[pvarangot]

Viruses don't "want", anthropomorphizing COVID like media headlines do is a bit of a "language virus" in and of itself that makes global understanding of what's going on more difficult. AFAIK the virus mutates randomly, and we just see more of the more infectious and less deathly (in the short and mid-term) variants because those are the ones that spread faster and successfully among humans, but attributing even collective behavior to COVID, like to an ant colony, is too liberal of a use of our imagination.

[randomopining]

Classic HN response spending an entire paragraph to disect how I used the word "want" even though it's obvious that I meant "to achieve their goal of maximizing proliferation".

[pvarangot]

Yeah I like my HN in the Classic configuration or flavor. Can't say I'm sorry if you don't.

[babyshake]

Is it not reasonable to use the word "want" in reference to natural selection tending to optimize for something?

[pvarangot]

Hmm, good question. I guess I can go full pedantic on this because it's HN but probably on any other social setting this exposition would drain everyones vital life and just fuel my autistic dissociation until I have no idea where I am anymore.

Giving "natural selection" as a force the capacity to "want" is probably less controversial that saying that a virus "wants". For example if you are a religious evolutionary biologist you can think that natural selection is an entity that makes some kind of conscious decisions that may appear random to us only because we don't understand them. I don't think that believing that will hamper your ability to actually understand natural selection as much as any other scientist, specially if you go by the Roman Catholic tenet of unquestionable faith in unsolvable misteries.

If you go by the more neutral terms used in evolutionary science I think natural selection is more of a process than a system or force and then it "wanting" things is also anthropomorphism.

My personal line for when anthropomorphism is tolerable and when it's not is when as an analogy it can make you come to dangerous conclusions. For example "oh COVID wants to mutate, we should just let it mutate because when you give something what it wants it will usually leave you alone" or stuff like that.

[postalrat]

Brain cells don't "want" either.

[pvarangot]

Nope but we can attribute properties to a group of brain cells that we can call a "human" the property of "wanting" without implanting incorrect analogies that, so far and according to our understanding of consciousness, don't impair the collective spread of the best knowledge we have about how "human" works. If you really literally think COVID wants something you are probably delusional or your understanding of what's a virus is like below high-school level.