poejavlo
2 HN recommenders · recommended in 4 months, 2013–2023
14:10 · 239K views · May 5, 2012
An excerpt from Richard Dawkins's lecture on Climbing Mount Improbable demonstrating how a complex eye can evolve through incremental steps. It answers the creationist irreducible complexity argument.
HN uses it as the go-to rebuttal to irreducible complexity, showing that even simple photoreceptors are useful and stages exist in living animals.
4 comments from Hacker News
Dawkins invalidating the notion that the eye is irreducably complex: this video . Showing quite clearly how incremental beneficial change leads to the development of complex features. But it will never matter to creationists: [LINK] . (Don't even bother with that last link.) They'll always just build another straw man.
Actually the history of the eye has been farily well understood, and the various stages of its evolution can be seen in animals that exist today. Dawkins explains it: this video
Just because something looks "engineered", doesn't mean it is. A perfect example is the eye. An organ of great complexity, but one that is very easily explained by logical evaluation, as well as existing living creatures and fossils: this video If you're a software engineer, I hope you understand how procedural systems and algorithms can transform data and functions. Similar processes take place via chemistry and biological interaction. Conway's Game of Life is a good example of a simple system giving rise to complex interaction and patterns. Complex beauty can arise from the interaction of systems, but if you say to yourself that it "must have been engineered by something greater than me", you settle in your mind, and shortcut around critical thinking and never progress toward understanding . And that's a great, great shame.
Makes me think of Dawkins' demonstration of eye evolution, where he shows the usefulness of even simple photo-receptor designs: this video