On the Topic of Consciousness

[Divine Insight]

Maybe we should break this out.....

This topic is an offshoot from another thread which was on another topic altogether.

This thread is "On the Topic of Consciousness"

I wouldn't pass judgements. My biggest question is why you have a brain type that is willing to jump into the unknown with some assurance, while I seem to have a brain type that doesn't. If I don't know, I leave it at not knowing.

I don't think it comes down to just the brain alone. I think there are many other factors involved. Clearly even from a secular point of view it is recognize that the brain "evolves" as we grow as individuals based much on how we experience life, etc.

For example the very concept of the "unknown" may mean something entirely different to me than it does to you. I mean, sure we could get out a dictionary and look up the term, but that really wouldn't help much because what you believe you know and what I believe I know are going to clearly be two different things. Especially considering my last sentence of the above paragraph. Our knowledge and beliefs evolve in our own brains based upon our own experiences, which clearly are not going to be the same experiences.

Consciousness: I don't know of any scientist that makes his or her living studying it who declares they know what it is.

This is true, but there may be quite a few scientists who feel like Daniel Dennett. Even though he is just a philosopher.

[youtube][/youtube]

I don't disagree with much of what Dennett says about how the brain functions. I don't disagree at all. But he doesn't touch on the real issues as far as I'm concerned. Near the very end of the above video he state a kind of Deepity of his own, "It's not that the Emperor has no clothes, but rather the clothes have no Emperor". The idea intended to imply that we are attempting to push too much onto consciousness that doesn't need to be there.

But for me none of this is satisfying.

I don't disagree with the fact that the brain is indeed a functional portal for the experiences that we have in this incarnated life. Therefore everything he observes and states about how the brain functions and how it "creates" much of our experience, is not in question for me.

But none of that even begins to address the issue of exactly what it is that is actually having this experience. In other words, if the clothes have no Emperor, then what is it that is having an experience? The brain itself?

This becomes a problem for me, because insofar as we know, the brain itself is made of nothing more than matter and energy. If neither matter, nor energy are capable of having an experience, they why should a brain that is made of nothing more than matter and energy become an "Emperor" in its own right?

This is not an easy question, and I wouldn't hesitate to put this question to Dennett himself. In fact, I would like to hear his thoughts on this. Maybe he does address this sort of issue in one of his many lectures. If you find a lecture where he addressed this heart of the matter please share and I'll be glad to take a gander at it.

I've watched several of his lectures, and thus far I haven't been convinced of his conclusions.

To say it is supernatural vs natural seems a leap.

This is statement here goes back to what I had mentioned above, concerning how you and I may very well think differently due to our different experiences in life.

You speak of the term "supernatural" as though that's a meaningful term.

I have been a scientist my entire life. Isaac Newton, and certain Greek philosophies like Zeno and others were my childhood heroes. Albert Einstein was my next hero as I grew in my scientific knowledge. And today I hold many scientists in high regard and marvel at what they were able to discover and prove.

Just the same, in all of this, I have come to the profound realization that to date we cannot say what the true nature of reality genuinely is. Therefore does it even make any sense to speak of the supernatural, when we can't even say with certain what is natural?

So I'm not prepared to accept the insinuation that I'm "jumping off to assume something supernatural". All I'm doing is recognizing that we can't say where the boundaries of the natural world truly are.

So I don't feel that I'm actually leaping anywhere. I'm just recognizing that we can't know that things need to be restricted to what we believe to be a finite physical existence.

In fact, if you go back to Dennett's very argument perhaps you can see an irony there. He is proclaiming that we can't know nearly what we think we can know, yet he seems to think that he can make very clear conclusions from this evidence that our brains clearly trick us.

That's almost an oxymoron right there. If what Dennett says is true, that our brains can fool us considerably, then perhaps the entirety of physical reality is itself an illusion that we are being tricked into believing. What we believe to be "brains" may not be physical entities at all.

My position is that we know consciousness is affected by natural events, and we know nature exists... seems a very small slide to presume consciousness is a natural phenomenon. But not knowing, sure, I can't say it's not - but I haven't been offered ONE example of the supernatural. So, I simply can't presume it's supernatural. I can't even think of why I'd consider the supernatural when the supernatural has such a horrible track record.

