Life, The Universe, and the Evolution of Everything
« on: 2003-04-22 10:38:26 »
In my neverending quest to understand Everything(tm), I've stumbled upon something that I'm having difficulty with. In fact, I'm having a hard time just coming up with the question.
So instead of a question, I have a scenario that I'd like to pose here and see if some Virian might come up with an insight that could help me.
Suppose that you are a leading bio-geneticist who has access to, and understands, much of the genetic makeup of all the species living on an isolated island in the middle of an ocean.
Suppose also that you have access to all the technology and processes necessary in order to make some genetic modifications to any and all species living on that island, be it a bacteria, a plant, an insect, or an animal (there are no humans on that island).
This island has been virgin for ever and evolution has pursued its course since the island became an island.
My question is, what can we do to make that island better? What can you do to improve the island's ecosystem?
Evolutionary Boost: Of course, it all depends on what we think might require improvement. But given that we are not expecting any major disaster to crash-in on the island, could it be possible to, say, foresee evolution's direction and tinker with the DNA of all the species on that island to give them all an evolutionary "boost" of a couple of million years?
Alternative Evolutionary Stable System: Alternatively, given the resources on the island, could we relocate some species elsewhere on the island in order to better promote the evolution of the island's ecosystem.
Human Selection: Is it possible that you would discover something that had been "missed" by evolution and that by removing a given specie from the island, you would guarantee a "better" evolution to all other species?
I obviously haven't studied genetics and evolutionary theory much so these questions might be a little naive but I'm wondering if others here might have comments, insights, rebuttals, or references that might help me understand these questions (and ultimately, frame these questions in one more generic "ultimate" question) :-)
Re:Life, The Universe, and the Evolution of Everything
« Reply #1 on: 2003-04-22 11:01:38 »
Any attempt to improve on evolution assumes that it has a goal, and you have to realize that any purpose that you ascribe to evolution is an anthropomorphization of a physical process. It is like saying that gravity is trying to bring masses together or that entropy is attempting to break everything down. I'm not saying that is bad, I'm just saying that you have to realize what you are doing so you don't take the analogy too far. For instance, physical processes like gravity, entropy and evolution obviously do not get angry when they are thwarted by human intervention.
Now that is out of the way, I can imagine some improvements...
Evolutionary Boost: Of course, it all depends on what we think might require improvement. But given that we are not expecting any major disaster to crash-in on the island, could it be possible to, say, foresee evolution's direction and tinker with the DNA of all the species on that island to give them all an evolutionary "boost" of a couple of million years?
You may want to endow one or more of the species with human-level intelligence so they can benefit from some of things that only humans enjoy such as arts and sciences.
Quote:
Alternative Evolutionary Stable System: Alternatively, given the resources on the island, could we relocate some species elsewhere on the island in order to better promote the evolution of the island's ecosystem.
Human Selection: Is it possible that you would discover something that had been "missed" by evolution and that by removing a given specie from the island, you would guarantee a "better" evolution to all other species?
Diversity is generally considered "good" for evolution, so if it turns out that moving or removing a species that is keeping the rest from proliferating (imagine an inedible weed taking up most of the soil resources) then that could be considered an improvement. Can we agree that a rainforest teeming with life is better than a desert?
« Last Edit: 2003-04-23 10:09:04 by David Lucifer »
Re:Life, The Universe, and the Evolution of Everything
« Reply #2 on: 2003-04-22 17:41:32 »
Quote:
Any attempt to improve on evolution assumes that it has a goal, and you have to realize that any purpose that you ascribe to evolution is an anthropomorphization of a physical process.
I like that statement. I indeed tend to forget that.
It still seems to me that we should be able to identify basic foundations or attributes that cause and sustain an evolutionary process. As you mention in your post, "diversity" might be one of those attributes; "resilience" or "sustainability" would probably be another; something to do with "prolificacy" also comes to mind.
Understanding that evolution is a mechanical process, if we can objectively identify these attributes, couldn't we possibly measure the performance of an evolutionary process?
