this post was submitted on 28 Apr 2024
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This title is also misleading, though. By claiming "evolution isn't linear" and then showing a massive dinosaur leading to a chicken, you're suggesting the chicken is a downgrade (otherwise, what "linear" would even mean in this context?).
The chicken is, however, a massive upgrade - for the specific environment it lived in. Well, "proto-chickens", let's say. The actual domesticated chicken is the result of artificial selection.
The title and the meme are correct. Many people think that evolution means a line of becoming bigger and physically stronger and having more powerful offensive capabilities and smarter and faster etc. But in reality evolution can just as easily mean becoming smaller, weaker, dumber, and slower
Exhibit A:
Koala bears.
Exhibit B: human
Hey evolution has decided at least one person I know is gonna become the start of a line of Neo-Neanderthals. So we aint all doomed.
The issue is precisely in your mix up of "linear progression" and implying "smaller" is somehow a counter argument to that. While it's true evolution isn't linear, being smaller is not a downgrade at all.
I haven't mixed up anything. Smaller to bigger to smaller again is not a linear progression in size going always upward, which is what happens in games and in people's misconceptions.
What you said isn't an "upgrade" either. It is just adapting to the changes.
Increasing fitness in one's environment is an upgrade. Being smaller or bigger, by itself, is not an upgrade nor a downgrade, it depends on context.
Also known as red junglefowl.