[ExI] hard science

spike spike66 at att.net
Thu Feb 13 02:01:49 UTC 2014


>... On Behalf Of Tara Maya

>...Amoebas are still wandering around in single-cell suits, despite being
immensely older than 10,000 years, and despite the presence of our exalted
selves...Not everything old is extinct. Not everything new displaces what it
replaces.  Tara Maya
______________________________________________

Consider the first amoeba to evolve.  That one is still alive.  Reasoning:
as soon as one could reasonably define that beast as an amoeba, a billion
years ago perhaps, a piece of it blebbed off and became another amoeba, but
that was the second one.  The original one was still there, just smaller.
Or if something came along and devoured the first one, the second one could
just as legitimately be defined as the first one, and the previous first
one, which was devoured, becomes the second, after off-blebbing from the
other.

In either case, repeat that same thought experiment arbitrarily many times,
and you soon realize that any amoeba you observe under your home microscope
is every bit as much the first one as any other one.  If that thought
experiment isn't satisfying, start with any two present day amoebea and run
the clock backwards: two similar amoebae belb into one.  It doesn't matter
which of the two you consider the dominant one, perhaps the larger, it
doesn't matter: the precursor into which the two amoebae belbed is the same
either way.  Repeat repeatedly, all the way back to the first amoeba to
evolve.

We have every reason for confidence that there will still be amoebae doing
the same as they are now, little changed since the first one first evolved,
when the sun goes red supergiant and slays everything here.  Conclusion: the
amoeba is immortal.

Ain't evolution kewall?  {8^D

spike




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