Evolution is romanticized, but its ability are limited, not infinite.
The more complex a species, the less adaptivity it has to fundamental shifts in environmental pressures. The interconnections between protein functions are directly responsible for that trade-off, and become a liability.
The time scales for evolution far beyond our current level of genetic complexity, probably extend beyond the life span of the Earth.
Now the benefit of this speghetti-code situation is that no intelligent designer is required - obviously a fundamental ingredient of abiogenesis, but does it benefit an species that's capable of genetic editing?
Nope. At this point, it's really just a bottleneck to even repairing the most straight-forward genetic diseases.
As a species, we're approaching the time where we've obviated evolution. ...I won't say we've seen that yet because reproduction rates are still very uneven across population segments, but it's only a matter of a few more generations (cataclysms not withstanding).
It’s not spaghetti code... I just think your analogy is weak and misleading.
Not sure how you’re defining complex but humans pretty soundly refute that adaptability thing.
It’s not a “bottleneck” it’s just... life. Can you point to an animal anywhere near as successful as humans that doesn’t have.. genetic variability? No. It’s a requirement and precondition for our success, not some flaw we overcame despite.
Nonetheless, it's a very freeing view to consider that just by existing you've already succeeded. Everything that comes after is an adventure. You've already beaten far, far greater odds just by being here than anything you'll accomplish in life.
Something being more mysterious doesn't make it more interesting.
What's my private key? It's a mystery, but not a very interesting one.
Why does the universe exist? It's mysterious, maybe the most mysterious thing of all, and 8lit's interesting, but I'd say it's not the most interesting question of them all.
by mystery, i mean much more than that which is not known.
i mean to convey: something that is difficult or impossible to explain. something that is deeply interesting and provokes wonderment.
what is more difficult to explain and understand than the fundamental nature of existence?
perhaps it is not apparently immediately _useful_.
but in a cosmic sense, of what use is it to understand thought objects in the world when there is a complete lack of understanding of the consciousness in which these thought objects arise?
i’m curious what are some candidates for “most interesting question of them all” in your view. this is something which sparks a genuine curiosity in me and would love to hear your perspective.
it is evident that people don’t actually converge on singular sets of beliefs in this way. but for sake of argument let’s put that aside and suppose we actually do.
even with this, this doesn’t address the concern of actuality versus appearance.
consensus reality has been wrong in the past, and can be shown wrong again.
>As a species, we're approaching the time where we've obviated evolution.
This is hubris. Everything that humanity may accomplish in the future, from editing its own genome to creating general artificial intelligence, is a product of that same evolutionary process. We do all that out of our innate need for self preservation and reproduction—evolutionary imperatives for all organisms.
But it’s more accurate to think of evolution as a universal computational process occurring within the substrate of (bio)chemistry. That computation will yield further computation (intelligence and its products).
This way you can define evolution to mean absolutely anything, at which point the word loses its meaning.
If we stick to traditional, useful definition of biological evolution, then we can confidently say that it stopped being the driving force for plant and animal life no later than when we've first learned to communicate and remember ideas; we've made it irrelevant when we've learned to write. It still works on microscale, but that's mostly because things breed and die faster at that scale, there's more of it, and we can't efficiently poke at it with any sort of precision.
The more complex a species, the less adaptivity it has to fundamental shifts in environmental pressures. The interconnections between protein functions are directly responsible for that trade-off, and become a liability.
The time scales for evolution far beyond our current level of genetic complexity, probably extend beyond the life span of the Earth.
Now the benefit of this speghetti-code situation is that no intelligent designer is required - obviously a fundamental ingredient of abiogenesis, but does it benefit an species that's capable of genetic editing?
Nope. At this point, it's really just a bottleneck to even repairing the most straight-forward genetic diseases.
As a species, we're approaching the time where we've obviated evolution. ...I won't say we've seen that yet because reproduction rates are still very uneven across population segments, but it's only a matter of a few more generations (cataclysms not withstanding).