Darwin's Illusion

[cladking]

Survival of the fittest wasn't part of that definition. You inserted it.

Again! Darwin used "survival of the fittest".

 

[gnostic]

If you refuse to parse a sentence the way the author intended you are playing word games.

If you are using your own “made up” definitions to words that ONLY YOU WOULD USE, but no one else use your definitions, then it is you, you are the one playing word games.

You are bloody projecting, cladking. You are blaming anyone who disagree with you, as playing word games, but you are the one redefining words that suit you and no one else use these redefinitions.

You are the one playing word games, and at the same time, causing confusion. People don’t have to follow or accept whatever definitions to words that you have changed.

Stop blaming others for your own faults.

 

[Evangelicalhumanist]

If you refuse to parse a sentence the way the author intended you are playing word games.



This isn't really true on several levels. "Placebo effect" is very powerful. One can experience what he chooses to a very large degree. This probably isn't as strong, if it exists at all, in animals but certainly humans can get comfortable in harsh environments. They can also do things like figure out how to build a shelter, obtain food, and find water almost anywhere. Individuals of all species adapt in order to survive and they do this with... ...drum roll, please... ...consciousness. From experience and consciousness they make changes in themselves and their environment to survive and procreate. There is also evidence that some learning and experience can even affect genes so that progeny has a head start on adaptations though this kind of experimentation is somewhat suspect at this time.

Consciousness is life and life is consciousness. Consciousness not only is life but also provides the means to survive in every situation and allows change to better suit the niche. Consciousness gave bees the waggle dance and termites agriculture without which their populations would be far lower or nonexistent. Without bees bird populations would be far higher affecting most niches and causing far more raptors. Nature stabilizes but still populations undergo bottlenecks causing speciation.

Not a word of what you've written has much truth in it. The placebo effect works where the condition is essentially perceptual -- pain, fatigue, depression, anxiety, or nausea, and so forth. Howeve it can do squat for the vast majority of physical conditions, like cancers, cholesterol, infections and the like.

You write ambiguously when you claim the ability to "figure out how to build a shelter, obtain food, and find water almost anywhere," as you precede that by reference to "animals but certainly humans." I don't know whether that was deliberate, or just part of your uninformed suppositions.

Your last paragraph is just pure nonsense -- except for one little bit, which I'm betting you didn't even notice. Since we are talking about "Darwin's Delusion" here, the very last two words, "causing speciation" betray you utterly.

 

[cladking]

A human couple had a child today, and the human gene pool evolved slightly with the addition of a new genome.

No. The species changed. It changed when the egg was fertilized and the change becomes permanent when the baby has off-spring and begin a continuous link of its genes. All of these changes are sudden and even the unbroken chain of the genes begins suddenly with a single birth.

That's evolution, and both parents and child are human. The ideas aren't contradictory.

If every child is the same species as its parent then we are homo erectus.

It's a definition, which is not an argument and therefore cannot contain a (circularity) fallacy.

Actually definitions can be circular.

The argument is that natural selection applied to genetic variation in population across generations leads to biological evolution (evolving gene pools).

Yes. This is your cleaned up version of "Darwin's Illusion". By any name it's a circular argument because no matter which individual survives you can just point to it and say "see it was fittest". Indeed, you don't even admit life is individual so you can just ASSUME the fittest one survived and it's characteristics, genes, experience, and consciousness were irrelevant since it mustta been fittest or it would not have survived.

If you give a bunch of dogs enough poison to kill 90% of them you have not proven the fittest 10% survived. You have merely predicted about how much poison it takes to kill 90% of them. If you keep doing this with successive generations long enough you get a pack of dogs resistant to that poison but otherwise no "fitter" than what you started with. You get a bunch of dead dogs and some that cost more to kill. You will never get a new species.

 

[gnostic]

Again! Darwin used "survival of the fittest".

No, Herbert Spencer uses and invented “survival of the fittest”.

But it is obvious to everyone, you are incapable of admitting that you are wrong. Stubborn ignorance is your trait.

