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asterixx:

--- Quote from: shvarz ---it's crazy that kids are not exposed to it until high school!
--- End quote ---

Yes it is.

 As for not bringing up computer simulators, he and I both agree that working-in modern applications of Darwin's ideas would not be time consuming or out of place. The substrate neutrality which Dennett refers to is a very good point, and could also help cover any analogies that are made during his presentation or if someone asks how it is possible that evolution can take place in nonliving things.

shvarz:
Well, it's your show so go for it.
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but, really, one must adapt the presentation to the audience. If you speak of great and wonderful things, but your audience is not prepared to hear them, you are just wasting your time. It's fun for you, but it's still a waste of time. An average american high-schooler has problems grasping even the most basic concepts of natural selection and mutation, because they are brainwashed by popular sci-fi movies etc., which completely misrepresent these ideas. Look, we had (maybe still have) a person here on this board who was claiming that mutation don't work in DB and nobody could figure out what he's talking about, because we all saw mutations happening in bots. After some time it turned out that his idea of mutations was based on X-men and such crap, so he thought that mutation=superpowers and since he was not seeing bots gaining superpowers he assumed that mutations are not working. That's the stuff that needs to be talked about in school. Dennet's ideas are fun but they are controversial even among scientists.
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but it's your show, so you can do what you please

P.S: Ah, speak of the devil... LOL

EricL:
I'll just make one point and that is that a decade ago, when I first heard it, I found Dennett's analogy between Evolution via Natural Selection and Long Division illustrative.  I think it's good mental model for newcomers in that it demonstrates the relentless inevitablilty of evolution occurring once you have the right circumstnaces (replicators with differential survival).

I agree with Shvarz in that I would avoid some of his more esoteric ideas, but I do like this analogy for getting the point across that evolution isn't some rare, one in a billion chance kind of thing.  Given a surprisingly simple set of conditions, it will and MUST occur, same as arriving at the right answer via long division by following a simple algorithm.  It counters the ID crowd's "hurricane in a juck yard assembling a 747" argument quite effectivly.

 I find that many newcomers to evolution have heard the "evolution is incredibly improbable" balony from IDer's and others and know that evolution has something to do with random mutations and therefor they find that the ID argument makes intutitive sense to them. I.e. humans and other animals are complicated things, so how could they possibly have come about by "chance" through random mutations?    Implicitly countering this argument by giving an analogy that shows that evolotution is not "chance" and not improbable, that it is in fact inevitable, is a great first step.

bacillus:
I found this link a very good way to explain the functioning of DNA and it has helped me write my own mutation-handling DNA engine, called DNAIL (although very glitchy). I wouldn't be surprised if either you knew it all already or became more confused, but it's worth looking into anyway:
DNA as seen through the eyes of a coder

Numsgil:
That's a great link!

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