Practical benefit of knowing about evolution

[Elessarina]

It makes plant breeding a lot less hit and miss.

Some English guy mentioned in a book (forgot the name) that it helps pigeon breeders, even if they don't realize that's what they're implements. (I wish I could remember his name, just saw a movie about him I think.)

That Sherlock Holmes was a genius!

[MissingNo.]

Understanding nature in any real way...it looks pretty bizarre without a basic grounding in evolution.

I also can't imagine plant and animal husbandry without evolution. That may be because I learned about both at the same time, but I'm always baffled by farmers who can build a prize-winning herd and still not believe in evolution.

[creationist hat] Because that's just micro-evolution. What you atheist fools don't understand is although micro-evolution has been demonstrated to be true, macro-evolution is just fairy tale. [/creationist hat] Yeah...compartmentalization.

[Animavore]

Is being better than everyone else a practical reason?

[RuleBritannia]

Without knowledge in the evolutionary process we wouldn't have bananas, which in turn means Ray Comfort would have no argument for the existence of god.

[Elessarina]

Without knowledge in the evolutionary process we wouldn't have bananas, which in turn means Ray Comfort would have no argument for the existence of god.

I'm curious to know what Ray says about the shape of pineapples

[AshtonBlack]

A field with no practical benefits AND without the need for evolutionary theory: "Quantum String / superstring / Brane theories."

Without evidence of the above and no, current, way to gather any, it's all just playing with maths to see how far we get. (The major assumption is that more than 4 dimensions exist, which we cannot test.)

[natselrox]

A field with no practical benefits AND without the need for evolutionary theory: "Quantum String / superstring / Brane theories."

True.

[RuleBritannia]

A field with no practical benefits AND without the need for evolutionary theory: "Quantum String / superstring / Brane theories."

True.

No practical benefits YET.

[AshtonBlack]

A field with no practical benefits AND without the need for evolutionary theory: "Quantum String / superstring / Brane theories."

True.

No practical benefits YET.

Of course and as always: YET.

[GenesForLife]

Don't employment opportunities count as practical benefits?

[Flora]

Evolutionary algorithms in computing, evolutionary modelling for disease analysis, evo-devo for understanding embryonic and cellular development, appreciating biodiversity, demonstrating the nature of interactions and competition in the environment, studying the evolution of new viruses, and of course, there is that question of cancer, which is the really big one, and by all means the progression of cancer IS an evolutionary process...

Yes, my ex works in evolutionary and adaptive computing - there are lots of practical applications in engineering & medicine. It's not my field so I can't elaborate but I know that the knowledge has been transferred and applied to many other areas.

[Xeno]

Doing a post-grad in Finance nearly ten years ago, we were given an assignment to bring risk and return within certain parameters drawing a sample from a given basket of financial instruments. It was assumed we would use a spreadsheet for the analysis and this was taught in the class. Recognising this gave no formal optimisation of item selection from the basket, I decided it was about time I tried my hand at an evolutionary algorithm (I am also IT qualified) and found it surprisingly easy to implement the principles (using internet sources) which optimised all three elements simultaneously. In fact, the long part was writing up an explanation and documenting the source code so my IT-illiterate lecturer could get it all verified.

So, there is a basic example in Finance, a topic not mentioned so far. I later used the approach on a quite different but this time real financial problem. The technique works well where there are multiple variables which make iterative solutions tedious and mathematical ones complex. It is a technique within programming for solutions under constraints.

[hackenslash]

I have to object to the assertion that M-Theory has had no appreciable benefits. The advances made in mathematics alone are worthy of note.

Disclaimer: I'm neither an advocate nor a detractor at this time. I'll wait and see what the experimental results say.

[JimC]

In my opinion, the beautiful and precise adaptations displayed by living things were quite reasonable evidence, in the pre-Darwin era, for the existence of a creator.

In fact, possibly the only valid reason, given no alternative explanation...

The development of an alternative mechanism by Darwin and his successors has removed the only good argument theists ever had...

And that sure as hell is a practical benefit!