Tuesday
Best argument ever
As part of an ongoing anti-Evolution argument some wacko is trying to make against P.Z. Myers, the wacko has exactly quantified the present level of knowledge which mankind as a whole has about "the origins of life and diversity."
This pretty much speaks for itself, but it's too much fun to let it. First of all, the quantification of knowledge itself is so funny. Also, why is the present year set to year zero for the purposes of this, rather than making year zero say one thousand years or two thousand years ago? Oh, because this would show that knowledge has increased greatly over time, and make it absurd to set out present "knowledge-units," at near zero, which is a key rhetorical point. Overall, this is an argument for thorough going skepticism about anything. If "we will know more in the future about area of knowledge X" counts as an argument for "all current beliefs about X are false," then it counts as an argument for "all current beliefs about everything are false".
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This pretty much speaks for itself, but it's too much fun to let it. First of all, the quantification of knowledge itself is so funny. Also, why is the present year set to year zero for the purposes of this, rather than making year zero say one thousand years or two thousand years ago? Oh, because this would show that knowledge has increased greatly over time, and make it absurd to set out present "knowledge-units," at near zero, which is a key rhetorical point. Overall, this is an argument for thorough going skepticism about anything. If "we will know more in the future about area of knowledge X" counts as an argument for "all current beliefs about X are false," then it counts as an argument for "all current beliefs about everything are false".
