Which is the more likely scenario, that the nerves raised the arm and pulled the trigger and the baker was just in the way, or that the man was aware of his actions? It comes down to intentionality.

And in a way the man that shot baker really had no creative awareness of what he was doing. It was the nerve impulses that caused the arm to raise and pull the trigger. The baker was just in the way of these unhappy coincidences.

I just watched an interesting interview with Feinmann on the question 'why'. He said he could not answer sufficiently when asked why a magnet is attracted to a fridge. Anyway.

Take the ant on the acacia that feeds on the sugar that the acacia provides for it.

A random mutation in a segment of the DNA responsible for producing or transporting sugar occurs, causing sugar to pop out through the phloem onto the surface of the tree - ie the tree is bleeding sugar. It is very lucky at this point the plant, with such a hideous disease does not starve to death or get eaten by some huge carnivore.

A passing ant sees the sugar, says yum, and starts to eat it. It comes back every day to the still uneaten tree, eventually deciding to set up shop in the bark of the tree. Along comes a pollinator to the tree and the ants naturally scare it away, just like they scare away the other herbivores that have come to eat the tree... oh wait there a sec. No I forgot something.

A second random mutation occurs causing the plant to produce a noxious smell to insects- no, wait, bees are insects. Let me try again. A second random mutation occurs to the plant, causing it to produce a noxious smell to ants, but only noxious to ants, not to pollinating bees. This has the coincidentally lucky effect of ensuring the ants don't chase away the bees when they come to pollinate.

Oh, hang on. Let me just tweak that mutation a little bit, as I just realised that if the plant is producing a chemical noxious to ants they would not stay in plant. Let me try again. A random mutation occurs causing an aromatic to be produced (not deleted). The aromatic is only expressed in the flowering part of the plant and not elsewhere, at times when pollination is required.

The aromatic was a very lucky unwanted copying error of the DNA, especially when we consider that without it, the plant should have died in the first generation of ant settlers. - the mutations must have occurred within the one plant within the one generation.

So the plant now has successfully produced - sorry wrong wording - the plant has now accidentally produced two freak mutations (which should be catastrophic to the plant), one to do with expressing sugar on its surface in nice bitesize portions, the other with producing an aromatic - so a minimum of two highly dangerous mutations, both of which fit perfectly in with the environment.

I wouldn't go anywhere close to vegetarian sentience, but some plants, at least, can signal that they are under attack and near-by plants (same species) can receive those chemical signals and initiate defense (increase of alkaloids in their leaves, maybe). — Bitter Crank

Hi Bitter Crank, would this suggest a sentience?:

"The ability to recognize kin is an important element in social behavior and can lead to the evolution of altruism. Recently, it has been shown that plants are capable of kin recognition through root interactions. "

http://www.amjbot.org/content/96/11/1990.full

It has been shown that if growing beside kin, the plants restrain their root growth so as not to monopolise the nutrients in the soil. When not growing beside kin, there is a race to claim whatever you can get as fast as you can.

This is one of the signalling types you were talking about:

ACACIA trees pass on an ‘alarm signal’ to other trees when antelope
browse on their leaves, according to a zoologist from Pretoria University.
Wouter Van Hoven says that acacias nibbled by antelope produce leaf tannin
in quantities lethal to the browsers, and emit ethylene into the air which
can travel up to 50 yards. The ethylene warns other trees of the impending
danger, which then step up their own production of leaf tannin within just
five to ten minutes.

https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg12717361.200-antelope-activate-the-acacias-alarm-system/

But what about this signalling, which describes how caterpillar-damaged plants protect themselves by attracting parasitic wasps.
http://www.pnas.org/content/92/10/4169.full.pdf

There is this article about how the plant feeds ants so they take up residence in their bark and attack anything that tries to eat it, but then emits a chemical noxious to ants to allow pollinators to visit the flowers.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8383577.stm

There are many examples of plant sentience, but this short article sums some of it up. I highly recommend you read this one. It's not very long.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8383577.stm

So, doesn't ultruistic behaviour, communication with other plants and reaction to other plants, communication with and reaction to other insects suggest that the plant is aware of what is going on? It is sentient.

Such a complex intertangling of nature could not have happened through random accidental misfirings of DNA copying. It is an example of the outcome of Creative Evolution.

Welcome aboard.

