Evolution requires variation. In the real world, there’s no such thing as enhancing a living system so it doesn’t vary. A living system that doesn’t vary doesn’t stay alive for very long.
Clarification: Do you think it would be impossible to bring humans to the point that we no longer have mutations, or that it would lead to our extinction, or neither?
That it isn’t going to happen. The future surely contains massive variation, as adaptive strategies are explored on ever-larger scales. Endless stasis just isn’t how evolution operates. Attempting to defend completely against mutations is pointless and futile.
Randomness was never one of the “properties that are needed if the population is to evolve by natural selection” in the first place. I never mentioned it, and nor did Maynard Smith and Eors Szathmary.
It would also exclude humans if we enhanced ourselves beyond mutating. This seems to me a much stronger counter example.
Evolution requires variation. In the real world, there’s no such thing as enhancing a living system so it doesn’t vary. A living system that doesn’t vary doesn’t stay alive for very long.
Clarification: Do you think it would be impossible to bring humans to the point that we no longer have mutations, or that it would lead to our extinction, or neither?
That it isn’t going to happen. The future surely contains massive variation, as adaptive strategies are explored on ever-larger scales. Endless stasis just isn’t how evolution operates. Attempting to defend completely against mutations is pointless and futile.
I’m not sure if you’re right, but in any case I expect variation in the distant future to come from design rather than random mutation.
Randomness was never one of the “properties that are needed if the population is to evolve by natural selection” in the first place. I never mentioned it, and nor did Maynard Smith and Eors Szathmary.