Reading Philosophy

Well, today in biology I have had some thoughts about evolution theory and stuff, the subject of class was how simple bacteria have turned into more complex cells.
Like there was a bacteria that "swallowed" another one and they started to live in symbiosis. You can still find those "swallowed" bacteria in our cells, it's the mitochondria (they're part of every cell, producing the energy we need to live=.

so now to my thoughts:
At the beginning, there were simple bacteria, and they evolved for themselves.
But at some point, one of them swallowed another one and they merged to more complex cells...now it was some bacteria together, one inside of the other, evolving.
Later on in the timeline, many of those cells came together to form a multicellur organism.
Those organisms started to evolve, too, but now they weren't mere cells, they were like a society of cells.
The evolved untill at one level, some of those organisms got intelligent enough to start inventing and building stuff.
By then, the process of biological evolutiuon slowly started to turn into a process of technical evolution.
But now it wasn't organisms evoling anymore, it was societys evolving. The one with the better technical stuff will win.

that's how it has been untill nowadays.
(Without the technical evolution stuff, it's just normal evolution theory with todays knowledge)

well yes, so there kinda is a sheme behind it. Like the "units" seem to get bigger (once cell->more cells together) and sometimes the evolutionprocess seems to reach an end and get exchanged with another mechanism of evolution.

so now what would this tell about the future, if it were correct?

At some point, technical evolution would reach an end. We would have all the machines and stuff we need, doing the work for us and all stuff.
So what happens to evolution now? I mean we could find an alien race and then battle for the place of the strongest, but that sounds kinda sci-fi movie stuff. Not soo realistic...
I think that other aspects of our life that haven't been paid so much attention to could start to gain importance. maybe there will be an evolution of intellect, or maybe factors like symphathy and the like get important.
or maybe with the end of technical evolution, comes the end of evolution, and people start degenerating, being all lazy, wtaching 3d-television all day.

Or maybe people find a way to kinda stick together and think as one, so that they would form one big "organism" (dunno, like the borgs in Startrek *lol*), through telepathy or something. Like when those singles cells merged to multicellular organisms.

what do you think about the evolution of mankind in the future? How will we change ?

cya Magic

"The wise have always said the same things, and fools have always done the opposite"-Schopenhauer

You're right about at least one thing, magic. Evolution evolves.

I don't want to say that natural-selection has stopped, but merely slowed down significantly. We're at an age where, a plant or an animal exists where they probably benefit humans somehow. This isn't true for all creatures like bears and such, though bears are not common, and everytime one is found in a town terrorizing the local townspeople, it is shot and there is one less bear in the world.

It is getting close to the point where lambs, pigs, chickens, and cows are becoming the most common animals on the planet, sadly enough. As a food source, they have begun to serve a purpose other than the one they were evolved to do.

In short, evolution has evolved to mean who has the bigger brain survives. Ironically enough, it is us who has changed the rules.

The future only implies more of the same, except tomatoes will be genetically enhanced to grow in square shapes to fit better in boxes. Cows will give twice the milk, at the sacrifice of its own health, and provide twice as much meat. Chickens will be more tender and plump when you cook'em. All of which centers around a single solitary rule which is how it benefits mankind.

Very few thngs escape mankind's grasp. Cockroaches are very much unwanted, though they thrive amongst humans, because unlike other animals, their sheer number and speed prevent them from being easily wiped out. And because of the lack of other animals to consume the food waste, cockroaches have a plethora of food awaiting them.

Viri too, escape mankind's grasp. The ultimate virus has become one which is highly contageous and hard to eliminate, whereas in the past, a successful virus might have been one that could dwell in a creature long enough to spread to another. Unfortunately, through our killing of the weaker viri, we are only providing natural selection letting only the strong survive.

I only hope we can catch on to the pattern before things become impossible to reverse. At this rate, most non-chicken non-cow species will perish, leaving us to wonder how greed drove us to this point to eliminate almost all of our neighbors.

