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Even if you look only at random genetic mutations, these are being inserted into an incomprehensibly large dynamical system with its own selective pressures. It
by dqpb 6y ago
Even if you look only at random genetic mutations, these are being inserted into an incomprehensibly large dynamical system with its own selective pressures. It’s a distributed computation at such a massive scale, you would never have any hope of fully stimulating or predicting its outcome. So I’m not sure what you mean by “just random trial and error”.
- ironmagma 6y agoWe don’t really have a good definition of random to start, but we can say things are more or less random than other things. When people say evolution is entirely due to “random mutations,” I would argue that’s misleading, because it’s less random than arbitrary bit flips. If an entire chunk of a gene from an already-evolved organism can enter at any time, that in my opinion is less random than the bit flips hypothesis. And sure, people in this thread can say this is old science, but my point is around the popular understanding of evolution and how it is communicated to students and the general public. It’s less random than total randomness, and many people completely deny it.