Re: Does Evolution still Occur?
- From: "Craig Franck" <craig.franck@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Wed, 24 Aug 2005 00:33:03 GMT
"MagentaStudios" wrote
> So I ask the question again- does evolution, especially human
> evolution, still occur?
>
> Or perhaps does it still occur but in a radically different and less
> natural form?
The basic principles of evolution always hold, it just occurs in a
radically different kind of environment.
Here's a post from sci.physics you might find interesting:
"Sbharris[atsign]ix.netcom.com" wrote
> T Wake wrote:
> > <donstockbauer@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote
> > > Then try to explain the emergence of thoughts from a substrate of 100
> > > billion neurons by statistical mechanics alone. Good luck.
> > >
> >
> > Easy enough really.
> >
> > Is the probability non-zero? If so, then given a large enough sample
> > (infinite universe) and long enough it will happen.
>
> COMMENT:
>
> The only problem is there's no reason to think the universe is
> infinite. And whether it is or not, there's certainly not enough time
> since the big bang to be "long enough" for most interesting things to
> happen by chance alone.
>
> It turns out that the universe has to be quite finally tuned to get
> even long-lived stars and thus a stable source of low-entropy energy.
> And you probably need a stable source of low-energy entropy to get life
> (self-reproducing molecular machines) out of ordinary matter. The whole
> thing is an amazing series of rim-shots to get stars, then life, then
> life with brains complicated enough to make culture, then a secondary
> process of evolution of cultural ideas themselves on THAT substrate
> (ie, you do it all over again in software instead of hardware, too
> boostrap yourself to higher effective intelligence). That is us.
>
> Our star is a third the age of the universe, and brains big enough to
> hold spoken culture are maybe 1/100,000th the age of our star. Writen
> culture (with attendent increase in pace of cultural evolution) is a
> tenth of THAT time. Going from horse and buggy to moon rockets in less
> than a century is merely the external mechanical menifestation of
> cultural evolution, which proceeds at Moore's law speed once culture is
> connected and transmitted at the speed of light.
>
> Computers and digitization of culture is a tenth of written-culture
> time. Computer power itself has been doubling every few years since
> computers were invented-- a direct consequence of the fact that
> computer power proceeds at nearly the pace of cultural evolution (human
> software evolution). In a comparable amount of time since invention of
> the digital computer, we expect to see digital processing power
> increase to the same power as that of our natural brains, making
> computers potentially capable of (for the first time) participating
> fully in the processing of "human" culture. At some point not too long
> after THAT, we reach a cusp at which processing platforms (either
> organic or non-organic, or a gemish of both) become completely
> designable and constructable by software running on the same
> substrates.
>
> You see what happens then-- no more bottleneck. Presently,
> computer-hardware evolution has been locked to human cultural
> evolution, which in turn has been locked to the maximal pace at which
> organic brains can process information, with writen and primitive
> digital computational assistance, and speed of light knowledge
> transfer. But at the point that computer hardware becomes capable of
> FULLY processing cultural software, including the full design of better
> computers, both cultural/technical and computer improvement processes
> now take off at a rate which is the square of the old one, because now
> each process (computer evolution, cultural evolution) is now (for the
> first time) capable of fully driving the other.
>
> Presently, computer design improvements procede with a rate-limiting
> step connected with thinking on present human brains. When this is
> removed, something transformative occurs. We've been headed in this
> direction now for billions of years, but each step is so much faster
> than the last. Very soon, within 50 or at most 100 years, comes
> something like a chain reaction; an explosian.
>
> Stay tuned. Each few years of this will bring a sea change. Can you
> feel it? Cell phones, the internet, google, i-PODs. Every few years,
> look to some large chunk of human cultural information reduced to
> something digital you can hold in your hand and take with you. Until
> all of it is, so that all of human knowledge and much of human culture
> sits in your "i-POD-like" thingamajig, linked to others, and possibly
> increasing directly to your brain. Then look to transformative changes
> in access to this, and processing of chunks of this, again every few
> years. Until the system doesn't need human brains anymore to continue
> to evolve. So you hope that at least some brains are tuned into or
> connected to it in some fashion, in order to go along with the ride.
>
> Shortly after that, we get destruction or else something close to
> god-hood. Something unimaginable. The old organic-only style brains are
> due to go the way of vinyl records, eventually. We'll keep the meat for
> awhile-- we always do keep the old stuff around. But the real action
> will be increasingly elsewhere.
>
> SBH
--
Craig Franck
craig.franck@xxxxxxxxxxx
Cortland, NY
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