Darwin's Illusion

[Dan From Smithville]

I'm supposed to go get groceries but so far I've been too fat and lazy to move. I like to get there when they open to avoid large numbers of humans but that ship has sailed so I might leave it until tomorrow. I'm not sure how I survive such a hectic exciting life.

I've been following the recent discussion about fossils and soil. I think that some of that confusion arises from the misunderstanding of an article that was recently posted on the forum about the discovery of a modern horse buried in Pleistocene soils. The horse was initially misdated and this made it to the popular press before it could be fully examined. Of course, when the press gets ahold of a story and misrepresents it or blows it out of proportion that is always attributed as a failure of science.

It seems that the horse was intentionally buried after death as early as the late 18th Century to as recent as the early 20th Century. When the skeleton was discovered, the cursory dating was based on the age of the soil to the depth it was buried. More serious examination revealed that it was a modern horse and not the remains from the Pleistocene. Science determined it's actual age and explained the reasons for the initial dating.

Now, I think the person that posted that article believes fossils are found only in soil. They do not appear to understand the different types of fossils, or anything regarding fossilization. Or perhaps they do not want to understand.

This success of science is painted as a failure of science and the conclusion of fossils seems to be that they are always found in soil and the soil somehow, inexplicably, falsifies the dating of the remains.

It is a terrible thing to know everything and still be confounded by poor reading comprehension.

 

[Dan From Smithville]

Does omniscience make you glow in the dark?

Did you know that cinnamon is not toxic to dogs. I didn't know that much about the effects of cinnamon on dogs. It seems I was not alone, I just didn't choose to make irrational statements about cinnamon and dogs.

Known observation and experiment indicate that cinnamon can be used to treat inflammation in dogs. Some experiments indicate that it can lower the heart rate and blood pressure of dogs.

I have no idea what unknown observations and experiments tell us about cinnamon, dogs, cinnamon and dogs or pretty much anything, since they are unknown.

The only thing I can say about unknown observation and experiment is that if you know them, then they are not unknown and you can provide the references.

 

[Dan From Smithville]

I think you are correct. People that choose to use what they imagine to be facts instead of opening their minds, observing and learning seem to come to the conclusion that they know everything. And without having to expend any energy or effort to learn like everyone else.

It seems pretty easy to start believing something, never learning or checking those beliefs against what is known and deciding that those imaginative and wild speculations just suddenly become how it is. In fact, it seems this imagined speculation is elevated to the "truth" and everything else is then dismissed without reason learning or review. Mechanism are created in an attempt to render rebuttal moot by declaring that detractors can't see the emperor's beautiful clothes, so there must be something wrong with them and not with the revealed "truth" of fantastical speculation. Word games become a staple of response, since there is no evidence or experiment to support the fantastical speculation.

It is really sad when you consider how amazing nature is and how fulfilling learning about what is actually happening with it can be.

I wonder if you will get any citations from those many unknown sources. LOL!

 

[John53]

Did you know that cinnamon is not toxic to dogs. I didn't know that much about the effects of cinnamon on dogs. It seems I was not alone, I just didn't choose to make irrational statements about cinnamon and dogs.

Known observation and experiment indicate that cinnamon can be used to treat inflammation in dogs. Some experiments indicate that it can lower the heart rate and blood pressure of dogs.

I have no idea what unknown observations and experiments tell us about cinnamon, dogs, cinnamon and dogs or pretty much anything, since they are unknown.

The only thing I can say about unknown observation and experiment is that if you know them, then they are not unknown and you can provide the references.

Maybe we could try developing a range of cinnamon flavoured poodles?

 

[Dan From Smithville]

Indeed.

Look at the attempts to rationalize the wild speculation and declare it checked against observation and experiment. As if. What observations? What experiments? How are those, if they exist, not part of what is known? If observation and experiment exist to support them, why are those never presented? Those are important questions that will never get answered by the speculators. They can't answer those questions. They have to ignore them. If they attempt to learn how to answer them, they would soon see their speculation fall apart in their own minds.

