Could there be more to evolution?

[Phi for All]

M.A.D. is doing its job and has done it for half a century...no credit due to anyone imo.

Still, the release of energy through nuclear fission represented an enormous leap in our destructive capabilities. We can at least be comforted that we're living up to our fabled high intelligence (so far). Some have proposed that this may be part of why we haven't run into any other spacefaring species; having a weapon so powerful but not using it may be harder than we think.

[too-open-minded]

Idk man..... I'm a pretty optimistic person but. I really think were kind of stupid. I mean yeah we figured out how to do fission...but we kind of harness its energy with a turbine.

 

 

I don't think any species capable of spacefaring would have anything to fear about us if they wanted something on or around our planet.

 

War....I don't think its going to be the end of us.

 

I think were more likely to go from global economic collapse and having the human race just not be able to come back from that.

[hypervalent_iodine]

!

Moderator Note

too-open-minded,

Their They're There was a spelling error in the title, witch which I have now fixed. Its It's been bugging me.

[too-open-minded]

Yeah I guess evolution is not a person so it does not really posses itself lol

 

Sorry man, I hated English with a passion.

 

I guess you envision pointing there, while i'm thinking theirs more evolution is holding than we can see.

Is it still improper context?

[studiot]

Messing about with (the english) language for effect is one thing.

 

But, for me at least, you have surpassed yourself thereby loosing the meaning in your last post.

 

Edited September 7, 2012 by studiot

[StringJunky]

Messing about with (the english) language for effect is one thing.

 

But, for me at least, you have surpassed yourself thereby loosing losing the meaning in your last post.

 

 

Nee...Naw...Nee...Naw...Skitt's Law alert!

 

I have yet to see a post that picks up on someone's error and not fall foul themselves...this law is apparently infallible!

[studiot]

@stringjunky

 

Do you mean to say you can't understand plain English?

 

Or would you like to discuss your post #31?

Edited September 7, 2012 by studiot

[proximity1]

I really do hope we don't blow it. Although I think we will.

 

 

If I was going to bet, I'd bet that you're correct. It's not that complicated. Human history indicates that humans do not learn (except commonly as exceptional individuals) from human history. It also indicates that with rare exceotion, little short of great catastrophe is sufficient to make even a modest impression on very large portions of the world population. But, unfortunately, that's not enough--and in more than one sense. First, it's not enough to present us with any reasonable expectation that we can continue "learning by catastrophe" in our current technological circumstances-- because these set us irrevocably apart from all former times. But, also because "learning by catastrophe" (here, that needs an acronym: "LBC" ®) misses much of the populace in its effectiveness and, the "lessons" drawn are more likely to be a mass of erroneous incoherencies than a set of valid and pertinent corrective understanding.

 

The examples are endless. What, correctly and pertinently and, perhaps most all, lastingly, was learned by any significant part of the world's population from any extraordinary LBC catastrophe that anyone may care to name?

 

World War I? Nothing. (ex.) --> World War II---? Nothing, really, that counts much. Worse, during and since World War II, the most influential and powerful of the world's "Leading Industrial Nations ®" developed many of the worst, most dangerous and species-threatening habits of thought and action that plague us today.

 

Over my life I've heard many optimistic people say things such as, "Well, we survived Nixon!" or "Well, we survived Reagan!" or, in case you mistake me as partisan, "Well, we survived Clinton! (Bush!; Obama!, etc.) Well, we survived the Cold War!

 

----my response is, "Uh, No, we haven't, not necessarily we haven't, not yet. All those things left us with festering wounds. It shows some amazing over-confidence to ignore that these wounds are still there, unhealed, unlearned from and, moreover, as far as we know, still deadly."

 

On nuclear war, it's seems obvious to me, and I think it should be obvious to anyone who has his eyes open, that our peril from anihilation in nuclear war is no less today than it was in the Cold War--that is, at any moment some unexpected trigger event could put us all within minutes or hours of one or more nation's launching a nuclear strike (deliberately or by accident) on some other nation or nations. the U.S., Pakistan, India, Israel, China, and other nations have nuclear weapons; the U.S. have resorted to the use of atomic weapons already.