Well, our difference of views here may indeed amount to the extremely different way we view the "supernatural". For you to say that the supernatural has a bad track record implies that you associate the term with just about any guess that anyone might come up with (and especially specific claims that have indeed been shown to be false).

Whilst those do indeed qualify as "supernatural", they may not qualify as the type of "supernatural" that I consider. In fact, the type of "supernatural" that I consider is actually quite natural. It simply amounts to nature that we haven't yet discovered or understood, so it's only in that sense that it seems to be supernatural to us, when in reality it may be perfectly natural.

Given this, there only seems to be the natural. Just because we don't know how consciouness works doesn't means it's because of the gods, or the supernatural or something else, or even "natural vs. I don't know".

Nature exists.
Consciousness exists.

Given these two facts, why presume we can't explain consciousness eventually?

I already gave my answer to this earlier in this post. I'll repeat it here for clarity.

Copy and pasted from earlier in this very same post:

But none of that even begins to address the issue of exactly what it is that is actually having this experience. In other words, if the clothes have no Emperor, then what is it that is having an experience? The brain itself?

This becomes a problem for me, because insofar as we know, the brain itself is made of nothing more than matter and energy. If neither matter, nor energy are capable of having an experience, they why should a brain that is made of nothing more than matter and energy become an "Emperor" in its own right?

This is not an easy question, and I wouldn't hesitate to put this question to Dennett himself. In fact, I would like to hear his thoughts on this. Maybe he does address this sort of issue in one of his many lectures. If you find a lecture where he addressed this heart of the matter please share and I'll be glad to take a gander at it.

End of copy and paste

Yes, consciousness exists. And something is having an experience.

But what is it that is having an experience?

Energy and matter?

Electromagnetic fields?

Something else? Many people have suggested that the thing that is having an experience is some sort of "emergent property of complexity".

I suppose this is a valid philosophical idea, but it seems pretty strange to me that an abstract idea of an emergent property could have an experience.

So I'm still left with a deeper mystery.

To simply say that "consciousness" is a natural result of nature, still leaves me asking, "Who is the Emperor that is having this experience?"

If the clothes have no Emperor, then what is it that is having the experience of conscious awareness? The clothes?

It just seems strange to me that the clothes (i.e. matter and energy) should be able to have an experience.

So this simply leaves the door to the "supernatural" (i.e. nature that we simply don't yet understand) wide open.

I'm not saying that the secular view is necessarily wrong. I'm simply saying that the purely secular view seems every bit as strange to me as the supernatural view.

In other words, that view doesn't "hit the spot" as being an obvious conclusion to accept either.

I'm not going to automatically accept Dennetts "Deepity" that "The clothes have no Emperor" as being the profound answer to this question. That's just as absurd as any other Deepity, IMHO.

So this is where I'm coming from.

I'm not claiming that the supernatural necessarily has to exist. But I am claiming that, insofar as I can see, it's on precisely equal footing with any other conclusions at this point.

Seeing that they are on the same footing, I don't mind using intuition and gut feelings to consider one over the other. So with that in mind, I confess that I lean toward the mystical view. But clearly I could be wrong.

[instantc]

IF we could do that, and it could think and act creatively, and react to the environment in a way that is indistinguishable form a man, and write huge essays on awareness, would it not be conscious?

Creativity and ability to adjust to new circumstances are not exclusive domains of conscious minds. We can build robots that can handle simple tasks. Now, imagine a robot million times more complicated that has been programmed to respond to any situation imaginable, process any information it gathers, add it up and create new information. Now at some point the behavior of that robot would be indistinguishable from our behavior. But at no point during the course of adding new information and new programming would it magically become conscious and start experiencing the world. We know how to program a robot to handle one simple task. A robot with billion similar tasks would not be any more conscious than the robot with one simple task, but its behavior would be indistinguishable from ours.

As far as I can see, both Gorilla brains and human brains do what they are programmed to do.

Exactly, and it doesn't require conscious experience from a brain to do what it is programmed to do.

[scourge99]

IF we could do that, and it could think and act creatively, and react to the environment in a way that is indistinguishable form a man, and write huge essays on awareness, would it not be conscious?

