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Is Evolution Predictable?

Posted by Zonk on Sat May 20, 2006 06:46 AM
from the no-one-predicted-the-tour-de-france dept.
Science
An anonymous reader writes "C|Net is carrying a story about some research out of Rice University. They are exploring the possibility that we can predict the evolution of a species, given environmental factors." From the article: "Typically, the bacteria can continue to thrive when the temperature hits 73 degrees Celsius (163 degrees Fahrenheit). The experimental strain of bacteria contained a mutated version of a gene that, in the naturally occurring strain of the microbe, produces a protein that made existence possible. They then put these mutant strains in environments where the temperature rose slowly but steadily, and studied how different generations coped with the changing temperature. In the breeding that followed, millions of new mutations of the gene in question were produced, but only about 700 of those variants replicated some of the functionality of the naturally occurring gene."
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  • You have got to be kidding. To even have a BASIC understanding of evolution you have to know that it means species evolve to fit new environments. This, at its very basic, means that if the climate is hotter, the species adapts to the extra heat. DUH. When a new predator comes along, the prey ... adapts to defend/hide from that predator. DUH.

    They didn't need to perform their silly experiments to come up with this hypothesis. It's built in to the basic nature of the idea.

    Now, as for the article... The
    • To even have a BASIC understanding of evolution you have to know that it means species evolve to fit new environments. This, at its very basic, means that if the climate is hotter, the species adapts to the extra heat. DUH. When a new predator comes along, the prey ... adapts to defend/hide from that predator. DUH.

      Not really. It's more like this...

      Random mutations occur all the time and whilst most of them result in serious deformation or death, some can offer advantages. In some cases these advantages are

    • Re:Evolution isn't just adapting to environment (Score:5, Informative)

      by vertinox (846076) on Saturday May 20 2006, @08:13AM (#15371788)
      You have got to be kidding. To even have a BASIC understanding of evolution you have to know that it means species evolve to fit new environments.

      Actually it isn't just that... (Well if you include evolving because other species are eating you, but that could be lumped into 'environment')

      It is that mutations are random and often times ill suited for their environment, but it is only a matter of chance that something survives to pass on its genes. Whether it is not being eaten into extinction by another species, not over populating until you destroy existing resources and then you go extinct, not dying because of an ice age, or not being wiped out by a meteor.

      One can say... Well that was the environment that killed off those species... Well it isn't because that the species evolved to adapt to the environment, but only those whose random mutations made them more suited for the environment survived.

      As in... If you put a million grizzly bear in the polar region none of them are going to spontaneously evolve his fur white more like a polar bear because that was the best choice.

      However, if any of those bears happened to spontaneously mutate into where their hair turned white making them better hunters so that the seals couldn't see them. Then those species may actually do better than there brown counterparts and may survive in times of hardship where as the browns die out.

      What I am trying to say is that any mutation that doesn't kill off the species will continue in the species, but it is more probable that mutations that allow a species to survive will get passed on.

      Take our appendix for example... What the hell does that do?

      It may or may not have had some purpose in the past, but we simply don't evolve it away because it doesn't kill us so we pass it on to the next generation.

      Basically, evolution isn't about mutating into the best possible creature for the environment, but rather we mutate constantly and the mutations that kill us don't get passed on.

      Now that leads to the question "What really causes DNA mutations?"

      Chances are it could be do to higher radiation events during magnetic pole reversals or gamma ray bursts where the radiation is so high that many species die of cancer and health problems, but those who do survive have random mutations. After that... Any mutation that doesn't kill the species off due to environmental factors passes those genes on.

      • Re:Evolution isn't just adapting to environment (Score:5, Informative)

        by plunge (27239) on Saturday May 20 2006, @09:11AM (#15371963)
        One theory on the appendix has been that the smaller the appendix comes, the MORE likely it is to get infected and kill. So once evolved, and once run out of a useful purpose, it has become very hard to get rid of, because many of the avenues are blocked.

        Likewise, it's worth noting that very often disparate elements are linked. The appendix itself might not be a good thing, but it's developmentally linked to or even just very close to something on the genome that is hard or dangerous to tinker with. And thus, it has been left alone since tinkering with that area of the genome breaks something else important.
      • Now that leads to the question "What really causes DNA mutations?"

        Chances are it could be do to higher radiation events during magnetic pole reversals or gamma ray bursts where the radiation is so high that many species die of cancer and health problems, but those who do survive have random mutations. After that... Any mutation that doesn't kill the species off due to environmental factors passes those genes on.