 

Nuclear war is hardly the only or even the most appalling of the prospects for doom which stalk our world thanks exclusively to patented human stupidity, greed and blindness: there are the dangers of civil uses of nuclear power as a common source of power generation; there is the wildly insane monkeying around with the genomes naturally occurring flora and fauna which potential catastrophic consequences for our entire planet that no one is wise enough to foresee. Either or some combination of these are more than enough to place everyone on an endangered species list with an ever-shrinking half-life. If these dangers were somehow absolutely necessary, if we simply had no other choice but to run these risks, then that would be one thing, in sizing up our wisdom versus our folly. But we don't have to run these risks. They're aren't absolutely necessary. We could, if we used our intelligence and our courage, find and take better, saner, safer courses. If we don't, it's because we're lazy. We rather play video games and eat micro-waved popcorn. For sheer blind human folly, how is it possible to top the retort that "We have to stick with civil nuclear power generation because our economy---the Jobs!---depend on it! But, once spoiled, the livable environment lost, no one's job will matter or mean anything at that point. How many job openings are available now around a three-mile radius of the Tepco power plants of Fukushima? By the way, for the Japanese, there is immense irony in the terrible lesson they've been given in "LBC" ®. That is because, for them, "Fukushima" ( 福島第 ) means, 福: (chance, luck) 島第: ('island of,') or, "Island of Chance, Luck".

 

It's as though someone replied, on hearing that a fuse had been lit, and that it leads to a world-ending explosion, "Relax, Buddy! Nobody knows how long that fuse is."

 

 

But, after all that digression, I would like to return to the thread topic and offer to stitch up some of these fraying ends. The upshot includes not just the observation that, simply, there is no plan or program going on, no grand project with some final end which can be held up for hope or hopelessness, not just that it's all a matter of random, undirected events and how they combine in ways that are simply beyond anyone to calculate for their single or multiple influences but also that from an enlightened human perspective, this can be seen as a "good thing"---it would be a truly terrible and unbearable world if there really was an overall purpose, point and design and that this became "known" to us. And, on the other hand, less positively, that evolution not uni-directional, always upward, always onward. Since there is no plan, and no notion of "progress", of "winners" or "losers" in Nature's vocabulary, we and other creatures can just as easily "evolve" into something quite puny in relation to what grand stuff we think of ourselves as being today, if that is the condition on which overrall survival rests. Nature isn't up to anything in particular. It is simply making "trials," "experiments" in life-stuff. And it will "try" anything and everything, no matter what. There's no balance-sheet, no profit-and-loss statement, no quarterly reports to file. Nature has no peer, no competitor. It simply "is".

 

And, for more irony, I recall more and more often Einstein's famous quip in which he ventured that "God doesn't play dice." (in a letter to Max Born, from Wikipedia :

 

"You believe in a God who plays dice, and I in complete law and order in a world which objectively exists, and which I in a wildly speculative way, am trying to capture. I firmly believe, but I hope that someone will discover a more realistic way, or rather a more tangible basis than it has been my lot to find. Even the great initial success of the quantum theory does not make me believe in the fundamental dice game, although I am well aware that some of our younger colleagues interpret this as a consequence of senility."

 

those may have been Einstein's most ironic words. It seems that there is no God, instead there are just the "dice" themselves, rolling incessantly and without point or purpose.

 

 

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

Right or wrong, I owe these views (insights, as I see them) to others, much smarter than I am; you could consult them for yourself if you are interested and curious and, so, while we wait for human stupidity to do us all in, we could read, think and try to add some unknown length to that fuse which is there, and is burning, and none of us knows how long before it reaches the detonation point:

 

 

 

Neil Postman, author of Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology, Knopf, 1992

 

Konrad Lorenz, author of The Waning of Humaneness (1987) (Der Abbau des Menschlichen, 1983), and Behind the Mirror: A Search for a Natural History of Human Knowledge (1973) (Die Rückseite des Spiegels. Versuch einer Naturgeschichte menschlichen Erkennens, 1973), and Civilized Man's Eight Deadly Sins (1974) (Die acht Todsünden der zivilisierten Menschheit, 1973)

 

Nassim Nicholas Taleb, author of The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable (the point of which, really, is that we often have no idea of nor any way to calculate what is or isn't "highly improbable").

 

Bertrand Russell, (works)

Edited September 7, 2012 by proximity1

[StringJunky]

...the US have resorted to the use of atomic weapons already.

 

In the broader scheme of preventing a much more catastrophic conflict (M.A.D.), Nagasaki and Hiroshima are real and poignant reminders of what nuclear weapons can do. If they hadn't been bombed a nuclear war would have probably been much more likely because the world would be in ignorance and the outcome, especially now, would have long-lasting global consequences...the world would not be the same again. To surmise: it cost tens of thousands of lives to save billions of future lives and also keep a habitable planet for much longer...I hope.

