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

["mdj" <mdj.mdj@gmail.com>]

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.

>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.

> >>>>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.

> > 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.

> >>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 :-)

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' :-)

Matt