I'm a Scientist, Isn't It?

Bad poetry is not just pseudo science, it's also a seduction. It gives people the idea that something as complicated as mollusk body plan or vertebrate body plan can arrive over night. And we have been seduced and misled by powerful bad poetry. The main example i use in the chapter on bad poetry is the idea of the cambrian explosion - when life suddenly sprung into existence 20 million years ago. That was probably pretty much the same as it is now with darwinian selection going on. I think your analogies with virtual reality are very instructive, actually. You give us an example of er, those sort of hollowed out faces that you might buy