Gravity is an unproven hypothesis.
Thinking of it as quantum first.
Before the 20th century, there was a preference for the idea that things were continuous.
Then there was experimental evidence that things were quantized when interacted with, and we ended up with wave particle duality. The pendulum swung in that direction and is still going.
This came with a ton of weird behaviors that didn’t make philosophical sense - things like Einstein saying “well if no one is looking at the moon does it not exist?”
So they decided fuck the philosophy and told the new generation to just shut up and calculate.
Now we have two incompatible frameworks. At cosmic scales, the best model (general relatively) is based on continuous behavior. And at small scales the framework is “continuous until interacted with when it becomes discrete.”
But had they kept the ‘why’ in mind, as time went on things like the moon not existing when you don’t look at it or the incompatibility of those two models would have made a lot more sense.
It’s impossible to simulate the interactions of free agents with a continuous universe. It would take an uncountably infinite amount of information to keep track.
So at the very point that our universe would be impossible to simulate, it suddenly switches from behaving in an impossible to simulate way to behaving in a way with finite discrete state changes.
Even more eyebrow raising, if you erase the information about the interaction, it switches back to continuous as if memory optimized/garbage collected with orphaned references cleaned up (the quantum eraser variation of Young’s double slit experiment).
The latching on to the quantum experimental results and ditching the ‘why’ in favor of “shut up and calculate” has created an entire generation of physicists chasing the ghost of a unified theory of gravity while never really entertaining the idea that maybe the quantum experimental results are the side effects of emulating a continuous universe.
That the many worlds interpretation is sort of correct, but incomplete. Hear me out.
Many worlds isn’t as mind bogglingly ridiculous if the worlds are constantly merging back into each other. Like the universe where a photon bounced left and the universe where it bounced right are functionally identical, then they ARE just the same universe. As long as which way the photon bounced didn’t make a meaningful difference, those two realities aren’t suddenly new separate lines, they’re like a rubber band that stretched in two directions, then bounced back together.
But let’s say you measure the photon and keep records of it. Now there’s two versions of you right? One measuring the photon going left, one measuring it going right. You’re in separate universes that shall never meet right?
No… you’ve stretched the rubber band a little further. Over a timescale that’s totally meaningless compared to the age of the universe, you will die, your records will decay and once the information is effectively scrambled into chaos… the two realities can just snap back together. Two universe… but now one again.
Now for some really mind bendy stuff… this stretching isn’t just localized in time it’s also localized in space. Meaning… if you measure your photon and split into two versions of yourself, but I’m on the other side of the world (or even just down the street from you) and I have no idea that there’s two versions of you, stretched across this temporary universe split… Well, there’s still only one version of me. Up until I encounter one or the other version of you. And if I never do… or if we just cross paths in the local grocery store and your photon experiment doesn’t come up at all… there’s still just one version of me.
And that one version of me can EASILY encounter both versions of you simultaneously without me ever knowing or it making a meaningful difference in my life. So your split reality is localized… possibly even microscopically in your body (like… most of your neurons in your brain didn’t really change at all because of your experiment, only a few of them have to fire differently, the rest don’t have to split… also, wtf) and in the parts of your lab equipment that kept records of the photon measurement.
Now, even whackier… the remerging isn’t perfect, just perfect enough that the universe doesn’t fall apart. Like… you know how sometimes you’re SURE that the neighbor had a red car, but then you look outside and it’s green and your spouse tells you it’s always been green? Stuff that fuels r/glitchinthematrix.
“OK thebardingreen,” you say, “sure, but wouldn’t that mean our records would detect the imperfections all the time and we’d have clear evidence when we go an check the database that it’s impossible to keep consistent records because of this spliting and remerging?”
“NO!” I say, “because of entropy.”
