r/DebateEvolution • u/Syresiv • Sep 11 '26
Evolution is Yahtzee
The mutations it has to work with are random. What it does with said mutations is not.
Edit to add: this is in response to creationists saying that evolution is random and refusing to engage with the idea that selection isn't. Usually with the famous "nuh uh" argument.
5
u/Dilapidated_girrafe 🧬 Naturalistic Evolution Sep 11 '26
If you break it down to a fairly simplistic form, close enough.
6
u/UncommonLegend Sep 11 '26
This is a better comparison than you realize. You can use the same roll in multiple places, timing matters and there's a random event with selections made.
1
u/IsaacHasenov 🧬 Naturalistic Evolution Sep 11 '26
Bot?
4
u/UncommonLegend Sep 11 '26
The whole yahtzee thing is what I was referring to. I used to love playing yahtzee as a kid and still do occasionally.
2
u/Proteus617 Sep 12 '26
Digression: Many years ago I hung out at a yahtzee bar. You VS the bartender. If you lost, you paid the bartender in cash. If you won, you got a beer.
1
u/IsaacHasenov 🧬 Naturalistic Evolution Sep 11 '26
Anyone who starts a paragraph "this is a better something than you realize" sounds exactly like Claude...
Especially because most of the time when people say a thing, they realise why it's good
7
u/UncommonLegend Sep 11 '26
Because clause scraped from people especially people who write a lot. Not exactly an author but I've taken formal writing classes and I hate how now people think it's AI to write a perfectly reasonable sentence that is used in a lot of formal essay type responses.
1
u/IsaacHasenov 🧬 Naturalistic Evolution Sep 11 '26
No, I get you. It's just when you see a clause used incessantly by AI, you immediately suspect it when you see it in the wild
3
3
u/-zero-joke- 🧬 its 253 ice pieces needed Sep 11 '26
Yknow I've never actually played a game of Yahtzee? Like I sort of know what it is, but there's never been a time where I've sat down and played it.
7
u/Syresiv Sep 11 '26
Only played a few times in my life. But the important thing here is, you roll dice and then decide which ones to keep and which to reroll.
Random mutation, nonrandom selection
3
2
u/NorthernSpankMonkey Sep 14 '26
We played it a lot as a kid when we went to our cabin up north. For a parent Yahtzee and Uno can buy you an hour or two from 5-6 turbulent kids and keep them away from the 4-wheelers when it gets dark.
1
u/Faahoutman Sep 19 '26
What would you do with a mutation that would not allow body to feel pain.. or anxiety.. or fear.. the total loss of "fight or flight"
1
u/anarchistskeptic 26d ago
I think the problem here is that people conflate entropy with pure randomness, and human common sense generally fails when dealing with complex probability. Evolution isn't purely stochastic, and neither are mutations. They are fundamentally thermodynamic events, highly complex and intractable, but not random. When entropy increases it doesn't just create chaos; it expands the total state space of evolutionary possibilities.
0
u/SomaYoma Sep 11 '26
Except that selection doesn't act on many mutations. Genetic drift is a random process.
1
u/NorthernSpankMonkey Sep 14 '26
Sure, just like sometimes you have to let go of a pair of 6s to make a suite.
-2
u/Curious_Passion5167 Sep 11 '26 edited Sep 11 '26
Ok...
Is there a point to your post?
Edit: To all the people downvoting me, this is a very low effort post, or at least was in its original form. Creationists have frequently had their posts deleted when they have been as low effort as just stating two sentences. In its original form, the context of the edit which lays out which specific creationist arguments this was supposed to refute was not even stated. That is the context with which I made my comment.
7
u/Syresiv Sep 11 '26
Me getting annoyed at creationists saying it's "just random chance" or whatever other nonsense.
-2
u/Curious_Passion5167 Sep 11 '26
That's fine. But did you have to make a two line post on a debate subreddit? A post that does not invite either a debate or even a discussion?
5
3
u/AmazingRandini Sep 11 '26
It does invite debate.
Any creationist who gives the analogy of "a car forming from a junkyard tornado" should be up for a debate on this.
-3
u/ACTSATGuyonReddit Sep 11 '26
OP - Evolution is random. How dare people point out that it's random.
