The comments section of my last blog erupted into a comment war that I should really respond to. OK, it was just Travis (hello Travis!). But I still need to respond. Most of this is things I see as misconceptions about evolution in general. I don't think Travis mentioned all of them, but I think they're all related- and good to know- so I've thrown them in here for the fun of it.
Firstly, I'm sure we've all heard claims that evolution is "just a theory". This has mostly come from the Intelligent Design people, and it's been widely condemned as misleading. The fact is, evolution is "just a theory". That means its a pretty good description of how things work. What it is not is a description of how things should work. Admittedly, saying evolution is the way things should work is mostly the work of Hollywood biologists (who, remarkably, are mostly Lamarkists). But this makes it quite a common misconception, and a bit of a dangerous one. Frankly I have no idea how things should work, but assuming the status quo is best is quite bonkers.
" Beware the voice of the Profit!"? Erm, no actually. To be profitable, you have to make the best use of available resources, to produce something that ultimately makes life easier for people. This is also what a good genetic trait does. It turns out that ultimately, profitability is an extension of the need to survive. So it follows that people who are trying to produce something profitable, are actually aiding survival. Mining companies produce energy and materials for building shelter and transport. The more they produce, for the least effort, the more profitable they become. The thing that makes things difficult is money. Not all things can be easily compared. An hour of a watchmaker's time is not directly comparable to a tonne of iron ore. This is why a universal unit, money was introduced. Money should make things easier, but the fact is although it can measure the value of most useful things, there are still a lot that it can't, things like knowledge, and health. Another problem is that you can't always figure out what the most profitable thing to do is, but that's pretty obvious. It does however, have a very significant consequence, which I'll write about later (except I'll probably forget, its all part of the fun here at Alias Mr Hackenbacker).
Travis also mentioned short term profitability, and apparently he doesn't like it. Here's the thing though. An organism might receive a new trait through genetic mutation that in the long run might make it the king of all creation. The problem is though, that if the trait is not immediately useful, it is not selected. Similarly, if a company isn't profitable (producing something useful) pretty much all the time, it just consumes capital (resources), and fails. So short term profitability is just another extension of one consequence of natural selection.
I hope I've said something useful here. There are several more conclusions I could make, but this is supposed to be a technology blog, not "Hiram explains capitalism", so from now on its shiny things and loud explosions. And probably more bloody evolution.
Sunday, June 29, 2008
Friday, June 20, 2008
Clearin' some Shit
If you're wondering where I've been, well I've been busy. Major projects don't do themselves, even when there's nothing to do.
I figured I'd return to the blagosphere by clearing up something I've figured out, but have never told anybody (I'm like that woman in Hitchhiker's who figures out the meaning of life just before the Vogons destroy the world, except I'm not a woman, and the Vogons represent apathy). A couple of blog posts I made earlier depend on this something, which is why I'm cleaing this up now (if that doesn't make sense, your not thinking fourth dimensionally).
Life has existed on Earth for about a billion years (out of the 4 billion years that the earth has existed, out of the 13.7 billion years the universe has existed). This has culminated in the rather sexy form you see now. Also, ponies! The weird thing is, sexy folk and ponies are related. The reason sexy folk and ponies look different is because of evolution. Evolution is made up of two basic things; natural selection and genetic mutation. natural selection means that physical features of an organism that are not useful to survival tend to lead to the death of the organism that possess them, while those that are useful promote survival. This is an extraordinarily efficient proccess. The obvious question is, where did these physical features come from in the first place? The answer is extraordinarily complex and subtle, but the simple answer is random changes in the genes of the organism. I really am simplifiying for the sake of brevity here, and if you want a fuller answer you should really read The Blind Watchmaker by Richard Dawkins. It's really dense, but remarkably clear, and it has no agenda like a lot of his books. Anyway, the thing to remember is that genes mutate and throw up new physical features, which either contribute to survival and themselves survive, or don't and disappear. This proccess worked perfectly well by itself for hundreds of millions of years.