See, if the universe is going to try to flow along the arrow of time to it’s lowest energy state… and as we all know, something stretched (like a rubber band, but ANYTHING really) is in a high energy state. If we found lots of evidence this was going on, well that would keep the universe stretched out more, over longer periods of time. The universe can’t have that, so when you start checking records, things tend to snap to their lowest energy state (possibly even to the point that you realize the neighbor’s car WAS always green, and you just had a dream last night that it was red. But something’s bothering you about that… doesn’t seem quite right. You post on the internet and tell a eerie story about your strange experience and then go on with your life. The feeling fades. Becomes a funny party story.
Decades later, your grand kids remember a story you used to tell… and they retell it, but they don’t quite remember what color you said the car was. There’s no need for them to split into multiple versions (one who says red and one who says green), they just both say “the car was blue, then it turned out to be yellow.” The universe is FULLY collapsed.
(Also, we KNOW that keeping perfect records / taking perfect measurements is actually incredibly hard and we tend to throw out anomalous results as garbage data, especially if we can’t reproduce them, this could be going all the time and we would just consider it statistically insignificant bad data, within our expected margin of error, easily explainable as a common, everyday screw up)
So yes, that means there could be a small infinity of parallel universes where evolution / history went differently. A universe where sapient rat people are squeeking over their version of the internet about weird science facts. Sure… but so what? The sun is going to expand into a red giant and consume the Earth and erase most of that information and then the local planetary stretch collapses back into it’s lowest energy state… one where there might have been rat people, or hairless ape people, but either way, they’re gone.
Ready for MORE whackyness?? THIS is the Great Filter. Sort of.
Intelligent civilizations spreading across the stars will create a HIGH energy state, as all those potential diversions splinter in more and more ways across greater distances. SO the universe will tend to favor outcomes where chaotic, clever and unpredictable life forms DON’T spread out of their own solar system, or travel across vast distances, because THAT would be a high energy stretch state. Although even just spreading across a galaxy is still only a LOCAL stretch as far as the universe is concerned. Heck, beings 100 light years away who never build a huge solar system sized radio telescope to pick up our faint emissions don’t need to cause weird reality splits. They could exist in a weird little myriad of their own stretched realities and NEVER interact with ours in a meaningful way. And if one day one of their radio astronomers detects a strange radio signal from our star that NEVER repeats and is NEVER explained… well it really doesn’t matter to them at all if we sent that signal or the rats did or the sun just hiccuped in way their physical models can’t explain. Our whole solar system becomes a Schrodinger’s cat box in which both us AND the rat people sent that signal existing in a superpositioned state until someone measures it… which they probably won’t and probably CAN’T so the universe maintains it’s low energy state.
So if you’re ever like “If I go back in time and kill my grandfather, does that mean I never existed”, what if you just created a weird stretch reality that will paradoxically persist for a while and then all collapse back together as soon as the universe can get away with it?
In this thought experiment, it’s possible that a small infinity of time travelers showed up to Stephen Hawking’s time travel party. BUT, that would cause a high energy stretch over a weird knot in time… so the universe will TOTALLY favor outcomes in which no one showed up, so in the vast majority of universes, NO time travelers show up to hang out with Stephen Hawking, BECAUSE that’s less stretching for the universe to do before it snaps back to a low energy state.
So, the many worlds interpretation doesn’t mean that infinities of universes are being created constantly, it means there’s JUST one universe, but multiple pocket realities can exist in it, localized in both space and time, and these pocket realities are constantly snapping back and merging with each other, sometimes inconsistently. Which is EXACTLY what we’d expect from an energetic system progressing through time, experiencing entropy.
I like it, and also second the request for whatever drugs you’re on
This doesn’t feel accurate for some reason. Maybe because I’m on drugs.
Man I want whatever drugs you have.
(Honestly this was a fun read, thank you!)
The universe is a black hole. All black holes create new universes. Ergo, you reincarnate in some fashion.
Something simple like if we just ignored Gravity we could move faster than light.
Or time maybe?
