State of the Game

I might be thinking too much into this, but the machine on the right implies you have to insert a pizza. Is it the topping-adder machine?!
You could be right but in the event of a machine failure (it is Odyssey after all) it's good to know that FDev have provided a backup chef... Apparently the new chef will appear in Update 7... He seems somewhat familiar to me.
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The part about sharks brought me to another reflection:
you seem to see evolution as a "game" oriented to favour exclusively DNA changes that serve gaining advantage in fight for survival.

If it was so, how come we have species like peacocks for example, where males are dragging their absurdly large fan of feathers around, that serves no other purpose then make "impression" on female birds.

I can't see any evolutionary advantage there - on the contrary, partner selection criteria of females seem to lead to choosing male birds that are more "handicapped" in their survival chances because of overgrown feathers that seem to have no other purpose then being superficial ornament and are a burden otherwise.
well, the thing here is, if no female is impressed enough to let him mate with her, his genes will not survive and his information is lost forever. So whatever is required for him to get a mate to choose him, has highest priority right after staying alive for long enough to be able to mate. There could be some less "civil" solutions but it seems that none of those offered a better survival chance. The male doesn't have to survive for longer than he can mate with a female or is of other use for her and his offspring - if he doesn't provide such services, his further existence is irrelevant and he is obsolete. Really harsh, but nature is that way - just look at the praying mantis, after copulation he will be used as a food source by the female - she starts eating him already during mating.

And yes evolution is a survival game - with cooperative and non-cooperative solutions - both are studied in game theory - so it the end it is a game.

Just to add this - any found solution just has to work, it does not have to make sense - whatever works and offers a good enough survival chance will be used, regardless how ridiculous it might be, it just has to work well enough to fulfill the job of survival - that is all what counts. And it is survival of the information, not about survival of the individual.

Richard Dawkins often mentioned a nerve which goes from the brain all the way down the neck of a giraffe just to turn there and get back up to the brain just a bit away from where it started. He is of the opinion that this is a flaw - but who knows, what it provides is "delay" - instead of the signal travelling fast just a short distance it is travelling a longer time before it is reaching it's destination - eventually this delay is useful for something, like short term memory, because the delayed information is an information about the past - even it was just a very short time ago, it could function as short term memory of a signal.

It is sometimes quite hard to tell what something is good for, because we compare it with engineered solutions, whereas this is evolved "technology" and it's purpose might not be that obvious and sometimes even appear to be ridiculous.
 
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Well, i will give another example of something what seems to be utterly useless until one is really thinking hard about it. Take those simple lookup table based critters, which i mentioned before. They don't get any memory and all what they can see is what is ahead of them. They can either move forward or turn 90 degree to the right. Now just for the fun of it we gave them an eye to see what is right behind them - a location where they cannot choose to go to, because they can just move forward or turn by 90 degree and they won't remember what they have done in the last step or what they have seen at that time.

That eye on their back should be utterly useless - but it isn't.

When they move forward is is more likely that the space right behind them will be empty, whereas when they turn the space right behind them is either empty or occupied. There is a slight chance that they have been moving forward, if they see an empty space right behind them - so this is a probabilistic memory to them and they can build motion patterns based on that information - it is not utterly useless, it is not precise either, but the slight chance that they might have moved forward lately whenever they see an empty space behind them is providing them with an advantage.
 
she starts eating him already during mating.
This isn't usually the case in the wild and is overemphasized in laboratory conditions, something about them increases the rate.

From my point of view it is quite unlikely to get to such complex conscious life forms like on earth
I don't know that I agree. There are experiments demonstrating metacognition (the ability to be aware of and respond to one's own mental state) in rats and corvids. Admittedly, rats are passably close relatives of ours, but we last shared an ancestor with a crow before the dinosaurs existed. What about mollusks? If it turned out to be true of octopodes I would be inclined to say consciousness to at least the degree human 2-4 year olds express it is a likely output of earthlike conditions.

You're right about conditions requiring it. Unusual intellectual spikes relative to close kin tend to be in generalist and opportunist animals, and usually highly social ones. Even Portia spiders are more social and more generalist than a usual spider!
 
oh my, a pterosaur and a mammal put into one - you guys are funny. Quetzalcoatlus northropi is actually one of my favorite pterosaur, because i think that there is a secret in it's flying abilities, which isn't solved yet. Some features of it's skull and what can be seen from it's wings suggests to me at least, that it might have had a real time adaptable wing shape, possibly supported by a tensegrity structure in it's wings and it had as well a massively increased section of it's brain, which is in birds responsible for controlling flight.
 
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This isn't usually the case in the wild and is overemphasized in laboratory conditions, something about them increases the rate.


I don't know that I agree. There are experiments demonstrating metacognition (the ability to be aware of and respond to one's own mental state) in rats and corvids. Admittedly, rats are passably close relatives of ours, but we last shared an ancestor with a crow before the dinosaurs existed. What about mollusks? If it turned out to be true of octopodes I would be inclined to say consciousness to at least the degree human 2-4 year olds express it is a likely output of earthlike conditions.

You're right about conditions requiring it. Unusual intellectual spikes relative to close kin tend to be in generalist and opportunist animals, and usually highly social ones. Even Portia spiders are more social and more generalist than a usual spider!
To the latter - dolphins are rather intelligent conscious creatures as well, but they won't achieve space flight or colonize another planet. They won't send out signals which could be picked up in other star systems. It is intelligent conscious life, yes, but not sophisticated enough to be a spacefaring species.
 
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