thu 14 jun 2012 05:13:30 — witte de withstraat
might as well be
just a note to write later about this.
big schism about whether the world evolves or is created by 'intelligent design'. the more we understand, the more we realize intricate order can emerge from a few very simple rules -- and yet the brilliance of adaptation in the end looks so much like it was intelligently designed, it might as well have been. which reminds me of my reaction to the suggestion that language is a parasite using us as hosts -- whether or not it's 'really' true, it sure seems like it might as well be true. or the notion that corporations are organisms that have escaped human control, not just autonomous but runaway, colonizing us who created them. if it's not true according to the usual causational thinking, it still ends up 'might as well be'. because the end result looks just as if it were.
under the circumstances, intelligent design might as well be. the myth as written is bullshit, but functionally, there might as well be a god. the outcome is as if there is. the ability of order to emerge from noise should be god.
meanwhile, imagine trying to convince a bacterium of the existence of a superorganism called a human being. the bacterium would look at you as if you were quite mad.