None. Flat Earth is characterized by their denial of science. By performing empirical experiments then rejecting the results.
That is antithetical to the very core of science. So any scientist who is given experimental data that contradicts their theory is, should make new theories.
There’s nothing fundamentally wrong with saying the Earth is flat, and then thinking about the implications, and then verifying the implications match reality, and then when you get bad data you modify your hypothesis. We need creative and curious minds to challenge the status quo with new measurements data and science. It’s the rejection of empirical data that is the death of science
Sounds like you’re saying The Structure of Scientific Revolutions is flawed because those pesky stubborn holdouts weren’t scientists.
Holding out on a belief when presented with a mountain of evidence to the contrary is definitively unscientific. What don’t we call people who are unscientific about their methodologies?
I guess I would have called them “bad scientists” – scientists who are bad at their job and hold everyone back. But still scientists.
For instance they correctly applied the scientific method in most other cases. They just were blind to or intentionally obstructive to certain things.
I try my best to be rational and apply Bayes’ theorem now and then, but I am sure I am still missing some invisible monsters which will make me look arrogant or foolish in the future. I don’t experiment much with software I am unfamiliar with, even if it could improve things at work. I do now and then of course, but should I allocate more time to trying new things? Yeah probably, but I don’t, and my job still gets done.
I don’t disagree that people can be stubborn and refuse to accept reality. This whole thread is known as Planck’s Principle.
OP asked what “what possible misunderstanding of nature could make current academics look like flat earthers”. I think it’s implied that they’re talking about a scientific consensus today which we later find to be flawed, in which case I don’t think that anything would make current academics look like flat earthers. The difference is, literally no flat earther lived in such a time where the scientific consensus said the world was flat; they all became convinced of a falsehood after it was known to be a falsehood, which is orthogonal to Planck’s Principle.
So I guess the answer to OP’s question is: if an academic becomes convinced of a falsehood with full knowledge of an overwhelming amount of evidence to show that it is false, then they would look like a flat earther. But I don’t think that’s the situation they’ve laid out.
No, the possibility still exists because the current academic community continues to exist even into the future, where a breakthrough is possible. At the very least you are being pedantic.
An appropriate level of pedantry, I think. You asked for everyone for their opinion, it hardly seems appropriate for you to call me pedantic for providing just that.
It also feels like maybe you didn’t pick up what I was putting down, because the “breakthrough” scenario is irrelevant. The important part is: did science already accept X as true (read: highly probable) at the time that a person decided they believe X is false? Because to me, that’s what makes someone “look like a flat earther”. But I can’t fault someone for not being convinced by some evidence, and choosing instead to stick with (what they believe to be) a null hypothesis.
You’re using too strict a definition of what makes a flat earther. Flat eathers are characterized by many different things but their defining feature is their refusal accept evidence that disproves their belief. My phrasing does not disclude this interpretation.
OK this makes sense to me now.
If you apply the scientific method, you’re a scientist. Congratulations
I imagine there are many academics that won’t budge from their current beliefs even when confronted with proof.
They might be academics, but definitely not scientists
Some scientists, might. There is no shortage on hubris in the scientific community.
I think we’re talking No True Scientist here
Yup! I don’t understand the downvotes, because this absolutely happens. Especially when technology has progressed to enable us to answer certain questions that we couldn’t in the past. Old curmudgeonly academics can definitely be resistant to accepting that they’ve been wrong, even when confronted with proof. Sometimes the only way for old theories to die is for their proponents to die or retire. It’s a shame, but ego can be a massive problem in some disciplines.
Some, sure. And they are indeed acting like flat earthers. I think they’re likely to be the minority though and they’re not acting like scientists if they do that.
Sorry, it’s just how I phrased the question. Sorry to be a Debbie downer but I was really interested in the answer.
No need to apologise mate, sorry if my answer came across as curt, wasn’t intended that way :-)
When we finally figure out and understand, in a real world mechanical sort of way, quantum mechanics, all bets will be off.
