Meet the principal

Baptiste raised his eyebrows slightly, and he motioned for Emilia to speak, wanting to hear what different opinions the mage apprentice could have.

"Mr. Baptiste, these creatures are very wonderful. I have never seen or heard of them in the main plane."

Emiya did not express her opinion directly, but took a detour.

"According to the theory of use it or lose it, the harsh environment of the demiplane of Erasmus has caused these creatures to evolve mechanisms to adapt to the environment in order to survive. But I have a question, why do all rainforest falcons evolve? Why do all land fishes have strong fins and special gills if they produce feathers rich in oil? How could these creatures be so similar if they are not very intelligent?"

Hearing Emiya's words, Reiner nodded slightly. Although this girl had only been exposed to the theory of necromancy for a short time, her thinking was very flexible, and she quickly realized that the evolution of living things does not have only one direction.

"Is it possible that these creatures have evolved different coping mechanisms in order to deal with the special environment of Erasmus, but some of them were not perfect enough and were gradually eliminated over the years, and eventually What we see in front of us is the rainforest falcon and the land fish."

After Alymiya finished speaking, she took a sneak peek at Reiner's expression. Seeing that the principal was silent, she couldn't help but feel a little uneasy.

"Are you saying that the environment does not motivate these organisms, but rather filters them?"

Agnes quickly sorted out the meaning of Alymiya's words, turning emotional language into theoretical elaboration.

"I think so, Ms. Wildfield."

Emilia nodded.

"Indeed, if you look purely at the results, the theory of advance or lose can perfectly explain these surviving organisms, but if you take into account those organisms that have not survived, this theory seems to be limited and has certain errors. .”

Agnes was lost in thought. On the other side, Edgar watched all this with cold eyes. He did not express his opinion, but a flash of inspiration flashed in his deep eyes.

"It's called survivorship bias."

Reiner suddenly spoke, causing everyone to look at him.

"Survivor...what?"

Jane felt that she didn't hear it clearly. She thought that Reiner's pronunciation might be "deviated", but she had never seen this word before, so she subconsciously thought that she had missed something.

"Survivor bias is a mathematical theory."

Reiner explained that he didn't care whether the theory had been proposed before.

"It's like a certain sea area where ships often get into trouble and sink. After checking the returning ships, people found that the port sides of these ships had great wear and tear, so they thought that strengthening the port sides could effectively prevent accidents."

His explanation was quite easy to understand, and Emilia quickly realized something was wrong.

"However, the actual ship that was involved in the accident has sunk long ago. Problems on the ships that were able to return should not be the main factor."

"correct answer."

Reiner smiled and looked at everyone.

"This is survivorship bias;

It means that people can only see the results obtained after some kind of screening, and use this as a standard for speculation, but ignore this screening process, so that the conclusions obtained are not true. There is another simpler and more straightforward theory. The expression, that is, 'Dead men cannot speak'. "

After a short pause, Reiner continued to explain.

"Applied to the situation at hand, the advance or lose theory only takes into account the evolution of creatures that survived the special weather in the Erasmus demiplane, but ignores those who failed to survive in this demiplane. The evolutionary process of species continues."

These words made Emiya feel suddenly enlightened. Previously, she had only vaguely felt this way, but could not refine the thoughts contained in it. Now after Reiner's explanation, she suddenly realized it.

At the same time, Emilia also realized that Reiner, who could master such a theory, could not imagine the laws between this and biological evolution. Reiner must have considered the doubts he mentioned!

Is he waiting for himself to realize?

Emilia looked at Reiner in confusion. He glanced at the land fish swimming in the water and continued.

"I think that when we think about species evolution, we should not just look at the characteristics of species that have survived to this day, but we should also look for the characteristics of extinct species that have been lost in the long history, and compare them to get the correct answer. .”

Reiner's words were somewhat direct. He was saying that there were obvious problems with Baptiste's conclusion. After such a discussion, Baptiste's use-it-or-lose-it theory was completely overturned, at least in explaining the evolution of species. A lot of convincing is missing.

People are waiting for Baptiste's explanation.

Baptiste remained calm, and when he saw that everyone was focusing their attention on him, he spoke.

"Indeed, if we look at the current situation, the use-it-or-lose-it theory does not play a key role in the evolution of species, but I still think it is an inducement to biological evolution."

He said, his expression as usual.

"Take the land fish as an example. Due to the dry season in the demiplane of Erasmus, a large number of rainwater lakes will disappear and the number of organisms in the water will decrease sharply. Therefore, the land fish must land on the shore to continue to survive, which prompts it to evolve. They developed strong fins that could move on land and special gills, but not all land fish could evolve like this at the first time. Those land fish that failed to evolve in time died because of this. We It can be said that the filtering of the environment is the reason why the species takes on its current appearance, but whether it can evolve to suit the fantasy world still depends on the creature itself."

The core of Baptiste's theory is already obvious, that is, he believes that will plays a dominant role in the process of evolution and can overcome all resistance.

This is also the view that mages have insisted on for a long time. As long as you have the will to advance, you can change yourself, continue to make progress, and continue to become stronger.

If Baptiste denies this view and believes that in the process of evolution, personal struggle is nothing but trivial, and that more important are environmental choices, which are external factors beyond human control, this is tantamount to asking He betrays his own will.

Just when Reiner was organizing words in his mind and preparing to debate with Baptiste, the other party suddenly spoke.

"If I tell you that I can train organisms to a certain extent so that they can actively evolve, can my theory be proven?"

"Active evolution?"

Reiner was a little surprised.

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