@OPOL

Hey everybody.

Forgive my ramblings. Long time no see.

Merry Meet and Welcome Back, OPOL!

Please hang for a while!!

Forgive my ramblings. Long time no see.

@OPOL We need to think and act socially, as a community, yet that seems to be crippled somewhat in the current culture. We are isolated, and spend so much time peering into our devices that we don't know our neighbors, let alone care about them.

A few influential and wealthy criminals have managed to buy and rig our system of government, we've got to get it back by any means necessary. Life on earth depends upon it.

Forgive my ramblings. Long time no see.

@don mikulecky

Actually, among us more complex critters, genes tend to retain multiple options, many of the carriers of which as dominant may have failed to survive die to whatever then-existing circumstances, (this applying even in cases of total extinction, as with the dinosaurs, which may have nothing to do with their general 'fitness' for survival but with unsurvivable disasters striking their locale, which may include the globe in extreme cases, as with global dimming, even minus nuclear radiation) but which still may exist as recessives and appear on occasion, even when handicapping/ultimately fatal to individuals.

Also, evolution isn't directed by anything except inherent genetic/acquired epigenetic capacities (the latter often negative, though,) and circumstance, and is not necessarily contingent on anything except the results finding a sufficient niche to fill where the organism can survive to propagate healthy young.

So I'd personally consider evolution to be dependent upon circumstance, not necessarily contingent upon clearing their progenitors out of the way, that being something that may occur according to circumstance, especially if a new variation is more likely to survive that circumstance than the original.

All that likely happens otherwise is that more interbreeding occurs between the existing and the new variation, (then typically considered 'sports' which pop up from time to time,) where dominant genetic traits will predominate, according to circumstance.*

Isolation for the inbreeding of a group with these traits is typically required for the development of new variations, whether via a flock of birds blown off-course to settle on an island under different circumstances where perhaps those with slightly longer/differently shaped beaks and/or more water-resistant feathers might do better at finding food and surviving times of relative famine, or whether limited to the survival of only specific, perhaps more warmly-furred, members of a species having their habitat affected by some gradual temperature change involving cold.

Again, circumstance is a determining factor, both for individual and species survival. And the potential for evolutionary change is determined both by both circumstance and genetic potential - as well as the ability to reliably pass along stable characteristics to offspring, to breed true, which may not be possible in the event of gene damage, which typically produces negative results.

If you're speaking of specific species/branches, in many cases, any successful new adaptation - or simple variation - in different circumstance survives to continue that variation, while the original may continue to survive in the original circumstance in which it prospered, so I dunno if I'd think of that necessarily as extinction of the old being necessary for the new to survive.

Look at the variations achieved in the directed breeding of domestic animals throughout human history, yet, in example, the wolves - while endangered also by human activities, ignorance and pathology - have still survived.

I know it ain't easy, but cheer up - our doom isn't yet absolutely ordained by anyone but a relative few Psychopaths That Be, and we outnumber them by 99-1. We can survive very well without them, but they can't hope to, without us to leech off of, while and if we still let them create hell of Earth to kill off all oxygen-dependent, toxin-susceptible life.

* Just a fast example of recent other, non-isolated instances where interbreeding occurs among naturally appearing variations, and predominance alters with circumstance (emphasis mine):

http://mothscount.org/text/63/Peppered_Moth_and_natural_selection.html

Peppered Moth and natural selection

...Peppered Moths are normally white with black speckles across the wings, giving it its name. This patterning makes it well camouflaged against lichen-covered tree trunks when it rests on them during the day. There is also a naturally occurring genetic mutation which causes some moths to have almost black wings. These black forms (called 'melanic') are not as well camouflaged on the lichen as normal 'peppered' forms and so they are more likely to be eaten by birds and other predators. This means that fewer black forms survive to breed and so they are less common in the population than the paler peppered forms. This is the normal situation observed in the countryside of Britain and Ireland.

Normal and Melanic Peppered Moths (Chris Manley)
However, in the nineteenth century it was noticed that in towns and cities it was actually the black form of the moth that was more common than the pale peppered form. Industrialisation and domestic coal fires had caused sooty air pollution which had killed off lichens and blackened urban tree trunks and walls. So now it was the pale form of the moth that was more obvious to predators, while the melanic form was better camouflaged and more likely to survive and produce offspring. As a result, over successive generations, the black moths came to outnumber the pale forms in our towns and cities. Since moths are short-lived, this evolution by natural selection happened quite quickly. For example, the first black Peppered Moth was recorded in Manchester in 1848 and by 1895 98% of Peppered Moths in the city were black.

