On Fri, Jan 23, 2015 at 3:37 PM, Russell Standish <[email protected]> wrote:
> Evolution will favour whichever strategy is better in the long run > That is incorrect. Evolution will favor whichever strategy is better in the *SHORT* run. That's why Evolution is such a dreadful designer and was never able to come up with something as simple and obviously useful as a macroscopic body part that could move in 360 degrees. And that is why the eye of all vertebrate animals is backwards, the nerves and capillaries of the retina are 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 when Apple is clearly superior. Nature is enormously conservative, it may add new things but it doesn't abandon the old because the intermediate stages must also work because Evolution has absolutely no foresight, it knows nothing about "the long run". That's also why humans have all the old brain structures that lizards have as well as new ones. John K Clark -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
