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Tim Tyler
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 Posted: Mon Jul 07, 2008 5:50 am Post subject: Evolution sees! |
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A recent essay:
http://alife.co.uk/essays/evolution_sees/
This essay deals with the supposed blindness of evolution.
To quote from its ending:
``Evolution is not blind. Brains and sexual selection
introduced intelligence into the selection process.
Engineering introduced intelligence into the process
responsible for the production of variation.
Evolution was blind in the beginning. Back then, the
metaphor of a blind idiot god would have been an
appropriate one. However, as with the development of
animals, it has it has gradually acquired the power of sight.
With the origin of brains, evolution turned into a kind of
cyclops god with partial vision. Now, with the origin of
engineers, evolution can now see even more clearly.
To think of the process of evolution as a blind
process is an impoverished view, which represents a
fundamental misconception of its character.
Human beings are largely the product of choices by
intelligent agents, capable of predicting the
consquences of their actions, and are not - in any
reasonable sense - the product of "blind" selective
forces.''
--
__________
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John Edser
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| Posted: Tue Jul 08, 2008 5:51 am Post subject: Re: Evolution sees! |
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Tim Tyler <seemysig@googlemail.com> wrote:-
[quote]To think of the process of evolution as a blind
process is an impoverished view, which represents a
fundamental misconception of its character.
[/quote]
JE:-
I think that evolution does evolve (it has to in order to remain a self
consistent bona fide theory of science). The question is, can nature
evolve a unit of selection which can remain exempt from Darwinian
natural selection? The answer is that the only empirical way for
Darwinian evolution to be halted within a natural population is to
maintain as equal for as long as possible the Total Darwinian Fitness
(TDF) of each Darwinian selectee (each fertile form). TDF represents a
single and therefore entirely falsifiable fitness maximand per selectee
per population, allowing just the random process of genetic drift
(sampling error) and mutation to provide a random break up of the
integrity of the genome over the time TDF remains equal. IOW no
population can avoid the Darwinian non random process of natural
selection. No matter how intelligent any system evolves to become,
artificial selection cannot win over natural selection. Indeed, it can
be argued that it requires a measure of intelligence just to be able to
understand this entirely natural limit which nature imposes on us.
[quote]Human beings are largely the product of choices by
intelligent agents, capable of predicting the
consquences of their actions, and are not - in any
reasonable sense - the product of "blind" selective
forces.''
[/quote]
JE:-
We are and remain 100% naturally selected. No matter how sophisticated
we may become only arrogance and not intelligence can allow us to think
that somehow, our increased intelligence and the products and services
it produces remains outside of natural selection. What evolution sees is
that it cannot see a thing...
Regards,
John Edser
Independent Researcher
edser@ozemail.com.au |
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Entertained by my own EIM
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| Posted: Tue Jul 08, 2008 5:52 am Post subject: Re: Evolution sees! |
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"Tim Tyler" <seemysig@googlemail.com> wrote in message
news:g4sare$1fhq$1@darwin.ediacara.org...
[quote]A recent essay:
http://alife.co.uk/essays/evolution_sees/
This essay deals with the supposed blindness of evolution.
To quote from its ending:
``Evolution is not blind. Brains and sexual selection
introduced intelligence into the selection process.
Engineering introduced intelligence into the process
responsible for the production of variation.
Evolution was blind in the beginning. Back then, the
metaphor of a blind idiot god would have been an
appropriate one. However, as with the development of
animals, it has it has gradually acquired the power of sight.
With the origin of brains, evolution turned into a kind of
cyclops god with partial vision. Now, with the origin of
engineers, evolution can now see even more clearly.
To think of the process of evolution as a blind
process is an impoverished view, which represents a
fundamental misconception of its character.
Human beings are largely the product of choices by
intelligent agents, capable of predicting the
consquences of their actions, and are not - in any
reasonable sense - the product of "blind" selective
forces.''
[/quote]
One of my main "EPT points" - perhaps both the 'mainest' and the
inevitatably meanest - is, that:
Evolution is, at least as far as it has produced us humans, still largely
(almost completely) blind. |
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