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Comment by owaislone | Hacker News Reader

Te point OP is making is that being born without tusks is just a random chance, not a response to anything but as a result of this random chance, this elephant has a higher chance of living longer and having more babies resulting in higher chance of the "tuskless gene" being passed on to future generations. The distinction is important to understand evolution correctly. A lot of evolution deniers have a problem with the "intelligent response" aspect of it which doesn't actually exist.

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> Te point OP is making is that being born without tusks is just a random chance

Yes. That's how evolution works. Your genes are randomized during life/mating.

Due to selection pressure one variation is favored over the other. That's evolution.

So in evolutionary response to poachers elephants evolve no tusks.

It is pedantic, but I see how 'response' here lends agency to evolution, and could be interpreted as implying an intelligent process, as mentioned above.

Same way any inanimate system can respond. Think of it more like action/reaction than anything else. I.e. there is no agency just a set of interacting rules.

Yea, I think the original wording is fine, although I'd think of it more like the elephant genes are a river that got dammed, so the river started flowing around. Saying the river responded to the dam would be similar.

If anyone thinks evolution has "agency" because the word "response" was used to describe it, their understanding of evolution is clearly very limited and I'm not sure how productively that person can participate in a conversation about such.

Evolution is an intelligence in the same way people call anything AI: it's a system which can learn and adapt.

You are correct.

Evolution is not a process by which beneficial genes are created, it's one where they are filtered for.

Across thousands of baby elephants there are a likely hundreds of unique genetic differences. Most are worthless, some are detrimental, and some of beneficial. Evolution is just the process by which the beneficial ones thrive.

You are overly pedantic as well :D

(Noone thinks that "getting born" involves intelligence choosing, the point you are repeating applies sometimes, but here out of context imo.)

I know people who used to think evolution is by design or somehow intelligent. Maybe it was a byproduct of the education system in my part of the world and yours did a better job but I've come across a lot of people who think like that. I feel it is an important distinction to make to avoid propagating such misconceptions about science.

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