        Not bad up until this point.

        For one thing, most evolution has less to do with mutations, and more to do with subtle variations between members of a species. So with the case of fur color in mammals, you have multiple genes that contribute to the quantity of melanin in hair. Individuals with combinations ideally suited to the environment are more successful than others.

        Secondly, we know many of the actions for how mutations happen at the biochemical level. Most mutations occur because of errors in DNA replication and repair. Another class of mutations occurs because DNA can fold back on its self under certain conditions, or become attached to other strands. These mutations occur all the time and with a frequency stable enough that we can use them as timers to estimate the geologic time that has elapsed since Kodiak bears and Polar bears shared a common ancestor.
      • The appendix is part of the immune system... it has a similar function to Tonsils, Meyers Patches, etc. contains Lymphoid tissue and contributes to the lymphatic system. You can remove it without major immune system degradation because it's functionality is duplicated in multiple parts of the body, even near it's own location... so it may be an original organ from a time when we needed additional immune response, especially in our large intestine (it's a pouch of tissue adjacent to large intestine).... pos
    • I'm afraid you're another victim of popular media reporting on real science. From TFA, "Conceivably, if scientists can predict how the microbes will adapt to changes in their environment, they can develop antibiotics that won't be rapidly rendered ineffective by stronger, successive generations." This is undoubtedly the real motivation, not to test Darwin's celebrated theories.

      Anyways, Darwin's theory doesn't really make any quantitative predictions. These guys are doing the basic science experiments
    • I don't think you can conclude that evolution can be predicted from that kind of experiments. Just that evolution can be observed. Evolution just happens. But the fact that we can observe it doesn't mean we can understand and predict it.

      Even if in some cases the expected outcome is deterministic, we don't know how really works, see folding@home, that stuff is really computationally expensive. We would need to know the folding behavior of all possible protein and then a fast, effective way to model the inter

      • Re:Kidding, right? (Score:5, Interesting)

        by Guido von Guido (548827) on Saturday May 20 2006, @08:37AM (#15371865)
        Actually, there is such a thing as recurrent mutations. You can measure the rate at which they occur in a population. Depending on what effect a recurrent mutation has, a change in the environment may make a recurrent mutation advantageous. It'd be pretty easy to make predictions about this sort of thing.

        The effects of more novel mutations, though, are going to be much less predictable for the reasons you give.

      • Actually I wonder about contamination... bacteria can and will take up stray DNA, and if the container was autoclaved after the first run, some of the mutant DNA would still be in there. The second batch of bacteria would take it up and act as if they'd invented it!

  • He's from spain (Score:5, Informative)

    by Joris Van Damme (971894) on Saturday May 20 2006, @06:57AM (#15371603)
    I had to read this several times before it started making sense... It's encrypted, really, it is.

    > The experimental strain of bacteria contained a mutated version of
    > a gene that, in the naturally occurring strain of the microbe,
    > produces a protein that made existence possible.

    That should read:

    The experimental strain of bacteria contained a mutated version of a gene that, in the naturally occurring strain of that gene, produces a protein that made existence in these temperatures possible.

    So, in short, they disabled the microbes heat resistence, and saw if the buggers could grow it back.

  • survival (Score:2, Interesting)

    by FudRucker (866063)
    since the human race is subject to the same laws of evolution i think this gene should be added to the human race so when global warming really starts to warm things up those humans that can use and evolve with this gene will survive...

  • Try an environment a bit more complex (Score:5, Insightful)

    by OpenSourced (323149) on Saturday May 20 2006, @07:08AM (#15371626) Journal
    That environment is absolutely different to real life. Try at least to have different temperature zones with more food in the hotter ones, for example. Or repeat the experiment not two, but a thousand times, and see if the result is always the same. That will be a bit more similar to real life, and so have a bit more prediction value.

