Intelligent evolution

[JustAnotherHuman]

Hi Nexians!

When I think of evolution, I feel that there is intelligence behind it. This intelligence is not external, like a higher Being is driving it, I don't believe this at all, rather the intelligence is innate to conscious, living organisms in the biosphere. (I believe that all living organisms possess a consciousness of some kind.)

What I mean by this is that, in my opinion, evolution is not random. Each organism wants to survive, needs to survive in order to procreate and spread and indeed, thrive in its environment, which is a very harsh environment. So it adapts, and slowly over millions of years, developes evolutionary features that help it to survive.

I think that this process happens in a deliberate, even conscious way. The organism evolves the most effective and efficient adaptations in response to environmental pressures. Of course, some do this better than others.

The reason I feel this way is, well, like I said earlier, that all organisms are conscious and moar so, whenever I read of an evolutionary adaptation that an organism has, it always blows my mind. The creativity, the elegance of these adaptations amazes me and leads me to think that there is intelligence in all of this.

Bear in mind, this is just my personal opinion.

What do you guys think? Please feel free to share!

 

[Final Incarnate]

I just have a feeling posting this will go hand in hand with this topic.

Evolution to some extent depends on environment, like why ants and scorpions are no longer size of a foot or a car etc.


Least for Human bodies, "Humanity" is a Virus. dmt is a Vaccine ( prolly other pscyhe medicines as well )

Dmt Eradicates the Virus, "Recalibrates one to "Proper Evolutionary Track" .

with dmt being in pretty much in every "living" organism, the humans are not producing enough endogenously vs every other animal.


having larger CPU and GPU/minds, humans vulnerability to internal attacks is almost too easy, i wouldnt be surprised if some sort of parasitical virus already took over humans long ago, and now the Vaccination is coming to fruition .

their is a parasitical worm that reproduces like this
Mind-Controlling Slime Balls

As an adult, the lancet liver fluke—a type of flatworm—resides in the livers of grazing mammals such as cows. (See pictures of animal "zombies," including a frog that survives being frozen.)

Its eggs are excreted in the host's feces, which are then eaten by snails. After the eggs hatch inside the snail, the snail creates protective cysts around the parasites and coughs them up in balls of mucus.

These fluke-laden slime balls are then consumed by ants. When the flukes wiggle their way into an ant's brain, they cause the insect to climb to the tip of a blade of grass and sit motionless, where it's most likely to be eaten by a grazing mammal. That way, the liver fluke can complete its life cycle. (Read about fungi that zombify ants.)

National Geographic

Explore National Geographic. A world leader in geography, cartography and exploration.

news.nationalgeographic.com

 

[tseuq]

The creativity, the elegance of these adaptations amazes me..

So beautiful.

tseuq

 

[arcologist]

Evolution is no more intelligent than the formation of ordered crystal structures in your freeze precipitation dish. Random events (e.g. mutations) allow the exploration of possibility space, and the environment ruthlessly evaluates the fitness of those possibilities. It's like a Monte Carlo simulation, where many random samples are taken (e.g. individual organisms), then only the samples best suited to the environment survive to reproduce. When you have millions upon millions of samples over millions or billions of years, the number of possibilities is very high and so the chance of getting an organism that has a unique adaptation to the environment is strong. This can have the appearance of intelligence, but it's still a random process that is mostly independent of the consciousness of individual organisms (aside from choices the organism makes during its life).

If there is any "intelligence", it's the same universal consciousness that gives rise to the physical laws, through which evolution operates.

The idea of intelligent evolution on the level of individual organisms was an early evolutionary theory and has been thoroughly debunked by Darwin, etc… Lamarckism - Wikipedia

If evolution were intelligent, why would it result in things like vestigial body parts? The human eye is poorly designed, since the optic nerve connects to the retina from the front (rather than from behind), creating a blind spot and decreasing the sensitivity to light. Surely if evolution were intelligent, it would be the other way around.

 

[syberdelic]

If there is any "intelligence", it's the same universal consciousness that gives rise to the physical laws, through which evolution operates.

I would tend to agree with this, but I would also include the possibility that such an intelligence doesn't necessarily have to encompass all the physical laws but just time would be sufficient to impose intelligence on to the other laws. Since time allows things to change, it also allows for the mechanisms of evolution.