So, in our example, by endowing a particular specie with better intelligence, we might be causing harm to other species in the environment that would find themselves at a new disadvantage. This could have positive impacts for the endowed specie but it would possibly cause a decrease of diversity in the system.
You've helped me to clarify my question though... it now goes like this:
Can we objectively measure the degree of "evolutionability" of a system? Not from any one specie's perspective but indeed from the entire system's perspective.
If we can objectively measure the evolutionary performance of a system, it should indeed be possible to improve it. Again, not from a subjective specie's or an arbitrary third party's perspective but from a holistic one; one that benefits the system's evolutionary performance as a whole.
Your initial statement, which I quoted above, doesn't lend itself to a positive answer to my question. Did I slipped somewhere along the way?
Ophis: "Understanding that evolution is a mechanical process, if we can objectively identify these attributes, couldn't we possibly measure the performance of an evolutionary process?"
This question includes the unstated premise that there is some sort of objective yardstick against which we can "measure the performance of an evolutionary process"; of course, to assume this unstated premise is to commit an anthropomorphism error of a different type than that previously committed on this thread, and to confusedly consider the values human beings impose upon valueless reactional and processual changes as if they were messages communicated from a sentient being pointing a purely passive yet human intellect in the direction of its ideal dream of the Panglossian "best of possible worlds" of which the universe could conceiveably hold in future store for it. As if there could be such a purely objective (meaning value-free) creature, or such a thing as an 'ideal dream' future for that which is incapable of investing necessarily nonexistent self-and-other-conscious commitment in such values. What truly objective yet humanly apprehensible yardstick exists to cause us to believe that the ecology some of us might prefer over another, for instance, a rainforest ecology over the ecology of a a desert, is indeed a cosmically 'better' rather than 'worse' example of an evolutionary ecosystem (there's a real god-surrogate for those who are slow to cognively adapt to evolutionary understanding) , or even that such human-independent standards could actually exist, or that they could coincidentally be embraced by something as noncognitive and will-less as an ecosystem, or with cosmically good reason, or simultaneously by us? Answer: none.
Evolution in the absence of self-conscious awareness is what it is. Natural. Material. Insensible. Valueless. Our sensibilities or perceptions of systems as a whole and the values and interpretations of relative and comparative fitness which we impose upon these perceptions as we compare them to internally manufactured ideals are, to be repetitive and redundant, ours.
Re:Life, The Universe, and the Evolution of Everything
« Reply #4 on: 2003-04-24 16:23:22 »
Quote:
Our sensibilities or perceptions of systems as a whole and the values and interpretations of relative and comparative fitness which we impose upon these perceptions as we compare them to internally manufactured ideals are, to be repetitive and redundant, ours.
I'm convinced of the selflessness, and now valuelessness nature of evolution. But I'm still puzzled about how this prevents us from deriving attributes and principles from our observation and study of the process. So here are two questions:
1- Without falling into the trap of interpreting an evolutionary process's results as a "goal" or as a "value judgement", haven't humans studied biological evolution and come up with basic pre-requesites for it to take place?
2- Once an evolutionary process has been identified, is it accurate to say that the results of the process have maintained or provided an environment that has allowed the evolutionary process to continue?
I understand that the process is "blind" and doesn't consciously pursue any goal, but that doesn't mean that there aren't any consistency in the outcomes of the evolutionary process. Although my questions have evolved (pun intended) since the beginning of this thread, I'm still trying to understand the nature of this "consistency" of results that seem to provide a fertile ground to evolution.
Re:Life, The Universe, and the Evolution of Everything
« Reply #5 on: 2003-04-24 17:00:12 »
You could look at the Kolmogorov complexity of the island as a quantitative measure of the diversity of its ecology. You could look at the thermodynamic efficiency of the whole system in terms of how well it turns sunlight into work.
We can indeed judge the relative degree to which a particular ecosystem embodies certain values and principles; it's just that these values and principles are ours, as is the judgment; none are cosmic writ.