The dichotomy of genetic change that is adaptation and the same genetic change that is evolution is never explained. How can they be both not the same and the same?

I don't think you are ever going to get a reasonable answer that isn't built on a mound of unobserved, imagined belief that has no backing of experiment.

It has occurred to me that since all these observations and experiments are unknown, they could just as easily support the science and deny all the irrational speculation about nature. Who can say, given that they are unknown.

 

[Dan From Smithville]

Maybe we could try developing a range of cinnamon flavoured poodles?

That's genius! That is a completely unexplored, should I say "unknown" area of the market.

 

[Dan From Smithville]

Maybe we could try developing a range of cinnamon flavoured poodles?

If we were to create a bottleneck that leaves only a few poodles and we just randomly breed them, there is a small chance that some of them may taste like cinnamon in several hundred to several thousand "sudden" years.

That seems like a sound plan based on observations and experiments that no one even knows were made.

Until now, I've never considered the possibility that things that aren't known to exist could offer me so much support.

 

[Dan From Smithville]

Maybe we could try developing a range of cinnamon flavoured poodles?

I make a lot of my posts for lurkers that I have no way of knowing even exist, but suddenly applying gap theory, I can assume that they exist and need to know about purple, cinnamon flavored poodles.

I like this new gap theory. You can put whatever you want in the gaps. At least until someone fills it with the facts of known observation and experiment.

I think I've gotten more than enough mileage out of this. Time to await the next wild, or hopefully, silly claim.

 

[gnostic]

You really have not answered my question. And frankly, your explanation about soil shifting doesn't make sense as you talk about why or why not. Have a good evening.

I have given you my answer.

Your claimed that soil moves, are bit in the “vague” side of “what if” assumption, as in no details, no evidence to support your assumption, and no real world example that soil moving would affect dating any specific fossil.

Until you present actual example that soil moving would disrupt or distort dating techniques of fossils, I cannot really answer your hypothetical “what if” claim.

 

[cladking]

I can't wait to see the word games that explain all that. Clearly it must be things that I can't see, because I don't believe they are there. Yeah, right.

You quoted your own post instead of responding to me;

"No. Bottlenecks which lead to speciation must be under conscious control. A dog can't decide its color or the length of its ears. But it can control what it eats and the foods it seeks so if only dogs which eat tree bark survive a bottleneck then they will probably breed a new species. Of course this presumes that there exists an underlying genetic reason for their predilection and that some event selects for the behavior.

Genetics and behavior are intimately linked in every species including homo omnisciencis but in other species the connection is much more intimate and there is less effect of learning because they don't learn such an array of subjects as humans. Their learning also is more directly connected with reality and their experiences as determined by their genes. Humans become their beliefs because we see only our beliefs but other species become what they know. It is this knowledge that keeps individuals alive, not fitness.

I believe this is the cause of "evolution". When nature selects for color this is adaptation. Both tend to occur very suddenly; over the course of a few generations."

We clearly see things like humans operating on their beliefs and it is obvious that in animals genetics and behavior are closely related. Cats don't feed at the bottom of rivers and catfish don't use a litterbox. A dog and no other individual selects what it looks like but almost every individual selects what it eats. You're simply arguing against the obvious and tautologies.

We see rapid change in species like the peppered moth when there is high morbidity for the sin of having the wrong color but the higher the odds of an individual dying the lower the odds the species can change in time. Such things are mere logic. If every single moth is eaten then there is no change in species; no adaptation.

You simply refuse to see unnatural selection from a different vantage point. If you breed only the tame wolves then you are effectively creating a bottleneck. Everything else is semantics and an insistence on viewing reality only in terms to which you are accustomed. You are simply choosing not to see that all the excluded wolves are effectively dead as far as breeding a new species, dogs, is concerned. If every dog not in your purple poodle experiment suddenly died it would just leave you with fewer dogs to work with. But if every wolf died when the dogs were created it would have no effect on the outcome because we know they got dogs. You probably would not get a purple dog because this is not how "change in species" works. Even if you did get a purple one it would still be a poodle because no poodle has ever decided its color.

