[extropy-chat] Seven cents an hour? (was: Riots in France)

[John K Clark]

"Eliezer S. Yudkowsky" <sentience at pobox.com>

> If allele A has an advantage over allele B in one environment, it does
> not follow that B cannot have an advantage over A given a different
> environment,

Maybe that's why I specifically said "at least in this environment"

> a different ecology, or just a different species gene pool

The same thing said 3 ways to sound cool.

> Your remark about elephants and mastodons did not even refer to alleles

I didn't talk about the lungs liver or spleen of elephants and mastodons
either. I suppose I could have said something about alleles, it might have
sounded erudite too, but it would have added nothing to the conversation.
But if you insist: Although many, probably most, alleles have nothing to do
with the resulting phenotype (junk DNA) the phenotype always has something
to do with the fate of its alleles; an allele in a animal that dies before
sexual maturity is going to find it rather difficult getting into the next
generation; thus a allele always does better in a successful phenotype than
a unsuccessful one.

At the time I felt that pointing this out in a discussion about Wal-Mart
would be full of sound and fury signifying nothing, a tail told by an idiot.
I still feel that way.

> and species selection is a discredited concept

I like the theories of Williams and Dawkins, but to say species selection is
a discredited concept is going too far, at least Stephen Jay Gould
thought so. If I was a betting man I'd say there is a 65% chance that in 15
years it will be a discredited concept, but we're not there yet.

   John K Clark