Singularity. Is it possible? When?

[Reschke]

Moot check out the Quiet War book. Its a pretty tough nut to crack but I thought it was a decent stretch on the way things could go over the next few hundred years.

[moot]

Thanks Reschke.  The one by Paul McAuley?

Bozon I was just splitting hairs with Trax. Technically you don't need death, only reproduction.  Death certainly expedites the process...  Yep, it's optimal to have death, like I was telling Trax (but mostly the other guys arguing the contrary).

[Penguin]

It's like having CAD to make blueprints versus doing them by hand.  You can do them by hand (without death) but things are much easier to do with CAD (with death).

-Penguin

[moot]

What's the CAD analogy to natural selection's higher iteration frequency by death?

[FireDrgn]

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.
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.

     then when was the emergence of death?.  dont you have to be alive first?   Stuff does not just kinda die. Therefore it has to be alive first   If its alive first evolution has already happened.
  So death is not a necessity.

[FireDrgn]

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.
 
 
 
 
If we lived for ever it would not stop evolution.               You do realize life is not a necessity for evolution either? . We went from nothing to rocks to liquid ect. ect  all parts of evolution. that did not require life or death.     

Death existed before philosophy. It was impossible for death to be a feature before philosophy. Therefore it can only be a feature philosophically.

[moot]

A lot of semantics and one critical error.

Evolution isn't only "being alive" but a selection process by more or less fitness and reproduction.  The more fit survive and reproduce, and the less fit survive less and reproduce less.  Hence a natural tendency for fitness, hinged on death and reproduction.

You can have evolution without death, but death optimizes the process: any iterative process will evolve, in the literal sense, proportionately to its iterative frequency.   Without death you have an iterative process with indefinitely long (or inexistent, when death happens before reproduction) iteration frequency.  Those competing organisms that are death-optimized will out compete you and you're effectively "naturally selected" for extinction.  Ultimately you also have the finite resources issue that Bozon pointed out - without death you have no population restriction which is unfit for our environment of finite resources.

Death existed before philosophy. It was impossible for death to be a feature before philosophy. Therefore it can only be a feature philosophically.

Non sequitur - You're mixing death the symbolic idea and death the real material "thing".

If we lived for ever it would not stop evolution.

How's that?               

You do realize life is not a necessity for evolution either? . We went from nothing to rocks to liquid ect. ect  all parts of evolution. that did not require life or death.     

If you mean something else than evolution, use something else than the word evolution.  What you describe isn't evolution.

[AAJagerX]

Adaptation is a key as well.  The arguement of adaptation vs. evolution makes death a key factor.  You can't evolve without reproduction, yet you can adapt to better fit your circumstance (physically, mentally, sociologically, etc.).  Without death, evolution would slow, while adaptation would still flourish due to outside influence (overpopulation, food supply, differing culture, etc.).  

[mechanic]

 Evolution happens every second on the individual basis as we grow, learn and observe life. Evolution on the other hand can also be a very long process, in the typical sense. But the general component of evolution is definitely survival, not death. An individual cannot evolve personally if they are dead. A species cannot evolve if it becomes extinct. Death, as moot says, only speeds up the evolution of a species, but it has no impact at on the individual but to halt evolution.

 Survival of the richest right now....but whatever the catalyst for evolution, survival is the key element. That being said, if our evolution is leading to eternal life, count me out. Far too selfish a prospect for humanity to concentrate on, all traces of our humanity will vanish as we decide who lives forever and who does not in the possible near future.

[AAJagerX]

Evolution happens every second on the individual basis as we grow, learn and observe life. Evolution on the other hand can also be a very long process, in the typical sense. But the general component of evolution is definitely survival, not death. An individual cannot evolve personally if they are dead. A species cannot evolve if it becomes extinct. Death, as moot says, only speeds up the evolution of a species, but it has no impact at on the individual but to halt evolution.

 Survival of the richest right now....but whatever the catalyst for evolution, survival is the key element. That being said, if our evolution is leading to eternal life, count me out. Far too selfish a prospect for humanity to concentrate on, all traces of our humanity will vanish as we decide who lives forever and who does not in the possible near future.

That's what I was getting at in a sense.  Evolution requires genetic change.  We can't evolve after we're born, unless gene therapy (or a nasty fall into a vat of nuclear waste) is used to modify our genetic make up.  Once we're alive, we adapt...  Therefore, life span has very little to do with evolution.  Adaptation, on the other hand, is a constant. 

[moot]

If you ever deal with a scientist who's anal about the nomenclature, the word you want to use is acclimatization, rather than adaptation.

[AAJagerX]

If you ever deal with a scientist who's anal about the nomenclature, the word you want to use is acclimatization, rather than adaptation.

I'll keep that in mind, although the only scientists I'll probably deal with will be in the computer science field.  That's a totally different breed of geek.

[moot]

Just sayin, on vague memory from biology classes - I'm pretty sure adaptation means something else (more of a generations-level thing). And acclimatization sounds more like what you mean.

E.G. the difference between someone who might have some genes for cold weather, and someone who comes from the Sahara.  The Saharan might be incapable of dealing with northern winter.  But give him the better part of a year in such a northern place with mild summers, and he ought to do ok come winter.

Maybe MORAY would know for sure.

[Anaxogoras]

FireDrgn,

The kind of inferences you are drawing would make a philosopher wince.  People who take the subject seriously are very cautious and circumspect about imposing ideas like logical necessity and possibility onto the findings of the empirical sciences.  Those philosophers who do wade into the empirical sciences are, hopefully, heavily studied in both fields.

[lulu]

Want good AI?

Put soul!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y1ehMrK3itM