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Sociogenic Mitosis
A theory about why we fight, separate into groups and split into tribes. | |
Came up with the theory watching a sped up video of
cells
dividing. The chromosomes starts wiggling around,
almost
looking like they're wrestling, then they move to
opposite
sides of the cell and split into two cells where
before there was just one.
My theory is based on the idea that
1- Conflict is in our
nature and 2- Nature knows what it's doing. It got hit by
an
asteroid and just made some design adjustments and
threw
out a species that will eventually be able to handle
future
asteroid challenges.
So the question is why does nature want us to fight, to
separate into groups and instead of covering X area of
the
earth cover X times 2 area of Earth? My thought is that
this
fulfills the programming innate to all life forms: survive,
and expand. If we were all to sit around and be nice to
each other, you wouldn't have the following scenario
where one
tribe becomes two.
Alpha male A runs the tribe. He's
stronger, brings back more
food, gets the females. Ok, that's fine but that tribe is
going
to expand outwards at a rate limited to the food and
resources in that geographic area. Fine for that tribe,
not
great for the species. Enter soiogenic mitosis. Alpha male
leader of the tribe is challenged by another alpha male
wannabe. The loser of this contest may leave the tribe
and
take other members with him. Now you have two tribes,
the species has expanded and taken with it the inherent
drive to compete with any life form that gets in its way.
The life form has expanded.
To summarize, although nature sometimes imbues a life
form with traits that lead to its demise, the one proven
survival strategy is expanding its domain and this trait of
splitting accomplishes that.
Racist Darwin
http://www.gutenber...0/2300-h/2300-h.htm He no likey the Irish [4and20, Feb 21 2020]
Evolution and war
https://evolution-i...ter-group-violence/ [doctorremulac3, Feb 23 2020]
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I think you were looking at chromosomes rather than
mitochondria there, [doc]. |
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Regarding the theory, there's this bloke called Charles from
Shropshire who you might want to discuss it with. |
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LOL, shit, meant to say that. (really) Thanks Max. |
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Is this an old theory? Who's Charles from Shropshire? |
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I don't read, what did he say about it? |
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Charles from Shropshire later wrote a really racist book called "The Descent of Man" in which he argued that it's far preferable if people like the Irish die off quickly instead of mating. Of the many problems Charles and theories he sired share, it is the fact that he was on an island, reflecting on his time studying an even smaller island, and couldn't seem to imagine, as doc has, that the Irish might just pick up and move somewhere better. Also, there is an entire school of Russian thought which argued more compellingly that mutual cooperation is more the nature of evolution... |
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So Max, did he specifically address the bifurcation of groups
due to competition and its resultant expanding of the
species? |
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The evidence suggests that Darwin was not a racist, in the
context of his own times. He was an abolitionist, for
example. His work on evolution simply convinced him that
all
humans share a common ancestry. In "Descent", he
explicitly argued that all humans were of one species - an
idea which was quite radical at the time. |
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He did use terms like "savage races", but we use terms
today
like "developing nations" which might in a century be
regarded
as intolerable. Not so long ago, in fact, we were quite
happily talking about "underdeveloped nations" and, before
that "third world countries". |
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I can recite chapter and verse of racist Darwin if need be, although it makes me feel dirty, and not in a Darwinian reproductive sense. |
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Speciation is an inevitable product of evolution, evolution
an inevitable product of a statistical distribution of genetic
traits subject to mutation. |
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One can imagine an artificial conciseness that has no need
to either reproduce or compete for resources -- such a
consciousness would seem alive if it could hold a Turing
conversation, but it would not have to either evolve or split
into tribes. |
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The link to "Descent of Man" is above. The first hit on a search for the word "saxons" will put you in the midst of the particular racist paragraph to which I've referred. |
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Yes, but he's comparing Saxons and Celts. I mean, be
reasonable. |
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Even there he seems to be confused. Because he still seems to have a secondhand love affair with the Scottish, which is still better than marrying his first cousin. |
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With Celts ? Why ? Anyway, it's not possible. |
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Apparently it is. They keep it under their kilt. |
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So did Darwin already come up with this? |
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By the way, this assertion doesn't celebrate man's warlike
nature, it just looks at why we might be that way which
might
be a step towards controlling these instincts,
understanding where they come from. I'm not saying it's
necessarily good just because it's natural, so is death,
plague and cancer. |
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Certainly being warlike to each other in the modern age
isn't helpful to the species. Nuclear weapons aren't
helping mankind if they ever get used. WW1 and WW2
killed tens of millions of people, again, not helpful for the
species. |
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But nature can't see into the future, it "thought" being a
big dinosaur was a great idea because it didn't foresee the
asteroid collision. It "thought" having big brains and
opposing thumbs was a great idea but it didn't anticipate
these body parts leading to thousand of hydrogen bombs
on missiles that can all be launched at once to wipe out a
significant portion of the human population. |
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But again, any of you Darwin experts out there, is this old
ground he's already covered? If so I haven't heard of it. |
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Evolution functions similarly to a "dollar auction" in
which the winner gets a dollar after having paid a lot
more than a dollar to win it, the losers pay a lot and
get nothing, and the abstainers never had a chance.
