I have this concept forming in my mind that I am trying to give birth to but I'm having a little difficulty with it. My hope is that as I try to explain it I will understand it better, if that makes any sense.

My brain is made up of billions of neurons with trillions of connections between them. But each neuron is just a dumb machine working in a sense/decide/react loop. The decisions it makes aren't intelligent decisions, they are dictated by the interactions of chemicals and electrical potentials. A neuron is an amazing machine, but it just does what it was built to do and it does it over and over again. Without other neurons it would be fairly useless.

The sheer number of neurons in my brain and the incredible number of connections between them gives rise to the emergent property of intelligence. Intelligence gives me an ability to survive that is superior to other life forms. Or does it? Alone on Earth I probably would not last long, and assuming I was not eaten or killed by disease, old age would eventually get me. So it seems that my survival depends upon the human race, which my intelligence derives from, and that the connections between humans gives rise to the emergent property of supremacy over other life. My survival is only assured by the large number of connections between billions of humans.

One could go off on a philosophical meandering about the human race as a super-brain through our collective intelligence and interconnections, but what is nagging at me is in the opposite direction.

I'm thinking about those primordial little buggers that through an incredible number of incomprehensible coincidences managed to become self-reproducing and flow along an unending stream of energy provided by the sun, and through sheer numbers managed to overcome obliteration developing their complexity in the process.

There is something wonderful in multiple reciprocal processes as evidenced by the ever fascinating Mandelbrot set. It's just one simple equation fed two variables and the results of this calculation are the variables fed to the same equation in the next iteration. Each iteration the distance of the variables is measured to a central point. If the coordinate specified by the variables is too far it's "game over" for the calculation. Some initial coordinates blow out immediately, some orbit endlessly, and some are in this amazingly complex "shoreline" between the two. I look at that shoreline like a monkey would look at a book by Shakespeare. It is beyond my comprehension. But it's just a bunch of dumb equations repeated over and over. How could it get so out of hand that I don't grok it?

There is no emergent property in the complexity of a Mandelbrot set. It looks like there is but there isn't. It's just numbers on a graph sitting next to each other. But when I look at it, it seems like so much more. It's beautiful. Incomprehensible. Downright freakin' amazing!

Going back to those primordial little buggers... somehow they did something over and over again that caused an unending chain of reproduction that never ended. Somehow in those iterations, repeating the same activity over and over again with slightly fluctuating environmental variables they developed complexity.

At the start, I suppose, the only communication that occurred was when a parent created a child. Information was passed from one to the other and they never had any exchange ever again. But information did pass. There was communication. It was primitive, but like the feeding of calculated coordinates to the next calculation in the iteration in a Mandelbrot calculation, information is passed from one generation to the next.

Somewhere in that ocean of primordial clones changes occurred to the little buggers in varying degrees. Some changed too much too soon and perished. Some never changed at all. Small by comparison was the number that made up the shoreline between the two but their differences would be astounding and an amazing complexity would be evident. In a mere thousand iterations a beautiful picture emerges on that shoreline, yet time would allow this much complexity to occur over and over again.

With a Mandelbrot set you are confined to a simple two dimensional plane with a radius of three. Each point undergoes it's iterations confined to one location. But the little buggers undergoing their iterations would be doing so unhindered in three dimensions, with varying conditions that would permit far, far more complexity than that seen on a Mandelbrot shoreline.

In time, apparently the ability to cannibalize the decaying remains of their perished brethren was developed; most likely because using built parts is more efficient than building things from scratch, and a communications circuit formed. No longer was the final communication occurring at birth from a parent clone who knew nothing more than the child. New input was available from any number of distant relatives. And if one useful chain of molecules was close enough to what was needed and could still be used, then something new was built and the clone child was no longer a clone. It was unique.

Then the iterations begin again, and again, over and over, ever changing, ever more complex.

The thing that's itching at my brain is the immense number of little buggers and the communication that occurred. The communication took much longer, but it occurred nonetheless. The pattern of intelligence developed with life, since all that is required is a huge number of communicating machines. It seems to me that even if there was not consciousness in the incredibly long process, the pattern of intelligence was there. And there is something about that pattern that assures survival. Information exchange, communication, is essential to development, and it seems to have a much more important role in our existence than we may imagine. Perhaps the emergent property of intelligence is an integral part of life and life can not exist without it any more than mortar can be a wall without bricks.

I could counter argue this in the opposite direction as well. And provide examples


I will not however, that the Sheer Number of coincidences is not as extreme as you make it sound. Yes, the conditions were right... Over Billions, Millions of years...

Over such vast time scales- the coincidences are only further reduced. To put it in perspective, what are the odds that I might do something truly incredible? Like paint a Mona Lisa or invent a life changing machine or cure cancer and world disease?
What are the odds I might if I had a thousand years?
A million?

Perhaps it will be the colonization of space that allows us to speciate due to the island effect. IIRC, the large the population, the lower the rate of evolution. Or something to that effect. Traits that offer a competitive advantage don't really become outstanding until there is competition.

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"What you think you thought you saw you did not see." Agent J, MiB - Manhatten Bureau

I believe we won't see any benefit from evolutionary processes going forward, but perhaps if we do colonize other worlds there might be changes to adapt to environments that are non-Earth-like such as lighter or stronger gravity, light levels, light frequencies, temperature, atmosphere, and so on.

