[Professor Smarmiarty]

Originally Posted by ThatPoorMessenger

Lets see, about 110 elements on the current periodic table (can't remeber the exact figure and we're not even including variants such as different forms of Fe), say 110P3 (and even then, nothing is made of just 3 elements), you're looking at forming 1294920 different compounds and you've not even hit different methods of reaction. Would take a loooong time.

There are only really 4 revelant elements H, N, C, O and postulated simple reactions and there are only about 30 prebiotic components that have been really speculated. With simple filters it only took about a year or so.

On the other hand, although the difference in say, the average length of a species neck affects a lot of other traits, the trait itself is chosen independantly and other develop from it's own occurence.

That is not really how biology works. Like at all. Pretty much every thing in your body does a whole shit load of different things because of how intertied everything is. It would be very rare for say a gene to code for longer neck, it would code for a longer neck and shit loads of other things which depend upon how the organism develops. So while you cna pass on the long neck gene it doesn't mean your dchildren will have long necks which is a problem for heritable advantage.

Also, while we're talking about evolution (and by extension, Darwin), a little side fact is that he was part of a club that endevored to eat one of every species on Earth.

More importantly Origin of species was equally as much a political as a scientific text, he loaded it with political analogy.

Originally Posted by Magic_Marker

I'm about to mangle your explaination in an attempt to see if I've got it. I understand things best through abstraction and metaphore so forgive the implications of intelligence in natural selection, and the over simplification of a complex issue, what I want to know is if I have the CORE of it down.

So, if I'm understanding right, Point B is a little like if Natural Selection worked like a Class Based RPG. It can make choices but with those choices come a packaged deal. Like, if you want to cast spells in D&D you have to be a mage and mages can't wear armor. The selected trait (spells) is packaged with the rest (having to use simple weapons, wearing robes etc.) The problem with this theory is how the packages came to be. Why is it that trait A can't be had with Traits B-F? In an RPG you say that Gygax designed it that way, but that doesn't work in Science.

Two things
Firstly- you've actually hit upon a different point which is also quite interesting but I didn't mention, which is that we generally see lots of traits which only come with each other and we can't figure out why- there is generally one trait that gives you an advantage (casting spells) but the other trait is detrimental, a free-rider (no armour) and there is no reason why they are directly related and the disadvantageous trait should have been got rid of.
Secondly- the main thrust of Fodor is more like this- how do oyu determine what is a wizard- is it spell casting ability or not wearing armour, these two things are always seen together. A human could determine the difference between the two but a blind force could not.
Now let's say you wanted to breed a super wizard. Humans would determine their magical ability and breed together the strongest. Nature could do this or it could equally select for who wears the least armour- these properties are inseperable.

An attempt to solve it is the Lego theory which is more like a point buy based RPG. Traits and stats are bought up individually. This explains why oragnisism are similiar in the embryo stage because that's like a blank slate where traits are then 'selected' like a two players putting states in STR. Sure they start out remarkably similar when the two players start applying points but at a certain point you know that these two embryos/character sheets are going to be very, very different after they are done. The problem with this theory is that certain points going into a certain build would have been much better than others and it is not understood why these 'lego peices' weren't chosen.

That's pretty accurate.
How I would run it is stats blocks are your DNA, every character has very similar stats/DNA, they all start out the same. Your classes are your development- slight changes in class selection lead to wild variations in final species.
The problem is that we are not sure why stat blocks are structure d like they are- averages of 10. It would be more efficient if everyone developed into all 18s or maybe developed into min-maxers with 18's and 6's but species all tend to average 10s in stats and we don't know why.

I hope that makes some sense, if it makes less sense I'll try again and actually think about what I'm typing instead of aimlessly.