4 ms·

I don't think we are smarter than evolution, in this regard. Evolution is not smart at all. It trends toward reproductive success and that's all. At the most b

by causi 4y ago

I don't think we are smarter than evolution, in this regard. Evolution is not smart at all. It trends toward reproductive success and that's all. At the most basic level, natural selection is an emergent phenomena of an energy-scarce environment. That is no longer the case for humans. A single human now has access to orders of magnitude more energy than any of our ancestors. It no longer matters if keeping an individual from aging requires ten times the energy input of creating and raising a child. That entire realm of biological innovation is completely invisible to traditional evolution.

palata 4y ago
> A single human now has access to orders of magnitude more energy than any of our ancestors. Now, but it's not clear at all how it will evolve in the fairly near future :-). But I generally agree with your point on evolution: it is a random process. We tend to "personify" it ("evolution chose to make us like this"), but that's wrong: species that evolved to being less fit died, those that evolved to be more fit survived. Pure chance.
- Kaijo 4y ago
  Evolution is not a random process. Natural selection acts on genetic variability in a population; selection is inherently non-random. A component of variability is due to random mutation. Just because evolution does not have a priori goals or fixed directionality does not mean it proceeds randomly.
  - palata 4y ago
    Right, yeah obviously the selection part is not random ("the fittest survives"). I guess my point is that there is a tendency to say "evolution chose to make this because that's the optimal solution", where actually evolution may have "missed" the optimal solution. But evolution is not an active process (of something choosing what's optimal), but a passive process (it does change, and some of those (random) changes win). Or am I missing something?
    - Kaijo 4y ago
      I don't think you're missing something, although there are many nuances here. Selection certainly converges on local optima, but yes, there's nothing making a "choice" to do so (except with sexually selected traits and mate choice). It's just how it works. In general it's unsurprising that selection misses hypothetical universal optima for the same reason it's unsurprising we didn't evolve wings even though that'd be an optimal way to escape lions. Evolution moves traits around fitness landscapes heavily contrained by exaptation. But interestingly many highly conserved mechanisms, e.g. essential cell machinery or metabolic pathways shared widely across the tree of life, have been shown to be maintained at absolute energetic and informational optima.
aksss 4y ago
I think Smil had calculated this energy to an equivalent number of laborers working for us 24x7 (like slaves). IIRC it was like 172 or something. It may sound fantastic but once you start imagining what kind of human labor it would take to keep your home heated 24x7, manually achieve what your appliances accomplish (when was last time you had ice delivered or washed your clothes at the river?), your transportation, and have the weather forecast available at any moment, etc., etc., it becomes really clear that 1st worlders live like pharaohs.
- esarbe 4y ago
  I once tried to come up with a reasonable number and ended up with something like 24 slaves per person given a central European living style, Do you have a link for your number, would be very interested.
  - aksss 4y ago
    I believe it's in "Energy and Civilization: A History", and probably reprised in "How the World Really Works". This is rando google search for it (so double check) but material looks correct to me: "An average inhabitant of the Earth nowadays has at their disposal nearly 700 times more useful energy than their ancestors had at the beginning of the 19th century. Moreover, within a lifetime of people born just after the Second World War the rate had more than tripled, from about 10 to 34 GJ/capita between 1950 and 2020. Translating the last rate into more readily imaginable equivalents, it is as if an average Earthling has every year at their personal disposal about 800 kilograms (0.8 tons, or nearly six barrels) of crude oil, or about 1.5 tons of good bituminous coal. And when put in terms of physical labor, it is as if 60 adults would be working non-stop, day and night, for each average person; and for the inhabitants of affluent countries this equivalent of steadily laboring adults would be, depending on the specific country, mostly between 200 and 240." So looks like my number was quite low. The references to "Earthlings" makes me suspect this quote was pulled from "How the World Really Works", since it starts out with a thought exercise using an extraplanetary observer watching the progress of human civilization over millennia. If you like this kind of information, I would highly recommend Energy and Civilization, it's a fantastic and eye-opening book. Edit: confirmed, above quote is from "How the World..".

by causi 4y ago

palata 4y ago

> A single human now has access to orders of magnitude more energy than any of our ancestors. Now, but it's not clear at all how it will evolve in the fairly near future :-). But I generally agree with your point on evolution: it is a random process. We tend to "personify" it ("evolution chose to make us like this"), but that's wrong: species that evolved to being less fit died, those that evolved to be more fit survived. Pure chance.

Kaijo 4y ago
Evolution is not a random process. Natural selection acts on genetic variability in a population; selection is inherently non-random. A component of variability is due to random mutation. Just because evolution does not have a priori goals or fixed directionality does not mean it proceeds randomly.
- palata 4y ago
  Right, yeah obviously the selection part is not random ("the fittest survives"). I guess my point is that there is a tendency to say "evolution chose to make this because that's the optimal solution", where actually evolution may have "missed" the optimal solution. But evolution is not an active process (of something choosing what's optimal), but a passive process (it does change, and some of those (random) changes win). Or am I missing something?
  - Kaijo 4y ago
    I don't think you're missing something, although there are many nuances here. Selection certainly converges on local optima, but yes, there's nothing making a "choice" to do so (except with sexually selected traits and mate choice). It's just how it works. In general it's unsurprising that selection misses hypothetical universal optima for the same reason it's unsurprising we didn't evolve wings even though that'd be an optimal way to escape lions. Evolution moves traits around fitness landscapes heavily contrained by exaptation. But interestingly many highly conserved mechanisms, e.g. essential cell machinery or metabolic pathways shared widely across the tree of life, have been shown to be maintained at absolute energetic and informational optima.

aksss 4y ago

I think Smil had calculated this energy to an equivalent number of laborers working for us 24x7 (like slaves). IIRC it was like 172 or something. It may sound fantastic but once you start imagining what kind of human labor it would take to keep your home heated 24x7, manually achieve what your appliances accomplish (when was last time you had ice delivered or washed your clothes at the river?), your transportation, and have the weather forecast available at any moment, etc., etc., it becomes really clear that 1st worlders live like pharaohs.

esarbe 4y ago
I once tried to come up with a reasonable number and ended up with something like 24 slaves per person given a central European living style, Do you have a link for your number, would be very interested.
- aksss 4y ago
  I believe it's in "Energy and Civilization: A History", and probably reprised in "How the World Really Works". This is rando google search for it (so double check) but material looks correct to me: "An average inhabitant of the Earth nowadays has at their disposal nearly 700 times more useful energy than their ancestors had at the beginning of the 19th century. Moreover, within a lifetime of people born just after the Second World War the rate had more than tripled, from about 10 to 34 GJ/capita between 1950 and 2020. Translating the last rate into more readily imaginable equivalents, it is as if an average Earthling has every year at their personal disposal about 800 kilograms (0.8 tons, or nearly six barrels) of crude oil, or about 1.5 tons of good bituminous coal. And when put in terms of physical labor, it is as if 60 adults would be working non-stop, day and night, for each average person; and for the inhabitants of affluent countries this equivalent of steadily laboring adults would be, depending on the specific country, mostly between 200 and 240." So looks like my number was quite low. The references to "Earthlings" makes me suspect this quote was pulled from "How the World Really Works", since it starts out with a thought exercise using an extraplanetary observer watching the progress of human civilization over millennia. If you like this kind of information, I would highly recommend Energy and Civilization, it's a fantastic and eye-opening book. Edit: confirmed, above quote is from "How the World..".