Red Queen was re:Ears under pressure
Bill Burnett (bbur@wpo.nerc.ac.uk)
Mon, 6 Nov 1995 15:49:25
In article <47l2s2$7dh@scotsman.ed.ac.uk> jamesb@hgu.mrc.ac.uk writes:
>hubey@pegasus.montclair.edu (H. M. Hubey) wrote:
>>
>>Probably not now. And in this case, it's still no contest since
>>no one has ever argued that bacteria are more complex than us.
>>
>I have two points to say.
>1) We are dependent on mitochondria for our energy, which evolved from
>symbiotic bacteria, so all of that complexity of the human form is only
>there as a slave to further the replication of the bacteria-related
>mitochondrial genome.
>2) Bacteria are far more efficient than humans at converting raw
>materials into biomass, therefore they are more highly evolved. They can
>also survive in a much wider range of extreme environments.
>James Borrett.
Yes! Very nice...
And lets not forget the parasite driven version of the Red Queen... What's
more advanced? The host that developes a better immune system to defeat an
invader or the invader that continually overcomes that system?
It there's an up, then that little HIV virus and countless others are waaaaaay
up there. They continually defeat our 'advanced' immune systems, they are
recently and rapidly evolved or evolving, and they do it with no brain at
all. Remarkable really. My point being that there is no universal 'up' and
hence we are no 'higher' than anything else.
Bill
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