3 ms·

Just because evolution is not monotonic doesn’t mean that progressivism isn’t a good “low resolution” model.

• vanderZwan 5y ago
  It's not usually taught as a "low resolution" model though, it's taught as a global model.
  • AbrahamParangi 5y ago
    Low resolution meaning coarse, like if you had to choose to believe if evolution was progressive or completely directionless, progressive would be a better model.
    • vanderZwan 5y ago
      > if you had to choose to believe if evolution was progressive or completely directionless We don't have to limit our choices to those two options, and there is a better third one, which undermines the argument before it even got started. But even if we did limit ourselves to these two options (and I cannot stress enough that there is absolutely no reason to do so), one can still argue that "completely directionless" is a better approximation: evolution has no agency or goal to work towards, it just selects for whatever happens work in any given moment/context. It is the stability of the context that is providing the selection criteria that causes a consistent "direction" to emerge, but as soon as you introduce this explanation we've basically already picked our third option that I mentioned.