RE: Is artificial selection considered "evolution"?
March 12, 2012 at 4:53 pm
(This post was last modified: March 12, 2012 at 5:01 pm by The Grand Nudger.)
Are you entirely sure you're responding to my post? What human beings do is ultimately a product of nature, but what does not involve human beings, while being a process of nature, does not involve consciousness or intelligence in all cases (or even most), as these are characteristics of ourselves, how we go about "artificial selection". Natural selection is not bound to leveraging intelligence or consciousness in its ministrations, and if it were, we'd be in trouble, because we can't seem to find the "consciousness or intelligence of natural selection" anywhere we look. NS is not a force, it is a description of a collection of pressures. It is not wandering around placing blocks where it chooses or pleases, it makes no choices, it does not please. It is unthinking because it does not have a mind, it is not a conscious process for that same reason. That is the important distinction. "Artificial selection" can provide predetermined outcomes, can weigh the possibilities, makes plans, sticks to plans, discards the unplanned, works faster, and is altogether more reliable insomuch as the parameters are specified. Natural selection does none of these things, cannot provide any of these things, and works from an entirely different toolkit.
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