It doesn’t surprise me at all, but some of the Intelligent Design-adjacent crowd is starting to get very butthurt over Probability Zero and my total lack of interest in their pet evolutionary epicyles. They obviously don’t grasp that I’m genuinely not on anyone’s side except that of the truth itself, whatever that happens to be. I have neither interests nor previous commitments to defend; I’m free to go wherever the evidence and my own curiosity takes me.
From the comments of William Dembski’s interview with me:
Hilbert: Great discussion. Great to see Bill raising EES/Third Way. This is the most likely explanation. Vox shouldn’t dismiss it without having studied it. I’m certain the EES community welcomes Vox’s work.
Bill Dembski: Hi Hilbert. Nice to hear from you. I’ve seen an updated edition of Michael Denton’s Evolution: A Theory in Crisis, which should be out this November. In it he has a chapter titled “An Unresolved Crisis,” where he takes on EES/TWE and argues that these have not resolved the crisis, in particular by not explaining the Types and by not explaining the systems that allow the new mechanisms (such as natural genetic engineering) to work in the first place. I’ll be announcing this book on this Substack, so stay tuned!
Vox Day: I’m not dismissing it, I’m totally unfamiliar with it, but I have not seen anything from it on the mathematical side. And if you don’t solve that to correctly account for what is observably there, then you’ve got nothing no matter how sound the logic is. The reason my initial stance is skeptical is because based on the reactions on every side, both positive and negative, no one seems to have put any effort into looking at the relevant math. No matter what your positive theory is, you have to answer for it. I hope the ESS/Third Way people are doing just that.
Hilbert: Hi Bill and Vox, many thanks for your replies. I’d say EES removes and replaces pretty much every pillar of neo-Darwinism: random mutations (unimportant), natural selection (unimportant), central dogma (it’s two-ways). This allows for directed and adaptive evolution, much closer to what Lamarck envisioned. So I’d say the arguments against neo-Darwinism, including the mathemical ones, hardly apply to EES. And unlike neo-Darwinism, it’s an open theory that can easily incorporate new mechanisms of genetic adaptation, even radical ones, once discovered. What EES cannot explain, and doesn’t pretend to explain, is how this amazing genetic/cellular system emerged in the first place. But even Creationists, to the extent they still are Naturalists, probably have to rely on EES to explain evolution. So I’d definitely encourage everybody to study EES papers and books (Bill has clearly already done so), as this seems to be the most promising theory of evolution.
Vox Day: Again, those statements don’t address the primary factor. Unless the model addresses the existing and observable accounting, it is irrelevant. I don’t know how I can explain this any more simply. All of these appeals to logic and possibility are just handwaving. There are real, observable facts that absolutely have to be addressed. If you’re not addressing them, you’re irrelevant. That doesn’t mean EES is wrong. I have no idea. But I will not even have an opinion one way or the other, or waste 30 seconds looking into it, until the relevant calculations, taking into account timescales and reproductive limits, are provided. What I know is natural selection is impossible. Neutral substitution through genetic drift is impossible. Those things are firmly established. Which is why I very much doubt any mechanism will rescue the concept of evolution.
Hilbert: In short, if you want to solve evolution, you absolutely should study EES in depth. Perhaps you fear that it actually might be able to explain evolution? In a naturalist way? Well that is your problem then.
Hilbert: Vox, I have to say, these are poor answers that make you sound like a fanatical amateur, unfortunately. “I have no idea”, “I will not even have an opinion”, “waste 30 seconds looking into it”. This doesn’t sound good, to be honest. The factual points you mention (natural selection, neutral substitution, genetic drift) have basically no relevance when it comes to EES. EES understands that these mechanism, though real, play almost no role in evolution. They rely on much more powerful mechanisms already observed in nature, (some of which mentioned by Bill), and they are open to additional mechanisms yet to be discovered (like hybridization or whatever). If you deny “the concept of evolution”, you’re probably not a naturalist, but a fantasist. Every observation we know confirms evolution did and does take place. Darwinism and Neo-Darwinism simply failed to explain it. And the challenge is not just speed (the point you focus on in your book). This is actually one of the smaller problems. The bigger problem, even if you can explain speed, is solving functionality (we see almost no failures in nature).
Vox Day: Posturing and name-calling hasn’t worked well for the Neo-Darwinians and the Neutral theorists. Unless you’ve actually done the quant work, you will very likely regret drawing my attention to your pet theory. And what is there to fear? I have no dog in this hunt. I don’t care if it’s evolution, God, or aliens.
Hilbert: Vox, at this point I think it’s clear your disingenuous, perhaps even to yourself: “I have no dog in this hunt. I don’t care if it’s evolution, God, or aliens.” You obviously strongly care. You obviously have a dog in this hunt… And you’re the one name-calling people, viciously and repeatedly. I don’t name-call you at all. I just told you that some of your statements make you sound like a fanatical amateur and a fantasist, not a naturalist, unfortunately. That is, it damages your case. If you really try to dismiss “evolution as a concept”, then you’re making the exact same mistake as Dennis McCarthy: conflating evolution and Neo-Darwinism. That’s like claiming fire doesn’t exist because the phlogiston theory didn’t explain it. It’s just stupid. For EES, the quant problem is not an issue in the way it was for Neo-Darwinism. This is because Neo-Darwinism limited evolution to a few trivial mechanisms (like random mutations). And this simply didn’t work out. So Neo-Darwinism failed.
In contrast, EES is open to any naturalist mechanism, and already includes much more powerful and directional mechanisms than the ones Neo-Darwinism allows (Bill mentioned several of them).
“you will very likely regret drawing my attention to your pet theory.”
Again, you’re wrong: it’s not my pet theory, I didn’t contribute anything to it, it’s simply the leading theory of evolution. And again, it’s obvious you do have a dog in this hunt… it’s obvious you try to salvage and protect your own pet theory… So overall a very disappointing performance. It looks like you’re really just a fantasist who happened to notice what was already obvious to many serious biologists: Neo-Darwinism fails to explain evolution, and then you tried to dismiss “evolution as a concept.”
If you don’t study EES, you’ll simply stay irrelevant. But because you can’t attack it with trivial math arguments, you’ll probably not even try to understand it.
Vox Day: Yeah, it took me less than 30 seconds to determine EES is irrelevant. Whether it operates or not, it is still totally irrelevant to the human genome and every other genome. Now stop posturing, shut up, and wait patiently for the nuke to land on your face. The analysis is done. The math is settled. The empirical evidence is conclusive. And just remember, you genuinely said I sounded like “a fanatical amateur and a fantasist”. But you’re right, I’m not a naturalist. I’m just a game designer. But one single game designer can do in a week what 170 years worth of naturalists couldn’t.