Alberto G. Corona [email protected] Wrote: > There are greath differences between evolutionary designs and rational design.
Yes there are big differences, rational designs are, well, rational, but evolutionary designs are idiotic. Mother Nature (Evolution) is a slow and stupid tinkerer, it had over 3 billion years to work on the problem but it couldn't even come up with a macroscopic part that could rotate in 360 degrees! Rational designers had less difficulty coming up with the wheel. The only advantage Evolution had is that until it managed to invent brains it was the only way complex objects could get built. I can think of a few reasons for natures poor design: 1) Time Lags: Evolution is so slow the animal is adapted to conditions that may no longer exist, that's why moths have an instinct to fly into candle flames. I have no doubt that if you just give them a million years or so, evolution will give hedgehogs a better defense than rolling up into a ball when confronted by their major predator, the automobile. The only problem is that by then there won't be any automobiles. 2) Historical Constraints: The eye of all vertebrate animals is backwards, the connective tissue of the retina is on the wrong side so light must pass through it before it hits the light sensitive cells. There's no doubt this degrades vision and we would be better off if the retina was reversed as it is in squids whose eye evolved independently, however It's too late for that to happen now because all the intermediate forms would not be viable. Once a standard is set, with all its interlocking mechanisms it's very difficult to abandon it completely, even when much better methods are found. That's why we still have inches and yards even though the metric system is clearly superior. That's why we still have Windows. Nature is enormously conservative, it may add new things but it doesn't abandon the old because the intermediate stages must also work. That's also why humans have all the old brain structures that lizards have as well as new ones. 3) Lack of Genetic Variation: Mutations are random and you might not get the mutation you need when you need it. Feathers work better for flight than the skin flaps bats use, but bats never produced the right mutations for feathers and skin flaps are good enough. 4) Constraints of Costs and Materials: Life is a tangle of trade offs and compromises. 5) An Advantage on one Level is a Disadvantage on Another: One gene can give you resistance to malaria, a second identical gene will give you sickle cell anemia. 6) Evolution has no foresight: This is the most important reason of all. A jet engine works better than a prop engine in an airplane. I give you a prop engine and tell you to turn it into a jet, but you must do it while the engine is running, you must do it in one million small steps, and you must do it so every one of those small steps immediately improves the operation of the engine. Eventually you would get an improved engine of some sort, but it wouldn't look anything like a jet. If the tire on your car is getting worn you can take it off and put a new one on, but evolution could never do something like that, because when you take the old tire off you have temporally made things worse, now you have no tire at all. With evolution EVERY step (generation), no matter how many, MUST be an immediate improvement over the previous one. it can't think more than one step ahead, it doesn't understand one step backward two steps forward. And that's why there are no 100 ton supersonic birds. Yes I know, such a creature would use a lot of energy, but if we can afford to do so why can't nature? Being slow, weak, and cheap is not my idea a an inspired design. John K Clark -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
