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I feel that this is the most commonly misunderstood thing about evolution by laypeople. 'evolving' as a verb is incredibly misleading. There is no active proce
by nightcracker 10y ago
I feel that this is the most commonly misunderstood thing about evolution by laypeople.
'evolving' as a verb is incredibly misleading. There is no active process that is 'evolving'. The body didn't 'realize' that this was useful so it kept it. There was no 'success'. We're merely looking at survival bias.
When scientists say that X is probably because of evolution, they don't really explain how X happened. Just a random genetic copying error, not anything exciting. Instead, they are saying that 'not X' has disappeared because those individuals had a higher chance to die before reproducing.
- koolba 10y agoOkay if you want to get technical, bodies with more sensitivity to detect things that could kill them had a higher survival rate prior to reproducing. That in turn lead to higher sensitivity to detecting things that can kill us. Saying "they evolved to..." is just short hand for "others were more likely to die so X won out".
- nightcracker 10y agoSorry, this wasn't meant against you or your post personally, just a random rant about how poor language choices can confuse a lot of people. And by that I don't mean that you made a bad choice, just when the terms were introduced.
- Zaak 10y agoI like the expression "evolution isn't toward, it's away".