On 5/6/05, Warren Ockrassa <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > On May 2, 2005, at 4:46 PM, Maru Dubshinki wrote: > > > On 5/2/05, Warren Ockrassa <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > ... > >> _Calculating God_, yeah. As it happens I just finished it this > >> weekend. > >> It's an interesting read but Sawyer leaves a gaping hole in his story > >> (two, actually), which he also did with _Hominids_. > >> > >> In CG Sawyer's aliens suggest that the current universe's physics are > >> too precisely honed toward life's development for it to be an > >> accident; > >> the idea is that some kind of superbeing prearranged the current "big > >> bang" expansion to have the state it does. What we don't go into is > >> how > >> that entity managed to survive the previous universe's "big crunch". > >> That's a pretty significant omission, to me. > >> > >> And of course the main basis for the argument that the Fohrlinors and > >> Wreeds propose is the way extinction events occurred simultaneously on > >> their homeworlds *and* ours (give or take a couple million years) -- > >> now if something that incredibly improbable actually had happened, > >> sure, there'd be something worth looking at. But in order to knock > >> aside any doubts at all the book has to suggest an additional not one, > >> but two literal deus ex machina events. > >> > >> Framed in that carefully constructed context it's hardly surprising > >> the > >> idea of "god" finds a lot of support, but the fact is that without > >> that > >> elaborately constructed set of premises, the argument falls flat. > >> > >> In _Hominids_, BTW, the problem I had was his suggestion that > >> consciousness developed in human brains initially as a quantum state > >> change, something random rather than emergent that altered the way a > >> given brain operated once and forever in the distant past. Well, how > >> exactly did that trait get passed along to offspring? It *must* have > >> been an emergent property of brain complexity, something that existed > >> in DNA, or else it would never have occurred again. > >> > >> > >> -- > >> Warren Ockrassa, Publisher/Editor, nightwares Books > > > > A goof point Warren, but you forget that genes aren't the *only* unit > > of inheritance- culture is also inherited. > > Yes -- but not biologically. If there is a discontinuity the culture > gets lost. It is not innate.
Exactly- like I suggested, the character-in-charge-of-exposition could use the historical examples of wolfling children to point that out precisely. ~Maru _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
