The concept you are both approaching anon_giraffe from the perspective of reproducing intellectual structures and tvbcof from the idea of social evolution is the that of group selection.
Group selection is a very deep and mostly under-explored area of evolutionary biology. The most intriguing and active thinking that I have seen in this area is that of Charlton. Below is an excerpt of his work.
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General properties of Group Selection and the 'group mind' (in relation to the adaptive production of geniuses)
Group selection is a very deep and mostly under-explored area of evolutionary biology. The most intriguing and active thinking that I have seen in this area is that of Charlton. Below is an excerpt of his work.
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General properties of Group Selection and the 'group mind' (in relation to the adaptive production of geniuses)
Selection in this sense suggests that randomness exists.
Random cannot exist in a system where cause and effect exist.
Cause and effect are upheld by Newton's 3rd Law, which is universal to our knowledge, and which has never been found to have any failure in anything.
Random as far as the way people use it, is simply an organized method of guessing, called probability, that people use. They use it because they have such limited ability for determining the abundant, detailed activities of cause and effect.
Quantum Mechanics is a complex form of complex probability that is used to guess more complex things.
QM doesn't prove anything.
The idea of "selection" suggests that there is intelligence doing the selecting.
BADecker I agree with the majority of your statement above. However, I disagree with the two sentences underlined.
Group selection does not require randomness. The existence of infinite possibility and a mechanism to allow examination of possibility is sufficient. Thus group selection is not necessarily incompatible with an entirely cause and effect driven view of the universe.
Quantum Mechanics is not simply a mechanism for guessing things. It offers us a deep insight that the world is not as it appears to our senses. It is quantum mechanics that leads us to the conclusion that we may actually be living in a Holographic Universe. The idea the the the world around us indeed the entire universe is simply the projection of a deeper reality.
In his essay The Universe Anonymint draws our attention to the the holographic principle. Specifically the fascinating notion that when you combine the the holographic principle with the thermodynamic quantities of heat and mechanical work it is relatively straightforward to derive Newtons classical equation of gravity.
These ideas are difficult to grasp and at this stage they remain theoretical physics. However, there are a growing number of scientist who are taking them very seriously.
Below is a great introductory video on the topic. I recommend it for you BADecker to give you a appreciation of quantum mechanics. More importantly I recommend it to anyone who has difficulty accepting the possibility of a deeper fundamental truth and reality.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lMBt_yfGKpU