It’ll open up a new perspective on the Universe (dare I say Metaverse?), and where we fit in with everything.
deleted by creator
I don’t know for sure, but there are some debates that simply don’t make sense to me. For example, whether or not dark matter/energy exists is something many just absolutely insist upon. To me, I would imagine, if something exists, being “measurable” is a badge or prerequisite of its existence, but here we have a name for the black omnipresence essence everywhere, the substance of nothing, so to speak, to the point where one of the theories put forward about the gravitational anomalies in the outer solar system is that it’s simply dark matter. I’m not buying it. I’m of the school of thought that what we see really is just plain nothingness. For those who constantly accuse the “it could be aliens” theory, it ranks up there to float around a go-to for everything.
Another one are the constant asteroid theories. What made the moon? An asteroid. What tipped Uranus? An asteroid. What killed the dinosaurs?
The ice ageAn asteroid. It doesn’t come off as very critical, especially when imprecisions are growing out of them all, for example people went from saying dinosaurs were all genocided specifically by the asteroid to some people saying there were some who became birds to some saying all of them became birds and animals to saying the asteroid did almost nothing to any whole species.FYI, dinosaurs are not extinct; they’re quite abundant, and we walk alongside them. For example, chickens are dinosaurs.
I acknowledged that in the last sentence.
Dark matter isn’t something that was randomly invented and is believed for no good reason. We observe something going on, and the best way to describe the effect is through dark matter, as in matter that doesn’t interact with electromagnetic waves, but does affect gravity. There have been many alternative explanations for the effects (e.g. MOND), but none line up as well as dark matter.
So it’s something that is measurable, insofar that we even came up with the idea due to measurements. We don’t know how to detect it directly, but we can detect its influence.
Isn’t it judging a book by its cover that something so unknown to us is seen as so applicable as a go-to before we know what applies to it? It would be like seeing fire for the first time and thinking “we only know one thing about fire, that it’s hot, therefore anything that’s hot must be heated by internal fire”.
All the models happen to fit perfectly when we describe the interactions as dark matter, and no better model has been proposed so far. Mind you, nobody is saying “dark matter must be this or that” - until we know more, it’s pretty much a placeholder. But unless someone comes up with a better model (and many, many people are trying to) the only alternative is to throw our hands in the air and say “god did it, we can’t describe it physically”. As soon as you start describing it physically, you’d arrive back at dark matter.
That’s kind of what I mean, it’s a cop-out, especially considering that we know so little about it. For all we know, it could be tiny microscopic black holes, and right now, we wouldn’t know the difference, yet we assume it’s something we “just know about”. Typically in science (or at least it used to be this way), you don’t resort to going with the placeholder hypothesis until the more specific ones are absolutely ruled out, so that we don’t draw a conclusion in a way that seals the deal on other possibilities.
That’s where your understanding is wrong - nobody is saying that dark matter can’t be microscopic black holes. There are reasons to assume this to be untrue (e.g. microscopic black holes evaporating incredibly fast), but “dark matter” is a placeholder for whatever the underlying physical phenomenon is, be it microscopic black holes, or WIMPs, or whatever else. You yourself are asking for your explanation not to be considered.
How so? I was always taught/told (in the context of science and science class) that it’s better to not have an explanation than to not know how to explain something is and just go with something out of pressure. This is that in practice as I’d rather wait, for example, to have better instruments to see if Planet 9 (which there’s a demand to identify with clarity since we suspect it to keep hurling small bodies into the inner solar system) is really dark matter (however we might identify it) or if it’s an obscure planet, a small black hole, or a phenomenon we don’t even know about yet.
How so? I was always taught/told (in the context of science and science class) that it’s better to not have an explanation than to not know how to explain something is and just go with something out of pressure.
Who is doing that? Your comments all seem to imply that you think dark matter is something scientists just randomly assume to be true, and I don’t know how to explain that you’re misunderstanding this beyond what I already wrote.
