Darwin's Illusion

[cladking]

That's a terrible overstatement, as the general drift of what he hypothesized was correct. To blame him for not batting 1000 is like blaming Freud for much the same since so much more is now known about both evolutionary biology and psychology.

At the risk of going off topic I do not consider anything Freud did as science and believe he was correct about nothing. He was insightful but wholly wrong.

Darwin's work was "scientific" and much of what he wrote was well reasoned and very much like reality but all of his premises were wrong so all of conclusions were wrong.

 

[wellwisher]

This is simply untrue. There are multiple experiments in which scientists have predicted how organisms would respond to environmental pressures, set up the required experiments and let them run. And lo and behold, organisms did just what was predicted. Here are just two of them:

The Wild Experiment That Showed Evolution in Real Time

By placing wild mice in large outdoor enclosures, an ambitious team of scientists has illustrated the full process of natural selection in a single study.

www.theatlantic.com

Environmental pressure is the basis for natural selection, which I have said, by itself, was actually a good rational theory. If we stopped the theory of evolution, at Darwin's natural selection, that aspect can make predictions. If we placed thick and thin fur animals, from all over the world, in a tropical rain forest, I bet thin fur is selected. Thick fur will become a liability due to too much R-value. The loss of predictive value, in the modern theory, begins with DNA and casino math.

The genetic addendum to evolution, added in the 1950's, is where casino math came in, and Evolution becomes less of a predictive theory and more like a catalog of lottery winners, since both use the same math; odds. Even if we have a perfect DNA catalog of all previous winners, based on DNA, we still cannot use this to know about the next winner, tomorrow.

We cannot know all the environmental pressures for natural selection, millions of years ago. We depend on just the DNA and carbon dating to catalog. If there was a cause and affect between environmental pressures and specific changes on the DNA, we do not have that knowledge in the current catalog. We do not know about future pressures, either, so DNA does not work for making predictions. The DNA data is useful, but there is a gap to a rational future.

We cannot just look at ape or human DNA and infer the future of this DNA, since DNA was not fully correlated by exact selective pressures. This weak system could be updated, since any DNA defines specific conformational potential in water, with this potential having a vector to the future. This may looks like magic to those who prefer dice and cards.

As a good and important example of the magic of casino math, global warming and climate change depend on casino math for prediction, therefore this also depends on a version of gaming odds. In sports betting, which also uses casino math, there is a sports bet called the over/under, where the bookies try to predict the sum of the total score for both teams. When you bet the over/under, on game day, you chose whether the sum of the two teams will higher or lower than the bookie predicts.

In terms of global warming, melting glaciers/poles and even climate changes, the consensus of science bookies and the Lefty base, keeps betting on the over, and they have got it wrong every time. The pace of change is slower than the consensus bookie odds, makes it out to be. The game is more like a slower paced pitchers dual, than a home run derby. Why are these bookie still in business, with so many over/under losses? That can be explained with politics, which also uses casino math. The push for the over, is trying to create excitement; fear, to game the system. The base will bet on over to feel the excitement.

The consensus of science bookies, appears to be lousy at picking winnable odds. Why are many still following them? One affect is more like the nostalgia better who always betting on the home team, due to loyalty and not the linear goal of a bet to win. I am trying to show you guys the pitfalls of science betting; casino math, and how the casino of science ruined a good base theory for evolution called natural selection.

The final question is, why do you always pick the "over" in the over/under science bets of global warming seeing this bet has lost for 20 years, straight? Is there a term to define a consensus of losing bookies? Maybe they win when you lose, based on politics who has a different over/under bet.

 

[cladking]

As if they alone have the ability to come up with these novel stumbling blocks for science that have been until now, unseen. Yet, are repeats of empty claims decades old.

Ignoring obvious problems with science such as its dependence on axioms and that it can only study what can be reduced does not make these problems go away. It makes them worse because they are unseen in both experiment and experimental conclusions.

 

[cladking]

To be fair, unsupported claims of ancient cultures over 40,000 years old that had science and some sort of near-perfect universal language are novel.

The Bible says exactly this!! We have merely discounted and misinterpreted the Bible.

That there was a single language is recorded in a lot of ancient literature and this language was confused. It is still confused but has splintered into 8 billion languages rather than just PIE.

The Bible says that working in concert homo sapiens were able to construct anything they wanted.

It doesn't not say that the change in language was a speciation event that gave rise to sleep walkers, homo omnisciencis, homo circularis rationatio.

