🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1992Oct31.183234.3683@sun0.urz.uni-heidelberg.de> gsmith@lauren.uucp (Gene W. Smith) writes:
>In article <1992Oct30.003045.4414@galois.mit.edu> jbaez@riesz.mit.edu (John C. Baez) writes:
>
>>Similarly, I believe that in its barest form, the idea of evolution is a
>>tautology: "What is able to make more of itself, that's what there'll be
>>more of."  (Roughly.)  It is, however, a very useful tautology that
>>suggests many new hypotheses which are falsifiable.
>
>This isn't really a tautology.  If it was, there wouldn't be so much
>hydrogen in the universe.

That's why I stuck in the word "roughly"!  

Of course, if Smolin's ideas on Darwinian cosmology are right, it
might be true in some sense that the hydrogen is simply a very
"fit" atom, that makes more of itself by forming stars, hence black
holes, of the right mass to yield baby universes that are initially 
composed largely of hydrogen, etc..  This is, of course, wild speculation.

Also, to get a bit closer to a real tautology, one should note that
a key way of "making more of oneself" is to get something else to make
more of you.