Every poodle is a dog but every dog came from a wolf.

Again, if RANDOM individuals breed you get exactly the same species with a less diverse genome. If individuals are selected with specific traits over which they have no control you get the same species with more of that trait. But if you select individuals that display behavior or anything that can be controlled by the individuals then you will get a new species. If the behavior is near normal then the new species is little different. But if it's very unusual behavior or anything controlled by the individual then the new species is likely to be very very different.

Ancient people knew this and used it to invent agriculture. This is one of the primary drivers of change in species. There is no survival of the fittest because "fitness" is continually being redefined by nature in a random walk and niches don't last long enough to allow speciation. There is no evidence for survival of the fittest beyond the misinterpreted fossil record that shows what biologists now call "punctuated equilibrium".

Wolves are dead, long live dogs.

This is why nature doesn't normally show us a parent and child species; the parents are all wiped out in an extinction. There are no four legged whales because it's a small miracle there are any left with fins. All of the four legged ones died except the few that gave birth to the aquatic species.

We are simply misinterpreting all the evidence because we see what we believe so we all see Darwin's Illusion. If "Evolution" exists at all it is not even tertiary to the causation of change in species. "Survival of the fittest" is the illusion we have chosen to see. It is the illusion created by Darwin's false assumptions.

 

[Dan From Smithville]

Where is this observation and experiment that isn't known? What does that even mean? How can you turn to observation and experiment that are not known? That seems to basically claim to use evidence that doesn't exist.

I can't wait to see the word games that explain all that. Clearly it must be things that I can't see, because I don't believe they are there. Yeah, right.

But even if that were true, it still doesn't explain how observations and experiments can be unknown and still available for examination.

More likely though, it will all just be ignored and no explanation will ever be offered. And then all the empty claims will be repeated

I have an explanation. I think it is absurd nonsense.

I predicted that you wouldn't get answers to your questions and I was right on the money.

Sometimes people dismiss nonsense, because that is all that it is. Nonsense.

I'm not sure what the reason is to post nonsense pseudoscience. Is it parody? Is a person trying to seem confused, ignorant, illogical and irrational on purpose to parody the ignorance of ideological dissenters of science?

Is it malicious? Are nonsense, pseudoscience responses created as some sort of punitive mechanism in response to the people that use the known evidence of observation and experiment that support the theories they accept as explanations?

Is it a false belief in the superiority of knowledge that arises purely from speculation and fan fiction versions of science and natural history that don't exist and can't be shown to exist? No evidence or experiment follows the empty claims, yet they are delivered as if they a truth recognized only by the person making the empty claims.

I don't know. I just know that what is posted is not supported by any observation or experiment, often defies explanation and doesn't make sense in light of what is known. It's fit to what is unknown cannot be established, since, by definition, no one knows what the unknown is. Observations and evidence that can be used as support or to refute claims is known by definition and falls into the category of "what is known".

I do know that genetic bottlenecks are not speciation events. The definition of the term was established by the first persons to coin the term and use it to describe a phenomenon that is not speciation.

I know that all the evidence does not indicate that all change in all living things is sudden. The evidence indicates that change in living things varies. How rapidly or slowly depends on the system that is being examined and discussed.

I know that if you use observation and experiment to support your claims, those observations and experiments must, by definition, be known. I also know that if they are known, then there is no reason they cannot be shown to others. The only reason not to show them is the fact that they do not support the empty claims. Or they simply don't exist and claims of their existence are just more empty claims.

I know that if evidence were really provided, then a person could point that out and not have to make up fantastic excuses that others just can't see the evidence, because they don't want to. That's just ridiculous!

I know that pseudoscience cannot be supported and there is no attempt to support it when it is presented here. Wild attempts to rationalize nonsense by creating more nonsense is not evidence for observations and experiments.

