Hello everyone On Sat, Mar 26, 2011 at 5:56 AM, Ian Glendinning <[email protected]> wrote: > OK Dan, I get your key point ... (as I said I was sure you already > knew what I was saying)
Hi Ian I'm sorry Ian but I don't think you do. >Ian: > Your question .. > "My question to Dave was that if we do not know what's better, then how > can we will ourselves towards it?" > > I alluded to answering that question without giving any examples. > Clearly our "knowledge" of what is "better" is imperfect, but so far > as we believe we know what is better and believe we understand how > evolution works - is there any doubt that we can wilfully influence > evolution ? > > We do it with plants and domesticated animals and ideas every day ...... Dan: You're talking about selective breeding, not natural selection. In fact, selective breeding leads to a species being less able to adapt to changes, less able to fight off illness and infections, and more prone to genetic diseases. Charles Darwin wrote about this extensively. He told a story about how an animal breeder informed him the quickest way to alter a animal was to cross-breed it with its sister or brother, or to back-cross it with a mother or father. But this ultimately leads to a weaker species. So no, while on the surface it may seem we have altered evolution by selective breeding, we have in fact effectively bred Dynamic Quality out of the equation. By determining what traits we select for, the Dynamic freedom exhibited in the wild is lost. Thank you, Dan Moq_Discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org/md/archives.html
