hammegk said:
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If all you want is toast, the simpler the better, imo. Unfortunately, what you "really want" may not be at all obvious to you or anyone else.
First, forgive my absence. I have been busy testing the local EKG machines and IV's at a nearby hospital. Fortunately, they have thrown me out for good behavior.
"Want" is a very key word for me. Not only do I define "conscious want," but I also define "biological want." The former is greatly obscured by rhetoric, but it is founded upon the latter which can be deemed, essentially, the biological need to maintain homeostasis, with the hypothalamus as the core feature of this biological quest. Because energy resources are
relatively finite, and probably dwindling (according to the belief that the universe is headed toward "heat death"), then management of energy resources is the critical biological need which should translate into conscious needs. Hence, the evolution of the brain can be drawn from a biological need to manage the acquisition of energy resources and to efficiently distribute energy resources within the body where needed and when needed.
As a side note, this is the root of the efficiency issue that Dymanic raised. However, it can be seen in far greater impact when related to money. Ultimately, money is our "exchange currency" for physical and mental labor of another human. (Bears and mice couldn't care less about gold coins and diamonds.) In exchange for money, other humans will redistribute their metabolic energy resources to benefit you. How many of you are impacted by the accountability of monetary resources - budgets, finances, etc.? Got a checkbook? Got bucks in your wallet? And how many of us are pressured to use money efficiently?
The other part of efficiency relates to time, as Hammegk noted. An efficient and elegant solution 20 years from now does not help overcome impending disaster within 5 minutes. Timeliness is critical in evolution. As they say, "the quick and the dead."
Returning to "complexity," it may be useful taking a lead from celestial mechanics. The 2-body problem is considered relatively straight forward. The 3-body problem, however, is a monster - as is current research into the N-body problem. In essence, adding one more variable creates greater complexity. If that can be a minimum determinant of complexity, then the number of variables and the number of relationships between them should be an indicator of the complexity of the system.
One other issue regarding de-volution, you could say that cetaceans have somewhat done that in one regard. Creatures climbed out of the sea and then dove back in. Yet, they seemed to have carried all of their historical DNA with them while retaining many terrestrial artifacts. I would expect the same to be true for microbes. Useless DNA is not necessarily sloughed off while de-volving. Thus, some complexity (and perhaps all) is retained in the historical DNA of the de-volved critter.
Personally, I would see this as an evolutionary asset. If the creature needed it once upon a time, perhaps it will need it again someday. Let's hang onto the excess baggage. It may not be efficient, but it is more efficient than writing the code from scratch. (After 25 years in IT, I can attest that much computer software is cobbled from other software since it is much more efficient than writing new code.)
Lastly, the issue of God and leprechauns, as well as the Evolution vs Creationism issue, highlights two other critical issues - what is truth, and what should be our criteria of truth? Ultimately, the Evolution vs Creationism issue must rest upon that.
Those dead Atlanteans? Hmmm. Probably not.
