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Little feathery dinosaurs whom we call birds are currently chirping in vociferous protest against the claim of their premature extinction. Chirp. Tweet.
Are they on Twitter now?
Nah. On the tree branches outside my window.Are they on Twitter now?
Its because evolution does not favor qualities like ours. Consider insects for a moment. Do they need to consider the meaning of life? No, yet they survive. Look at the Lion. The lion is terribly strong, so it only needs to develop a limited skill set. Consider the octopus with its amazing eyes. It will never develop and appreciation for meaning, despite everything it sees. It must live in a low oxygen environment and simply won't have the brain power. Sharks have remained the same for hundreds of millions of years, because evolution keeps them that way. Only 1 species on Earth out of millions has developed this appreciation, not because we have needed it to survive but as a side effect. As far as evolution is concerned its as important as the giant butt on a monkey. It will probably never happen again, ever, anywhere.
But giant and colourful monkey butts have happened more than once - Mandrills, Baboons, Macaques and, most recently discovered, Lesulas, all have colourful and prodigiously proportioned posteriors. If it's evolutionarily neutral (which it almost certainly is not in both cases) there is no reason to assume that either gargantuan arses or oversized brains will not happen again. If it (colour-coded rear ends or computer coding ability) does happen to provide a survival advantage then it almost certainly will emerge again and again and again - like flight and sight - wherever adaptation and environment conspire to provide a niche.
No "ultimate end" would be served, because no such "ultimate end" exists. And in any case, nature tells you that it's impossible. Evolution trumps everything.
That's good, but my point in that illustration is that evolution does not have favorites. Its common to think "We are here, so it must be a common evolutionary feature for creatures like ourselves to appear" but that is a fallacy in the category of the undistributed middle. We can't assume that our unique point of view will ever be repeated.
I doubt the validity of your reasoning here. That said, I'm not that interested in debating with you about it, since it seems we'd be getting somewhat off topic.
...but evolution does seem to have favored various large and brightly hued versions of monkey bottoms...and more importantly things like eyes and wings both of which have evolved independently several times - eyes possibly dozens of times. Clearly being able to see has an evolutionary advantage as does being able to fly - and so, it would appear, does the ability to reason - to envisage the future - to assign meaning to what appears otherwise to be a meaningless accident of evolution...natural selection certainly plays favorites and as far as the large mammals are concerned, we are definitely one of her 'pets' - don't you think? And if one pet dies...there's ample space for another.
Wow. Well argued, but there is a leap from eyes and wings to reason, and that leap is a thermodynamic one. How many times has reason evolved from scratch on Earth? Only one that we can tell. There is a resistance to it, because thinking has a minimal thermodynamic cost. To process knowledge is to generate heat, and to reason takes effort, and that is why it is hard to change one's mind and to learn new things. Its why there are things we just don't want to think about, why we are impatient when we are doing anything new but notice time flying when we do anything repetitive. The cost is high, and so it is rare. I expect you will overturn this with some well tuned reply.
The long-term utility of our cleverness is questionable.
Not at all - you are obviously correct about the thermodynamic cost of large brains and their complex functions - not to mention the mechanical and physical issues of getting a large-brained baby out of the womb and to a self-sufficient stage of development before being eaten or succumbing to disease in our under-developed infancy - but humans have somehow turned all that to advantage...making our long childhood a time for extensive learning both to reason and to do and make things. And all that has enabled our species to dominate the planet and establish viable populations on every significant land mass save one - something no other species on earth has achieved. Rare indeed - but perhaps not unrepeatable. Nature will do the cost/benefit analysis and in our case, it came out in our favour. But you're right - it has only happened once on earth as far as we know so there is no basis to assume that it will happen again. But then again - though admittedly to a significantly lesser extent - flight is thermodynamically costly and that has evolved several times. So the jury is out I think - should we just call it a draw?
Or a successful evolutionary niche maker? The dinosaurs did not wipe themselves out of course, but their 'demise' opened up the way for a new epoch of mammalian domination of the land AND their surviving progeny to dominate the skies. I'm not suggesting our profligacy is a good thing - but nature is much bigger and much 'smarter' than we imagine of we think we are going to kill the planet. What I envisage our foolishness accomplishing is the reduction of populations of almost all land-based animals with the extinction of many and accompanying that will be a massively reduced human population that will struggle to survive but will ultimately pull through. Evolution will go into overdrive (again) and as the remaining species re-establish themselves in new territories left vacant by extinction, new species will emerge by the thousands. Eventually, some of them will rise to dominance - whether that will be the descendants of our species homo poenitens - or perhaps another primate - maybe pan cogitares or pongo sapiens - that has managed somehow to cling on - or maybe an intelligent avian - corvus ingenium or gallus prudentissimus perhaps? Maybe the dinosaurs will have the last laugh after all!
Ah yes
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Good points, Siti, but even in overdrive it usually takes millions of years after a mass extinction for Nature to recreate a complex biotic tapestry resembling the pre catastrophic state.Or a successful evolutionary niche maker? The dinosaurs did not wipe themselves out of course, but their 'demise' opened up the way for a new epoch of mammalian domination of the land AND their surviving progeny to dominate the skies. I'm not suggesting our profligacy is a good thing - but nature is much bigger and much 'smarter' than we imagine of we think we are going to kill the planet. What I envisage our foolishness accomplishing is the reduction of populations of almost all land-based animals with the extinction of many and accompanying that will be a massively reduced human population that will struggle to survive but will ultimately pull through. Evolution will go into overdrive (again) and as the remaining species re-establish themselves in new territories left vacant by extinction, new species will emerge by the thousands. Eventually, some of them will rise to dominance - whether that will be the descendants of our species homo poenitens - or perhaps another primate - maybe pan cogitares or pongo sapiens - that has managed somehow to cling on - or maybe an intelligent avian - corvus ingenium or gallus prudentissimus perhaps? Maybe the dinosaurs will have the last laugh after all!