Janeway vs. Ransom?

[BridgeConsoleMasher]

Yes that account is actually a bit contemptible.

[Artabax]

You can't predict what mutations you'll get and you can't predict how the environment will change.

Maybe you can't.

Neither climate or evolution are perfected sciences. Anyone not high on their own hubris in those respective fields will tell you as much. Geological data we currently possess (which is basically a sliver compared to the planet's age) doesn't even fully express how tectonic shifting has altered the landmasses over the centuries. We can only hypothesize, at best, what the Earth looked like 65 million years ago, or even 20,000 years ago.

As for evolution, anthropologists theorize that the spinosaurus was, by design, the perfect hunter of its time. As the planet changed from whatever meteorlogical/galactic happening, its food supply diminished and the species eventually went extinct. You would think that evolution would explain the opposite-that the species would adapt due to its "perfect" nature- but, nope, it died out completely.

Believe me, science as a whole is still fairly uncertain about a lot of things. When you politicize science to force your own agenda, that's when you get an Al Gore or those siblings in that TNG episode about how warp tech is bad for us all. Saying it can predict what kind of mutations a species will develop is a bit silly.

I'm not clear though on why it's impractical for sci-fi to have computers that are able to look at the DNA of a specimen and hypothesize a reverse-course of evolution based on finding a match for DNA that the computer has.

I mean I haven't seen the episode or its corresponding review in a little while. And this query of mine didn't occur to me, so I'm not sure if I'm missing something.

I did however think it was funny when Chuck talked about the micro-virus traveling between hosts in the micro/macro virus episode.

Looking at current DNA and calculating what ancestral forms looked like is perfectly reasonable. Trek evolution predicts that humans will evolve into salamanders and other nations will evolve into extinct and serves them right.

If we can predict the environment a population will live in AND their niche, then we can guess which mutations will be favoured: in the mountains fluffy fur, in the swamp oily feathers, in the desert scaley skin. Trek insists that Evolution has a planned direction.

[BridgeConsoleMasher]

Yeah I hadn't seen the episode/review in a while and wasn't clear on the precise absurdity.

Yes that account is actually a bit contemptible.

^^^