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Engineering is the opposite of evolution. No?
by zxcb1 7y ago
Engineering is the opposite of evolution. No?
- tiborsaas 7y agoNot sure. I'd say they are parallel things. I think both processes are pointing to the same direction to optimize things towards a certain goal.
- faceplanted 7y agoEvolution doesn't have a goal though, evolution is more like maintenance and jerry rigging than it is engineering.
- tiborsaas 7y agoIf obeying thermodynamics count, then it counts as a goal. There's a theory that life (and thus evolution too) exists to better dissipate energy. "England’s calculations suggested that groups of atoms that are driven by external energy sources can behave differently: They tend to start tapping into those energy sources, aligning and rearranging so as to better absorb the energy and dissipate it as heat... England sees life, and its extraordinary confluence of form and function, as the ultimate outcome of dissipation-driven adaptation and self-replication." https://www.quantamagazine.org/first-support-for-a-physics-theory-of-life-20170726/ https://www.quantamagazine.org/first-support-for-a-physics-t...
- selimthegrim 7y agoEngland’s proof says nothing about how you get to that sink in the first place
- hoseja 7y agoIterative, empirically driven engineering is evolution-like.
- Agebor 7y agoSee Universal Darwinism for how it actually may have a goal.
- worldsayshi 7y agoDepends on whether you choose to believe in free will or not.
- anonu 7y agoEngineering is evolution. When a chimp uses a tool, like a long twig, to pull ants out of the ground, it has used basic engineering (tools) to solve a problem. The species advances because of this.
- agumonkey 7y agoI think people here are discussing the notion of sharing proven models rather explicitly rather than only trying at random.
- SirHound 7y agoIt's the result of it, and will probably continue to be so.
- buboard 7y agoIf you mean “we know what we’re doing” vs “we re doing random stuff hoping one works “ , then yeah
- acomjean 7y agoEngineering is applied science.
- dekhn 7y agoEngineering is the opposite of entropy. It tries to create order, simple order that can be understood by human brains, so that we can build reliable systems that do useful things. Much of engineering is about making the physical structure (or software structure) of the system have a low entropy (low complexity, no tendancy to rust/degrade over time, statistically very high probability of being able to complete a cycle, etc).
- dtwest 7y agoWhen you build something, taking raw materials from their current state and assembling them into something like a car or rocket ship, is that the opposite of entropy?
- dekhn 7y agonot really. what you're doing is using an external energy source to locally order things at the expense of increasing global disorder (ultimately contributing to the heat death of the universe). some people will use a term https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negentropy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negentropy to refer to this process.
- dtwest 7y agoThat's my point. Saying engineering is the opposite of entropy doesn't make sense to me.
- flobosg 7y agoSort of. François Jacob described evolutionary innovation as tinkering rather than engineering: http://web.mit.edu/~tkonkle/www/BrainEvolution/Meeting9/Jacob%201977%20Science.pdf http://web.mit.edu/~tkonkle/www/BrainEvolution/Meeting9/Jaco...
- madhadron 7y agoI think of engineering as doing something that you can stand behind in court and be acquitted as having met the standard of a reasonable practitioner.