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The article will be more accurate if evolution was not treated as a volitional choice.
by lucio 9y ago
The article will be more accurate if evolution was not treated as a volitional choice.
- lohankin 9y agoCan you cite any experiment that can distinguish volitional choice from non-volitional choice (whatever that means)? In the absence of such experiment, both options are purely speculative (by definition). BTW, is your statement above a result of volitional choice, or non-volitional choice? How do you know? :)
- tasty_freeze 9y agoThis is a silly argument. You can't seriously be suggesting that the bacteria are choosing to modify their DNA in anticipation of future benefits. For sure, nothing is ever 100% absolutely known, but some things are so unlikely that we can safely assume they are not true, rather than putting a wordy disclaimer on every single "fact" that we state. Getting back to the original point, people, including me, will say things like "this shopping cart wants to pull to the right" knowing full well that the shopping card has no desires at all. It is a useful metaphor that confuses nobody.
- lohankin 9y agoModifying something for future benefits is exactly what sentient beings are doing. Yeah, bacteria are small. But small is not the same as dumb.
- sabertoothed 9y agoWhat are you suggesting? I am not sure you are making any sense.
- pranjalv123 9y agoIf mutations in a single generation are favorable more often than would happen by chance, this would be evidence of volitional choice. But we don't see this.
- mattkrause 9y agoI thought the article was pretty good on that front. The passive voice is consistently used throughout ("have become hypermutators", "picked up early mutations in") and so on. The last paragraph explicitly calls out the stochastic nature of mutations and the role of selective pressures. The only part struck me as even vaguely "volitional" is "they are each finding their own path toward the same goal of optimal fitness" , and even that is a far cry from "Giraffes evolved long necks so they could eat leaves at the tops of trees".