From these we can directly deduct the survival of the fittest, unless we have very different definitions of that theory. — BlueBanana

So, to come back to Divergent Evolution, should the allele diversity in the population increase rapidly in the population or become conservative to conserve those successful genes?

The canvas is functioning like an effective filter for all the possible creative combinations you could be expressing right now. Of course, being the complex organism you are, you might be also expressing your creativity in a variety of other areas simultaneously, such as your clothing, arrangement of the room, coffee you are drinking etc.

Hence the canvas.

You are writing on your canvas right now, Blue Banana. It's a lovely picture of the defence of an antiquated evolutionary system :) .

You're not wrong, ever moreso these days. Creativity is being trampled by bureacracy, proven documented accountability, action plans, centralised control of the curriculum and Scope and Sequences as well as common agreement through meetings on the way things should be taught where the one with the most votes wins. - that of course for the teachers. The students that are coming out of the sausage factories though, don't look like sausages and nobody is sure why...

But as Creative Evolutionists say, Blue Banana, the environment is just the canvas that allows the expression of the creativity to be seen. It must be expressed against something.

That's it. It's detective work. The practical effects for yourself and your loved ones are enormous. It's called creative evolution. — Rich

Ha ha, very good.

Absolutely. Its the puzzle and debate and bouncing of ideas that's exciting.

Well thanks Rich, but I'm not in the field. I did a couple of degrees in biological and molecular science and lectured for a few years, but then argued with the wrong person. I've always had the passion for it though.

The kangaroo, for some reason, must be the fittest possibility for this to happen - probably because of existing space for it. — BlueBanana

Then why the wombat?

Well, I can confirm that the argument was over an inability to replicate the results. The Research School had been working on the same question. You could have something there Rich, but it would be happening at a level above the scientists. Outside influences could affect the research directions, but scientists wouldn't allow it to change not the findings.

Hi StreetlightX,
I haven't read your paper in a lot of detail yet, I will save that for the weekend, but on the face of it calling Natural Selection 'baggy' is really just saying that Survival of the Fittest didn't really fit isn't it? You have had to invoke creativity to make up the shortfall?

Do you know of any studies that have looked at predictive models of conservative vs non-conservative expression of alleles in isolated populations such as occurred in Australia?

I agree. Just like people.
The fun thing to explain, like Nelson alluded to, is when we have a tone of positively weighted inputs, that when summed lead to the opposite feeling. For example, you may hate the way a yellow beach house looks at sunset, yet independently love yellow, beaches, houses and sunsets. You might have to surmise a contradiction has occurred (eg beaches are nature, nature is inviolable, beaches are nice but on a beach violate nature - or something to that effect).
I believe it can be coded though - you can code the illogical without it being a fault.

Hi Rich,
I take your point on the corruption of science. When private companies are make a fortune selling a product that science says is needed, they are not going to listen to anyone who tries to tell them different. Especially if it means reporting to shareholders that their 500 dollar a pill wonderdrug is not required

I am sure everybody is familiar with the helicobater plori bacteria which is responsible for stomach ulcers. How the pharmaceutical companies didn't want to know about his discover because they were making an absolute fortune of selling all sorts of anti-stress medications and treatments. It wasn't until he actually drank the bacteria, gave himself stomach ulcers and then took routine antibiotics to cure himself that the scientific community were forced to sit and look.

The cost blow out on drugs that cost less than two dollars to make and are sold at ridiculous prices is shameful.

This behaviour though, appears relatively isolated to Big Pharmaceutical I think, although you may know differently.

The scientific community in the main are just like us and love to argue the hell out of everything. I was once in the room when a German scientist presented his findings and data to a Research School. I was impressed. He was very confident and self-assured. Then, when he was done, they picked him apart. It was like watching a train wreck in slow motion. Huge heated arguments flaring up and quietening down, people standing up out of their seats to proclaim differences and demand evidence. At the end he was bumping into things as he was walking about justifying his position. But it was all good. Science is still rigorous, it's just the inflexible dogmatic narrow minded scientists like Dawkins that I personally want to rail against.

So natural selection would have to be countered by a matching capacity for creative (that is, intelligently tuned) variety production. — apokrisis

I agree with your post, Apokrisis. I agree you need conservative and creative elements alike to succeed and you need regulation over them. In the DNA this would be expressed as conserved regions and more recombinant regions.

We know that certain cells can generate high levels of recombinant alleles in certain sections of the DNA, such during antibody production, while maintaining the integrity of the cell.