This is that in practice as I’d rather wait, for example, to have better instruments to see if Planet 9 (which there’s a demand to identify with clarity since we suspect it to keep hurling small bodies into the inner solar system) is really dark matter (however we might identify it) or if it’s an obscure planet, a small black hole, or a phenomenon we don’t even know about yet.
But what do you want to wait for? Unless people think about what could be causing the gravitational anomalies we’re seeing, we won’t come up with better instruments. But you don’t want people to think about that, because they can’t fully explain it. So how do you get to better instruments?
Science works by observing phenomena, formulating a hypothesis to explain them, making predictions with that hypothesis, and finally testing (and refining) it. Scientists have observed gravitational anomalies, they’ve formulated many hypotheses (of which dark matter fits the best so far), and now they’re trying to make predictions and test them. This is really difficult, because we’re far away from the gravitational anomalies that we’re seeing, and they aren’t interacting with the electromagnetic spectrum. What exactly is your issue with this process? You keep saying that scientists assume things, but I see no violation of the normal process, and no better theories.
I once heard that dark matter is just the consequence of using approximations and then having equations not balance out further down the line. So we inject dark matter in there so that the math maths all right.
Thats literally how it started, yes.
Then scientists realized that their math hack might actually hold some weight.
I think you’re right about black matter, it might just be the modern day aether. The asteroid theories not so much, there is proof for the dinosaur extinction event being caused by an asteroid, and there is a measurable anomaly in the earth core which gives evidence to the moon origin theory (which was not so much an asteroid but a Mars-sized object). Also, asteroids are considered proven to excist.
ELI5: Why didn’t the asteroid also reduce life the first time or also create a second moon the second time? Why those specific outcomes for those specific asteroids?
Because there was no life around yet the first time, and because the second time is was an actual asteroid instead of a planet.
size/impact difference.
First one was before the Solar system finished forming, no life, it was also the size of Mars. The Moon is a combination of matter from that object and matter thrown up from Earth. Second one was tiny by comparison and we actually are pretty sure we found the crater
To add onto Size/Difference, also time. When the moon was created; life wasn’t what it was say during the time of dinosaurs. Also imagine that we say dinosaurs, but thats a massive amount of time. There were numerous periods of near total extinction events, where populations and species bottlenecked. A meteor was only one of these events over our 4+billion life span as a planet.
FYI, dinosaurs are not extinct; they’re quite abundant, and we walk alongside them. For example, chickens are dinosaurs.
You called?
Consciousness being an emergent property of the universe instead of the universe being an emergent property of consciousness.
I came here to say this.
Modern physics already gives special status to observer objects and properties that “non-observer” objects don’t have, and every universe needs to be defined from some particular point of view instead of “objectively” from outside. There are a couple other weird things but those are two big ones to me.
And so a physicist from the 2100s where physics is defined in relation to consciousness asks a modern physicist, so why did you think it was all just atoms and numbers in an “objective” universe?
And the modern physicist says what the fuck are you talking about don’t get all weird and religious on me
And the future physicist says okay dude good luck then
You’re fundamentally misunderstanding the concept of an “observer” - it’s not a conscious entity literally observing something. It’s simply an object whose state depends on the quantum particle in question.
Why does the detector in the double slit experiment cause an interference pattern if its state depends on which slit the particle went through, but then it resets its internal state after, without transmitting the result?
There’s no way to fully erase the state, as information cannot be destroyed. There will always be consequences of the state measurement in the detector (e.g. through heat).
Absolutely false. You have apparently never heard of the exact aspects of quantum mechanics which so surprised physicists when they were first discovered? (which are pretty much its defining feature) IDK, it kind of sounds that way.
I’m honestly not saying it’s as simple as the pop science oversimplification of QM, even though my comment was kind of invoking exactly that oversimplification. But yes, things like having the detector erase its measurements without recording them were exactly the types of experiments which started to point to something much stranger going on than just one object’s state depending on another.