 

My thoughts may seem cold but we must learn from history so that those lost Japanese lives were not totally wasted and may have actually helped to preserve the existence and state of humanity as we know it...I think so.

[proximity1]

In the broader scheme of preventing a much more catastrophic conflict (M.A.D.), Nagasaki and Hiroshima are real and poignant reminders of what nuclear weapons can do. If they hadn't been bombed a nuclear war would have probably been much more likely because the world would be in ignorance and the outcome, especially now, would have long-lasting global consequences...the world would not be the same again. To surmise: it cost tens of thousands of lives to save billions of future lives and also keep a habitable planet for much longer...I hope.

 

My thoughts may seem cold but we must learn from history so that those lost Japanese lives were not totally wasted and may have actually helped to preserve the existence and state of humanity as we know it...I think so.

 

This takes us farther still from the thread and perhaps with that I shouldn't even bother with the rest. Maybe I'll delete it bef........................

 

poof. gone.

 

If you'd like to discuss this more, maybe we should (or someone has) started an appropriate thread over in "Politics". Whaddaya think?

[too-open-minded]

Alright well if I have one last thing to say.

 

If their is any hope for the human race, sadly. I think help would be from the hands of the worlds wealthiest people in terms of population control.

 

 

 

[Phi for All]

If their is any hope for the human race, sadly. I think help would be from the hands of the worlds wealthiest people in terms of population control.

If you're saying you wish the ultra-wealthy would stop screwing with us, I agree.

[too-open-minded]

I'm saying ultra wealthy people should cut off our resources. Sadly.

 

Were wasteful and ignorant. I plan on moving to Sweden and becoming self sufficient.

Edited September 7, 2012 by too-open-minded

[Phi for All]

I'm saying ultra wealthy people should cut off our resources. Sadly.

 

Were wasteful and ignorant. I plan on moving to Sweden and becoming self sufficient.

I can't speak for Sweden, of course, but why would a Parliamentary democracy allow the migration of an ignorant, wasteful, poor person who would sadly let the wealthy decide who gets to live to procreate? What's in it for them? It would seem contraindicated, in an evolutionary sense.

[too-open-minded]

Sorry I was kind of broad and I know your thinking the worst about what I said.

 

I just feel like our whole lifestyle; from eating mcdonalds, watching t.v, driving to walmart. Our lives revolve around things we don't need. Most of the jobs in the world, build things we don't need.

 

I'm willing to bet one of the biggest problems with going "green" is that it would put alot of people out of work. Theirs so many things that go into this, you give to one area and you take away from another.

 

I somewhat believe in the "illumaniti."

 

I hate it, I really do. The planet revolves around materialism, the wealthy made money off this and now their looking at a problem that they have created.

 

Yeah a driving a few miles a day, going through a few plastic bottles, and buying processed food that has been shipped widley isn't that bad.... when only one person is doing it. Were raping our planet with pollution.

 

 

I am an ignorant wastefull person. I hate it, i hope to move to Sweden and change my ways. I want to live off the land and minimize the industrial waste I put on this planet.

 

Please, don't think i'm some ass who believes the world needs less people on it. Its not the people its what us people are doing to the biosphere that could bring life to our future generations.

 

I don't know any easy way the degredation of our planet could be handled. I don't want to be a part of the problem or the solution. I want to be in Sweden doing what I have to, to get by and living off the land.

[EMField]

Again, you are using the word evolve in different ways in the same post. This is liable to confuse and introduce ambiguities. It is not a good idea.

 

Individuals change over time, but those changes are not heritable. Only mutations in the germ cells (sperm and ova) are heritable. Changes in the individual do not affect the germ cells.

 

Rocks certainly evolve, but in a quite different way from biological evolution or individual evolution. Drawing the terms together creates more confusion thant clarity. At the end the only thing it does is provide a less elegant way of saying "things change".

 

 

But life evolved from non-life, so the non-genetic became biological where once it wasn't. Basically we are made of the same stuff as the rocks, protons, neutrons and eletrons, just in different combinations and configurations. Energy my man. The very thing that makes you, you and me, me. Without that electric current brains don't function and no thoughts exist. Muscles don't move and hearts don't beat, and life ceases. And it all boils down to atoms and thier configuration and energy level. But before biological life formed, there was only non-biological so they are related beyound seperation.

