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Elok
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Land of Ramen Dragons
Mar 2003
time: 00:27
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DISCLAIMER: THIS IS NOT A RELIGIOUS THREAD. DO NOT MAKE IT INTO A RELIGIOUS THREAD. IF PEOPLE START ARGUING ABOUT JESUS VS. DARWIN IN THIS THREAD I WILL ASK THE MODS TO LOCK IT. I DO NOT START RELIGIOUS BICKERING THREADS; I ONLY TRY TO END THEM.
Okay? Now that that's settled, on to the actual question:
Does the theory of evolution have any technological application? This question came to me one day while I was playing Civ2 and I wondered why Darwin's Voyage gives you civ advances when IRL the theory of evolution seems to be most useful as a philosophical statement. I've never heard of evolution leading to any device, medicine or process the way quantum mechanics led to the MRI or Einstein's work led, eventually, to the nuclear age. I'm not challenging its verity in this thread, only its usefullness. I've read, in Michael Chrichton books, that evolution can be used as a metaphor for writing computer languages or describing systems, but that's not really a direct application, and MC books would also have us believe that some kinds of epilepsy turn you into an axe murderer, so, y'know, it's a questionable source. Obviously, I'm not well read on the question but if somebody could better inform me I'd appreciate it.
Does a theory based on the distant past have potential uses for the future?
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Elok
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Land of Ramen Dragons
Mar 2003
time: 00:27
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quote:
Originally posted by Urban Ranger
In argiculture. Without evolution, we wouldn't have an agricultural evolution - no domesticated crops and animals. In fact, it is still being widely used in agriculture today. Even for indirect things, like we shouldn't use pesticides too much because that will only end up in super pests, and that prompted us to look elsewhere. |
I agree about the pesticide thing, but people have been domesticating and cultivating since *long* before Darwin(or Lamarck, or Aristotle, for that matter).
I'm not sure whether I agree about the altered-worldview bit either, because the scientific method also predates Darwin, and I think the general idea of "only the strong survive" could arise from a context not involving the belief that survival of the fittest was the most active process in shaping our ecosystem; to put it another way, do you need to believe that we are the distant descendents of fish in order to appreciate the improvement value of competition? Laissez-faire capitalism is a similar concept in some respects, but unrelated in its development.
DAVOUT: I'm terribly pragmatic; I don't especially care for knowledge in and of itself, but only for the ways it can be specifically used or exploited for the benefit of myself or others. Knowing how something happened is nice but not terribly useful unless it springboards to application in the present. But that's just me talking.
Multi-dimensional geometry, unlike the TOE, is a procedure like other forms of mathematics, and not just a description, correct? That's where I think your analogy fails. Evolution on a grand scale is a process that applies, by its nature, only to the past, and veeeery gradually to the present, and is accomplished as such without human help. Artificially controlled evolution is just domestication and breeding, which has been done for milennia.
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Inverse Icarus
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flying too low to the ground
May 2001
time: 00:27
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The End of our Evolution and the Rise of Machines
A Paper Based on Conjecture from “Can Animals and Machines be Persons?”
“Life” has been evolving since the dawn of Earth, and has no intention of letting up any time soon. Evolution of a biological species takes millions of years, and is the product of specific gene mutations being passed on to next generations. It’s a slow moving process at best, and it’s a statistician’s nightmare, a roll of the die sets the whole thing to chaos. Mechanical evolution, however, can be planned, organized, evaluated, and perhaps more importantly, can be done extremely rapidly. Look at how far computers have come since their conception, only a few decades ago, it’s simply amazing. In a new world, simplicity will begat complexity, chaos will begat order, and biological will begat mechanical.
One of the biggest arguments against artificial intelligence is that its current incantation is essentially hard coded rules in which a machine is being told how to emulate human thought, and essentially, that is true. Today’s code, both in games and research areas, is a nothing but emulation, at best. However, a lot of research has been done into the areas of artificial intelligence, self-evolving code, and robotics recently, and when these areas advance sufficiently enough to meet up, mechanical life will begin.
The only way to develop a truly sentient artificial intelligence, in my opinion, is to not develop it at all. The criticisms based on underlying, hard-coded, humanistic tendencies for artificial intelligence must be addressed, and the artificial intelligence must be allowed to evolve on its own. It can be supplied with the basic structures for learning, such as schemas, and the basic foundations of cognition and data organization. Then, the agent should be run, and left alone to evolve its own intelligence, besides, recreating human intelligence for a non-human host seems ignorant, and honestly, boring. Imagine what could happen regarding artificial agents’ emotions if they weren’t provided any ideas about them. Would they evolve their own emotions? Would they be similar to ours? I wonder what intelligent agents “grown” in isolation would do, if we created “societies” of artificial agents in an isolated environment with no knowledge of humanity, where we could supply them with enough raw materials to do their bidding. Would the original agents look to create other ones, to reproduce, or would they simply look to expand their own functionality? The question comes down to this, what happens to cognition when the biological drives of life are taken away?
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Dauphin
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Caught in a tuna net
Jan 1970
time: 05:27
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quote:
Originally posted by Azazel
Also, our current economical system is based on evolution, and competetiveness.
