What's new
TerraForums Venus Flytrap, Nepenthes, Drosera and more talk

Register a free account today to become a member! Once signed in, you'll be able to participate on this site by adding your own topics and posts, as well as connect with other members through your own private inbox!

Interesting thought on evolution

From Scott Adam's latest newsletter.

_I_ like it...

STRANGE THOUGHT OF THE DAY
==========================

Sometimes my brain ties together things that are better left alone. Here are three things I've thought about recently:

- Microchip designers often embed microscopic messages on the surface of the chip as a way of signing their work.

- DNA has a lot of "junk" parts that don't seem to have any function.

- A lot of people think evolution is obviously "designed" by someone.

I wonder if any cryptographers have looked at that junk DNA to see if it's a message from the designer. I'm guessing that it's a code that says something like, "I am Kaloopah, from the star system Nebulon IV. I have sent this evolution program into space as my eighth grade science project."

I imagine that a few thousand years from now, when scientists have learned to manipulate DNA, we'll be launching evolution programs into the cosmos, programmed to seek any planet that has the right environment. The rocket will land and spill its primordial goo, programmed with evolutionary preferences such as gender, eyeballs, limbs, mobility, and the urge to sit in cubicles while complaining about coworkers.

Evolution on that new planet would be programmed to develop over a few billion years to resemble us, obviously, because we're spectacularly vain, so we'd write the DNA program to turn out that way. There'd be no point in going to all that trouble just to create the Giant Chipmunk Planet.

This doesn't answer the question of who created the original aliens. But I suspect that the only way time can be infinite is if the past connects to the future like some huge Mobius strip-wormhole kind of deal. All you need to make this hypothetical system work is people like us who evolve and create new planets, who in turn evolve and create more new planets, until time loops back to our past and we get created again. In other words, we'd HAVE to evolve to the point where we could create a new planet or else we wouldn't exist in the present. Freaky, huh?
 
Great theory, and I have had similar speculations. Your logic is well thought out. Please pass the bong, and keep the mind active with these sorts of thoughts. An idle mind is the Devil's playground, and the Devil's name is Alzheimer!
 
We'd sooner strip a planet of all its existing life and resources, judging from previous experience.

Still having a somewhat stable ecosystem just a century from now isn't considered by many of us to be "profit"... so I don't know that people will be that interested in planning for infinity.
smile.gif
 
[b said:
Quote[/b] (endparenthesis @ April 22 2005,12:43)]I don't know that people will be that interested in planning for infinity.
smile.gif
You obviously don't need enough science fiction!!



There is actually a large body of people who think that space is the way to go, you just never hear about them because the popular media tends to focus on politicians and Michael Jackson and stuff that really does not matter in the least.
 
I have shelves of science fiction... I just don't see people planning a couple billion years ahead.
smile.gif
 
[b said:
Quote[/b] ]The rocket will land and spill its primordial goo, programmed with evolutionary preferences such as gender, eyeballs, limbs, mobility, and the urge to sit in cubicles while complaining about coworkers.

Evolution on that new planet would be programmed to develop over a few billion years to resemble us, obviously, because we're spectacularly vain, so we'd write the DNA program to turn out that way

obviously he doesn't know much about evolution. it's not evolution if it's already programmed. what ... but... they.... sigh... I'll just shut up.
 
Good idea, Alpha. Don't want another 2000 pages on a thread!
 
  • #10
[b said:
Quote[/b] ]Good idea, Alpha. Don't want another 2000 pages on a thread!
LOL... glad to know I'm loved.
[b said:
Quote[/b] ]Great theory, and I have had similar speculations.
just to clarify, that is NOWHERE even remotely close to a SCIENTIFIC theory.
 
  • #11
Good thing there are more things in the world than scientific theory!
 
  • #13
[b said:
Quote[/b] (superimposedhope @ April 22 2005,11:17)]
laugh.gif
biggrin.gif
I thought you left, obviously not the case.
 
  • #14
Scott Adams sounds alot like me, donning on these random thoughts at random times. Just the other day, I thought... If God is real, what if he's just the God of this galaxy, since we know nothing about other galaxies? What if there's a God for every galaxy? And what if God really does make mistakes, and all the other planets in the Milky Way, seeing as they all have screwed-up magnetic fields and at least a remote trace of an atmosphere plus (with some planets) a whole lot more lightning the earth, were failed attempts at Earths and this planet is the one that came out right? Anyhoo, my random ponders aren't usually this God-based, but those are what I came up with in the last week.
 
  • #15
Oooo....My head....Too much for a Monday morning...

Tamlin, you done with that yet?
 
  • #17
Pass it this way when you're done with that --
 
  • #18
[b said:
Quote[/b] ]Scott Adams sounds alot like me, donning on these random thoughts at random times. Just the other day, I thought... If God is real,
lol... If god is perfect, does he taste like chocolate? surely if god is perfect he must taste perfect too right? maybe he changes taste depending on your mood...
lol. I won't even go into more of my random thoughts.
 
  • #19
does He ever take a day off, I wonder, too. Does he just go fishing? Work in the garden?
 
  • #20
aprilh, that's a silly question....Of course he works in a Garden.....EDEN!! LMAO

Where (s)he grows lots of CP's....
 
Back
Top