Creativity and ability to adjust to new circumstances are not exclusive domains of conscious minds. We can build robots that can handle simple tasks. Now, imagine a robot million times more complicated that has been programmed to respond to any situation imaginable, process any information it gathers, add it up and create new information. Now at some point the behavior of that robot would be indistinguishable from our behavior. But at no point during the course of adding new information and new programming would it magically become conscious and start experiencing the world. We know how to program a robot to handle one simple task. A robot with billion similar tasks would not be any more conscious than the robot with one simple task, but its behavior would be indistinguishable from ours.

As far as I can see, both Gorilla brains and human brains do what they are programmed to do.

Exactly, and it doesn't require conscious experience from a brain to do what it is programmed to do.

Instantc seems to be proposing that something like philosophical zombies are possible while Goat is rejecting that possibility. A common objection to Goats proposal is "the Chinese room" thought experiment.

[instantc]

IF we could do that, and it could think and act creatively, and react to the environment in a way that is indistinguishable form a man, and write huge essays on awareness, would it not be conscious?

Creativity and ability to adjust to new circumstances are not exclusive domains of conscious minds. We can build robots that can handle simple tasks. Now, imagine a robot million times more complicated that has been programmed to respond to any situation imaginable, process any information it gathers, add it up and create new information. Now at some point the behavior of that robot would be indistinguishable from our behavior. But at no point during the course of adding new information and new programming would it magically become conscious and start experiencing the world. We know how to program a robot to handle one simple task. A robot with billion similar tasks would not be any more conscious than the robot with one simple task, but its behavior would be indistinguishable from ours.

As far as I can see, both Gorilla brains and human brains do what they are programmed to do.

Exactly, and it doesn't require conscious experience from a brain to do what it is programmed to do.

Instantc seems to be proposing that something like philosophical zombies are possible while Goat is rejecting that possibility.

Well, it seems to me that it is possible to build a machine so well programmed that its behavior cannot be distinguished from ours, while it would not be experiencing consciousness. That would mean that it cannot inferred from behavior alone whether or not something has conscious awareness.

[Goat]

IF we could do that, and it could think and act creatively, and react to the environment in a way that is indistinguishable form a man, and write huge essays on awareness, would it not be conscious?

Creativity and ability to adjust to new circumstances are not exclusive domains of conscious minds. We can build robots that can handle simple tasks. Now, imagine a robot million times more complicated that has been programmed to respond to any situation imaginable, process any information it gathers, add it up and create new information. Now at some point the behavior of that robot would be indistinguishable from our behavior. But at no point during the course of adding new information and new programming would it magically become conscious and start experiencing the world. We know how to program a robot to handle one simple task. A robot with billion similar tasks would not be any more conscious than the robot with one simple task, but its behavior would be indistinguishable from ours.

As far as I can see, both Gorilla brains and human brains do what they are programmed to do.

Exactly, and it doesn't require conscious experience from a brain to do what it is programmed to do.

Instantc seems to be proposing that something like philosophical zombies are possible while Goat is rejecting that possibility.

Well, it seems to me that it is possible to build a machine so well programmed that its behavior cannot be distinguished from ours, while it would not be experiencing consciousness. That would mean that it cannot inferred from behavior alone whether or not something has conscious awareness.

Is it?? If it is possible, then , why don't you build one, and we can run it thorugh it's paces.

[instantc]

IF we could do that, and it could think and act creatively, and react to the environment in a way that is indistinguishable form a man, and write huge essays on awareness, would it not be conscious?

Creativity and ability to adjust to new circumstances are not exclusive domains of conscious minds. We can build robots that can handle simple tasks. Now, imagine a robot million times more complicated that has been programmed to respond to any situation imaginable, process any information it gathers, add it up and create new information. Now at some point the behavior of that robot would be indistinguishable from our behavior. But at no point during the course of adding new information and new programming would it magically become conscious and start experiencing the world. We know how to program a robot to handle one simple task. A robot with billion similar tasks would not be any more conscious than the robot with one simple task, but its behavior would be indistinguishable from ours.

As far as I can see, both Gorilla brains and human brains do what they are programmed to do.

Exactly, and it doesn't require conscious experience from a brain to do what it is programmed to do.

Instantc seems to be proposing that something like philosophical zombies are possible while Goat is rejecting that possibility.

Well, it seems to me that it is possible to build a machine so well programmed that its behavior cannot be distinguished from ours, while it would not be experiencing consciousness. That would mean that it cannot inferred from behavior alone whether or not something has conscious awareness.