 

[brilliantlydim]

Evolution is no more intelligent than the formation of ordered crystal structures in your freeze precipitation dish.

Perhaps no less intelligent as well?

If evolution were intelligent, why would it result in things like vestigial body parts?

You not understanding the reason why does not prove the lack of intelligence behind it.

I tend to lean towards the same idea as you OP. That is the universe being something of an intelligent, evolving, system.

Here are a couple of neat video talking about the math of evolution being random.


[YOUTUBE]

[YOUTUBE]

 

[entheogenic-gnosis]

Intelligence, in the sense that homosapiens are intelligent, is not inimical to living creatures, it's actually an anomaly of sorts, and whether nature delivered thus type of intelligence to our specified intentionally, I can not say...

It seems nature is going for broke with the human species, placing all its bets on it, threatening the existance of other other living organism on earth...why?

Is it because life can not be sustained on a planet for very long?

its only a matter of time before resources are depleted, or the environment becomes toxic, or before the planet's star supernovas...in order for life to exist longer than its planet it must leave the planet, and in order to leave the planet at least one species had to be endowed with a dangerous level of intelligence, and while it may allow us to save our species, and all life for that matter, it could also be the source of our demise and our species ultimate failure, well, the demise and failure of all life really...nature took a big risk, all other forms of life are in tune with their environment, their bodies and consciousness are designed perfectly to their planet, but as the environment is temporary, nature took a wild change and endowed a certain primate with hyperintellegence in an all or nothing gamble to see all that has evolved here leave the planet, spreading through the universe...

I smoked a good deal of hash before I wrote this and was more or less just letting my thoughts run wild, take it for what it is I guess, it made sense when I was writing it any way...

-eg

 

[brilliantlydim]

It seems nature is going for broke with the human species,

A purpose? Intent? Not a random string of events? Sounds like some sort of intelligence.

This idea does make sense to me and helps put things into perspective, or at least helps me realize that I may not see it with a fully grasping perspective.

I know you will be familiar with this idea eg, the idea that if someone came around a corner and came face to face with a woman giving birth and had never seen or heard of such a thing before, how the whole act may strike them. There may be screaming and yelling, bleeding, obvious signs of pain. It would seem to be a very traumatic experience that one would wish to avoid. But as you and I both know, this is the beginning of life. A beautiful and miraculous thing.

This may be similar to how we see some things that happen in nature. We don't get why, but our perspective is not one which sees the whole. If you could step outside of time, space, and matter for a second (how could we possible achieve that? ) and observe you may get a sense seeing the complete picture, which may be a very different and less anxiety inflicting perspective.

I smoked a good deal of hash before I wrote this and was more or less just letting my thoughts run wild, take it for what it is I guess, it made sense when I was writing it any way...

-eg

Its good to let them run wild once in a while.

 

[RAM]

I think the word "intelligence" brings along religious connotations which scientists would be wary about. When initially reading the word "intelligence," it is easy to think of a godlike creature sitting in the clouds or in another dimension pulling control switches to make this and that evolution happen.

I surely do not believe in that kind of creature (and do not believe there are things we can do to "appease" it, as many religious folks seem to think) mainly because there is no evidence for it. Natural selection makes logical sense to me, and scientists have even demonstrated in experiments using fruit flies and bacteria. The most well-adapted organisms from a genetically varied pool survive and pass on their traits, leading to changing traits over time that leads to the survival of the organisms most adept at surviving in their given environment. These traits can be physical or even mental, I believe, as smarts and tactics can also come from genes and play a large role in survival within an ecosystem.

But if we rewind a couple billion years, it is impressive to think that the complicated human brains and bodies evolved from microscopic prokaryotes that emerged from nature in abiogenesis, where lighting or something like that combined some amino acids in a particular way. I think it is too easy to assign fascination to this process however because with the size of the universe this was bound to happen somewhere and any resulting species that could think reflexively about itself would share our beliefs about how crazy it is they evolved and how it "couldn't be a coincidence." But any organisms would eventually come to think that, so I do not think it is useful to claim there must be intelligence because of how rare/special/unique we might think we are.

