Re: The uncertainty of evolution

From: Michael Ragland (ragland37_at_webtv.net)
Date: 10/04/04 

Date: Mon, 4 Oct 2004 16:34:47 +0000 (UTC)

From: ragland37@webtv.net (Michael Ragland)
HN: The whole Universe evolves, so does life on Earth, and so does human
society.

RM:
No, that sentence is a lie. The Universe as a whole evolves in one sense
of the word, and life on Earth doesn't do the same thing at all but it
evolves in a completely different sense of the word, and human society
doesn't do the same thing either but it evolves in yet a third
definition of the word slightly related to life evolution. By pretending
like the three different meanings of the same word are the same, you are
playing a stupid children's game of punning and actually believing the
pun represents reality.

MR:
Why is it a lie? Hanna Newcombe stated "the whole universe evolves, so
does life on earth, and so does human society. In reading the sentence I
didn't infer she was implying evolution is the same for the universe,
for life on earth and for human society. She may have been invoking a
universality to "evolution" but I don't see differences in different
types of evolution as necessarily opposing such universality. One
definition of universality is (a) of or pertaining to the universe,
cosmos; cosmic. We are a part of the universe even if the evolution on
earth is different from the evolution of human societies or evolution of
the universe.

RM:
The most fundamental property of living matter is chemical fecundity.
The chemicals in living matter take in chemicals unlike themselves and
convert those chemicals into more of the living matter's own kind of
chemicals. For example, plants take in CO2, H2O, and various inorganic
minerals dissolved in the H2O, and convert them into cellulose and DNA
etc. Different kinds of plants compete with each other for these
inorganic resources, and for sunlight to energize the work of all this
conversion. Some plants do better than others in certain environments.
But mutations change plants in random ways, causing some to occasionally
do better than their ancestors did, causing them to multiply in quantity
at the expense of other kinds of plants that formerly were doing better.
These mutations, and the subsequent increase in numbers of plants with
those very rare good mutations, is what we call "evolution" of livings.
But the word as applied to the Universe as a whole has a totally
different meaning, merely random change, without any fecundity of any
kind, some things last longer than others before they decay, but matter
that performs chemical fecundity, what we would call "living", seems to
be rather rare in the Universe.

MR:
I don't know. The "Big Bang" theory is most widely accepted but it can
be proved and when it comes to the origins of the universe we will
probably never be able to prove it. I think it is way too premature to
state "but matter that performs chemical fecundity, what we would call
"living", seems to be rather rare. When the Hubble telescope can make
out what it thinks are stars in galaxies whose light took 13 billion
light years to reach us I think it would be foolish to think there
aren't other chemical life forms and other types of life forms in the
universe. As a species we haven't even managed prolonged space flight.
And it may be a long time before we encountered any alien life form but
the universe is immense. It's so immense I think that is why we haven't
come into contact with alien life forms. In addition, there is the
factor to consider that apparently nothing can travel faster than the
speed of light and "warp" travel seems that of science fiction.

RM:
"Oranges have navels. So do human beings." No, oranges have embryonic
growths which we **call** navels because they resemble human navels in a
superficial way and we needed a name for them, but oranges and humans
don't have the same thing when we're speaking of navels, they have
totally different things that happen to have the same name.
Do you begin to see how stupid your opening sentence really is when you
consider the true meanings of the word rather than being blinded by the
pun?

MR:
I don't know where the statement, "Oranges have navels. So do human
beings". You wrote that. It's not my opening sentence, it is Hanna
Newcombe's. I think your needlessly nitpicking.

HN:
What is the aim of evolution, if there is one?

RM:
There isn't one. Evolution is just the name we used to refer to change
in allele frequencies over time, which we understand are caused mostly
by mutation and natural selection in the situation of fecundity greater
than one except for competition. Evolution isn't a purposeful being.
(Neither is the inappropriately-named "Mother Nature".)

HN: It could be only aimless change, chance fluc-tuations like Brownian
motion, but it does not seem to be.

