On Sat, 17 Mar 2001, Technotranscendence wrote:
> What survives, survives. (Of course, this is not to say I agree
> that Darwinian selection is the only factor in evolution. I just want to
> point out what I believe to be a flawed bashing of it. Nor do I disagree
> with Wagenaar's conclusions regarding aging.)
Just so we don't go beating up "too much" on people who are misinformed,
please know that I've sent him a note on where he goes wrong and who he
should read to better inform himself. He responded with a quite polite
"guilty as charged".
For those of you who are interested there is a piece called "When Scientists
Overextend Themselves" here:
http://www.aeiveos.com/~bradbury/Critiques/WSOT.html
It isn't clear whether you disagree with his claims regarding the "causes"
(which are what is wrong) or his arguments that machines and humans will merge.
I'd say on the last point he has a lot of company. One of the things we need
to figure out how to manage successfully is how to allow those who want to merge
to do so while respecting the rights of those who choose not to follow this path.
For those of you who are unaware, the answers to the question of "why do
organisms age?" are "the declining force of natural selection" and
"antagonistic plieotropy". They probably carry different weights in
different species. These were proposed by Williams and Hamilton back
in the '50's and '60's but still aren't widely known. You can find the
references for the books & papers under: http://www.aeiveos.com/Authors/Aging/
Robert
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