Basic concepts of Evolution

Discussion in 'General Science & Technology' started by ScottMana, Dec 15, 2007.

Thread Status:
Not open for further replies.
  1. ScottMana Registered Senior Member

    Messages:
    159
    Often enough I see wildly wrong conclusions on the subject of evolution.

    First and foremost is the point of change we call evolution of something. If you had an old man with his own ideas and he was really suck to them, even when wildly wrong, there is always evolution. The man will die. One may pass over this as evil or overly mean. Yet it should not be. Sometimes the old has a position of power that leaves not room for the new.

    Like God woke up one morning and saw his children with fixed positions on something, death was born. (I use this jokingly, please do not take offense.) It is not too far a conclusion that death exists for evolutionary purposes. Putting aside the rock that fell on the poor guy. Bodies get old and fall apart because sometimes you need them to for something new to come in. This may seem mean or cruel, yet it is not. We would still be living in caves, or Roman garb if the smart and powerful rulers of long ago never needed to step down. All because of fixed ideas.

    Next is the common idea that evolution is an improvement. It sometimes is. Sometimes.... After Democracy, Communism came along. Russia did not gain communism because it was better than any other system. Indeed the country is in the same stat now than it was when communism first started in Russia. The only change was by the western world. Cell phones, TVs and better cars. Why did communism come to power over there? It was not because it was better. It came to power because the communist was better organized than any other. More people running around with more funding and so on and a stronger leader. Those people payed the price for it.

    So here was an instance were something new rose in the ashes of a dieing government. It was not better, in fact it was worse. The country had to have a revolt and now their new government is no real improvement. Evolution is not always an improvement. What was once in power may have been good or may not have. But what comes next is so often not an improvement that evolution can almost get a bad name.

    Clearly it is not always bad. But a study of why something changed to look for how this change was better in some way is not workable. All too often it didn't improve. It is just that the old system failed. For anything to be here today (as far as evolution goes) it had to have aleast 51% correct ideas or changes. You get that 1% as a minimum because life may not always go your way, in which case you may need more then 1%. So if it falls below 51% the number of errors will stack greater then what is keeping it alive and it will fail.

    As most life on this planet has not improved in the last 100 million years to any notable degree it can be seen that improvements can be few and far between.

    I would suppose at this point I am a negative jerk, but the positive side looks to me to not need much said about it.
     
    Last edited: Dec 15, 2007
  2. Google AdSense Guest Advertisement



    to hide all adverts.
  3. Fraggle Rocker Staff Member

    Messages:
    24,690
    What exactly are you calling "improvements?" Aren't polar bears an improvement on the grizzly bears' ability to exploit a marine environment? That species arose in the past 100,000 years. How about angiosperms? And the animals that arose to climb those trees and eat their fruit? You know, the primates, the ones who developed exceptional intelligence and eventually invented computers so we could have this conversation?
     
  4. Google AdSense Guest Advertisement



    to hide all adverts.
  5. superluminal I am MalcomR Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    10,876
    Well...

    The thing I notice first is that "improvement" is not usually considered a general feature of evolution by natural selection. Otherwise he (Big D) might have called it "Improvement by natural selection".

    Certainly, as fraggle pointed out, for a given species to be able to adapt to a new environmental challenge is certainly an "improvement" for that species" as opposed to extinction.

    But evolution is really only about one thing. Adapting. Complexity arises as a result of the environment becoming ever more challenging. And by environment I mean mainly other organisms.

    So what we have is not some end goal - evolution knows nothing of the future - but a series of states that an organism finds itself in that allow it to survive and reproduce.

    Our grand intellect could easily prove to be highly maladaptive if we create an environment of unstoppable nanomachines that just love to consume human growth hormone (or something equally unlikely, but the point stands) or we destroy our own ability to grow sufficient food because we like plastic products better than eating.
     
  6. Google AdSense Guest Advertisement



    to hide all adverts.
  7. Roman Banned Banned

    Messages:
    11,560
    Evolution requires reproduction. It doesn't even require death.

    So "the evolution of an idea" or "my art has evolved so much since then" or "she has really evolved as a person" are all totally, 100% wrong uses of the word evolution.
     
  8. ScottMana Registered Senior Member

    Messages:
    159
    Please understand that I am not defining what Evolution is. Just elaborating on two concepts.

    Also, it will be seen that I above all else want to be understood. I do not use specialized English reserved only for a subject. As the people I intend to talk to are not specialists. I wish anyone to be able to understand it.

    Try if you will to see that I am not redefining anything of the subject of evolution. Just showing another side to it.

    In the concept of death I made a mistake. I should have said "It is not too far a conclusion that death can forward evolutionary progress." In that I made a mistake.
     
Thread Status:
Not open for further replies.

Share This Page