"If I die of a heart attack eating bacon, I'll be a happy man." -My father

There is one thing about evolution i don't understand.

Evolution goes by small steps, right?. If so there shouldn't be birds, because the evolutionary form between them would be a no-fly bird-alike :D [it's a very big jump] which sounds pretty useless to me.

It's hard to me to understand that some animal would give birth to another animal that would miraculously start flying.

Same with anything else.

I mean it's hard for me to imagine circumstances that would force some animals to grow wings, if they would become usable in future generations. Useless wings-in-development somehow don't seem to make this specimen more proficient, so they would be passed to fuutrre generations :]

Where's the flaw in my thinking?

"Life is a queue. You come in, hang around for a bit, get some service, then depart."

Uh, even though I'm in high school, I've read several books on revolution that suggest perhaps revelution doesn't go in small steps, there is a graph that goes like this: First it increases very slowly with no large changes, then suddenly, it leaps a huge step, then it continues to get longer again, with no large changes, then it suddenly leaps again. So it repeats like that, like a staircase. I think it actually does make sense if you apply what you'v been thinking to this theory, after all, we have not been able to find fossils from the "leaping stages" in revolution while we can find enough fossoils from the "slow progressing" stages. So something must have happened during that stage to cause this sudden leap in revolution. Perhaps it is the caused by a sudden change of climate? Some weird people even say it's aliens. Although I doubt that.

I do agree with one person on the effects of human selection on bacterias and how it's not doing us any good. Yes, I do think that natural selection is still ongoing to some degree. But I would like to correct him that what he is talking about with humans killing off bears and farming chickens and etc, is not NATURAL SELECTION. According to Darwin, there are two types of selections, one is Natural Selection, and one is Human Selection. What he is talking about here should be Human Selection. It has nothing to do with Natural Selection. Natural Selection must happen without any interference by Humans, only by the natural environment. Anyways, so yeah, I don't think that human civilization is actually going to reach a level where we can go to other planets, but I also don't think that our growth in technology will stop. It will never stop, but there's somethingelse that will cause our population to stop growing. I think most likely a series of natural disasters or a large scale virus will take place that wipes out 80% of the people on this planet, and that's when the technology stops growing because there won't be enough people around to investigate in technology. If you look at our growth graph, our population has been growing continuously and like most graphs like that, something MUST happen to stop this growth and decrease it. In most cases, the population might cease to exist. I certainly don't hope that's the case with us.

If this disaster does indeed happen in the future, people might become more spiritual as people always do after a disaster. There might be a tremendous spiritual growth and perhaps some new abilities might be developed.

Well i have some difficulty believing that evolution might take big leaps by itself. But that's my problem :]. The only option might be a mutation effect. But i don't consider it as a part of normal evolution. It's like "cheating" and taking a shortcut :]
[Awful comparison :]]

And yes, disaster is going to happen :

Warning this will sound very cruel. But that's scientific point of view.

- Humans let the weaker units in their population live and have children (you know, medical care, compassion, etc). So their often severe genetic flaws get passed on. And generally humanity degrades itself, genetically, instead of improving itself.
- Humans fight bacteria with various things. The weakest bacteria get killed off, and the strongest live and mutate, constantly improving themselves.

Zap in thoughts some time into the future. What will you see? Totaly good for nothing humanity with awful genetic flaws. And super bacteria, which passed strict genetic selection. All of this because of human selection. Things don't look so good, do they? (I sometimes scare myself :/. Too much thinking)

of course i didn't take one possibility under consideration : That humanity will eventually (hopefully) learn to improve their genes, making these bacteria harmless to people. But they might not make it (we have another virus threat coming up from asia, bird flu might mutate anytime, jump to humans and cause a pandemia)

"Life is a queue. You come in, hang around for a bit, get some service, then depart."

