Evolution, maybe someone can explain?

[cladking]

"When individuals are selected for breeding they are removed from that gene pool. Certainly the individuals selected might have bred naturally without having been removed but the odds are very low and then their off spring would have bred into the population."

Come to think of it this is what mate selection is for. One of the female's principal jobs is to assure species don't evolve by selecting mates that are healthy and typical!!!

It's a dirty job but somebody's gotta do it. Ya' wouldn't want all sorts of creatures running about and you wouldn't want your grandchildren to look like frogs.

Ain't life grand?

 

[TagliatelliMonster]

Come to think of it this is what mate selection is for. One of the female's principal jobs is to assure species don't evolve by selecting mates that are healthy and typical!!!

 

[TagliatelliMonster]

This isn't really true.

It is true. Excuse me while I consider that I understand my own position better then you do.

You know that the the Mississippi River exists. I believe there's a 99% chance.

I am 100% certain it exists.
Verifiable facts are verifiable facts.

If I go to the US and go to the geographic location of where the river known as Mississippi is located, I am very certain I will encounter said river.

You seem to be confusing facts with explanations now.

You know that the river has existed for eons and I believe that you can't step into the same river twice. You know the river will exist for a very long time and I have no such belief at all. You know the word "Mississippi" has meaning and a referent that stretches from MN to the gulf. I don't believe in taxonomies nor naming allowing the possibility that the Mississippi really is the Ohio River and its tributaries or even that it starts in my back yard and flows into what you know as the Illinois River. It's all just water flowing downhill and doesn't need no stinkin' river or human (with stinkin' feet) to tell it how or to name the path most of the water usually takes.

Uhu. Cool story bro.

Life seemed mystical or... ...drumroll, please... ...metaphysical to people in the 19th century. People who wanted answers turned to religion because science didn't even address life. Darwin brought life to life by providing simplistic highly facile answers to questions about where life came from and how it changed. These answers are so simplistic a child can understand them. They are apparently wrong but a child can certainly understand the Theory of Evolution.

Evolution is much more likely than airways full of storks laden with babies but it doesn't rise to a level that one must "accept" it.

Your bare assertions are noted.

Meanwhile, all the evidence supports evolution. Regardless of your mere beliefs, assertions and strawmen.

 

[shunyadragon]

I don't know how many times I've said 'I don't know".

This does not reflect your history of posts on this forum. You very frequently make statements that you claim to know as previous cited concerning the sciences of evolution.

I've said several times I don't understand a question. Frequently the response is "sure you don't". Sometimes it is clarified or explained to me and then I address it.

Then you need lessons in reading comprehension, and by the way a speech therapist.

I Don't know much of anything including when I am wrong. However I maintain exactly zero beliefs I know are wrong.

I do have a lot of difficulty unlearning anything so I may repeat errors.

Bold is the first true statement on your part for a while

 

[It Aint Necessarily So]

Bats so far remain bats.

The night is young. Just wait a few tens of millions of years, and if there is still life on earth, some of it will be non-bats that descended from bats.

Your perspective is too brief. Acorns remain acorns even after planted - at first.

Said Dr. Harold Urey, Nobel Prize winning chemist: “All of us who study the origin of life find that the more we look into it, the more we feel it is too complex to have evolved anywhere.

If that was true when he said it, it no longer is.

I believe Darwin was wrong because he had false assumptions. I simply don't agree with the conclusions.

The reason you've been unable to convince the scientifically literate is because you don't offer arguments that falsify Darwin, just speculations, and your alternative "mechanism" is too vague to be called that - something to do with consciousness, but you never explain how you think consciousness changes species. Consciousness is also a byproduct of evolution, not a driver of it. It's also not the primary driver of behavior. That's also the genes, which is why different conscious species behave differently.

Who needs God at all if there's a well understood mechanism for life to arise and flourish?

Some people are comfortable without a god belief.

When you have all the answers there is no need for outside agents or unknowns.

Even when you don't have all the answers, there is no value in invoking unseen agents before they are needed to account for some observation.

I have never said any prevailing paradigm today can not be correct.

Then who wrote this "I believe Darwin's paradigm could not be more wrong." (source) It's got your screen name on it.

The observer ... sees the reality he expects.

Yet we all have the experience of being surprised by something we weren't expecting yet saw anyway.

