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Darwin’s recessionary tip: act like a beetle
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/3e1fe172-dcdd-11dd-a2a9-000077b07658.html?nclick_check=1 ^ | JOnathan Guthrie

Posted on 01/09/2009 9:48:47 AM PST by OldNavyVet

"Darwin’s great insight was that species retain randomly occurring new features that improve their survival. Hence, evolution. In theory, adaptation occurs in companies thanks to conscious strategy. In practice, the process may be more freakish, as directors studying their business plans years later tend to concede. It can involve happenstance, hunches and blind panic."

(Excerpt) Read more at ft.com ...


TOPICS: Business/Economy; Culture/Society; Editorial; Foreign Affairs
KEYWORDS: darwin; freepun; oldearthspeculation; survivalofthefittest
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The article is from today's FT editorial pages, and the excerpt provides insight to connections between Darwin's theoy and today's business world.

Click on the source link ... It's a fun read ...

1 posted on 01/09/2009 9:48:47 AM PST by OldNavyVet
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To: OldNavyVet

John, Paul, George or Ringo?


2 posted on 01/09/2009 9:52:28 AM PST by Long Island Pete (For the first time in my life, I am afraid for my country.)
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To: OldNavyVet
I know they are trying to be funny, but there is a big difference between intelligent actors and random chance events. Many of the things that intelligent agents do are not particularly intelligently thought through. Still, intelligent agents regularly identify courses of action that random chance would not stumble upon in the history of the universe. Thus there is a continuum of chance-to-intelligently-directed changes in entities directed by intelligent agents.

The examples of thoughtlessness/stupidity should not be taken as evidence the intelligent agents (such as managers) are on par with random chance, which is highly constrained to produced only limited, gradualistic evolutionary phenomena.

3 posted on 01/09/2009 9:55:27 AM PST by Liberty1970 (Democrats are not in control. God is. And Thank God for that!)
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To: OldNavyVet

"Eat ****!???"

4 posted on 01/09/2009 9:58:43 AM PST by weegee (Obamunism, just another word for the policies of a NeoCom.)
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To: Liberty1970

Great ideas often originate within ordinary — non managerial — minds. And those that persevere in following though on good ideas sometimes end up managing — and profiting from — the product of their ideas.


5 posted on 01/09/2009 10:14:08 AM PST by OldNavyVet (Character counts)
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To: OldNavyVet

Okay! No Problemo!.............

6 posted on 01/09/2009 10:15:55 AM PST by Red Badger (I was sad because I had no shoes to throw, until I met a reporter who had no feet.....)
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To: OldNavyVet; SunkenCiv; Rennes Templar; LexBaird; lowbridge; trooprally; Larry Lucido; ...
Beetle? Scarab? As in Walk Like an Egyptian? Been there, dung that.




Pun for All and All for Pun....
Funners & Punners & Photoshoppers & Parodies Ping!

(see keyword FReePun)
If you want either on or off
this family-safe occasional ping list,
you must be out of your minds....


Let me know of any appropriate candidate threads.
I don't ping the list to threads that are sacreligious or tacky or seem likely to become so.
(on or off requests: FReepmail, enclosing a nominal $217.95 list processing fee).

7 posted on 01/09/2009 11:05:34 AM PST by The Spirit Of Allegiance (Public Employees: Honor Your Oaths! Defend the Constitution from Enemies--Foreign and Domestic!)
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To: The Spirit Of Allegiance; OldNavyVet; SunkenCiv; Rennes Templar; LexBaird; lowbridge; trooprally; ..
Beetle? Scarab? As in Walk Like an Egyptian? Been there, dung that.

How about I emulate John Lennon and act like an ash ??

8 posted on 01/09/2009 11:31:50 AM PST by theDentist (Qwerty ergo typo : I type, therefore I misspelll)
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To: The Spirit Of Allegiance

Thanks for the sting, TSOA. You’re very prodigious of late with the articles, but I’ll adapt, as it were. I may not be the sharpest knife in the chandelier, yet something is bugging me something fierce: After all, what in the blue blazes has a German sub compact got to do with weevilution? I don’t get it.


9 posted on 01/09/2009 11:39:02 AM PST by Dysart (Socialism=Vomit Carnage)
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To: OldNavyVet

Since Darwin had no method to see, understand, or comprehend the incredible complex engineering which takes place within the cell (the invention of the electron microscope and the discovery of the double-helix DNA strand were decades away), we must ponder the question: does the cell possess the intelligence or engineered capability to discern what is a positive external influence or what will have a negative impact on it’s existence and/or future?

Negative influences result in the death of the cell, its impairment (benign), or malignant cancerous activity. Positive gain in genetic material results in such anomalies as Down’s Syndrome, Tay Sachs, or Sickle Cell Anemia. Hardly an evolutionary gain for our species.

The amount of data in a single strand of DNA has been compared to the Library of Congress. As a network engineer I know that changes in data do not improve a program, they render it useless or problematic at best. Ever have a corrupted program on your computer spontaneously develop new and improved features?

Evolution contradicts the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics and the truth is we are seeing many species which have gone extinct over time (even before the Industrial Revolution) for a variety of reasons. We are not finding newly evolved species. Adaptation is NOT evolution! The example of a bird’s beak growing longer during periods of drought does not prove evolution, it simply shows an adaptive built-in mechanism which was pre-engineered. The proof: the same beak will retract to its original size when the drought ends.

