Subject: Re: Conference: Loebner and his prize From: Erik Naggum <erik@naggum.no> Date: 08 Nov 2002 06:17:56 +0000 Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp Message-ID: <3245725076176347@naggum.no> * Erik Naggum | Evolution is not about survival of the fittest, but death of the unfit, | which is quite a different story. All sorts of things survive, but when | some illness or catastrophy or other disastrous event occurs, a lot of | individuals die. It is entirely random (as far as survival pre-disaster | is concerned) which factor allows individuals to survive the disaster. * Russell Wallace | This is true if the disaster is something which recurs at intervals | longer than normal evolutionary timescales. (E.g. an asteroid hitting | the Earth.) Huh? What does the timescale have to do with anything? | However, most things which are disasters for an individual or even a | group, are actually quite normal, repeated occurrences on an evolutionary | timescale. For example, when an individual survives an illness, it's | usually because its ancestors survived it on previous occasions and | passed on their genes for a well-adapted immune system. How is this not just what I said? | So to answer the question of what factors drove a complex adaptation such | as intelligence to appear, one often needs to look for things which might | be disasters for an individual, but would be frequent occurrences over | the length of time during which the adaptation evolved. Are you sure you read what I wrote? I am quite puzzled by your response, which looks like it tries to refute something, but does nothing to restate what I wrote as far as I can see. -- Erik Naggum, Oslo, Norway Act from reason, and failure makes you rethink and study harder. Act from faith, and failure makes you blame someone and push harder.