Stormcrow wrote:"It's self-correcting"

It's value neutral. Correcting implies
right or positive.

Stormcrow wrote:
"If a mutation is beneficial, chances are the carrier will pass on that gene."

By this you imply that if human beings overrun the planet and most species die off, those species just failed to have beneficial mutations, but humans did!

What you're missing are two things especially:
1) Humans are a completely new wrinkle in evolution ...the power of mind for good or bad
and
2) survival does not really show fitness. Fitness was a very rough term but did not consider cataclysmic events in nature like
cyclical climates, collisions with space rocks, or rampant hordes of nearly hairless primates.

Given time, most of us will fail to have descendants while certain cockroaches and alligators will continue to have descendants.
It is not proof their mutations are "beneficial"
and that's that.

Do you hate me now?

• Michael W. Pearson - yanniru - July 15, 2002 - 13:50 UTC
  • Richard David Yannopoulos-Ruquist - carefuluniverse - July 16, 2002 - 05:06 UTC
    • Thanks - yanniru - July 16, 2002 - 13:08 UTC
  • Certainly my incompetence to criticize is a "matter" of degree! - carefuluniverse - July 17, 2002 - 00:49 UTC
    • Thanks - yanniru - July 17, 2002 - 13:26 UTC
      • There can be no value-free science in this subject - carefuluniverse - July 17, 2002 - 16:15 UTC