Science a GoGo's Home Page Forums General Discussion General Science Discussion Forum Evolution: What Next?

What are we going to evolve into , has been the much researched subject around the world...
I myslef have given ample time to it and have concluded that today the evolution process is aiming at reducing the stress level for the calculating machine called Brain...
For two reasons ... consider the evolution of Engines or Processors .. they have become faster and better and any previous 'difficult' load or situation can now be handled without any stress or with burden on the resources..
Example 3D games... ,... Now food hunting is not a tough job..
The problem or the stress appears when we create new difficult or unsolvable problems .. like creating a Trillion dollar empire ,having complete control over the planet , enjoying the pleasure of having all the females or solving the most complicated Mathematical problems with Deep Blue..or going to the nearest star (how ambitious we are:-)).... etc .. so the problem resurfaces and we are again given a new set of problems ....thus resulting into stress...but noticeably we have devised a new set of rules with respect to our status as species or technology..
In whole process look at the Brain ... it is just trying to solve the problem or reduce the stress but due environmenat factors or external influence we are ending up with a new set of problems...
In maze of event the desire of Brain's objective remnains one and same .. that is to accomplish more n more with minimum effort with its computing power....it allows itself to chnage the previously accepted laws of narture..
IS Evolution is all about creating new set of Problems to solve ...
However I disagree becuase objectively all problems are a farce if it can not give an extended lifespan for e.g Totoise or Corcodile...
If our species dies before the crocs then definetly crocs have more 'understandable' existence than any other species...
Whats the use if you are no more there to enjoy ..(even other animals know how to enjoy)

Therefore my assertion is that the sole objective of evolution is(or should be) to extend our lifespan and for that brain should be ready to change(devleop brain to help increase lifespan...)

PS:
In my opinion Evolution can not be modeled using any set of laws and the future prediction of evolution can never be made with good precision...just imagine that someone want to create a program (like weather forecast) to capture each and every detail of Environmental , Pshycological, External , Internal changes...
it is nearly impossible(i ma known to be an optimist or rather I am scared of being called a fools:-)))

The premise of your question is faulty. You make the assumption that evolution has a goal ... a direction: It does not.

The truth is that any attempt at prediction is stillborn.

So you mean to say that evolution process has no goal?!!
In that case the whole meaning of existence reduces to meaningless (or rather a goaless) struggle for survival between species....
We have already reached at the top of the food chain and we have also reached at a threshold of environmental food chain disaster...
Such is the condition that we manufacture some of the species for our food ....e.g Chicken
Finding Chicken in wild is wild dream .. atleast for me...
So species have vanished before and how many will ...but the question is do we need prevent this vanishing act ...
to put it simply I would like to ask can we prevent the cataclysmic downfall of our species ?
How has the reduction in Whale number affected our chances of survival in say next 1000 years..?
What kind of role the population of Human species will play in our chances of survival ?these are important issues because
I feel that the chain of destruction has its own inertia...and therefore we must understand and act before it is too late...

Evolution works towards no goal and no purpose. Of course that doesn't mean that we can't ascribe our own purpose for our existence. It just means that the universe doesn't care about our opinions.

Robert Louis Stevenson wrote (I think he was quoting a philosopher) "To be what we are and become what we are capable of becoming is the only end of life."

There is no discernable purpose - for the cosmos, for life writ large, or for us as individuals. Probably this is the main reason that many people (notably creationists) choke on the idea of evolution.

But science is not Truth. And not everything that is important is scientific.

I'm not sure I understand your rebuttal, but surely understanding the relationship between ourselves and our environment (to include the other species on the planet) is part of "understanding the problem," which as any good scientist knows is the first step of solving any problem. (Well, that's the first step according to Georg Polya. The first step according to Dewey is recognizing there IS a problem.)

The meta-problem is that the environment of which we are a part is the archetype of the complex adaptive system. The system itself is inherently complex and changing. How certain can we ever be of our conclusions. How certain do we have to be before we take action - realizing that taking the wrong action is not without cost.

As far as I can see it, any predictions about future evolution can only be as strong as our predictions on what the environment and other relevant factors will be like in the future. Anything else is just speculation. We might be able to see why a particular species has evolved when we look back through evolutionary history, but even then we can be wrong on occassions.