There is nothing new under the sun from linear funiculars to animal science. Life is consciousness and it's pretty difficult to come up with anything truly new. The closest I've come to it is merely to define two distinct metaphysics. To do this one must understand both logical science and experimental science so this is apparently an entirely new concept under the sun.

 

[cladking]

Even if we have a perfect DNA catalog of all previous winners, based on DNA, we still cannot use this to know about the next winner, tomorrow.

It will be a long time till we can make such predictions but before this happens Darwin will be relegated to the trash heap.

 

[cladking]

It is a logical impossibility to determine every possible iteration of a complex to declare that it is irreducible.

Even consciousness might someday be understood but the simple fact is we have not even begun to reduce it to experiment. First there must be a definition.

 

[cladking]

Darwin's ideas were considerably more sophisticated than you give him credit for.

For instance, he didn't think "organic life was exceedingly simple". In his The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication (published 1868), he had anticipated genetics in proposing ‘pangenesis’ ie that each part of an organism contained ‘gemmules’, particles too small to be seen, by which physical inheritance was passed to offspring, and he noted examples of their "modification" both as a cause of variation and as a cause of genetic disorders.

He saw life much as we see consciousness; as a black box problem that can be factored out of change in species.

He was wrong as we are.

And as you know, Darwin's theory of evolution was just the beginning. The theory itself has come a long way since 1859, and as you'd expect is a great deal better researched, better evidenced, more rigorously tested and more deeply understood as a result of more than 160 years of scientific enquiry since then.

Of course! There's a great deal of truth and science in Evolution.

It is still wrong.

 

[wellwisher]

The final question is, why do you always pick the "over" in the over/under science bets of global warming seeing this bet has lost for 20 years, straight? Is there a term to define a consensus of losing bookies? Maybe they win when you lose, based on politics who has a different over/under bet.

I figured out the how and why the Left keeps losing the over/under bet but keeps getting funded. The over/under bet does not pick the winner of the game. The over/under bet only deals with sum of the scores of the two teams. Politically, your home team can still win the game, even if you personally lose, the over/under best. The poorly predicted excitement (exaggerated fear) encourages an over bet. This draws in the most excitable fans, to help make their home team play harder for the win. You guys ten double down after each over/under loss with fanaticism.

This full stadium affect; overly excited home fans, can cause the other team to play defensively. They will continue to win the under bet; lower score, but they will also lose the game. The fear being created by exaggerating the over bet; sky will fall in two days or the glaciers sink ships, motivates the mob with fear.

Even when the other side win the over/under; exaggeration was erroneous, the crooks keeps getting funded; win the game, even after losing all the over/under bets for 20 years. This scam is why casino math should be outlawed in science. We need to return to rational science, buffered from political game makers; same casino math is used by science, bookies and politicians. The latter can game the system to make a loser look like winners; waste resources on bad bets. If we get rid of Casino math in science, politicians will need to become more rational to play. This is better than gaming.

 

[It Aint Necessarily So]

None of us can predict the future

Much of the future is predictable. Some are better at that than others. I just had this discussion on another thread where I was told that only God has foreknowledge, after which I offered many examples of reliable predictions man can make. The goalposts were then shifter from foreknowledge to perfect foreknowledge, which I agreed man lacks, but not that any such god existed.

We are underestimating the importance of "punctuated equilibrium" but more importantly we are misinterpreting the cause and its ubiquity.

Here's another of those overly broad pronouncements that cannot be addressed directly for lack of detail. I can't speak to the comment - just about it. It contains the usual ingredients - a vague grievance about an undescribed matter depicted as a problem without a problem identified nor an idea on how to improve on whatever is being rejected.

we are imagining a gradual change in whales over millions of years

Yes. We have good reason to do so. I'm sure you saw the metaphor of the photo album comprising annual photos throughout a lifetime. We look at those and imagine gradual change there as well, and we are correct.

Like most people you want to ascribe complex behavior in simple life forms as "instinct"

No, I don't. Instinct is one motivator of behavior, intuition another, and experience a third. But maybe your definition of instinct is different from mine. It's inborn knowledge not derived from personal experience, like that used to peck one's way out of an egg and then eat and swallow.

So long as you think of humans as being the only truly conscious beast you'll miss the point.

I don't. I've described consciousness in my dogs a few times here.

Animals respond to reality and in most cases this appears as "instinct" to us.

Disagree again. Much of my dogs behavior is learned through induction, not inborn.

I'm sure the biggest problem is that most of the theory is composed of what you can not believe because your premises and axioms are wholly different.

