[ExI] Essential Upload Data

[Re Rose]

Stuart, you hit the nail on the head! Yes, evolution is inextricably tied
to error rate, and DNA transcription enzymes allowing a particular error
rate (which varies from organism to organism) IS indeed a feature not a
bug! Many have written on this, Manfred Eigen derived specific error rates
that led to the so-called "error catastrophe".

Ben, I don't think anyone (and certainly I did not mean to imply) said
evolution is a "perfect" system. It is a damn good one though, and I am not
awfully interested in getting away from it as "soon as possible" (what a
great way to accidently break biochemistry) but I am in favor of helping
with small, studied perturbations.

--Regina


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Message: 7
Date: Fri, 22 May 2020 23:02:03 +0100
From: Ben <ben at zaiboc.net>
To: extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org
Subject: Re: [ExI] Evolution
Message-ID: <23d4d682-db56-5967-8841-6a0d7cd9efce at zaiboc.net>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=windows-1252; format=flowed

On 22/05/2020 13:34, Stuart LaForge wrote:
>   the error rate that you and John complain about is an essential part of
evolution. If DNA replication was 100% accurate then none of us would be
here. Life would never have progressed beyond the RNA world or whatever the
prototypical life scenario was. The ability to modulate the error rate and
fine tune it over time and space is a feature of DNA-based wetware, and not
a bug. Perfect fidelity is unnatural and changing environmental conditions
will inevitably render any "perfect" organism extinct.

This is perfectly true, and of course I'm not arguing otherwise.
What I am saying is that regarding evolution as a perfect system is silly
and that there are other, better ways of doing things. Evolution,
biology and nature in general has done a marvellous but limited job so
far, and now (or soon) it's time for something better. My analogy of
evolution as an abusive parent stands. Without it, we wouldn't be here,
but we need to get away from it asap.

--
Ben Zaiboc
   [ExI] Essential Upload Data
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