Surivival of the Fittest per se would advocate a position too conservative for life to be sustained through challenging environmental changes. That is the major problem with it. A Creative Evolution model that stresses a much higher and purposeful rate of allele creation while conserving fundamentally necessary parts of the DNA (eg through methylation) seems much more plausible.

Back to Lemark for a short second- we briefly mentioned him the other day. It has just occurred to me that a Creative Evolutionary model seems to favour a Lemarkian interpretation that experiences throughout a lifetime can affect heritable DNA. We have found life everywhere in all sorts of extreme environments, but for simplicity's sake we will go back to our pond bacteria near a volcanic vent.

Even given a massive mutation and replicative rate, to wait for a blind mutation in some section of the DNA to provide the adaptive advantages required for life to survive and thrive in hostile environments seems like an unnecessary stretch. Much less of a stretch seems to be (through promoter control for example), that the cell loosens constraint on conservative regions of DNA associated with some region causing problems for the cell (eg metabolism or cell wall structure etc), thereby increasing creativity in these regions. To me, this makes a lot of sense. What are your thoughts?

The less fit an individual is, the less likely it is to survive, and the more variance there is, the more there are unoptimal individuals. Thus, as the species in stable conditions approaches their optimal form, the weaker the survival of the fittest as a force driving them towards that stage of existence gets. — BlueBanana

Hi Blue Banana, I think you started by trying to argue Survival of the Fittest and ended up lending weight to Creative Evolution.

"The more variance there is, the more there are unoptimal individuals."
- Yes, and the more there are optimal individuals. Think of boxing, take a crowd of a thousand young men, different sizes, weights, coordination levels, fitness levels. Most of them won't be able to box well at all, but a handfull will probably show a lot of promise. Compare this to random sampling 100 young men.

"As the species in stable state conditions approaches their optimal form, the weaker the Survival of the Fittest as a force driving them forward towards that stage of existence gets." - right, you are suggesting conservation of the allele diversity in the population, which I am arguing we should expect to see in the survival of the fittest model. So, how does that fit into divergent evolution where this 'approaching optimal form' says: 'You know what, stuff being a possum, I want to be a kangaroo.'

Thanks for your input, but I think you've missed the point completely Harry, and now almost find yourself arguing my case.

But what would make some variant useful under the CEM, if not great environmental change?" — Harry Hindu

I agree in times of great environmental changes you want a genome that is actively throwing out a lot of diversity, not one that has the occasional mutant which just by chance may be able to allow life to scrape through at just the right time - talk about a lucky coincidence, time after time after time after time. Life should buy a lottery ticket with that kind of luck.

After all the devastatingly close calls life on this planet has had, and every time has bounced back to occupy every niche we can imagine, it was not because there was a lucky one-off mutant that should not have occurred, which being unfit and on the verge of being wiped out, suddenly was made king of the castle. It is because variety is being spat out all over the place all of the time and regardless of what you do to the environment, life will spit out the combination it needs in short order (at least 99.99% of the time).

It seems that you are arguing that mutations crop up as the result of some intelligence, instead of the random miscopying of genes. — Harry Hindu

If I recall correctly there are regions of the DNA in some cell types where copying errors are (seemingly purposefully) high. I believe it is the regions of antibody creation. Rapid, random variation is very much required to find the best match for the antigen. Those mutations that don't cut the mustard are not selected for. Not all mutations are random copying errors without purpose.

Purpose of course does suggest an intelligence, and is it such an abstract notion to suggest that life is intelligent? Is it incorrect to suggest that life may have some control of the regulation of the DNA transcription and translation that....it regulates.

Most mutations are a hinderence to survival, and are rejected in the current environmental conditions and most other conditions that exist on Earth, past, present, and future. So where is the intelligence in that? — Harry Hindu

You're suggesting the mutations serve no purpose most times and are therefore wasteful. Most soldiers on the wall overlooking the enemy territory never see an enemy soldier or come under fire. Where's the intelligence in that? That's wasteful.

Actively spitting out variety of genetic combinations at a high level also allows organisms to find their snug little niches in the environment much quicker then waiting for some accidental mutation. Take as an illustration a bacterium next to a volcanic pond. Creative evolution would see a rapid increase in allele population around metabolism until the bacterium is able to metabolise sulphurous gases.