Them something strang happened. Evolution had produced these things called apes. People still like to argue about what exactly happened, but apes became intelligent. They could analyse problems, solve them, and communicate the solution to other apes. Biologists can point out that a lot of animals can do this, but it seems the apes were just better at it at the right time. Eventually the apes began to record the things going on around them. They could also make tools to solve problems, rather than just using bits of their anatomy. What apes had then, was a remarkable combination of traits that simply changed the way evolution worked. Problem solving was previously the domain of a random proccess, the mutation of genes. The problem was, genes couldn't see the problem they were solving. To use an ancient phrase, the watchmaker was blind. Apes were not blind. Using a brain to solve a problem meant that they could see what was needed and try and make that, not as an extension of their bodies, but as a seperate and eventually reusable tool. There was another problem with genes, they only recorded what worked at the time, and nothing else. this wasn't true of the ape mind, it was capable of recording the past, building a library of ideas both successful and unsuccessful to draw on if and when the need arose.
This means you, ape. This is what you're suppposed to do with that spiderweb of neurons of yours. The problem is, we aren't doing it very well. Looking at problems and solving them isn't done very well at the moment (biofuel?), and we apes need to do science on more things, to see how they work, so we can solve all our problems. We're also not doing so great at that learning from our mistakes part, from what I can see (Hello, Mr Costa!). I just think its time for more Large Hadron Colliders, more Tacoma Narrows, and less Kyle Sandilands.
Disclaimer: As far as I can tell current knowledge of early human evolution goes something like: First there were mokeys, them some cool stuff happened, then uh...Egyptians? There are still a lot of questions about how we got to where we are today. I don't think the details matter so much to the point of this post, but if I've made glaringly obvious mistake, fell free to say so in the comments.
I figured I'd return to the blagosphere by clearing up something I've figured out, but have never told anybody (I'm like that woman in Hitchhiker's who figures out the meaning of life just before the Vogons destroy the world, except I'm not a woman, and the Vogons represent apathy). A couple of blog posts I made earlier depend on this something, which is why I'm cleaing this up now (if that doesn't make sense, your not thinking fourth dimensionally).
Life has existed on Earth for about a billion years (out of the 4 billion years that the earth has existed, out of the 13.7 billion years the universe has existed). This has culminated in the rather sexy form you see now. Also, ponies! The weird thing is, sexy folk and ponies are related. The reason sexy folk and ponies look different is because of evolution. Evolution is made up of two basic things; natural selection and genetic mutation. natural selection means that physical features of an organism that are not useful to survival tend to lead to the death of the organism that possess them, while those that are useful promote survival. This is an extraordinarily efficient proccess. The obvious question is, where did these physical features come from in the first place? The answer is extraordinarily complex and subtle, but the simple answer is random changes in the genes of the organism. I really am simplifiying for the sake of brevity here, and if you want a fuller answer you should really read The Blind Watchmaker by Richard Dawkins. It's really dense, but remarkably clear, and it has no agenda like a lot of his books. Anyway, the thing to remember is that genes mutate and throw up new physical features, which either contribute to survival and themselves survive, or don't and disappear. This proccess worked perfectly well by itself for hundreds of millions of years.
Them something strang happened. Evolution had produced these things called apes. People still like to argue about what exactly happened, but apes became intelligent. They could analyse problems, solve them, and communicate the solution to other apes. Biologists can point out that a lot of animals can do this, but it seems the apes were just better at it at the right time. Eventually the apes began to record the things going on around them. They could also make tools to solve problems, rather than just using bits of their anatomy. What apes had then, was a remarkable combination of traits that simply changed the way evolution worked. Problem solving was previously the domain of a random proccess, the mutation of genes. The problem was, genes couldn't see the problem they were solving. To use an ancient phrase, the watchmaker was blind. Apes were not blind. Using a brain to solve a problem meant that they could see what was needed and try and make that, not as an extension of their bodies, but as a seperate and eventually reusable tool. There was another problem with genes, they only recorded what worked at the time, and nothing else. this wasn't true of the ape mind, it was capable of recording the past, building a library of ideas both successful and unsuccessful to draw on if and when the need arose.
This means you, ape. This is what you're suppposed to do with that spiderweb of neurons of yours. The problem is, we aren't doing it very well. Looking at problems and solving them isn't done very well at the moment (biofuel?), and we apes need to do science on more things, to see how they work, so we can solve all our problems. We're also not doing so great at that learning from our mistakes part, from what I can see (Hello, Mr Costa!). I just think its time for more Large Hadron Colliders, more Tacoma Narrows, and less Kyle Sandilands.
Disclaimer: As far as I can tell current knowledge of early human evolution goes something like: First there were mokeys, them some cool stuff happened, then uh...Egyptians? There are still a lot of questions about how we got to where we are today. I don't think the details matter so much to the point of this post, but if I've made glaringly obvious mistake, fell free to say so in the comments.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)