Singularity. Is it possible? When?

[RTHolmes]

You're making a straw-man argument Holmes.

I wasnt making an argument, the first sentence was my position, the second was just a throwaway comment. having read up on searle's position I still disagree with him

[moot]

The spare big toe she has almost looks like it would be good for climbing things like a monkey, in the pic that's what her foot looks like, just like the foot of a monkey that's used to grip as they climb.

If they're limber enough, she might get something useful out of her extra fingers playing musical instruments.

[Sonicblu]

That is not an error - that's a feature.

If you keep the quote in context. It is an error.  If we can regenerate we should be able to regenerate forever without aging.
The hidden comparison is that it should be possible to live forever. If are dna is capable of regenerating us to the point of not dying as far as aging goes. It seems to me that it would be an error.

Yes I am presupposing.

Thanks for your support.

[moot]

No Sonicblu, it's not an error for the purpose of natural selection, natural selection which was the ruling paradigm till we grew evolutionary intentions of our own.  Before that there was no such volition as "live forever". 

[bozon]

No Sonicblu, it's not an error for the purpose of natural selection, natural selection which was the ruling paradigm till we grew evolutionary intentions of our own. 

We are still under natural selection, even though we like to fool ourselves that we are above it. The specific selection rules simply changed and it is no longer about who has the strongest arm to spear the mammoth and who has the quickest legs to run away from the saber-tooth. Though you might want to wait a few years for the world population to hit critical limits. Your dormant saber-tooth escaping abilities might just get you selected by nature.

[moot]

No you're right, we're not doing much selecting today.  But that's not gonna last.  Not unless there's some major obstacles, unseen ahead.

The above/below way of looking at it's bunk IMO.  There's no superiority or pride to these things.  It's all just pushing atoms and bending molecules, cause and effect, learning as we go, same as anything else.  A few more decades and it should start to get interesting, though.
http://www.ted.com/talks/aimee_mullins_prosthetic_aesthetics.html
IMO.  The bodymod scene at the moment is pretty freaky.  Too stark in aesthetics, too crude in tools.  Once we've got enough of a handle on the biology of it all, so that you can effectively get anything you can imagine, it ought to be a lot more entertaining.

[FireDrgn]

Ok, and I'm not sure I understand your reply.

Let me expand on the point, and then we'll see how you respond then.

Of course it is true that evolution does not design anything.  The adaptive features that organisms exhibit are a result of causation, not design or purpose.  But not all evolution is adaptive.  Bottle-necking, geneflow, and mutation all cause evolution that isn't necessarily going to increase the fitness of an individual or a species.  What leads to adaptive evolution is natural selection, and as a biology teacher of mine pointed out, natural selection is not "selection for," it is "selection against."  That is, predation and disease kill off the organisms that are less fit, and there's a small probability that the ones who are left over survived because of an accident of evolution that happened to be adaptive.

But there are a number of things that have to be true for selection to be adaptive.  There has to be genetic difference among individuals.  They have to have different fitness (a different phenotype), and the difference in fitness has to have been caused by the genetic difference.  Only under those conditions will natural selection cause adaptation.

Now, the role of death is that death is necessary for genotype frequency to change over time, and a change in genotype frequencies in a population is necessary for evolution and adaptive change.  Without death, the rate of change of genotype frequencies in a population would dramatically slow.  Moreover, competition for resources might become a serious issue that itself could threaten a species with extinction.  So, a slowing rate of change in genotype frequencies slows the rate of adaptive evolution and scarce resources means that a population would be vulnerable to whatever new selective force nature could throw at it: they die or even go extinct.

It's no accident that the most widespread animal phylum, arthropoda, reproduces and dies at an incredible rate.  We humans try very hard to eradicate some of them and they always have some new trick for survival.  The long life spans of some mammals are kind of an oddity in the animal world, but think of the stable environmental conditions that are necessary to make it possible.  You could wipe out an entire generation of insects and no big whoop; do the same to humans and it takes decades to recover.