The reason I can't understand your beliefs isn't due to any beliefs I have. I can understand anything comprehensible. It needs to be coherent. To be that, it needs to be clear and lacking self-contradiction. I'm wondering if you can tell that your ideas are incomplete as you relate them - that there isn't enough there to disagree with above the level of individual claims that don't seem to have much to do with one another or point to any conclusion. I'm a little surprised that you aren't more interested in that claim. If you consider it untrue, shouldn't you be showing me what error you think you see and why you think it's an error? If you don't consider it untrue, shouldn't you be interested in how you could communicate more effectively?

Most of what we all believe is fiction

Most of what I believe is derived empirically from experiencing life, and is demonstrably correct. It's mostly ideas like I believe that I live five blocks north and three blocks east of the pier. Is that fact or fiction? Well, if walking five blocks south and three west from my home gets me to the pier, that's good enough for me. I can use that knowledge to anticipate outcomes and in this case, control them. I don't require more of any idea to consider it knowledge.

Merely that "survival of the fittest" is an exceedingly poor perspective on life and what causes change in species.

The claim is that genetic variation subject to natural selection causes gene pools to evolve to generate new species.

If all individuals are "fit" then it must be something else driving change.

You have not established that premise that all individuals are fit. You haven't even defined fitness. But all individuals are not equally fecund, they aren't all equal at surviving and competing for scarce resources like mates, and differential success at reproduction occurs.

Individuals who are not fit are irrelevant to change in species.

Fitness is a relative term. The most fit yesterday will be supplanted by the more fit of tomorrow.

We have merely discounted and misinterpreted the Bible.

I don't think I've misinterpreted it. Do you disagree? Do you consider it of divine provenance, or purely the work of man?

The Bible says that working in concert homo sapiens were able to construct anything they wanted.

Why would it matter if the Bible said that? It also says that we can move mountains with a mustard seed of faith.

 

[cladking]

Much of the future is predictable. Some are better at that than others.

When it comes to almost anything except politics I'm one of the best. Remember it was I who predicted a hot spot on the first couple courses of the Great Pyramid near the north side and another under the chevrons above the entrance. Then I campaigned for many years to get them to do such basic science and prove I was right. I've made lots and lots of quite specific and quite accurate predictions.

But I understand the nature of predictions and KNOW that there is no such thing as a Nostradamus (or at least there's only one).

Here's another of those overly broad pronouncements that cannot be addressed directly for lack of detail.

There's ample detail!!! Evolution is wrong and reality is closer to the Bible or punctuated equilibrium. What do you want me to do, complete a century and a half of scientific research by thousands of people by myself?

I'm working alone here in my spare time and I have half a dozen pursuits and research that take more time and effort than thinking about change in species. This is just an adjunct to my more important work in ancient science which itself isn't my most important pursuit.

I don't. I've described consciousness in my dogs a few times here.

But yoyu don't believe in slime mold consciousness nor bee consciousness do you?

Most of what I believe is derived empirically from experiencing life, and is demonstrably correct.

For about the hundredth time in this thread "empirical evidence" is an interpretation of what you already believe. Most of that evidence fits my theory better or is irrelevant to the reality. Science and theory are based in experiment, not evidence.

I have a great deal of respect for experience as all true knowledge is experience, however just because something is true through experience does not prove it is the simplest explanation of reality. It can even be false. The witch doctor has lots of experience driving away bad mo jo but to at least some degree the knowledge, the experience, is most probably contradictory to reality.

Much of my dogs behavior is learned through induction, not inborn.

I believe all induction is based on abstraction and animals do not understand abstraction. I believe what you are mistaking for induction is simple pattern recognition and extrapolation.

...later

 

[It Aint Necessarily So]

Remember it was I who predicted a hot spot on the first couple courses of the Great Pyramid near the north side and another under the chevrons above the entrance. Then I campaigned for many years to get them to do such basic science and prove I was right. I've made lots and lots of quite specific and quite accurate predictions.

I didn't know that congratulations. I also made a call about thirty years ago during the Clinton years about which I am proud, although not happy to be correct - the ineluctable downward spiral of America. I saw then that I would likely be expatriating someday.

What do you want me to do, complete a century and a half of scientific research by thousands of people by myself?

All I asked is that you write your ideas in clear sentences that reinforce one another and paint a coherent word picture - the same as I try to do here.

you don't believe in slime mold consciousness nor bee consciousness do you?

I don't believe that slime molds are conscious since they lack brains. Bees have a ganglion of neurons, but there may be no consciousness or else a very rudimentary form.

For about the hundredth time in this thread "empirical evidence" is an interpretation of what you already believe.