In the mid-twentieth century controls were introduced to reduce air pollution and as the air quality improved tree trunks became cleaner and lichen growth increased. Once again the normal pale Peppered Moths were camouflaged and the black forms were more noticeable. Now the situation in urban areas has again become the same as in the countryside, with normal pale Peppered Moths being far more common than the black forms. So natural selection has been seen to work in both directions, always favouring the moth that is best suited to the environmental conditions. The same thing has been observed throughout Europe and the USA. ...

These have been dying off, like the rest of planetary life, in recent decades, in this case, I suspect most likely largely from from pesticide over-use, as it's stated in this article that the numbers of these in Britain, which had previously survived extreme levels of highly toxic combusted coal pollution, had diminished by 2/3rds within the period between 1968 and 2002...

And one more example - as well as my own commentary, I'd some excerpts from (mostly) a few of the most pertinent paragraphs copied out, regarding the profound mental and physical alterations in various of a captive Silver Fox population having had participants and breeders selected entirely and only on the basis of relative degrees of friendliness toward and trust in, (ultimately affection displayed for) humans and was nearly finished gradually putting the last bit together one at a time, as it pasted out as one word at a time down the page in each excerpt, when the page abruptly changed and the entire addition vanished; I frankly lack the energy to redo that as I do not trust this computer not to do that again, lol. Most of the rest of this appears to have survived on the back-page, at any rate. So, posting as is...

http://www.eebweb.arizona.edu/Courses/Ecol487/readings/Early%20Canid%20D...

Early Canid Domestication: The Farm-Fox Experiment: Foxes bred for tamability in a 40-year
experiment exhibit remarkable transformations that suggest an interplay between behavioral
genetics and development
Author(s): Lyudmila N. Trut

We have no need to physically evolve into anything else and are unlikely to do so unless we are bred (genetic introduction from various other organisms is manipulation, not evolution, relying as it does upon our own, undamaged and inherent genetic resources and ability to pass on stable, heritable, positive characteristics to offspring which then can continue to do so themselves,) for specific purposes; we just have to prevent the psychopaths - the born psychopath suffering from an underdeveloped brain missing the functions of essential human/survival areas - from gaining any position of power over us, and begin fighting to save the remaining results of Earth-life evolution and the natural life support system they form from The Psychopaths That Be.

History is not a driving force for the future. Evolution is. the sad fact is that evolution depends on development and then extinction. Development for change and taking advantage of new opportunities, extinction to get the old stuff out of the way. They are tightly linked. Every time development happens it does so by using one option among many. The others are then no longer available and when needed can not prevent extinction.

@eyo

Development of any complex system reinforces specific dependencies while eliminating alternatives, reducing the diversity that affords adaptive degrees of freedom: the more developed a system is, the less potential it has to change its way of being. Hence, in the evolution of life most species become extinct.

This perspective reveals the limits that complexity places on knowledge and technology, bringing to light our hubristically dysfunctional relationship with the natural world and increasingly tenuous connection to reality. The inescapable conclusion is that, barring a cultural metamorphosis that breaks free of deeply entrenched mental frames that made us what we are, continued development of the Global Economy will lead inexorably to the collapse of civilization.

Choosing one evolutionary door to open another usually determines the further path of evolution.l But there are exceptions. Basic truths can be found about any order, genus, species demonstrating limitations. For instance: bacteria cannot fly independently. Or, unaided a human being cannot hold its breath for 30 minutes.

But there is no predictability about the extent of future evolution, assuming there is a future. Regardless of how much of the brain's processes are conscious, there is NO EVIDENCE for any upward limitation on human cognition. There is however, that abundant evidence that the current political evolution (as opposed to heritably-driven), that humanity may never mature given its well-documented proclivity for self-destruction.

Peace OPOL, if Lakoff is correct it's more like "Think For 2% of Yourself", doesn't sound too hard.

98% of human thought is unconscious - A taste of the DIF featuring George Lakoff

good luck

Hat tip don mikulecky
https://www.complex.vcu.edu/
thanks

@Big Al see my comment to hecate above. I am not given to a sanguine impression of our (humanity's) future based on the relentless path toward annihilation homo insapiens is bound upon. Yes good things happen. Will they happen fast enough?

right direction although I certainly still maintain hope we can end rule by the rich. I certainly agree that we should not think small, but that's where I think we're hung up. To me, placing hopes on a tired old politician running with the same tired old political parties is not thinking big that's for sure.
But there are signs that people are ready to take their destiny in their own hands instead of resting it with this oligarchy controlled political system. However, like "often being too close to our own times", too many seem to think their time (now) is different when it really isn't except that conditions are worse. This global capitalist system is eating us up and if it isn't changed soon, the number of people being hurt will increase significantly from those being hurt now.
Boycott the duopoly, boycott and demand abolishment of the presidency, demand democracy.