Chimps \'r\' not us: the role of gene enhancers (Introduction)

by David Turell , Thursday, February 01, 2018, 18:44 (2282 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: 99% of all earlier more complex species are dead. His obvious main goal is/was humans.

dhw: You seem to have settled on “main” goal, which means he has other goals, but when I asked you what they were, there were none. The fact that 99% of species are dead makes it equally “obvious” that he wanted a continuous process of change. And you still haven’t answered why it makes more sense for him to want complexity for the sake of complexity rather than complexity for the sake of improved survivability and improved living conditions. Wouldn’t you say that human complexity has improved our survivability and our living conditions?

Exactly my point. Highly complex humans have made tremendous improvements, none of which were required for survivability. We are more complex than necessary. Raup reminded us survivability was related mainly to bad luck, not Darwin's competition between species.

DAVID: You have dragged in current events, which are horrible, but they do not change the point that prior to 30,000 years ago we lived in caves in survival mode despite our huge but unused brain that stayed at survival mode. We had to learn to use it. Of course stone age folks individually wanted to survive. I'm not discussing the issue at that level.

dhw: Earlier you said that “survivability is a minor evolutionary issue”, and above you say “survivability was of no issue to the Homo branch”. Now you tell me that the Homo branch spent 270,000 years focusing on nothing but survivability! And I point out to you that survivability is still the main issue for Homo today, but you don’t want to discuss that either. So when was survivability of no issue for the Homo branch?

I'm discussing survivability at a different thought level than yours. It is a minor evolutionary driving force, but a daily individual human concern.