All of KristianRonn's Comments + Replies
Good point. Will add a bit of a better bridge for part 3 (that I hope to realease in a week).
Thanks, Sebastian! One of the strongest arguments against the Fragility of Life Hypothesis is that evolution through natural selection may be meta-stable. If life is diverse enough, it becomes difficult for Kamikaze mutants to kill all forms of life. As long as some life persists, competitive Lotka-Volterra equations suggest that populations in the ecosystem will stabilize after the catastrophy.
However, the most reliable way to assess the true stability of life, free from survivorship bias, is likely through detailed evolutionary simulations and continued exploration for life within our solar system.
Thank you Maxime! Very cool to hear, and feel free to send me an email if you potential collaborations down the line. :)
Good point. I will cover a lot of this in part 2. Essentially I think we are falling victim to survivorship bias. E.g. we will find ourselves in a place in the universe where cooperation is more common since it is needed for complex life and observers like us.
Thank you Seb! And you are correct! 😊
Got it.
Yes, agreed. Teleology is still very useful in biology. Describing the above post with chemistry would be like describing a high level programing language using only NAND gates (I.e. not very useful).
1Sure. It's an optimization process. At least in my vocabulary process and algorithm are more or less synonymous. But totally fine with calling it a process instead.
What in your mind are the wrong intuition created from calling it an algorithm?
(I was objecting to Dan's point. I think evolution is both an optimization process and meaningfully described as an "optimization algorithm". I don't really know what Dan's point is, since the book he linked doesn't super agree with it, though it does provide nuance to the degree to which evolution could be described as an optimization process)
1So natural selection is not optimizing fitness? Please elaborate. 😊
It doesn't disprove the doomsday argument. It does offer an alternative explanation however.
Don't think they necessarily care about a specific time period. I think they care about: can they learn how the simulated beings interact with a new technology in a way that prevents them to repeat or mistakes. And it could be the case that our particular time is the most efficient to learn from (i.e. the time that happens right before you might go extinct).