A goal or purpose for life is propogating life itself, I think that's it really. If life had any other 'purpose' would suggest intelligent design. I don't think that because life is the sole purpose of life necessarily means that brain development in humans is a foregone conclusion. Perhaps, for example, we develop a mechanism - such as lungs or gills - that allow only humans to process high levels of nitrogen, or something, over other species of animals. More simply, maybe a virus will wipe out all traces of human life. Would this mean the virus had the bigger brain, that they out-smarted us?

Even if we knew the environment, any guesses we made about future evolution would be wild. For all we can tell, evolution is random.

True, evolution has no goal or purpose. It is a description of how factors act in conjunction with each other. That which is best suited to survive tends to survive best. This is a statement like one of Newtons laws of motion.

"Every object in a state of uniform motion tends to remain in that state of motion unless an external force is applied to it."

or

"For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction."

Evolution is not a force, like electromagnetism or gravity. It has no mind, no intent, and no purpose. It is simply a rule governing certain forms of complex systems.

Change the system, and the direction of evolution changes. What is beneficial in one environment is harmful in another. Evolution has no moral standards, no agenda, and no direction. It simply is.

Given this, there is no next step in evolution. Evolution will procede blindly, without intent, supporting those who reproduce most effectively and eliminating those who fail to reproduce.

It's quite true: Evolution has no goal and no purpose. It can't because it's not a sentient being able to make decisions or have goals. This is probably why it is just another false reductionist 'explanation' of processes.

Everyone should know by now that aliens planted us here as part of their world-harvesting agenda to milk out all the precious metals. What can be more efficient than dropping off a few monkeys and coming back 10,000 years later to take the gold and platimum? Of course they'll kill us and start again when they come back...

We also have technological evolution. If you make a better product then you can make a big profit by selling it. Your product will replace the older one. This is how stone tools we used tens of thousands of years ago evolved into cars airplanes etc.

Within a few centuries from now humans will be replaced by robots. The technology we created will replace us.

"Technological evolution" is a metaphor.

It's more than just a metaphor. Consider an isolated society which uses tools. The blueprint for making the tools is stored in the brains of the people. Tools are replaced when they wear out. If e.g. by chance someone invents a different tool for the same job, people will try it out and if they decide it is better they'll use that one instead. That tool will then replace the previous one in the following generations.


Technological evolution will ultimately replace hmans. Human employees are no more than tools that can in principle be replaced by machines. Once these machines are developed, humans will become useless.

So do you consider evolution to have a blueprint?

DNA

DNA? I think you're on a bit of a slippery slope here, Iblis, because if you're saying that DNA is a blueprint for evolution you are saying that DNA is non reducible.

Evolution is a population's response to a force acting on the population. That force has a name; it is "change". Change is the only meaningful constant in the universe. The universe is constantly changing. We and all other things in the universe are constantly evolving in response to change, whether on an organismal or population basis.

Two things are coming out:
1.Evolution has no direction ..or rather the next step is going to be a random one...
2.Life's only purpose is to propagate itself.

I dont think any of those conclusions are actually scientific(Life also has a brain at its disposal...thanks to humans)
The Next Step question still reamins a mystery because even if the Next step is random...we should be able to find the finite set of possible Outcomes with different probablities for a period(tomorrow,100yrs,10000yrs etc), in principle atleast.I think that we have enough data to start playing with it... but unfortunately my conclusion has been very discouraging to me because the initial condition is itself is very complex for any computing machine and therefore we may never be able to extract any useful informtaion about the future(say after 1000 yrs).
Given the kind of presence we have on this planet and the amount of reasearch we have done .. Hope we(or rather Life) does not end up with a scenario where she looses us!!

Idea that the Life's only purpose is to propagate itself... is sensible only upto some extent ...
Any uncontrolled population growth often results in conditions which can make the life vulnerable to various kinds of internal and even externam threats... for e.g India a highly populated country can not claim to have the ability to fight Aliens as of Now!!:-))
There are very limited resources ...and only if we decide to stop using our brains ,we would like to go on reproducing like rats when we are not.
Therefore Life's should not(and cannot) aim at indiscrimitnate population growth.
And the actual goal of Life (in my opinion )is to survive at any cost under any cirumstances..

As far Machines are considered... i dont think that they will ever be able to enslave us because as we work hard to manufacture them we will also evolve ...
but in what way that was my question ....

So far as we can tell, life has no purpose AT ALL - not even to propogate itself. Propagation is what life does, not what it's assigned to do.

