A while back I went down the rabbit hole of “how life started” and how this incredible evolutionary process… was somehow able to turn dirt into...beings… Drawing a path all the way from the original LUCA. What an astounding phenomena of the universe.
Yes, it’s fascinating right?
Evolution’s “prime quality” is just that it is the only one which seems to occur naturally (in absence of design).
Evolution’s “prime quality” is that it is comprehensive.
Here’s a case people wrote about – for top-down optimised design beating bottom-up evolution:
Aren’t cameras much better than human eyes? Cameras can have a higher imaging resolution, can zoom in more on far-away objects, and distort light less than human eyes (which by some happenstance have photoreceptors situated behind the signalling circuits). And yes, for all of those targeted desiderata the camera beats the human eye.
But the countercase is that the evolution of the eye is more comprehensive in terms of functionality covered. Does a camera lens self-heal when it scratches? Does a camera lens clean itself when dirt hits it? Does the camera design get self-assembled and source its energy from nearby available chemicals? Does...
Eye phenotypes evolved to be fitted to many varying contexts of the world that the eye (and nearby stored genotypes) were exposed to. The camera, on the other hand, is a tool that functions outstandingly according to some desiderata within some scoped contexts, but fails to function in many other contexts (eg. no working electricity charger nearby, no more images).
Responding to the essay, I’m not sure there is good reason to believe evolution or evolutionary algorithms will play too much a role in future AI
To be honest, you are not actually responding to ideas in this essay. That’s okay, just want to flag this.
Software is already copied with perfect fidelity a gazzillion times a day and we’ve solved this control problem handily—cosmic radiation is not going to “flip bits” to cause evolution nor certainly would hardware churn. Even extending to model weights.
To be honest, you are not actually responding to ideas in this essay. That’s okay, just want to flag this.
I’m sorry this was your takeaway, but feel free to return to my OP for deeper reflection at any point. The general idea, which I tried to put sensitively, is you are the one “misunderstanding evolution” at a rather deep level.
And yes I saw your comment that was partly what I was replying to
In your comment, you restated certain assumptions that I have heard before. This post was meant to clarify where those assumptions are unsound.
As the author of the post, if I reply that you are not addressing the ideas, it would be fair to check/paraphrase your interpretation of those ideas with me. Without it, I don’t know how to have a productive conversation. Maybe someone more skilled than me could, but I really can’t find a way.
Leaving it at this. Thanks for wanting to clarify your ideas too, and wishing you well
Yes, it’s fascinating right?
Evolution’s “prime quality” is that it is comprehensive.
Here’s a case people wrote about – for top-down optimised design beating bottom-up evolution:
Aren’t cameras much better than human eyes? Cameras can have a higher imaging resolution, can zoom in more on far-away objects, and distort light less than human eyes (which by some happenstance have photoreceptors situated behind the signalling circuits). And yes, for all of those targeted desiderata the camera beats the human eye.
But the countercase is that the evolution of the eye is more comprehensive in terms of functionality covered. Does a camera lens self-heal when it scratches? Does a camera lens clean itself when dirt hits it? Does the camera design get self-assembled and source its energy from nearby available chemicals? Does...
Eye phenotypes evolved to be fitted to many varying contexts of the world that the eye (and nearby stored genotypes) were exposed to. The camera, on the other hand, is a tool that functions outstandingly according to some desiderata within some scoped contexts, but fails to function in many other contexts (eg. no working electricity charger nearby, no more images).
To be honest, you are not actually responding to ideas in this essay. That’s okay, just want to flag this.
See comment earlier here.
To be honest, you are not actually responding to ideas in this essay. That’s okay, just want to flag this.
I’m sorry this was your takeaway, but feel free to return to my OP for deeper reflection at any point. The general idea, which I tried to put sensitively, is you are the one “misunderstanding evolution” at a rather deep level.
And yes I saw your comment that was partly what I was replying to
In your comment, you restated certain assumptions that I have heard before. This post was meant to clarify where those assumptions are unsound.
As the author of the post, if I reply that you are not addressing the ideas, it would be fair to check/paraphrase your interpretation of those ideas with me. Without it, I don’t know how to have a productive conversation. Maybe someone more skilled than me could, but I really can’t find a way.
Leaving it at this. Thanks for wanting to clarify your ideas too, and wishing you well