I don't understand what your complaint is. What is it you don't like about the way I acquire knowledge? I've already explained that my present method of processing information since leaving religion has done what I wanted it to do and continues to work for me, so I don't know what problem you are imagining or what incentive you think I have to change it.

I believe all induction is based on abstraction and animals do not understand abstraction. I believe what you are mistaking for induction is simple pattern recognition and extrapolation.

That's what induction is, and many animals do it. It's fundamental to both classical and operant conditioning, and it need not be deliberate. I just gave my pug a bite of what I'm eating. Normally, I drop bites for him, but today, the floor had just been washed, so I decided to put it in his mouth. He didn't even notice my hand next to him once he saw that it pick up food. He was looking at the floor.

just because something is true through experience does not prove it is the simplest explanation of reality. It can even be false.

I'm not looking for the simplest explanation, just the simplest explanation that accounts for all relevant observed phenomena (most parsimonious). And if it is false, it will be discovered empirically (experientially). I've told you what I require of an idea to call it knowledge. It needs to accurately anticipate outcomes. I told you about the directions from my house to the pier. If they get me there, they are correct. If they get me there faster than other directions which also get me there but with less effort or time expended, they are also optimal. I'm not sure how you process evidence, but you can't do better than that.

The words truth, correctness, and knowledge have no meaning for me if they are divorced from any eventual decision-making process. The value of knowledge is to inform decisions and drive actions, which then modify events in the external world, ideally in a predictable way. We should expect similar decisions made under similar circumstances to lead to similar outcomes.

In other words, the ultimate measure of a true proposition is its capacity to inform decisions under the expectation of desirable consequences. Take away any of these elements and the word truth and knowledge refer to nothing more than an idea that one likes, and this describes both formal science and the empiricism of daily life, like looking both ways before crossing a street to effect the desired outcome of crossing safely. It's really that simpler and straightforward.

As I said, it works as hoped, so I have no incentive to modify it. If it's not your way, you might want to try it.

 

[Dan From Smithville]

At the risk of going off topic I do not consider anything Freud did as science and believe he was correct about nothing. He was insightful but wholly wrong.

Darwin's work was "scientific" and much of what he wrote was well reasoned and very much like reality but all of his premises were wrong so all of conclusions were wrong.

Can you list Darwin's premises for us?

Then show that each is wrong and why?

 

[Dan From Smithville]

Ignoring obvious problems with science such as its dependence on axioms and that it can only study what can be reduced does not make these problems go away. It makes them worse because they are unseen in both experiment and experimental conclusions.

How does this address what I wrote unless you are offering it as another example of the belief in omniscience that underlies most of the empty claims against science.

What solutions do you offer for these alleged problems? Is it something from experiment or just your imagination? We have already established that you cannot claim to have fathered a new species of fly, since you never established that the flies that survived your attempts at artificial selection were a different species to begin with. Your merely declaring they were different species is not experiment or evidence to establish they were. You assume you did something significant without any knowledge that you did anything more than kill a few flies. Therein lies the problem. You assume you do things without any knowledge, experiment or evidence that you did anything.

Can you show me that science is dependent on axioms rather than evidence? If the problems of science are unseen, what are you seeing that you can show us? Do you believe that repeating a claim over and over establishes that claim as valid. Can you support that position?

 

[Dan From Smithville]

The Bible says exactly this!! We have merely discounted and misinterpreted the Bible.

That there was a single language is recorded in a lot of ancient literature and this language was confused. It is still confused but has splintered into 8 billion languages rather than just PIE.

The Bible says that working in concert homo sapiens were able to construct anything they wanted.

It doesn't not say that the change in language was a speciation event that gave rise to sleep walkers, homo omnisciencis, homo circularis rationatio.

There is nothing new under the sun from linear funiculars to animal science. Life is consciousness and it's pretty difficult to come up with anything truly new. The closest I've come to it is merely to define two distinct metaphysics. To do this one must understand both logical science and experimental science so this is apparently an entirely new concept under the sun.

So you are merely extending the claims of the Bible embellished with your own imagination without benefit of any experiment or evidence to support this process and then assuming you are correct?

What other ancient literature assumes that there was only one language? What has been done to establish that this perceived assumption wasn't just cultural bias and reflects a fact that there once was only one language? Are a few scattered pictograms of varying age that may be similar really evidence of a single ancient language or are they evidence that someone that wants to believe they are such evidence is seeing what they believe?

 

[Dan From Smithville]

It will be a long time till we can make such predictions but before this happens Darwin will be relegated to the trash heap.

