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I love this: "Evolution has no foresight, it is simply the frozen history of which organisms did in fact reproduce."

by des 17y ago

MikeCapone 17y ago
Some more quotes I wrote down from the posts in the sequence (http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Evolution http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Evolution): We are simply the embodied history of which organisms did in fact survive and reproduce, not which organisms ought prudentially to have survived and reproduced. --Eliezer Yudkowsky, An Alien God Mutation is random, but selection is non-random. This doesn't mean an intelligent Fairy is reaching in and selecting. It means there's a non-zero statistical correlation between the gene and how often the organism reproduces. Over a few million years, that non-zero statistical correlation adds up to something very powerful. --Eliezer Yudkowsky, An Alien God "Don't think that, in the political battle between evolutionists and creationists, whoever praises evolution must be on the side of science. Science has a very exact idea of the capabilities of evolution. If you praise evolution one millimeter higher than this, you're not "fighting on evolution's side" against creationism. You're being scientifically inaccurate, full stop. You're falling into a creationist trap by insisting that, yes, a whirlwind does have the power to assemble a 747! Isn't that amazing! How wonderfully intelligent is evolution, how praiseworthy! Look at me, I'm pledging my allegiance to science! The more nice things I say about evolution, the more I must be on evolution's side against the creationists! But to praise evolution too highly destroys the real wonder, which is not how well evolution designs things, but that a naturally occurring process manages to design anything at all." --Eliezer Yudkowsky, The Wonder of Evolution "One grad student can do things in an hour that evolution could not do in a billion years." (Yudkowsky: "According to biologists' best current knowledge, evolutions have invented a fully rotating wheel on a grand total of three occasions.") --biologist Cynthia Kenyon, in Evolutions Are Stupid (But Work Anyway) "Individual organisms are best thought of as adaptation-executers rather than as fitness-maximizers." -- John Tooby and Leda Cosmides, The Psychological Foundations of Culture.
- Eliezer 17y ago
  Only the first sentence is from Kenyon.
  - MikeCapone 17y ago
    True, my mistake. Will correct it.

I love this: "Evolution has no foresight, it is simply the frozen history of which organisms did in fact reproduce."

by des 17y ago

I love this: "Evolution has no foresight, it is simply the frozen history of which organisms did in fact reproduce."

Some more quotes I wrote down from the posts in the sequence (http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Evolution http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Evolution): We are simply the embodied history of which organisms did in fact survive and reproduce, not which organisms ought prudentially to have survived and reproduced. --Eliezer Yudkowsky, An Alien God Mutation is random, but selection is non-random. This doesn't mean an intelligent Fairy is reaching in and selecting. It means there's a non-zero statistical correlation between the gene and how often the organism reproduces. Over a few million years, that non-zero statistical correlation adds up to something very powerful. --Eliezer Yudkowsky, An Alien God "Don't think that, in the political battle between evolutionists and creationists, whoever praises evolution must be on the side of science. Science has a very exact idea of the capabilities of evolution. If you praise evolution one millimeter higher than this, you're not "fighting on evolution's side" against creationism. You're being scientifically inaccurate, full stop. You're falling into a creationist trap by insisting that, yes, a whirlwind does have the power to assemble a 747! Isn't that amazing! How wonderfully intelligent is evolution, how praiseworthy! Look at me, I'm pledging my allegiance to science! The more nice things I say about evolution, the more I must be on evolution's side against the creationists! But to praise evolution too highly destroys the real wonder, which is not how well evolution designs things, but that a naturally occurring process manages to design anything at all." --Eliezer Yudkowsky, The Wonder of Evolution "One grad student can do things in an hour that evolution could not do in a billion years." (Yudkowsky: "According to biologists' best current knowledge, evolutions have invented a fully rotating wheel on a grand total of three occasions.") --biologist Cynthia Kenyon, in Evolutions Are Stupid (But Work Anyway) "Individual organisms are best thought of as adaptation-executers rather than as fitness-maximizers." -- John Tooby and Leda Cosmides, The Psychological Foundations of Culture.

Eliezer 17y ago
Only the first sentence is from Kenyon.
- MikeCapone 17y ago
  True, my mistake. Will correct it.