Well, this is an excellent book with an interesting ending. A lot of the science has been out there for a long time — Heinlein and Asimov were both pretty prescient on the subject of AI and computer self-perpetuating intelligence. But I warn you — don’t read this diary if you haven’t read the book and don’t want some part of it spoiled for you.
Robert Langdon gets called in when one of his former students — a brilliant computer engineer and misanthrope and atheist who is pretty obviously modeled on Elon Musk (apparently I’m not the only one to think so — a Guardian article that I read when doing research for this diary referred to him as exactly that) — Edmond Kirsch — claims to have made a YUGE scientific discovery that totally disproves the existence of God. Naturally the Catholic Church and all other major religious leaders are gunning for this guy, to prevent him from releasing his discovery to the world.
Typical Dan Brown mayhem follows.
Welp. ahem. His so-called big discovery is that the universe is tilted toward major entropy, and life came to be because life causes entropy. That is, life, which seems to be more orderly, contributes more to disorder.
Now I can think of a lot of things wrong with that premise — for instance, if the whole universe is geared toward increasing entropy, and uses life to do it — then there should be life EVERYWHERE — on all planets — there should be noticeable life on the Moon, on Mars, on Jupiter — maybe there is, but if so, it’s not out there contributing in any noticeable way to entropy.
But that’s not my major nitpick. It is that Edmond Kirsch’s discovery in no way disproved the existence of a Creator. Now I’m as much of an atheist/agnostic/non-God-botherer/non Bible thumper as anybody. I don’t think it’s possible to prove or disprove the existence of a Creator of the Universe, and this book certainly did not do it.
The whole point was that life could arise out of the primordial soup with no Creator taking a hand. Edmond Kirsch tried to prove this, by appropriating the original test tube experiments in that regard. Then he computer modeled the whole. The computer models failed, UNTIL he, the programmer, introduces this algorithm that says you must go for maximum entropy. Well. Right there he’s destroyed his own argument. He, as the programmer, the Creator, if you will, had to introduce this factor for any of it to work. Mere randomness didn’t work.
Now I do think that mere randomness would work, but I just don’t know. It certainly wasn’t proved in this book.
I look forward to flame wars picking apart my scientific understanding from people a lot smarter than me here. Dan Brown I know is kinda cheesy, but there’s a lot of food for thought in his books.