4 ms·
We absolutely wouldn't end up in the same place, simply because the state space of possible organisms and environments is astronomically larger than the space o
by gipp 10y ago
We absolutely wouldn't end up in the same place, simply because the state space of possible organisms and environments is astronomically larger than the space of possible dice rolls (his metaphor isn't perfect and I'm already straining it here). But we would be almost guaranteed to end up with organisms that have similar levels of complexity.
Again, randomness is an important part of evolution, but there are also necessary deterministic aspects of it that make the "blind watchmaker" type arguments that started this discussion irrelevant.
- PetoU 10y agoaccording to https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution_of_biological_complexity https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution_of_biological_comp... Complexity argument is not valid. It's debatable at least. AFAIK it's part of the bigger discussion whether evolution has direction.
- sirclueless 10y agoThe basic argument made by the "random chance" commenter was not that evolution is a random process, but that it favors organisms with complex and interdependent gene expression, because this increases the rate at which random mutations cause differentiation.