73 thoughts on “A short Twi**er exchange on evolution”

  4. I understand the first part, but what does “natural selection a process in consciousness” even mean?

    2. Because giraffes know THE SECRET!
      They just sway back and forth and chant ‘I want a longer neck! I WANT a longer neck’

      2. streeeettttccchhhhh….Maybe Deepfried Okra thinks that all those extra brain cells in the long neck help the giraffe achieve its goal??

          1. I sadly can’t take credit for the Deepfried Okra. It was either someone here, or maybe Brian Cox?? I hope this nickname will not ruin my taste for the delicious food of the same name.

    3. I assume it means something like “mind causes the change” or rather “mind changing is the evolutionary change”. The usual idealist blather.

    4. I assume he’s wondering whether humans, or another form of intelligent life, is a predestined part of evolution that it naturally works towards. Seems odd to think so, as if you visited earth ten million years ago or so, you probably wouldn’t think that consciousness had evolved. It also makes 99.9% of life absolutely pointless, and their purpose is apparently to be eaten by us or to be found pretty by us. It’s awfully inefficient. You might as well ask whether planetary formation is a process in creating oceans. It might happen, but it’s not a goal.

  11. Okay, the first part is dumb but could make for some decent sci-fi story. But second part is even below a toddler level speculation on “how things are”.

    I mean, what is it supposed to be like an impala herd scrambling away from a leopard and the last guy realizes he is the slowest and says “Damn! Slowest again. Time to take one for the team.”?

    1. If you can run down David Gerrold’s story “Love Story in Three Acts” I think you’ll find it à propos.

  14. Seriously. It’s like those old Mad Libs games.

    Deepak Algo:

    1) randomly select a field in science
    2) randomly select 5 big words particular to the selected field
    3) arrange in a grammatically correct sentence
    4) post to Twi**er

    1. He probably uses alphabetical fridge magnets.

      I had an S once. It got me nowhere.

  15. Deepak always asserts “truths” like this, while skipping the middle step in which you actually experiment and collect evidence for your claims.

    I wish more of the newspapers and magazines who take this guy seriously, and help line his pockets, would realize that.

    1. Thx! The next step is to see how many iterations are required to randomly generate an actual Deepak tw**t.

      I’d guess not many. Then we could test the hypothesis that Deepak’s quantum consciousness is really a random bit sequence generator and tie everything back to random mutation…

      I think I’ll get to work on it…

    2. Thanks for the link. I availed myself of the wisdom of Chopra and and learned that:

      “Rats are insects” !!!

      He is clearly not a biologist…

    1. Yes, but only when they are co-incident with the collapse of the waveform of a Riemann multi-dimensional ellipsoidal quantum hypertangent.

  21. Chopra likes asking questions, he doesn’t have any interest in the actual answers, and that’s what makes him a crank.

    1. He probably fancies himself some kind of Socratic sage.

      Asking questions is great. But only when coupled with a sincere effort to discover the real answers. People of Derpak’s ilk like to think that posing deep-sounding questions is work enough and adequately demonstrates one’s sophistication.

    3. Ah, but he does know the answer. He wants you (my little grasshopper) to work it out for yourself. Only then can you know true wisdom and set up your own $franchise.

  22. If something is consciously selecting which individuals with which traits are going to be reproductively successful, how is that “natural” and not artificial selection? I’d say the second half of Derpak’s question is a classic deepity. Yes, there are conscious agents that effect selection – it’s called artificial selection. True but trivial.

    The whole point of the term “natural selection” is to contrast with “artificial selection”; to describe an intent-free, agent-free, consciousness-free process. “Deep” but false.

    And I’m not positive, based on other things he’s said about how your mind can help you “evolve”, that he understands evolution requires generations. An individual does not evolve, in the biological sense.

  23. I recently listened to Julia Sweeney reading her book, Saying Goodbye to God, on a YouTube video and the funniest parts are about Deepakity. After she left the catholic church she was struggling to find some other type pf spirituality to latch onto. She said she knew a little science, but not a lot which made her the perfect candidate for, there is a long pause to build tension, “DEEPAK CHOPRA!” She briefly explains his woo and then punctuates the passage by loudly exclaiming “Deepak Chopra is full of shit.” It almost made me fall off the couch laughing.

  25. Isn’t that the old ‘Lamarcian’ idea that was so thoroughly discredited even before Darwin proposed natural selection?

    1. Yeah, but there’s always been a neverending line of fools trying to ressurect that smelly rotting carcass.

    2. Actually, Lamarkism was considered by Darwin as one possible mechanism.

      But never “mind first” stuff. It isn’t one’s brain (or worse, immaterial mind) that would create germ line changes according to Lamarck, it was the changed properties themselves, as far as I can tell. This might make (historical) sense if one recalls the idea that each body system was once held to influence the formation of sperm, etc.

  27. I wish the millions Chopra embezzles from his followers was being invested in real academic research. I would like to see him investigated for fraud.

  28. If mutations were guided by some teleological force, what would that force even need natural selection for? We should see only advantageous mutations, and we should see traits requiring many simultaneous advantageous mutations arising all the time.

    Unless, of course, Deepak’s teleological force works in mysterious ways. It’s funny how deities and vague teleological forces always seem to intervene in such a way that is indistinguishable from if they didn’t exist.

    1. If you are one of the morons who keeps saying that “unguided evolution” is a random process, then you think teleological forces are necessary. If you aren’t one of those morons, you ask questions like “If mutations were guided by some teleological force, what would that force even need natural selection for?”

  29. Wow, Deepak hasn’t learned that Lamarkianism* has been debunked for some time now.

    *I realize some biologists like to call a lot of things Lamarkianism, which either represent minor quibbles, or restate facts in such a way that they distort or seem to contradict Darwinism, when they don’t.

  30. “If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?”

    Yep. Next question.

    “If Deepak posts on Twi**er and someone is around to read it, does it make sense?”

    Nope. Next question.

    1. “If Deepak posts on Twi**er and someone is around to read it, does it make sense?”

      You don’t need the middle part.

      “If Deepak posts on Twi**er, does it make sense?”

      Nope.

  32. I think this also shows how scientifically illiterate a large segment of the public is. Not just creationists. I presume creationists wouldn’t read Deepak Chopra. But his readers must on some level think what he is saying is valid since he coats it all with an air of science-y jargon. For the life of me I still don’t understand why Mlodinow would lend a whiff of respectability to Chopra by agreeing to write a joint book together. It was a bad move, similar to Bill Nye’s debate with Ken Ham.

  33. Deepocket Cobra once again spits his venom at any casual Darwinian passerby. Good thing we’ve all received the antivenin. Richard must feel like a herpetologist with all the unrelenting snakebites directed his way each day.

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