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Flood and evolution
Posted By: scarab	Date: 2/7/12 8:47 p.m.
I was replying to Stephen L but I decided that what I wrote deserved its own thread. Intelligent Design I didn't know were to fit this in so I'm just dumping it at the top. The Flood has been intelligently designed. It was created by intelligent agents (the Precursors) to further their own agenda. These agendas, in a sense, are political, they are constructs of intelligent minds and have nothing to do with the survival or reproduction of the Flood. The Flood needs to reproduce in order to carry out the Precursors' agenda(s) But the political aspects of the Flood's design will not be selected for by natural selection. There is a question about whether the Flood is the Precursors or whether the Flood is a Precursor creation. Since the Flood arrived as a powder that genetically changed existing organisms lets assume that the Precursors reproduced by having baby Precursors instead of making a powder that infects other organisms and leads to Precursors over several generations. The Flood is a Precursor creation. Flood starvation and evolution I was thinking about Flood 'starvation'. Just how does the Flood starve? Does Flood die out because of a lack of food or does it dies out for some other reason if there are no sentients? What other reason would there be? I think that the other reason is evolution. A Definition of Evolution Evolution is defined as the change in the frequencies (proportions of) heritable features in populations over time. Natural populations gain members through breeding and lose members through death. We also know that children inherit features from their parents. We even know how this is done - through inheriting, almost perfect, copies of genes from their parents. Gene copying isn't perfect. Its very very good but its not perfect. This means that over time, different individuals in a population have different versions of genes and some individuals have new genes that were never seen before. This is a random process, over time the copies become different from each other and different from the original. How would this effect the Flood Super Cells? If the FCSs have insane levels of error correction then they would not evolve. If they don't then they will, in time, evolve. So this gives us two scenarios for the Flood. FCSs do NOT evolve FCSs evolve Evolutionary Theory Lets quickly go over some of the basic points of evolutionary theory to enable us to understand why it matters if Flood does or does not evolve. Variety Imperfect replication creates variety. Not only do children become different from their ancestors, they also become different from the other individuals in their current generation. Over time we get variety. Competition Its a dog eat dog world out there. Cooperation can be a very good evolutionary strategy but its still a fact that not every individual that is born gets to breed. If you die before you have children then you will not contribute to the next generation (or any generation after you). You become a dead end. I saw a BBC documentary (an Attenborough I suppose) in which a polar bear is struggling to reach land as the ice cap, prematurely starts melting. The animal is exhausted, its fur is wet and heavy, its struggles to pull itself out of the water and onto small pieces of ice before plunging back into the water on the other side. Its not certain that the bear will survive. It has to use everything it has in order to survive. If it fails then it will have no future offspring. Whether it succeeds or not depends on two things. luck though this isn't much of a factor in this case good genes is the bear blessed with strong lungs, a good exercise metabolism? Remember that its normal for polar bears to be out on the ice cap over winter (its how they find food). So there will be many bears tapped in the same situation. All are racing to reach dry land. Those that make it have a chance to have kids. Those that fail are fish food. This kind of thing is seen all over the natural world. Individuals within and between species are locked in a competition to survive and have the most kids. Natural Selection Since there are limited resources and since there are more individuals born than can reproduce... there is competition between individuals to reproduce. Those with the better genes win out. This winnows out bad genes and preserves good genes. It is a feedback mechanism that is not random. The environment selects genes that do well in that environment. It gets a vote. :-) And this feedback is the basis of... Adaptation You must have heard about antibiotic resistant bacteria. they have evolved resistance through variation and natural selection. Antibiotics are a natural product. They were produced by fungi to help them compete with bacteria for food. There is competition over food between fungi and bacteria. When the fungi produced antibiotics they gained a temporary advantage. The bacteria have not stood still. They have evolved resistance. We humans used fungal antibiotics for our own good but we have not kept up by finding new antibiotics. In evolutionary terms: if you stand still then you can be overtaken. Evolution and The Flood Finally! Back to the topic at hand... Why would evolving make