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I thought that evolutionary theory came after the theories of economic competition/survival of the fittest, not the other way around. (That is the ideas were present in economic theories before Darwin).
Last edited by Dauphin on 19-04-2003 at 02:35
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CyberGnu
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of the Virtual Serengeti
Apr 1999
time: 05:27
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Mutegenecity of chemical compounds is tested via a direct application of evolution.
You take a petri dish covered with agaros (a sugar), and apply a drop of bacteria which has been genetically modified to lack the enzyme for agaros breakdown. Since they can't use the agaros, they have no nutrition and they can't grow. They can still replicate, though, by feeding on each other, and eventually one of them will mutate into a form that can use the agaros, and a colony will grow.
If you also add a chemical that promotes mutations (i.e. it is mutagenic), the rate of mutations will be increased. Practically, what you do is simply take 200 petri dishes, use 100 as the standard, apply the chemical to the other 100, and then see how much faster the ones with added chemical mutates.
The faster they mutate, the more mutagenic the chemical is, and consequently more cancer inducing.
Now, this really isn't important enough for a "wonder of the world", but I think it is a pretty cool application 
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Urban Ranger
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Apolyton Duke of Off-Topic
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quote:
Originally posted by Elok
I agree about the pesticide thing, but people have been domesticating and cultivating since *long* before Darwin(or Lamarck, or Aristotle, for that matter). |
That's true. Don't forget that for most of human's history, we invented things without knowing the theories behind them. For example, earthernware, gunpowder, and compass. So was domestication of plants and animals, which is really just evolution applied.
Don't forget, the definition of evolution is "changes in frequencies of alleles in a species within a region."
quote:
Originally posted by Elok
I'm not sure whether I agree about the altered-worldview bit either, because the scientific method also predates Darwin, and I think the general idea of "only the strong survive" could arise from a context not involving the belief that survival of the fittest was the most active process in shaping our ecosystem; to put it another way, do you need to believe that we are the distant descendents of fish in order to appreciate the improvement value of competition? Laissez-faire capitalism is a similar concept in some respects, but unrelated in its development. |
The application of certain knowledge does not require the knowledge itself. For example, if you are hammering a nail, you are applying physics. You don't need to know physics to use a hammer, however.
That's a bit confusing, so think about that.
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Az
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MACEDONIA - It's the name of the sovereign country to the north of Greece
Apr 2000
time: 07:27
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quote:
Speaking of this (though off-topic), I have to say a big "**** You" to the folks at Greenpeace and their knee-jerk opposition to GMOs. IMO, they are partly responsible for the deaths of millions in Africa by starvation. |
A mixed reaction here, Boris. I applaud you for ignoring the bullshit ( Sorry, UR ) that is getting spread around, and embracing GMOs as viable, and productive measures, but I am really not knowlegeable on the exact details of famines there.
quote:
AFAIK, genetic modification doesn't really increase crop yield. These genes just make the plants product things they don't before.
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It can do both. You've said yourself that a chinese biologist had inreased rice crop yield through selective breeding, i.e. applying very strong evolutionary pressure to achieve a goal. Gentic Engineering could shorten the time needed a lot.
quote:
Plant genomes are hugely complex, much more complex than animal ones. Without knowing what's going on, doing GM on plants is not a wise idea. It reminds one of using pesticides without knowing much about ecology.
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That's why you try to know what is going on. That's why things are checked for years before they are made available on the market. One could argue that not enough is done. If solid evidence would be presented to me, I would agree. But saying that we should throw out GMOs as a solution, and we should just "leave it alone" is completely unacceptabl.
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Urban Ranger
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Apolyton Duke of Off-Topic
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quote:
Originally posted by Azazel
A mixed reaction here, Boris. I applaud you for ignoring the bullshit ( Sorry, UR ) that is getting spread around, and embracing GMOs as viable, and productive measures, but I am really not knowlegeable on the exact details of famines there. |
You sound like a religious fundamentalist, ignoring your opponents arguments. 
quote:
Originally posted by Azazel
quote:
AFAIK, genetic modification doesn't really increase crop yield. These genes just make the plants product things they don't before.
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It can do both. You've said yourself that a chinese biologist had inreased rice crop yield through selective breeding, i.e. applying very strong evolutionary pressure to achieve a goal. Gentic Engineering could shorten the time needed a lot. |
See my other point below.
quote:
Originally posted by Azazel
quote:
Plant genomes are hugely complex, much more complex than animal ones. Without knowing what's going on, doing GM on plants is not a wise idea. It reminds one of using pesticides without knowing much about ecology.
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That's why you try to know what is going on. That's why things are checked for years before they are made available on the market. One could argue that not enough is done. If solid evidence would be presented to me, I would agree. But saying that we should throw out GMOs as a solution, and we should just "leave it alone" is completely unacceptabl. |
Solution to what? To me, it is a solution looking for a problem. Besides the problems I have pointed out (genes getting spreaded into the environment, etc.), what do these GMO's attempt to solve?
Last edited by Urban Ranger on 20-04-2003 at 06:59
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18-04-2003 19:59
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