But what you claim does happen even to experienced, critically thinking empiricists, who might see a word like conceit and read it as concept, and doesn't realize that for four or five seconds - the time it takes to realize that the sentence makes no sense as read and he rereads it to discover the error.

There are also others that do what you suggest a lot, like people who see a god in everything they see or a Marxist in every shadow.

I believe there is a far simpler explanation that doesn't involve survival of the fittest, gradual change and is more in keeping with the fossil evidence. Something happened that simply killed animals with shorter necks but this wasn't caused by chance or "fitness" but rather by consciousness. Perhaps there was some strange food that was preferred by a small percentage of the animals and when other food became poisonous or contaminated or very scarce those which ate the unusual food survived and created a new species because consciousness, experience, reality, and genetics all go hand in hand in all species except homo omnisciencis. One might be tempted to suppose this food might be higher up so long necks prevailed but there is likely little correlation. Perhaps Giraffes had a proclivity for long necks even before they had long necks because they roamed a continent where CO2 lakes, vents, and geysers were very very common. When you're in low lying land or there is a river of CO2 flowing under your feet you need to tiptoe and hurry out. This is what people around Lake Kivu say TODAY and it is what was written by the ancient Egyptians 5000 years ago. There are an infinite number of ways that consciousness could have led to longer necks during population bottlenecks.

That would be Darwinian evolution, and you ARE describing biological fitness. You suggest consciousness killed shorter necked giraffes, then suggest that a poison did it, too.

You failed to mention how the longer necked giraffes came to be, or why one subpopulation of giraffes had a different food preference than the others. The mechanism would be genetic variation in populations across generations generating phenotypical variation. Presumably, before the poison changed the environment, short-necked giraffes predominated and outcompeted their taller sibs, but after, the relative frequencies of the two body types reversed just as with the moths in England's Industrial Revolution, whose color changed over a few generations as the surfaces they rested on became sootier and darker.

We only have one mechanism for all of this, and it doesn't depend on consciousness.

When individuals are selected for breeding they are removed from that gene pool.

Organisms are removed from the gene pool when they die. Genes can't interact with other genes in the pool when in infertile organisms, but they still exist in the population and as such remain in the gene pool.

You are reasoning in circles. "Evolution happens because there is gradual change, gradual change happens because there is Evolution."

Evolution is not the cause of anything. It is the name for change in the tree of life over time, which is gradual.

Defining is not reasoning. We define evolution using a string of descriptive words. Here's a little nomenclature:

"A definition is made up of two parts: the definiendum and the definiens. The definiendum is the term that is to be defined, whereas the definiens is the group of words or concepts used in the definition that is supposed to have the same meaning as the definiendum. For example, bachelor is defined as an unmarried man."

Evolution is the definiendum, and the words that follow after the dash are the definiens. It is not circular reasoning to point out that they refer to one another (definiendum <--> definiens). A common creationist trope is to say that fittest is defined as those who survive (replicate, actually) and that those who survive are fittest, making this a circular argument, but in fact, it's not an argument at all - just a definition.

It's not God or a belief in "God" that makes people lazy, it's finding the answers.

What's a lazier answer than "God did it"?

 

[cladking]

I am 100% certain it exists.
Verifiable facts are verifiable facts.

And you must be pretty sure this isn't a hologram and you're not a transplant from any of the infinite number of worlds, you don't live in the matrix, and reality exists exactly as you perceive it. Not even you can step into the same river twice so exactly what Mississippi are you so sure is there? Are you sure the Ohio doesn't actually carry more water (as it is right now)?

If I were going to pick something to believe in it would be something far more beneficial to me than the existence of some river or some opinionated and superstitious 19th century artist/ explorer/ believer.

But I've always had trouble believing in much of anything which is why I started with a single axiom and have pursued this.

Your bare assertions are noted.

Looks like you do either believe in storks delivering babies or that avoiding discussion is a good thing.

Of course this assumes you are trying to do what's right.

Meanwhile, all the evidence supports evolution.

And again you neatly sidestepped every point.

 

[cladking]

Females are almost always the individuals that choose their mates. Males will display anywhere any time but females cut them off at the pass.

