Using the technique of belittling the poster rather than the argument is effective in those with limited intellectual tools.
When one only has a hammer…they hit everything like it is a nail.:wally
Boy, it’s a good thing that your use of the putz smilie (’:wally’) isn’t an attempt to belittle a poster, or you’d look like a hypocrite.
Somebody watched too many reruns of Battlestar Gallactica on SciFi in the last few days…
Actually, with your biological Bluetooth wireless implant, the desktop will be able to stimulate your pleasure centers directly.
Thus you will be able to complete your spreadsheet all the while simulating a video production starring yourself, Paris Hilton and the Olsen twins.
Actually that is a quite silly comparison. There would be no need to create artificial intelligence in the form of a man (two hands, two feet, etc.).
Arms and legs evolved as the first ‘tools’. From this start we levered their power by learning to use inert tools to amplify our own abilities. Carrying this to its logical conclusion, artificial intelligence would control its/their own toolset remotely so as to protect its/their own ‘seat of intelligence’ from the vulgarities of interacting in close range with the environment.
Destroying a Silicon solider would be no more effective in killing an artificial intelligence than cutting up a revolver would ‘kill’ a person wielding it.
Wait until you meet “Wrath of the Swarm.”
Trinopus
Bow before me! I am the Pinochle of Evolution!
I would respond to this but my Overseer wants to play Castle Wolfenstein and my ‘thinking’ drops his frame rate.
As silicon warrior with no gun is pretty pointless.
No, Grey, a silicon warrior with no spear would be pointless. A silicon warrior may be pointless even with a gun. Now, bayonettes (sp?) on the other hand…
Let’s stop with the glibness here. I’m not trying to come of as being pretentious. I’m just trying to correctly verbalize my annoyance.
Is nobody going to even try to be serious in this thread?
It seems that a new Evolution Versus Religion thread starts everyday. I actually have somewhat of a digression from the normal topin that I think will finally fit into this thread, so I might as well say it while I can.
My wife and I are not planning on having kids, ever. This makes my wife and I the voluntary endpoints of this branch of evolution. Nobody with the combination of mine and my wife’s genes will ever exist. No one will ever have our exact recipe of good and bad traits.
And you know what? I’m perfectly okay with this. And, I think that that is strange.
This is something that should petrify me. I truly believe that everything in the animal kingdom boils down to procreation and survival of the species. The whole purpose to life is to multiply - and I am choosing not to, along with millions of other Americans.
Hmmm. It is obviously the chemicals in my head that give me the urge, or lack of urge, to spawn.
Dons SDMB Tin Foil Hat ™:
Perhaps there is some slowly unravelling gene in the human chromosomes, put there by nature, that is self destructing the human race, and planning us for obsolencence.
Takes off SDMB Tin Foil Hat ™.
Sure, one species replaces another. Master creates its own replacement, in its own image. Product is “better” than its Creator, and lasts longer. Eh. It’s called “recycling”.
::sings:: (with apologies to Fred Astaire)
“I’m puttin’ on my foil hat,
Warmin’ up the death ray,
Chargin’ up the lap-top,
Gonna be a dark day…”
Pessemist: You seem to be forgetting that computers or machines will not “evolve” and overtake humans simply because machines are stupid. They only know what we teach them. They cannot learn by trial and error like humans, etc.
(restraining self from joke about how glad I am that ChiFaucet isn’t reproducing 
)
The problem is that there are MANY pinnacles of evolution at any time. I may be okay as an uncle but I am a truly LOUSY ant–too big, too few legs, no exoskeleton, etc. Looking for a top dog (though I make a poor dog, too) is an exercise based on a false assumption: that there is a goal to evolution. There may be a biological urge for Mr & Mrs Faucet to make little Faucets (there has to be a “petcock” joke here someplace) and those Faucets might have small changes that make the next generation of Faucets more likely to successfully reproduce but EVOLUTION HAS NO GOALS!
They may also have slight changes that make reproduction less likely too.
Like a leaky washer. 
Oh, I couldn’t resist, sue me.
Ideally, in GD, you should have a few facts. For instance if you’re making comparisons about evolution, you should probably understand evolution, a little. Otherwise you’ll get nailed. On the up side, you’ll learn from it, if you can take it. :dubious:
Oh, you did fine.
Obviously. Evolution is but a description of the impact of environmental pressures on traits that can be inherited.
There is no underlying intelligent force behind evolutionary pressures directing them one way or another. So one has anthromorphosized Evolution when one says it is goal sensitive.
If one postulates that superior intellect and superior variable processing speeds are the ultimate adaptive traits, and one further postalizes that at some point these abilities will supersede the abilities of man in synthetic creations, then it follows that the next step in the evolutionary chain could very well in fact be synthetic.
Incidentally there is an interesting corollary to this. Almost all known organisms are programmed to die. In fact human cells are capable of approximately 50 generations before the line becomes nonviable. This nonviability is thought to be genetically programmed in.
Now consider a synthetic organism. Taking the place of the DNA code would be some descendant of a software code. Now we have a form of ‘DNA’ that can be altered to incorporate adaptations ‘on the fly.’
Instead of waiting for random changes in the code to manifest, a proactive approach to environmental adaptation could be made accelerating the evolution of, well, Evolution. 
Of course cosmic radiation slaps to such a colossal program would continue to provide an element of randomness as the occasional bit is swapped here or there.
**Oh how brave mere mortals are to sit hours on end in front of my high voltage electron gun with but a tiny phosphorus screen for protection!
Well, technically, this is a ‘What is the next giant step in Evolution’ thread. I just included some God references so the religious right would not feel left out of the discussion.
But thinking about it… If one believes that God is responsible for evolution, then it follows that evolution DOES have an intelligent force guiding it…
False postulate. Evolution means reproduction. Computers cannot replicate themselves, so “superior variable processing speed” is not an adaptive trait.
Just because something is faster, more efficient, or somehow “better” does not make it adaptive. Something that leads to more offspring is adaptive. Period. Computer = no offspring = no evolution. Capiche?