It seems to me that good evidence for some kind of intelligence behind the process is the ingeniousness of the process of evolution and natural selection itself. How did this process of genetic variation evolve itself in the universe that was filled with hydrogen and helium atoms post Big Bang? How has it ended up in a wide variety of conscious beings, from bacteria to lions to humans? Looking for the answers to these questions could help expose some of the intent behind evolutionary processes and help us get at the real question here, "What is our purpose?!"

 

[Praxis.]

Evolution is no more intelligent than the formation of ordered crystal structures in your freeze precipitation dish. Random events (e.g. mutations) allow the exploration of possibility space, and the environment ruthlessly evaluates the fitness of those possibilities.

I really like this explanation. It's kinda poetic.

How did this process of genetic variation evolve itself in the universe that was filled with hydrogen and helium atoms post Big Bang? How has it ended up in a wide variety of conscious beings, from bacteria to lions to humans?

This echoes my thoughts, if I'm understanding you correctly.

If evolution operates according to the parameters of some sort of algorithm, as a random process of natural selection, what is the driving force of the algorithm? I want to refrain from eluding to a "programmer" or something that implies a conscious "creator" - but what is it that allows the process to exist in the first place? What gives it shape and "moves" it through time? And is it measurable?

 

[Nathanial.Dread]

Evolution is no more intelligent than the formation of ordered crystal structures in your freeze precipitation dish. Random events (e.g. mutations) allow the exploration of possibility space, and the environment ruthlessly evaluates the fitness of those possibilities.

I really like this explanation. It's kinda poetic.

How did this process of genetic variation evolve itself in the universe that was filled with hydrogen and helium atoms post Big Bang? How has it ended up in a wide variety of conscious beings, from bacteria to lions to humans?

This echoes my thoughts, if I'm understanding you correctly.

If evolution operates according to the parameters of some sort of algorithm, as a random process of natural selection, what is the driving force of the algorithm? I want to refrain from eluding to a "programmer" or something that implies a conscious "creator" - but what is it that allows the process to exist in the first place? What gives it shape and "moves" it through time? And is it measurable?

It's an emergent property set by the boundary conditions of The Universe.

I like to think about formal logic as an example: if you create an axiomatic system, certain patterns and relationships provably *must* emerge. They are not 'created,' but rather they are discovered, and must exist as soon as the system is formed, even if no one has ever seen them, spoken about them, or knows that they exist.

Evolution is the same way (note: I'm referring to evolution as a process, rather than any specific output, such as humans or birds or something). As soon as we had a universe in which increasing complexity was possible, evolution was all but ensured, so long as the right conditions were met.

You could ask yourself 'well how did we get there,' but at that point, you're basically asking 'why the Big Bang?'

Blessings
~ND

 

[Psilociraptor]

Ahh I wish j remember where I read this but apparently some microorganisms under environmental pressure will explicitly enhance the rate of mutation of certain genes over others. While there is a randomness to evolution I think it would be naive to think organisms haven't exploited these pathways to enhance the generation of certain traits under environmental influence. Particularly microorganisms. Random point mutation and Darwinian selection isn't everything. We have transposons, plasmid exchange, viral interactions etc who's roles in shaping evolution are poorly understood

 

[syberdelic]

Another thing to consider here is that as we progress with technology (specifically medical), we slow down human evolution. The last major evolution our species has experienced is lactose tolerance. Our evolution has significantly been shifted to a social level and that is currently evolving inversely to our physical evolution.

I would argue that if there is any intelligence to any mechanism of evolution, it is some dwell point or singularity in the future that is drawing us in.
In this case, evolution is a means to an end, being intelligence. Once acquired, intelligence becomes a feedback loop that accelerates evolution until the very definition of evolution must evolve.

We now have completely new organisms that feed on human activity otherwise known as institutions. Religions, governments, and more recently corporations have transformed our landscape and continue to evolve. These institutions are where nearly all evolution related to humans is currently proceeding.

 

[entheogenic-gnosis]

It seems nature is going for broke with the human species,

A purpose? Intent? Not a random string of events? Sounds like some sort of intelligence.

This idea does make sense to me and helps put things into perspective, or at least helps me realize that I may not see it with a fully grasping perspective.