Re:Life, The Universe, and the Evolution of Everything
« Reply #7 on: 2005-05-11 03:18:11 »
well, I dont know about what you can do to make the island better or improve the ecosystem, thats a qualitative analysis and i agree with what david and joe are saying, but I think that if an evolutionary boost is to be made it would have to be something that allowed whatever was being boosted to excape from the island and propogate itself elsewhere, expanding its presence in space, or else help it survive a forseeable disaster that would otherwise wipe it out, expanding its presence in time. Other than expanding its presence in space or time I can't really conclude that you can make it more evolved except for possibly making it have sentient cognition, since thats the next most complexity I see (and it might just simply be because I have cognition myself.) In theory humans might have missed the boat on an alternative higher complexity *Thing* that is different from the mind we have. who knows?
Re:Life, The Universe, and the Evolution of Everything
« Reply #8 on: 2005-05-13 11:00:25 »
In general i wouldn't recommend bringing a species from the island somewhere else and letting it propagate elsewhere because there is the problem of invasive species. In certain ecosystems and species can fit very well into the balance, but outside of that ecosystem it can wreak havoc on other ecosystems. One example is Kudzu, which from what i understand is a type of ivy that grows rapidly and spreads over everything which results in agricultural problems, trees dying, and i've even heard of houses collapsing.
I don't really see a value in manipulating evolution for the ecosystem's sake. Maybe if something started to change, and there was a famine of some sort and species started dying out, you could modify some of the organisms to feed and obtain energy differently. This would be much easier for bacteria than larger species though.
the scientist's goal: to know the engineer's goal: to do
Engineering an ecosystem is only meaningful if you have some goal or objective in mind. There are no goals and objectives outside of the human mind (that we know of), only tendencies and properties. So the engineer's job depends upon the human mind providing some goal.
Ophis, I would answer your question by saying: so far you have presented our engineering group with the goal of "improvement" and have asked the group to specify how that would be done. Before we can go into attempting to understand the tendencies and properties of the phenomenon of evolution itself, we must make sure we have a workable goal in mind. Once the problem itself is stated, the solution falls out.
What is meant by "improving" evolution? I can think of two distinct possibilities, either:
(1) we say that "improving" means making more good, i.e. making more of what is desirable to us as humans, or
(2) we pick some arbitrary measure, such as efficiency or amount of matter accumulated into biomass, or number of distinct species
I would personally be in favor of the first criterion as a starting point for environmental design. This is because I think this is a big issue in environmentalism - should we be serving ourselves or should we be serving the environment? I am in favor of serving ourselves, and only worrying about what's "good" for the environment insofar as it is good for an environment that is good for us.
In case (2), we link the concept of "improvement" (inherently value-laden) to other measures which we know are inherently empty of value: efficiency, diversity, complexity, etc. This is an irrational mixing of concepts. After all, what do we owe to evolution biological evolution, an unconscious process that happened to give rise to us?
Therefore I propose: we start this discussion from the notion that we would be improving this desert isle for our own benefit.
Re:Life, The Universe, and the Evolution of Everything
« Reply #11 on: 2005-10-26 13:39:54 »
Based on past performance of humans we will certainly try and make it better. "Better" will certainly be only from our point of view. Typically we will go ahead and try to make "improvements" to systems that we do not fully understand. This is a catch-22 of course, because we can never fully understand something. Often we screw things up worse for ourselves as a result.
In the military there is a saying: "A good plan today is better than a perfect plan tomorrow." This is a necessary stratagey when you are competing with others who are trying to make their own improvements which may be at odds with yours. On an island under unified leadership it might be possible to plan sufficiently and carefully enough to actually make it a better place for US. We are not improving it for itself, but for us.
The problem as I see it is that there are a few enlightened individuals on the island, who, given a chance, would make it a better and sustainable island for all. However, the island is ruled by competing zealots who's only goal is to rule and who have little time or interest beyound their own self agrandizement.
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