The will to live - Who is it from?

Fervent said:

Careful there, the notion that organisms adapt to circumstances is a bit backwards. Organisms don't mutate in order to adapt, mutations occur and then selection pressures render some advantageous...the ones that are produce advantages survive, or at least the ones that don't actively produce disadvantages. So the question is, what selection pressures would make a 9-legged spider hold an advantage?

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My point is/was that the natural world is full of mystery and wonder. We haven't discovered everything about everything. It could be that we would have to discover what would hold an advantage.

Joseph G said:

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I don’t know how seriously I can take a poster which was created using AI discussing the nuances of the will to live. Something generated by a non-living program to espouse the virtues of the will to live is a little too meta for me.

Rose_bud said:

My point is/was that the natural world is full of mystery and wonder. We haven't discovered everything about everything. It could be that we would have to discover what would hold an advantage.

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Sure, but the analytical step isn't to look at what "adaptations" have occurred but what sorts of things would contribute to selection pressures. @Bradskii's point that the arrangement of the legs would render the specimen particularly vulnerable to predation is salient precisely because it considers the kinds of things that promote or reduce viability.

Rose_bud said:

Sure, could be that we just haven't discovered what specific circumstances the 9 legged spider has adapted to.

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No, you have it backwards (and Fervent beat me to it). Something doesn't evolve to fit something. There's a random variation in the genetic makeup which might give it 9 legs and IF that confers a benefit then the spider may live a little longer than his mates with the usual 8 legs. In which case the genes for 9 legs will be passed on to his (or her) offspring and they will reap the minor benefits of said variation. And that benefit will propagate through the group of spiders in that environment. So the group will evolve. An individual doesn't.

When actually what happened is that someone wanted to criticise evolution and showed that they knew so little about the very basics of nature that they couldn't even draw a spider correctly. But this is par for the course. Those that criticise the loudest always seem to know the least about the subject.

And hey, while we're playing 'Spot the Idiotic Mistake' here's another for you.

Bradskii said:

And hey, while we're playing 'Spot the Idiotic Mistake' here's another for you.

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No dinosaurs?

Fervent said:

Sure, but the analytical step isn't to look at what "adaptations" have occurred but what sorts of things would contribute to selection pressures. @Bradskii's point that the arrangement of the legs would render the specimen particularly vulnerable to predation is salient precisely because it considers the kinds of things that promote or reduce viability.

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Great, but I wasn't responding based on the scientific developments of what was said. I was responding to the mystery of it all. The deeper perhaps unanswerable question of why. I wasn't addressing the how... I will leave that to the people whose expertise it is to discover.

Bradskii said:

No, you have it backwards (and Fervent beat me to it). Something doesn't evolve to fit something. There's a random variation in the genetic makeup which might give it 9 legs and IF that confers a benefit then the spider may live a little longer than his mates with the usual 8 legs. In which case the genes for 9 legs will be passed on to his (or her) offspring and they will reap the minor benefits of said variation. And that benefit will propagate through the group of spiders in that environment. So the group will evolve. An individual doesn't.

When actually what happened is that someone wanted to criticise evolution and showed that they knew so little about the very basics of nature that they couldn't even draw a spider correctly. But this is par for the course. Those that criticise the loudest always seem to know the least about the subject.

And hey, while we're playing 'Spot the Idiotic Mistake' here's another for you.

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See my response to @Fervent

Rose_bud said:

See my response to @Fervent

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It's not a mystery. We know how it happens and why. It's not rocket surgery. The great mystery as far as I'm concerned is why nobody before Darwin's time had figured it out. The details can be incredibly complex, but the basic theory is so simple that it could easily be explained to an eight year old.

Bradskii said:

It's not a mystery. We know how it happens and why. It's not rocket surgery. The great mystery as far as I'm concerned is why nobody before Darwin's time had figured it out. The details can be incredibly complex, but the basic theory is so simple that it could easily be explained to an eight year old.

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Not all of us have moved from human to god status where we know everything. Be patient with me, it's supposed to be a characteristic of a god.

Rose_bud said:

Not all of us have moved from human to god status where we know everything.

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I doubt that we'll ever know everything. They say that the more you know, the more you realise how much you don't know. But evolution is one of the things that we do know very well indeed.

public hermit said:

"Natural selection" and "will to live" seem like two ways of saying the same thing. How are they different?

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Because Natural Selection operates on vastly more levels than just 'will to live'. It only "cares" (for lack of a better term) about reproductive success and 'will to live' is just one of any number of strategies to achieve that end.

Evolution operates on the population level, not the individual. This means that fitness landscapes and reproductive strategies become incredibly complex and often lead to situations that could be counter-intuitive.

Consider the strategy of semelparity, also known as 'suicidal reproduction' or 'terminal mating'. This is where an organism dies after mating/reproduction (or even during the act).

A famous example is salmon - they go through incredible hardships just to get back to their spawning point, only to die shortly after. There's a genus of mouse in Australia that goes through a breeding period that is so intense that the males basically mate themselves to death (and it's their sperm that compete with each other). Some trees are semeparlous, releasing masses of seeds and then dying out shortly after to avoid out-competing and literally overshadowing their progeny.

Then there's the situation of sexual cannibalism. There are plenty of species that consume their mate during or after reproduction. There are even some species where the female will consume any non-successful males she comes across.

There are also reproductive success strategies that involve 'suicide' or self-sacrifice by various creatures. Lots of eusocial species don't appear to have any individual 'will to live' and will sacrifice themselves en-mass to accomplish certain tasks. There are also some vertebrates that appear to kill themselves off in certain situations, like drought or large population imbalances.


Natural selection produces the 'Will to Live', because that's one successful strategy. But it's also produced the 'Will to Live (until gene transfer)', or 'Will to Live (until reproductive success)', or the 'Will to Die (to help offspring)', or 'Will to Die' (to protect queen/colony).

Bradskii said:

I doubt that we'll ever know everything. They say that the more you know, the more you realise how much you don't know. But evolution is one of the things that we do know very well indeed.

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Yes, no doubt experts are well explored in their various fields. I do not deny that and we should be very grateful for their insights.

But we scratch the surface when we think we know all the complexities and interfaces, especially the why... knowledge is layered with often more to discover. And I'm quite content with discovery, it keeps the conversations going...

public hermit said:

"Natural selection" and "will to live" seem like two ways of saying the same thing. How are they different?

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One is generic, the other specific.

Bradskii said:

They say that the more you know, the more you realise how much you don't know.

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Yeah, typically people with the most assurance of their knowledge are the least acquainted with anything resembling as much. Which is why wisdom is far more precious than knowledge in my book, and I qualify myself as a philosophical skeptic. Though that realization/quote is in reference to what is known as "deep knowledge" rather than surface claims like the trustworthiness of scientific procedures and the associated theories.

Joseph G said:

Oh come on now, Trop, could AI produce a personality as whacky as mine? I've been called all kinda names, but this is a real head scratcher, LOL!

Here's a pic of me for proof...

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Oops!

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If you created that picture not using AI, then I’m concerned about how you think spiders, fish, and birds look. The spider has 9 legs, the bird on the bottom left has a backwards wing, and the fish looks deranged.