  • What is WITH headlines like that? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by ScentCone (795499) on Saturday May 20 2006, @07:10AM (#15371630)
    Sure, you can predict evolution if you control all of the life-or-death variables that influence the viability of the bacteria species you're watching. I mean, for fun, I go to Drudge for headlines like that because, well, it's amusing to see the twisted contexts... but isn't this audience/editorial team just a skosh more thoughtful about this sort of thing? Given the traditional dialog and debate here about all thinge evolution-related, throwing that word in the headline in that way drags all of that baggage in with it. Come on, there, Zonk! How about a headline like "Unnatural Selection Works Too" or something similar.
    • While I agree with you that the title is convoluted, I disagree that we can predict evolution reliably. As you said, we need access to "life-and-death" variables, but which ones are they? Can we predict the viability of a new strain by looking at the molecular structure? Should we look at it at level of individual atoms? Tissues, organs? Even defining what is alive is near damned impossible.

      These issues are not specific only to this type of research. I am a scientist myself (actually, I am from Rice Univers

  • What the article doesn't mention... (Score:4, Funny)

    by creimer (824291) on Saturday May 20 2006, @07:15AM (#15371649) Homepage
    Is that a group of graduate students have returned from E3 with an unauthorized copy of the game Spore [spore.com] instead of working on their project for the final. I predict that these lazy students will evolve into hard working game testers.

  • Maybe (Score:3, Insightful)

    by suv4x4 (956391) on Saturday May 20 2006, @07:32AM (#15371674)
    From TFA: "Can we predict how animals and plants evolve in response to changes in the environment? Maybe, according to preliminary research from Rice University."

    Can we guess the numbers from the lottery? Maybe, says preliminar research I just did.

    Evolution works by having random variations and mutations based on what is physically possible and better adapted to the environment.

    You can never guess which mutation will be best fitting though. We can guess some mutations that might work somewhat better, but nature will surprise you with something you never thought of.

    Let's not imagine we're that smart, we still barely know the details about our own species let alone make guesses for the entire nature.

    But of course: if we put a cat and a catfish in deep water I think it's obvious which one the natural selection will prefer.
    • Can we guess the numbers from the lottery? Maybe, says preliminar research I just did.

      Evolution works by having random variations and mutations based on what is physically possible and better adapted to the environment.

      I think it's a bad analogy. Numbers from the lottery are trully random. Evolution is based on random mutations, but the one mutations that will stay can be predicted, although we are unable to do so due to our lack of informations and knowledge.

      Example. Imagine than us, the humans, more or l

  • I knew one day this question would be asked....
  • If you continue to slowly increase the temperature, at what point do the bacteria reach an evolutionary dead-end and die? There are bacteria that survive on or near geothermal vents.
  • I believe Darwin's comments have often been missunderstood because of an unfortunate choice of words. Evolution doesn't rely on the survival of the fittest, but of the most sustainable. If the mutant variants can sustain themselve they will survive, and be the DeFacto higher organism. Those that can't, don't, and become history.

    Fittest suggests that you must be 'more' something. Stronger, faster, smarter, ... But this is not necessarily the case. Bacteria will almost certainly outlive humankind, for exa
    • It's worth noting that SotF isn't really even Darwin's term. It wasn't even added to Origin until the 6th edition, and then only grudingly, Darwin being unsatisfied with most such terms but giving into popular parlance.
  • Obviously you can't predict evolution perfectly, but it is an extremely complicated (one could say the most complicated) mechanism in existence and so with a good understanding of the dynamics, organisms, their biology and environments you might very well be able to do something useful. For example the increasing of temperature gradually is in fact one such attempt.

    If you had a very good understanding for example of a given gene and its mutations in an organism throughout history and in different evironments, you ought to be able to predict something of how it would act if inserted into another organism, and if it is a very successful gene it may have a great impact on "evolution". But it is probably 99% fantasy if you think those picture books illustrating "future creatures" are going to be what will come to pass.

    The only meaningful answer to this question is, if you have full control over the environment can you direct evolution of an organism to develop in your desired direction. Of course this is possible, happens every day in the lab. But once you get away from talking about the evolution of say a given gene, and start talking about what a creature looks like, I think this is beyond our current knowledge though possibly not out of reach if we had far more powerful, half-sentient computers handling most of it. We are talking more about genetic engineering though now, not evolution. Possibly if we had a way to describe biomes and evolutionary stresses on organisms it might be possible to predict things like giraffes' necks elongating. Deducing the structure of an eye or a human's gait would seem to be far more difficult.
  • Of course, by itself, the experiment proves little. However, a reproduceable experiment that suggests, in even a small way, predictable genetic responses to environmental pressures is very interesting. Sure, we want more than two runs, but the results so far seem very convincing.

