How does complex nano engineering evolve?

[UnseenParticipant]

What Michael and his ilk always leave out is the vast time scales over which evolution happens. A time scale so vast that it allows for some seemingly unlikely things to happen simply coincidentally.

Of course, if he believes the earth is only 4,000 years old…

[_Robert_Participant]

Unseen wrote:

What Michael and his ilk always leave out is the vast time scales over which evolution happens. A time scale so vast that it allows for some seemingly unlikely things to happen simply coincidentally. Of course, if he believes the earth is only 4,000 years old…

Adults actually go to Ken Ham’s Ark-shaped facade in a parking lot and pay money to look at stuffed dinosaurs in cages and leave thinking they just visited a museum. Those two kangaroos and had a long swim. And it took those poor sloths about 300 years to walk home.

[michael17Participant]

@simon Paynton.

An accelerated simulation  showing that happenstance can design and control a system can be offered as evidence. There is no such simulation to date. However the partial simulation  of known cells structures has been attempted.  Google these simulations you might mine some progress.

[Simon PayntonParticipant]

michael17 wrote:

happenstance can design and control a system

But an organism has to be adapted to its environment, or it can’t do well, and will be selected against by natural selection.

Those cells that are best at surviving and reproducing in an environment will become the dominant paradigm.  Reproduction of any kind is the key innovation, that enables natural selection.

What I mean is, as soon as there is reproduction, there is natural selection for success in reproduction, surviving and thriving.  Hence, a cell’s machinery grows ever more sophisticated, thanks to evolution and natural selection.

[michael17Participant]

Simon Paynton wrote:

michael17 wrote:

happenstance can design and control a system

But an organism has to be adapted to its environment, or it can’t do well, and will be selected against by natural selection. Those cells that are best at surviving and reproducing in an environment will become the dominant paradigm. Reproduction of any kind is the key innovation, that enables natural selection. What I mean is, as soon as there is reproduction, there is natural selection for success in reproduction, surviving and thriving. Hence, a cell’s machinery grows ever more sophisticated, thanks to evolution and natural selection.

That,0 of course is a unproven supposition based on barring anything else just as it was

 

[michael17Participant]

michael17 wrote:

Simon Paynton wrote:

michael17 wrote:

happenstance can design and control a system But an organism has to be adapted to its environment, or it can’t do well, and will be selected against by natural selection. Those cells that are best at surviving and reproducing in an environment will become the dominant paradigm. Reproduction of any kind is the key innovation, that enables natural selection. What I mean is, as soon as there is reproduction, there is natural selection for success in reproduction, surviving and thriving. Hence, a cell’s machinery grows ever more sophisticated, thanks to evolution and natural selection.

But natural selection  can not design. Thus it can only select if the nano machinery is there. But cell can’t exist without nano machinery, so it’s a moot point.

• This reply was modified 1 week, 2 days ago by  michael17.
• This reply was modified 1 week, 2 days ago by  michael17.

[Simon PayntonParticipant]

Surely the cell can exist as some kind of bubble.  You can have proto-cells.

Once reproduction starts, there must be some kind of ratchet effect that leads to ever-greater fitness and adaptation.

[DavisModerator]

ever-greater fitness and adaptation

That is a misconception. As everything else is also adapting, creatures must adapt as well. It is not “ever greater” but adapting to the circumstances of the moment. Organisms may emerge with greater complexity in some cases but not always and that is not the same as greater fitness and adaption. Greater intelligence has also emerged for one species of one branch in the animal kingdom but again, not the same thing.

[UnseenParticipant]

Davis wrote:

ever-greater fitness and adaptation

That is a misconception. As everything else is also adapting, creatures must adapt as well. It is not “ever greater” but adapting to the circumstances of the moment. Organisms may emerge with greater complexity in some cases but not always and that is not the same as greater fitness and adaption. Greater intelligence has also emerged for one species of one branch in the animal kingdom but again, not the same thing.

Evolution is partly driven by changing circumstances and partly by the chance effect of mutation. Some mutations persist not so much because they provide greater survivability but because they are adaptationally neutral. This explains a lot of creature traits that seem puzzling if one assumes they must have some adaptational value.

Why do lynxes and bobcats lack a long tail? Why do turkeys have wattles and snoods? On the human side, what is the adaptational advantage of male pattern baldness?

Some useless traits can be dismissed as “vestigial,” meaning they had some adaptational value in the past, but applying that theory to all of the useless traits species have is a stretch. It’s far more plausible and logical that a mutation happened and remains only because it offers no particular adaptational disadvantage.

[Author]

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