[extropy-chat] Re: Intelligent Design and Irriducible Complexity

[Spike]

> Kevin Freels
> Irriducible Complexity
> >
> > 2. By Darwin, all structures must over any long time be useful for
> survival or they gradually vanish. What is the survival advantage of 
> having God?
> >
> According to Darwin, yes, but I am not so sure about that...


Did Darwin express this thought or is it a derivative?  
The Origin of Species carries some thoughts that are
kinda along these lines, but nearly 2/3 of the book
is actually about mate selection.  This is a neglected
part of evolution education which causes many 
misunderstandings.  Mate selection can lead to many 
structures that have no apparent survival advantage, 
and may carry survival disadvantages, such as the 
peacock's heavy tail plumage.

Steven Jay Gould gives an example of a species that
apparently went extinct because of mate-selection
characteristics that worked against survival of the
genome: a particular species of elk that developed
monster-huge antlers.  The theory is that the does
continued to choose the bucks with the largest antlers
long after they were too big to use for fighting rival
males.  Eventually the buck's antlers became so heavy,
the does were not able to support their considerable
heft during the mating process.  The results were
predictable.

I have posted one of my favorite notions here before,
that human brains resulted from mate selection: both
genders selected mates with bulbous heads because the
big-headed were cute.  They looked like babies.  The
cute tended to mate sooner and more often, giving a
slight reproductive advantage to the large-headed,
resulting in a totally accidentally smart species.

The punchline to all this is that large brains now
work against our survival, just as the oversized
antlers did for those elk and their ilk.  We make
war, we use birth control, we build nukes, all of
which work against human survival.  

Before you reject this notion, consider this.  Some
have argued that our large brains contribute to our
survival in the wild, for we outsmart other beasts,
etc, so that large brains have a survival advantage.
The argument continues that humans have little
natural defense: we are not particularly swift runners, 
we have no claws, no fangs, etc.  

I would question this to some extent, but even if I 
allow these notions, we have another natural defense 
that few humans think about: we taste terrible.  Evidence:
there are cases where lions or other large carnivores
have slain humans, but do not actually devour same.
Here in Taxifornia, we have mountain lions.  Occasionally
one attacks and even slays a human.  It is common to 
find such a victim with exactly one hunk of meat torn away.
The hunk of meat is often found nearby, undevoured.
The Alaska bear guy who was found dead recently had exactly
one leg more or less eaten.  The Australian babe carried
away by the dingo was evidently not devoured either, for
her clothing would have been shredded.

If any large carnivore attacks a human, surely that beast 
was hungry, yet the prey is seldom devoured.  My conclusion
is that evidently we taste terrible, and probably
smell bad to most animals too.  So humans could likely
survive in the wild alongside large carnivores, even
without actually outsmarting them, like the skunk.
Friends, we are skunks.  

Given that, I would argue we are waaaay smarter than
we need to be to survive, but more to the point, we are
too smart for our own good.  We might actually breed
better if we were dumber.  We would be far less comfortable
as individuals, of course, but evolution does not work
towards the comfort and survival of the individual.

In that sense, large brains are analogous to large
antlers.  If we manage to grey goo the planet with
runaway nanotech, do let me say I told ya so.  In
advance.  

spike