably been around humans for thousands of years. I would even argue that charcoal has become LESS available as indoor cooking has recently become more common.
It sounds to me like the monkeys started eating charcoal in the last few years, say five, after being exposed to charcoal for the last five thousand.
So why didn’t they start sooner, Deepak?
Try reading all the rest of the words around the insults and maybe you’ll see why he has that OM.
@hznfrst…
Being a douche-bag excludes no one from receiving an OM. Actually, a large number likely received it due in no small part to their douche-baggery. Yes, they argue well. But sometimes that’s not enough to stand out from the crowd.
Besides, creating a club, then forming an exclusive clique within that club, then deciding to give out little prizes to each other… that kind of childishness tends to attract a certain type.
(Charges of “pearl clutching” may now commence…)
Not using “foul” language doesn’t keep one from being a douche bag. In fact the biggest annoying douche bags we get on here cringe at foul language. They manage to be total assholes without it.
If you think people get the OM for quality insults, you haven’t been paying attention.
Creationism Part 1 – Creation
Creationism Part 2 – Intelligent Design
Creationism Part 3 – Universal Intelligence
Here we go again.
If you think people get the OM for quality insults, you haven’t been paying attention.
That isn’t what I said at all. And I’ll bet you actually know that.
I assume all the OMs earned theirs the same way I earned mine: generous gift baskets to members of the OM selection committee, along with promises to release their loved ones unharmed after the voting.
Stevie, I wasn’t addressing the quality of his arguments, only the unpleasantness attached to them. There are plenty of times when foul language is appropriate but he flings it around indiscrimately. It’s tiresome and makes him less effective than he could be because it gets in the way of his message – just my opinion, and I don’t lose sleep over his bad manners.
@136
Since his message for people who get their knickers in a twist about “foul language” and other “unpleasantness” is roughly, “Fuck you,” I think his message comes across pretty well.
And you need to understand that on this blog the commenters usually prefer you address the actual argument rather than the foul language. Just a bit of advice.
I actually feel a bit sorry for Guru Deepak. Until I saw that ABC debate with him pitted against Michael Shermer and Sam Harris, I took him for a cynical con-man getting rich peddling New Age mysticism to the gullible.
But in that debate it seemed pretty evident that the man is desperate to believe in an afterlife, and will grasp at any straw, fix on any speculative leap no matter how improbable, to convince himself that yes, there really is a soul, yes, there really is an afterlife, so he won’t have to really, actually, truly die.
…I often wonder what the vintners buy, one-half so precious as the stuff they sell…
I’m beginning to suspect that this desperation is the root of everything New Age. The giveaway, to my mind, is this idea that consciousness somehow had to be propelled into being by some unknown mysterious force (the Intelligent Universe, AKA God), instead of just evolving naturally through random mutation, natural selection, and great gobs of time.
There’s a parallel New Age idea that seems to assume that somehow, complexity itself had to be propelled — that is, that complex life forms evolving from simpler ones demands some sort of push, or guidance, again from unknown mysterious forces. Apparently no New Ager has asked the question “Well where, in everything we know about the universe, is there any force, physical law or other constraint that says complexity can’t just happen?” Or to turn it around, where does it say you can only have simplicity unless something intervenes?
You can see where this kind of assumption leads. If you believe that complexity, and consciousness, had to be propelled into being, then that implies that consciousness might be separate from the material world (a soul!), and separately implies a guiding force that one might as well call Godlike. Put those both together and you can start to think that all those ancient (and Eastern) beliefs about an afterlife just might have been on the right track after all.
You did it rough, I just invited them all to a bacon lesbian orgy. Didn’t even have to find bacon or lesbians, the mere invitation was enough to get the votes.
Wow. So let me get this straight. Observational learning = tapping into the universe? Seriously? We should call Bandura and let him know his interpretation with the Bobo doll study was completely off.
Hell, call the animal cognition folks and let them know that their dogs/chimps/what-have-you aren’t learning by observation, they’re tapping into the motherfucking cosmos, man! (Have another puff there!)
That was exactly my point, dumbass. You get the OM for the quality of your arguments and not whether you refrain from “unpleasantness”.
I can’t help but wonder whether ingesting too much charcoal could result in a severe case of “radically ambiguous and ceaselessly flowing quantum soup.”
@ stevieinthecity #72:
I think he’s the 21st century P. T. Barnum, and I rather doubt he really believes much of anything he sells. I lost a friendship over his crap, though, so I know how powerful the need to believe his crap can be.
“…their new discovery represents a quantum leap forward in their survival.”
I once had a boss that used to rally the troops by telling us “we need a quantum leap in understanding on this.” As we said around the lab at the time, “quanta are small.”
Chopra has kids. That being the case I’m surprised he thinks monkeys don’t attempt to eat random things. After all human babies have the tendency to stick whatever they can get their hands on into their mouths.
Just remember, Deepak Chopra tried to claim physicists hijacked the word quantum from him.
o_O
“and their new discovery represents a quantum leap ”
Not much of a jump then it seems…
Speaking of OM’s, it’s been a while.
“monkeys don’t eat random stuff”
Looking at other primates, like humans, there’s this thing called ‘pica’. I’d be surprised if only humans exhibited the behavior. Then again as a little kid I do remember chewing on everything in the garden; I even had to chew on some noxious things twice before I learned to leave them alone. Fortunately there doesn’t seem to have been anything particularly toxic in the garden.
“quanta are small.”
some are, but size is not part of the definition of quantum.
A quantum is a “discete unit” that is all, regardless of size.