But just because we can't discern that Nature has assigned a purpose and a meaning for us doesn't mean we can't have ANY purpose.

Science doesn't tell us why - at least not in some cosmic sense. It can't answer questions about "ought."

We can make our purpose whatever we wish. We can work it out collectively or we can figure it out as individuals. Or we can even decide that having no purpose at all is okay.

I disagree with your idea of choose 'your goal concept'... but anyways given that you have allowed me to have such a great degree of freedom I would like to have 3 goals atleast:
1.Life must survive
2.Humans must survive
3.Other Species must also survive
Threats to survival:
1.Internal (from activity on the planet e.g Nuclear misadventure)
2.External (from activity outside the planet e.g asteroid)
3.Suicidal or Psycological(due to severe stress we decide to call it off e.g Sarin gas holocaust)

[QUOTE]Originally posted by Artificial Interest:
DNA? I think you're on a bit of a slippery slope here, Iblis, because if you're saying that DNA is a blueprint for evolution you are saying that DNA is non reducible. [/QUOTE

That's right. DNA and RNA also evolved from the primordial soup. Reproduction using DNA is probably much more efficient than anything that existed before. So effectively we can pretend as if DNA is the blueprint of an organism...


If you compare the evolution of life to our economy, then our economy would be analogous to the primordial soup. The economy can grow as a whole but you can't isolate a part, say a factory, and let it make a copy of itself. Similarly molecules in the primordial soup were able to eproduce themselves, but only with the help of all other molecules. So, the soup had to grow as a whole.


Organisms reproducing themselves would be analogous to (nano)machines that can copy themselves. Just like the primordial soup evolved into organisms, our economy will give rise to self reproducing, fully automated factories.

In your opening sentence you already concede the point that DNA and RNA ?evolved? from the primordial soup. Even if DNA and RNA are ?efficient? means of reproduction, you cannot ?pretend? that they are not reducible just because it suits your argument.

I don?t really follow your analogy of the economy and the factory, and I can?t see how it helps your argument, as you again conveniently overlook the fact that the factories that help comprise the economy were built by other energies altogether; as was DNA and RNA.

The slope gets slipperier

dkv,

Yes. You can choose your own goal. But there's a proviso and it is this: Nature doesn't care about your personal goal or mine or any goal that any individual or collective of humans assign to themselves.

All of your goals are good and worthy goals. I think those goals can form the basis of an excellent philosophy or a tolerable religion. But if those are really your goals, you should be aware that nature and natural selection are indifferent to them. Many other people are also indifferent to your goals. Now the question is this: given that those are you goals and that the threats are likewise as you have related and that nature is indifferent, how does that affect your actions?

Unfortunately, that itself is not a part of science. Science gets to the 'how' and 'what', not to the "ought."

I've often thought that ADD and ADHD are nature's attempts to produce humans able to comprehend the increasingly large and chaotic flow of information that engulfs us.

I am surprised to say the least when we try to exclude our next evolution process from Science....It appears that we are not willing to discuss our destiny...(may be because it leads us to the complex domain of free will and consciousness)
In my opinion the greatest strength of science comes from its ability to predict future within allowable limits of errors or exceptions.
Therefore let us rephrase the question .. can we create a computer simulation model in which when we feed all the data related to the Present Universe we will be able to guess future Universe...?You may replace humans(and other species) with Nerual network based Virtual Human beings who learn.
We know that we already have virtual god , fish and plants ... so it will not be impossible.
My desire is to know whether this problem can be solved or not.
Our new physical theories have managed to remove singularities from the past and future ... the universe looks comprehensible but what about the life which it carries ... is it also comprehensible and can it be also subjected to laws of Physics...
In my opinion yes... but I know most of scientists will get scared because they know ... knowingly or unknowingly they will be playing with discarded or ridiculed philosophy of free will...
Having said all that .. allow me to give you an answer myself...
With the process of new evolution as new problems occur , we will become more aware .. we will realize that there are billions of Universes having billions of stars with say a million diffirent types of life forms...
we will know how to tap the inexhaustible source of energy for our peaceful growth ...
We will be able to build the psycological aspects of life into equations ...
we will know why peace is required ...
we will know why science is required
we will know why god is required
we will know why love is important ...

Ultimately we will know that it was all about comprehending the so far incomprehensible...
this is what each and every species in this Universe wants ...

(Everything doesnt need a complicated maths to look genuine...every tried consulting a mathematician for producing your offspring!!)

dkv,

I think we already have some insight into why love is important and why science and peace are good things.

