is life about the survival of the fittest chemistry?

Discussion in 'Biology & Genetics' started by globali, Jan 29, 2018.

  1. Write4U Valued Senior Member

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    Evolution creates the variety, Natural Selection weeds out the less efficient forms.
     
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  3. Gawdzilla Sama Valued Senior Member

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    AND promotes the most efficient.
     
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  5. sideshowbob Sorry, wrong number. Valued Senior Member

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    The slowest zebras get eaten - i.e. the population is eroded from the bottom end. For the ones that survive, it isn't particularly relevant who gets the gold, silver or bronze medal.
     
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  7. Gawdzilla Sama Valued Senior Member

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    And now let's talk about breeding.
     
  8. iceaura Valued Senior Member

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    The best cooperator's DNA often out-reproduces the worst. That's the basic point of leverage for evolutionary advantage.
    You mean the collection of millions of self-sacrificing cooperators we call "cells", harboring and embedded in their matrix of mutualistic and symbiotic bacteria and yeasts, wandering about a landscape of similar collections almost all of which are either indifferent or cooperative with it in some way?
    By cooperating in various ways, at various levels, mostly.
    Cooperation requires no more "intelligence" than competition - maybe less. The physical adaptations often involve loss of capability.
    And more sparse on the landscape.
    The worse cooperators are at the edge of the herd, often - the ones that harbor disease, the ones that don't keep up or pay attention to others, the young of the less nurturing parents, etc.
    And in the meantime, most of their DNA is at the center of the herd.
     
  9. pluto2 Banned Valued Senior Member

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    There is still a lot we don't know about how the human body works.

    For instance, we don't even understand the mechanism by which biological evolution happens.

    We know that evolution happens but we don't know the process (or mechanism) by which it happens: It could also be aliens, it could also be God or it could also be magic?

    We just don't know.
     
  10. Gawdzilla Sama Valued Senior Member

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    You just don't know, you mean.
     
  11. pluto2 Banned Valued Senior Member

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    What do you mean by that?

    The scientific bureaucracy doesn't want to admit that there is still a lot we don't know about evolutionary biology and how the human body truly works.
     
  12. Gawdzilla Sama Valued Senior Member

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    And how much do you know about the scientific bureaucracy? Met even one of them? Have then acknowledged your conspiracy ideas?
     
  13. Write4U Valued Senior Member

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    Some 500 diferent types of bio-molecules ~(1.2 x 10^27 billions of them) is all. And a few metals.
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biomolecule#Types_of_biomolecules
     
    Last edited: Feb 16, 2018
  14. DaveC426913 Valued Senior Member

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    Yes we do.

    Here is a primer in less than ten sentences:

    • A species is a population of organisms that interbreeds and has fertile offspring.
    • Living organisms have descended with modifications from species that lived before them.
    • Natural selection explains how this evolution has happened:
      • More organisms are produced than can survive because of limited resources.
      • Organisms struggle for the necessities of life; there is competition for resources.
      • Individuals within a population vary in their traits; some of these traits are heritable -- passed on to offspring.
      • Some variants are better adapted to survive and reproduce under local conditions than others.
      • Better-adapted individuals (the "fit enough") are more likely to survive and reproduce, thereby passing on copies of their genes to the next generation.
      • Species whose individuals are best adapted survive; others become extinct.

    Evolution is a fact. Walk into any fish breeder's or dog breeder's lab and they'll show you evolution in action.

    Now, what is not fact is evolution by natural selection. That is theory.
     
  15. Xmo1 Registered Senior Member

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    I seen two one celled microorganisms. One was being chased, and eventually eaten by the other. How does that happen? My brain is 97% efficient. I am the other 3%. Sometimes it lets me be fully aware (getting streams from all 5 senses). I think we have a spirit we can command as well. I've asked my spirit for years if a certain road was clear or not. It flew out, and seconds later returned with a result. This occurred for more than 10 years, and it never gave me the wrong answer. That's mystical, but maybe not..
     
    Last edited: Feb 27, 2018
  16. DaveC426913 Valued Senior Member

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    What about it confuses you?
    It is simply predation, writ small.
     
  17. Write4U Valued Senior Member

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    I understand the gist of your posit, but one could argue that evolution is a form of natural selection, but not exclusively so.

    IOW, a very successfully evolved species can be wiped out by a natural cataclysmic event, such as a collision of earth with another planet, which may wipe out all life except for a few micro-organisms. So there is no competition involved.

    A tardigrade is not a complex organism, but is able to withstand conditions where most other life forms might perish. Thus under such conditions a tardigrade might well become the dominant species.
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tardigrade

    This is not because a tardigrade is highly adapted to its environment, but its very simplicity allows it to adapt to almost any natural environment. A kind of reverse evolutionary process, where simplicity prevails. Where dinosaurs might perish, our lowly tardigrade survives.

    Thus, IMO, natural selection is a higher order (probabilistic) survival mechanisms, whereas evolution is the gradual specialized deterministic adaption to the environment, enabling one species to out-compete other species for available resources.
     
    Last edited: Feb 27, 2018
  18. Write4U Valued Senior Member

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    If you haven't seen this yet, I suggest watching this lecture by Robert Hazen at the Carnegie Institute. (start viewing @ 25:25)

     
  19. DaveC426913 Valued Senior Member

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    There are, broadly, two survival strategies: the generalists and the specialists.
    Specialists are finely-tuned to their environment, and thrive during relatively inactive climatic and geological periods, when food and environment don't change a lot. Hummingbirds, Koalas, feed on some very specific foodstuffs. (Cacti are specialists too, based directly on climate.)

    Generalists, have learned to take sustenance from a wide variety of sources. They do well during times of rapid climate change. Bears, rats, coons, humans.


    There's nothing "reverse" about it. That is evolution. It doesn't have a forward direction, so it doesn't have a reverse either.

    Creatures that are better adapted to an environment will flourish. It has nothing to do with complexity. (The simplest bacteria have been around billions of years, and are still rivaling our own success.)
     
    Last edited: Feb 27, 2018
  20. Write4U Valued Senior Member

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    That was the point I was trying to make. It's true that competition for avaiable food sources very quickly leads to complexity, but complexity demands special natural needs, as is obvious by the threat of drastc climate change, to name one. Our very complexity needs an orderly environment or things go wrong very quickly.

    Whereas the simplest forms have almost no needs at all. Without decaying, they persevered very well as a species. The oldest fossil found was 500 milion years old.
    Tardigrades are a remakable Species of animal.

    When too cold they go dormant, when too hot they just dry up. As soon as the environment changes to within their range of functionality, ususally a little water will do the trick, they go merrily on their way..

    Have you looked at the Waterbear wiki link? This little creature has survived the most extreme events and conditions in all of the history of life on earth. I would call that a triumphant existence. Everything changes but it won't bother the waterbear. It's simplicity is its strenght.

    From Nature's perspective it's one of her crowning jewels. It needs no evolutionary improvement. It does require water. But that's about it.
     
    Last edited: Mar 2, 2018
  21. Gawdzilla Sama Valued Senior Member

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    iceaura and Write4U like this.
  22. pluto2 Banned Valued Senior Member

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    After all this time scientists still don't have a clue as to how the human body really works so biology is rapidly becoming a pseudoscience.

    Scientists still don't know why we feel pain and why certain people experience pain differently and much more intensely than others and biological science should be able to answer that question and the fact that it doesn't means that biology is becoming a pseudoscience.
     
    Last edited: Mar 14, 2018
  23. Gawdzilla Sama Valued Senior Member

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    You know zip-shit-nada about biology, that's obvious.
     

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