Burn Your Wings

Heeere we go.

Does this all come to down to connotation and denotation? You bet. You find me two different dictionaries that both list the exact same definition for random – or any word. If they’re not all giving the exact same definition, then they are leaving - at least a little - up to the imagination and interpretation. A disagreement here would simply come down to whoever could find the one dictionary that supported their view of random. Then you’re going to be left wondering which dictionary is more correct.

Personally speaking, I don’t think that something is truer simply because it’s been written down by someone, somewhere. Even dictionaries are subject to disagreements with each other when certain words or ideas are involved. Look up angels, for instance. I mean.. that should be something with a singular definition and idea behind it, right? Hah.. good luck with that one.

Word meanings are fluid, and are not static or concrete. Dictionaries should not be telling us what words mean, and instead should be documenting their usage as they evolve. WE, on the other hand, should be telling the dictionaries what words mean. So...I will start by stating a definition for random. This is MY interpretation of random when applied to something as broad as evolution.

My personal belief? Randomness is a hard thing to pin down. There's a certain scale to follow when attempting to describe something as random, and it usually involves setting forth parameters for the 'random event' to occour within. But does this really constitute as random if we are already putting restrictions and limitations on it? If you roll a three sided die, then your outcome is limited to three options. This is, somewhat arguably, considered as random number generation. I would argue that for true randomness to be plausible, you would be able to land on a five when rolling a three sided die.

I wonder if this line of thought can be followed, or at least pondered. For true randomness to exist, anything must be possible. You would have to assert that fate (or god) exists, and that acts can occour outside of fate’s control. The sky could be pink on Mondays, purple Tuesdays... Tomorrow could have 37 hours instead of 24. These sorts of things could *possibly* be considered random, if they were to occur. We wouldn’t be able to explain them, given our current understanding of the universe, and would simply accept them as random. But once we WERE able to explain them, the randomness disappears.

This is not to say that I believe randomness doesn’t exist. When you scale it down.. to a micro scale.. or a personal scale.. I believe people have the capacity to enact feats of randomness upon the world around them. Free will, consciousness gives us access to this ‘power’ of being random, and doing random things which affect the system around us.. instead of being a product OF the system around us. But then on that note, we’d have to explore and discuss what free will really is. Now that's a pickle... or more probably an aardvark.. of a different kind.



--With that said, large scale evolution - Natural Selection - is hardly random. While on a more individual basis, given from the definitions above, an offspring’s particular attributes *could* be considered random. Genetic variation - stressing on variation - allows for variables to be present that can produce an offspring with any number of physical or mental attributes. This could fall under any number of the definitions of random. However, again, only within parameters does this work. You’re not going to have two Jewish people get together and produce a Chinese baby. That’s just silly.

So that, in a sense, is randomness; but it is not evolution. Evolution is a process of elimination that rules out an individual, in any species, which has attributes that are not favorable for its own survival. This individual, and others similar to it, do not live to reproduce, and therefore the gene to carry on this weakness is slowly weeded out. Dying because of weakness is not random.

Now this is not to say that such a creature cannot still die from an otherwise unforeseen thing. Unforeseen deaths happen to all creatures with all sorts of different genetic traits across a broad scale. The law of averages still evens this out. Ultimately, it is the gene leading to the weak attribute that will cause its own diminishing.. and weeding out. This does not lend any sort of randomness to genetic evolution. Strong creature gets struck by lightning... lives, dies old. Weak creature gets struck by lightning lives... only to die to its weakness or possibly die to the lightning because of its weakness. Ad nauseam.

If evolution were random, then there would be at least ONE SPECIES of organism on earth, somewhere, totally unsuited to live on this planet. That’s just a contradiction, and impossible. HOWEVER there are individuals born daily with defects that do not allow them to live long on this planet. An immune deficiency is a good example. Unfortunately, evolution is a study of species as a whole, and not single organisms. OR IS IT? Ho-ho-ho. Here we go. I’m sure this will be disagreed upon later.

Evolution - the process of turning randomness into consistency. Such a process would not, COULD NOT, be random at all.

And now I’m just hopping on the chaos theory train. Everything is simply a conformity of a chain “random events” that we have no control over because it was set into motion long before we came along. Yet we can affect and influence the system at the same time and are able to change the outcome, to some degree, as long as it’s within the preset parameters. And because of this, nothing is really random at all. Order and chaos existing both at once.

Oh... and for fuck sake, do not interpret this as me arguing for intelligent design. "How can we all be perfectly suited for life on earth ‘by coincidence?’” Because we bloody well adapted to live here. Nothing is coincidental or random about it. That’s like seeing a liquid in a glass and being mystified by the liquid conforming to the shape of the glass “magically” or randomly. It’s not magic, intelligent design, or randomness. It simply is.

Coo coo cachu on that.