lilschuh

I will agree with that. Okay, so I'm curious as to what you think about the "survival of the most adaptable, no fittest" convo I've been having with Skaffen.

So it sounds to me like you are looking at adaptability as a means for survival, therefore giving the individuals a better chance to reproduce. Is that correct? What about say, speed of an antelope. The antelope doesn't decide to run faster or slower based on the lion chasing it. It runs as fast as it can because that is how it is programmed. "Fit to survive which is clearly adaptability." What if there is not a need for adaptation in a particular instance. Say, the antelope never gets caught and never has to be faster. It doesn't adapt if it doesn't need to, so it is still going to survive without adapting, because it is the most fit to survive. Its possible for the animal to never change and still be the fittest animal in the world. This 'fittest to survive' animal does not need to be adaptable in order to survive.

Isn't fitness defined as the capability of a certain genotype to reproduce? So, isn't it the fittest that survives? Adaptability is the ability to change to fit certain circumstances, which I think may lead to increased fitness. But, I thought it was survival of the fittest. Many things contribute to whether an organism will be relatively fit, and I believe adaptability is one of those. I don't feel like adaptability is the end all be all for survival. I do agree with your point on 'all life is a composite of smaller scale organisms' though.

All of natural selection and evolution are random. The mutations in genotypes and then to phenotypes are completely random. The reason that natural fur colors match the surroundings is because, at one point, the mutation caused the fur to be a little bit more like the surroundings, giving that animal a better chance to survive and pass on that mutation. The eye is the same way, small random mutations that built upon each other.

The growth charts come from somewhere though. They are not made up. There may be a lot of variability, which it appears there is, but the chart was most likely formed using statistical data. There is a given amount of variation in the chart as well. There are many, many things that affect height. It is an additive process of genes, and there is some knowledge as to how those interact and what the end product will be. And, to say that we will never be able to determine someone's adult height seems to me to be a long shot. I doubt that there is anything we can not accomplish.