I think the current theory on wings is that there were dinosaurs with wing-like arms (i'm not exactly sure if there are fossiles of those or if it really just is a theory) which didn't enable them to fly, but helped them run faster. And well, there are several birds nowadays that can't fly, kiwis or ostriches, for instance.
Which somehow is logical as you can run faster if you have legs and arms to push yourself forward instead of just legs.
And birds are genetically linked to dinosaurs/reptiles, they have a lot in common.
AND the scales of reptiles are sort of similar to the feathers of birds (way more similar than they are to fish-scales or hair).

But to understand those processes of evolution, you have to have a better understanding of genetics. Because there are genes and master-genes. The master-genes control the way the "normal" genes are expressed.
So while a mutation in a normal gene might lead from black to blonde hair, a mutation in a master-gene might lead to you growing needles instead of hair (just an imaginary example ;) ).
A real example of this would be all the different kinds of cabbage.
All cabbage sorts are mutations of some ancient cabbage, but they are mutations in a master-gene, which resulted in the different sorts (and the different ways they look).
There has been quite some experimenting with this. For instance scientists have made tomato-plants that didn't have leaves, but instead small green "sticks". And that with the mutation of just one control gene.

It's like, most organisms have the same "toolbox" of genes, but those "master-genes" (i think they were called homeobox-genes) tell the organism what to build out of those genetic building stones.
I think almost every multicellular organism posses those master-genes

this is a nice example. A fly bred with eyes on it's antenna (the little eyes below the big eyes), due to a mutation of a control-gene. (there have also been fly's with legs coming out of their eyes, but that is due to another process. Generally the process in an embryo which tells the cells where there should be legs and where there shouldn't )

so, whenever people (like creationists) say that something happened "by accident", "out of pure chance" or "it just happened" and make it sound like "*puff* and then suddenly there was a fully developed bird", they obviously have no idea what they are talking about (or they don't want to have an idea ;) ). It's rather as with the tomato, a master-gene mutation in the "how to make scales" gene, leading to something that somehow resembles feathers, so a big change, and then small changes, slowly leading to wings.

Evolution goes in "small" steps. but it's small genetic steps, not small morphologic ones. And a small genetic change can lead to a genetic chain reaction, leading to huge differences. But still it's only a small change.
Then again, 99.99999 and so on percent of those mutations wouldn't really survive. (I haven't got any Idea what the percentage would be, but I'm quite sure it's low). But well, nature has got time, a LOT of time. And LOTS of subjects for trial and error experiments.

I hope that helped answer your question.

and then again, evolution is a theory that works everywhere where there is information that is passed on, with a way of altering that information in the process. It's not only with genes, it works with language and even computer programs.
If you are interested in more information on this subject, you could read one of the following links (especially the Digital Evolution one, which i find most interesting):
Meme
Sociocultural Evolution
Digital Evolution (the part about the program called Tierra, which was the first of it's kind)

"The wise have always said the same things, and fools have always done the opposite"-Schopenhauer

This is both an interesting read and the coolest fly picture I've ever seen. I swear that dude was thinking about cruisin' with his G in his new lowrider when that picture was taken.

"*sigh* Some men are really hard to manipulate!" - Orchid

This would be the fly with the legs instead of the antenna ;)

and some more pics of the eye-mutant:

Mutations rock! ^^

Cya magic

"The wise have always said the same things, and fools have always done the opposite"-Schopenhauer

Humans are moving towards this hive-like mentality. In the process of maintaining oneself, we work for companies which act someone like 'hives' in of themselves. A company will fire and hire people to contribute to the 'bigger' picture, which is the interests of the company. This means, albeit in the context of the company's interest, that we can never be individuals.

In my opinion, this is a byproduct of organization and improvement in business technology. A 'good' company is one which has workers committed to that company (and nothing else). By definition, to become a good company is to focus workers to be 'hivelike,' if you will.

We are still individuals, however, even if only in our time off work. I seriously doubt we would ever become like the borg, because fortunately, humans could never allow themselves to sustain this dedication without a little distraction every now and again. *Perhaps* a 'borgish' society could exist, but it'd have to have a golf course installed and a large stash of beer made available.