I’ll take the physics definition of quantum leap, the only one that matters as far as I (and many others) are concerned:
Physics
a. The smallest amount of a physical quantity that can exist independently, especially a discrete quantity of electromagnetic radiation.
b. This amount of energy regarded as a unit.
Complete and utter misuse of the term, and I’m not a grammar wonk. It may be common usage to mean something else, but then no one said common usage showed intelligent usage.
In fact, it could be argued that Chopra’s statement was “unintelligently designed.”
People, and probably monkeys, often suffer pica for a reason. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pica_%28disorder%29
I’m going to have to posit that you’ve got a slightly off-kilter view of ‘left-wing’. I guess you’re American – apologies if not and you find that annoying – which could explain the confusion. I’m Brit but lived in california for a 13 years and Canada for 6, so I have a slightly wider spread of observational base than many people. It seems that in the US ‘left-wing’ is conflated with ‘not right-wing’ which seems pretty silly and up there with ‘not-catholic’ equaling ‘not-christian’. If you take that view then I can see how you might get the idea that there is a lot of mystical woo in the left side of politics but honestly I think you’re mistaken. Yes, there are surely a lot of people that will self identify as left simply because they hate the republicans but … oh hell it ends up sounding like a No True Scotsman argument and I don’t think it really is.
I don’t honestly think you can even identify US-style ‘liberals’ as left-wing without seriously screwing up your definitions.
Note that I’m not even faintly suggesting that left-wingers are free of woo. Quite a lot of loudly-left politicos appear to have their very own brand of woo that is fully as demented as the most appalling of TeaPalins.
Shorter version-
Not being a supporter of TeaPalin doesn’t equal being a supporter of Stalin
Becca @47
Sadly, I was reading about some celebrity spruiking exactly this as the new wonder diet. I can’t remember who it was or where I read it, but it was some time this week.
The problem is just that, while he got his conclusion written down ok, Deepfried Porkchop forgot to tell us about the mechanism by which the Intelligent Universe got the monkeys to start eating charcoal. Sit down, Neddy, and I’ll tell you a tale …
Long, long ago, a troop of prehistoric monkeys were lying around after dinner, farting up a storm, when they heard a strange sound (they were used to the sound of farts). Looking over a ridge they saw an enormous black iPod standing in a clearing, playing loud spooky music. The music was a lure to draw them close enough for the iPod to plant an intelligence cookie in their brains. As soon as this happened, one of the monkeys said, “Hey, wait a second {headslap} — CHARCOAL IS BLACK!! I think I’ll go eat some!
So he and the other monkeys found a lightning-blasted tree stump, chowed down on the bark (now charcoal), and discovered that after the fart clouds cleared away food tasted much better. So starting from Blackened Tree Bark the monkeys went on to invent Cajun cooking. From there it was a short step to surround sound, space stations, and Pan-American World Airways.
Well, nobody bats a thousand.
PZ I signed up just to make this comment. I have been lurking you since USENET back in the 90’s.
>The colobus story is not an example of evolution at all — it involves no changes in, or transmission of, heritable traits in a population.
Oh please. I know, I know. Evolution is the change in allele frequency over time.
But I think its ok for people to think its “random mutation” and “natural non-random selection”. PZ should have called him out on the “evolutionary theory refuses to abandon the notion of random selection” part instead.
Deepak would not benefit from knowing the allele definition, but correcting that statement would have helped. I think most lay people don’t know the real definition, but those who get the idea understand the mechanics.
Dammit, I lost the text I worked so patiently and poetically on.
Anyhow, in Chopra’s world the first man to invent fire looks up to see a bunch of monkeys asking for charcoal.
This sentence no sense.
Midwifetoad, you really should have included the previous sentence in your considerations, so as to acquire context; however, I here to translate from blogcommentese for your convenience:
But I think its ok for people to think its “random mutation” and “natural non-random selection”. PZ should have called him out on the “evolutionary theory refuses to abandon the notion of random selection” part instead..
→
But I think it’s best for people to think of it as “random mutation” and “natural non-random selection”. PZ should, in my opinion, have especially criticised Chopra’s claim that “evolutionary theory refuses to abandon the notion of random selection” part, instead…
I hope that clarifies matters for you.
Even so, “smallest unit of something” does not necessarily mean it is itself very small, just that it cannot be any smaller.
Also, try looking up “quantum leap”:
So, wait, what happens when a useful behavior is transmitted for a while through a primate group and then lost? I vaguely recall new hunting behavior appearing in a couple generations of a band of savanna baboons and then disappearing after a disease had a major impact on the age group/sex that normally did the teaching.* Did the universe decide they just weren’t ready? Is there some counteracting dualist force of Anti-Intelligence* that just shoves the smart out of people?
*I’m probably getting a lot of this wrong, since I haven’t looked at the collection this appeared in since undergrad, but now I want to go home and look it up.
**Note: If there is an Anti-Intelligence equation, Deepak Chopra can almost certainly manipulate it Pied Piper-style.
I can demystify one mystery for you…major newspapers print articles about ol’ Deepak because they sell more copies that way. He’s popular with many people who have more money than brains, so it’s a simple equation, really.
From this I could only imagine the response this guy would get in a serious science meeting. Probably something like this:
Deepak Chopra. We here at the University believe that the purpose of science is to benifit mankind.
YOU on the other hand seem to view it as some sort of dodge, or hustle.
Your theories are the worst of popular tripe, your methods are sloppy, and your conclusions are highly questionable. You are a poor scientist, Deepak.
When bliss ninnies like Cheap Hack D’Oprah blather on about “the universe giving rise to consciousness” they never pause to wonder why the good universe also decided to give rise to fire ants, the Plague and Rod Stewart.