If males are bigger and stronger than why would nature not want the biggest and strongest progenitors for each generation. You have your answer. I'd wager most individuals in most species know it as well. Sometimes nature does want tuna with good taste instead of what tastes good.

 

[Yerda]

If males are bigger and stronger than why would nature not want the biggest and strongest progenitors for each generation.

It isn't always a good thing to be bigger and stronger. Or, in terms of selection, larger specimens are penalised in almost every niche.

 

[Dimi95]

The night is young. Just wait a few tens of millions of years, and if there is still life on earth, some of it will be non-bats that descended from bats.

Your perspective is too brief. Acorns remain acorns even after planted - at first.

If that was true when he said it, it no longer is.

The reason you've been unable to convince the scientifically literate is because you don't offer arguments that falsify Darwin, just speculations, and your alternative "mechanism" is too vague to be called that - something to do with consciousness, but you never explain how you think consciousness changes species.

This is what i agree with you from your answer

Consciousness is also a byproduct of evolution, not a driver of it. It's also not the primary driver of behavior. That's also the genes, which is why different conscious species behave differently.

And this is were it gets tricky
Actually it is that Consciousness is a byproduct of intelligence in the whole procces of Evolution.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1364661305000823

So as you can see in this article size is the measure of importance in some part of evolution.
Take,for example the time of the dinosaurs and the species that co-existed with them.You need only species to have a valid chain of hunters in the animal kingdom.
So those that were not on the top of the chain probably had to group and co-exist together since they were hunted by something bigger or stronger.In the same sense the hunters hunted because they knew they were hunting something smaller.

We know that intuition is in our genes as it is in other animal's.
We know that intution is what survived through species and evolved by the examples in some animal activity such as hunting.

Development evolving:The origins and meanings of instinct - PMC

How do migratory birds, herding dogs, and navigating sea turtles do the amazing things that they do? For hundreds of years, scientists and philosophers have struggled over possible explanations. In time, one word came to dominate the discussion: ...

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

I know also other examples when we speak about instinct.
I remember the name of the one who made this study.I think it was Kuo or something like that but i can re-check it if it is neccessary.

He was studying the development of the heart in chicken embryos, he inserted a catheter into the tiny structure which was growing to be a heart. Every day, he measured the volume of the fluid extracted by the catheter On the 21 day, (the time chicks normally peck out of the egg), he withdrew the catheter and waited for his chicks to peck out.
None of them did, so he had to crack each shell to let them out.
This guy Kuo also discovered that none of them pecked for food and had to be hand fed.
Now, we know that pecking its way out of an egg is done by instinct since there is no little elf inside the egg telling the chick to 'peck on the dotted line'.
And similarly, chicks who don't peck for food, die.
So. what happened to Kuo's chicks?
Kuo retraced his steps. When chicks normally develop, they do so in a ball shape.The head is folded down to rest directly over the heart. But in order to expose the heart for placement of the catheter, the head was moved to the side..
So what could that do.?
Well, when the head is over the heart, every time the heart beats, the head bobs.When the head is displaced, It does not.
So think about what a head looks like when it bobs to the beating heart for most of the 21 day gestation. It looks like pecking, right?
So the pecking 'instinct' isn't directly encoded into the genes, but relies upon the shape of the developing creature to help it along.
When those features are tampered with, the 'instinct' does not appear.

The point is, there is a very complex interaction between what is carried by genes and what is promoted by the environment. They are really inseparable. But it is fair to say that whatever structures are provided by genetic information, they are not 'good to go' unless the proper environment is present.

And this does not apply only to instincts. It applies to most aspects of brain development and function.

Some people are comfortable without a god belief.

That's OK , but being comfortable doesn't mean anything.

Even when you don't have all the answers, there is no value in invoking unseen agents before they are needed to account for some observation.

What kind of observation ?
Even what you said has no sense.What unseen agents? The deluded ones of the pseudo ID?
I can't belive that they are using such heretic terms.
But they belive they live in a stimulation and that's their best way to explain it.
That is how you measure their intellect.
It seems to me that they have confused themselfs with the meaning of 'Creator' and used some alternative as 'Designer'.

But your answer has value only when you adress their view , so it may be that you are to focused on the deluded ones.

Yet we all have the experience of being surprised by something we weren't expecting yet saw anyway.