 

[Dan From Smithville]

This may help clarify the confusion that non-scientists with little or no education in biology are having over the term adaptation. I largely recognize that those that think they know all will reject any reasonable definition that does not fit with what they want to believe, but this comes from biologists that study such things.

I prefer the terms that John Maynard Smith uses in his work "The Theory of Evolution, Canto edition". At the time there was no established nomenclature defining some of these conditions so he was the first to coin some of this.

Adaptation: "An animal or plant is genetically adapted to particular conditions if it possesses characters suiting it for life in those conditions, and if it develops those characters in all or most environments in which it is able to develop at all. Thus many birds and mammals are genetically adapted in that their colours render them less easily seen in their normal habitat, but their colour does not change if they are raised in unusual conditions."

This is the adaptation that is evolution over time. It is not sudden.

Physiologically versatile: "Flatfish are physiologically versatile in being able rapidly to change their colour according to their background. The effect of such rapid physiological adjustment is to enable an organism to maintain its individuality in spite of changes in external conditions; in this case by avoiding being eaten by predators. A more usual kind of physiological adjustment results, however, not in a change in the external appearance of the ‘animal, but in maintaining conditions within the body constant despite external changes. If you go into a cold room you may shiver, thus generating heat which keeps your body temperature constant, whereas on a hot day you sweat, and so are cooled down by the evaporation of water from your skin.

This is a much more rapid type of "adaptation" that doesn't result from selection acting on genetic variation. It is an adjusting of existing physiology to meet current conditions. I think this and the next confuse the unfamiliar and it is erroneously equated to adaptation in reference to evolution.

Developmentally flexible: "An animal or plant is developmentally flexible if when it is raised in or transferred to new conditions, it changes in structure so that it is better fitted to survive in the new environment. The changes involved are gradual, and are usually brought about by cellular multiplication and differentiation.

This can be illustrated by various kinds of flexibility found in human beings. If a man does heavy manual work, the skin on the palms of his hands grows thick and horny. This change is induced by pressure on the skin, and is adaptive in preventing the outer layers of skin being worn away and the hands from becoming sore."

This change is more gradual and, again, is not the result of selection acting on variation and is not heritable. Getting calluses from hard work doesn't mean your offspring will be born with calluses on their hands.

It seems to me that the objections to the synonymy of adaptation and evolution are based on confusion of these basic phenomena.

That and belief in a lot of erroneous information and semantical twisting of definitions.

Edit: For those that might be interested in going to the source and consulting Maynard Smith's words directly. It is a large pdf file.
https://gwern.net/doc/genetics/selection/natural/1993-smith-thetheoryofevolution.pdf

 

[Dan From Smithville]

No, Herbert Spencer uses and invented “survival of the fittest”.

But it is obvious to everyone, you are incapable of admitting that you are wrong. Stubborn ignorance is your trait.

It seems that we are seeing what I would call scientific revisionism based on a poor understanding of science, biology, theory and specifically the theory of evolution and related concepts.

If I was that wrong and was continually shown to be that wrong, I would hope I had the strength to recognize this, but it may not be that way for some apparently. Being told how wrong you are and then claiming to have explained and supported oneself multiple times when that never happened is a difficult position to educate.

 

[cladking]

"animals but certainly humans."

I didn't say that and that is not a sentence. It was lifted from a sentence that was clarifying that there is no placebo effect in animals or ancient man because it is caused by belief. Only homo omnisciencis has any beliefs at all. As such the reality we perceive (expect) becomes our reality. Believing you aren't thirsty might prolong your life by mere minutes but not being distracted by what you can't control might lead to a solution to your problems. All individuals can adapt to harsh environments (it's a great life if you don't weaken). Some will then flourish. This gets back to the nature of consciousness and experience. It gets back to the very genes of the individual and its ability to deduce the best courses of action. This is most especially important when these harsh conditions are temporary and the niche of an individual's species will return. Only those individuals which survive will be able to procreate. But this hardly means they are any more or less "fit"; merely that they survived a specific adversity by some specific means.

