God's Debris : A Thought Experiment (2004) - Plot & Excerpts
"This book promises big things.""I should tell you how great it is. It's great. Really great. Honestly. Really, really great."" says one (unnamed) review on the back cover, while another (also unnamed) one claims ""I don't think I've ever read a book that was anywhere as thought provoking as God's Debris"". Meanwhile the author gets in on the act of hyping up his own work starting with his recommended reading age ""... the ideas expressed by the characters are inappropriate for young minds"", he claims. ""People under the age of fourteen should not read it.. He further goes on to claim that the target audience for the book are ""... people who enjoy having their brains spun round inside their skulls"" and how the book introduces a whole host of ""new ideas"" and ""untraditional views"".To put it politely - it's all a load of codswallop. This book is truly awful.The author claims there is some debate as to whether the book sits in the ""fiction"" or ""non-fiction"" camp. In fact, he actually further claims there is no publishing category into which his book sits. I have no such qualms about labelling this. It's fiction. Sub-section - bad.I am a scientist. I work with computers. I have an honours degree in psychology. I studied biology extensively throughout university, and am widely read in popular science. I am not, however, a philosopher nor a physicist. The parts of this book that touch on biology, psychology or artificial intelligence of any sort, I disagree with. I can therefore only assume that the relevant philosophical and physical books are similarly ill-researched, but can't know this for sure.This book reads like a bad ""Tuesdays with Morrie"". Mitch Albom's book was a delight to read. It introduced philosophical concepts to the readers via a wonderful blooming (or re-blooming) relationship between an ex-pupil and his mentor. It was thoughtfully written, used beautiful language, and swept the reader up into a number of concepts which require further contemplation. This book achieved none of these things.The two protagonists are introduced to each other through the relationship of parcel delivery man and parcel addressee. Yet the reader is to assume they have this deep and meaningful discussion over a number of days (certainly, my postman or FedEx deliveryman has never been quite so forthcoming, but maybe that's just my bad luck or a result budget cuts in the Royal Mail). The book is badly written, divided into a number of chapters which only serve to interrupt the flow of conversation, and distract the reader. For a book which attempts to excplain such concepts as the origins of the universe, quantum physics, and electromagnetic theory, the use of words such as ""formulas"" (formulae) and phrases such as ""...yanking my chain"" are just grating to the reader. No concept is examined in detail, while a number are glossed over with unsatisfactory and incorrect philosophising. Anyone who wanted to read this with a view to learning something new in their scientific education, or as use as a starting point for a discussion of the issues, would be left sorely lacking.The chapter entitled ""Evolution"" alone almost had me throwing the book across the room in disgust. The analogy made with the plates and cutlery, although bad, would have some merit if it had been properly described. The fact that he doesn't even try to descibe the evolution of crockery just makes his example so bad it's almost painful to read. He dismisses such suggestions of forks evolving from spoons, or pots evolving from bowls. However, how did early man move from primitive tools (albeit 2nd generation tools) such as spoons and bowls without evolution of a nature? If he's going to use this (very very bad) analogy, he should at least have the decency to do it properly.He then goes on with the following ...""""Does it strike you as odd that there isn't more evidence today of the mutations that drive evolution?"" he asked.""Like what?""""Shouldn't we be seeing in today's living creatures the preview of the next million years of evolution? Where are the two-headed humans who will become overlords of the one-headed people, the fish with unidentified organs that will evolve to something useful over the next million years, the cats who are developing gills? We see some evidence of mutations today, but mostly trivial ones, not the sort of radical ones there must have been in the past, the sort that became precursors of brains, eyes, wings and internal organs""""(pp.69-70)I could actually excerpt more from this chapter to discuss, but I'd probably just end up retyping the whole of it here.For a start we are seeing evidence of evolution taking place on current species. For one, humans are evolving and it is now seen that some hand bones are fusing together, providing no disadvantage to those affected. Evolution is random, and it is only those mutations that confer an advantage on the individual that are selected upon. Any neutral or negative mutation is not selected upon and does not continue in the gene pool. I am therefore at a loss to try and work out why such things as ""two-headed humans"" would become overlords