I know you will be familiar with this idea eg, the idea that if someone came around a corner and came face to face with a woman giving birth and had never seen or heard of such a thing before, how the whole act may strike them. There may be screaming and yelling, bleeding, obvious signs of pain. It would seem to be a very traumatic experience that one would wish to avoid. But as you and I both know, this is the beginning of life. A beautiful and miraculous thing.

This may be similar to how we see some things that happen in nature. We don't get why, but our perspective is not one which sees the whole. If you could step outside of time, space, and matter for a second (how could we possible achieve that? ) and observe you may get a sense seeing the complete picture, which may be a very different and less anxiety inflicting perspective.

I smoked a good deal of hash before I wrote this and was more or less just letting my thoughts run wild, take it for what it is I guess, it made sense when I was writing it any way...

-eg

Its good to let them run wild once in a while.

And I asked the mushroom once about the social chaos at the end of history, and the mushroom said 'No worry, bro. This is what it's like when a species departs for hyperspace." There's a little shimmy in the landing zone as we take off. So the metaphor that I have created to try and calm people and to make it possible for us to go into this future with dignity and hope -- which I think is the only appropriate response -- is the metaphor of birth. If you had never heard, if no one had ever informed you, of the facts of life, and you were suddenly to come around the corner and encounter a woman in the act of giving birth, this situation vibrates medical emergency -- blood is being shed, clearly there's a great deal of physical pain and agony, pleading, a sense of helplessness, it looks as though an enormous tumour is metastasizing out of someone's body. It would be a real leap of faith and understanding to be able to contemplate that for the first time and to know or to guess that this is how nature does it, this is how we move to the next higher level, this is what is happening to us. Matter and the human body is the placenta of the soul and it is certainly true that the earth is the cradle of the human race, but no infant remains in the cradle forever. Again, to harp back to the birth metaphor, if it's time for birth to occur and it doesn't occur, then you do have medical emergency, what's called toxemia sets in, dangerous to the mother, fatal to the foetus, the two must be medically parted jolly quick or there will be permanent repercussions. This is why we must aid this birth process, because it is painful, life is sculpted out of death and the feeling that we as a species have in this moment is the feeling that the foetus has, I think, as it moves into the narrowest neck of the birth canal. Gone forever are the endless amniotic oceans of peace and tranquillity when we could rape and pillage and burn and explore to our heart's content because the earth seemed infinite in extent. Now, we have the same feeling that the foetus has as it starts down the birth canal -- we can't breath, there's no oxygen, we can't get food, we appear to be ... the walls are moving in to crush us. -terence McKenna

Reliving birth trauma? - First steps in Hyperspace - Welcome to the DMT-Nexus

-eg

 

[entheogenic-gnosis]

Another thing to consider here is that as we progress with technology (specifically medical), we slow down human evolution. The last major evolution our species has experienced is lactose tolerance. Our evolution has significantly been shifted to a social level and that is currently evolving inversely to our physical evolution.

I would argue that if there is any intelligence to any mechanism of evolution, it is some dwell point or singularity in the future that is drawing us in.
In this case, evolution is a means to an end, being intelligence. Once acquired, intelligence becomes a feedback loop that accelerates evolution until the very definition of evolution must evolve.

We now have completely new organisms that feed on human activity otherwise known as institutions. Religions, governments, and more recently corporations have transformed our landscape and continue to evolve. These institutions are where nearly all evolution related to humans is currently proceeding.

Terence McKenna called evolution that was not genetic, (meaning cultural and technological evolutions) "epigenetic"

So biology is not some Johnny-come-lately epiphenomena. Biology is a phenomenon more persistent than the life of the stars themselves, and biology is not a static thing. I mean, a star evolving now is not greatly different from a star evolving a billion years ago. Biology doesn't work that way. Biology constantly changes the context in which evolution occurs. The way I have downloaded this into a phrase is "the universe is -the biological universe at least- is a novelty-conserving engine". Upon simple molecules are built complex molecules. Upon complex molecules are built complex polymers. Upon complex polymers come DNA. Out of DNA comes the whole machinery of the cell. Out of cells comes simple aggregate colony animals like hydra and that sort of thing. Out of that, true animals. Out of that, ever more complex animals, organis of locomotion, organs of sight, organs of smell, complex mental machinery for the coordinating of data in time and space. This is the whole story of the advancement of life, and in our species it reaches its culmination and it crosses over into a new domain where change no longer occurs in the atomic and biological machinery of existence. It begins to take place in this world which we call mental. It's called epigenetic change, change which cannot be traced back to mutation of the arrangements of molecules inside long-chain polymers, but change taking place in syntactical structures that are linguistically-based, and people have probably been using language with considerable facility for probably 50,000 years, possibly more. -terence McKenna