I know that dogs do not decide to exist on a diet entirely of watermelons. Fish don't decide to step out of water and start living on land. Amphibians don't decide to grow fur and start producing milk. I know that the evidence indicates that living things evolve gradually, adapting to their environments over time. I know the evidence supports that speciation does not occur in individuals, or from one generation to the next or suddenly as if by magic. I know that the evidence of observation and experiment demonstrate that fitness of a population varies with the gene by environment interaction and some members of the population are more fit than others in relation to their genotype/phenotype and the environment. I know there is no evidence to indicate that consciousness is involved in the natural genetic changes and evolution of populations. I know that word games, no matter how extraordinary, fantastical and ignorant cannot falsify sound reasoning and evidence.

I don't know everything, but I also don't have to make up wild rationalizations to address reasonable questions and appease my ego to satisfy me that others think I know everything. But I also recognize nonsense when I see it offered as fact and explanation.

 

[Dan From Smithville]

I predicted that you wouldn't get answers to your questions and I was right on the money.

Sometimes people dismiss nonsense, because that is all that it is. Nonsense.

I'm not sure what the reason is to post nonsense pseudoscience. Is it parody? Is a person trying to seem confused, ignorant, illogical and irrational on purpose to parody the ignorance of ideological dissenters of science?

Is it malicious? Are nonsense, pseudoscience responses created as some sort of punitive mechanism in response to the people that use the known evidence of observation and experiment that support the theories they accept as explanations?

Is it a false belief in the superiority of knowledge that arises purely from speculation and fan fiction versions of science and natural history that don't exist and can't be shown to exist? No evidence or experiment follows the empty claims, yet they are delivered as if they a truth recognized only by the person making the empty claims.

I don't know. I just know that what is posted is not supported by any observation or experiment, often defies explanation and doesn't fit make sense in light of what is known. It's fit to what is unknown cannot be established, since, by definition, no one knows what the unknown is.

I do know that genetic bottlenecks are not speciation events. The definition of the term was established by the first persons to coin the term and use it to describe a phenomenon that is not speciation.

I know that all the evidence does not indicate that all change in all living things is sudden. The evidence indicates that change in living things varies. How rapidly or slowly depends on the system that is being examined and discussed.

I know that if you use observation and experiment to support your claims, those observations and experiments must, by definition, be known. I also know that if they are known, then there is no reason they cannot be shown to others. The only reason not to show them is the fact that they do not support the empty claims.

I know that if evidence were really provided, that a person could point that out and not have to make up fantastic excuses that others just can't see the evidence.

I know that pseudoscience cannot be supported and there is no attempt to support it when it is presented here. Wild attempts to rationalize nonsense by creating more nonsense is not evidence for observations and experiments.

I know that dogs do not decided to exist on a diet entirely of watermelons. Fish don't decide to step out of water and start living on land. Amphibians don't decided to grow fur and start producing milk. I know that the evidence indicates that living things evolve gradually, adapting to their environments over time. I know the evidence supports that speciation does not occur in individuals, or from one generation to the next or suddenly as if by magic. I know that the evidence of observation and experiment demonstrate that fitness of a population varies with the gene by environment interaction and some members of the population are more fit than others in relation to their genotype/phenotype and the environment. I know there is no evidence to indicate that consciousness is involved in the natural genetic changes and evolution of populations. I know that word games, no matter how extraordinary, fantastical and ignorant cannot falsify sound reasoning and evidence.

I don't know everything, but I also don't have to make up wild rationalizations to address reasonable questions and appease my ego to satisfy me that others think I know everything. But I also recognize nonsense when I see it offered as fact and explanation.

I was just reading through this and I think you nailed it. Well done!

 

[John53]

I was just reading through this and I think you nailed it. Well done!

I'd agree but I'm one of the silent majority here only to bask in your wisdom.

 

[Dan From Smithville]

I was just reading through this and I think you nailed it. Well done!

Thank you.

