19th April 2006, 2:06 PM
At this point in time, we may be ready to basically "take over" our evolution. Random chance got us this far, but it's far too clunky and slow to work at this point, so if we are capable of it, we should take over. So in other words, your argument that if we clean up our code, there won't be a lot of extra genes to accidently mutate in various ways is sort of pointless, since we won't exactly be depending on that any more once we get started. When an environmental stress occurs, we'll be able to far more quickly and intelligently design a solution, rather than blindly hoping some change will be able to save us many generations from then.
Outdated programming methods are replaced all the time. Our DNA is no different. Keeping "legacy" code we'll really have no reason to use is pointless. On the other hand, if our intention is to seed another world with life and allow it to evolve the old fasioned way, then keeping "dirty code" may very well be needed.
Outdated programming methods are replaced all the time. Our DNA is no different. Keeping "legacy" code we'll really have no reason to use is pointless. On the other hand, if our intention is to seed another world with life and allow it to evolve the old fasioned way, then keeping "dirty code" may very well be needed.
"On two occasions, I have been asked [by members of Parliament], 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?' I am not able to rightly apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question." ~ Charles Babbage (1791-1871)