of the ""one-headed people"", why fish are evolving into anything else whatsoever just because aquatic creatures did so in the past, and why cats would need gills, as any cat owner will tell you, cats just abhor water.The whole thought also that the mutations that produced "" ... brains, eyes, wings and internal organs"" were large, cataclysmic mutations also shows a VAST misunderstanding in the whole theory of evolution. How people can think that a creature was suddenly born with a fully functioning eye, brain or lung, is just unbelievable. Such things came about by very very small differences that conferred an advantage on the beholder so that they were passed down the genetic line. The tiniest of light-sensitive spots enabling the evasion of a predator for instance, which went on to have another small mutation, and another, and another, and another, for a million times or more, before it resembled anything close to a basic functioning eye. They didn't suddenly appear, fully developed and functioning, out of nowhere.The author also fails to discuss the impact of humans on the current state of evolution. If there were to be a mutation like he seems to want - for two-headed humans, for instance - don't you think that the world's best doctors would be all over the ""patient"" before they'd reached their first birthday? Such anomalies would be operated away before you could even discuss what was happening. In the natural kingdom humans are routinely artificially mutating animals and plants for our own ""benefits"", while we're destroying natural habitats at such a rate we're killing the creature who live there. How are we to know how the dodo may have evolved, or how pandas or tigers may evolve, when we're doing our level best to manually make them extinct as quickly as we possibly can? There is no such thing as ""natural selection"" any more because humans seem intent on removing everything ""natural"" from this world.I gave this book a score of 1, partly because there isn't a 0 score, but also it has been beneficial to me in one way. It's spurred me on to start reading some proper scientific books again. May I suggest any other readers who think this is a wonderful book start hunting out some Matt Ridley, Simon Singh, Richard Dawkins, Richard Fortey or David Attenborough for a start. These will provide you with much more interesting material, that will be a much better use of time spent, and which will be much more enjoyable to discuss with that ""smart friend ... while enjoying a tasty beverage"" as the author suggested.Scott Adams. Stick to drawing cartoons."
In God’s Debris, Dilbert creator Scott Adams tries his hand at philosophy and lets the reader know right from the introduction what to expect. Adams makes no pretense of this being a great work of literature and admits that the story is little more than a framing narrative for the ideas that he wants to discuss. Although his introduction may seem defensive, as if to pre-empt criticism or make excuses, knowing what to expect with this book was far preferable than the disappointment I felt with The Final Summit.As someone who agrees with most of what was said, this book, which reflects a pandeistic outlook on the nature of God and the universe, had a “preaching to the choir” vibe and I had few issues with anything in the first three quarters. One early part that stood out, however, was the claim that “religious people are happier, they live longer, have fewer accidents, and stay out of trouble compared to nonreligious people”. I wondered if this was backed by an actual study or statistics, or just something that Adams made up because it seemed true and fit his argument. Also, is “religious” intended to mean people who follow organized religions, or does it include people who would consider themselves spiritual, without necessarily following a particular faith (like a deist)? It may seem like a petty complaint, but it sticks out as an unclear passage with a questionable conclusion in a discussion that is otherwise easy to understand and makes an effort to “prove” its conjectures.I also disagreed with the way in which he presented the advice “be yourself” as a dichotomy: “If it means to do what you think you ought to do, then you’re doing that already. If it means to act like you’re exempt from society’s influence, then that’s the worst advice in the world”. First of all, just because one might believe they are exempt from society’s influence does not mean that they “would probably stop bathing and wearing clothes”. Being exempt from society’s influence could just mean approaching its norms critically (rather than always doing the opposite of everything it says). Furthermore, I have always took “be yourself” to mean that one should reflect on their desires and actions and make certain that they are doing it because it makes them happy, not someone else. This does not affect the point he makes in this chapter, but it does highlight how certain ideas are glossed over. Furthermore, framing concepts as dichotomies to advance a point is a recurring problem in this work.The above, however, is also an excellent example of what is great about this book: it gets your mind going and it