8 ms·

Evolution by natural selection is the most beautiful algorithm imho.

dumpsterdiver 2y ago
I was looking for a word earlier that describes when it slowly dawns on a person how profound a thing is that’s been right in front of their eyes most of their life. The word I settled on was revelation, and one of the revelations I revisit as I grow older is the menacing terror presented by evolving lifeforms. If you press the fast forward button as a theoretical “survivor in the game of life”, the creatures that were benign when they were static now become terrifying, constantly morphing organisms which gain and lose all manner of sharp and venomous appendages. Like those early Deep Dream videos that always had creepy eyes and teeth everywhere on inanimate objects… that truly is what evolution looks like. It inspires instinctive fear of all the bad things, because that is exactly how it manifests. When you release the fast forward button though and come back to the present, what was creepy and terrifying before suddenly becomes magnificent. A living representation of localized perfection.
- adastra22 2y ago
  Only in niches that get locked in an evolutionary arms race, as does sometimes happen but is not the norm. There’s also prokaryotic life out there chilling and doing the same thing it’s been doing for billions of years.
tux3 2y ago
We owe everything to it, and yet it is twisted and wrong. Every day that passes, medicine weakens it. I thank medicine.
- ajuc 2y ago
  Medicine isn't weakening natural selection any more than birds' nests, bees' hives or beavers' dams are. It's all part of the optimized function.
  - 082349872349872 2y ago
    You can spot social Darwinists by hand-wringing that the "unfit" might paradoxically be outbreeding the "fit".
    - adastra22 2y ago
      What a succinct summary of the problem, thank you.
- adastra22 2y ago
  Who invented medicine? The product of natural selection, that’s who.
  - m463 2y ago
    First, do no harm. actually, it's interesting that not only does the oath not say that, but that doctors take all kinds of different oaths. They differ in all sorts of respects, and keep getting revised (like privacy policies). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primum_non_nocere https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primum_non_nocere https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hippocratic_Oath#Modern_versions_and_relevance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hippocratic_Oath#Modern_versio...
    - adastra22 2y ago
      I don’t understand the relevance?
- octopoc 2y ago
  > and yet it is twisted and wrong Have you seen the movie Idiocracy? IMO it's a way more likely dystopia than 1984 or Brave New World, and it's explained here[1]. I would argue that that future is twisted and wrong, and is partly enabled by (mis)use of medicine. Now I do think that nature's approach, while extremely robust, does result in a lot of collateral damage--e.g. the fit don't always survive (most of us know people who died young due to no genetic conditions and due to no fault of their own), and the unfit don't have to die, they just need to not reproduce. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZTMybQuRZ6E https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZTMybQuRZ6E

I was looking for a word earlier that describes when it slowly dawns on a person how profound a thing is that’s been right in front of their eyes most of their life. The word I settled on was revelation, and one of the revelations I revisit as I grow older is the menacing terror presented by evolving lifeforms. If you press the fast forward button as a theoretical “survivor in the game of life”, the creatures that were benign when they were static now become terrifying, constantly morphing organisms which gain and lose all manner of sharp and venomous appendages. Like those early Deep Dream videos that always had creepy eyes and teeth everywhere on inanimate objects… that truly is what evolution looks like. It inspires instinctive fear of all the bad things, because that is exactly how it manifests. When you release the fast forward button though and come back to the present, what was creepy and terrifying before suddenly becomes magnificent. A living representation of localized perfection.

adastra22 2y ago
Only in niches that get locked in an evolutionary arms race, as does sometimes happen but is not the norm. There’s also prokaryotic life out there chilling and doing the same thing it’s been doing for billions of years.

tux3 2y ago

We owe everything to it, and yet it is twisted and wrong. Every day that passes, medicine weakens it. I thank medicine.

ajuc 2y ago
Medicine isn't weakening natural selection any more than birds' nests, bees' hives or beavers' dams are. It's all part of the optimized function.
- 082349872349872 2y ago
  You can spot social Darwinists by hand-wringing that the "unfit" might paradoxically be outbreeding the "fit".
  - adastra22 2y ago
    What a succinct summary of the problem, thank you.
adastra22 2y ago
Who invented medicine? The product of natural selection, that’s who.
- m463 2y ago
  First, do no harm. actually, it's interesting that not only does the oath not say that, but that doctors take all kinds of different oaths. They differ in all sorts of respects, and keep getting revised (like privacy policies). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primum_non_nocere https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primum_non_nocere https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hippocratic_Oath#Modern_versions_and_relevance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hippocratic_Oath#Modern_versio...
  - adastra22 2y ago
    I don’t understand the relevance?
octopoc 2y ago
> and yet it is twisted and wrong Have you seen the movie Idiocracy? IMO it's a way more likely dystopia than 1984 or Brave New World, and it's explained here[1]. I would argue that that future is twisted and wrong, and is partly enabled by (mis)use of medicine. Now I do think that nature's approach, while extremely robust, does result in a lot of collateral damage--e.g. the fit don't always survive (most of us know people who died young due to no genetic conditions and due to no fault of their own), and the unfit don't have to die, they just need to not reproduce. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZTMybQuRZ6E https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZTMybQuRZ6E