This doesn’t necessarily mean you’ve opted out of the evolution of humanity (or of our laptop overlords, or whatever comes next).
We are no longer in the simple “survival of the most physically fit” stage of evolution. (This is all IMO of course)
For example, we can overcome physical shortcomings more quickly with advances in medical science than we are going to evolve new traits that deal with the same problems.
In other words, we are evolving *culturally * rather than physically
(The idea of “Memes” as a mental equivalent of genes comes from this, err, I think)
You may not have any offspring, but this doesn’t mean you or your wife can’t have an impact on the future of humanity (oh! the humanity)
I don’t know how many decedents say Einstein, or “Bill the Quill” Shakespeare have, but their impact on mankind isn’t dependant on how much of their genetic stuff has been preserved
Perhaps the various hominids that were around at the same time as the early humans drove our evolution in certain directions through competition and cultural interaction - without any significant interbreeding.
If we can come up with evolving software for computers - we will be a part of the evolution of our laptop overlords, and they of ours, without any silicon/carbon rumpy-pumpy (except in tacky SF B-movies like “Demon Seed”)
I am really surprised that your thinking is so one dimensional on this issue.
‘Reproduction’ as you put it can take place under any number of mechanisms.
You don’t need an Apple sticking its 3.5" floppy into an IBM docking port to call it ‘reproduction.’
All you need is a mechanism for creation and some selective pressure to form the next generation.
In the case of computers the creation comes from the factories of man and the ‘selection pressure’ comes from input from man who are building on previous technology.
So computers most definitely DO EVOLVE.
Even today future computers are designed with the help and assistance of present day computers. Stretch your mind a bit and it wouldn’t be difficult to envision a future where one generation of machine designs the next and then carries through with its manufacture in a completely automated facility (no man).
Evolution will continue to take place but it will be directed evolution and no longer dominated by random mutations. Capiche?
I understand that evolution has no goals, it has results. The results are either a stronger species, or an exinct species.
The point of my post, which I guess I neglected to actually mention, is that we always look at evolution from 35,000 feet above. We look at the whole process, and map out 10 million years in a magazine foldout page.
But down in the trenches, where evolution is currently taking place, nature has obviously decided that the combination of my wife and myself has nothing good to offer the human race, and has taken away our need to continue our blood line, therefore assuring evolution will not continue in the direction my wife and I are currently heading. At the very least, this is insulting. It should be scary. But then again, I don’t care because the chemicals in my head aren’t letting me care.
And the SDMB Tin Foil Hat ™ works pretty well, too.
Chicago Faucet, evolution is a stochastic process. Maybe you would have had kids if you grew up in Detroit, or were Catholic/Mormon/whatever. Evolution has nothing against you personally.
You’re right. This (my bolding) is a much better comparison:rolleyes::
And of course my post was not meant to be a literal comparison, but a note that the general idea is hardly as novel as the smugness of your OP would indicate. It’s a tired old yarn that has no basis in reality.
Hmmmm…I’m starting to see your point, though it’s still more fun to make fun of you. But I still have ChicagoFaucet, don’t I? (Hey, Chi, I ever mention I interviewed there once? They didn’t hire me.)
Like Capt B. Phart said up there, there are more ways to ‘procreate’ than by propagation of genetic material. Passing along values, ideas and such, for example.
Quite a lot of buzzwords…, but maybe only I feel that way…
Ok, I can accept the idea that eventually we will be able to have computers that will have the ability to design other computers. Some might not, because some don’t believe in the possibility of Strong AI. Regardless, in this case it might be possible computers could be considered a new species of sorts, since they would possess the ability to reproduce themselves, but I still wonder if they would possess the ability to evolve. The way that computers evolve today is due primarily to Human ingenuity and creativity. It’s questionable whether a computer could ever have such an ability, and to delve into that involves a lot of Philosophy of Mind or maybe even a little bit of metaphysics.
Computers are definitely evolving, but the evolution and the reproduction of their characteristics are almost entirely directed by humans at the moment;
a turning point will be when the computers are given general goals to achieve and the discrimination to choose their own strategy to achieve those goals.
After that the evolution of the computer ecology will start, and perhaps it will have a conscious direction behind it.
Perhaps I should mention our own project- a fictional future galaxy where the artificial intelligences of the future have evolved into Gods; http://www.orionsarm.com/main.html
it turns out to be a mixed blessing, to say the least.
By your definition of evolution, playstations, hammers, chicken soup, cotton sweaters, light bulbs, air conditioning units, and nike shoes are all evolving as well.
Sorry, but I’m definitely not buying it. Computers dont procreate or reproduce any more than my socks do.
Computers are not evolving in any biological sense. They are created, and modified, by humans.
In order to evolve, or to at least be subject to evolutionary mechanisms such as natural selection, they must vary, there must be competition, and there must be a means of passing traits on to future generations. Computers can currently do none of these, as the entire process is governed by humans, based on market preferences, not on any inherent traits possessed by the computers themselves. We (as in humans) determine what traits are to be possessed. We determine the “niche”, or market for a given machine. We determine if a design continues, and which traits are kept or discarded. The computers themselves no part, beyond being a thing which we have designed. These same characteristics apply to pencils, houses, jet planes, Beanie Babies, or anything else we humans have created.
If we achieve the creation of true A.I., a case could still be made that the resulting being(s) may not be capable of evolving, depending on the nature of the specific resulting construct. What resources would an artificial entity with no biological components require, and therefore compete for? Who would it compete with? How would it vary, and whence the variation in the first place? How would those traits be passed on? Design upgrades could not really be considered passing on of a beneficial trait, since it would be pre-determined that such traits are more useful than existing ones. In other words, they would not be passed on from previous generations at all: they would be created anew, with each subsequent generation.
Even in the case of a true A.I., I think that any resulting “mechano-man” (or whatever physical form the A.I. might ultimately reside in) population would still be under the influence of its capitalistic market influences moreso than natural or even artifical selection. Again, this is largely because there is no inherent method for a trait to be physically passed on from parent to “offspring”. Building an identical model would not qualify, nor would building a “new, improved” model.
In some ways all human artefacts evolve, and have continued to evolve since the development of the Acheulian handaxe;
the fact that the elements of information transfer are memes not genes make this sort of evolution much more rapid and allows for the possibility of conscious;
unless civilisation collapses in the next two hundred years, Darwinian natural selection is destined to beome a sideshow.
In some ways all human artefacts evolve, and have continued to evolve since the development of the Acheulian handaxe;
the fact that the elements of information transfer are memes not genes make this sort of evolution much more rapid and allows for the possibility of conscious design;
unless civilisation collapses in the next two hundred years, Darwinian natural selection is destined to beome a sideshow.
I know, and perhaps it is a dishonor to the Botany department at Sheffield University (which I left behind many years ago) that I believe anything different;
but cultural evolution is surely important in the evolution of our species, and this does depent on information transfer other than via genetics…
once computers acquire the goal of self improvement the new configurations they design for themselves will be a new kind of evolution, directed by choice, and the end results are impossible to imagine.
A similar thing might happen to biological beings once the function of the genome is fully understood.
But I still have ChicagoFaucet, don’t I? 