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From: jru@etn-rad.UUCP (John Unekis)
Newsgroups: sci.bio
Subject: Re: Why are Humans as Smart as They Are?
Message-ID: <243@etn-rad.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 10-Aug-87 12:32:41 EDT
Article-I.D.: etn-rad.243
Posted: Mon Aug 10 12:32:41 1987
Date-Received: Wed, 12-Aug-87 02:14:01 EDT
References: <3058@blia.BLI.COM> <373@hubcap.UUCP>
Reply-To: jru@etn-rad.UUCP (0000-John Unekis)
Organization: Eaton Inc. IMSD, Westlake Village, CA
Lines: 40

In article <373@hubcap.UUCP> beede@hubcap.UUCP (Mike Beede) writes:
>in article <3058@blia.BLI.COM>, heather@blia.BLI.COM (Heather Mackinnon) says:
>> It's also possible that evolution is preprogrammed to some extent, like
>> the flowering of a plant.  At which point our cleverness could be a
>> growing towards an end we can only dimly envision.
>> 
>A lovely thought, but ``destructive to the logical faculty.''  If we
>allow magical explainations, we lose the incentive to understand what
>really happened.  There is absolutely no evidence (that I am aware of :->)
>that there is a mechanism underlying evolution that is directing it in
>some particular direction.  Indeed, looking at all the false starts

.....
  As someone whose familiarity with the mechanics of evolution has been
  gained through the popular press I have what may seem to some to be a
  rather naive question, but here it is anyway.

  What if the the real advantage of sexual versus asexual reproduction
  was that it allowed the genes of the species to contain some kind of
  checkpoint sequence. The mechanism would essentially function to check
  how often gene sequences were 'seen together'. In a large population,
  one would expect that in-breeding would be kept to a minimum, and the
  mechanism would remain dormant. If external pressures began to reduce
  the population, the checkpoint sequences would begin to recognize each 
  other more often, and would trigger changes to the genetic sequence when
  they did. Most of these changes would be self-destructive, but some might
  produce succesful adaptations for dealing with the forces which were
  threatening the population.

  Obviously this mechanism would have had to come into being at random. 
  But once it developed, it would allow for a 'punctuated equilibrium',
  where a succesful species would change very little, but a species that 
  was threatened would change rapidly in an attempt to cope with outside
  pressures. The mechanism would hardly be foolproof, and many species would
  still become extinct.

  My question is, is this a feasable scenario?

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