[extropy-chat] Precognition

[Stathis Papaioannou]

On 3/18/07, Damien Broderick <thespike at satx.rr.com> wrote:

>We wouldn't be sitting around debating whether ESP exists because it
> >would be completely obvious and commonplace. The fact that evolution
> >does not seem to have taken this path should tell us something.
>
> Yes, this also explains why very fleet-footed predators never
> evolved. Their prey would never be able to escape them, and would all
> be swiftly eaten, and the predators would perish. It also accounts
> for the absence of flight among living creatures, since they would be
> able to avoid all predators and would immediately perish in a
> terrible population explosion that obliterated their food supplies.
> Luckily, there are no feedback processes in evolution, or who knows
> what weird things we'd find emerging from our ponds!


Of course there are feedback processes, but these lead to a dynamic
equilibrium, not usually elimination of the adaptive trait: vision leads to
camouflage which leads to better vision, and so on. If ESP were possible, it
would be as useful as a sense like vision, if not more so, and we should
expect to see evidence of it everywhere in nature, just as vision has
evolved independently many times. Moreover, we should expect that it will
become increasingly refined and powerful through evolutionary competition,
just as other senses have.

Stathis Papaioannou

Stathis Papaioannou
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