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A comment on Mass Extinction and the Structure of the Milky Way (2013). Parent comment

Re:Mass Extinction and the Structure of the Milky Way (2013) by mirimir on Monday May 08, 2017 @03:57AM (#14289955)
Re new DNA combinations, do you have evidence? CNS development is a higher level of natural selection, involving on-the-fly variation. Rather like the immune system. There arguably hasn't been much biological evolution over the past few thousand years. Certainly not enough to account for modern civilization.

We all become disruptors when we switch fields.

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Re:Mass Extinction and the Structure of the Milky Way (2013) by sametmax on Monday May 08, 2017 @05:47AM (#14290325)
Every mass extinction, a new DNA set is gaining traction.
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Re:Mass Extinction and the Structure of the Milky Way (2013) by mirimir on Monday May 08, 2017 @06:12AM (#14290427)
That's quite a jump in time scale. The overall lifetime of the human species is miniscule, relative to the timing of mass extinctions.
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Re:Mass Extinction and the Structure of the Milky Way (2013) by sametmax on Monday May 08, 2017 @06:35AM (#14290508)
Of course. But once we are immortal, the timescale changes.
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Re:Mass Extinction and the Structure of the Milky Way (2013) by mirimir on Monday May 08, 2017 @06:53AM (#14290562)
Fair enough :)

But on that scale, why would we be limited to flesh? I'm reminded of Sobornost practices in Hannu Rajaniemi's Jean le Flambeur trilogy. Basically, make numerous copies of a mind, introducing more-or-less random changes, and select on some set of criteria. I mean, why is natural selection limited to biological systems?

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Re:Mass Extinction and the Structure of the Milky Way (2013) by sametmax on Monday May 08, 2017 @07:22AM (#14290686)
It's not. We could in the end create our own pool for it. Would we be wise enough to do it?
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Re:Mass Extinction and the Structure of the Milky Way (2013) by mirimir on Monday May 08, 2017 @08:55PM (#14296911)
Well, if a few billion people were doing it, at least some of them would get useful results. We might get lots of [insert name of "famous" person] variants, however.
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