this post was submitted on 13 Nov 2023
479 points (96.3% liked)

Science Memes

11441 readers
1589 users here now

Welcome to c/science_memes @ Mander.xyz!

A place for majestic STEMLORD peacocking, as well as memes about the realities of working in a lab.

Rules

  1. Don't throw mud. Behave like an intellectual and remember the human.
  2. Keep it rooted (on topic).
  3. No spam.
  4. Infographics welcome, get schooled.

This is a science community. We use the Dawkins definition of meme.

Research Committee

Other Mander Communities

Science and Research

Biology and Life Sciences

Physical Sciences

Humanities and Social Sciences

Practical and Applied Sciences

Memes

Miscellaneous

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
[email protected]
[email protected]
[email protected]
479
chadodiles (mander.xyz)
submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
18 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] kadu 9 points 1 year ago (2 children)

That's not actually necessarily true. Even if we adopt this "top possible performance" thing, which isn't how organisms work, you can't guarantee their current set of traits would be this optimal maximum.

Evolution can only work with traits already present, or small additions or deletions. It can't jump around. Meaning, for instance, perhaps a crocodile capable of shooting a literal stream of acid would be even more optimized for this environment - but such a trait can't appear out of thin air, and the necessary stepping stones won't be selected.

[–] EpicGamer 4 points 1 year ago

They might also be more succesfull if they can put sticks and stones together to eventually create a military industrial complex in order to hunt prey using a 50 Caliber machine gun.

[–] repungnant_canary 3 points 1 year ago

Sounds like machine learning with a very small learning rate. You will most likely end up in a local minimum ie. no acid shooting (it would be cool and terrifying)