But what you claim does happen even to experienced, critically thinking empiricists, who might see a word like conceit and read it as concept, and doesn't realize that for four or five seconds - the time it takes to realize that the sentence makes no sense as read and he rereads it to discover the error.

I agree completly.
Maybe you will find it too..

There are also others that do what you suggest a lot, like people who see a god in everything they see or a Marxist in every shadow.

What people?
You have every kind of people beliving in God
There are scientists , athlets , teachers , Gardeners , Postmans , Killers , Lunatics , Maniacs , War Criminals , Sick people , Christians , Muslims , Jews , Budhist.
Each one of them might say in its own way why he belives in God and that might not always be connected with science.
And that is how it is , Science and the Spiritual Realm are two different categories of study and each one of them speaks about different things.But there are those who think otherwise , that they are connected in some strange ways.That Science should give precise answers about the Spiritual Realm and the other way around - Spiritual Realm giving precise answers in the way of Science.

Evolution is not the cause of anything. It is the name for change in the tree of life over time, which is gradual.

Evolution is a procces in the tree of life and this Universe.It's not just a given name for some sort of definition.

What's a lazier answer than "God did it"?

Nobody did it.

 

[Pogo]

Dude........ you are LITERALLY repeating mistakes that have been corrected time and again for YEARS.

Why are you this dense?

You don't know by now? Most 3 years grow out of demanding attention for attention's sake.

 

[YoursTrue]

The night is young. Just wait a few tens of millions of years, and if there is still life on earth, some of it will be non-bats that descended from bats.

Your perspective is too brief. Acorns remain acorns even after planted - at first.

If that was true when he said it, it no longer is.

The reason you've been unable to convince the scientifically literate is because you don't offer arguments that falsify Darwin, just speculations, and your alternative "mechanism" is too vague to be called that - something to do with consciousness, but you never explain how you think consciousness changes species. Consciousness is also a byproduct of evolution, not a driver of it. It's also not the primary driver of behavior. That's also the genes, which is why different conscious species behave differently.

Some people are comfortable without a god belief.

Even when you don't have all the answers, there is no value in invoking unseen agents before they are needed to account for some observation.

Then who wrote this "I believe Darwin's paradigm could not be more wrong." (source) It's got your screen name on it.

Yet we all have the experience of being surprised by something we weren't expecting yet saw anyway.

But what you claim does happen even to experienced, critically thinking empiricists, who might see a word like conceit and read it as concept, and doesn't realize that for four or five seconds - the time it takes to realize that the sentence makes no sense as read and he rereads it to discover the error.

There are also others that do what you suggest a lot, like people who see a god in everything they see or a Marxist in every shadow.

That would be Darwinian evolution, and you ARE describing biological fitness. You suggest consciousness killed shorter necked giraffes, then suggest that a poison did it, too.

You failed to mention how the longer necked giraffes came to be, or why one subpopulation of giraffes had a different food preference than the others. The mechanism would be genetic variation in populations across generations generating phenotypical variation. Presumably, before the poison changed the environment, short-necked giraffes predominated and outcompeted their taller sibs, but after, the relative frequencies of the two body types reversed just as with the moths in England's Industrial Revolution, whose color changed over a few generations as the surfaces they rested on became sootier and darker.

We only have one mechanism for all of this, and it doesn't depend on consciousness.

Organisms are removed from the gene pool when they die. Genes can't interact with other genes in the pool when in infertile organisms, but they still exist in the population and as such remain in the gene pool.

Evolution is not the cause of anything. It is the name for change in the tree of life over time, which is gradual.

Defining is not reasoning. We define evolution using a string of descriptive words. Here's a little nomenclature:

"A definition is made up of two parts: the definiendum and the definiens. The definiendum is the term that is to be defined, whereas the definiens is the group of words or concepts used in the definition that is supposed to have the same meaning as the definiendum. For example, bachelor is defined as an unmarried man."

Evolution is the definiendum, and the words that follow after the dash are the definiens. It is not circular reasoning to point out that they refer to one another (definiendum <--> definiens). A common creationist trope is to say that fittest is defined as those who survive (replicate, actually) and that those who survive are fittest, making this a circular argument, but in fact, it's not an argument at all - just a definition.

What's a lazier answer than "God did it"?

Like you imply it will take a real long time to follow through...

