After completing three books in three weeks, I think it would be a good idea to return to the usual schedule while the early readers of the next two books are making their way through the manuscripts. So, we’ll do a Stupid Question Day tonight to ease back into things. Post your questions on SG. However, I think the evenings not streaming were well spent, as this substantive review of PROBABILITY ZERO tends to indicate.
Vox Day, an economist by training, presents a mathematical case that demonstrates the mathematical impossibility of the Theory of Evolution by Natural Selection (TENS). Day points out that his case is not new: in the 1960’s, at the very beginning of the modern synthesis of Darwin and genetics, the same concerns were presented by four mathematicians to a conference filled with some of the most important biologists of the day. Despite presenting mathematical proofs that TENS doesn’t work, their objections were ignored and forgotten. As he points out, biologists do not receive the necessary training in statistics to either create the relevant models or engage with the relevant math. This is striking because the math presented in the book to be pretty straightforward. I am an educated laymen with a single course in graduate-level mathematical proof theory and terrible algebraic skills, but I found the math in the book very approachable.
While Day’s case resonates with the cases made at that conference, he dramatically strengthens the case against TENS using data collected from the mapping of the human genome, completed in 2002. Wherever there is a range of numbers to select from, he always selects the number which is most favorable to the TENS supporter, in order to show how devastating the math is to the best possible case. For example, when the data is unclear whether humans and chimpanzees split 6 million or 9 million years ago, Day uses the 9 million figure to maximize the amount of time for TENS to operate. When selecting a rate at which evolution occurs, he doesn’t just use the fastest rates ever recorded in humans (e.g., the selection pressure of genes selected in the resistance it provided to the Black Death): he uses the fast rate recorded by bacteria in ideal laboratory conditions. Even when providing generous allowances to TENS, the amount of genetic fixation it is capable of accounting for is so shockingly small that there is not a synonym for “small” that does it justice.
Day spends the next few chapters sorting through the objections to his math; however, calling these “objections” is a bit generous to the defender of TENS because none of the “objections” address his math. Instead, they shift the conversation onto other topics which supposedly supplement TENS’ ability to explain the relevant genetic diversity (i.e., parallel fixation), or which retreat from TENS altogether (i.e., neutral drift). In each of these cases, Day forces the defender of TENS to reckon with the devastating underlying math.
Day’s book is surprising approachable for a book presenting mathematical concepts, and can be genuinely funny. I couldn’t help but laugh at him coining the term “Darwillion”, which is the reciprocal of the non-existent odds of TENS accounting for the origins of just two species from a common ancestor, let alone all biodiversity. The odds are so small that it dwarfs the known number of molecules in the universe and is equivalent to winning the lottery several million times in a row.
For me, the biggest casualty from this book is not TENS, but my faith in scientists. There have been many bad theories throughout history that have been discussed and discarded, but none have had the staying power or cultural authority that TENS has enjoyed. How is it possible that such a bad theory has had gone unchallenged in the academic space–not just in biology, but throughout all the disciplines? Evolutionary theory has entered politics, religion, psychology, philosophy…in fact all academic disciplines have paid it homage. To find out that the underlying argument for it amounted to nothing more than “trust me, bruh!” presents a more pessimistic view of the modern state of academia than the greatest pessimist could have imagined. Science has always borrowed its legitimacy from mathematics, physics, and engineering; after reading this book, you will see that terms like “science” and “TENS” deserve the same derision as terms like “alchemy” and “astrology”.
It sounds like Vox Day is just getting started with his critique of TENS. Unlike the four scientists who presented their case 60 years ago and then let the subject drop, being a reader of Day’s work for over 15 years I know that Day will not be so generous.
Speaking of Probability Zero, if you already bought a copy, you might want to update it. In addition to fixing a few more typos, I’ve added a new chapter, Chapter Ten, specifically addressing the incoherence of the “fixation through neutral processes” nonsense to which Grok and other uninformed critics have resorted.