From: Robin Hanson (rhanson@gmu.edu)
Date: Fri Jul 25 2003 - 15:04:00 MDT
At 09:14 AM 7/25/2003 +0930, Emlyn O'regan wrote:
> > The aberration is temporary because DNA will soon be replaced by other
> > faster-changing forms of genes, including those you mention.
>
>If you mean other faster-changing replicators (like memes), then I'd agree
>with you, although that's maybe redundant (we were talking about memes
>already I thought).
I had in mind memes, as well as new abilities to directly change DNA.
>Increasing intelligence is likely to increase an individuals fitness (maybe
>- unless we get some really nasty memtic viruses which require very high
>intelligence to understand; maybe fermi's paradox is explained in something
>like that?), but that's hardly likely to be done via natural selection. We
>are far more likely to purposely design better mental hardware, than have it
>crop up through natural selection (note of course that using genetic
>algorithms to design a better brain is not natural selection, it's design).
My key point was that "design" is not an alternative to "natural selection".
Design is one of the strategies used by replicators that undergo evolutionary
selection. Different replicators use different design strategies, and some
of these strategies will result in more progeny, relative to other strategies.
Robin Hanson rhanson@gmu.edu http://hanson.gmu.edu
Assistant Professor of Economics, George Mason University
MSN 1D3, Carow Hall, Fairfax VA 22030-4444
703-993-2326 FAX: 703-993-2323
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