Strange7 comments on Talking Snakes: A Cautionary Tale - Less Wrong

107 Post author: Yvain 13 March 2009 01:41AM

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Comment author: Strange7 28 November 2014 12:05:44AM 2 points [-]

"Haha, no, of course I don't believe in monkeys transforming into humans! That'd never work. I just think they diverged from a common ancestor, many hundreds of thousands of years ago. Surely you're aware of the differences between, say, sunni and shia islam, despite both believing that all the same prophets said all the same things, and splitting only a few hundred years back? To say nothing of the other Abrahamic religions.

Think of a living organism as being like a city, with cells like individual households, each keeping their own copy of DNA scripture in the nucleus. When that scripture gets transcribed incorrectly, or reinterpreted, the change can potentially alter any detail about how the larger city works. The cumulative effect of changing no more than one detail every few years, and recombination to found new colonies which then make their own changes, eventually results in different tribes that seem to have nothing in common."