To extend the analogy: each person can increase
their own chances of winning by joining a political
faction, with the result that anyone who is not part of
a political faction has no chance of winning. |
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Male lions typically win and maintain their status by
defeating other male lions in single combat. Hunting
ability might tangentially help a male lion grow but
isn't the ultimate test. |
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I don't have a practical solution to the general
problem of scarcity. The easiest solution of all is to
convince people that "happiness" means "luxury
vacation" not "land and 3 smart children to inherit
it"...let's call this option "Los Angeles". Less easy
would be a system that promises everyone "enough"
in exchange for being productive citizens, where
"enough" includes both children and vacations. Such
a system would tend to harm the most successful
people, who are held back from defeating weaker
people, and would also tend to be disliked by the
weaker
people who are held back from making bad
decisions, and would be at risk of corruption...but if
it worked such a system could possibly deliver
enough technology growth to stay ahead of a
(regulated) population growth rate. Let's call this
option "Star Trek: The Next Generation". A third
option would be to give up the expectation that a
democratic compromise is possible, and become
enthusiastic about tribal conflict. Let's call this
option "Imperial Rome with Nukes". Although it
would be easy to focus on the negatives, all 3 of
these options are full of exciting possibilities. |
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// life forms split, to expand their kin's domain, to
survive // |
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The icy beauty of evolution is
that complex life originated not from a grand plan,
but from simple mechanical laws acting on matter.
From the first self-copying simple molecules in
shallow lightning-struck pools of oily water on early
Earth, to self-copying cells protected by a cell wall,
to plants, to animals...there's no guidance at all,
merely mechanical processes. Life simply is. Unless
it fails to copy itself, then it ceases to be. Physical
laws (of energy conservation, motion, chemical
reactions, etc.) are obeyed at all times, across a truly
large number of organisms and number of years. |
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From a materialist perspective there's no guiding
purpose behind it all. |
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//Speciation is an inevitable product of evolution// |
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Not the other way around, then? |
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I mean, a large part of Origin of Species consists of Charles
persuading his sceptical readers that speciation happens. This
suggests that speciation is necessary for evolution to be
credible, not that evolution is sufficient for speciation to occur.
One can imagine a counterfactual scenario (with slightly
different organic chemistry, perhaps) in which a species could
adapt to its environment to some extent, but could never
actually split into two species. |
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//the particular racist paragraph// |
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To be fair, the words of that paragraph are not Darwin's. He's
quoting someone else, and Darwin's point in quoting them has
nothing to do with supposed ethnic characteristics. Rather,
Darwin's point is about moral characteristics (for which Galton,
not Darwin, has used race as a proxy). The point is that natural
selection is under no obligation to promote characteristics
which we might evaluate as good. |
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This point is worth re-emphasising, because so many people in
the C20th wrongly used "more evolved" to express a positive
value judgement, and/or "less evolved" to express a negative
one. |
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Darwin's own response to the laudatory paragraph he propagates is even worse. He essentially says that the Irish (and the Scottish?) die off quickly, which is quite a good solution. Apparently the British Empire, being the extant of the world and taxing everyone to the eyeballs, was still too poor for the monarchy and scientists to help subjects on their own island... |
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Wait a minute; are we reading the same document? Because
that's not how it reads to me at all. |
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Come, come. Darwin's next paragraph: |
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"There are, however, some checks to this downward tendency...it has been proved by Dr. Stark from the statistics of ten years in Scotland...that at all ages the death-rate is higher in towns than in rural districts, "and during the first five years of life the town death-rate is almost exactly double that of the rural districts." |
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... telling us that country life is healthier than city life. Scotland
was where the research was done. Had it been done in England,
Wales or Ireland, it would likely have shown a similar pattern.
