-
Would that we could put clinton in Jefferson's petri dish Q ERTY6 rodham clinton REALITY CHECK BUMP! - Two hundred or so years ago, we had Jefferson, Washington, Ben Franklin and Tom Paine, and there were four million people. Today we have more than 220 million, and look at our leaders...Darwin was wrong."
Mort Sahl, 1998
- contingency principle
-
- by Mia T
- A trait or strategy that is successful at one time may be unsuccessful at another. Evolution is not progress. Populations are simply adapting to their current surroundings. Populations do not necessarily become better in any absolute sense over time.
- Take RAPE. It may have been an evolutionary imperative for Homo erectus in the Pleistocene Epoch, but one can hardly argue that it is adaptive behavior for Homo sapiens in the year 2000, Boy Rapist-President notwithstanding.
-
-
This contingency principle was demonstrated experimentally (Paquin and Adams) with a yeast culture that was maintained for many generations. Occasionally, a mutant strain would arise that increased reproductive success. These mutant strains would crowd out the formerly dominant strains. Samples of the most successful strains from the culture were taken across time. In later competition experiments, each strain would outcompete the immediately previously dominant type in a culture. However, some earlier isolates could outcompete strains that arose late in the experiment. (Would that we could put clinton in Jefferson's petri dish.) Competitive ability of a strain was always better than its previous type, but competitiveness in a general sense was not increasing.
- Any organism's success depends on the behavior of its contemporaries. (If you doubt this, just ask David Schippers.) For most traits or behaviors, there is likely no optimal design or strategy, only contingent ones.
- Mort Sahl: No desire to meet clinton: "With no morality, there's nothing there"
- Two hundred or so years ago, we had Jefferson, Washington, Ben Franklin and Tom Paine, and there were four million people. Today we have more than 220 million, and look at our leaders...Darwin was wrong."
