Off Topic — HabitableZone

Off Topic » in reply to Legacy code

re: Legacy code
TB — (archived)

Seeming chaos in the genetic code isn't a bug, it's a feature.

For the same reason that a chaotic ecosystem of thousands of species (rainforests, etc.) is more robust and resistant to attack and stress than a monocultural ecosystem (like a single-species farm). A genetic code with loads of odd bits and pieces that can come to the foreground when needed will be more responsive than the kind of no-wasted-lines-of-code setup that a true intelligent design would contain.

There was a post a while back about a dolphin manifesting normally-dormant hind limbs. This is leftover "trash" DNA in action. Seemingly useless, but if dolphins ever had to return to land for some reason, the mechanisms are standing by in there somewhere, ready to go.

Evolving hind limbs from scratch, where no ancestor had ever had them, would be far more unlikely.

Nobody knows what evolutionary requirements the environment might throw at a species. It's nice to know that somewhere in all that excess baggage is probably an old outfit that would be suitable for the occasion.

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