Darwin is describing the
balance of forces which appear to create an equilibrium. There's
no smoking gun here. |
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Darwin is favoring a grossly racist interpretation, then following it immediately by saying we may not have to worry about Irishmen overpropagating, because they die so much earlier crowded into (Scottish) cities. It's tiresome to point out the bleeding obvious. Darwinism remains a kind of cargo cult to some people. |
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//is this old ground he's already covered? // I can't point you
to a specific sentence in Darwin's works (though there may
well be one). But the general idea that large populations
tend to split, and ultimately compete for resources, is a
pretty basic and long-established idea. |
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And not just in humans, of course. There are umpteen animal
species where a single dominant male breeds with multiple
females. A challenger may either displace that male or
simply make off with most of the harem. |
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We can agree on that point. :-) |
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It's well worth pointing out that Darwin was making these points in the 1871 2nd edition of his book, some 20 years after the Great Famine killed a million or more people in Ireland. Darwin shoudn't have been fucking his first cousin. He really should have been fucking his mother. |
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I think it's also worth pointing out that identifying a problem
isn't the same as saying that it's a good thing. |
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//Speciation is an inevitable product of evolution// |
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//Not the other way around, then?// |
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this is not a chicken or egg question (and clearly egg) So
no. |
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Don't know what that means either. Part of the confusion is largely caused by Darwin's stupidity. He favorably uses a quote describing the Scottish as "Saxon," some percentage of whom may be, given Viking though not particularly Saxon heritage. Then in his next paragraph he suggests the problem will resolve itself as people die earlier, for example in Scotland. True, Scotland had a substantial Irish population, but isn't this poverty porn going to hit some of the Scottish "Saxons" too? |
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None of this really matters. He's showing no great care in praising race-differentiated death. Darwin's writing is a clusterfuck, but he's not some kind of bible that one tries to cautiously interpret for some lost god's message. |
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(Max) A tribe where one alpha male is replaced by
another isn't
sociogenic mitosis, a split into two viable groups
caused
by aggression of the leadership is what I'm talking
about.
One where two alpha males start gathering
followers
within the group and at some point go to war and
split. |
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If it's a commonly known fact that it's beneficial to
a
species to have innate aggression split groups into
two so
they'll cover more area it should be pretty easy to
cite
some reference to it. I've never heard this
discussed
before, pretty sure Darwin never said anything
about it.
His theories and conclusions are very well known.
If he
discussed group dynamics with regard to friction
within
those groups being beneficial by causing groups to
split
and cover more territory, I never heard about it. |
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A single reference makes this all go away. Consider
it a
challenge. |
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And here's why I'm doing this, there's a term that I
created
that quite accidentally ended up in the Webster's
Dictionary. Well, not totally by accident, it was a
joke term that caught on such that It's common
slang now
and the story behind it is a bit long but it was a
term I
introduced that's now in common parlance, so 'd
like to
see if I can create another term, one that might
have a
little more interesting concept behind it and one
that
might lead to beneficial discussions about how to
avoid
war by looking at another possible reason for why
we go
to war. |
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I believe that aggression that causes wars was once
beneficial to the species and now that we've added
technology to this innate drive, it's no longer
beneficial.
That's the whole point, so again, if this has been
discussed, I'd love to see references. |
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If the dynamic of two dominant males resulting in
two
groups being a good thing for the species before
the
introduction of industrial age killing tools and it
now
being NOT beneficial for the species after the
introduction of that technology has been
discussed, I'd
like to find that discussion. Might be out there but
I
haven't seen it. But this is why I threw this out there, to
see if it's been
discussed before. Maybe I'll write David Attenborough. |
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And Max, if you're saying it's such common
knowledge that
we don't even need a word for it, I'd beg to differ.