-eg

 

[entheogenic-gnosis]

Evolution is no more intelligent than the formation of ordered crystal structures in your freeze precipitation dish. Random events (e.g. mutations) allow the exploration of possibility space, and the environment ruthlessly evaluates the fitness of those possibihlities.

I really like this explanation. It's kinda poetic.

How did this process of genetic variation evolve itself in the universe that was filled with hydrogen and helium atoms post Big Bang? How has it ended up in a wide variety of conscious beings, from bacteria to lions to humans?

This echoes my thoughts, if I'm understanding you correctly.

If evolution operates according to the parameters of some sort of algorithm, as a random process of natural selection, what is the driving force of the algorithm? I want to refrain from eluding to a "programmer" or something that implies a conscious "creator" - but what is it that allows the process to exist in the first place? What gives it shape and "moves" it through time? And is it measurable?

It's an emergent property set by the boundary conditions of The Universe.

I like to think about formal logic as an example: if you create an axiomatic system, certain patterns and relationships provably *must* emerge. They are not 'created,' but rather they are discovered, and must exist as soon as the system is formed, even if no one has ever seen them, spoken about them, or knows that they exist.

Evolution is the same way (note: I'm referring to evolution as a process, rather than any specific output, such as humans or birds or something). As soon as we had a universe in which increasing complexity was possible, evolution was all but ensured, so long as the right conditions were met.

You could ask yourself 'well how did we get there,' but at that point, you're basically asking 'why the Big Bang?'

Blessings
~ND

Strange how these "emergent properties" are so intricately structured...

I think you are probably correct...

Though you would be saying intelligence is simply an emergent property of complex interactions of matter...

So what sets the rules? The properties of matter as it interacts with other matter, right? This explains geometric formations in nature, the complex structure of the physical world, molecules, and so on, right? ...just how intelligent life fits in, that's still puzzling...

At first, after the big bang things were hot, and there was only hydrogen, then helium and it's isotopes (and deuterium;heavy hydrogen) formed via nucleosynthesis, then lithium, then everything heavier than lithium was produced through stellar nucleosynthesis (produced by stars), eventually resulting in chemical reactions and the creation of physical matter, planets, etc...

How life fits into all this physical matter puzzles me...

How about this, if all this matter was in existence, containing all its brilliant order, yet there was nobody there to observe it, would it even really "exist", as observers we give validation to the existance of all matter and order, and life could be a simple observers role... though that still doesn't explain how life results from these complex physical interactions...



Life from physical matter is a puzzle indeed.

-eg

 

[syberdelic]

Evolution is no more intelligent than the formation of ordered crystal structures in your freeze precipitation dish. Random events (e.g. mutations) allow the exploration of possibility space, and the environment ruthlessly evaluates the fitness of those possibihlities.

I really like this explanation. It's kinda poetic.

How did this process of genetic variation evolve itself in the universe that was filled with hydrogen and helium atoms post Big Bang? How has it ended up in a wide variety of conscious beings, from bacteria to lions to humans?

This echoes my thoughts, if I'm understanding you correctly.

If evolution operates according to the parameters of some sort of algorithm, as a random process of natural selection, what is the driving force of the algorithm? I want to refrain from eluding to a "programmer" or something that implies a conscious "creator" - but what is it that allows the process to exist in the first place? What gives it shape and "moves" it through time? And is it measurable?

It's an emergent property set by the boundary conditions of The Universe.

I like to think about formal logic as an example: if you create an axiomatic system, certain patterns and relationships provably *must* emerge. They are not 'created,' but rather they are discovered, and must exist as soon as the system is formed, even if no one has ever seen them, spoken about them, or knows that they exist.