  • Popular Media Reporting On Real Science (Score:4, Interesting)

    by m0nstr42 (914269) on Saturday May 20 2006, @09:04AM (#15371944) Homepage Journal
    We're all victims here, I think. From TFA: "Conceivably, if scientists can predict how the microbes will adapt to changes in their environment, they can develop antibiotics that won't be rapidly rendered ineffective by stronger, successive generations." That's probably the real goal, the message just gets mangled by some dumbassed reporter.

    We've been working at predicting evolution and using evolutionary results to explain why animals have certain characteristics for quite some time. c.f. Evolutionary Game Theory [wikipedia.org], Behavioral Ecology [wikipedia.org], Adaptive Dynamics, etc. Of course these are mostly all theoretical results. The guys from TFA are doing experimental research that happens to verify the theories, which is in itself pretty cool - it's hard to do evolutionary experiments for obvious reasons. Using bacteria isn't a particularly new idea, but modern technology is enabling more sophisticated and precise experiments.
    • Wrong. You're looking at it from the wrong angle.

      Darwin stated that the mutations were RANDOM and that those that led to better survivors would out live those without.

      E.g., if my kids can cope with the sun better than your kids then there is a chance they won't die off from cancer. If all their kids and grandkids and so on, I'd have a family tree that tends to live longer and reproduce more, etc.

      It has nothing to do with the mutations being guided.

      Tom
        • They aren't talking about predicting the mutations. They are talking about predicting the *surviving* mutations, which in a case where they are actively and in a somewhat controlled way killing off the least fittest really isn't as remarkable as the headline implies.
          • Again, what is interesting about the article, to me, is that not only do they predict he surviving mutations... but they predict which mutations will *form*. The same exact mutations *occured* in the same order the second time... and, as you said, the same ones eventually died off and the same one or two survived as the most fit.

            I'm not saying one experiment is the straw that breaks Darwin's hypothesis. I of course observe the survival of the fittest like everyone else. I'm just saying it is an interesti
        • I'll bet there WERE other mutations but they died off and the one with the heat resistance won out twice in a row.

          Big deal. That doesn't fly in the face of Darwinism.

          That the same mutation eventually occurred twice given a limited genome doesn't surprise me.

          Tom
            • It's interesting but you have to take things into context.

              Darwin states survival of the fitest.

              This experiment didn't say the ideal mutation was the ONLY mutation that occurred.

              That the same mutation occurred is particularly interesting but you also have to look at the amount of variation available. I mean, just how long is the DNA of a microbe anyways? Laws of probability state that if the available mutation pool is small enough you should see a good overlap.

              It's like putting six playing cards in a bag a
        • I think you are missing what random means. Random doesn't mean without any causal connection to anything whatsoever: it doesn't really even mean unpredictable (know all the causal conditions and a random dice throw is predictable).

          What is means is that mutations are not directly correlated with anything having to do with functional needs. Chemical bonds like DNA don't "know" anything about the larger functional structure they are a part of, and they don't act like they do. And this experiment doesn't sho
            • It doesn't say that they same exact mutations happened. It says that 700 mutated in some way to get back some of the same sort of functionality. We've done many many "knockout" experiments like this before and had similar results: various new solutions to the broken system crop up. Usually they are innovative and surprising new solutions. It's certainly possible that if you delete an A from the DNA, it will randomly mutate and return: that's not surprising either. But by and large it will solve the pro

    • Re:So it almost seems evolution follows a... desig (Score:5, Insightful)

      by tgibbs (83782) on Saturday May 20 2006, @07:59AM (#15371742)
      The crux of Darwinism is precisely that evolution is undirected, stemming from *random* mutations. Those who say there is a purpose and pattern to evolution are no longer in the Darwinist paradigm.

      This is a remarkably stupid objection, confusing randomness with unpredictability. If random events were completely unpredictable, then casinos would not make money. The experiment describes exactly the kind of conditions--very large numbers of bacteria--in which one can make predictions about the outcome.

      However, Darwinism insists that natural selection is what creates new species. And the evidence for that happening--for bacteria turning into another life form--is lacking.

      Considering that it has now been shown by genetic sequencing that all of the differences among species can be attributed to the kinds of genetic changes that have been shown to arise by mutation--perhaps the most dramatic example in the history of science of the discovery of evidence confirming a theory--this is also pretty foolish.

      The late Dr Colin Patterson, senior paleontologist of the British Museum of Natural History, wrote a book, Evolution. In reply to a questioner who asked why he had not included any pictures of transitional forms, he wrote....

