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Comment by khafra | Hacker News Reader

If there's imperfect replication and death, natural selection happens. It's a mathematical fact; observation is unnecessary for confirmation.

Although I haven't seen the video, and Dawkins is a smart guy, so perhaps he was making some related point.

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This comment seems wrong to me. What if Einstein had said, "sorry, General Relativity is a mathematical fact; observation is unnecessary for confirmation" instead of proposing tests!

Edit: Also, I think it would be just plain cool to observe natural selection in life that arose completely independently of our own. I don't think any reasonable person seriously doubts that natural selection is necessary for life.

Funny thing is, Einstein did in fact pretty much said it:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tests_of_general_relativity#Def...

"When asked by his assistant what his reaction would have been if general relativity had not been confirmed by Eddington and Dyson in 1919, Einstein famously made the quip: "Then I would feel sorry for the dear Lord. The theory is correct anyway.""

Not only that but it would be interesting to see natural selection processes evolving using something other than what's familiar to us (DNA). If something like this were truly separate from us, wouldn't it have evolved its own genetic system (or equivalent) as well?

Some bacteria and viri use RNA. But I guess that doesn't really count as being different enough from DNA.

I think he was predicting/speculating that any complex life anywhere will have arisen through Darwinian selection; that there's no other process that leads from simple replicators to complex life.

Video is here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vueDC69jRjE

Jump to 1:20.

That's already two quite big assumptions. There might be other means of mutation than imperfect copying or no mutation at all. I also wouldn't rule out that there couldn't exist a ecosystem with no involuntary death. Space is a big and weird place.

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