Is it?? If it is possible, then , why don't you build one, and we can run it thorugh it's paces.

We have already built machines that can exhibit creativity, solve problems and handle various tasks. What is it that you suggest a human can do but a machine can't, apart from subjective experience?

[scourge99]

IF we could do that, and it could think and act creatively, and react to the environment in a way that is indistinguishable form a man, and write huge essays on awareness, would it not be conscious?

Creativity and ability to adjust to new circumstances are not exclusive domains of conscious minds. We can build robots that can handle simple tasks. Now, imagine a robot million times more complicated that has been programmed to respond to any situation imaginable, process any information it gathers, add it up and create new information. Now at some point the behavior of that robot would be indistinguishable from our behavior. But at no point during the course of adding new information and new programming would it magically become conscious and start experiencing the world. We know how to program a robot to handle one simple task. A robot with billion similar tasks would not be any more conscious than the robot with one simple task, but its behavior would be indistinguishable from ours.

As far as I can see, both Gorilla brains and human brains do what they are programmed to do.

Exactly, and it doesn't require conscious experience from a brain to do what it is programmed to do.

Instantc seems to be proposing that something like philosophical zombies are possible while Goat is rejecting that possibility.

Well, it seems to me that it is possible to build a machine so well programmed that its behavior cannot be distinguished from ours,

I agree that it seems feasible. But imagining something is possible doesn't mean it actually is possible. We can imagine logical impossibilities.


It all comes down to how we test for consciousness. For example, i think its possible to program a computer to respond to so many questions that it would be very difficult, perhaps impossible, to tell it from a human. It can fool the test. But that just tests its ability to respond like a human, not whether it's actually having experiences.

I know of no way to test for experiences. That tells me that experience is an illusion or we are missing something in our understanding of it. I'm inclined to believe the former. That doesn't mean that the computer is having illusion experiences, just that there is something more to human consciousness then being able to respond to questions correctly. And the part i think a computer would be missing is self-reflection.

... while it would not be experiencing consciousness.

How can we test whether something is conscious or not? If we have no method then how can we say something is or isn't conscious?

Right now the way we do it is by guessing based on observing behavior. Rocks and trees don't act like they have experiences. But birds, chimpanzees, and dogs do sometimes act like us so we aren't sure about them.

And that opens up another can of worms. How exactly do conscious beings act compared to non-conscious beings? Can there exist something that can fool our test but isn't conscious? Thus, we have come full circle to philosophical zombies and the Chinese room.

That would mean that it cannot inferred from behavior alone whether or not something has conscious awareness.

if we can't develop a good test for conscious experience then what is is it exactly (conscious experience) that we are testing for? I would say that fundamentally its the ability to self reflect. To conceive of one's self. Thus, i think the problem is clarified. We aren't testing for something physical. We are testing for something that manifests from complex interactions of the physical. But we currently don't know exactly how the ability arises from the physical so we can't accurately test for it. Until then we are just going to have to make heuristic guesses about what is conscious and if non-conscious beings can accurately mimic conscious beings.

[Goat]

IF we could do that, and it could think and act creatively, and react to the environment in a way that is indistinguishable form a man, and write huge essays on awareness, would it not be conscious?

Creativity and ability to adjust to new circumstances are not exclusive domains of conscious minds. We can build robots that can handle simple tasks. Now, imagine a robot million times more complicated that has been programmed to respond to any situation imaginable, process any information it gathers, add it up and create new information. Now at some point the behavior of that robot would be indistinguishable from our behavior. But at no point during the course of adding new information and new programming would it magically become conscious and start experiencing the world. We know how to program a robot to handle one simple task. A robot with billion similar tasks would not be any more conscious than the robot with one simple task, but its behavior would be indistinguishable from ours.

As far as I can see, both Gorilla brains and human brains do what they are programmed to do.

Exactly, and it doesn't require conscious experience from a brain to do what it is programmed to do.

Instantc seems to be proposing that something like philosophical zombies are possible while Goat is rejecting that possibility.

Well, it seems to me that it is possible to build a machine so well programmed that its behavior cannot be distinguished from ours, while it would not be experiencing consciousness. That would mean that it cannot inferred from behavior alone whether or not something has conscious awareness.

Is it?? If it is possible, then , why don't you build one, and we can run it thorugh it's paces.

