6 ms·

Natural selection is a very powerful process.

• mbroncano 5y ago
  * given enough time
• pintxo 5y ago
  when executed over millions of years
  • whimsicalism 5y ago
    Much shorter time frames than that are still powerful, especially for something like a virus.
    • est31 5y ago
      Yeah the number of generations is more important than the number of years.
    • ddingus 5y ago
      We may receive that education somewhat directly and immediately through covid, and failure to vaccinate people.
  • jcims 5y ago
    In practice this is what we observe, but the combinatorics are so ridiculously large that its hard to understand how it works. A very small protein of say 200 amino acid residues has 21^200 configurations. If every atom in the universe was another universe, and every atom in those universes was a universe, you'd still need 10^20 grandpappy universes to represent each configuration as a distinct atom in the grandchild universe. Given that these configurations confer meaningful chemical and mechanical utility, sometimes with discontinuities in effect, it's really odd to me that it all somehow works.