It could be that humans - some of them at least - have a predeliction for believing in some sort of deity.

Here is a problem: Say you have a rock balanced precariously at the top of a very tall mountain with a very broad base. The top of the mountain on which the rock is perched is kinda pointy and when we look at the system - with a telescope - it appears the rock could fall in any direction. There are winds blowing up there all the time. They swirl about - producing eddies and back eddies. Eventually we sense the rock will fall. Now some one asks you, "When the rock falls, where at the base will it land? Surely it is the goal of science to make such predictions!"

How do you answer such a question? How do you address such an assertion?

Of course one pretend that! That's how science works in practise. You make reasonable approximations. The makeup of a cell probably resembles the contents of the primordial soup. DNA is the mater molecule mnaking reproduction possible in an efficient way so that the cell can function as a more or less independent organism. The fact that DNA also evolved is not relevant when trying to undrstand evolution of complex organisms.


I'm not sure what you mean. The analogy is crystal clear.

You wrote:
"Of course one pretend that! That's how science works in practise."

Surely you can do better than this. A sentence lacking in both grammar and subject followed by a total fabrication. Science does not work the way you seem to think.

The science I work in does work this way and frankly I don't know of any scientist who would disagree with me.

Dear TheFallibleFiend ,

We can not in principle predict outcome of discreet events like falling of a rock with good precision. However is we can increase our sample universe of obseravtion in a given condition then we will be able to predict with good amount of accuracy.
For e.g it almost impossible to deifne a direction of the molecule in a liquid but on an average we can make fairly good predictions...
Here I am not talking about evolution of an individual but of the entire species...
Further I also do not believe in the concept of "we are special to the extent that the whole Universe was created for us" ...
Having said that I would not like Science to run away from making future predictions with accuracy..
They must develop(if they havent already) means to tell us what will happen tomorrow.
As far as deity is concerned it is a very complex concept involving too many aspects of life...
Btw let us allow Literature and Grammer to coexist but dont expect them to be the best friends..

My dream Alien,
he will be very peace loving..
he will be calm and quiet ...
he will talk to me in my language ...
he will have a lifespan to 200 years..
he will always be in a happy state of ...
he will know the theory of everyhting....
he will gives us new sources of energy for growth..
he will share his special reciepe to stay young..

I do not see them as our invaders... because any intelligent species knows that war is not required to win ...

" Two things are coming out:
1.Evolution has no direction ..or rather the next step is going to be a random one...
2.Life's only purpose is to propagate itself. "

Evolution is an expression of change; such change is the successful 'local response to the following imperitive, survive..

Life's only purpose is to dissipate energy; its modus operandi is evolution ~

Life's only purpose is to dissipate energy ??!!!
There are so many other ways of dissipating energy and it doesnt take 'intelligence' or 'life' to do so....
Having said that I fail to understand what do you mean by that.
Need more explanation...

Why will any intelligent species try to destroy us if they are technologically and spiritually (or morally and executionally ) superior?
This question has a valid point....
today in most of the Movies, Directors believe that we will have zero utility value to our dear Aliens or we will be used against our will...
But the fact is we will be used in accordance to our will...something like Matrix.

ONe word for you-evolution equals mutants! we will all become teengae mutant ninja turtles! just messing with you DKV my dear,
Evolution is a random process, driven by the environment in which an organism exists. Change the environment sufficiently, and an organism will either have to adapt to it or perish. Thus it has always been. We 20th century humans have found a way to circumvent the process to a degree - by controlling our environment, we limit the degree of change our species is exposed to. However, we are still not immune. Even though we can moderate environmental forces to some extent, we still do not have the capacity to survive major geological or climatological upheavals. And in a subtle way, we may be our own undoing. Just as the stromatolites of prehistory poisoned themselves by filling Earth's atmosphere with oxygen (thereby making life possible for the animal kingdom), we are filling it with carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrogen. As well, at least in the West, we are allowing, through medical intervention, genes for such things as spina bifida, cystic fibrosis, and other diseases which normally kill, to accumulate in our gene pool. What effect is this having on the survivability of our species? Who knows?

Your questions are extremely important ..
It will be very difficult to implement time travel as method to rollback our destiny....:-))

Not difficult ... impossible.

One can not do things in a neat clean Newtonian way in a universe that runs itself on quantum mechanics.

