Explaining Scientific Concepts from the Perspective of other Disciplines

[Nephew Twiddleton]

Reattempt at explaining evolution from music.

One day you pick up your guitar, and you just start fucking around. You come up with an idea. The idea can go a bunch of different ways. You write the idea down.

You riff on those ideas, some of them go off in different directions, and become completely different songs. We're not thinking about those different branches right now though. We're thinking about the formation of a specific song and trying to see how we got to there. Because, we all know it starts off with a simple riff, and the final product is never the original riff, unless it works.

Maybe that riff is entirely intact at the end of the line. Maybe you end up coming up with a theme album with a leit motif, kinda like NIN's Downward Spiral, where every song has some riff that is a variation on some other riff found in some other song on the album (if you don't believe me, listen to both the riff at the end of Closer and the weird sample at the beginning of Ruiner. That sample, if you play it, even in your head, slower and/or backwards, is found all over the album- the mechanical camera sound on Reptile at the minute mark onward, or the people on the rollercoaster sound on The Becoming after about 22 seconds).

You can build a lot off of a riff. You can build whole albums, whole careers. None of the songs may end up sounding like each other, but they all stem from this one idea that worked.

That's the whole. Let's get back to the specific. You have this one specific riff, based off of the general pattern that you go with, and you really like this riff. You think this might be your hit song. You keep playing the hook. The hook is good, but sometimes you screw it up, and sometimes you go, man, that sucked. I'll try not to slip up like that again. Then, sometimes you'll screw up the hook, and the hook will sound better. Then you'll stop, and figure out what you did right, and you'll keep playing it until you make sure that you won't forget it. Maybe you won't forget the previous iterations of the riff. Maybe you'll change it up here and there, almost the same riff, but each one with its own zazz, just to keep the song interesting.

How does that work for an analogy?

[Reginald Ret]

Reattempt at explaining evolution from music.

One day you pick up your guitar, and you just start fucking around. You come up with an idea. The idea can go a bunch of different ways. You write the idea down.

You riff on those ideas, some of them go off in different directions, and become completely different songs. We're not thinking about those different branches right now though. We're thinking about the formation of a specific song and trying to see how we got to there. Because, we all know it starts off with a simple riff, and the final product is never the original riff, unless it works.

Maybe that riff is entirely intact at the end of the line. Maybe you end up coming up with a theme album with a leit motif, kinda like NIN's Downward Spiral, where every song has some riff that is a variation on some other riff found in some other song on the album (if you don't believe me, listen to both the riff at the end of Closer and the weird sample at the beginning of Ruiner. That sample, if you play it, even in your head, slower and/or backwards, is found all over the album- the mechanical camera sound on Reptile at the minute mark onward, or the people on the rollercoaster sound on The Becoming after about 22 seconds).

You can build a lot off of a riff. You can build whole albums, whole careers. None of the songs may end up sounding like each other, but they all stem from this one idea that worked.

That's the whole. Let's get back to the specific. You have this one specific riff, based off of the general pattern that you go with, and you really like this riff. You think this might be your hit song. You keep playing the hook. The hook is good, but sometimes you screw it up, and sometimes you go, man, that sucked. I'll try not to slip up like that again. Then, sometimes you'll screw up the hook, and the hook will sound better. Then you'll stop, and figure out what you did right, and you'll keep playing it until you make sure that you won't forget it. Maybe you won't forget the previous iterations of the riff. Maybe you'll change it up here and there, almost the same riff, but each one with its own zazz, just to keep the song interesting.

How does that work for an analogy?

I tihnk my limited experience with music is keeping me from completely understanding this, but it sounds like it conveys the right idea.

[rong]

not trying to be a dick, but it kind of sounds like intelligent design to me. 

I would think a metaphor for evolution needs an external, random-ish influence.

[Chelagoras The Boulder]

I would disagree, sure the traits an organism is born with are variable, but the process of natural selection is pretty nonrandom. How likely your genes are to being reproduced is directly related to how those genes help you survive and mate. in this metaphor, the improvisational riffing is the variable gene element, whether or not the resulting sound is pleasing as music determines whether or not the riff gets reproduced in later attempts.

[Nephew Twiddleton]

Exactly. Deanthropomorphize the musician in the metaphor. Hes not who you should be paying attention to but rather the process where variations arise either perpetuate or not. If anything the musician represents reproduction.