Technological applications of evolution?

[Elok]

DISCLAIMER: THIS IS NOT A RELIGIOUS THREAD. DO NOT MAKE IT INTO A RELIGIOUS THREAD. IF PEOPLE START ARGUING ABOUT JESUS VS. DARWIN IN THIS THREAD I WILL ASK THE MODS TO LOCK IT. I DO NOT START RELIGIOUS BICKERING THREADS; I ONLY TRY TO END THEM.

Okay? Now that that's settled, on to the actual question:
Does the theory of evolution have any technological application? This question came to me one day while I was playing Civ2 and I wondered why Darwin's Voyage gives you civ advances when IRL the theory of evolution seems to be most useful as a philosophical statement. I've never heard of evolution leading to any device, medicine or process the way quantum mechanics led to the MRI or Einstein's work led, eventually, to the nuclear age. I'm not challenging its verity in this thread, only its usefullness. I've read, in Michael Chrichton books, that evolution can be used as a metaphor for writing computer languages or describing systems, but that's not really a direct application, and MC books would also have us believe that some kinds of epilepsy turn you into an axe murderer, so, y'know, it's a questionable source. Obviously, I'm not well read on the question but if somebody could better inform me I'd appreciate it.

Does a theory based on the distant past have potential uses for the future?

[Sava]

I believe it represents a civilizations embrace of science rather than well... the alternative.

[DAVOUT]

The theory of evolution is for life what cosmology is for the universe : it is an attempt to explain how we arrived where we currently are.

They do not result directly in technological applications, but at least give rise to a considerable appetite for new tools and instruments which can, and often does, require technological improvments.

[Spiffor]

I suck at sciences, so my answer won't be great.
But I've seen a TV documentary about biologists wondering why a specific tree in Mauritius was unable to reproduce itself since 300 years. I was amazed by the extent to which these biologists used the evolutionist frame for their analysis, which led me to think their counclusions would have not been possible without the theory of evolution.

Most of our current understanding in biology, and especially in the prediction of the biologic future comes from the evolution theory. Had evolution not been around, our understanding of the living would have been much less important, which means a smaller prowess in advanced medicine and genetics.

[Dauphin]

The application that springs to mind is the treatment of infections and the knowledge that diseases will get resistance if there is overprescription or patients do not finish their courses.

Most of the other applications of the theory evolution that I can see is in understanding wider problems.

[DAVOUT]

Re: Technological applications of evolution?

Originally posted by Elok
I'm not challenging its verity in this thread, only its usefullness.

Does a theory based on the distant past have potential uses for the future?

Technological applications are not the ultimate criteria of usefulness for knowledge. First, authentical knowledge is usefull since it helps to improve our understanding of the universe and its content. Second, at the minute we acquire a given knowledge, we are unable, in most cases, to tell if it will be ever usefull to anything ; but years or century later, another progress will be made possible by that *useless* knowledge. For instance, geometries with more than 3 dimensions had no applications until Einstein need them.

[Urban Ranger]

In argiculture. Without evolution, we wouldn't have an agricultural evolution - no domesticated crops and animals. In fact, it is still being widely used in agriculture today. Even for indirect things, like we shouldn't use pesticides too much because that will only end up in super pests, and that prompted us to look elsewhere.

[Jack the Bodiless]

I expect the biggest technological applications of evolution are yet to come, when scientists figure out how the human genome (and other genomes) actually work. This will involve figuring out how (and in what order) evolution put it together, and how all the various traits interact.

[Elok]

Originally posted by Urban Ranger
In argiculture. Without evolution, we wouldn't have an agricultural evolution - no domesticated crops and animals. In fact, it is still being widely used in agriculture today. Even for indirect things, like we shouldn't use pesticides too much because that will only end up in super pests, and that prompted us to look elsewhere.