We have already built machines that can exhibit creativity, solve problems and handle various tasks. What is it that you suggest a human can do but a machine can't, apart from subjective experience?

Figure out a brand new puzzle of a type it never encountered before. Not a different variation of a theme.

That's one thing. When it comes to many puzzles, and problems, the 'rules' have to be very specifically programed into the computer. A conscious being would not need that.

The problem with the whole 'Chinese Room' scenario is that it is being held to a much higher standard than people are.

[Rev. Hydrogen]

[Replying to post 102 by scourge99]


Rev's Opinion: To understand conscious awareness we have to understand what we are, and how and why we think and behave as we do? Otherwise we be guessing.

I use my Jack Russell - Nelson as a model and subject for the non reflective mind and my own reflective mind as a control. The reflective mind did not evolve by degree. You either possess it or you do not. Yet it's antecedent brain components can
be seen in the higher mammals brain evolution.

What am I? ... is a question very few will attempt or be accurate in answering.

The animal strand of conscious awareness runs on the extremely beautiful and efficient concept of Ego,
evolved over quite a long time.
(Ego, defined here as I, aware of my experience).

The ego is the necessary false and subjective side of us that has allowed us to survive to this day in our (arguably), mentally fit state.

Ego is not a live realtime system, instead it is dependent upon the conflict generated by an assortment of memories including resident programs. It has no location in the brain and has unlimited memory storage. As it is not biological it does not need to rest like our brains and can dream
while we rest.

But we much prefer to dream when we re awake in
personal muse. We can dream standing up.

The reflective mind is enhanced animal ego.
An additional strand of causal input wrapped around the say, dog mind.
So humans have 2 strands of causal input while animals have one. Both use the animal strand to sense and interact with the world. The reflective strand can occupy most of the input stream which results in cognitive or physical action by taking over in a private muse, or in talking or planning.

Nelson has feelings and emotions.
He does, as emotions are the outward flow or results of the desire which is the fodder or input of ego. But he has no language aside from what is natural and true if he is in tune with things.
He has doggy dreams of chasing rabbits.
It must feel good because he sleeps a lot, but then he plays hard.
My dreams could be more complex and likely to involve imagination or impression memory.

So how does the reflective mind change things?
Well in humans, Ego has evolved into a whole new ballgame of psychological magnificence.The reflective strand has psychological dominance over
the animal mind thinking the animal mind is part of its' servant body. This then the 'first conditioning' , when the reflective mind assumed control of the being around age 5.

Language meant the extra input
could think in language about a percept-rotate, store it, table nest it, test it ,add to it. And as we see today, it can solve problems of incredible complexity . That language as shown by hypnosis is also used
as a programming language.

Science and reason is what happens when you apply factual memory to ego with reflective mind.
But factual memory is for geeks, and boring to most
whose personalities must become slave to it.
Impression memory, musing in imagination is where
the pleasure is at and where we spend the majority of our musings and dreams.

So man becomes slave to his impression memory
because it feels good.
Most all humans can not think outside of their ego
thinking that their identity is their reflective strand.

And in this way they are trapped without knowing it.
The over thinking diseases - anxiety and depression our most widespread maladies.

Imagination (the lowest) and reason are just two sections on the ladder of knowledge. Above and beyond reason lies self knowledge 4where
we can discover who and what we are in the scheme
of things. Ego is the false side of us and this can be seen when you start pulling it apart. We also have a true side that few are willing to allow their personalities to entertain as a result of resident programs leading to an over controlling ego that knows no other way. Sadly this is normal and the reason why everything is as it is in society today.
Sorry this got long -hope it is relevant for some?

[Divine Insight]

Hope this is relevant for some?

The views you've expressed here seem to be compatible with how I think of things.

Although I tend to think that it's more than just the reflective aspect of the mind. I think that many animals have the reflective aspect too. They just don't intellectually abstract that into a well-defined ego. So from my perspective the thing that really sets humans apart from other animals is not the self-reflection aspect so much as it is the ability to think abstractly. In other words, the ability to create abstract concepts to the point where they appear to have a reality of their own.

In fact, I would argue that this is what secularists are doing when they speak of an emergent property being able to have an experience. They are giving this abstract notion of an emergent property so much credence that they treat it as though it's an actual entity rather than just an abstract concept.

