From: Lee Daniel Crocker (lcrocker@calweb.com)
Date: Tue Jan 21 1997 - 16:02:51 MST
> << Evolution is over. I'm in charge now. My genes have made the fatal
> mistake of building a survival machine that is more powerful than them,
> and giving it free will. >>
> How has free will been proven to overcome evolution already? When did this
> happen? Isnt this a bit of a "controversial " statement?
How can it be otherwise? You are free to choose not to breed,
aren't you? That alone changes things. My particular expression
of the idea is perhaps a bit rhetorical, but the fact it represents
is inevitable. The processes that lead to our creation will
continue, but the fundamental replicator unit is no longer a piece
of DNA, because I've discovered it, and I can choose not to carry
it into the next generation if I want.
> I would love to think that i can, by free will alone, make myself live
> indefinetely...
> hmm...
Certainly not. Reality is still a constraint. But you can use free
will to overcome your natural urges to breed, or to encourage others
to do the same. Therefore, the mental processes that lead to our
choices to propogate (I use that term instead of "breed" because the
latter implies biological propogation only) are the replicators from
now on, not our DNA.
The process of natural evolution is simply a mathematical consequence
of duplication, mutation, and competition. It is inevitable, and will
continue. What changes, though, are the entities upon which it works.
For this period of Earth's history, it has been little chunks of DNA.
>From now on, since we have free will, it will be little chunks of
motivation. Of course, DNA will continue in other non-free species,
and other replicators may be discovered as well. But for /us/, we
no longer slavishly serve DNA.
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