Something that's so universally known should
probably
have a term to refer to it no? Words and term are a
meeting point of ideas and a starting or jumping off point
to figuring stuff out and looking at why we go to war as
groups from nature's viewpoint is certainly not a common
discussion. Maybe it should be. |
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What was the term that got into Websters? That's cool. |
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Regarding the phenomenon - as I mentioned, it's common
for a rival male (for instance) to take a bunch of the
females and set up a new group (leaving the old group to
regrow). You're right, I can't point to sentence in Darwin
(I'm not going to re-read all his books). All I'm saying is that
the phenomenon of large groups splitting, sometimes
violently, is just WKTE. It's nothing personal, just that in
terms of animal behaviour it's one of those almost-inherent
phenomena. |
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As for advantageousness, it's advantageous to the individual
who forms the new group: he gets to pass his genes on more
directly to more descendants, as long as he's successful. |
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Well, how about this? We know groups split but if you can
point to an article saying what caused them to split and
why it was beneficial to the species I'll tell you what the
dictionary word is. |
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I understand what you're saying, that this is such common
knowledge that it's like making up a term like "car
startyosis" referring to the starting of a car, that
the term is just not needed. But I haven't heard anybody
assign a clarifying term to this process. Yes, we've seen
the results of groups splitting but but why they split, and
specifically why that drive might no longer be good for us
hasn't been discussed in anything that I've seen. This is a
starting point for that discussion. |
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I'm not just saying "Groups split, let's call it "group splitty
mc splitface." There is a new (I think) concept behind it.
A
beneficial natural trait that now, because of a new
environment has become a detrimental physical trait.
Group friction used to have a good reason to exist.
Replace clubs with hydrogen bombs and thousands of
ICBMs to deliver them with a touch of a button, group
friction has to be re-evaluated. A single term to replace
"the common knowledge that alpha males will fight and
take some females to another location to start a new
group that causes the species to spread" is a bit wordy. I
fell asleep halfway through writing it. Having a nice,
quick, clarifying reference term is beneficial towards the
discussion. |
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And yes, passing of strong genes to the winners has been
discussed at length, but it doesn't discount the fact that
there are other group benefits to this competitive
process. Specifically the expansion of the species as a
direct result of the social friction within the species. |
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If it's beneficial to the species (which it might well be),
that's
incidental. It's a contested point, but broadly speaking
natural selection doesn't care about species - it cares about
the individual (or, if you want to get all Dawkinsy, about
that
individual's genes). So, you can probably find instances
where
a split has been bad for a species as a whole (eg, too little
genetic diversity in each subgroup), even though it will have
been beneficial in the short term for the individual. |
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If your argument is that this splitting tendency has become
more harmful now that we humans have big weapons, well,
yes, that's possibly true. But there are lots of traits that
natural selection has left us with that are now harmful
rather than helpful because our world has changed quickly. |
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And I can see I'm going to have to work hard to find out
which word you got into Websters. Let's begin: was it
'aardvark' ? |
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By the way, just have to say I've never needed coffee
more than now having this discussion but I'm going to try
to sleep today to go on a nighttime ride along patrol with
my police officer son and want to try to take a nap. This
is very challenging. I want to be sharp and rested. I will
after all be wearing a bullet proof vest and driving around
dangerous neighborhoods. |
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But we're zeroing in here, god I wish I wasn't the walking
dead here without my morning brew. |
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//If it's beneficial to the species (which it might well be),
that's incidental. It's a contested point, but broadly
speaking natural selection doesn't care about species - it
cares about the individual (or, if you want to get all
Dawkinsy, about that individual's genes).// |
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But nature does care about the species. For instance, it
doesn't want viruses to kill the host, the ideal microbe
lives happily for as long as possible and in as many hosts
as possible. It's when they're "designed" to live in a bat
and somebody makes soup out of that bat and passes it to
another species that the virus doing its thing burns down
its house so to speak. |
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Nature designs stuff and with purpose. I don't know how,
our knowledge of evolution is like the knowledge a
monkey has sitting in the pilot seat of an airline jet and
finding the on button then declaring himself an expert on
aviation science. We've just scratched the surface. But
nature does get stuff done. Nature spreads life. When it
tries one thing to spread life like being big and dinosaury,
and that doesn't work, it tries smaller, smarter and
manipulaty. But the one thing it wants life to do is
spread. I don't think this trait is by accident. I think it's
going to give plants fruit that birds eat to spread the
seeds, or little parachutes to catch the wind. It's going to
give viruses transmission vectors to expand the life form
and it gives us aggression to do what we've done. Become
so successful at covering the planet that we're the only
species to exist on every continent and travel from Earth
to another body in the solar system. |
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Can we talk about this tomorrow when I have my coffee?