has plenty of material to discuss. I did find, however, that it began to weaken near the end. For example, he writes off evil as “any action that might damage people”, but does not seem to realize that any action might damage people. Philosophers have devoted their entire canon to disproving the existence of evil; it might be argued, for example, that we cannot judge whether an action is good or evil because we can never experience every consequence of every consequence ad infinitum of our actions. For a book that defines God as probability (and debris), wouldn’t it have made more sense to suggest that evil is “any action whose results have a high probability of damaging people”, and then maybe throw in a discussion about the perpetrator’s intentions? And what if it damages some people, but helps many more? Or the same amount? Or damages many people emotionally, but saves half a dozen lives? In any case, for a book like this to say what it does and then reaffirm the “good vs. evil” dichotomy without much critical thought was disappointing.I also thought his analysis of “worshiping” God by obeying the laws of probability and increasing your chances of living was poorly fleshed out. Even setting aside the fact that his examples are overly simplistic and that the slippery slope of such philosophy might be spending all your time calculating how to best increase your chances of living, it is problematic. For example, because car accidents are more frequent than accidents that happen to people when they are walking, one should never drive anywhere if their primary objective is to increase their chances of living, even if that made their life incredibly inconvenient or unhappy. If that is too extreme, then who determines what the appropriate level of “increasing your chances of living” is?On the whole, however, God’s Debris keeps itself together enough to make for a worthwhile read. This book is probably not going to change anyone’s life, as there is just too much to absorb and much of it is not developed enough to be easily retained, but I do not feel that that was Adams’ intention in writing this. After all, there can only be one “Avatar” at a time, so the idea is not to live your life like the old man. Instead, I feel that this is a book full of ideas that one can use as a jumping off point to start a conversation, or maybe just get their mind going and thinking in a new way. Overall, this is not only a quick read (at 132 pages), but can also be acquired for free from the publisher as a PDF. Thus there is no reason I can think of not to read it; maybe it is not everyone’s “thing”, but I believe that, if one takes their time and reads it slowly, with an open mind, then almost anyone can find at least something in this book to make it worth reading.
What do You think about God's Debris : A Thought Experiment (2004)?
Thought-provoking, but not consistently well thought out. For example, it starts with the assumption that if God existed he would commit suicide (hence the Big Bang, and the book's title), self-destruction being the only goal challenging enough to hold the interest of an omnipotent being -- as if the desire to take on difficult challenges were somehow the inevitable result of high intelligence, rather than a contingent fact about one particular species psychology. Adams tries to take an unorthodox look at God, but he falls into the same old trap of assuming that God would of course be capable of experiencing boredom, the desire to be loved, and so on (though I suppose a being who just happens to have hominid psychology without having evolved is no less ludicrous than one who just happens to be super-intelligent).The book explores a variety of topics, from probability to pop psychology, with varying degrees of insight, but generally Adams' questions are more interesting and useful than his answers.
—Wm Jas Tychonievich
My notes and quotes:“There is more information in one thimble of reality than can be understood by a galaxy of human brains. It is beyond the human brain to understand the world and its environment, so the brain compensates by creating simplified illusions that act as a replacement for understanding. When the illusions work well and the human who subscribes to the illusion survives, those illusions are passed to new generations.-“The human brain is a delusion generator. The delusions are fueled
—Ryan
Tiene cosas interesantes y que me gustaron y otras que no tanto, por ejemplo cuando se cuestiona nuestra creencia en la ciencia y en la voluntad propia; estoy de acuerdo en la idea de que el ser humano se cree el centro de todo solo por el hecho de que no comprende y tambien que muchas veces nuestra mente busca explicaciones que no son reales o verdaderas pero que para nosotras lo son porque en realidad no podemos distinguir muchas cosas dado que no las entendemos, no me gusta la probabilidad y leyendo el libro creo que por fin entiendo por que jajaja, tampoco me gustó lo de los escombros de dios y el polvo, eso si no lo crei más allá de que crea en dios o no pero bueno a pesar de eso creo que entretiene y que a pesar de todo te da en que pensar y te mueve las creencias que creo era lo que buscaba el autor.
—Alejandra C