Indeed, life is truly a continuing test for almost every individual because even ideal conditions present a continuing series of hazards and opportunities which require experience and consciousness to master. Animals know this innately. Humans (homo omnisciencis) are removed from nature and their own individual natures by beliefs in everything from the Loch Ness Monster to Charles Darwin.

A mother rabbit can beat off a bobcat to save its young. One minute it's munching a carrot and feeding its young and the next it's called on to kick a wild cat in the nose. This is the nature of life. This is the nature of how species change; they acquire unusual characteristics in localized bottlenecks and then these characteristics lead to bloody noses or a whole new species. It all happens suddenly. If the cat knew it was going to be so fast it mightta been a little more cautious. Nothing in reality is gradual. Even the collision of galaxies may take eons but they collide far far more quickly than they travel to get there.

Reality is not what humans see. We see our beliefs. You see the infallibility of Darwin and someone else sees the Indubitable Snowman. None of it is real because it's all models and all beliefs.

 

[Dan From Smithville]

If a toxin is presented to dogs that kills 90% of them, the surviving 10% have much higher fitness in regards to that selection pressure. Breeding the survivors of each experiment together and repeating the selection will eventually produce dogs that are likely much more resistant to the selection of the toxin. The genes providing this fitness can be looked for and examined.

This is seen in nature with animals that produce toxins to prevent predation. It is often referred to as a genetic arms race. Where a population of prey species with a toxin selects for predators that have increased resistance to the toxin. In turn, the prey species is selected for individuals with greater levels of toxin production. This fitness has its costs though.

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdfdirect/10.1111/j.0014-3820.2002.tb00132.x

https://d1wqtxts1xzle7.cloudfront.net/43063079/Brodie_2005ParallelArmsRaces-libre.pdf?1456427879=&response-content-disposition=inline;+filename=Parallel_arms_races_between_garter_snake.pdf&Expires=1679274403&Signature=B08n1q2ie7EjYK-QtMG3nwMa0JyTqg9AdkNP5BI1a~GcFNHOVbBjFkzKFOPDJzr3N1F2OtXXir-WqWE~sqpUau2VkLa15Xf7S2KIapjkBlLfP54Hj4HVKgo0mzwrfHAaCX16R-L2nZtpMvozvdnJdtrwfmiuX5zRDJv~d4HHYxthFKYUM9Nbopw2s1Yr92~lQz6u-u4KYbq0QsRJok7Sd24Y2q2FMB~dBAtAcFQrLcNXHtWk0ALEWTbgFB~qHDYB4M2KoJniR0jdvBIw02qD-dFDTf45LaYp~bhEaIIwOZ3AbtAlQ2BXJNSIR5t8KFvx6zaXzyQ6yc4zjEnxRnJUvA__&Key-Pair-Id=APKAJLOHF5GGSLRBV4ZA

https://www.researchgate.net/profil...o-behavioral-rejection-of-toxic-newt-prey.pdf

 

[cladking]

Since we are talking about "Darwin's Delusion" here, the very last two words, "causing speciation" betray you utterly.

"Nature stabilizes but still populations undergo bottlenecks causing speciation."

Bottlenecks cause speciation. More accurately bottlenecks select for unusual behavior and it is the individuals displaying this individual behavior that suddenly creates a new species.

Every change in nature is sudden. "Life" is a part of nature so life changes suddenly as well.

ALL OBSERVED EVENTS ARE SUDDEN. This implies events (like speciation) that we rarely observe are also sudden.

 

[Evangelicalhumanist]

"Nature stabilizes but still populations undergo bottlenecks causing speciation."

Bottlenecks cause speciation. More accurately bottlenecks select for unusual behavior and it is the individuals displaying this individual behavior that suddenly creates a new species.

Every change in nature is sudden. "Life" is a part of nature so life changes suddenly as well.

ALL OBSERVED EVENTS ARE SUDDEN. This implies events (like speciation) that we rarely observe are also sudden.

