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The Evolution Game: The Rule Breakers

The Evolution Game: The Rule Breakers

Every game has rules and whether fixed or fluid, all players follow them. The games people play (in the game theory sense) constitute contrived or created games. Nature operates on sets of rules as well. However, the difference is that these sets of rules do not describe a contrived or created game and, creationist arguments set aside for the moment. This does not make evolution any less of a game.

Let the games begin

Not everybody is familiar with the subject of game theory but we all recognize various games and types of games on some level. Single player games, multiplayer games and various goal orientations such as “king of the mountain” are different types of games and game play. Evolution is a game of chance as well as a single player competition. This means that each player is goal oriented and advances or fails based on individual performance.

With the environment as the “game board” and the other players are other species, the rules are the repeated interactions of the various elements and the patterns they form, otherwise known as the laws of nature. Whether or not you subscribe to the theory of strict darwinianism or intelligent design or creationism, it is very hard to assert that evolution as a process is not occurring and that it has not done so for millions of years.

For the scope and purpose of this article, let us assume that the process has  been in operation for millions of years. Therefore as Sherlock Holmes was fond of stating “…the games afoot!”

Highlight Reels

Over the last billion or so years our studies into the history of the “game of evolution” have revealed a rich and very successful performance. Millions of players have been introduced and a great many of them have performed brilliantly, such as the beaver. This skilled gamester evolved a strategy of building its home within a mound of wood in the middle of a pond with an underwater entrance. Additionally, if no pond was available it evolved the strategy of building a dam across a stream to create one.

They still do so today, where they can find streams and forest of course. This insured that the other players (predators) would be unable to attack their young (new team players) as they could only be accessed via a hidden, underwater chamber. The game board was mastered with engineering, allowing Beavers to overcome the limitation of a lack of ideal locations for their new, secure breeding chambers. You simply have to admire the careful brilliance and patience of this Play. Its success is evidenced by the long run that team beaver has enjoyed, well over 30 million years. Until recently that is.

Foul Play

Until recently, the evolutionary game proceeded nicely and the achievements where exciting. From Beaver Dams and Lodges to Fire Ant Colonies and Termite Mounds the engineering solutions alone are a fascinating study. Until recently, of course. The problem is that recently, over the last several hundred thousand years or so, a team has surfaced that seems to be spoiling the game play and even cheating. For example, in Australia all large species seemed to just vanish, (this seemed to happen all over the planet recently) and there is evidence that a particular species may be to blame. Most of these mysterious extinctions involve large game animals and have occurred during the last ice age. The species in question is human, you.

The Broken Game

At the time these “foul plays” occurred, the human species would have been just reaching its full evolutionary development. The human team was small in numbers due to the complexity of reproduction and the long gestation and maturation period. However, their natural evolutionarily developed skills were very dangerous indeed, tool-making, and advanced migration skills, complex communication and group hunting behavior had resulted in an almost perfect game performance. This does not constitute any cheating or foul play in the traditional sense. In fact, the very concept of cheating may not even apply to the game of evolution. That is a matter for the philosophers and metaphysicians to debate.

What must first be considered is the fact that having achieved a near perfect play, the human species is threatening the game itself. This is not a negative thing for team human certainly but other teams are certainly being impacted and not for the better (in most cases). Due to hunting and encroachment team beaver, once 60 million strong in North America, is now down to between eight to 12 million and falling. While there is no proof-positive, most of the large game animal extinctions during or after the last Ice Age are being blamed on team humans startling ability to hunt and expand into new territory and survive almost any conditions. The history of game play since this time is obvious. In the next installment we meet “The Viral Species.”

Part II The Viral Species : http://www.bukisa.com/articles/352979_the-evolution-game-the-viral-species

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