It seems that the complexity of organisms would grow more quickly than exponential growth when the complexity is low and les quickly as the complexity increases. Here's my analysis. Let us say that an animal of complexity level 1 evolves to complexity level 2 is T years. How long will the complexity level 2 animal take to evolve to level 4? If you think of the complexity level 2 animal as a union of two unrelated level 1 parts, then each of these parts would grow to level 2 (so the union would grow to level 4) in another T years,. But the parts are related and this makes it difficult for them to get more complex in the same amount of time. If a mutation makes a part more complex and also more efficient it still might not be favored by evolution as it might disrupt the way one part must relate to the other. In other words the need to maintain a relationship between the parts retards the growth of complexity. As complexity grows, the retarding effect increases. So if we now observe that it takes 376 million years to double the complexity, it probably took lees time when the animals were simpler. ________________________________________ From: Friam [friam-boun...@redfish.com] on behalf of Douglas Roberts [d...@parrot-farm.net] Sent: Thursday, April 18, 2013 12:27 PM To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group Subject: Re: [FRIAM] This is truly thinking outside the box
A (the only?) downside to not reading every FRIAM post. Sorry for the dupe. --Doug On Thu, Apr 18, 2013 at 10:26 AM, glen e. p. ropella <g...@tempusdictum.com<mailto:g...@tempusdictum.com>> wrote: Douglas Roberts wrote at 04/18/2013 05:36 AM: > Thinking along the lines of Moore's law, extrapolating it backwards. I > love stories that are told across cosmological time scales: > > http://www.technologyreview.com/view/513781/moores-law-and-the-origin-of-life/ We have to give credit where it's due! ;-) Roger already posted this. Roger Critchlow wrote at 04/16/2013 08:44 AM: > I don't know if retrodicting an exponential growth curve back to > it's origin is technically an extrapolation, but aside from that > quibble this is very cute. > > Plot Moore's Law, it hits the origin in the 1960's when there were > zero transistors on chips. > > "A similar process works with scientific publications. Between 1990 > and 1960, they doubled in number every 15 years or so. Extrapolating > this backwards gives the origin of scientific publication as 1710, > about the time of Isaac Newton." > > Now make some assumptions about the time of origin of various > genetic complexities evident in the history of life on earth, and > plot the growth curve for that. When was its origin? > > http://www.technologyreview.com/view/513781/moores-law-and-the-origin-of-life/ > > http://arxiv.org/abs/1304.3381 > > -- rec -- -- glen e. p. ropella, 971-255-2847<tel:971-255-2847>, http://tempusdictum.com The government solution to a problem is usually as bad as the problem. -- Milton Friedman ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com -- Doug Roberts d...@parrot-farm.net<mailto:d...@parrot-farm.net> http://parrot-farm.net/Second-Cousins <http://parrot-farm.net/Second-Cousins> 505-455-7333 - Office 505-672-8213 - Mobile ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