Now THAT is, I'm afraid, objectively wrong, and you have not a single shred of science to back the statement up. And that's your problem -- you don't think it needs backing up, because you've decide, based on your own "intuition," that it couldn't possibly be wrong.

I refer you, as others have in this thread, to the Dunning-Kruger Effect.

 

[Dan From Smithville]

Interesting. A wild rabbit isn't likely to be munching a carrot.

Bottlenecks, as it has been pointed out many times, are not speciation events. A bottleneck involves a population and not an individual. It is the critical reduction of a populations size and genetic variation. They remain the species that they were prior to the bottleneck event.

 

[Evangelicalhumanist]

"Nature stabilizes but still populations undergo bottlenecks causing speciation."

Bottlenecks cause speciation. More accurately bottlenecks select for unusual behavior and it is the individuals displaying this individual behavior that suddenly creates a new species.

Every change in nature is sudden. "Life" is a part of nature so life changes suddenly as well.

ALL OBSERVED EVENTS ARE SUDDEN. This implies events (like speciation) that we rarely observe are also sudden.

And for the record, as you have proven (with much more than abundant evidence) that you are either unable or unwilling to learn, I shall stop conversing with you. Even the greatest teacher can't get through to a brick.

 

[Dan From Smithville]

Now THAT is, I'm afraid, objectively wrong, and you have not a single shred of science to back the statement up. And that's your problem -- you don't think it needs backing up, because you've decide, based on your own "intuition," that it couldn't possibly be wrong.

I refer you, as others have in this thread, to the Dunning-Kruger Effect.

Intuitive thinking in ignorance is just day dreaming from what I have seen. It appears to result in a plethora of confusion and erroneous ideas that are declared as facts by those that have already claimed no expertise in biology.

It isn't science and it isn't good thinking either. It leads down rabbit holes that go in circles.

 

[Dan From Smithville]

The problem here is that it can be difficult to know what you intend when you use private definitions of words without being clear what YOU mean when you use the word.

Here's a good example. You must have a private definition of one or both of these words to equate them, since in common usage, these words refer to different things. For example, I just awakened from a nap. Consciousness disappeared for me while sleeping, but I remained just as alive asleep as when awake.

I don't define adaptation that way, and you probably shouldn't put quotations around words you attribute to others that you didn't copy verbatim. Here's the definition I provided (verbatim): "Adaptation is change to more optimally exploit a situation, and can occur over very long periods of time." Survival of the fittest wasn't part of that definition. You inserted it. Developing calluses due to learning a stringed instrument or wearing ill-fitting shoes is an adaptation that is neither sudden nor related to survival of the fittest.

That was in response to, "Evolution occurs daily." Are you confusing evolution and speciation? A human couple had a child today, and the human gene pool evolved slightly with the addition of a new genome. If there was a mutation in one of the parental germ cells, then there may be a new allele in that gene pool. That's evolution, and both parents and child are human. The ideas aren't contradictory.

And what shall we call the process whereby the individuals who are different and survive because of that difference begin to accumulate in a population over a few generations?

It's a definition, which is not an argument and therefore cannot contain a (circularity) fallacy. It's a common misunderstanding. We see it in a common criticism of evolution that survival of the fittest is a circular argument - "It's fit because it survives and it survives because it's fit." But that's not an argument, just a definition. The argument is that natural selection applied to genetic variation in population across generations leads to biological evolution (evolving gene pools).

I have seen a number of terms that appear to have private definitions different from and often contradictory to the established nomenclature that everyone else is using. This sort of semantics is very confusing and seems only to exist to sustain an otherwise erroneous position.

 

[Dan From Smithville]

Another point of clarification. Human beings are classified in the genus Homo, species sapiens. That is the recognized nomenclature for the species as it exists now and has for the last 300,000 years. Any other nomenclature that is being applied to people is unrecognized by science and appears to be a secret, personal definition that has no meaning to anyone other than that person holding such a secret definition. Thus having no descriptive value or utility in these conversations.

