Computer Scientists Find Mass Extinctions Can Accelerate Evolution

Re:Computer Scientists Find Mass Extinctions Can Accelerate ... by rdlecler1 on Saturday August 15, 2015 @02:09AM (#10064503)

Prior to an extinction event you may be in some kind of equilibrium state where no agents are expressing phenotype a of sufficient novelty to provide a major selective advantage. Once you remove species this creates a vacuum for new phenotypes.

This also makes me think about how new technologies may disrupt the status quo leading to rapid technological evolution as we are seeing now, and in the dot-com

An interesting idea here is that government regulations have the ability to shift the selective landscape away from it's current equilibrium state and drive more technological evolution.

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Re:Computer Scientists Find Mass Extinctions Can Accelerate ... by miscellaneous on Monday August 17, 2015 @05:45AM (#10072076)

Creating new government regulations or the removal of old government regulations?

I would posit that progress in an industry gets 'stuck' due to large companies using their resources/influence to encourage regulation that hinder competition. It then takes very significant advancements in technology to create businesses that are so different that they can compete with incumbents in ways that have not been preemptively regulated.

In fact I would suggest that regulation is the opposite of an 'extinction event'. Regulation is not a random shock and it inherently targets smaller industries/organizations. For instance, "too big to fail" is an example of regulation preventing a mass extinction event. Without "too big to fail", many of the least innovative companies (large banks, GM, etc.) would have gone bankrupt and there would be drastically more progress in these industries.

[ Parent | on HN ]