Things are being done 'cleanly' so far...
But qunatum mechanics does not prohibit the 'unclean' part...
Expect miracles to happen once in a lifetime..
:-))
Thanks to the God of probability...
Time needs to be understood properly before we can think of any such adventure...
Any such travel will violate Entropy ....when 'y' moment goes back to 'y-1' moment then the entropy decreases...assuming our consciouness to remain continuous ...(or observation can be communicated between two moments)...
Another puzzle solved. What say?

Actually it does as was published this year. Here is an item in the popular press that does a reasonably good job of describing the science story.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/4097258.stm

Like it said it is now considered IMPOSSIBLE!

Wow! I was again correct.

I don't think that there are any intelligent alien near us, but if there were, we would have two values to them:

1. The matter in our bodies/planet/solar system and the energy released from our sun. They may want to do something better with energy and matter than we are currently making of.

2. As a curosity, something unusual. Life is probably pretty rare in the universe, and semi-intellignet life even rarer. In this case they might want to preserve us in much the same way we want to preserve natural wonders.

In either case we would have some value to them

The important thing about evolution is trying to predict what is inevitable so that we can be on the gravy train or just survive. Trying to do this could be itself redundant if the process requires immediate almost unthinking responses. But since we're here, talking about it, lets hope the former is in fashion.

dkv, you are not talking about evolution. Perhaps there is a language barrier; to a scientist, the word "evolution" refers to the process by which groups of organisms change over the course of many generations. Evolution has nothing to do with solving the world's problems.
Instead of evolution, I think you are speaking of what, in English, we might call "human destiny".
As several others have pointed out, the process of evolution is not guided in any particular direction or by any particular goal. Overall, evolution does not even represent progress.
A couple more observations: 1, to say that long life is a goal of natural selection is to fail, utterly, to understand even the most basic of Darwinian thinking. And 2, wild chickens do still exist; the southeast asian species Gallus gallus, known in English as the "Red Jungle Fowl" is unquestionably the most recent ancestor of domestic chickens. In fact, domestic chickens will readily breed with wild jungle fowl.

An Old discussion got revived as you capture the pattern of the recent questions.... (This is an amazing discovery for all of us)
Anyways back to the discussion:
================================
dkv, you are not talking about evolution. Perhaps there is a language barrier; to a scientist, the word "evolution" refers to the process by which groups of organisms change over the course of many generations. Evolution has nothing to do with solving the world's problems.
Instead of evolution, I think you are speaking of what, in English, we might call "human destiny".
REP: That was a stupid thing to say... Speices change to solve certain existing problem bologically...In fact human-destiny is a biased answer.
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As several others have pointed out, the process of evolution is not guided in any particular direction or by any particular goal. Overall, evolution does not even represent progress.
REP: So you think we have not progressed in the last 2000 years of 1 million years...We are the same a******.
Let us grow up. We have progressed in terms of domination over the planet.. No other species can now dare to invade our spcae...(But aswe are greedy and now we have invaded their sapce)
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A couple more observations: 1, to say that long life is a goal of natural selection is to fail, utterly, to understand even the most basic of Darwinian thinking.
REP: No wonder that you think that there is no goal... Even if it is not so then will it be not worth aiming....
========================
And 2, wild chickens do still exist; the southeast asian species Gallus gallus, known in English as the "Red Jungle Fowl" is unquestionably the most recent ancestor of domestic chickens. In fact, domestic chickens will readily breed with wild jungle fowl.
REP:We have chained the lifecylce of Chickens and they are all subjected to similar environements which results in the lowering of resistance power...And finally they end up having Bird Flu or Pig Virus.....
Am not sure whom we are trying to kill the Chickens or Ourselves...
Pray for Red Jungle Fowl.

dkv, I'm afraid that you don't understand what evolution is. You seem to think about everything is human terms and with an eye toward solving problems. I applaud your determination to work on the world's problems and I encourage others to work as hard as you want to.
But this has nothing to do with evolution.
Yes, I do believe that we have not progressed in all the millenia of human history. We have changed. To make the average human life longer may be a nice goal and it certainly has been achieved by various means (sanitation, medicine, education, etc.) You need to understand, though, that this is not evolution, in the sense of a change in a population's genetic structure.

I advise you not to call people stupid, especially when you are preaching about making the world a better place.

