Evolution (general)

[Fist and Faith]

[There are threads about evolution of something specific, so I figured I'd start one that can be about anything. No need to stay on topic.]

So I just read that only mammals have a neocortex. Just my opinion, but I think that's more important than mammary glands. (Speaking only in regards to evolutionary development, that is. I mean, I'm a guy.) The Class should be called Neocortexia!

And what's with ALSO being the only animals with the three middle ear bones? How the heck did it happen that these things all happened at the same stage in evolutionary history?

[I'm Murrin]

You'd assume it means the other branches that had those features just didn't survive.

[Fist and Faith]

Good point.

[Zarathustra]

All mammals have a neocortex? Or all those with a neocortex are mammals?

[Fist and Faith]

It would seem all mammals have it, and nothing that's not a mammal has it.

[Cord Hurn]

Going to another general truth about evolution:

Insects are the only non-vertebrate animals to have developed flight, and the acquiring of that ability appears to go back about 300 million years.

newswise.com/articles/view/545296/

[Vraith]

It would seem all mammals have it, and nothing that's not a mammal has it.

The interesting thing about that is that neocortex doesn't seem to be the only way to develop/instantiate intelligence...
I just saw an article about ravens/crows---they don't have it, and their brains are more built in a "cluster" arrangement instead of the "layers" we have...
And yet, they solve many kinds of problems the same way we do...
And octopi [octopuses?] have another different build---and solve as we do...

So they could have [might still/eventually?] become truly intelligent IF subjected to different environments.
Big brains are really, really expensive---to be selected for, especially during the vulnerable stage between pretty smart and actually intelligent, it has to have a very significant "profit margin"

[Vraith]

Only tangentially related, but it seems to have large implications for the origins of life---the odds/likelihood---and our ability to rationally and with purpose/forethought evolve ourselves [and maybe other critters, like in Uplift universe]]
I mean, if you can just whip up brand new, never existed before, enzymes/proteins from scratch, and shove them into cells and they DO STUFF...wow.

https://singularityhub.com/2018/01/31/e ... 1dma2g0xmo

[Hashi Lebwohl]

Evolution crawls towards imperfection. Kosh said so.

[Skyweir]

mmm... hmm .. evolution itself would dispel that assertion would it not?

[Fist and Faith]

This is mind-boggling. Both in how it came about (randomly stringing together pieces of coding, millions of times, and seeing if any of them happen to make a bacteria that can't metabolize iron metabolize iron), and in how it works ("We don't think Syn-F4 is replacing the mutant bacteria's missing enzymer; we think it's working through a completely different mechanism."). I would not think either scenario has a calculable chance of success. And yet both happened? In the same experiment??

[Vraith]

mmm... hmm .. evolution itself would dispel that assertion would it not?

Not really, at least from one perspective/interpretation:
When any/all organisms become too perfect---the next thing they become is extinct.
Evolution/fitness selects for the best breeding/adaptation for an environment RIGHT NOW. The more perfectly an organism fits its environment, the quicker it vanishes when that environment changes.

There are some pressures/selections where adaption/mutations that are general/adaptable themselves are "supported". [intelligence seems to be a mutation of that kind]
But there are many, many more pressures sorting specificity, particularity.
And specificity. perfect adaptation, no matter how long the road, is eventually a dead end.
There is a mostly-myth thing out there that sharks haven't changed in hundreds of millions of years. To the extent that it is true at all [that extent being "not very"], it is true not because they're so well adapted [though they are], but because their environment hasn't changed much.

Soo.....in the VERY long run, evolution kills the perfect--only the imperfect has a chance.

[Skyweir]

wallace.genetics.uga.edu/groups/evol300 ... ction.html

Interesting V

So would we then be realistically racing towards the 6th extinction event? This one driven by humans, as opposed to a natural climate i.e. ice age or geological event i.e. volcanic eruption.

Humans aren't really good at adapting to their environments, they have been rather too "good" at adapting their environments. Resulting in affected natural habitats, reducing bio-diversity, increased carbon emissions, global warming, climate change, we are in effect orchestrating our own extinction. What an end result for the "species" with a neocortex

[Zarathustra]

We're not engineering our own extinction. The survival of the human race doesn't depend upon biodiversity or a slightly cooler planet.

Everything on the earth will eventually be destroyed ... unless humans manage to save some of it by leaving the planet.

We are the earth's only hope, not its problem. We're the most important thing on earth, the most important thing in the solar system, and (as far as we know) the most important thing in the universe. We are the universe waking up to itself. We are the life, the consciousness of the universe. We can stand to lose a little biodiversity of much less important organisms in order to hatch from this terrestrial egg.

[Hashi Lebwohl]

We're not engineering our own extinction. The survival of the human race doesn't depend upon biodiversity or a slightly cooler planet.

Everything on the earth will eventually be destroyed ... unless humans manage to save some of it by leaving the planet.

We are the earth's only hope, not its problem. We're the most important thing on earth, the most important thing in the solar system, and (as far as we know) the most important thing in the universe. We are the universe waking up to itself. We are the life, the consciousness of the universe. We can stand to lose a little biodiversity of much less important organisms in order to hatch from this terrestrial egg.

This.

If we don't establish a presence off this planet then at some point everything human beings have ever done will be erased from existence as if they never happened at all. Realistically, in the truly long term that will happen, anyway, but there is no reason for us to sit here, helplessly, waiting for the end without trying to do something about making sure that Earth's end is not our end. All it will take is one sufficiently-large meteor and Game Over.

If we hadn't gotten complacent or distracted in the 1980s we could have already had an established Moon Base by now.

[Skyweir]

No need to sit on our laurels helplessly at all

There are things we can do while we exist because we will no doubt be erased from existence .. eventually. In fact the entire planet will eventually be erased from existence.

[Vraith]

And here's a take on the question of why simple life stayed simple for so damn long...then suddenly exploded into complexity and diversity.

[[and--related some above posts--yes, biodiversity matters, it is the source of potential and possibilities if nothing else. And there are manythings else]]
https://www.quantamagazine.org/oxygen-a ... -20180307/

[Skyweir]

Interesting read V cheers