Computers could be hive-like, without the need of 'distraction.' Though many would perceive a hive-like living computer apparatus to do the work of humans to be highly threatening, I encourage it, because it means we as humans have only to be paid for things that a computer cannot do (don't know what it might be yet? anybody? anybody? ... "think", ladies and gentlemen).

However, have no fear, folks. Computers could never rule us, because we'd need to give them permission to do so in some fashion, and how many people do you know that trust computers more than human beings?

"If I die of a heart attack eating bacon, I'll be a happy man." -My father

A bird could became conservatively lighter to survive famine, developed feathers to survive cold winds, a preference for trees, strong vision to discern fruit.

None of these mechanisms involved flight. Flight becomes mere coincidence, an ease of travel, evolution is not predetermined.

We are just a speck of evolution's masterpiece, not the culmination of all it's properties. We don't have gills or chlorophyl, etc. -only what we need to survive.
Species evolve at different rates, not everything, take a crocodile or sea crab thingee for example, don't seem to evolve.

Our very excistence is in similar hands.

Human change is driven by rationalization and is clumsy.

Life is ticking away in every corner of this room as it has been for millions of years.

We exaggerate ourselves in the grand scheme of things and understand the universe in what it means to our existence there in.

People see some great human growth spurt, we butt into the world frame and disturb the complex stability, so now it evolves around us. And we feel the need to dramatically change ourselves. Erase out impact on the world. We are all cursed.

To end the evolutionary process means to accept ourselves as we are. I think you wind up accepting the status quo.

"We are just a speck of evolution's masterpiece."

I wonder what John Fiske would say.

"I think you wind up accepting the status quo."

I wonder what the other John Fiske would say about the status quo in regards to "Popular Culture".

自作自受

Well i'd like to point out that mitochondira are now made by our cells, so apparently they are no longer bacterial entities. They are as much appart of us and other animals as chlorophil (check the spelling im lazy) are to plants
and of course we evolve to adjust to changes in our environmet to match the environment and we also evolve to the speed of direty
e.g. i mean like the inuits, they have fattier eyelids that aids them in the cold climate. They evovled relativly quickly because it was nessesary to live, however something like our air is steadily changing to a more polluted state is more or less a small concern to our bodies. Here's why: If u put a frog in a boiling pot it jumps out. But if u put it in cold water and heat it up to boiling it wont jump out.
In essence, its the same thing, we are steadily poisoning ourselves but our bodies dont know it.
And a sudden brainwave i had asks me something inpaticular (Check that too) if a cell had swallowed another cell would that cell not be a predator cell looking for food for energy? and if it required food to process into energy then would it not have some form of mitochondria already?

Uhm actually, our cells don't produce mitochondria, they reproduce themselves independently. They also got they're own genome which doesn't really change over time.
In fact, the genes inside the mitochondria are passed on by your mother and so on, and there's only 5 different types of mitochondrial DNA (iirc) in all of human population, so you can say that we're all offsprings of 5 different women :P

but still, our cells can not produce mitochondria, they grow and divide themselves when they feel that the need for energy inside a cell grows to big for them to handle. And they divide themselves in a process similar to bacteria cell reproduction.

The one thing that does seperate them from bacteria is the fact that they could never live outside of a cell.

And Chlorophyll is a pigment, there's 4 different sort of chlorophyll and they never really chan ged throughout the history of evolution, and even though mitochondria haven't changed much either, there still was some significant changes and different species got different mitochondria DNA, whilst all land plants share exactly the same type of chlorophyll (only some algae got different types of chlorophyll). It never was anything that was seperated from cells, it never existed outside of cells ;) so i think that analogy is a little misleading.

greets Magic

"The wise have always said the same things, and fools have always done the opposite"-Schopenhauer

Well evolution only occurs when there is a 'void' (if you will) of purpose in the food chain. For example, when plankton evolved, there began to be a vast amount of plankton floating on top of the water (due to lack of predators). At a certain point, a fish which might have been a little different than its predecessors that filtered organisms drifting through the water took to the top of the surface to eat the plankton. Since there was *so* much plankton, these fish did far better than the predecessors in competition with other species that filtered organisms drifting through the water.

