Rachell Powell on Evolutionary Convergence, Morality, and Mind
1/26/20261 hr 37 min
Evolution with natural selection involves an intricate mix of the random and the driven. Mutations are essentially random, while selection pressures work to prefer certain outcomes over others. There is tremendous divergence of species over time, but also repeated convergence to forms and mechanisms that are unmistakably useful. We see this clearly in eyes and fins, but the basic pattern also holds for brains and forms of social organization. I talk with philosopher Rachell Powell about what these ideas mean for humans, other terrestrial species, and also for forms of life we have not yet encountered.
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First 90 secondsLisa LaFlamme0:00
[upbeat music] Welcome back to Carry the Fire. I'm Lisa LaFlamme, and this is season two from the Princess Margaret Cancer Foundation. We have 10 new and inspiring personal stories for you about what happens when world-leading doctors, researchers, and their patients come together to ignite breakthroughs in cancer diagnostics and treatment. Subscribe to hear a new episode every week.
Sean Carroll· Host0:26
Hello, everyone, and welcome to The Mindscape Podcast. I'm your host, Sean Carroll. We talk a lot about complex systems here at Mindscape, and one of the interesting things to me about complex systems is there's a little bit of a tension between the fact that on the one hand, the space of possibilities is mind-bogglingly large, right? When you have a but- bunch of small constituents that can come together in different combinations, different patterns to make some kind of aggregate, which is a very typical thing that happens to get complexity, uh, generally just the numerology works out that the number of possible aggregations or ways to aggregate things is ginormous. You cannot even possibly imagine searching through all of the possibilities. And yet the tension is with the fact that in some environment, if we're talking about a complex system that persists and adapts and flourishes and whatever, that is somehow fitting into the environment where