[extropy-chat] Intelligent Design and Irriducible Complexity

[Hara Ra]

Group evolution is a very poorly defined term. A species is defined as a 
collection of organisms which can only reproduce among themselves. Even 
this definition has its flaws, there is a bird found in the Himalyas which 
at any longitude mates with its own  kind, but birds taken from Pakistan 
cannot mate with ones taken from Burma. Albatrosses go around the world, 
but there is an overlap zone where two types appear which cannot reproduce, 
but are the ends of a continum.

Evolution can be applied to collections of organisms which interbreed but 
groups in humans have enormous variety, and are often defined by culture, 
which is a mementic kind of thing. Memes are too ill defined to say much 
about them, wheras DNA has a very specific physical definition in the base 
pairs.

Also, groups do not reproduce, their members do. I would rather say a 
group's characteristics unfold than evolve. And, organisms have elements 
with definite boundaries which we call bodies. I can't say the same of a group.

Finally we have to be careful here - the usual folk meaning of evolution 
implies positive change. Actual evolution is persistence and survival. 
Remember the rat and the cockroach, whose forms are so successful they 
haven't changed in ages. Their evolution is to remain the same.....


> > Eliezer Yudkowsky
> >
> > Spike wrote:
> > >
> > > If that is the case, then we have an example of
> > > natural selection working at the group level...

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=   Hara Ra (aka Gregory Yob)    =
=     harara at sbcglobal.net       =
=   Alcor North Cryomanagement   =
=   Alcor Advisor to Board       =
=       831 429 8637             =
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