[ExI] Evolution

[Dave Sill]

On Sat, May 23, 2020 at 1:30 AM The Avantguardian via extropy-chat <
extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:

>
> It is true that deleterious mutations are more common than beneficial
> ones. It is the price that life pays for searching fitness-space for
> greener pastures on the other side of the valley of death. That being said,
> automotive engines display a different sort of complexity than living
> systems. The complexity of the car engine is imposed upon it a top-down
> fashion. Because of that, the engine's parts are very specialized and
> essential. This has the effect of making the engine brittle and
> failure-prone.
>

No, engines are brittle because that's the way we design them. We don't
design them to last a million miles or to be inherently redundant, we
design them to be relatively robust, inexpensive, and efficient. Would you
pay $200,000 for a car that got 15 mpg, performed like a Camry, and had an
drive train that was unlikely to ever need repair? Engineering is about
trade-offs. Manufacturers know what buyers will buy and design their
products to meet that demand.

-Dave
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.extropy.org/pipermail/extropy-chat/attachments/20200525/25bc9839/attachment.htm>