By contrast the Survival of the Fittest model, which is conservative by definition (mutations are unplanned accidents that most times it does not want even though they have repeatedly allowed survival) asks us to believe that a random copying error out of all the possible millions of random copying errors that may have occurred suddenly allows the metabolisation of sulphurous gases. To me the Survival of the Fittest model asks us lower our intellectual reasoning to the point that there really isn't any.

Is there an intelligence behind the changing of environments throughout Earth's geological history? You'd have account for that change and the cause of it. Is it the same intelligence evolving organisms, or are there two intelligences - one that controls the evolution of organisms, and one that controls the changing environment and both are in a never-ending battle against each other? — Harry Hindu

Well here you've blown out the scope of the argument in order to find an advantageous foothold I think. You've presupposed my answer to your intelligence question was yes, and then created a strawman to know down. Let's quickly look at the question though. Is there an intelligence behind the universe? Is that your question? Maybe there is Harry, maybe there is.

Are there two intelligences? Maybe, I can take one intelligence and blow it out into bubbles, each bubble with its own restraining properties, trying to hold form while bumping into the other bubbles. Of course, when they all pop again, you have the same intelligence you started with.

It's a bit of a prickly paradox. It needs the order to allow the disorder. It can't be All Creative. It is the order part of the creative 'package' that is resisting entropy.

As to the Matrix, it's a film. Does simulated rain make you really wet? Would a simulated factory make real robots? — apokrisis

No, but the program that tells the machine gun to shoot anyone who steps over the fence sure shoots real bullets.

It creates dissipative pathways to cool the universe faster. — apokrisis

So life is a manifold. To what end - the cooling of the universe faster I mean?

Thanks StreetlightX. I'll check it out.

Haven't you seen the Matrix movies, Apokrisis? I could build a system of robots that could make the factories, fix the glitches that halted production, and even provide the power (but you won't want to know where from). When people do it, they are meddling in the artificial world of robots.

I've read you before talking about the purpose of nature to entropify in other posts. I'm a bit vague on your meaning. If entropy is the purpose, why bother with the speed hump of life?

I'm not concerned about your wording of nature, I was just curious.

There are other factors outside of Survival of the Fittest theory that seek to enhance variability, is that the position? Can you elaborate a little more for me?

Thanks StreetlightX.

It's a little sneaky to say that creativity was selected for, although it made me smile. Survival of the Fittest swallows Creation. That would have made a better title for the OP.

There is a distinction though between the two which is in the opening OP. In a situation where an animal can diverge evolutionaryly, without interference, does the current model of evolution predict increased conservation of successful alleles or increased prevelance of alleles in the population?

It sounds pretty bang on with creative evolution. Those ancients may not have had the instrumentation of today, but they could deduce better than anyone.

I would be interested in comparative allele comparisons using the two ideas, so long as we could agree on a baseline. I think someone should be able to test the theory.

A more concrete answer it's that the mind, life, works against entropy in order to create. — Rich

There's could be a problem of restraint here Rich. Creativity by definition is working against rigidity - against restraint, and yet you've defined it as a restraint on entropy. However without restraint it is entropic in nature.

Even talking with Apokrisis yesterday, I needed to invoke a restraint on the DNA and have only sections of high recombination for it to work. Otherwise we end up with a puddle of goo, which is entropic.

The robot may through a faulty thought proscess decide that it loved brick houses or hated cement even if it had no logical ground. — Nelson

Hi Nelson, if a human has an illogical thought process, is that also the result of the faulty wiring or code? What's the difference?

The simple difference would be that the artificial doesn't have the means to make itself.

Nature makes itself whether that be at the level of rivers carving out their channels or bodies turning food into flesh. The artificial only happens as the result of someone having the idea and the desire to manufacture the material form. — apokrisis

Hi Apokrisis. It's always good to read your posts. Just a couple of questions for you. What do you mean by "means" in the above statement "it doesn't have the means to make itself"? A robot assembly factory is able to slap together pieces to make another robot. Do you mean resources?

Also you personify Nature in your second statement. Just going back to your previous discussion, what is your position on panpsychism v semiotic machine behaviour?

Lastly you say the AI only happens as a result of someone having the idea and desire. Could AI also be a generator of ideas or desires?

I probably am describing neurosis in general. I agree that language is very dominant in human relations, but it is the least effective tool you have if building trust and rapport is your goal. These group sessions seem to have a heavy trust focused bias. Sorry, I only watched the first couple of minutes and then skipped through so maybe I missed something.

