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Re: Apple II: Second Best Tech Product of All Time!

mdj wrote:

On Apr 12, 6:38 am, "Michael J. Mahon" <mjma...@aol.com> wrote:

Apologies for the delay in reply - temporal entropy ;-)



I'd substitute "in charge of" with "capable of". I'll also say that
when viewed holistically, human civilisation gives the impression of
being chaotic, perpetuating the idea of evolution as a constant. But
where some see a continuation of that chaotic process, I see an
emergence of order from that chaos. At least *potentially* ...


So do I.

Since "in charge of" includes the case of screwing it up, I fail to
see the distinction intended by "capable of".



The distinction is the choice to accept accountability or ignore it.
There's an awful lot of denial going on in the human race about both
the magnitude of our influence *and* our responsibility for that
influence. And while you're correct that the responsibility exists
regardless of our choices, the choice still remains, as does our
freedom to make it.


But it is a *fact* that we are now responsible for our evolution,
and choosing to ignore it is no defense, its just choosing not to
choose.  This abdication will not last a decade.

The key to motion on this issue is the fact that accepting
responsibility provides leverage to affect survival, and almost
everyone wants to survive more than they want to believe something.
(There are a few who have this wired up backwards, but they are
a small minority.)


There is no doubt that evolutionary forces operating on our species


are now dominated by human


actions.



Didn't we already agree that evolutionary forces no longer act on our
species? ;-)

I think it's important in a discussion such as this to constrain the
use of the word evolution to its biological sense. It's otherwise
difficult to determine whether someone is simply referring to change,
or inferring that change in a particular system is governed by the
same rules as biological evolution.


Fair enough, and a good distinction.

What I meant, though, is that some biological evolutionary forces
continue to operate, but their effect is swamped by human actions.


Are we slowing evolution down?  No
way!  Instead, we're rather speeding it up with our technological
advances, which now are influencing the Earth also on a global scale.
Our artificial breeding of both plants and animals also speeds up
evolution a lot.



You're kidding, right? Causing extinctions by the bucketload and
reducing biodiversity? This helps the great wheels of evolution spin
faster?



Actually, yes.  The biggest factor in the proliferation of species
is the massive extinction of many existing species--thus opening up
huge spaces for new life to dominate.



Well of course, but the human race isn't a 10km wide asteroid hurtling
through the atmosphere :-) Instead, we're subsuming "our" environment
from within, adapting it to our own purposes, and rather than
encouraging the existing evolutionary process to thrive, we replace
vast tracts of its stomping ground with more humans and human
controlled environments. Far from creating new spaces for new life
forms, we create less space for them and more space for us. We're not
speeding up the existing process, we're obsoleting it.


Hmmm.  We seem to be in agreement--we are increasingly taking the
place of natural evolution in whatever domains we influence.  The
net effect is that some species are eliminated and some are changed
even faster than natural evolution would produce.



I disagree with the perceived notion of speed; changes in the rate of
obsolescence are insufficient alter the rate of systematic change -
see below.



Come on, you're anthropomorphizing something that is nothing more than
an emergent property of a complex system. A common and excusable trait
to be sure, but equatable with creation mythologies and other forms of
romanticism.



I don't see that in what he said.



It's right there! Look again.


Yes--if I look at it right, I can see the sense of "progress" in there,
but the statement can be taken without that implication.



I think there's an implicit link between your notion of speed and
progress.



I read only a simple statement of fact--that human action is speeding
the course of biological transformation--for better or worse, and
without any real plan at present.



Speeding where exactly? :-)



To imply that human action is speeding the course of evolution is to
imply it actually has a course and speed, and I contend that this is a
purely human conceit, based on no other evidence than the fact that we
are here.


No, a chaotic system can be speeded, too--consider Brownian motion
and increased temperature.  Speed does not imply net direction.



Okay, but my point is, surely the rate of change of a biological
system is governed as much (if not solely) by the reproductive rate of
its inhabitants? A measure of "speed" that includes only rate of
selection can only be used to predict change in size, and as such is
no measure of speed.

Indeed, humans appear to be living longer and breeding later, creating
a net slowing of their reproductive rate. That has a slow down effect
on evolution holistically.

So the implication that it's "speeding up" seems to me to be false.


OK, I see your concern.

Part of the problem is the ambiguous use of "evolution", when "change"
is, perhaps, the more precise term.

Humans are now changing humans more rapidly than they changed in
the past.  Some of this change is genetic, and in the next few
decades, much more will be genetic.

Even in the area of "natural" genetics, the vastly increased
communication between the disparate families of humanity in the
modern world is causing an unprecedented stirring of the genetic pool.


To do so puts our faith in the system from which we emerged. A system
which by our very own understanding of it is without meaning or
purpose; a system that produced the human being by a process
explicable by nothing other than chance.



It's my belief ( :-) ) that in doing so we shift responsibility for
human behavior away from ourselves and onto something else, in this
case a phenomena rather than a deity. Effectively trading free will
for fatalism with a self fulfilling prophecy.


I know what you're concern is, but we agree that you can have lots
of "whats" and "hows" without any "whys".  I don't think anyone has
really raised the spectre of "intelligent design" (unless you consider
the possibility that our universe is just someone's lab experiment ;-).



Well, one metaphor for my point of view would be to make "intelligent
design" fire, and "popular science" a source of fuel. A lot of the
supposed 'debate' can be avoided by a treatise on the philosophy and
methodology of science, which is curiously and unfortunately missing
from many education systems.


Hear, hear!

Part of the problem is that so few teachers are qualified to teach
critical thinking, let alone the scientific method.

And few school boards would permit it to be properly taught!

There is work to do...


We can now do genetic engineering that grossly accelerates the pace
of change on this planet.  How we use this growing power in the years
ahead is one of the central questions of this century.



Indeed! And how we justify fiddling about with a system that takes
*eons* to show predictable affirmation of a change. I suspect that
once again the justification will be "Because we can", but I remain
hopeful that it will not.


We will not wait to find out the results if we took our hands off the
wheel, because we will keep driving.  Until further notice (say, by an
asteroid that we can't divert), *we* are responsible for the stability
of the planet, including its biome.



I suspect that some of these differences in viewpoint come from a
difference in underlying philosophy. You seem to have the viewpoint of
a 'hard' pragmatist, ie. that taking hands off the wheel is the same
as driving in the dark, headlights off, with a drunken navigator ;-)


;-)


While the likely result is the same, the latter scenario still places
an intelligent agent in control of the car, so the potential outcome
is different :-)


Leadership is always a problem. (!)

Since we always have the leaders we deserve, we need to work hard
on education, so that we deserve better.


Considering that the planet can get along just fine without us, we're
effectively obliged to either take responsibility for our actions or
have 'nature' do it, resulting in our extinction. Or to put another
way we either stop behaving like an group of simplistic organisms and
more like enlightened self-responsible entities or we'll most
definitely find ourselves 'naturally selected' :-)


Bingo.

As an eternally optimistic pragmatist, I see signs that we are beginning
to open our eyes...  Somewhere along the line we will have to deal with
the problem that so many are trying to close them.

-michael

NadaNet networking for Apple II computers!
Home page:  http://members.aol.com/MJMahon/

"The wastebasket is our most important design
tool--and it's seriously underused."