Wheeler’s delayed-choice experiments demonstrate that extracting “which path” information after a particle passes through the slits can seem to retroactively alter its previous behavior at the slits.
Quantum eraser experiments demonstrate that wave behavior can be restored by erasing or otherwise making permanently unavailable the “which path” information.
Emphasis is mine. If I’ve misunderstood something then fill me in, sure.
There is “observer-dependence” in quantum mechanics in a comparable way that there is observer-dependence in general relativity. It has nothing to do with some “fundamental role of consciousness” but comes from the fact that reality itself depends on how you look at it, it is reference frame dependent. The “observer” is just a chosen coordinate system in which to describe other things. I know, you probably got this from Kastrup too, right? Idealists have been getting desperate and resorting to quantum woo, pretending that something that changes based on coordinate system proves fundamental consciousnesses.
This is accurate, yes. The cat in the box is conscious presumably, in my opinion of cats at least, but still can be “not an observer” from the POV of the scientist observing the experiment from outside the box.
I have no idea who Kastrup is.
No idea what you’re talking about with getting desperate. I got a little more detailed in another comment about what I was and wasn’t claiming (“I’m honestly not saying it’s as simple as” etc). I stand by my statement that QM is about quite a lot more than coordinate systems, and in my opinion will make it look weird in retrospect once physics expands to a more coherent whole that includes the special properties of the observer in a way that’s something other than “yeah we don’t know WTF that’s about and we try not to think about it”.
This is accurate, yes. The cat in the box is conscious presumably, in my opinion of cats at least, but still can be “not an observer” from the POV of the scientist observing the experiment from outside the box.
“Consciousness” is not relevant here at all. You can write down the wave function of a system relative to a rock if you wanted, in a comparable way as writing down the velocity of a train from the “point of view” of a rock. It is coordinate. It has nothing to do with “consciousness.” The cat would perceive a definite state of the system from its reference frame, but the person outside the box would not until they interact with it.
QM is about quite a lot more than coordinate systems
Obviously QM is not just coordinate systems. The coordinate nature of quantum mechanics, the relative nature of it, is merely a property of the theory and not the whole theory. But the rest of the theory does not have any relevance to “consciousness.”
and in my opinion will make it look weird in retrospect once physics expands to a more coherent whole
The theory is fully coherent and internally consistent. It amazes me how many people choose to deny QM and always want to rush to change it. Your philosophy should be guided by the physical sciences, not the other way around. People see QM going against their basic intuitions and their first thought is it must be incomplete and needs to have additional complexity added to it to make it fit their intuitions, rather than just questioning that maybe their basic intuitions are wrong.
Your other comment was to a Wikipedia page which if you clicked the link on your own source it would’ve told you that the scientific consensus on that topic is that what you’re presenting is a misinterpretation.
A simple search on YouTube could’ve also brought up several videos explaining this to you.
Thank you for this. I was just thinking about it and how it implies consciousness is shared or linked in some way.
We are all the same entity, just different instances, existing inside of the greater consciousness that is the universe. We have performed every great and evil act to ourselves, as we are all the same entity.
This is an idea explored in The Egg by Andy Weir.
Well said, me. Bravo!
I can’t say we are the same. Not definitively. Only similar.
I dont mean that we are the same as in each human is exactly like one another.
I mean we are the same as in there is no “we”, “we” is an illusion. There is only one of us, experiencing existence through the lens of each living creature simultaneously. “We” are the universe itself. The humans, the animals, all of the matter and energy are just perturbations in our collective fabric. The current body in which you are experiencing life is just one of many appendiges.
You are yourself and you are your parents. You are the primordial cavemen. You are hitler, and you are ghandi.
All of these experiences of each life feed back into the greater consciousness.
This is a good answer. Bernardo Kastrup argues this; check out his very eloquently titled book Why Materialism is Baloney.