      Ah, the sine qua non of the Creationist/ID crackpot: the quotes taken out of context. The fact that they always seem to regard this as a particular telling point (note that the poster saved it for last, apparently under the delusion that it is some sort of haymaker of argumentation) is illustrative of how little they understand science. I suppose that this sort of textual hair-splitting must make some kind of sense in the context of Biblical interpretation. But science is based on evidence, not the words of the prophets.
        • To use your casino analogy, the experiment is like poker player drawing the same 7 hands in a row... twice. Sure, randomness and predictability aren't to be confused. But the same gene's in the same order twice??? That is a bit more specific then a casino predicting they'll win a little less then one percent of the time in craps.

          More like the winning hand in a poker game of a billion players being the same several times in a row: "Oh my god, the winning hand is a royal flush once again!!!! The game must be

        • To use your casino analogy, the experiment is like poker player drawing the same 7 hands in a row... twice. Sure, randomness and predictability aren't to be confused. But the same gene's in the same order twice??? That is a bit more specific then a casino predicting they'll win a little less then one percent of the time in craps.

          Scientist: "Hm, that's strange. Let's see if this can be reproduced by anyone else. If so, we can come up with a theory and some experiments later."

          Creationist: "OMG! Look! It's God

    • Re:So it almost seems evolution follows a... desig (Score:4, Informative)

      by gm0e (872436) on Saturday May 20 2006, @08:16AM (#15371794)
      Hey bud, copy and paste much?

      http://www.worldmag.com/articles/11485 [worldmag.com]

      All I had to do was copy and paste one phrase into google with quotes.

    • The crux of Darwinism is precisely that evolution is undirected, stemming from *random* mutations.

      ... which are then selected by the environment in a decidedly *non*-random fashion.

      We know that evolution can help an organism adapt... and, as the article shows, we are beginning to show that organisms do this in accordance to a pattern

      Absolutely. The pattern is that adaptations that are good for survival and reproduction in the prevailing environment are successful and will proliferate within a population, w

    • Re:So it almost seems evolution follows a... desig (Score:5, Insightful)

      by plunge (27239) on Saturday May 20 2006, @09:02AM (#15371935)
      "As Michael Behe has shown, the most basic mechanisms of life--the structures within a cell, the chemistry of blood-clotting, the processing of oxygen--display "irreducible complexity" that could not have evolved randomly. If these already complex and finely tuned structures were not in place, life on any level could not exist."

      But he hasn't shown this at all. Your argument doesn't even make sense: life could not exist without blood clotting? This will come as a huge surprise to bacteria! Sea cucumbers will all die in shock at the news! Inability to process the corrosive poison oxygen: oh noes! Yeast is a miracle!

      Fact is, blood clotting has turned out to be as embarrasing an example for Behe as all the rest: there has in fact been extensive work done to figure out how blood clotting evolved.

      And the larger point is even if we didn't have good leads on how something evolved, historically, simply saying "I don't see how it could have" is not a good argument: it's merely incredulity, not a demonstration of impossibility.

      This is the reason Behe's arguments are not taken seriously. ID theorists, of course, would have you believe that it's because of a giant conspiracy or dogma. It couldn't POSSIBLY be because the arguments of ID proponents are incorrect. Merely being able to make arguments against evolution proves that these arguments are right and evolution is just a fad!

      "However, Darwinism insists that natural selection is what creates new species. And the evidence for that happening--for bacteria turning into another life form--is lacking."

      This is always fascinating to me. People like you claim that evolution is flawed... but when you actually start talking about it, you imply that you don't even understand what it is.

      This is a REALLY key point to grasp. Evolution is cladistically conservative. What that means is that is one life form does not "turn into" another. Everything that descends from bacteria will still be rightly classed as bacteria (that is, everything that set bacteria apart from all other life will still set all its descendants apart), just like we humands are still eukaryotes, still tetrapods, still eutherians, still apes, and so on.

      The evidence for speciation is not only solid, but has been observed in nature. The mechanisms, despite what ID theorists would have you believe, are not even mysterious. Speciation at base simply involves two population genetically drifting away from each other to the point where they can no longer interbreed. For some species we even know how this happens down to the point by point mutation (like in abalone, where the "lock/key" mechanism of sperm and eggs is constantly changing, often leaving islands of incompatibility where certain populations are stranded off of from others).

