Scott Adams Thread (Garfield Cartoonist)

[Piotrsko]

Not sure how genetically engineering is different from evolution, but it's faster

[redpoint5]

Originally Posted by Piotrsko

Not sure how genetically engineering is different from evolution, but it's faster

That's been my basic argument. It's not as if we aren't engaged in genetic engineering when we select a mate, because they aren't randomly assigned, but instead preferences play out. If we're making selections on preference, we're engineering.

There are folks that complain about GMOs, too, and that's absurd for the same reason; that we select what characteristics to promote by selecting based on preferences, and therefore all our food, plants, and domesticated animals are products of our design.

Genetic engineering is simply a more precise method of selection preference.

[freebeard]

Originally Posted by Piotrsko

Not sure how genetically engineering is different from evolution, but it's faster

Well -- for one, evolution includes a fitness test; while engineering is driven by politics and money.

[redpoint5]

Originally Posted by freebeard

Well -- for one, evolution includes a fitness test; while engineering is driven by politics and money.

Zero things are exempt from the evolutionary fitness test. The other way to phrase it is that all things are participants in an evolutionary process (paraphrasing Gadd Sad).

It's this perspective I have that probably puts me at greatest odds with theists. Somehow I have managed to adopt philosophies that annoy everyone.

[freebeard]

Somehow I have managed to adopt philosophies that annoy everyone.

My philosphies are un-noticed [un-hearable?] by everyone for reasons I fail to identify.

DETERMINISM, FREE WILL, AND FATE with ARTHUR M. YOUNG

MISHLOVE: Well, Arthur, after you invented the helicopter, which was about 1947, you've devoted the rest of your life to really plumbing these mysteries of philosophies and man's role in the universe, and our relationship to our own consciousness and to higher consciousness. What more can you say about fate in this regard?

YOUNG: Well, one of the first things to say -- you have to say them in a certain order, because people have ideas about it. Fate conflicts with free will, is what people think. Well, that's very similar to the conflict of determinism and free will. There's a hierarchy between them. An example I give of freedom is at the time that I had my basic design ready of the helicopter -- a stable model that I could fly out the door and back again -- I was looking for a backer, but I looked for almost two years. There were people coming to see me, and I was going to different places -- the Navy, the Army. I had a dozen different --

.....

MISHLOVE: To no avail for two years.

YOUNG: And I had perfect freedom about this. I was perfectly free to hammer on the door, but the door didn't open until fate opened it. Fate controls what is going to happen on a larger scale. It doesn't prevent you from doing things.

MISHLOVE: You know, I think I'm beginning to understand the remark you made before the show began, that there's a sandwich with determinism, free will, and fate. It's as if we're in the middle with our free will, and we have deterministic control, in a sense, over our bodies, over our machines; but we are also under this larger umbrella of fate -- the environment --