Honestly I use the word "defect" less and less these days because I think it's more accurate to refer to these as natural variations. "Defect" assumes things are supposed to be a certain way, but biology doesn't have any direction, it just keeps exploring what is possible in every which way it can, and natural selection filters out some variations. Some variations really are upgrades.
Edit: I'm not saying all variations are helpful! Most aren't.
Natural selection isn't actually a thing; there is no reason as to why, when or how it is supposed to act. We just like to pretend that there is actual system, direction, and reason for changes to happen. But fact is that sometimes changes DO NOT happen. There actual are forms of life on this planet, which have survived for absurdly long time, without functionally any change; we call these "Living fossils". To assume there is some sort of a real mechanism in play which selects things in the nature, we'd need to explain to why there are "living fossils" which are not subject to this selection anymore. There are also many organisms which keep on living happily, and are the only (as far as we know) existing forms of that life. Encephalartos Woodii is an example of this, all existing E.Woodii cycads are clones of this one plant, and it can not reproduce as it a male, and no one has found a female of this plant anywhere in the world; it is also suspected that it is a natural hybrid of two different plants, and therefor there actually are no female plants for it to reproduce with. Yet it existed, and was found in 1895, and brought to England, from which it has been cloned.
The reason this annoys me is that it assume that there is some greater agenda in the world, and that a static system couldn't even potentially exist. Along with this it assume that every currently living thing - which can reproduce - is "the best" form of living due to "natural selection". However a meteor hitting the planet and wiping out a superior form of life was not "natural selection". A isolated cave deep underground, which due to earthquake gets destroyed, was not "natural selection". If we want to broaden the definition to include that, then we'd need to consider something like a genocide killing a entire group of people's is "natural selection". Or someone with unique beneficial trait making the superior in some metric, gets killed by drunk driver that passed out in their car being considered "natural selection", Or someone being able to have offspring because they won a lottery and could afford medical treatment to correct an issue, while someone else who couldn't afford this because a shareholder wanted to maximise dividens next quarter - as being "natural selection". This would lead us to an absurd scenario where insurances companies denying coverage to people is just "natural selection" and nothing can be done about it... Or government deciding that unique one of a kind habitat must be destroyed along with all life forms in it, because some oligarch wanted to turn it into a radioactive waste, asbestos, and heavymetals dump, so they could get lucrative government contracts. Nothing can be done about this... It is just "natural selection"... Right?
There is no rule which says that the superior individual should survive.
Random events can not be described as part of environmental pressure. Neither can be intentional actions detached from environment - such as actions of humans motivated by socially constructed gains. There is no "natural selection", because it has no goal it selects towards, there is no reason to "why" it selects, nor is there a reason to why it doesn't select some traits. There are living fossils which evolution has more or less basically halted, and now are only suffering because of motivations based on socially constructs which are not "natural". Extinction because Excel spreadsheets' numbers having to be made to go up is not "natural selection", political decision to destroy are not "natural selections". Natural selection can not both exist, not exist, include everything and not include everything.
There is no reason to why life should keep evolving, with our without natural selection. There are also things like viruses and prions which interact with living creatures and propacate, despite not fitting definition of living as we understand it. Along with this, it is impossible to draw a distinction between just chemical potential gradient sustaining itself, and when something is "alive". If a thermal vent in depths of the ocean sustain organic chemical reactions, and adjust itself as currents interacts with it; do we then define that area of chemical reactions as being "alive" and "evolving with natural selection"?
I'm not denying the existince of evolution, it is a mechanism which we can prove and which we understand. We can't prove natural selection being a thing, anymore than we could say that pantheon of gods decide what survives. Darwing himself thought that "God" was the first cause, and allowed for the mechanism to act. There is no way we can prove that the process of selection is something else than devine interaction. There is also no reason to not assume that natural selection chould not be halted in stable environment. Nothing prevents a negative trait evolving at random, which leads to a species being dominant and destroying other forms of life, until it dies itself while being unable to continue going. In this case the most dominant and superior form of life, could at the same time be both succesful and unsuccesful.
There is no goal for life - beyond what we like to philosophically attribute to it - so what is there to be selected for? Lets imagine we humans just destroy the planet in a manner where all life just gets sterilised, because it was more profitable for shareholders. Was this just natural selection which erased all life?
The reason I dislike this all, is beause it assumes that very thing. That life has some greater goal or reason. It doesn't. We should appreciate and admire it as it is... also by the fact that so much human suffering has been justified with this natural selection, whether it be "social darwinism" or "free markets imposing natural selection" or whatever.
Random events can be part of the environment and part of natural selection. Generally speaking some traits will allow for better survival of a random disaster, so those traits will be selected for by it. Actions of humans also absolutely can be included in natural selection, unless it falls under artificial selection (deliberately trying to alter the traits which are selected for, such as in the cases of selective breeding or genocide).
Natural selection does have a goal it selects for, insofar as something with no mind or intelligence can be said to have a goal. Traits which make the individual more likely to reproduce are more likely to be passed down and thereby become common in a population. I think you are maybe caught in the trap of thinking of it as some sort of cosmic force which is making choices, but really it is just a natural consequence of the way the world works.
Species which have been static for a long time were like that because they were suited to their environment. Natural selection was still acting on them, but it would actually have been acting to prevent them from developing different traits, since those traits would be deleterious. And again, human decisions are encompassed by natural selection.
Why do you think there is ‘no reason’ for life to evolve? It’s not a matter of choice, random variations caused by mutation or genetic recombination will arise and these will bring about new traits which either will or won’t be more suited for the environment than previous traits. It just happens.
The quibbling about what counts as life seems irrelevant.
We have already proved natural selection, again you just don’t understand what it is. It is a natural and obvious (once you understand it) process. It is absolutely not divine intervention (well I suppose we can’t 100% prove that the whole universe isn’t divinely controlled, but we have no reason to suspect that of being true). Natural selection would not be halted in a static environment because then the natural selection would be against new traits. Still natural selection. A species could evolve a trait which is beneficial in the short term and long term deleterious, yes. This doesn’t disprove natural selection, it’s an unintelligent process which doesn’t look at the distant future. If humans do end up wiping out all life on Earth you could say that natural selection for intelligence caused this.
Goal for life is irrelevant. Natural selection doesn’t care about this at all. The traits selected for are just the ones that are more likely to be passed on. It’s a natural and completely unintelligent process.
This is your misconception, it does not assume any greater purpose for life. This is again, completely irrelevant to natural selection.
And your mention of natural selection justifying suffering, well, this is clearly an appeal to consequences fallacy. The fact that something has consequences which you don’t like is completely irrelevant to whether or not that thing is real.
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u/Ill-Agent7195 29d ago
Defect? You mean 4x4 upgrade?