I'm sorry dkv, but while you appear to be an intelligent person, it is very clear to me that you are lacking in education. I am a high school teacher and I am very familiar with people who are intelligent but ignorant. I'm guessing that you're about 15-16 years old. Your intelligence will carry you far, when you lose the arrogance and when you have a deeper understanding of the subjects that interest you.

1. Evolution has no discernable goal.

2. Evolution does not act to increase lifespan, in general. Evolution is about living long enough to reproduce. This is why evolution can actually produce things that will kill a species. Sickle cell may kill you, but in a place where you're likely to die early of malaria, it provides you the chance to live at least long enough to breed.

3. There is scientific knowledge and there are other kinds of knowledge. Saying that something is not scientific is not the same as saying that it's not true or that it's not useful.

4. Evolution, indeed science itself, does not guarantee survival for us or any other species. If anything, this is a lesson that we need to be careful and pay attention.

Jumboman07 ... thank you for using your intellect to promote intelligent discourse about science. No doubt some day you will become a contributing member of society ... perhaps flipping burgers or digging ditches.

And thanks for demonstrating, so graphically, the value of birth control.

Well said, FF.

First things first..
No one in the without intelligence and therefore no one is stupid.. We know why we are discussing the science here .. We have a purpose behind all the disussion .. it is making all of us more aware of the truths .. we are acheiving (or atleast trying to achieve) greater awareness and then some say that together as a whole we do not have a purpose...
I disagree and have a good logical reason behind it.
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1. Evolution has no discernable goal.
REP: All around I see desired destiny... How come the goal becomes discernable when we talk about the Life as a whole... Thats so dull that I could resist my outburst.
============================
2. Evolution does not act to increase lifespan, in general. Evolution is about living long enough to reproduce. This is why evolution can actually produce things that will kill a species. Sickle cell may kill you, but in a place where you're likely to die early of malaria, it provides you the chance to live at least long enough to breed.
REP: Agree . But Evolution is all about finding my passion and to exprience it for longest period... As Human I hope I am experiencing much more using my intellignce that any other species therefore I want to increase my Life Span...
And Hence OUR GOAL should be(or if it not already) to Increase the Life Span...
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3. There is scientific knowledge and there are other kinds of knowledge. Saying that something is not scientific is not the same as saying that it's not true or that it's not useful.
REP:Agree.
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4. Evolution, indeed science itself, does not guarantee survival for us or any other species. If anything, this is a lesson that we need to be careful and pay attention.
REP:Evolution can not guarantee anything .. It is a name given to a process limited within its defintion of Life and its related problems...
It we extend the term for non-living beings(without worring about the domain) then even stars has such a process in place...
No one guarnatee the Survival of Universe...
BUT AS PART OF THE UNIVERSAL EVOLUTION WE MUST TRY TO EXTEND THE LIFE SPAN OF THE UNIVERSE OTHERWISE WE WILL NOT EXIST.. AND MAJORITY OF US WILL AGREE THAT WE SHOULD NOT EVAPORATE SINCE WE HAVE COME INTO EXISTENCE AFTER SUCH A LONG TIME... If this desire is hardoced into the system then we can call it the destiny...
And OUR the destiny is to survive whether using Worm Holes or using God.
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1. rewording "Evolution has no SCIENTIFICALLY discernable goal." Part of the reason it seems to work so well is that it doesn't seem to have a goal. While optimizing along a particular axis, there yet remains sufficient variability that many species can remain resilient even if the environment changes (within limits).

4. I'm not sure what scientific meaning destiny has. I strongly want the human species to survive. I strongly desire the continuance of my own existence. I've never seen any indication the that the universe has any opinion or awareness of my desires. My guess would be the universe doesn't consult us - either individually or collectively - when it's deciding what to do. DOES it "decide" what to do?

1. rewording "Evolution has no SCIENTIFICALLY discernable goal."
REP:OK. So we exist without any scientific Purpose!!
A goal is something which needs to be achieved because of the law of Cause and Effect.
An electron needs to achieve an higher Energy Level jump after receving a Photon packet....
A car needs to achieve higher speed if accelerator is pressed. It sounds mechnical but this the law of cause and effect.
My question is this : Given the current conditions(or set of causes) what is our next step orgoal...
If you still disagree with me then I can attribute this misunderstanding to a self-referral situation which needs to be understood.
A scientific purpose involves the knowledge and the knower but in our case(i.e in LIFE sense) .. We are the Knowledge and the Knower.This becomes obvious when we understand ourselves as part of the Universe and the entire Universe is what is presented to us for study and research...
Rewording :This Scientific illusion of NO-GOAL is created due to the false seperation of Knowledge and knower.
If the entire information in the Universe can be projected for 'experience' and 'understanding' then we can say that the knowledge is completly known as the other details can be derived using little bit of effort.
So the question is what is the next step...?
If you have found the next step then what will be the next step after that and so on...
Finally what will happen during the climax and why...What is the direction of Growth with in the error limits?
Going by Creator and consumer philosophy Universe has created us as the consumer for the knowledge it created by coming into existence.