Innately, I don't think we are really all that much different from many animals, especially mammals that are closely related to us in terms of evolution, like dogs, cats, monkeys, apes, etc. In other words, I think a chimpanzee actually has an experience of life that isn't all that much different from a human experience save for the intellectual abstraction capability.

Of course, as you point out, that difference does seem quite profound since we are able to give the abstraction of the ego so much detail. In this sense we create an ego that is real in terms of the details we have attributed to it. So in that sense the ego has reality. It has reality as a detailed abstract concept. But clearly that detailed concept is not what is having an experience. The thing that is actually having an experience is the same thing that is having an experience in a chimp, dog, or cat, etc. And so for this reason, the ego is not real. It's just a construct of abstraction.

Also for this same reason, we really aren't all that different from chimps, dogs, and cats, etc. We just think we are precisely because we see ourselves as being this ego we have created abstractly.

[Rev. Hydrogen]

[Replying to post 109 by Divine Insight]

Thanks for reading!

Looking a little more closely at the question:
What is conscious awareness in animals & humans.

Think the smartest apes eg Gorillas are in non reflective ambivalence. A gorilla can make a bed from the rain but not think to make a raincoat or temporary shelter. If we cast ourselves to what it must be thinking , to not think of a hat or a coat etc means it cannot think much outside of its experiential and innate programming.
(as a point of difference).

I am thinking that conscious awareness has three possible modes of output. The first two relate to ego
and self. Ultimately everything we do in ego mode
can be broken down to self. And ego is dominant over the 2nd mode - no self. So getting it to step aside can be a mission.

The two ego outputs resulting from the desires we have (in out circumstances) can be all traced back to
Affirmation of self to self, or Assertion of self on others. Try to hide it as we like we as ego are selfish beings evolved as a response to our environment.
We are not spontaneous but rather programmed beings predictably boring.

The reflective mind, thinker in us, is a biased Judge
of good and bad in favor of self and kind, creed, team, country etc. It has a dual honesty that is accepted as part of society. That is where the problem starts because even a little bit false is false.

Modern mystics purport that another perception of actuality is available as conscious awareness and this lines up with the third output as expression of
experience without ego or non self conscious awareness. The ego system (thinker) temporarily
(even for a second or two), disengaged. The system
then switches from delayed response/reaction to live time which being in the eternal unfolding moment is timeless or outside of time.

Ego as cute and complex as it is does not account for certain human faculties such as conscience, Love
and appreciation of the aesthetics.
Love for example is a timeless feeling and liberation of self for another, the antithesis of ego.

Consider the difference in the conscious awareness of a fish swimming in the water to someone plotting to rob a bank. One is feeling the water and responding to live sensory and limbic survival processes and behavior.
The other in an imaginationland of testable possibilities without moving a muscle or requiring the animal strand. Not needing to sense or respond the world much at all.

While living in the past and future like this in muse
we all seek diversion from experiencing life (like the fish) in the hours we are musing. That is the way ego likes it, because ego does not really exist in
terms of matter so it must do the best it can to
survive in tact. Preferring the status quo of resident programming is the mechanism of choice for ego to remain in a stable position until death of the biochemical host that supports it.

In some religious the ego plays a trick by installing a program where a deal is done (with the ego) to make the ego eternal. It is laughing at them behind their own backs. The thinker is an extremely good judge of truth and false. But as I said it is biased to continued existence and protection of self and kind.

I am thinking that aspects of our personality are modulated by our Being or spirit agency that
exists outside of our time but connects via our
unconscious. So if a part of our personality was to transcend this mortal life I would doubt it would be the false part whose existence seems dependent upon this bodies lifespan. Looking for God inside egocentric conscious awareness related to imagination is absurd and as false as the ego that entertains it.

Just that the ego has inserted a program to make
someone think that something is actually true but is not.

Like the stage hypnosis act where a guy is programmed to believe that he is a famous ballerina doing a twirl for the audience every time the word banker was mentioned in the show. Sure enough when people were asked what they did, banker was a leading occupation. But the point was while the guy was in the trance he really believed that stuff.

And so we see how it works in real life.
Billions of religious ballerina living out his/her life-sketch in a trance they actually live.
Every prayer, hymn, sermon, sacrament containing
powerful hypnotic messages that self perpetuate in generations of massive global tribes.

Guess it was always meant to happen, otherwise we
could expect another catastrophe to restore evolution back a few million years to try again.