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FRAGMENT FROM NATURE continues from last weekend and concludes on the theme of imperfection in nature. Humans have a 2,000 year old history of seeing the world through a lens that tells a story, and within that story is embedded the theme of perfection. Thus, seeing nature through that lens has colored our perspective. But nature is a different reality. Evolution is a messy business. Ninety nine percent of her experiments have ended on the scrap heap. Resolving the distorting lens and reality is our challenge today. View in LinkedIn

SEXUAL VS VEGETATIVE REPRODUCTION. "Mutation leads to evolution in biological organisms over many, many, many generations if at all - even beneficial mutations don't always make it through. Computer programs don't reproduce. They don't have genes to pass on. They simply do not evolve." https://lnkd.in/evQuB2z View in LinkedIn

NATURAL CODE MUTATIONS. “Studies by IBM in the 1990s suggest that computers typically experience about one cosmic-ray-induced error per 256 megabytes of RAM per month. Apparently, not insignificant." http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2580933/cosmic-rays-what-is-the-probability-they-will-affect-a-program View in LinkedIn

LOW ODDS. "An error in a program would make a program work differently - and in most cases this means work incorrectly, and in most cases this means worse than intended. The chances of an error improving a program are extremely low." Biological mutations are usually deleterious but some are very advantageous, if only in the long-term. https://lnkd.in/evQuB2z View in LinkedIn

"EVOLUTIONARY DEAD ENDS are traits that increase the likelihood of extinction, but become fixed within species because they are thought to initially provide a short-term evolutionary advantage. Some classic hypothesized dead ends include asexuality, selfing, polyploidy, and specialization." https://lnkd.in/dY4khXd View in LinkedIn

NOT ALL IS ADAPTIVE. "It's easy to assume that all features of organisms must be adaptive in some way — to notice something about an organism and automatically wonder, "Now, what's that for?" While some traits are adaptive, it's important to keep in mind that many traits are not adaptations at all. Some may be the chance results of history." http://evolution.berkeley.edu/evolibrary/misconceptions_faq.php View in LinkedIn

DEALT CARDS. "Because organisms have arisen through complex evolutionary histories (not a design process), their future evolution is often constrained by traits they have already evolved. For example, even if it were advantageous for an insect to grow in some way other than molting, this switch simply could not happen because molting is embedded in the genetic makeup of insects at many levels." http://evolution.berkeley.edu/evolibrary/misconceptions_faq.php View in LinkedIn

MISMATCHED FITNESS. "There are many reasons that natural selection cannot produce "perfectly-engineered" traits. For example, living things are made up of traits resulting from a complicated set of trade-offs — changing one feature for the better may mean changing another for the worse (e.g., a bird with the "perfect" tail plumage to attract mates maybe be particularly vulnerable to predators because of its long tail)." http://evolution.berkeley.edu/evolibrary/misconceptions_faq.php View in LinkedIn

PERPETUATION IS SELECTED. "Natural selection has no foresight or intentions. In general, natural selection simply selects among individuals in a population, favoring traits that enable individuals to survive and reproduce, yielding more copies of those individuals' genes in the next generation." Sometimes not. http://evolution.berkeley.edu/evolibrary/misconceptions_faq.php View in LinkedIn

NEEDS ARE NOT SELECTED. "Natural selection has no intentions or senses; it cannot sense what a species or an individual "needs." Natural selection acts on the genetic variation in a population, and this genetic variation is generated by random mutation — a process that is unaffected by what organisms in the population need." https://lnkd.in/dNENRRj View in LinkedIn