And if you still have not understood then give me a good defintion of Life.
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Part of the reason it seems to work so well is that it doesn't seem to have a goal. While optimizing along a particular axis, there yet remains sufficient variability that many species can remain resilient even if the environment changes (within limits).
REP:If no goal is an advantage then why am I not taking it...???
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4. I'm not sure what scientific meaning destiny has. I strongly want the human species to survive. I strongly desire the continuance of my own existence.
REP: That should be spirit when so many people want to die...We get life only once for all practical purposes...
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I've never seen any indication the that the universe has any opinion or awareness of my desires.
REP: The cause and effect does not require common logical understanding of the reality...
No wonder that you dont know how it effected the Universe.You need more inofrmation(in the right way) to know that. But it happened trust Sceince..
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My guess would be the universe doesn't consult us - either individually or collectively - when it's deciding what to do. DOES it "decide" what to do?
REP:Universe doesnot consult anyone it does what it should be doing ...
We do what we should be doing ....
But what are we(or Universe) going to do next(and after infinite time)?
And why ?

If intelligent machines were to take over the world because they were much better at performing human processes, would this count as evolution?

"If intelligent machines were to take over the world because they were much better at performing human processes, would this count as evolution?"

Answer 1. It's all a semantic issue that is almost entirely arbitrary.

Answer 2. In the most general definition of the term 'evolution', yes, it is evolution.

Answer 3. Is it biological evolution? I'm not sure.

An sf book you might find interesting: "Code of the Lifemaker," by Hogan.

In any case, I don't expect anything like this (computers that are "intelligent" in the ordinary sense that we mean the term) to happen in my lifetime and probably not in my children's lifetimes. Possibly in my grandchildren's lifes, but I doubt even that. One day, I think we'll figure it out, but not too soon.

Recent news:
Stanford won DARPA's grand challenge this year. They did a great job and they probably deserve the $2 million. But I'm guessing those conditions were relatively controlled. It's significant progress, but it's still only a fraction of where we'd like to be with autonomous vehicles (or so I'm guessing).

A japanese company recently demonstrated a robot that could ride a bike and stop and start without falling over. Significant, but we're still not there. I think we need numerous quantum leaps in technology to get there from here.

TheFallibleFriend
Which method of creating AI do you agree with?
1. The algorithm method (I think it's called the top-down method)
2. The neuron method in which artificial neurons are created that act in a similar way.

"Which method of creating AI do you agree with?
1. The algorithm method
2. The neuron method in which artificial neurons are created that act in a similar way."

I suppose I agree with both of them, as I've implemented trivial AIs with both of them. OTOH, I'm guessing you mean a non-trivial AI. I couldn't even hazzard a guess at it. One thing, though - these things aren't necessarily mutually exclusive. I implemented artificial neurons by means of algorithms.

If intelligent machines were to take over the world because they were much better at performing human processes, would this count as evolution?
REP:Imagine a DOG less evolved than you.You and DOG live together happily.
Now Imagine a LION less evolved than you.YOu and LION can not live happily together unless you have your space defined.
Thus IF machines take over (as Matrix would like to tell you) then you created objects of LION types and not DOG types...
We know not many many LIONS can live together..
There is an inherent limitations of any such Techonology to create harmony out of LIONS....
The failure to understand the base nature of HARMONY has led to so many wars ....
Harmony of Strenghts comes out Evolved Knowledge..
Knowledge which proposes Ecologocal Stability..
Knowlegde which Proposes Diversity ...
Knowlegde which Proposes Peace ...

Those high held values are not meant to taken as moral crap ... but rather it is a reality ..
REALITY of EXISTENCE OF WAYS OF RESOLVING ISSUES OR CONFLICTS WITHOUT A KILLING.
Everyday We live this law.. when someone says bad about you for no reason.