🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <3027@news.cerf.net> snodgras@cyber.net (John E. Snodgrass) writes:
> Without the purpose of attempting to survive, organisms
>would not evolve. (But one cannot logically assert this purpose
>also evolved.)

The depth of misunderstanding in this statement boggles the mind.  The
ESSENSE of the Darwinian theory of evolution is that no "purpose" of
attempting to survive is required for evolution.  Mutating, self-replicating
entities evolve, purpose or no.  You might as well assert that things fall
because they have a purpose of being at a lower level.

>>       You might argue that it has no application to the real
>>world; that complex behavior in the real world always arises from
>>the "complex control systems interact[ing], each intent on
>>maintaining the identity of its own system". But this ignores the
>>fact that much real-world behavior is like the behavior of the
>>mathematical systems.
>
>       Only in that it is unpredictable.

The patterns of activity simulated by non-linear mathematical systems are
very much like the patterns seen in many systems in the real world.  To say,
"only in that it is unpredictable" is to ignore the facts.