RM: To make that stupid statement, you must be considering only
mutation, not natural selection. Natural selection is most definitely
not random! That which works to enhance survival wins out over that
which doesn't. If you think that's random, think again.

MR:
So Darwinian evolution does have partially an aim. To enhance survival
over that which doesn't. Natural selection acts on mutations e.g.
peppered moth. Hanna Newcombe was addressing whether evolution had an
aim so she mentioned aimless change, chance fluctuations like Brownian
motion but she did neglect natural selection. You mentioned it and
vindicated her statement evolution doesn't seem to be aimless in the
sense of enhancing survival over that which doesn't.

HN:
It has been evolution toward complexity.

RM:
Nope, not at all in any uniform sense. It has been evolution to survive,
to solve whatever the most life-threatening problems in any given niche.
By chance some critters solve those problems and have many descendents
while the rest don't solve the problems and go extinct during the same
time period. Sometimes (much of the time), in fact increased complexity
was what happened to solve the problem, but the rest of the time
improved efficiency via decreased complexity has solved the problem. At
the very beginning of life, life was very simple, perhaps just a single
catalytic cycle, and just about anything else that can survive would be
more complicated, so of course for a while there was a trend toward
increased complexity, and all the super-simple lifeforms died out in
favor of the more complex lifeforms that are more able to survive. Also
perhaps the very most complex keeps stretching toward more complexity
just by random drift. (If you have a box that is closed at the left end,
closed along far and near sides, open at right end, and has a numeric
scale that runs from zero at the closed end, and you drop a bunch of
ants right at the closed end, they'll diffuse randomly as they explore
the box, and the rightmost one at any time will tend to be further to
the right as time goes on. This isn't because the ants are biased toward
the right, merely because they started out in a non-uniform situation
all at the left end and are merely diffusing to more uniformly fill the
available space, and their standard deviation increases with time, but
they are constrained to have left-most position fixed, so the mean and
the right-extreme both drift toward the right.)

MR:
I agree her statement there has been an evolution towards complexity is
wrong. There are bacteria which are simple and haven't changed in
millions of years or longer. You write, "It has been evolution to
survive, to solve whatever the most life-threatening problems in any
given niche. By chance some critters solve those problems and have many
descendents while the rest don't solve the problems and go extinct
during the same time period. Sometimes (much of the time), in fact
increased complexity was what happened to solve the problem, but the
rest of the time improved efficiency via decreased complexity has solved
the problem." I agree according to Darwinian evolution. However, at this
juncture in our evolution I think Homo Sapiens are an exceptional
organism which has the potential to evolve towards greater complexity.
In other words not continuing to be constrained by Darwinian evolution.
In terms of scientific, medical and technological advances and
developments no other organism other than Homo Sapiens on earth have
achieved this cultural evolution of complexity. What is correspondingly
lacking is biological evolutionary complexity. Given the problems our
species faces I don't think improved efficiency via decreased complexity
is a viable option.

HN:
Only a narrow sphe-rical shell around the centre of our Galaxy (and
probably other galaxies as well) can sustain life.

RM:
I disagree. Once life has evolved to be technological, and has in fact
developed technology to travel between the stars and build habitats out
of materials they find along the way, that technological life can build
shelters to survive near the center of our Galaxy, and can build
efficient mapping tools and material&energy collectors to travel far
from the galaxy, even to other galaxies, and survive alive all the way
from here to there. It's only *without* such technology that primitive
life can't form and live naturally too close to the galactic center or
too far away.

MR:
Well Hanna Newcombe stated, "Too close to the centre there is too much
radiation from the massive black hole and too many collisions of
particles, asteroids and comets. Too far from the centre there are not
enough ele-ments beyond hydrogen and helium, such heavier elements being
necessary for life." I don't know if all this is true but I doubt it but
I'm open to the idea that even alien life forms may have problems
(assuming they are physical matter) with getting too close to blackholes
and navigating through a wide belt of comets and asteroids. And she did
state, "We occupy prime real estate, rare in the Universe. Is it
Providence or the anthropic principle? If we tried to be anywhere else,
we could not succeed, and could not there-fore think about it." I think
she is indeed using the anthropic principle and she makes that pretty
clear.

