this post was submitted on 13 Nov 2023
493 points (96.2% liked)
Science Memes
10950 readers
2752 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
- Don't throw mud. Behave like an intellectual and remember the human.
- Keep it rooted (on topic).
- No spam.
- 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
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
- !reptiles and [email protected]
Physical Sciences
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
Humanities and Social Sciences
Practical and Applied Sciences
- !exercise-and [email protected]
- [email protected]
- !self [email protected]
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
Memes
Miscellaneous
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
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.
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.
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)