From: Rick Smith (rick.smith@ntlworld.com)
Date: Fri Aug 03 2007 - 11:56:38 MDT
From: "Byrne Hobart" <sometimesfunnyalwaysright@gmail.com>
>They're adaptive solution finders adapted mostly to finding solutions to
>problems involving hunting, gathering, and sex.
It's not inconceivable that the solution we have is an overkill solution to the problems of resourcing and procreation, given that single mutator operations on genomes can produce radical effects and evolution seems to happen in jumps when a wildly beneficially radical change happens. The solution just has to be fitting, it doesn't have to be minimally fitting.
> I suspect that there's some kind of evolutionary constraint that
>makes new adaptations a lot easier to lose or forgo than old ones.
To my understanding, the chances of any adaptation being lost rest with the chances of the environmental trait it exploits disappearing. You'd be correct if civilization were about to collapse :^)
-Rick-
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