[I]n evolution, complexity does not correlate to fitness. Translation: smarter is better only 50% of the time. Sometimes, new organisms survive because they're smarter than their ancestors; equally often, it's the dumber ones who survive. This fact is reflected in the fossil record.

I don't see that extending to an actual 50/50 probability for any possible change. Intelligent beings should be able to change those odds when choosing traits for a life form, though anyone who thinks they've chosen 100% success probably messed up in their error analysis. ("Let's get rid of that annoying genetic disease... oops, did we just lose survivability in some circumstance?" Scott Westerfeld's Risen Empire has whole planets of unmodified people who are valued for being a reserve of fallow genes.)

• Re: Two Errors: Intelligent Design and "Progress" by Karl Schroeder on Friday December 30, @07:13AM

  Ultimately what I'm saying is that intelligence is an outstanding and useful trait, like having big claws is an outstanding and useful trait, but if such traits increased fitness in and of themselves then every organism on Earth would have big claws. Big claws are great tools for particular types of organisms doing particular types of things; ditto for intelligence. It's kind of a Copernican revolution sort of idea: the sun doesn't revolve around the Earth, and intelligence is not the pinnacle or aim of evolution. Intelligence is just one of a whole suite of traits an organism can choose from. In thinking this way, I'm looking at the very long term--and would never deny that intelligence is gives us a tremendous short-term advantage. But, you know, flesh-eating disease and the flu both have huge short-term advantages, as organisms go... but it's the long term that counts.

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• Re: Two Errors: Intelligent Design and "Progress" by Jim on Monday September 25, @12:42PM

  I have two objections to this paragraph. First, you're quite correct to say the evolution has no inherent direction or preference for complexity, but we're not talking about natural evolution, so its aims (or lack thereof) aren't the issue. It's human goals, or more generally sapient beings' goals, that would be used to purposefully direct their development. Artificial selection can have a direction, even if natural selection does not. Secondly, I disagree with the notion that intelligence does not confer a long-term advantage. Maybe in certain edge-case environments or biological niches it would be more trouble than it's worth, but in the general case I think it's a win—especially if coupled with the ability to use tools like humans do. Above all else intelligence means flexibility: the ability to plan, and to reason about the natural world in order to achieve a given end. And flexibility is a prime survival trait. Overspecialization is deadly if the environment changes, while a sapient species can purposefully adapt. Finally, in the really, really long term, intelligence is probably one's only hope. For instance, the cockroach could reasonably claim to be a more successful species than H. sapiens, at least so far: their residency on this planet exceeds ours by tens of million years at least, and they would probably survive catastrophes that would destroy our civilization utterly. But they will never build starships, and all their vaunted evolutionary robustness won't help them much when the sun goes into its red giant phase in a few billion years. Whereas humans and their descendents could potentially leave to populate the entire galaxy, and be able to survive virtually any event save the heat death of the universe itself. At least, if we don't blow ourselves up in the meantime. It's a double-edged sword, no question about that.

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ID posits a Creator based on the idea of "irreducible complexity," which is essentially an argument from personal incredulity. This is not an argument made by everyone who suggests that complexity correlates with fitness. There are many biologists who disagree with Gould and argue that certain complex adaptations (like vision) are inevitable results of evolution because they are so useful. They are specifically saying that this occurs in the absence of a Creator.

One could say that both groups have reached a similar conclusion -- that evolution has a direction -- but they have arrived at that conclusion by entirely different means. The IDers' argument is not subject to scientific inquiry; the biologists' argument is, potentially.

As for the transhumanists, I'd say they are claiming that human beings can replace natural selection with artificial selection, so the argument that "natural selection does not work that way" kind of misses the point. Domestic turkeys have so much breast meat that they can only reproduce via artificial insemination, but natural selection had nothing to do with it. If we want to predict how domestic turkeys might look in the future (or whether intensive poultry farming is sustainable in the long-term), we won't gain anything by studying trends in wild turkey evolution.