“Since the dolphin has evolved flippers would you therefore say that ânatural selection operates on flippers?”
“Yes—provided we were talking about a process that included dolphin evolution.”
I’m flabbergasted by this response. There is nothing inherent about natural selection that is going to give you flippers. That’s dependent on the environment, the mutations, and other factors. The process itself has no “flippers”. It’s a process that works fine without flippers, yet you insist that natural selection “operates on flippers” just because of a quite contengent possible outcome of that process.
Meanwhile even where flippers evolve they can also go extinct. The natural selection continues, was influenced by flipper existence at one point, but now is no longer influenced by flipper existence because all such animals are extinct. Natural selection was there all along, seems to operate just fine with or without flippers and yet you want to say that it “operates on flippers”. Seems using your rather strange logic one would have to say that it “Doesn’t operate on flippers” when there are none around.
Do you further claim that natural selection “operates on flippers” in the case of for example, chimps, just because in parallel there are dophins in the sea? How remote or close do these things have to be. If there is an alien on another planet with wingdings does that mean that one can say about Natural Selection while standing on Earth, “Natural Selection operates on wingdings?”
You see, to me, the term “operates on flippers” means that the flipper is an integral and mandatory requirement for the thing to work. Not something unneccesary and contengent. Otherwise, the list is endless and meaningless, and the definition pointless to saying exactly what Natural Selection is or isn’t.
Boy, I can just imagine trying to teach a class of kids Natural Selection using your concept of “operates on” as a basis. This is so far out there I’m not even going to assume Yudkowski meant this in his original quote “natural selection operates on induction”. I’m sure he’d reject this interpretation also. It would make his statement as profound as saying “natural selection operates on banana peels.” and as silly.
“Yes—provided we were talking about a process that included dolphin evolution.”
I’m flabbergasted by this response. There is nothing inherent about natural selection that is going to give you flippers. That’s dependent on the environment, the mutations, and other factors. The process itself has no “flippers”. It’s a process that works fine without flippers, yet you insist that natural selection “operates on flippers” just because of a quite contengent possible outcome of that process.
Meanwhile even where flippers evolve they can also go extinct. The natural selection continues, was influenced by flipper existence at one point, but now is no longer influenced by flipper existence because all such animals are extinct. Natural selection was there all along, seems to operate just fine with or without flippers and yet you want to say that it “operates on flippers”. Seems using your rather strange logic one would have to say that it “Doesn’t operate on flippers” when there are none around.
Do you further claim that natural selection “operates on flippers” in the case of for example, chimps, just because in parallel there are dophins in the sea? How remote or close do these things have to be. If there is an alien on another planet with wingdings does that mean that one can say about Natural Selection while standing on Earth, “Natural Selection operates on wingdings?”
You see, to me, the term “operates on flippers” means that the flipper is an integral and mandatory requirement for the thing to work. Not something unneccesary and contengent. Otherwise, the list is endless and meaningless, and the definition pointless to saying exactly what Natural Selection is or isn’t.
Boy, I can just imagine trying to teach a class of kids Natural Selection using your concept of “operates on” as a basis. This is so far out there I’m not even going to assume Yudkowski meant this in his original quote “natural selection operates on induction”. I’m sure he’d reject this interpretation also. It would make his statement as profound as saying “natural selection operates on banana peels.” and as silly.