New Oxygen research; abundance and Cambrian (Introduction)

by dhw, Thursday, September 29, 2016, 13:26 (2977 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: What causes the drive to improvement? My point is the appearance of multicellularity (complexity) causes more problems which have to be solved, so why bother. If evolution is a chance process there logically should be no drive. Therefore the drive comes from God.
dhw: Why bother? In order to improve - hence limbs, senses, brains etc. The issue between us is not the cause of the drive - I keep agreeing that God is a possible cause - but its existence and purpose. You told me I was confining evolution to the drive for survival, which I was not. I have explained why there is very little difference between your drive for complexity and my drive for improvement, and now you switch back to the origin of the drive!-DAVID: Because I view complexity as the main drive, and it may or may not bring improvement or survival! Improvement is a judgmental approach. The appearance of complexity is obvious, but 99% of all species produced by the process have disappeared!-We know for a fact that organisms try to survive, so I think even you would agree that is a built-in drive. However, the drive itself is no guarantee of survival, as proven by the 99% extinction! Ditto the drive for improvement. I must confess I simply cannot see the point of complexity just for the sake of complexity, and I'm surprised you don't consider limbs, the senses, brains etc. an improvement, but you are right. That is a judgemental approach. Clearly then, nobody should argue that humans are an improvement over bacteria, let alone that H. sapiens "is a perfect solution to the problem". I did ask you before, what problem? Whatever it is, we'd better not say it involves improvement, even if some of us might think that solving a problem is better than not solving a problem.