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.
this is the dumbest thing i’ve ever read. natural selection is 100% provably real. take a species and put it in 2 completely different environments and come back 1000 years later and they will have different characteristics. the “agenda” you’re looking for is the most basic impulse of every living creature: to reproduce and make offspring with someone that has the most suitable genetics for survival. i have never ever EVER heard anyone refer to a mass extinction event as “natural selection.” natural selection “ended” because humans wanted to save every last living thing just because they could and it felt good. the rule that says the superior being should survive is that the superior being will overpower the inferior being and steal their potential mates and food. the strong get stronger and the weak get weaker. that’s how nature works.
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u/Ill-Agent7195 29d ago
Defect? You mean 4x4 upgrade?