Does evolution actually go for the best?

reply to post by CynicalDrivel


Thanks for clearing up your creationist POV and the noncoding DNA, this is a new area of study to me to pardon my ignorance
I just looked up penguin mouths and they look like the Sarlacc from Star Wars....very scary indeed

Evololution goes for life. There is only one winner when it comes to LIFE and there are no first or second.
It truly is all or nothing in the very sence of the word!

reply to post by nyny1


Frankly, someone who is more gung-ho about the idea of evolution would likely see this potential for storage of now-unnecessary bits as a way around needing to have so many dead-ends for any given trial run in a species adaptation to their environment--kind of a back-up for the next generation's survival.

It means that there wouldn't be a need for as many dead-ends.

It means that some of the ways that we define what makes a separate species from the now-living from their comparable fossils wouldn't work. Literally, the difference between some would be the flip of an expressed gene. Like if you could find a fossil of a bird that looked exactly like a chicken, but that it had teeth? Or maybe it had teeth AND a longer tail structure? It may be that it's just an ancient chicken, then. But then, if you look at what a chicken came from--that still semi-wild species of bird? (I can't see enough difference between that species and a chicken, as it is.)

Another one that I like to look at is which elephants look just like a hairless Woolly Mammoth: Nepalanese Elephant has a similar head structure, and a bit more hair than other elephants.

Maybe I have missed it but hasn't anyone corrected the OP when he said that evolution is a "popular idea"?

Evolution is not about reach a "perfect being". It's mostly about adapting, surviving and passing down our genes.

Evolution takes the easiest path to its "goal" (whatever that is), not always the best one. Computer science would call this the "hill climbing problem", when going through a semi-randomized process of finding similarly optimal solutions. (It's not that uncommon for evolution algorithms to parallel actual evolution.) This kind of thing explains why most vertebrates have blood vessels that could be considered to be on the wrong side of the retina when compared to mollusks with similarly structured eyes such as squid and octopus. Or why you can still find convergent evolution when starting out with two completely gene sets to mutate and build new traits with. Bats, birds, and bugs all fly, but the way they go about it still varies by quite a lot. Birds may have the most efficient flight, but that didn't stop other animals from accomplishing the same even though they lack feathers or (mostly) hollow bones.

a reply to: nyny1

That's it!

Where does the information come from? DNA? DNA is a string of information, this string is comprised with active and inactive information. Like active, I have green eyes on, but I have the blue one too its just not on. Does new information create itself new DNA words? Or are they already there waiting for activation?

a reply to: Xtrozero

So according to you, we decided to be vicious and cunning using our intelligence and now we are in trouble because of it?

I think we need to decide what we use our intelligence for!

a reply to: TheDualityExperience

We sure are lucky, don't you think?

It's a process that enables organisms to survive. Those who survive pass on their genes and, presumably, the traits that made them successful.

That doesn't necessarily mean they are "best." Sometimes, creatures show up who adapt themselves into a corner. They get so specialized that if something happens, they cannot survive any changes to their unique conditions. Giant Pandas and koalas have highly specialized diets. Certain hummingbirds have beaks adapted to only eat out of flowers of certain depth.

Such specialists are highly adapted to their niche, but if their niche goes away ... so do they. Does that make them "best?" I suppose it depends on your POV.

originally posted by: bitsforbytes
a reply to: Xtrozero

So according to you, we decided to be vicious and cunning using our intelligence and now we are in trouble because of it?

I think we need to decide what we use our intelligence for!

Or maybe we have too much of both for our own good... We are still evolving so maybe in a few 100,000 years we might be better...

Just think if humans came from a situation like the the non-aggressive Bonobo....

The Bonobo

Bonobos are female dominant, with females forming tight bonds against males through same-sex socio-sexual contact that is thought to limit aggression. In the wild, they have not been seen to cooperatively hunt, use tools, or exhibit lethal aggression.

The Chimpanzee

Chimpanzees are male dominant, with intense aggression between different groups that can be lethal. Chimpanzees use tools, cooperatively hunt monkeys, and will even eat the infants of other chimpanzee groups.

Bonobos and Chimpanzees share close to 99% of their genome in common with humans, meaning that their genomes are more similar to that of humans than they are to that of gorillas.

It is said the two groups were separated by a river where the Bonobos evolved in a non-competitive environment and the Chimps evolving in a competitive environment on the other side of the river, hence their aggressiveness.

Is it reasonable to assume that evolution always chooses what is best?

No, life is a bunch of hurdles, and those who get over them survive to pass on their genes- whether they're the best or not.

a reply to: Xtrozero

One wonders with Bonobos. Sure they aren't ripping each other up physically, but the passive aggression has got to be off the charts.

Evolution is not a magical force that acts upon life forms somehow making them stronger or more well adapted. The term natural selection is probably closer to the reality, but even that sounds like some sort of conscious selection is taking place to some people.

This is the analogy I like to use.

Imagine you have a bag of small buoyant pebbles, but they all have different weights and buoyancy. You shake them out of the bag into the water. Some will float on the top. Others will sink to the bottom. Others may float halfway between the floor and the surface. That's natural selection. Natural selection is "just how things shake out." And it isn't always about what's "best."

Imagine a population of microbes in a specific environment. The ones most well suited to that environment and to successful energy consumption will outlive the others. Not because there is a force known as evolution acting upon them, but simply because they are more well adapted through either inherited tendency or random mutations. Eventually new mutations will occur which make some of them even more well adapted than the first group. Those will then outlive the former, and eventually outnumber them.

Imagine this process continuing for millennia. Random mutation, better (or worse) odds of survival dependent upon myriad factors, with some naturally outliving others. (Some will take a bad mutation turn and die out entirely, as well.) You eventually end up with things sufficiently different from where you started to see the impact of evolution.

But not because it's an invisible force acting on life forms to always make them better. Merely because that's "how things shake out."

Peace.