I agree about the pesticide thing, but people have been domesticating and cultivating since *long* before Darwin(or Lamarck, or Aristotle, for that matter).
I'm not sure whether I agree about the altered-worldview bit either, because the scientific method also predates Darwin, and I think the general idea of "only the strong survive" could arise from a context not involving the belief that survival of the fittest was the most active process in shaping our ecosystem; to put it another way, do you need to believe that we are the distant descendents of fish in order to appreciate the improvement value of competition? Laissez-faire capitalism is a similar concept in some respects, but unrelated in its development.
DAVOUT: I'm terribly pragmatic; I don't especially care for knowledge in and of itself, but only for the ways it can be specifically used or exploited for the benefit of myself or others. Knowing how something happened is nice but not terribly useful unless it springboards to application in the present. But that's just me talking.
Multi-dimensional geometry, unlike the TOE, is a procedure like other forms of mathematics, and not just a description, correct? That's where I think your analogy fails. Evolution on a grand scale is a process that applies, by its nature, only to the past, and veeeery gradually to the present, and is accomplished as such without human help. Artificially controlled evolution is just domestication and breeding, which has been done for milennia.

[Inverse Icarus]

The End of our Evolution and the Rise of Machines
A Paper Based on Conjecture from “Can Animals and Machines be Persons?”

“Life” has been evolving since the dawn of Earth, and has no intention of letting up any time soon. Evolution of a biological species takes millions of years, and is the product of specific gene mutations being passed on to next generations. It’s a slow moving process at best, and it’s a statistician’s nightmare, a roll of the die sets the whole thing to chaos. Mechanical evolution, however, can be planned, organized, evaluated, and perhaps more importantly, can be done extremely rapidly. Look at how far computers have come since their conception, only a few decades ago, it’s simply amazing. In a new world, simplicity will begat complexity, chaos will begat order, and biological will begat mechanical.

One of the biggest arguments against artificial intelligence is that its current incantation is essentially hard coded rules in which a machine is being told how to emulate human thought, and essentially, that is true. Today’s code, both in games and research areas, is a nothing but emulation, at best. However, a lot of research has been done into the areas of artificial intelligence, self-evolving code, and robotics recently, and when these areas advance sufficiently enough to meet up, mechanical life will begin.

The only way to develop a truly sentient artificial intelligence, in my opinion, is to not develop it at all. The criticisms based on underlying, hard-coded, humanistic tendencies for artificial intelligence must be addressed, and the artificial intelligence must be allowed to evolve on its own. It can be supplied with the basic structures for learning, such as schemas, and the basic foundations of cognition and data organization. Then, the agent should be run, and left alone to evolve its own intelligence, besides, recreating human intelligence for a non-human host seems ignorant, and honestly, boring. Imagine what could happen regarding artificial agents’ emotions if they weren’t provided any ideas about them. Would they evolve their own emotions? Would they be similar to ours? I wonder what intelligent agents “grown” in isolation would do, if we created “societies” of artificial agents in an isolated environment with no knowledge of humanity, where we could supply them with enough raw materials to do their bidding. Would the original agents look to create other ones, to reproduce, or would they simply look to expand their own functionality? The question comes down to this, what happens to cognition when the biological drives of life are taken away?

[Inverse Icarus]

i was limited to one page for that essay, but i could go on and on and on...

[Boris Godunov]

From Mike Wong's site:

"We are, in fact, awash in examples of applied evolution theory. The grocery store is full of foods that would be unviable in nature, but which exist because of selective breeding. We accept biological absurdities such as seedless grapes and turkeys so fat and stupid that they drown in heavy rain, but we rarely stop to recognize that they are products of selective breeding, and selective breeding is evolution. It is one of Darwin's three types of selection: natural, artificial, and sexual."

[Inverse Icarus]

Originally posted by Boris Godunov
From Mike Wong's site:

"We are, in fact, awash in examples of applied evolution theory. The grocery store is full of foods that would be unviable in nature, but which exist because of selective breeding. We accept biological absurdities such as seedless grapes and turkeys so fat and stupid that they drown in heavy rain, but we rarely stop to recognize that they are products of selective breeding, and selective breeding is evolution. It is one of Darwin's three types of selection: natural, artificial, and sexual."

:dances the evolution dance:

[Az]

actually, evolution transcends biology. It is a certain way to force certain basic "creatures" and to mold them according to the parameters needed. There are forseeable applications in computer science, for example.

Also, our current economical system is based on evolution, and competetiveness.

Is this the fastest and/or most efficient way? This is one of the core contention issues between the free-market thinkers, and the planned economy thinkers.

[Dauphin]

Originally posted by Azazel
Also, our current economical system is based on evolution, and competetiveness.

I thought that evolutionary theory came after the theories of economic competition/survival of the fittest, not the other way around. (That is the ideas were present in economic theories before Darwin).