The clickity-click-click of the keyboard is lulling me to
sleep. |
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LOL, yes I made up the word aardvark but I added
another A. So if anybody claims to have created the word
aaardvark, you tell them you know the man behind it.
And by the way, aardvark should be spelled with 3 letter
A's as a sort of protest. "Why did you add 3 letter A's?"
"Why did you add two?" And I don't know how to add an S
to the letter A to make it plural but I don't want to look it
up
so I'm just going to take a nap now. |
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// But nature does care about the species.// It really
doesn't. Natural selection acts (can only act) on individuals.
In most cases, individual selection works for the benefit of
the species, but that's not a given. It's just that we only see
species where individual selection has worked well for the
species. |
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//Nature designs stuff and with purpose.// Again, alas, no.
For every mutant gazelle born with stripes that give it
better camouflage, there's another one born without eyes or
with a screwed up leg. |
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What makes evolution so miraculous is that _despite_ the
fact that mutation is random, and _despite_ the fact that
nature can't look ahead and plan for the benefit of the
species, the endless application of blind natural selection
gives us bee-orchids, tapirs and kangaroos. |
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and even evolution deniers :) |
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// // But nature does care about the
species.// It
really doesn't. Natural selection acts (can only act)
on
individuals. // |
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Natural selections acts on individuals acting as
individuals
and on groups acting as groups. The Portuguese
man of
war, the cells that make up an organism, these are
all
individuals as well as members of a bigger life
form.
Individuals forming a group does't prevent it from
being a
life form that has specific trends and tendencies.
Groups
are effected by evolution just like the the
individual and
social aspects of the group may effect their
survival or
extinction. It's theorized that cro-magnon won out
over
neanderthal because of specialization and division
of task
between female and male unlike neanderthal
where
everybody in the tribe just went out and hunted
and
gathered. The theory is that females tending the
home
base and males specializing in the hunting and
gathering
was a more effective system. I'm sure that theory
will
cause outrage among some but it would make
some
sense. |
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Certainly specialization is the core of an advanced
society. One individual can learn everything they
need to
in a hunter gather society. It would probably take
hundreds of years to learn all the jobs necessary to
run an
advanced society, rocket scientist, brain surgeon,
software engineer etc. Maybe the first
specialization WAS
having one group hunt and gather and the other
make the
tools to help hunt and gather. And maybe the
social
construct allowed the group to survive, evolve and
replace groups that didn't engage in this social
delineation of group efforts to survive. |
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And there may have been groups that just sat
around
hugging
each other, happy with where they were but we
don't
know about them because they didn't expand
enough to
survive. |
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But again, I'm going to try to take a nap, which is
damn
near impossible for me, wake up refreshed then go
driving around with my boy while
he
keeps the streets safe then drink some coffee
tomorrow
and see if this clears up. One cup and I might erase
the
whole thing after a "What the hell was I thinking?"
moment. |
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Well, [doc], your thinking is not bad thinking. If you get a
chance, read some Dawkins - you'd probably really enjoy him. |
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[doc] what do you want to be true? That every
species has an innate urge to organize into tribes in
conflict and then to spread those tribes far and
wide? That the "tribe splitting" urge can be precisely
identified in humans? That someone could make a
pill that turns off the "tribe splitting" urge in humans,
so humankind could finally cooperate and stop
spending two weeks out of every year building
weapons? |
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Kipling (also considered a bit socially backward
these days) wrote a poem that goes something like
this: |
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// When the Cambrian measures were forming, They
promised perpetual peace.
They swore, if we gave them our weapons, that the
wars of the tribes would cease.