Then there are some animals that are "programmed" to die after mating, even some that are relatively intelligent, like octopus and squid.  You can think of genetic change as a kind of arms race between species, and if it's advantageous to die after reproducing, then competitors that do not will be adaptively out-gunned.

Evolution is what it is. A claim that anything within is a feature or error is philosophical. Evolution or science can not make any claims.  Claims can only be made  with intelligences.  Just because we can think and reason does not make anything a feature or an error. Intelli gents came after evolution. Its not magically a feature without philosophy.   We can only come to the conclusion that it is a feature  with philosophy.

The claim that it is a feature is a completely differant argument.

How is death necessary for genotype frequency?  I dont see that, but its a mute point.  There was no death until after life already evolved. Therefore death is not necessary for evolution.  

.

[trax1]

How is death necessary for genotype frequency?  I dont see that, but its a mute point.  There was no death until after life already evolved. Therefore death is not necessary for evolution. 

Death is a part of evolution, natural selection is a part of evolution and for natural selection to happen you need death.

[moot]

You can get evolution without death, but death does optimize it.

[maddafinga]

Death is a part of evolution, natural selection is a part of evolution and for natural selection to happen you need death.

Not necessarily, evolution really is all about reproduction.  The term natural selection is a bit misleading.

[trax1]

That would be why I said that death was a "part" of evolution, death weeds out the forms of evolution that don't work.

[maddafinga]

That would be why I said that death was a "part" of evolution, death weeds out the forms of evolution that don't work.

Not really so much it doesn't.  There's not much weeding out so much as there is out reproducing.  Squeezed out would probably be a better metaphor, and there's no death required for that really.  I think death is probably a good thing, I can't imagine how tedious living indefinitely would be. 

[trax1]

Not really so much it doesn't.  There's not much weeding out so much as there is out reproducing.  Squeezed out would probably be a better metaphor, and there's no death required for that really.  I think death is probably a good thing, I can't imagine how tedious living indefinitely would be. 

Well your really just getting into semantics now, and like before I just stated that death does play a part in evolution, I never said it's the only factor.  If a life form is born with a new mutation and that mutation isn't one thats going to help it to survive better in it's environment then it's not going to live long.

Look at it like this, if an animal is born a different color then the rest of it's species, but this color makes it easier to be spotted by predators then it's not going to be around long compared to one that might be born a color that does help it hide better.

[maddafinga]

Well your really just getting into semantics now, and like before I just stated that death does play a part in evolution, I never said it's the only factor.  If a life form is born with a new mutation and that mutation isn't one thats going to help it to survive better in it's environment then it's not going to live long.

Look at it like this, if an animal is born a different color then the rest of it's species, but this color makes it easier to be spotted by predators then it's not going to be around long compared to one that might be born a color that does help it hide better.

And while that is true, things like that play a much smaller role than you'd expect.  Think about this, if an animal is born with a mutation that allows it to reproduce faster, or more than the others of its species, and that gene passes to all its offspring, even if none of the animals ever die, how long until the mutated reproducers grossly outnumber the members that don't have that gene?

[bozon]

There was no death until after life already evolved. Therefore death is not necessary for evolution.  

I am pretty sure that there was death during the time in which life evolved. Your philosophical argument treats the emergence of life as a moment instead of a process. There is not much philosophy involved here. It is just the nuts and bolds and springs and gears to make the machine work.

You can get evolution without death, but death does optimize it.

Without death that's gonna be pretty hard. If old generation did not die and keep reproducing then their un-evolved DNA not only stays in the pool, but keeps filling it. For most life forms life expectancy is set by the environment - they will likely die by the elements or a predator before they grow old. For larger creatures and top predators in particular, death by age, or being weakened by age till the elements or predator kills you ensures that old generations are removed from the system. Death of old generations also frees natural resources to the young.

This is why this "error" that causes aging is actually a feature developed and optimized by evolution. It optimizes the time a creature has to reproduce vs. the need to remove it from the system and allow the new generations to keep evolving. Thus having it is an advantage to the specie and the survival of this feature in the gene pool - it got selected.