@DarkhorsePod

Hi Brett.

I would like to propose an upgrade to your upgrade. I finally got around to listening to your discussion with Joe on your hypothesis to enhancements of the evolutionary mechanisms at play and how we understand them.

What you laid out makes sense but to me still doesn’t quite explain how rapid changes can sometimes be, for example if environments change rapidly, and leaves some gaps for me around explorer mode. Your comparison to computing and coding, especially with storing variables, got me thinking to feedback loops. If we treat DNA as static code then the analogy in programming is building an old school program that requires the developer (evolutionary mechanisms) to make changes. If we hypothesise that evolution is smarter than that and the program is more akin to a modern self adaptive program (and why wouldn’t it be?), then what we should see is the ability for the program to change in a single organisation over the life of its time.

My hypothesis is that not only are the “junk DNA” sequences used as variables as you hypothesise, but that these can be modified slightly based on the life experiences of an individual. It would be too late for that individual to get this adaption, because they would already be built form the original code, but that it would allow them to pass the tuning to the variable(s) down. If they mated with an individual that had similar extreme experiences and similar variable changes, then this would stick more and we would see more rapid change. If it was just on one side, then when the crossover happened, you wouldn’t see as bigger changes happen as rapidly.

With the gliding squirrel example, maybe evolution didn’t explore first with a little bit of webbing that gave the advantage and progressed. Maybe it was the squirrel being chased and narrowly escaping, and the experience of that, that triggers the evolutionary explorer mode to kick in. Just being entirely haphazard experimentation doesn’t, to me, feel like it would solve for all situations especially those where very rapid adaptation is required.

There would have to be limits in the amount of feedback and variance that can be done at any given generation. I can see why limits would be built in to stop wild over corrections, runaway processes, etc. I don’t have any good thoughts on what the limitation mechanism might be.

It may not happen exactly as I hypothesise in terms of updating the variables but I feel there has to be some kind of experience driven feedback loop like this. Maybe there is another evolutionary mechanism for this already and I just don’t know enough about biology and evolution to know about it/them!

One final thought, I felt you were so close with your consideration that evolution can’t see into the future but it can build an animal that can see into the future. For my hypothesis, it’s less about looking into the future (but maybe that applies too) and more about learning from the present and building that into the next generation.

I hope my ramblings are of some use. I’m an IT guy that did biology in high school, so please excuse me if my thoughts are ludicrous!