I accept (embrace) that the larger human enterprise that includes our myriad social/political/economic/technological systems is the element that is "evolving" and that practices such as Engineering "evolve" in that context.
I believe that the rate of evolution in the social/political and NOW technological aspects of 'being human' outstrips the phenotype/genotype evolution by orders of magnitude... many of the things that select humans for "reproduction success" have been inverted (e.g. "Development is the most effective contraceptive") from our pre-industrial selves. Trans/Post humanism is already in it's nascent phase if I understand your binding of the term. We may look back at our archives in 2030 and laugh at how naive/arrogant we were here. - Steve On 4/26/21 1:59 PM, uǝlƃ ↙↙↙ wrote: > Both of these (using CRISPR to edit away the problem or where to draw the > line between selected and selector) seem to miss the larger point, which is > that "natural" selection is a kind of metaphysical "top turtle". No matter > how grandiose our engineering scheme, no matter how high and > total-universe-incorporating it might be, there's always a super-context > outside it ... and *that's* where natural selection operates ... similar, > again, to Tarski's argument that you can't define truth from within the > language (or von Neumann's no finite description, or Gödel's incompleteness, > or Rosen's no largest model, ad nauseum). > > We prolly should lay out the "language" a little more concretely before > claiming that some operation is not inside that language. E.g. before > declaring an end to human evolution, perhaps be more hard-nosed about what > "human evolution" means. > > For example, in a recent genetic algorithms talk, the presenter studied (and > argued) that mutation didn't play a significant role, at all, in finding the > (locally) optimal individuals. But that wouldn't rule out, with different > evolutionary algorithms -- and their contexts/runtimes -- mutation might take > on a more significant role. As we cross the transhuman inflection point, > perhaps some operators fade, others gain prominence, and still others emerge? > > On 4/26/21 12:39 PM, Frank Wimberly wrote: >> And I wondered why the impulse to develop contraception and vaccines, for >> example, and social welfare programs aren't elements of the environment. >> >> >> On Mon, Apr 26, 2021, 1:13 PM jon zingale <[email protected] >> <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: >> >> I pressed a similar argument for CRISPR on vFriam this week. If the >> socially >> responsible thing to do is to vaccinate for COVID-19, then perhaps it is >> even more socially responsible to CRISPR away all potential to contract >> the >> virus for future generations. - .... . -..-. . -. -.. -..-. .. ... -..-. .... . .-. . FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6 bit.ly/virtualfriam un/subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ archives: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/