Here on Earth is a different story. Humans currently work feverishly to eliminate natural selection processes through medicine and law, just to name two, because the majority of us don't like to see people die for any reason. We protect the weak and ignorant; in fact we give them special status and have developed a wide range of adaptations to our cultures to keep them alive.

To me this is wise. While some people may have certain genes that make them weak, they may have others the gene pool really needs or will need and just from a purely logical view it only makes sense to keep them alive. But we do go beyond simply keeping people alive for their genetic material, we do so even if we know those people will never breed, but that humanitarian attitude applied generally assures we keep as much of the gene pool intact as we possibly can.

But then we have wars and kill lots of people. And this may not make sense but it really is more one group's desire to preserve their own genetics over that of another. We may fight for stupid reasons sometimes, but since there are some of us who are naturally aggressive and amoral violence is a necessary evil even for the passive at times.

The point of all this is that our own behaviors now are slowing evolutionary processes even more, in spite of the killing that occurs, and our own self-modification will likely progress much faster than any natural process could.

Seems plausible that space colonization will speed up selection (both natural and artificial)

We will always try to make people healthier,
and one of the ways to do that is better adaptation to the environment
(by tools, medicine, way of life, artificial habitats, and probably also bioengineering and genetic manipulation)
It the environment is different (space), the adaptations will be different.

The same will happen in a natural way during a crisis (the less well adapted die out)

The "less well adapted" die out even without a crisis. It's just that the surviors then are adapted to non-crisis conditions.

__________________
"If this were play'd upon a stage now, I could condemn it as an improbable fiction."
Shakespeare, Twelfth Night
Illuminati's Razor-The most complicatedly evil answer is usually the most correct answer. - Fazor
"Every book is a children's book if the kid can read." - Mitch Hedberg
"Distance doesn’t matter much in space, where if you just start a thing off with the right kind of shove, sooner or later it will get where you want it to go." -Frederik Pohl, Mining the Oort

Fred,

You asked in your OP what phrase is better than Intelligent Design?

There's already one - Transhumanism! Wikipedia has a pretty good primer about it, including the ethical issues surrounding it.

Orions Arm, a fairly "hard" (i.e. attempt at realism) sci-fi site, is based in large part on transhumanism of a fairly optimistic (but NOT utopian) sort.

Thanks filrabat... I'm going to look into it with the hope that I don't find New Age kooks at the end of the rainbow. Transhumanism does look interesting though.

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The only way of finding the limits of the possible is by going beyond them into the impossible.

Arthur C. Clarke

The Brain Science Podcast

BAUT member eburacum is associated with Orions Arm.

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Any day you wake up on "the right side of the dirt" is a good day.

T. Anderson

I think it's been touched on upthread, but the biggest effect I see is medical - not just medical technology but the increased availability of life-saving procedures and medications. Those that natural selection might have deemed unworthy of reproducing may live to do so now, thus keeping more undesireable traits in the gene pool.

Also, in many countries, voluntary population control plays a role. Not everybody who can - and from a natural selection pount of view, should - bear offspring are doing so.

So, even without overt genetic modification, we still are altering our evolutionary path.

A core tenet of transhumanism is that the consciousness can be made distinct from the body, although it remains dependent on a substrate; a la ghost in the shell. This would be quite distinct from a concept of a soul, for example, that the new age may believe in.

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plenty of woo, at the hotel hoagaland...

Since humans invented medical technology, and human inventiveness is a product of natural selection, then keeping those people alive is also a product of natural selection. If they can survive, then their traits are not "undesireable". They're just adapted to an environment that has modern medicine.

__________________
"If this were play'd upon a stage now, I could condemn it as an improbable fiction."
Shakespeare, Twelfth Night
Illuminati's Razor-The most complicatedly evil answer is usually the most correct answer. - Fazor
"Every book is a children's book if the kid can read." - Mitch Hedberg
"Distance doesn’t matter much in space, where if you just start a thing off with the right kind of shove, sooner or later it will get where you want it to go." -Frederik Pohl, Mining the Oort

So how can a creature adapt to to something that isn't a selective force through the life of its ancestors. That's the thing with major crises: They take out a big chunk of the population regardless of how well they had been adapted to their previous environment. This leaves room for novel combinations to then reoccupy vacant niches.

Please be aware that in promulgating adaptionist ideas that these are no longer currently mainstream evolutionary thinking, despite being championed by Dawkins, in this respect he is a conservative, although it was possibly '80's orthodoxy, back when he was writing 'Blind watchmaker'; it's time to move on.

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plenty of woo, at the hotel hoagaland...

A major crisis is a change of environment, requiring new adaptations. I never said or implied that adaptation to niches was the only factor in effect. You're reading in more than what's there.

I'm not "promoting Dawkins" or anybody else. I've never read Dawkins. Evolution isn't a force, it's a description of a process, nothing more.

__________________
"If this were play'd upon a stage now, I could condemn it as an improbable fiction."
Shakespeare, Twelfth Night
Illuminati's Razor-The most complicatedly evil answer is usually the most correct answer. - Fazor
"Every book is a children's book if the kid can read." - Mitch Hedberg
"Distance doesn’t matter much in space, where if you just start a thing off with the right kind of shove, sooner or later it will get where you want it to go." -Frederik Pohl, Mining the Oort

hmm, I always thought the evolutionary adaptation thing sounded goofy. I'm glad it wasn't just me.

__________________
"What you think you thought you saw you did not see." Agent J, MiB - Manhatten Bureau