Eliezer_Yudkowsky: Did you see the recent “What’s the most important[or whatever] idea?” thing on edge.org? Richard_Dawkins’s answer was Darwin’s theory of natural selection, and he justified that on the grounds that the metric for a good theory is:
“what it explains, over what it needs to explain”
and then pointed out how it “explains” billions of species.
Now, he may just be using different labels for the same point you made in your post, even so, that’s a remarkably confusing way of describing the appropriate way to judge a theory. That would suggest that you can’t blame popular confusion on errant usenet Darwinists, that the confusion comes from the most credible biologists.
Eliezer_Yudkowsky: Did you see the recent “What’s the most important[or whatever] idea?” thing on edge.org? Richard_Dawkins’s answer was Darwin’s theory of natural selection, and he justified that on the grounds that the metric for a good theory is:
“what it explains, over what it needs to explain”
and then pointed out how it “explains” billions of species.
Now, he may just be using different labels for the same point you made in your post, even so, that’s a remarkably confusing way of describing the appropriate way to judge a theory. That would suggest that you can’t blame popular confusion on errant usenet Darwinists, that the confusion comes from the most credible biologists.
The idea of natural selection is remarkably awesome and has applications even outside of biology, which is part of what makes it such a great idea.