Comments on: The Continuing Adventures of the Blind Locksmith: You Can’t Get There From Here

By: that funky monkey

that funky monkey — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 03:26:51 +0000

When it comes to evolution, you are always home. Lotsa oxygen? You grow, oxygen’s depleted? You shrink. On the way down, you pass the point you started from like a yo-yo.

We know so little that the more we learn, we realize how much more there is to know. Inferrential statements contradict scientific pursuits by their very nature.

By: johnk

johnk — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 06:10:14 +0000

Wed, Oct 7. Today’s NY Times has an editorial based on Carl’s summary of Thompson’s Nature paper.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/07/opinion/07wed4.html?ref=opinion

By: A random walk of sorts « A Man With A Ph.D.

A random walk of sorts « A Man With A Ph.D. — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 21:00:13 +0000

[...] random walk of sorts October 2, 2009 — Richard The Continuing Adventures of the Blind Locksmith: You Can’t Get There From Here: [Via The Loom] Three years ago, I wrote a series of blog posts about how scientists at the [...]

By: steve

steve — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 14:37:09 +0000

this means star trek voyager has lied to us?

By: Don Monroe

Don Monroe — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 14:27:26 +0000

Great story, Carl.

It was good that you were able to include the larger implication, if only briefly at the end: that “the biology we ended up with was not inevitable.” Even if a particular mutation would be advantageous, other random mutations could determine whether an organism could take advantage of it.

As Stephen Jay Gould was fond of emphasizing, the history of life is contingent, depending on random events. Many people think this is obvious, but some claim that evolution was set in motion with the certainty of eventually producing us. This result is further evidence that that this view is not compatible with how unguided evolution really works.