Re: Evolution increases the computational ability of organisms.

On Sep 24, 11:18 am, Tim Tyler <seemy...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
John Harshman wrote:
Kent Paul Dolan wrote:
John Harshman <jharshman.diespam...@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
This idea goes back at least to Darwin, and I
think he realized that your ratchet requires that
whatever that "something" is, it's necessary that
it be useful in all environments.

Huh?

Why do you think that?

You eliminate too much context when you snip. We are talking about
adaptations that can be referred to as general improvements. While "all
environments" may be a stretch, any such improvement, to create a
ratchet, must at least be useful in any environment in which any future
descendant will find itself.

No way. All it has to do is stick around. To do that *some*
descendants have to have it - not /all/ future descendants.

Also, technology doesn't have to "not ever get lost" for
there to be overall technological progress.

Nobody rides penny farthings or boneshakers any more - that
doesn't mean that they weren't a step forwards at the time -
or that we haven't progressed since then.

IIRC when the Tasmanians migrated they lost (or forgot?) some
technologies. This is kinda like drift or a founder effect. This sort
of thing could be less possible to happen nowadays because humans are
so depply networked globally.

I think I have a read on your perspective. Its a sort of optimistic
and progressivist futurism. No problem with that, but I have issues
when you read it into your generalizaions about the way evolution
seems to operate. I won't even dwell on the universal genetic
algorithm bit.

But I could turn your apparent bent on its ear and give a harshly
pessimistic dystopian outlook on the way the future could turn out.
The second movie of "Planet of the Apes" is a start. After the nuclear
apocalypse those psychic people living underground were worshipping a
nuclear warhead. That's a bit farfetched but if all hell were to break
loose nuclear wise and/or biologically and there resulted a major
historic catastrophe that wiped out a majority of the human species
leaving a mere remnant and a good portion of our technologies were
wiped out and/or forgotten as these people eked out a very meager
existence, it would be similar to a bottleneck in a much reduced
population. This, I'm afraid would not be progress. Humans might
subsequentally progress from this point, but lets say all knowledge of
computer technology and other advanced technologies were lost? What
then? Someone might one day stumble upon a cobwebbed Dell PC tower in
a mountain of rubble that was one a buildng and think it a gift from
the gods and start worshipping it.


.

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