Matt Kielty

Computer programming of nothing but chance and randomness, which is totally counter to the sort of order of natural selection.

So natural selection would be like, you've got a bird with a...

like awesome beak and cool eyes and it's like can fly like a baller and then there's like a lesser bird that's kind of a weenie bird and it's got like me it can't see in three dimensions and it's like not good at sports it's like basically this is heather bird but in this scenario

And like the Darwinian idea, it's like athlete bird with its great eyes, its great wings, wins the evolutionary battle.

Heather bird goes extinct.

Weenie birds as a kind of bird, as a species, cease to exist.

But what these computer simulations were showing is that extinction doesn't work that way.

And that actually, Heather weenie bird and super athlete bird have equal chance of not necessarily thriving, but like

So it's like if those two species were born at the same time, weenie bird and athlete bird, it's up to chance which one would survive longer than the other one.

Right.

So fitness might explain why one species does better than another.

But what they saw suggests that when it comes to extinction, it's not fitness or out competing one another.

It's just random.

Right.

It's a little hard to get your mind around.

But wait, but I have a question.

Going back to that Marine, you know, there in Woods Hole, what did they all, do we know what they thought at that moment?

Yeah, we do.

They were all totally shocked.

Crystal, just the way he heard it is basically... When, you know, the printouts come out, they're like, oh my God.