 

[Pogo]

This is what i agree with you from your answer


And this is were it gets tricky
Actually it is that Consciousness is a byproduct of intelligence in the whole procces of Evolution.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1364661305000823

So as you can see in this article size is the measure of importance in some part of evolution.
Take,for example the time of the dinosaurs and the species that co-existed with them.You need only species to have a valid chain of hunters in the animal kingdom.
So those that were not on the top of the chain probably had to group and co-exist together since they were hunted by something bigger or stronger.In the same sense the hunters hunted because they knew they were hunting something smaller.

We know that intuition is in our genes as it is in other animal's.
We know that intution is what survived through species and evolved by the examples in some animal activity such as hunting.

Development evolving:The origins and meanings of instinct - PMC

How do migratory birds, herding dogs, and navigating sea turtles do the amazing things that they do? For hundreds of years, scientists and philosophers have struggled over possible explanations. In time, one word came to dominate the discussion: ...

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

I know also other examples when we speak about instinct.
I remember the name of the one who made this study.I think it was Kuo or something like that but i can re-check it if it is neccessary.

He was studying the development of the heart in chicken embryos, he inserted a catheter into the tiny structure which was growing to be a heart. Every day, he measured the volume of the fluid extracted by the catheter On the 21 day, (the time chicks normally peck out of the egg), he withdrew the catheter and waited for his chicks to peck out.
None of them did, so he had to crack each shell to let them out.
This guy Kuo also discovered that none of them pecked for food and had to be hand fed.
Now, we know that pecking its way out of an egg is done by instinct since there is no little elf inside the egg telling the chick to 'peck on the dotted line'.
And similarly, chicks who don't peck for food, die.
So. what happened to Kuo's chicks?
Kuo retraced his steps. When chicks normally develop, they do so in a ball shape.The head is folded down to rest directly over the heart. But in order to expose the heart for placement of the catheter, the head was moved to the side..
So what could that do.?
Well, when the head is over the heart, every time the heart beats, the head bobs.When the head is displaced, It does not.
So think about what a head looks like when it bobs to the beating heart for most of the 21 day gestation. It looks like pecking, right?
So the pecking 'instinct' isn't directly encoded into the genes, but relies upon the shape of the developing creature to help it along.
When those features are tampered with, the 'instinct' does not appear.

The point is, there is a very complex interaction between what is carried by genes and what is promoted by the environment. They are really inseparable. But it is fair to say that whatever structures are provided by genetic information, they are not 'good to go' unless the proper environment is present.

And this does not apply only to instincts. It applies to most aspects of brain development and function.




That's OK , but being comfortable doesn't mean anything.


What kind of observation ?
Even what you said has no sense.What unseen agents? The deluded ones of the pseudo ID?
I can't belive that they are using such heretic terms.
But they belive they live in a stimulation and that's their best way to explain it.
That is how you measure their intellect.
It seems to me that they have confused themselfs with the meaning of 'Creator' and used some alternative as 'Designer'.

But your answer has value only when you adress their view , so it may be that you are to focused on the deluded ones.


I agree completly.
Maybe you will find it too..


What people?
You have every kind of people beliving in God
There are scientists , athlets , teachers , Gardeners , Postmans , Killers , Lunatics , Maniacs , War Criminals , Sick people , Christians , Muslims , Jews , Budhist.
Each one of them might say in its own way why he belives in God and that might not always be connected with science.
And that is how it is , Science and the Spiritual Realm are two different categories of study and each one of them speaks about different things.But there are those who think otherwise , that they are connected in some strange ways.That Science should give precise answers about the Spiritual Realm and the other way around - Spiritual Realm giving precise answers in the way of Science.


Evolution is a procces in the tree of life and this Universe.It's not just a given name for some sort of definition.


Nobody did it.

Interesting articles the sci direct one much less so than the other, but we still don't know is the ultimate answer.

 

[Dan From Smithville]

"When individuals are selected for breeding they are removed from that gene pool. Certainly the individuals selected might have bred naturally without having been removed but the odds are very low and then their off spring would have bred into the population."



Yes!!!! Exactly! This is why I refer to it as "an artificial imposition of a population bottleneck". People are simply duplicating how nature causes species to change.

Quote mining. Well I'm not surprised.