[proximity1]

But life evolved from non-life, so the non-genetic became biological where once it wasn't. Basically we are made of the same stuff as the rocks, protons, neutrons and eletrons, just in different combinations and configurations. Energy my man. The very thing that makes you, you and me, me. Without that electric current brains don't function and no thoughts exist. Muscles don't move and hearts don't beat, and life ceases. And it all boils down to atoms and thier configuration and energy level. But before biological life formed, there was only non-biological so they are related beyound seperation.

 

 

This deep insight is one that is momentarily lost on the leading lights of contemporary genetics. It's a very high bar your insight asks readers to clear. So, instead, and really without much of any awareness of it, contemporary genetic theory is shot through and through with terms and phrases which are sometimes subtlely, sometimes blantantly, redolent of a teleogical view, of a purpose-directed version of evolution.

 

By such a view we get descriptions of cells as "guardians," or "helpers", or, really, all manner of humanly-derived agency.

 

In an recent article in Scientific American, (August, 2012, vol. 306, Edition 8) "Quiet Little Traitors", by David Stipp, we have "...cells that are programmed to run out of dividing power..." and "cytokines that attract immune cells and activate them to fight infections", or, "senescent cells secrete hurtful molecules, bahaving like catatonic zombies drooling poison."

 

A natural objection is that all such talk is nothing more than a "manner of speaking," that, of course, no one in science who is competent really thinks of the physical matter in so anthropomorhic a manner. But it seems that the most fundamental assumptions---those being the ones least consciously held up for re-examinations--actually do carry a very highly-charged element of "finalism", of purpose-directed life processes. So, it should not be such a wonder to us that "Creative Design" sprang up with such force and captured so many people's imaginations. Contemporary genetics takes a very "designer-driven" view of the basic nature of molecular processes directed specifically by genes, proteins, and other enchanted microscopic entities.

 

This, "But before biological life formed, there was only non-biological so they are related beyound seperation," again, is a very deep insight. It happens that it is also the core principle and driving idea behind the theory of Jean-Jacques Kupiec's "ontophylogenesis---a bio-nature which is founded upon quantum theory not just as a strange, fanciful notion but in actual working anaysis and experimental research. And it's an idea that mainstream biology has not yet come to understand and accept as true and fundamentally important. It is as though quantum physicists never existed or, if they did, they and their ideas and work never chanced to influence the thinking of biologists, for whom the world is still fundamentally an enchanted place, no matter how much they may protest that they are the apostles of solidly-grounded scientific, materialistic, views.

Edited September 10, 2012 by proximity1

[swansont]

This, "But before biological life formed, there was only non-biological so they are related beyound seperation," again, is a very deep insight. It happens that it is also the core principle and driving idea behind the theory of Jean-Jacques Kupiec's "ontophylogenesis---a bio-nature which is founded upon quantum theory not just as a strange, fanciful notion but in actual working anaysis and experimental research. And it's an idea that mainstream biology has not yet come to understand and accept as true and fundamentally important. It is as though quantum physicists never existed or, if they did, they and their ideas and work never chanced to influence the thinking of biologists, for whom the world is still fundamentally an enchanted place, no matter how much they may protest that they are the apostles of solidly-grounded scientific, materialistic, views.

!

Moderator Note

You have a thread for discussing Jean-Jacques Kupiec's position. Please keep discussion of it in that thread, as per the rules.

 

No need to drag this discussion off-topic by responding to this modnote.

[Ophiolite]

But life evolved from non-life, .

Yes, but it did so by a mechanism distinct from that envisaged by the Modern Synthesis. It would be much clearer, less ambiguous, if we were to say that life emerged from non-life, or that life arose from non-life. Using the same word for two disitnct processes is unscientific.

 

But life evolved from non-life, so the non-genetic became biological where once it wasn't.

One of the difficulties here is that humans have a tendency to classify things. We make sense of the universe by organising our observations and the phenomena they relate to. But classification is ultimately artificial. Nature operates independently of any classifications we seek to impose. The distinction between life and non-life is one of these artificial distinctions.

 

True, there are some things that are certainly not alive and others that certainly are. But there are also grey areas and in the past, as life was emerging, these grey areas were likely larger and even more ill-defined. In such circumstances your statement, the non-genetic became biological probably ceases to have meaning. More likely the accretion chemistry gave way to pre-biotic chemistry that led on to biochemistry from which genetic chemistry emerged. It is a spectrum of changes, not a digital LIFE/NON-LIFE.