But when we disarmed They sold us and delivered
us bound to our foe,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: "Stick
to the Devil you know." |
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A tree branch can't grow where another branch already is. Twins can't be 100% the same.Differentiation is forced and causes separation. Whether that differentiation causes success is probably down to resources made available and their use. |
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It would be a waste of Earthly complexity if the expanding group were just individuals that are exactly the same. |
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Like ants, bees and termites ? |
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I quite like bees and ants, yes; why? |
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There is still differentiation and different food sources. I'm sure there are lazy bees. |
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The queen is pretty lazy. Royal jelly all day. Getting laid. lounging about. Disgraceful really. |
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Laying would be a hefty job. I was thinking more about the the lazy flyer that finds the flowers others missed but takes longer to get back to the hive. An advantageous diversification. All bees exactly the same, flying to same place would be an evolutionary disaster. |
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//there may have been groups that just sat around hugging each
other, happy with where they were but we don't know about
them // |
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The tantric communities of Afghanistan in the C5th, just before
the Huns showed up. It didn't end well. |
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// flying to same place would be an evolutionary disaster // |
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Is there an option for Sociopathic Mitosis ? We consider that preferable ... |
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//read some Dawkins - you'd probably really enjoy him.// |
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OK, THAT'S what I came here for. I'm familiar with his
work and
this is right up his alley. I'm going to contact him. |
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"Dear Doctorremulac3, Mr Dawkins was wondering how
you got his address and hereby requests that you stop
standing in front of his home with a "Ask Me About
Sociogenic Mitosis" sign." |
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Seriously though, this is his bailiwick, if he can't shut me
up about this nobody can. |
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//(are you hoping) that someone could make a pill that
turns off the "tribe splitting" urge in humans, so
humankind could finally cooperate and stop spending two
weeks out of every year building weapons? // |
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Wouldn't want (or be able) to tame our innate aggressive
drives that have an upside, but putting more energy into
building and less into tearing down as you described
would be a nice goal. |
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But in a more immediate sense I was hoping that putting
a tag on the drive to hate each other might cast some
light on this and lead us to make more considered less
emotion driven opinions about our fellow man and fewer
automatic judgements that lead to conflict if that makes
any sense. |
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The analogy I came up with might be understanding that
we are attracted to beautiful women. This understanding
allows us to control our natural urges, for instance you
wouldn't run up on stage while Miss Universe was getting
crowned and ask her to marry you. You'd just say "She's
very beautiful, I appreciate that so I'll wait till after the
ceremony to pop the question." Kidding aside, if we didn't
understand this urge, to be attracted to (trigger warning)
the opposite sex, it might be confusing. |
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Likewise, there might be a practical application of this
concept, if you're at a family gathering and two people in
the family support political candidates on the opposite
side of the political spectrum, knowing this is a natural
tendency might soften the impact. Political strife is the
embodiment of sociogenic mitosis. The two parties
understanding that they're wired to split like this might
make them take that into consideration. Maybe they don't
want to let their natural urges control them, maybe
they'll consider that the reason they're so angry is that a
natural process is at work. |
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Anyway, thanks to everybody taking the time to comment
on this admittedly oddball post. I'm going to keep looking
into this and post what other views I get from folks and
Dawkins is the guy to research next. If he's got a chapter
called "Mitosiotic Sociogeniocity" or something I'll drop
this idea. |
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He's definitely got a chapter called something. Are you going to follow up on your promise? |
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"The Evolution Of War:
Why we separate into groups and fight, and how
we
can control the natural urges to do so." |
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OK, found something. (link) |
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Just glossed over it but it doesn't appear to be
anything new, just the survival of the fittest
concept, tribe better suited to war wins the gene
pool lottery. Old stuff. |
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No I meant the promise to drop the idea, if Dawkins had a book chapter called something. |
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I already answered that. The answer was: "I will." |
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// What makes evolution so miraculous is that _despite_ the fact that mutation is random, and _despite_ the fact that nature can't look ahead and plan for the benefit of the species, the endless application of blind natural selection gives us bee-orchids, tapirs and kangaroos. // |
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The problem with this type of praise is that it doesn't take into account how much better a planned process might be. Why should trees and whale sharks live 300 years but people get 120 at best? |
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Anything doc produced could be an improvement on Darwin. Whether he chooses to write that book should be independent of whether he chooses to delete the cumulative ideas other people have posted under this heading of course... |
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Oh I'd never delete a liveley discussion. I might drop
the idea and move on but people put some time into
these comments and I appreciate that. |
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//it doesn't take into account how much better a planned
process might be// Of course, but then it's no longer a
description of evolution. Computers and vibrators have all
evolved hundreds of thousands of times faster than evolution
would allow. |
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God knows you know vibrators better than I do. Some Darwinists are still very focused on "intelligence" in reproductive processes. I don't believe intelligent people get more mates, hence their brilliance with computers and vibrators. |
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Sorry, I didn't understand! My error! |
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... for which you will be punished. |
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OK, I have Richard Dawkin's's's contact info. I'll post my
email to him before sending it. |
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