Flood go away? Why would NOT evolving make Flood go away? Lets take the not evolving option first... Imagine that FCSs do NOT evolve They are in a race with every other organism in the environment and they have picked the strategy of standing still. That's not the best option when you are in a race. :-) Does the Flood take over everything? Does it take over the plants? Does it do photosynthesis? Does it decompose dead Flood cells? Can it handle every possible environment? Out compete every possible organism? How big does its genome have to be to achieve all those goals? How long would it take to replicate a genome that has to do everything? Hours? Days? Weeks? Take all the genes of every organism on earth and stick that into a single cell. EEK!!! We know that it was intelligently designed by Precursors, and we imagine that they were capable. But are they omniscient? Can they think of everything? Conceive of every eventuality? Even if they could, could they fit all that in one cell? One possible solution I think that GMs can tinker with the FCS genomes to create new forms of Flood. They can adapt to new situations by intelligently designing new forms. They can make local alterations for local environments. But this is intelligent design and, by definition, relies on having sentient minds to carry it out. It wont happen if there are no sentients around. Problem with ID Note also that ID relies on minds. Each problem has to be worked on by a mind. And the number of possible niches is practically infinite. GMs are few in numbers, they can't actually keep up with the numbers of decisions needed to keep up with evolution. Evolution is a massively parallel algorithm were each new organism is a proposed solution to an existing problem. Every organism that has a child has just conducted a new genetic experiment that may help further its race. But lets not worry about that. Lets just say that without sentients then the Flood can not adapt. This doesn't stop every other organism in the environment from adapting. So, in time, the Flood looses out. Imagine that the FSCs do evolve Natural selection doesn't understand or care about political agendas. All it cares about is, does this set of genes produce more offspring than this set? (Though to be accurate: natural selection does not care about anything. Its just a thing that happens like: rainfall or bird shit on cars. There is no mind, or at least no plan. But it does happen :-) ) If there are no sentients about then the ability to infect sentients is useless. Its just excess genetic baggage that has to be copied before a cell can divide. It takes time to do this copying and if a FSC is competing with a bacterium that doesn't have to copy sentient infecting genes then the bacterium will reproduce quicker. Why does this matter? Have you ever played a rushing strategy in an RTS? Lock all the available resources inside your cells and there is nothing left for your competitors to use. To do that you need to make lots of cells really quickly. A small genome helps here. The Flood must copy useless sentient infecting genes or ditch them. Holding them has a big cost in certain situations and so will be selected against. If we assume that FCS gene duplication is imperfect (a requirement for evolution and the natural state for natural processes) then sentient infecting genes will be broken over time. So in time evolution will discard the politically instilled Flood aspects. Also, if FCSs reproduce independently of each other then they will compete with each other, some varieties will win, some will loose. But, in time, we will see an ecosystem made of FCS derived organisms and, perhaps, natural organisms that have evolved to out-compete FCSs under certain circumstances. Every natural environment is comprised of organisms competing with and cooperating with other organisms. FSC based organisms are just another set of organism living within that environment. They will be subject to the same laws. Intoduce FSCs into an environment and , in time, the environment will look just like any other natural environment. Precursor politics will play no significant role in that environment.

Message Index

Flood and evolution	scarab	2/7/12 8:47 p.m.
Great post!	ZackDark	2/7/12 9:01 p.m.
Re: Great post!	scarab	2/7/12 9:37 p.m.
Re: Great post!	uberfoop	2/7/12 10:24 p.m.
Re: Flood and evolution	kanbo	2/7/12 9:35 p.m.
Its independent of any fiction	scarab	2/7/12 9:42 p.m.
Re: Its independent of any fiction	kanbo	2/7/12 10:50 p.m.
No real spoilers	scarab	2/8/12 1:34 a.m.
Re: No real spoilers? eh...	General Vagueness	2/9/12 11:42 a.m.
Re: Flood and evolution	Flynn J Taggart	2/7/12 9:40 p.m.
Re: Flood and evolution	scarab	2/7/12 9:59 p.m.
Night guys	scarab	2/7/12 10:00 p.m.
Regarding Isolation	JDQuackers	2/8/12 8:09 a.m.
Re: Flood and evolution	Stephen L. (SoundEffect)	2/8/12 8:32 a.m.
Re: Flood and evolution	yakaman	2/8/12 1:03 p.m.
This thread is gold. *NM*	Postmortem	2/8/12 9:09 a.m.
Genetic space is not a constraint...	Arithmomaniac	2/8/12 1:43 p.m.
Re: Genetic space is not a constraint...	scarab	2/10/12 2:21 a.m.
Re: Genetic space is not a constraint...	JDQuackers	2/10/12 7:13 a.m.
Re: Genetic space is not a constraint...	scarab	2/10/12 8:06 a.m.
Re: Genetic space is not a constraint...	davidfuchs	2/10/12 8:59 a.m.