Kastrup is entirely unconvincing because he pretends the only two schools of philosophy in the whole universe are his specific idealism and metaphysical realism which he falsely calls the latter “materialism.” He thus never feels the need to ever address anything outside of a critique of a single Laymen understanding of materialism which is more popular in western countries than eastern countries, ignoring the actual wealth of philosophical literature.
Anyone who actually reads books on philosophy would inevitably find Kastrup to be incredibly unconvincing as he, by focusing primarily on a single school, never justifies many of his premises. He begins from the very beginning talking about “conscious experience” and whatnot when, if you’re not a metaphysical realist, that is what you are supposed to be arguing in the first place. Unless you’re already a dualist or metaphysical realist, if you are pretty much any other philosophical school like contextual realist, dialectical materialist, empiriomonist, etc, you probably already view reality as inherently observable, and thus perception is just reality from a particular point-of-view. It then becomes invalid to add qualifiers to it like “conscious experience” or “subjective experience” as reality itself cannot had qualifiers.
I mean, the whole notion of “subjective experience” goes back to Nagel who was a metaphysical realist through-and-through and wrote a whole paper defending that notion, “What is it like to be a Bat?”, and this is what Kastrup assumes his audience already agrees with from the get-go. He never addresses any of the criticisms of metaphysical realism but pretends like they don’t exist and he is the unique sole critic of it and constantly calls metaphysical realism “materialism” as if they’re the same philosophy at all. He then builds all of his arguments off of this premise.
Time (capital T) is vastly different than time (lowercase t).
That the universe is infinite. It’s unknown if it is but commonly called infinite. It could, however, be finite in some way, such as be wrapping back around on itself out past observable space.
What would cause it to do that? Only thing I can think of is gravity, no? That would imply there’s something in the middle that keeps everything from straying too far?
Or do you simply mean that our perception of space is limited and we simply can’t perceive it properly and thus we’d go in one direction and end up back where we started? But if that’s the case, it means we’ve also misunderstood light? Doesn’t it go infinitely? So shouldn’t there be a light source that reaches us from different directions?
Nature religions were right and we’re all part of a single bigger organism of which every part can feel and communicate with every other part.
We’re like fingers who don’t know there’s a hand
That evolution is purely randomness + fitness landscape rather than that DNA guides the process at least somewhat. Don’t burn me alive guys
I don’t understand your point but it seems interesting. Could you rephrase?
The current paradigm assumes a uniform probability of mutation across all genes. But maybe there are mechanisms that say “keep this part of the genome under tighter control” and “make this other part of the genome more susceptible to mutation.”
Oh we already know this. There are parts of the genome that, if even slightly changed, cause terrible, terrible things.
Mutations can happen anywhere, but serious mutations (that may affect the basic things a cell needs to do in order to exist) result in cell death and therefore don’t manifest in the population — the population continues on as though the mutation had never existed.
In this way, natural selection conserves some parts of the genome while less essential parts can vary more freely without being deleterious to the organism.
For example, most non-bacteria (including all plants, animals, fungi, protists) have special proteins called histones. Histones are used to package the DNA together and wrap it all up. Cells can’t function at all without a these proteins, and the most important histone proteins evolve so slowly that they’re almost identical between a human and a pea. (Humans and peas shared a common ancestor over half a billion years ago.)
ETA: My molecular biology knowledge is rusty, but IIRC the way DNA is packaged and unpackaged can also reduce or increase the risk of DNA being exposed to potential mutagens. So if it’s wrapped up, it’s harder to access and tamper with
I would expect randomness to play a larger roll than fitness.
In the short term (single digit generations) that’s probably true, but I don’t see how it could be on longer scales. If the random mutations decrease fitness, they won’t be passed on at some point, since there is less reproduction. If they increase fitness, they will be passed on to more individuals.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
Immediately knew it was Sabine
