Dawkins and his competition with God

"All models are wrong, but some models are useful" is the motto of many biostatistical groups.

It's actually not necessary for a model to be correct to give us insight by even thinking about applying it to a situation.  Sometimes it's useful to successively apply a whole checklist of models or frameworks to compare what each of them suggests.

The battle over unvarnished Darwinism as espoused by Richard Dawkins that wrote on a few days ago continues to reverberate in my mind.

I think that one useful model to view this with, not necessarily right but definitely useful, is the pure marketing and "competitive product" view.

In that model, humans have a need or a "niche" that they spend resources on, in our case under consideration that would be "Religion" and what Dawkins calls "God."     He, and of course Oxford University, and most of the rest of the product vendor called "Science" (in this model), have an alternative product that would either fill that same niche, or is blocked from being purchased by what is currently in that niche (ie, religion.)

And, the Science (trademark ) brand notices it is recently losing market share to the Religion(tm) brand, and wonders why.

Dawkins, and others, viewed in this framework, are effectively asserting that "the customer is stupid" and "the customer is wrong" and their own product (Science (tm)) is obviously superior.

That type of response to loss of market share is pretty much what General Motors has been doing for the past 30 years, as Toyota and Honda persistently ate a larger share of  GM's lunch.  This year or next, but very soon, Toyota will pass GM - and as all American's have been repeated taught for some baffling reason,  if you can't be number one, you might as well commit suicide. Investors will bail out screaming.  Civilization as we know it will come to an end.

In GM's case, it would be good for their sales if they ever stopped wailing about how unfair life is, and got down to the business of business and looked at what the consumers were buying, and why, and adjusted their product line to that.

In the case of Science (tm),  the bundle of attributes they are selling doesn't seem to appeal to their potential customer base.

At least some energy should be put into an honest and frank exploration of what the needs are of humans on every scale,  and why the Science(tm) product line doesn't meet those needs, as judged by customer's feet.

Or, like GM, they will sink slowly but persistently into the "has been" category.  Science(tm) takes place in a social context - a fact of life that is as "inconvenient" to Scientists as Global Warming is to politicians.   Science(tm) rose to power and access to a good chunk of the national budget and respect on a set of promises and implicit or sometimes explicit promises of a "better life" for people, groups, companies, nations, and the planet.

Maybe, the customers are looking at the actual outcomes, not the Boardroom powerpoints, and, from their point of view,  the promised "better life" just doesn't seem to be there.

I can hear in my mind some Scientists replying "But, that's not our problem!"

Actually, it is.

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