I'd like to expound a little on the concept of breeding. For instance, let's look at poodles again. If a breeder discovers a trait in poodles and decides they want to breed for that trait, the very act of carrying out this breeding doesn't cause a bottleneck in poodles. It doesn't cause a bottleneck in any species that a breeder would choose to breed. I've explained this before, but clearly those ignorant of biology, genetics and breeding don't want sound explanations that shred their empty claims of perceived, but laughable, superior knowledge.

Breeding, by its nature is selective and not carried out with random individuals from a population. Again, what would be the point of that when the breeder is trying to fix a specific trait? Breeding random individuals would not reduce the genetic diversity of a species. It would proliferate the existing diversity and likely would conserve detrimental recessive traits within the species. In any event, it is inconceivable to consider breeding of a small subset of members of a species would eliminate the remaining members of the wider species in any way. Claims to the contrary are nonsense based on ignorance in a desperate attempt to maintain contrived and incorrect views.

Look at wolves. The species still exists. They can still interbreed with dogs. The diversity of wolves can be introgressed into dogs or vice versa if a breeder wanted to. In natural selection, there is no demand of theory that ancestral species must go extinct. Neither is that the case in artificial breeding.

 

[Dan From Smithville]

I'd agree but I'm one of the silent majority here only to bask in your wisdom.

Thanks, I appreciate it. I've come to the conclusion that in order to have a rational discussion on this subject using evidence and experiment, I am better served to talk to myself. Just as the best strategy for some would be to put themselves on ignore, my best strategy is to pay more attention to me.

I don't mean for this to exclude others with knowledgeable questions, comments and evidence based on logic, reason, observation and experiment. I have no doubts that there are some here that can and do approach the subject with more than fanciful pseudoscience with the appearance of fan fiction as explanations for the observations of nature.

I welcome those individuals and even learn from them. I have not closed my mind to a belief that I know everything and need word games in order to sustain what amounts to nonsense.

 

[Dan From Smithville]

I'd agree but I'm one of the silent majority here only to bask in your wisdom.

I've been thinking more on your idea for cinnamon-flavored purple poodles. I think it would be a good idea to breed subset populations based on the cuisine of the different regions of the country. Now I have to find dogs that have decided to eat seafood for the east coast, those that have chosen to eat chicken-fried steak, watermelon, and fried okra for the southern states and Tex-Mex for the southwest. I think we are gonna be rich.

 

[Dan From Smithville]

I'd agree but I'm one of the silent majority here only to bask in your wisdom.

We could do the same for other countries and continents.

 

[Dan From Smithville]

I'd agree but I'm one of the silent majority here only to bask in your wisdom.

I cannot see how it is feasible to have a discussion with a person that refuses to listen to others, to learn or to recognize that most of what they declare as knowledge of a subject is conjecture they imagine are facts.

It was obvious pretty early on that most of the declarations were empty and not only don't conform with the evidence of observation and experiment, but more often conflict with it. Then too, the conflict of views that are contrary to previously offered empty assertions. None of it offers any sort of useable, rational explanation of observations.

 

[Dan From Smithville]

From my first formal studies of ecology, I learned that a niche can be described as "an n-dimensional hypervolume" where the n dimensions include the organism itself and other co-existing organisms, the environment (which technically includes the previously mentioned organisms) and the resources that define the biological lifestyle and persistence of the organisms. Essentially, niche defines the overall position of a species in its ecosystem. Niches can be further classified based on food source, habitat, physical and chemical makeup and reproduction. Empty appeals to conjecture about niches absent of supporting evidence or claims that such evidence cannot be seen and is unknown embrace pseudoscientific mysticism and qausi-religious nonsense that has no place in science. Certainly, such appeals do not offer valid information or criticism of explanations based on the evidence of observation and experiment.

It seems to me that the repetition and attempts to force pseudoscientific explanations into the conversation are done purely to keep those attempts alive and to furnish a sense of credibility to those making the empty claims. That is not science either.

 

[Dan From Smithville]

I'd agree but I'm one of the silent majority here only to bask in your wisdom.

You know me. I'm really posting to the millions of the silent readers that must be there hanging on my every word.

There's like, maybe, six or eight of us left.