HN:
Similarly, there is only a narrow shell around the Sun in our solar
system that can keep water in the liquid state, and thus support life.
Too close to the Sun a planet is too hot, like Mercury and Venus. Too
far away from the Sun, a planet is too cold, like the outer gaseous
planets; Mars may be in an ambiguous position.
RM:
This statement is even more obviously false. With appropriate technology
to supply energy far from the Sun or to shield from too much radiation
cose to the Sun, it'll be standard in a few centuries for people and
their accompanying pets and pests to reside and survive and thrive in
all such places. And as for natural life without technology: Europa
might very well have life already, in that salty ocean with lots of
geothermal energy under that thin ice shell.

MR:
I think Hanna is referring to the origin and current status of human
evolution. I don't think she is looking into the future when science and
technology may make it possible for human beings to live on Mars. And
you're right there may be other life forms in our solar system besides
us.

HN:
In the future, when we may be "dumbed down" enough to have lost the
original skills, it could be much worse. We should always keep up those
skills as a fall-back position.

RM:
In the book/movie "Fahrenheit 451", there was an "underground" culture
where people preserved their favorite books by memorizing them. With the
aid of computer-assisted-instruction, we could do even better,
deliberately maintaining *all* the "how to do it" knowledge, trained
into randomly selected individuals, with lots of redundancy (maybe 10%
of the population i.e. about a billion people would know each branch of
mathematics and science and any other essential craft, allowing such
skills to survive even a disaster that killed 99.99% of the population,
and 1% would know how to build other important but less essential
technologies, and a few hundred would be trained to know each little
tidbit of obscure but possibly useful or worth-keeping knowledge or
culture, allowing each tidbit to survive a loss of 99% of the population
and allowing a good fraction of them to survive a loss of 99.9% of the
population.
When the Great Library of Alexandria was destroyed, many of the
important manuscripts there had no copies anywhere else, and were
permanently lost. With proper planning as I outlined above, we might
never have to suffer a similar fate again.

MR:
It's an ideal plan (although I wouldn't randomnly select individuals)
but it assumes the possibility of a worldwide catastrophe and
politicians would laugh if off as absurd especially in light of their
strained budgets and immediate concerns not to mention the fear in the
public it would create. Hopefully if there is such a disaster there will
be enough people with various kinds of knowledge to see the way through.

HN:
We need to pay attention to both local and global levels of
organi-zation and problem-solving, and several levels in between.
RM:
I agree, but:
The optimum number of levels from person to planet would be about 8:
I disagree. The military has a rule of thumb that the chain of command
must have at each level at least three subordinates and at most appx. 9
(I forget the exact number) to avoid wasteful command and to avoid loss
of command due to overloading the superior officer. A similar rule of
thumb may apply to political organization. If so, what we optimize is
the number of sub-units under any next-larger unit, and whatever the
number of levels is depends on the total population at a given time.

MR:
Hanna stated, "The optimum number of levels from person to planet would
be about 8: individual, neighbourhood, town, local region, pro-vince,
nation, continent, world. Problems should be solved at the lowest level
possible. I think as a "general rule" this is acceptable. You mention
military and political organizations and certainly they have their own
formulas from number of levels from person to planet. Considering the
state of the world, however, it is clear "we are not" paying enough
attention to both local and global levels of organi-zation and
problem-solving, and several levels in between. Part of the problem, at
least in the U.S., is the ignorance of many Americans about the rest of
the world. Many people today are alienated from themselves and others.
They are not politically active. Why should they be when their
"representatives" mainly represent developers and big business which
leads to overcrowding, traffic jams, higher taxes, more crime.
 

"It's uncertain whether intelligence has any long term survival value.
Bacteria do quite well without it."
 Stephen Hawking

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