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

by dhw, Friday, February 02, 2018, 13:52 (2281 days ago) @ David Turell

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?

DAVID: 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.

Your point is exactly the opposite of mine! According to you, all our advances in medicine, in methods of acquiring food, in protecting ourselves against the climate and against our enemies have nothing to do with survivability. We are not talking about the causes of extinction, but about survivability being what you call a “minor evolutionary issue” and “of no issue to the Homo branch”.

dhw: 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?

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

It is and always was a daily individual concern for all species, and it is the absolute priority for all. If you want to confine the discussion to human evolution, you keep telling us that for millions of years until 30,000 years ago every single advance was confined to the purpose of survival, so how can you say that it was a minor or even no issue as a driving force. According to you it was the only issue!