Evolution is the same way (note: I'm referring to evolution as a process, rather than any specific output, such as humans or birds or something). As soon as we had a universe in which increasing complexity was possible, evolution was all but ensured, so long as the right conditions were met.

You could ask yourself 'well how did we get there,' but at that point, you're basically asking 'why the Big Bang?'

Blessings
~ND

Strange how these "emergent properties" are so intricately structured...

I think you are probably correct...

Though you would be saying intelligence is simply an emergent property of complex interactions of matter...

So what sets the rules? The properties of matter as it interacts with other matter, right? This explains geometric formations in nature, the complex structure of the physical world, molecules, and so on, right? ...just how intelligent life fits in, that's still puzzling...

At first, after the big bang things were hot, and there was only hydrogen, then helium and it's isotopes (and deuterium;heavy hydrogen) formed via nucleosynthesis, then lithium, then everything heavier than lithium was produced through stellar nucleosynthesis (produced by stars), eventually resulting in chemical reactions and the creation of physical matter, planets, etc...

How life fits into all this physical matter puzzles me...

How about this, if all this matter was in existence, containing all its brilliant order, yet there was nobody there to observe it, would it even really "exist", as observers we give validation to the existance of all matter and order, and life could be a simple observers role... though that still doesn't explain how life results from these complex physical interactions...



Life from physical matter is a puzzle indeed.

-eg

One theory of theoretical physics is that there are actually an infinite number of universes (Multiverse). Being an infinite number of universes, one would eventually pop into existence that has exactly the right parameters for life to emerge such as happened in ours. Most of these universes would simply collapse into non-existence as soon as it popped into existence. This of course is right in line with most religious/spiritual concepts not being able to be proven or disproven. It would be tantamount to a cartoon character being able to look off the page and see other comics as well as the world that contains all the comics. This could be what's happening when we consume drugs like DMT but we will likely never know until we are unbound from this physical reality.

 

[DoingKermit]

It's all very puzzling indeed. The fact carbon was created through the nuclear fusion of three helium nuclei at the centre of stars seems unlikely, due to their unstable nature. They also need to collide at the exact same moment, which also appears quite improbable. But there is a "resonance" which helps the nucleosynthesis of carbon, causing stars to produce vast quantities of the stuff. Basically, it seems like we live in a "Goldilocks Universe" where the conditions are perfect to harbour life, but how life got to this point seems statistically impossible and extraordinary.

To follow up on what EG said about our relation to the cosmos as participants. Are we here as the universes' bitch in a way? Does the universe need an observer to exist outside of a superposition-like state? Maybe that's our purpose as conscious beings.

I also like the low-entropy multiverse theory, where we were always going to live in a place so finely tuned for life and that we can potentially "see" the fingerprints of alternate universes through string-like vibrations within atoms.

This is all quite a new subject for me, so I hope what I said makes sense.

 

[Koornut]

This is all quite a new subject for me, so I hope what I said makes sense.

I'd recommend "our mathematical universe" by physicist Mark Tegmark, he nails down these obscure concepts in a nice ley way :thumb_up:

 

[fathomlessness]

But if we rewind a couple billion years, it is impressive to think that the complicated human brains and bodies evolved from microscopic prokaryotes that emerged from nature in abiogenesis, where lighting or something like that combined some amino acids in a particular way. I think it is too easy to assign fascination to this process however because with the size of the universe this was bound to happen somewhere and any resulting species that could think reflexively about itself would share our beliefs about how crazy it is they evolved and how it "couldn't be a coincidence." But any organisms would eventually come to think that, so I do not think it is useful to claim there must be intelligence because of how rare/special/unique we might think we are.

If you watch the video that was posted above you, it says that statistically abiogenesis actually isn't bound to happen somewhere in the universe. Please feel free to explore whether that it valid or not. I find what you say could be true if you had a hyper-dimensional simulation where you could run a vast multitude of universes (multiverses). Then whatever the probability of life originating in one universe, you could multiply it by all the other universes existing alongside of it, thereby increasing the exponential proportionately beyond measure. In other-words, there could be universes existing simultaneously in which life on earth never originated due to the vast improbability of it doing so.