Does anyone think that at the sub-cellular level decisions are being made to evolve with the environment? Hardly. There is no mental, thought-revolving tool at that level and the brain cannot “will” cells to spontaneously evolve in accordance with circumstance (otherwise we’d all grow wings and fly to work when rush hour occurs).

At the end of the day, the best of the best scientists have not a clue as to how life started other than the backs of crystals with 250 complex protein strands coming together in precisely the correct order. Try taking 4 dice and rolling them 250 times in an exact numerical sequence - it isn’t happening. It is mathematically next to impossible. Even if it did once, the chances of such a cell spontaneously developing the tools to regenerate, exchange gases, excrete waste, take in nutrients, etc. are infinitesimal plus the chances of surviving for any length of time in a brutal environment make this an impossible proposition.

And I haven’t even touched upon the genesis of the universe and all of the laws of physics and mathematics which conveniently came into being existence. Everything points to Intelligent Design and an Intelligent Designer though the term “God” frightens the essence of every secularist. They would gladly prefer the terms “seeding” and “aliens” that God - but where would they have come from (no doubt in their minds a Darwinian evolution)?


10 posted on 01/09/2009 11:56:30 AM PST by datakcy (Declaring our love for God, country, and family ISN'T hate speech - it's common sense!)
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To: The Spirit Of Allegiance

Thanks for the ping!


11 posted on 01/09/2009 12:23:12 PM PST by Alamo-Girl
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To: weegee

hehehe...that was my first thought when I read the title!


12 posted on 01/09/2009 12:54:06 PM PST by Gondring (Paul Revere would have been flamed as a naysayer troll and told to go back to Boston.)
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To: Liberty1970
Still, intelligent agents regularly identify courses of action that random chance would not stumble upon in the history of the universe.

Oh? Do tell.

13 posted on 01/09/2009 12:54:59 PM PST by Gondring (Paul Revere would have been flamed as a naysayer troll and told to go back to Boston.)
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To: datakcy

“Evolution contradicts the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics”

The great big fusion reactor at the center of our solar system takes care of the that little issue.


14 posted on 01/09/2009 12:57:19 PM PST by DevNet (What's past is prologue)
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To: theDentist
"we must ponder the question: does the cell possess the intelligence ... "

To what end? All living things involve cells and it seems to me, based on living things adapting (one way or the other, ie life or death) to different enviornments, that all living things are capable of some level of sense perception, which might include senses we know nothing about.

"As a network engineer I know that changes in data do not improve a program, they render it useless or problematic at best. Ever have a corrupted program on your computer spontaneously develop new and improved features?"

Programming changes improve programs, not data changes. If you have data problems, human engineer your program to identify them. When it comes to spontaneously developing new and imporved computer program features, I do it daily.

"We are not finding newly evolved species."

The AIDS virus is a new species.

"Does anyone think that at the sub-cellular level decisions are being made to evolve with the environment? "

Just as theories proposed by Copernicus and Galileo moved toward being accepted as fact, Darwin's theory is moving up to being fact.

"the best scientists have not a clue as to how life started

True ... We also don't have a clue as to how the universe started.

Thank you for your time ...

15 posted on 01/09/2009 1:32:33 PM PST by OldNavyVet (Character counts)
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To: weegee

My thoughts EXACTLY!! gmta


16 posted on 01/09/2009 1:39:45 PM PST by Elsie (Heck is where people, who don't believe in Gosh, think they are not going...)
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To: OldNavyVet
When it comes to spontaneously developing new and imporved computer program features, I do it daily.

YOU do; alpha particles don't.

17 posted on 01/09/2009 1:42:20 PM PST by Elsie (Heck is where people, who don't believe in Gosh, think they are not going...)
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To: Gondring
Still, intelligent agents regularly identify courses of action that random chance would not stumble upon in the history of the universe.
Oh? Do tell.

To use a trivial example, suppose you asked me to sort out all the hearts from a deck of cards. That is a trivially easy task for the average person. But to expect a chance mechanism to sort out the hearts and only hearts from a deck of cards would be unreasonable within a human timeframe.

A rule of thumb is that there are about 10^78 elementary particles in the universe. Probabilities of less than 1 in 10^50 are therefore considered such that they would never happen in the history of the universe for any macroscopic event, as a rule of thumb. But even if we bump the odds to 1 in 10^100, the point is that it is easy for intelligent actors to do things that transcend these odds.

18 posted on 01/09/2009 1:47:03 PM PST by Liberty1970 (Democrats are not in control. God is. And Thank God for that!)
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To: DevNet
The great big fusion reactor at the center of our solar system takes care of the that little issue.

That is a common myth. Energy input (such as the sun) typically makes entropy proceed even faster. There needs to be intelligent control of the energy inputs via complex mechanisms and the use of blueprints (such as the biochemical systems in photosynthesis and the DNA governing it) to harness the energy and put it to good, non-entropic use.

19 posted on 01/09/2009 1:48:57 PM PST by Liberty1970 (Democrats are not in control. God is. And Thank God for that!)
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To: Liberty1970

But that’s assuming this isn’t the universe in which it happens.

Looking at a single deck is one thing, but when you have an infinite number of decks, it’s easier for a deck of those to have a specific configuration than if you asked a human to sort one.

And there’s no reason to believe we are not in a universe that has that configuration, as we would not be observing the universe if we were in an inhospitable one.


20 posted on 01/09/2009 2:06:05 PM PST by Gondring (Paul Revere would have been flamed as a naysayer troll and told to go back to Boston.)
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