The predecessors that continued to scrap by eating organisms drifting through the water would have easily been wiped out come an event which would have caused such organisms to die out. These new fish would live on.

And since these fish would be so numerous living amongst the plankton without competition, a new predator that had used to scrap by eating fish that fed off of organisms drifting through water have evolved to spot spots on the surface of the water (where such plankton-eating fish would feed). And since there were *so* many such fish, these predator fish did far better than the predecessors in competition, et cetera.

Evolution is an opportunistic process. Never does an animal evolve with wings and flies. It only happens through many changes that would allow a particular evolved species to take advantage of a cycle that constantly changes because of the other many species which have done exactly the same up until then.

It's hard to me to understand that some animal would give birth to another animal that would miraculously start flying.

In fact, most scientists don't think it happened that way at all. The first ancestors of the fliers were probably dinosaurs which were known to leap in the air to escape predators. Obviously, they came back down. The ones which managed to stay in the air the longest were the ones that weren't eaten by the predators waiting for them when they came back down. Eventually, those with folds of skin were able to glide away rather than having to land back down. Thus the first fliers were born.

And they say birds probably evolved from the pterodactyl dinosaurs from there...

"If I die of a heart attack eating bacon, I'll be a happy man." -My father

It seems that the over-arching problem, that one nagging hair in my throat of this arguement, is that at some point evolution could stop.
Evolution is a principle, like gravity, and self-adjusting qualities of water, it exists outside of our vantage.

It occurs to me that the Western mind says that time is an arrow, and once shot will eventually end. The Eastern mind says that Time, our existence is cyclical. All will meet itself eventually.

We may see this eventual union with the computing machine as the pinnacle of man's acheivement, but I direct the reader to civilizations and cultures millenia older than our recently-civilized society. The Pyramids of Egypt, South America and Mexico hold the same power as any Pentium 4...if we could be decypher the code.

Electronic Computing Machines, our most recent evolutionary step is not revolutionary, as some might maintain. Nothing is revolutionary when one is held anchored more firmly by the process. Let us also not confuse "process" with "evolution"; process can be also de-volutionary.
These machines are only one cog in our eventual acclimation to the True Nature of Things and The Universe.

Knowing what a rock knows, or what that 900 year old oak knows, or what those cave painting in that region of France knows, we can truly know evolution. These are items of a celestial time scale.

But I submit, we here, now, know the scale of evolution. We can see things evolve in our own time.
Look at the rise in polution, green house gasses, and radiation outputs. These are all phenomena that have been seen, explored, and realized within my life time.
Within my own life time I've gone from a rotary dial phone to a Blackberry. There is noone on earth that can tell me that evolution will ever stop. It is a principle.

Or maybe people find a way to kinda stick together and think as one, so that they would form one big "organism" (dunno, like the borgs in Startrek *lol*), through telepathy or something. Like when those singles cells merged to multicellular organisms.

It's kinda deserving of a chuckle, that statement. But then it's also deadly serious. Within the working of the mind, we all have the ability to realize that we are all connected to the Greater Mind.
The borgs merely represent the question of Fate, and Individuality. Are we ever truly independent thinkers, or is the always going to be some form of hive-mind that pulls us to our eventual fate, that which has been predetermined?
Eventually, all will return to the source, The All.

what do you think about the evolution of mankind in the future? How will we change ?

We see it all around us. People are much stupider these days than ever before. Many more clones, and drones walking around.
It is true, we are amusing ourselves to death. We prefer to let the machines do the thinking for us.
We will never evolve until the machines are shut down, and we are not anchored to them any more.

I'll bet that just took 5 years off my life--but GODDAMM if it wasn't worth every second

This post was edited by zen on Dec 20, 2006.