Subject:
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Re: Drake Equation (was: Re: Some great Space info and dicussion)
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.space
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Date:
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Thu, 23 Jan 2003 14:50:42 GMT
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Viewed:
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1266 times
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In lugnet.space, Lindsay Frederick Braun writes:
>
> Redemption is, of course, an ethical concept,
> not an evolutionary one. Yes, our propensity
> towards violence is rooted in the competitive
> nature that very probably *gave* us our intellects
> to begin with; but that aggressive nature in
> itself wouldn't be sufficient to snuff out nearly
> all multicellular life on the planet (or even
> our own species). That particular twist is
> entirely thanks to human sapience.
There's some analogy here about blaming the gun rather than the wielder, but
it's a little too late in the night for me to tell whether it changes the
argument...
>
> I'd argue that you can't have the type of
> intellect we have *without* the conflict and
> competitiveness;
So would I! I hope I didn't unintentionally imply otherwise.
>
> the question is how close one
> has to cut it in order to survive the period
> in which the species has the ability to destroy
> utterly the closed system upon which its survival
> is dependent. A million years is a geological
> blink of an eye, after all, and at the rate we've
> been going in just the last two hundred years,
> be it in fouling our nest or killing one another,
> we'll have vanished before a thousand more. If
> all intelligence in the cosmos follows such a
> pattern, then intelligence (at least that of
> the type that would build artifices and colonize
> space) may in fact be a dead-end: a short-term
> survival benefit without long-term staying power.
Firstly, I'm not sure we can say with any confidence that we're headed for
_total_ extinction (and technically that's the only way we become an
evolutionary dead-end).
Secondly, given the completely unique and unprecedented situation of the
"closed system", to out-compete and to survive long-term are two different
things. I would argue that because the genome doesn't "plan" and is subject
completely to change in its _current_ environment, then long-term survival
isn't really something that a species is selected for. Lumping a species
that is "too good" into the dead-end basket along with various sterile
mutants (which are _definitely_ evolutionary dead-ends) seems completely
inappropriate. It may be our brains' fault that we're imperiling ourselves,
but it's not our genes' fault. They've done a wonderful job, so to speak.
Personally, I feel that the nastiest, most tragic, depressing, brutal,
unpleasant and wrong thing about our Universe is the selfish gene. No wonder
there are so many creationists!
>
> But as I said, I'd like to remain optimistic.
> That's why I love .space so much. :)
My hope is that genetic evolution is about to finish/culminate (for us
humans), and that technological and mental evolution will take over where it
left off...
Here's a little something to be optimistic about:
http://www.enviromission.com.au/project/prototype.htm
And here's one way of looking at the beginnings of mental evolution:
http://www.susanblackmore.co.uk/SciAm00.html
Cheers,
Paul
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