
The ctenophore’s brain and the evolution of intelligence - urahara
https://aeon.co/essays/what-the-ctenophore-says-about-the-evolution-of-intelligence
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briga
In his book What Technology Wants, Kevin Kelly makes a pretty convincing case
that evolution, and by extension technology, is convergent upon certain forms.
The eye evolved independently several times in natural history not by
coincidence, but because the eye is a universally useful structure that an
evolutionary process will eventually stumble upon. The same is true of ideas
and the same is probably also true of brains. I wouldn't be surprised if life
on other planets had forms similar to life on earth, simply because so many of
biological structures on earth are so well optimized towards survival.

~~~
meri_dian
When you think about it, it's not that surprising. Function driven body parts
like the eye will evolve to optimize function. Almost by definition there will
be one optimal design.

The superficial diversity we see in, say, Birds of Paradise plumage has more
freedom to evolve in different ways because there are many more ways for a
bird to 'look good' to other members of its species than to design an eye that
functions well.

~~~
vbuwivbiu
Sorry to be that person, but nothing evolves "for" any one function. And one
can't prestate the potential set of functions of any subsystem of an organism.
It's the other way around: systems evolve, we ascribe functions to them after
the fact.

It's better to say that similar environments, pressures and circumstances
result in similarly evolved features.

~~~
posterboy
Are you a nihilist or just parroting? I for one don't even _do anything_ "for"
anything.

It's funny how your argument can be applied against determinism and free will
at almost the same time.

~~~
kahnpro
A purpose implies intent or some kind of forethought, which evolution works
completely without.

It's not a positive action (there is light so we need to develop eyes), but a
passive result (there is light so the ones who happened to have eyes survived
more often and reproduced more successfully).

~~~
posterboy
As a matter of fact, antropomorphisms are a very popular figure of speech and
I've never seen much come from a remark against the preoccupation of
evolution.

The funny thing is, when you talk about human procreation suddenly there is
intent and the goal post could be shifted to exclude those cases where
pregnancy was not expected and I could probably question the cases where it's
intended too because "a child" is a very broad cincept and as after thought
not all cases turn out as expected and I would keep shifting in the same way
you were about evolution, just to provoke discussion about free will and where
to draw the line.

Maybe frequent reminders against creationisms are necessary to provoke
fundamentalists, which I don't personally have contact with, so this meme is
just boring.

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zero_one_one
I had watched a clip from Hellraiser earlier today, and after a long day at
work read the title of this post as "The Cenobite's brain..." :)

Reading the article was equally as interesting had the above been true - there
has always been repetition of patterns in nature (which has certainly driven
evolution) - repeated behaviour testing the state of the surrounding
influences to see if and where the behaviour can influence or manipulate the
state itself in order to learn and grow, and to move to testing new
behavioural patterns within similarly fluid environmental states - behaviours
that have grown from those proven to further the species (species propagation-
related or not).

The behaviour itself may not change, but the state in which it is enacted is
almost certainly never the same twice

Survival of the fittest is not necessarily down to strength and force - moreso
down to species continually banging their head against a wall until they
break, or indeed the wall moving in step with their behaviour(s).