No. Not at all. A trivial similarity and your choice to cloud the issues with your own secret, personal definitions for words doesn't make you correct. You couldn't be more wrong. You keep trying to be, but completely wrong is a much wrong as you can be.

The original population from which a breeding pair or group was selected still exists. They or their offspring can be bred back into that original group. IT IS NOT AN EXAMPLE OF A POPULATION BOTTLENECK AND POPULATION BOTTLENECKS ARE NOT HOW SPECIATION OCCURS.

Portions of natural populations become isolated, return to the main population or continue on as a separate population. Both can exist concurrently. The founder group does not magically, suddenly become a new species upon separation from the main. Their offspring are not a new species either.

What you describe is not a population bottleneck. Insisting on using existing terms and redefining them to mean something else is confusing to others and reduces communication. I get the impression you want that. I guess you consider miscommunication critical to your "science".

 

[Dimi95]

Interesting articles the sci direct one much less so than the other, but we still don't know is the ultimate answer.

I agree with this much or less in some sense.
I don't think however that this 'ultimate answer' can be in one explenation or example.

 

[Pogo]

I agree with this much or less in some sense.
I don't think however that this 'ultimate answer' can be in one explenation or example.

Agreed, it is far more convoluted than one explanation will suffice.

 

[Dan From Smithville]

I agree with this much or less in some sense.
I don't think however that this 'ultimate answer' can be in one explenation or example.

I'm just now looking them over. They look interesting. Thanks for posting the links.

 

[Dan From Smithville]

Come to think of it this is what mate selection is for. One of the female's principal jobs is to assure species don't evolve by selecting mates that are healthy and typical!!!

This isn't a thing. Where do you come up with this nonsense?

It's a dirty job but somebody's gotta do it. Ya' wouldn't want all sorts of creatures running about and you wouldn't want your grandchildren to look like frogs.

Ain't life grand?

There are none so blind than those that refuse to see.

 

[Dan From Smithville]

Come to think of it this is what mate selection is for. One of the female's principal jobs is to assure species don't evolve by selecting mates that are healthy and typical!!!

It's a dirty job but somebody's gotta do it. Ya' wouldn't want all sorts of creatures running about and you wouldn't want your grandchildren to look like frogs.

Ain't life grand?

You never heard of sexual selection either. I'll add that to the growing list of things that you don't understand.

 

[Dan From Smithville]

Come to think of it this is what mate selection is for. One of the female's principal jobs is to assure species don't evolve by selecting mates that are healthy and typical!!!

It's a dirty job but somebody's gotta do it. Ya' wouldn't want all sorts of creatures running about and you wouldn't want your grandchildren to look like frogs.

Ain't life grand?

There are numerous reasons for female mate choice including traits that indicate a high potential for reproductive success. They are not selecting mates to inhibit the evolution of the species. Such a trait would extend outside of the ability to determine the outcome and out of range of natural selection.

It would actually be counterproductive and limit valuable genetic variation that might be essential for species survival in a changing environment.

Much like selecting for a mate that will have an extended lifespan. This cannot be determined until the mate achieves advanced age, at which time it has reached an age where reproductive success is decreased or in the case of a female, no longer available. This too is outside of selection and occurs randomly rather than selectively.

You seem to think any silly idea that pops into your head is a fact without bothering to verify it for yourself or perhaps it is that you lack the ability to do this. That is why most people ask those with more knowledge before they show the butts to an audience by accident.

Well, you know all and anyone that suggests you don't is automatically wrong it seems.

 

[Dan From Smithville]

Females are almost always the individuals that choose their mates.

You actually got something correct.

Males will display anywhere any time but females cut them off at the pass.

You started off OK. But I have no idea what this is supposed to mean.

If males are bigger and stronger than why would nature not want the biggest and strongest progenitors for each generation.

You are anthropomorphizing nature and attributing what you think would be the outcome of natural selection to nature. If size and strength had a fitness advantage in the environment, then it would be selected to a point. There are limitations in nature that cannot be overcome and compromise results.

You have your answer.

An answer. It isn't a useful one, but it is an answer.

I'd wager most individuals in most species know it as well.

Knows what? Clarification? You have any? Evidence? You have any? Or is this more of the revealed truth of the omniscient?

Sometimes nature does want tuna with good taste instead of what tastes good.

No idea. Appears irrelevant to the conversation.