[ExI] Anti-transhumanist crap on Kuro5hin and related.

[giovanni santost]

I think it is kind of silly to try to "explain" evolution in terms of "chance". Chance is a code-word for our ignorance. Saying that evolution is driven by probabilistic events is not really an explanation of anything. It just shows we don't understand what really goes on and we recur to statistical arguments as the best possible way to model what we don't fully understand. As a model, Darwinian Evolution is the best  we have at the moment, but we have to realize any model is a limited picture of reality.
Probablility makes sense when applied to a large sample of data. Sadly, we know so far, just one example of  world with life so probability and evolution should be used in the same sentence with extreme caution.





Kevin H <kevin.l.holmes at gmail.com> wrote: On 11/8/07, Harvey Newstrom <mail at harveynewstrom.com> wrote: Keith Henson wrote,
> Genes build brains with particular motivations. These
> genes were selected during the millions of years our 
> ancestors lived as hunter-gatherers that built brains
> with inclinations to do things that improved the genes
> chances of being present in the next generation.

This is really a nit hardly worth mentioning.  (But for some reason, here I 
go....)

It is a personal pet peeve of mine that people anthropomorphize "evolution"
into trying to propagate genes to the next generation.  Evolution has no
such goals.  In reality, the cause and effect are reversed.  Creatures 
undergo random mutations or pursue random acts with no clear goal toward
propagation.  It is by sheer statistics that those changes less likely to
survive tend to die out while those changes more likely to survive increase 
in number.  But this should imply no motivation to the creatures involved to
actually reproduce.  They are usually just rutting beasts that are focused
on their short-term goals rather than long-term goals.   
 I just wanted to say Thank You!  It's a pet peeve of mine also, mainly because people come to all sorts of invalid views based on said anthropormization: namely, that evolution proceeds towards some kind of goal, like a pre-established or pre-determinable state of "fitness".  But in reality, evolution is nothing but another word for "change": it doesn't imply that what it changes into will be better, more complex, more extropic, or anything else; we really have no idea where this tumbleweed will blow off to next. 
  
 Best regards,
  
 Kevin

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