Re: PROBING
(czar@freenet.edmonton.ab.ca)
10 Oct 1996 14:33:48 GMT
Martin Dann (mdann@j39to56.demon.co.uk) wrote:
: In article <53gai0$496@news.sas.ab.ca>, czar@freenet.edmonton.ab.ca
: >All three. As for evolution being "about survival rather than
: >superiority", it is simple *results* that count in nature -- what
: >survives (and therefore reproduces) is, by definition, something that
: >out-competed (demonstrated "superiority" to) what *didn't* survive.
: I can't disagree with that. The "superiority" I was referring to was
: intellectual superiority. The reasons we humans think we are so damned
: smart is because we are. My challenge is to the notion that smartness is
: necessarily a "good thing" in evolutionary terms.
How does the old joke go? -- Nature has come up with (X) designs of the
wing, (Y) designs of the eye, but only *one* design of intelligence.
Reason being, that intelligence has yet to be shown to have any survival
value. (Something like that -- I only heard it once.)
: There are species around which have been around longer than we have, and
: will probably be here when we are long gone. And many of them have little
: if any brain at all.
Someone once said that intelligence is not the ability to solve problems,
but the ability to *create* them. Yes, we may speculate that all manner
of "simple" organism may "out-exist" us, but our ability to alter our
environment, and the growing ability to alter ourselves will, I believe,
prevail. Quite frankly, rats and cockroaches have *nothing* on us.
Space colonies, a terraformed Mars, entire sequences of DNA transformed
into algorithms and living in "hardware worlds" -- where will it end?
Will it end?
--
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Czar
EAC Minister-without-portfolio
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Me fail English?
That's unpossible!
- Ralph Wiggum
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