Open thread, Feb. 23 - Mar. 1, 2015

MrMind

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I've been thinking this for a while: here on LW evolution is often portrayed as a weak algorithm that procedes to explore the genetic landscape fumbling around with random mutations. And this is certainly true for natural selection.
We have though also sexual selection: 'suddenly' you can choose which genome gets to reproduce thanks to a brain! In principle, brains are Turing complete, and this means that evolution could be much smarter. Of course, even that program is determined by your genetics, and sometimes things can go awry. Still, and more cogent for humans, there is the possibility of 'smarting up' evolution.

People have had this idea before. It's called "eugenics".

It has a bad reputation from its implementation by the Nazis, who might have corrupted it a bit for their other political goals.

But I think even a pure implementation of eugenics is not as good as the other options we have for improving the lives of future humans.

1Viliam_Bur11y

If by "evolution being smarter" you mean things like "brains becoming intelligent, developing science, and doing genetic engineering", then yes. But it's the brains who are smart, not the evolution per se. The evolution would still fumble around the genetic landscape, except that with brains the local landscape becomes much more complicated, something like a fractal mountain instead of the smooth hills in most of the plain. On a different terrain, the weak algorithm may produce more interesting results. That does not make the algorithm more intelligent.

2ChristianKl11y

Random mutations aren't natural selection. Natural selection is the process that prevents harmful mutations from spreading and that encourages beneficial mutations to spread. Sexual selection is part of natural selection in the way the term "natural selection" is usually used by biologists. [...] No, they aren't. Neural nets don't work with 1's and 0's the way computers do.