Language is good for misleading people too and creating false impressions and the person with the fast tongue can frustrate the person without, causing all sorts of expressive bottlenecks.

I have interacted with a lot of different personalities over the years, but not in a clinical setting.

From my experiences it seems that people often aren't looking for solutions to their problems when they come to me. They are wanting to tell someone their problems and are wanting to know that the world hasn't changed for having told them. The world goes on and they are still accepted in it despite the trauma they have faced. They are still part of the pack. (They also often want justice)

I find when dealing with people that are extremely upset for instance a big key is to not show a lot of emotion. To listen closely and nod- to show you are listening. Once they have told me their problem they almost invariably look me very strongly in the eyes to watch my reaction to what they've said. If I react like its all under control and in the scope of my everyday experiences (regardless of how much it is not), they relax almost immediately.

You can tell them of course things like, "well that is horrible", or "well let me see if I can do something to make that right for you" (justice), but without too much emotion. You can isolate them with a strong focus of attention, causing them to believe they really do have a problem. - Just you and them in a psychiatrists office for example - they know before they even go in they have a problem, they just don't know how big it is yet. They'll wait for your reaction before they make their mind up on that one.

I love studying animal relations. We all use the same gestures and the same pattern of gestures.
Sounds are important in conveying intent - warm intent or hostile intent, as much as gestures are. Language may explain it a little clearer, may allow you or them to pop the blister of pain.

If I go out into my backyard and there is a bird there, I will look at it- show it that I see it - and then look away and show no interest. All animals do it, including humans. Animals do this to establish you can share a domain with them and vice versa. Its a mutual non-aggression pact: They yawn, lick themselves, scratch themselves and look away - these all show awareness of your presence and a disinterest in threatening you or seeing you as a threat. Tensions are immediately dissolved. Proximity is of course important, but it's never a direct approach unless you know the animal. Smiling and tongue lolling works.

Of course, when they don't do that stuff, you know you're in trouble.

In what I saw of the group therapy session there was a high level of general awareness and disinterest. They responded to each other initially and then showed little interest. The patients would be free to express themselves, be heard and then blend into the group without thinking they have singled themselves out for scrutiny. There is a mutual non-aggression pact in a group dynamic, so, many social disorders would benefit enormously from this approach I would think.

But, I am not trained in psychiatry.

You might have answered it, but here's the post.
" In one of the examples the man's eyes and optic nerves were functioning fine, but the visual cortex had been damaged. As a result he was 'blind' but could see. He could not create a visual impression of the environment in his cortex, but he could dodge telegraph poles and garbage bins while walking down the street by 'sensing' they were there. Of course he could only move very slowly to do this. My contention at the time was that the difference was the difference between Windows and DOS operating systems. In a Windows based GUI you could see instantaneously and react appropriately without have to sought the code.

It also give a lot more surety about what you are perceiving. I used the example that there was a time when I was sleeping and I heard a noise - a bang. As I was in the netherworld between sleep and wakefulness my mind manifested the sound visually to me. I saw the sound expanding like a sphere. Several seconds later the bang was repeated. I saw it again. It expanded at exactly the same rate to exactly the same size and I woke up immediately and said "Double barrel shotgun." The visual representation of the image gave me certainty. I had no doubt what so ever that it was the same sound. I have no idea if that's what it was (I have been asked), but I am sure of what I saw...heard.

It also makes you wonder about other animals such as bats where the dominant sense is not vision. Do they actually visualise what they see, like I did with the sound? It might mean we need to redefine the idea of vision."

What are your thoughts on this in relation to the holographic theory?

I am trying to reason this out with myself as much as with you, and I take your point that divergence can be accounted for in the Survival of the Fittest model, but under a Survival of the Fittest model I would be looking for where is the selection pressure to do so was when delicious leaves and grass were already in abundance. The ancestor possums weren't attacking each other so there was no need to seek out new niches to live in. There's no adaptive advantage here. There's only maintaining the status quo through risky reshuffling of the DNA.

I guess the Survival of the Fittest model would contend there is equal adaptive advantage for the kangaroo, wombat and koala, so they were all selected for. Normally the environmental forces would have wiped the variants out of existence, except in this case there is a lack of them (your global constraints). The mutant variants got lucky and be damned with thoughts of adaptive advantage.