Re: Genetic space is not a constraint...	scarab	2/10/12 10:10 a.m.
Re: Genetic space is not a constraint...	General Vagueness	2/10/12 10:10 p.m.
Re: Genetic space is not a constraint...	Quirel	2/11/12 2:58 a.m.
Re: Genetic space is not a constraint...	General Vagueness	2/11/12 11:02 a.m.
Re: Genetic space is not a constraint...	Quirel	2/11/12 12:35 p.m.
Re: Genetic space is not a constraint...	Stephen L. (SoundEffect)	2/11/12 12:38 p.m.
Re: Genetic space is not a constraint...	General Vagueness	2/11/12 1:07 p.m.
Re: Genetic space is not a constraint...	Stephen L. (SoundEffect)	2/11/12 1:55 p.m.
Well...	ZackDark	2/11/12 2:03 p.m.
Re: Well...	Stephen L. (SoundEffect)	2/11/12 2:11 p.m.
Re: Well...	ZackDark	2/11/12 2:13 p.m.
Re: Genetic space is not a constraint...	General Vagueness	2/11/12 4:23 p.m.
Re: Genetic space is not a constraint...	Stephen L. (SoundEffect)	2/11/12 4:48 p.m.
Re: Genetic space is not a constraint...	General Vagueness	2/11/12 5:24 p.m.
Re: Genetic space is not a constraint...	Stephen L. (SoundEffect)	2/11/12 8:09 p.m.
Re: Genetic space is not a constraint...	General Vagueness	2/11/12 10:20 p.m.
Re: Genetic space is not a constraint...	Stephen L. (SoundEffect)	2/12/12 9:25 a.m.
Re: Genetic space is not a constraint...	General Vagueness	2/12/12 4:58 p.m.
Re: Genetic space is not a constraint...	Stephen L. (SoundEffect)	2/12/12 5:19 p.m.
If there's no "cure" to the Flood...	davidfuchs	2/8/12 3:10 p.m.
Re: If there's no "cure" to the Flood...	Stephen L. (SoundEffect)	2/8/12 3:42 p.m.
Re: If there's no "cure" to the Flood...	ZackDark	2/8/12 4:36 p.m.
Re: If there's no "cure" to the Flood...	Hoovaloov	2/8/12 4:42 p.m.
Re: If there's no "cure" to the Flood...	ZackDark	2/8/12 4:57 p.m.
Re: If there's no "cure" to the Flood...	davidfuchs	2/8/12 5:23 p.m.
Re: If there's no "cure" to the Flood...	Stephen L. (SoundEffect)	2/8/12 6:07 p.m.
Re: If there's no "cure" to the Flood...	Bry	2/8/12 8:09 p.m.
Re: If there's no "cure" to the Flood...	Stephen L. (SoundEffect)	2/8/12 8:30 p.m.
Re: If there's no "cure" to the Flood...	Bry	2/8/12 10:03 p.m.
Re: If there's no "cure" to the Flood...	Stephen L. (SoundEffect)	2/9/12 5:38 a.m.
Re: If there's no "cure" to the Flood...	Quirel	2/8/12 10:46 p.m.
Re: If there's no "cure" to the Flood...	Stephen L. (SoundEffect)	2/9/12 5:41 a.m.
Re: If there's no "cure" to the Flood...	davidfuchs	2/9/12 8:00 a.m.
Re: If there's no "cure" to the Flood...	Stephen L. (SoundEffect)	2/9/12 8:02 a.m.
Re: If there's no "cure" to the Flood...	Bry	2/9/12 10:30 a.m.
Well, crap.	Quirel	2/9/12 10:37 a.m.
Re: Well, crap.	Stephen L. (SoundEffect)	2/9/12 11:46 a.m.
Re: Well, crap.	Quirel	2/9/12 5:06 p.m.
Re: Flood and evolution	General Vagueness	2/9/12 11:37 a.m.
Re: Flood and evolution	scarab	2/10/12 7:48 a.m.
Re: Flood and evolution	ZackDark	2/10/12 5:04 p.m.
Re: Flood and evolution	Stephen L. (SoundEffect)	2/10/12 5:19 p.m.
Re: Flood and evolution	ZackDark	2/10/12 5:28 p.m.
Re: Flood and evolution	Stephen L. (SoundEffect)	2/10/12 6:08 p.m.
Re: Flood and evolution	General Vagueness	2/10/12 7:43 p.m.
Re: Flood and evolution	General Vagueness	2/10/12 10:25 p.m.