What do hyperbolic statements like this really say about the work of Darwin?

Is it your belief that we should know everything suddenly without effort? Do you blow up a bridge, just because it was made a few years before all the new bridges along the route even when that bridge still serves its purpose? That doesn't seem like a rational paradigm. Should Newton and Galileo be scrubbed from history and tossed on the trash heap too for their failure to be omniscient?

 

[Dan From Smithville]

Even consciousness might someday be understood but the simple fact is we have not even begun to reduce it to experiment. First there must be a definition.

How does this response address in any way what I wrote about irreducible complexity?

Why do definitions matter to you or that I should believe they do, when you use secret personal definitions of words that already have definitions in science?

If I speak of bottlenecks, I am using the term as defined in its current use in science and not in some secret, unspoken new way that confuses others and is better described by other existing terms with existing definitions.

You speak often of fitness, but never define what you mean by it. You speak of consciousness as if you are an expert extolling decades of your research findings as fact, when you never define the term or support any claim you make regarding it. You like laundry list and use it in a way that fits my understanding of the definition, and you have a laundry list of terms you never define so that others can understand what you are talking about. It is as if you leave it nebulous on purpose to avoid real scrutiny and keep the engagement alive for the purpose of the engagement and not what is under discussion. You use many other terms in ways that do not fit with the definitions I use or that anyone else on here uses. You defer to some nebulous claim of billions of languages and yet make no effort to bridge the gap. So, I am left to wonder at the value of a claim that there must be a definition coming from someone that responds as you do.

 

[John53]

Why do definitions matter to you or that I should believe they do, when you use secret personal definitions of words that already have definitions in science?

I'm having Mr ID flashbacks

 

[Dan From Smithville]

He saw life much as we see consciousness; as a black box problem that can be factored out of change in species.

He was wrong as we are.

More nebulous statements of some perceived problem that is never identified. What did Darwin see and why is that a problem with the modern theory of evolution?

Of course! There's a great deal of truth and science in Evolution.

It is still wrong.

How is it wrong? What are some actual reasons it is wrong based on evidence and experiment? Not just random links found with a key word search. But studies of substance that support these claims so that I too can agree with them.

 

[Dan From Smithville]

I'm having Mr ID flashbacks

That is interesting you say that. I had the same thought recently myself.

 

[Dan From Smithville]

When it comes to almost anything except politics I'm one of the best.

Really? One of the best what?

Remember it was I who predicted a hot spot on the first couple courses of the Great Pyramid near the north side and another under the chevrons above the entrance. Then I campaigned for many years to get them to do such basic science and prove I was right. I've made lots and lots of quite specific and quite accurate predictions.

But I understand the nature of predictions and KNOW that there is no such thing as a Nostradamus (or at least there's only one).

Do you have references to show us so that we can all praise your first to market? Or was this suppressed by Peers?

There's ample detail!!! Evolution is wrong and reality is closer to the Bible or punctuated equilibrium. What do you want me to do, complete a century and a half of scientific research by thousands of people by myself?

What is that detail it being so ample?

Punctuated equilibrium is evolution. Just a different mode. You can see how others might see a lot of what you say as contradictory and doubt you your understanding of the basics based on statements like that.

Aren't you doing just that by your presence here and saying that 150 years of science is all wrong?

I'm working alone here in my spare time and I have half a dozen pursuits and research that take more time and effort than thinking about change in species. This is just an adjunct to my more important work in ancient science which itself isn't my most important pursuit.

I'm sure it all is, but doesn't that seem like a cop out and avoiding more detailed responses that someone of your avowed knowledge could dispense easily?

But yoyu don't believe in slime mold consciousness nor bee consciousness do you?

Do you have evidence to share with us so that we can see it too? Or do you feel that what you say should be accepted without question or vetting?

For about the hundredth time in this thread "empirical evidence" is an interpretation of what you already believe.

Can you provide examples that this is so? If I record temperatures daily at a single location for 20 years and then analyze that data and find trends, can you show me that I wanted those trends to exist or willed them into existence?

Do you think those recorded temperatures change depending on who is looking at them or using them?

Are those recorded temperatures really interpretation or are they measurements that can be compared and contrasted to predicted values and other measurements?

Most of that evidence fits my theory better or is irrelevant to the reality.

What theory is that? Are you saying that evidence is not part of reality or that some isn't?

Science and theory are based in experiment, not evidence. inter-subjective

Experiments generate evidence and that evidence is used to generate theories. What do you mean by inter-subjective. You haven't used that phrase here before, but others recently have. What do you mean by it and how does it relate to what you are saying?