      "We know that evolution can help an organism adapt... and, as the article shows, we are beginning to show that organisms do this in accordance to a pattern or (dare I say) a design."

      Did you even READ the article? That's not what it shows at all. Where in the article are you finding this? Even patterns of mutation is not the same thing as design: mutation is a physical process with its own observable constraints and quirks.

      "We still do know that organisms evolve into new species. And, dare I say, I doubt we ever will. The late Dr Colin Patterson, senior paleontologist of the British Museum of Natural History, wrote a book, Evolution. In reply to a questioner who asked why he had not included any pictures of transitional forms, he wrote: "I fully agree with your comments about the lack of direct illustration of evolutionary transitions in my book. If I knew of any, fossil or living, I would certainly have included them ... . I will lay it on the line--there is not one such fossil for which one could make a watertight argument." The renowned evolutionist (and Marxist) Stephen Jay Gould wrote: "The absence of fossil evidence for intermediary stages between major transitions in organic de
    • Darwin lived a long time ago. He developed his ideas without the deep knowledge we posess today, and yet, as Ernst Mayr pointed out, the theory of evolution was enhanced by molecular biochemistry, not weakened. So, to criticize a modern scientist for not being a pure Darwinist is really to congratulate that inidividual for staying current in the field.

      As for the ID attempt to bring about a paradigm shift in science: good luck. Seriously! The crux of ID is that of bias in observation of the natural wor

    • I've always wanted to go to Miller-Urey, but I'm afraid I'll fall of the edges of the flat earth...

      • Re:you need information (Score:4, Insightful)

        by plunge (27239) on Saturday May 20 2006, @08:28AM (#15371835)
        "Miller-Urey only showed that the amion-acids could be produced by "accident". Of course, it proved this by going through a lot of hard work to make them."

        Well no, not really. Until them, we didn't know that the basic amino acids will form under some fairly pedestrian chemical conditions. Miller and Urey DIDN'T sit down and build them: they instead set up an environmental condition and they came about by themselves. That's only a tiny piece of the picture in the field of abiogenesis, but it was most definately a fascinating surprise that changed the way we thought about organic molecules.

        "What it dosen't accout for it the information."

        This has become the latest creationist trope, but it's complete nonsense.

        Define "information" any way you like, and evolution produces it. It's mathetically demonstrable, we do it all the time in practice when we use genetic algorithms, and we observe it in nature. Generating new information is a BASIC function of the evolutionary process (depending on how you define information, it's either random mutation ITSELF, or the outcome of natural selection). Heck, the article here describes it happening. It might not phrase it in the language of information, but when the demands of an environmental pressure is imprinted onto a gene pool, that's an information increase in the gene pool (information about the environment).

        The claim that evolution cannot produce information is a garbled version of the arguments of William Dembski, whose arguments have been roundly debunked too many times to count.
        http://goodmath.blogspot.com/2006/03/king-of-bad-m ath-dembskis-bad.html [blogspot.com]

        "Once DNA would be formed out of the acids it has to code for orgenelles and cell walls and whatever else."

        Well, eventually, but almost certainly not right away. You're imagining that early life would immediately need to become like life today. Almost certainly, that amount of complex cell structure was not there at the beginning. Single celled life ruled the world far longer than the multicelluar life and complex single-celled structures we have today.

        "Even the scientists that support Evolution are having a hard time coming up with an explination with where the information came from, not just the medium it is carried on."

        As I said, no. Information is trivial. What you are probably referring to is that we don't know how specifically early life arose, largely because we just don't have much to go on to direct us in one direction or another. But like most things in science, we're working on it, and fascinating discoveries and insights happen almost every other month.
      • Abiogenesis and the formation of the earliest RNA/DNA molecules is largely outside of the domain of evolution. Evolution describes changes in biodiversity among a group of living organisms in an environment. How those organisms got here, (panspermia vs. hot springs vs. mud) is a question for biochemistry.
    • With more complex species, for example humans, other, less easily determined factors, including one commonly known as 'attraction', will come into play.

      Ugly people don't have any less kids that "attractive" people. Example : Marilyn Monroe : 0 kids. Osama bin Laden : at least 24.

      And it all comes down to how many kids you get in the end, not how often or how easily you get laid.

    • If we can predict evolution, can we now predict the future prediction capabilites of mankind?

      No, because we do not evolve anymore since the advent of agriculture (or so).

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