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Science as Attire — LessWrong

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The preview for the X-Men movie has a voice-over saying: “In every human being . . . there is the genetic code . . . for mutation.” Apparently you can acquire all sorts of neat abilities by mutation. The mutant Storm, for example, has the ability to throw lightning bolts. I beg you, dear reader, to consider the biological machinery necessary to generate electricity; the biological adaptations necessary to avoid being harmed by electricity; and the cognitive circuitry required for finely tuned control of lightning bolts. If we actually observed any organism acquiring these abilities in one generation, as the result of mutation, it would outright falsify the neo-Darwinian model of natural selection. It would be worse than finding rabbit fossils in the pre-Cambrian. If evolutionary theory could actually stretch to cover Storm, it would be able to explain anything, and we all know what that would imply. The X-Men comics use terms like “evolution,” “mutation,” and “genetic code,” purely to

x Science as Attire — LessWrong Mysterious Answers Signaling Literary Genre Practice & Philosophy of Science Tribalism Frontpage 195 Science as Attire by Eliezer Yudkowsky 23rd Aug 2007 2 min read 88 195 The preview for the X-Men movie has a voice-over saying: “In every human being . . . there is the genetic code . . . for mutation.” Apparently you can acquire all sorts of neat abilities by mutation. The mutant Storm, for example, has the ability to throw lightning bolts. I beg you, dear reader, to consider the biological machinery necessary to generate electricity; the biological adaptations

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