Hello, I would just like to point something that's really bothering me: the way you talk about evolution, like it has some kind of purpose. This is really not the case, and I feel describing it this way really is harming scientific thought.
"Evolution" as we can observe emerges from conjunction of two phenomena: mutations, and selective p…
Hello, I would just like to point something that's really bothering me: the way you talk about evolution, like it has some kind of purpose. This is really not the case, and I feel describing it this way really is harming scientific thought.
"Evolution" as we can observe emerges from conjunction of two phenomena: mutations, and selective pressure. These are very dumb phenomena, and do not "know" or "want" anything - they are forces, just like gravity.
There are multiple consequences of this:
- there is not "good" or "bad" evolutions; this doesn't make sense. All there is are random mutations, and environment that kills individuals, creating selective pressure.
- it's not because a behaviour / phenomena emerges, that it has to be related to evolution. There are plenty of mutations that barely change the fitness function of a population (see genetic drift).
Of course, when I say "evolution wants you to reproduce your genes" this is a shorthand for something like "there has long been selective pressure such that organisms that were better able to reproduce their genes had more descendants". I trust readers (like you) understand this.
Hello, I would just like to point something that's really bothering me: the way you talk about evolution, like it has some kind of purpose. This is really not the case, and I feel describing it this way really is harming scientific thought.
"Evolution" as we can observe emerges from conjunction of two phenomena: mutations, and selective pressure. These are very dumb phenomena, and do not "know" or "want" anything - they are forces, just like gravity.
There are multiple consequences of this:
- there is not "good" or "bad" evolutions; this doesn't make sense. All there is are random mutations, and environment that kills individuals, creating selective pressure.
- it's not because a behaviour / phenomena emerges, that it has to be related to evolution. There are plenty of mutations that barely change the fitness function of a population (see genetic drift).
Of course, when I say "evolution wants you to reproduce your genes" this is a shorthand for something like "there has long been selective pressure such that organisms that were better able to reproduce their genes had more descendants". I trust readers (like you) understand this.