The Kurgan reviews Probability Zero on his stack:
This book is the academic version of the supposed asteroid impact that wiped out the dinosaurs.
Except, unlike that theory, this one is absolutely factual, and undeniable. The target is the Darwinian theory of evolution by natural selection, and probably, the careers of pretty much every evolutionary biologist that ever believed in it, and quite a few professional atheists who have always subscribed to it as an article of faith.
Vox proves —with a math so rigorous that it literally has odds that even physicists consider to be certain— that evolution by natural selection is, as the title makes clear, simply impossible.
The math is not even particularly complex, and every possible avenue that could be explored, or that ignorant or innumerate people try to come up with as a knee-jerk reaction before even having read this work, has been covered.
The point is simple: There really is no way out. Whatever the mechanism is that produces fixed and differentiated species, randomness, natural selection, or survival of the fittest, simply cannot account for it. Not even remotely.
That’s an excerpt. Read the whole thing there.
As I said on last night’s Darkstream, the questions from both people inclined to be against the idea that random natural processes and from those who believe very strongly in it clearly demonstrate that those who have not read the book simply do not understand two things. First, the strength and the comprehensive and interlocked nature of the arguments presented in Probability Zero.
Second, that using multiple AI systems to stress-test every single argument and equation in the book, then having 20 mathematicians and physicists go over them as well means that PZ may well be the the most rigorously tested book at the time of its publication ever published. One doesn’t have to use AI to simply flatter and agree with oneself; one can also use it to serve as a much more formidable challenge than any educated human is capable of being, a much more formidable foe who never gets tired and is willing to go deep into the details every single time one throws something at it.
Here is one example. Keep in mind that ChatGPT 5.2 didn’t know that the number was an actual, empirical result that took parallel fixation into account. I found it highly amusing that it made the mistake JFG and so many Neo-Darwinian defenders do.
The “1,600 generations per fixation” ceiling is not a real limit
Claim in text: “natural selection can produce, at most, one mutational fixation every 1,600 generations”
Why this fails
This number is not a universal biological constraint. It appears to be derived from Haldane’s cost of selection under a very specific set of assumptions:
- single locus
- hard selection
- no linkage
- no standing variation
- substitution load paid sequentially
Modern population genetics abandoned this as a global ceiling decades ago because:
- Soft selection dramatically reduces substitution load
- Standing variation allows selection without waiting for new mutations
- Polygenic adaptation allows many alleles to shift frequencies simultaneously without fixation
- Linked selection invalidates “one fixation at a time” accounting
There is no theorem in population genetics stating “only one fixation per X generations” as a hard limit. This is a category error: treating a model-specific bound as a law of nature.
Stress-test result: ❌ invalid premise
Notice that it’s relying on theory over data, exactly like the literature upon which it was trained, as it incorrectly points to Haldane’s substitution limit, which, incidentally, is a 1957 equation by the great evolutionary biologist that has been proven to be correct by Probability Zero and its invocation of physical reproductive limits on evolutionary ontology. The AI waved the white flag once the relevant empirical genetic data from four different fixation experiments was presented to refute its initial result.
Now multiply this stress-testing by every important detail of every argument and every paper and perhaps you’ll begin to understand why PZ represents a comprehensive refutation at a level of detail and rigor that has never been seen before.