Ms. Siv

The wisdom of natural selection ?? Did I hear you right ?? Cant be.
Everyone knows (or should ) that nature is a blind, indifferent, short term Darwinian profiteer and has no wisdom.
Yeah, that must be it ... I didn't hear you right.

You must read up sometime on the biochemical reasons for that behaviour. Magic, my ass
Its a wonderful thing to watch them, I agree. It creates a warm and fuzzy feeling inside and all that ... its supposed to.


Ok ... now you're scaring me ... please tell me that you're joking. Please

Hooboy !!

Blind? Hardly. Tell that to the crickets breeding like mad in my garage.

You can rationalize it all you want, but it does not alter the fact that life seeks to continue to exist.

Precisely. Yet, you earlier claim that "that nature is a blind, indifferent, short term Darwinian profiteer and has no wisdom". Don't you see the contradiction? "Life" may have formed by accident, but it's continued existence is no accident, by design, whether intentional or accidental is irrelevant.

The quickest way to break something, is to try and "fix" it.

If I have learned nothing, it is that extinction happens. Odd though that creatures like cockroaches, mosquitos and alligators remain virtually unchanged for millions of years.

Ms. Siv

Dont you see the blindness in that ?? Following their genetic instincts because their genes want to optimise their own propogation ?? Its pathetic.

What am I rationalising here ??
Of course life seeks to continue to exist .... or to put it more precisely, gene propogation continues simply by default .... because only those genes (working together with others) which program behaviour in their gene-vehicles (us organisms) which maximises gene propogation end up in more numbers. Its a blind but amazing concept.

My dear Hooboy, where is the cotradiction ???
Nature is blind and indifferent. It destroys as easily as it nurtures.
Have you read and understood the concept of "natural selection" ? Its not random ... but it is totally blind because it all happens totally by default.

I'm increasingly getting the feeling that you're one of those creationists/ID proponents who dont understand evolution.

Whats broken ? And who's fixing it ??
You're talking in complete riddles now.

Actually its bacteria and viruses which are the oldest. We homo sapiens arrived just yesterday in the cosmic time frame. And will probably disappear soon enough. Very interesting, all that .... but whats your point ?

Hooboy !!

No. Not once organisms began manipulating their environment. Blindness implies that circumstance and random events (chaos) are the sole determining factors. An organism that has developed the ability to alter it's environment (self-determination), also develops the ability to alter these factors. Perhaps that is also blind, but I don't think so.

Ms. Siv

Do you think any gene propogation can happen without manipulating the environment ?? :huh:

Hooboy !!

Absolutely.

Ms. Siv

If there was a point being made, I didn't get it.

Gene propogation is a blind process ... and it involves manipulating the environment a great deal (heard of phenotypes and extended phenotypes ?).

So, there is no wisdom in natural selection.

Hooboy !!

Look up the word "wisdom" in the dictionary.

Obviously you are objecting to the word because it implies an underlying intelligence. This objection is largely predictable and somewhat amusing.

Time to let you off the hook...

I used the word "wisdom" for hyperbole, not to imply an underlying intelligence.

Wisdom is in essence, good decision making. Natural selection is also a decision making process, hence the word "selection". The similarities are too hard for me to ignore.

The opposite of natural selection is artificial selection, which ironically involves an intelligence (human). Further irony is that human interference in the process of "selection" very often leads to adpatations that are incapable of self-propogation. How is this "wise"? Which is a nice segue back to my original point that natural selection is indeed "wise".

The criteria for determining what is and what is not "wise" in genetic propogation is simple: what works. Genetic combinations that have survived relatively unchanged, for millions or billions of years...is the ultimate demonstration of good decision making. Or in other words...wisdom.

Graculus

"Left turn now" time.

Chaos isn't random, and it applies to those organisms that are manipulatiing their environment as well as those that don't.

Chaos has to be more widely misunderstood than evolution...

Rhaedas

I can see where you're trying to go with the association of wisdom and natural selection. I have to disagree based on your explanation though...if wisdom is "good decision making", then selection isn't wise at all. Yes, what works can get selected, but as many of the ID counter arguments show, they aren't always the best decisions, hence there's no sign of any intelligence behind them.

For all the good decisions, or rather, the ones that work to the advantage of the organism, there are many natural selection decisions that fail miserably. To claim that there's wisdom behind selection you have to ignore the many more mistakes that don't get selected, as well as the "good enoughs" that aren't the best solution, but get the organism far enough to pass the trait onwards.

If we argue words, I'd even say that "decision" is a bad one, because it also implies something choosing a path. So does "selection". The simple fact is, an organism has traits, some handed down without change, some modified. The traits either help, hinder, or do nothing. If they get passed down to another generation, and it's due in part to that trait, we personify it as a "selection" of that trait. But there's no selection, decision, or wisdom...it just worked.