 

[Dan From Smithville]

Just another clarification. When selection (the environment) is so great that adaptation (evolution) cannot occur rapidly enough to meet it, the event is referred to as extinction. The selection imposed by the Chicxulub impact was that type of selection relative to most non-Avian dinosaurs.

When selection is great, but random and incomplete and a much reduced population remains with much reduced genetic variation, this can be referred to as a bottleneck event. Based on genetic evidence, these are known to have occurred historically in many species including humans and cheetahs. A more recent bottleneck in elephant populations is recognized due to modern hunting techniques and range elimination.

None of those are speciation events nor do they result in speciation.

 

[Dan From Smithville]

For the record, there is no evidence that all change in all living things is sudden. All the evidence indicates that change in living things is highly variable and relevant to the system being examined. Biochemical activity can range in rate, but is often incredibly rapid. Lifespan is highly variable and can be from days to millennia depending on the species. Generation time is also variable and can be from 20 minutes to decades. This is noted in every biological system that has been examined.

I can think of no reason to consider all change in living things to be equal in duration or to all be sudden. One need not be an expert in the field to recognize the evidence that change is variable. Common sense tells us this.

 

[Dan From Smithville]

Adaptation is change to more optimally exploit a situation, and can occur over very long periods of time.

I think I did - ring species. You still haven't tried to rebut that argument, so, unsurprisingly, I still consider it a correct answer. If I considered it correct then, why wouldn't I now still? I've explained what can change my mind and what can't. Only rebuttal, which is a very specific type of argument - one that falsifies a claim. Merely disagreeing and explaining what you believe instead accomplishes nothing. You'd need to give me a reason to think I'm wrong, and only a sound, falsifying argument can do that. Nothing else. Please look at that again: NOTHING ELSE. If your purpose is only to share your ideas, then you don't need to worry about how they're received. But if your purpose is to change critically thinking minds, you'll need to learn what can and what cannot do that.

Because that true. There was no human being born that didn't have human parents. But this opens the door to the sorites paradox that occurs with gradual transformations from one thing to another. There was no first human being, yet human beings didn't exist ten million years ago but do now.

No. That's a semantic quibble based in my not specifying being fertile.

So you claim.

No, based on their fecundity. Surviving isn't enough, which is why I call survival of the fittest an unfortunate choice of language. Proliferation of the most fecund is more descriptive.

So you say. You know the drill. Demonstrate the circularity if you can, and if you're correct, you can. If you're wrong, you can't.

Darwin claimed they evolve.

Do you mean naturally gentle, or tamed by man? Darwin's theory only addresses the former. Either way, nothing about wolves contradicts Darwin. If you want to do more than tell others your opinion, you need to do more than merely state it.

Did I claim that? What I said was that niche is not part of the concept of species, and I gave the ring species example how speciation can occur in a niche. I assume that you didn't accept that argument, but since you didn't falsify it, it remains my position. You can't make progress without dialectic, and it's not dialectic without rebuttal/counterargument/falsification (synonyms in this context). Separate lions in a single niche into two populations unable to interbreed, and eventually, you will two species of lion.

It seems the mechanism of selection in ring species, is speciation by distance. Distance between populations is so great that gene exchange between the most distant populations is so greatly reduced that new species evolve that can breed with neighboring populations, but are incapable of breeding with more distant populations. In the case of ring species, distance is the barrier.

It is interesting that distance is a proposed mechanism for a population bottleneck of about 100,000 years ago in cheetahs. They expanded their range so rapidly, genetic variation was greatly reduced by the limitation of distance on gene introgression between populations over the new, expanded range. Their genetics was diluted by distance.

 

[Audie]

If you are using your own “made up” definitions to words that ONLY YOU WOULD USE, but no one else use your definitions, then it is you, you are the one playing word games.

You are bloody projecting, cladking. You are blaming anyone who disagree with you, as playing word games, but you are the one redefining words that suit you and no one else use these redefinitions.

You are the one playing word games, and at the same time, causing confusion. People don’t have to follow or accept whatever definitions to words that you have changed.

Stop blaming others for your own faults.

wf