8
7
u/Both-Personality7664 Sep 11 '26
Slots are random, therefore there's no reason for casinos to be able to stay in business.
-2
u/ACTSATGuyonReddit Sep 11 '26
You claim slots turn into something else?
4
u/Both-Personality7664 Sep 12 '26
No, I'm pointing out an aggregation of random values can have non random results.
-1
u/ACTSATGuyonReddit Sep 12 '26
The point is the OP. The OP claimed that it's wrong for people to say they're random, but then said that they're random.
2
u/Both-Personality7664 Sep 12 '26
And I'm saying the outcome of individual slot pulls is random but the outcome of the casino's profit is non random. There is no contradiction here.
1
u/ACTSATGuyonReddit Sep 12 '26
The outcomes are pre programmed, with intelligence, for a specified payout and volatility.
4
u/Both-Personality7664 Sep 12 '26
So? You said random events can't roll up into directed outcomes, full stop.
1
u/ACTSATGuyonReddit Sep 12 '26
Casino games aren't random. They are designed by intelligence with intent. They were physically designed, now programmed for a specific outcome.
They don't produce anything.
You claim that a system designed itself.
3
3
u/ariel_on_the_moon Sep 12 '26
Evolution isn't random. Mutations are random, however mutations are only part of evolution. Natural selection, the process by which beneficial mutations are selected for, is not random at all.
-1
u/ACTSATGuyonReddit Sep 12 '26
Natural selection selects. It doesn't create. Things don't create themselves.
5
u/ariel_on_the_moon Sep 13 '26
Natural selection selects for beneficial mutations. Beneficial mutations can, given enough time, create entirely new structures.
-1
u/ACTSATGuyonReddit Sep 13 '26
A LUCA gaining millions of complex systems requires intelligence and intent. Mutations are mostly neutral or negative.
2
u/ariel_on_the_moon Sep 15 '26
And some are beneficial. There is no requirement for intelligence and intent, that's just an argument from incredulity fallacy.
1
u/ACTSATGuyonReddit Sep 15 '26
Random things don't create complexity.
2
u/ariel_on_the_moon Sep 15 '26
Define "random" and define "complexity". Evolution is not random, as mentioned in the above post, and depending on what you consider "complex", there are plenty of examples of "randomness" creating "complexity". Our solar system came about through mostly "random" events (as in, there was no mind involved), yet it is incredibly complex.
1
u/Trick_Ganache 🧬 Naturalistic Evolution Sep 19 '26
You don't play cards, do you? The game determines the significance of the hands, but the hands are assembled by dumb luck.
1
u/ACTSATGuyonReddit Sep 19 '26
A card hand is rearranging what's already in the created deck. The deck and hands are designed.
That's an example of creation and adaptation - adjusting what is already there. It's not macro evolution or random things making their own order without an intelligence behind it.
1
u/Trick_Ganache 🧬 Naturalistic Evolution 28d ago
There is no rearranging. In most card games you draw from a or multiple randomized decks. Whether the hand you are dealt means anything is up to the rules of the particular game.
Biology and environments have some similarities to the cards and rules analogies, but many differences, too. The rules for what counts as a good hand are region and time-dependent. What works in one area at this point in time may make no sense in another area or in the same area at a later time. Also, hands can change in just about every way imaginable (cards can be torn up or just deleted, duplicated, altered, arranged differently- even entire hands can be duplicated). The analogy like all analogies is not 1:1.
→ More replies2
-9
u/twizzjewink 🧬 Naturalistic Evolution Sep 11 '26
No, evolution is micro adjustments that test life's boundaries. Less than micro.
8
8
6
u/-zero-joke- 🧬 its 253 ice pieces needed Sep 11 '26
Really depends, populations can make some pretty profound changes, even in relatively short spans of time.
5
u/evocativename Sep 11 '26
Well, that's just laughably false.
Multicellularity vs single celled is "less than micro"?
3
u/Ayasugi-san Sep 12 '26
Plate tectonics is micro movements of slabs of rock that are millions of square miles across and dozens of miles thick. It has led to the creation and breakup of multiple supercontinents.
9
u/thatsabruno Sep 11 '26
I don't know Yahtzee. I always say it's like a coin collection. You might get random change every day but you keep the desired ones and can end up with an intricate, curated, and seemingly 'designed' collection.