When a species is well adapted to its environment though the Survival of the Fittest model would suggest that DNA should be trying to minimize the amount of variant alleles in the population to help ensure its continued survival. It should be increasing the conserved regions of DNA, constraining itself so that it sticks with a winning combination. Allele diversity in the population should fall, or at the least the increase should only be a gradual creep.

The Creative Evolution Model would contend also that a lack of global constraints enabled the survival of a diverse progeny. It would suggest though, that rather than being an aberration of nature that somehow got out of its intrinsic DNA constraints, it instead would have been almost impossible to stop the variance from arising because variance is the sole driver of life. The organism would have been looking to maximise its amount of variance. For this model to work there would need to be a highly conserved (constrained) portion of DNA and a highly recombinant area. We would expect the allele count in the population to rise rapidly until new species are born.

Phobias. If we could program the computer to learn and adapt information from its environment that increased its probability of survival by evoking a fear response, then the only way a fear response in a robot would become a phobia is if it was a fault. Is that your position?

Interesting. If the robot had previously learnt that eating pies was safe, but then saw the person dying from eating the pie, then is it fair to create an extreme fear response when presented with a pie to eat, rather than weighting it at a be aware or simple avoidance level? You say not. You say the pairing of the pie with the fear response is unjustified [it is over weighted] and therefore the code or wiring is faulty.

Perhaps if the robot did not understand how the person died - maybe the pie killed them, then the weighting is justified. A pie might kill it. Then if you explained to the robot why the person had died, should the robot then reduce the weighting on the fear response, especially if it too could suffer the same fate? Is that the reasonable thing to do? Can we do it?

What if reason and fear are not directly interwired? Do you wish to give the robot total control over all of its internal responses, rather than group them into subroutines with 'push me now' buttons on them. The robot would spend all day long trying to focus on walking across the living room.

What is the distinction between a person who reacts this same way? They too have over weighted their code. The shock of seeing death caused by a pie or any other death has over weighted their perception of pies. Perhaps their friend was the one that died. The entire incident caused the weighting, but the focus was on the guilty pie.

Do you see it differently?

Of course you could also condition the robot to be afraid of the pie by beating it with a stick every time it saw a pie, but that is a slightly different matter.

Its great fun to study human behaviour. I may be off track here with your OP, but do you know what this reminds me of? "Dog Whisperer". I find Dog Whisperer handy for understanding many human behaviours.

Dog Whisperer "Cesar Milan" gets these troubled hounds and take them to his dog farm and they all run around together. He doesn't fix the dogs, the other dogs do. They quickly ascertain if the aggressive dog is all bark and no bite, or if its the alpha, or if it just needs the pack for security. The dogs find their position relative to each other. Once they all know where they fit in, and a sense of belonging has been established in the that group, a sense of harmony normally overcomes the troubled dog.

So, I would suggest this interaction has more to do with belonging in a accepting social group than with language. The personality profiles of these people, do they struggle generally in group settings? Do they feel alienated and isolated in their everyday lives. Do they feel that nobody understands them? Are they the bottom of their social heap?

An issue with this type of therapy might be if the person in the group is not perceived the way they want to be - which is possibly the cause of many troubled minds. You would need to run the group for an extensive amount of time, and certainly abolishing the independent judge is important.

How successful is the method when the patient interacts with other more novel groups? Is there a successful transference?

So, are you saying that our own illogical feelings just 'pop' into existence without a neurochemical or coded cause?

My definition of being aware is: being able to act and think without input, have illogical fellings develop out of the self — Nelson

Hi Nelson,
This is well a considered point.

Why wouldn't a program that allows for illogical feelings count though? Scientists are, afterall, designing the 'self'. When the weighting of an electro-neural signal exceeds the threshold of 8 for example, we may program the neuron to start firing off in random fashion to random connections.

I like the idea of germ line transmission of experiences. It sounds so right. It would be the perfect way to adapt your progeny to a new world. If you're not in, then it guess it leaves just me.

You're right, the global constraint has been significantly loosened in a divergent system. I don't know your position on evolution, but it seems to me that by loosening the constraint there is no driver of change for the animals. The competition for resources in the vast continent was negligible. Adaptation into niches without a primary environmental driver to do so seems like a superfluous action. Do you agree with the idea that a creative evolution model and not survival of the fittest model fits best here?