Why is evolution even still a debate?

[tas8831]

If we take a mole of liquid water; 6.02214076 × 1023 water molecules or about 18 grams of water, science models this dynamic situation; at the nanoscale, using probability and wave functions.

Tsk tsk...

Remember - when you copy paste someone else's work, exponential notation does not translate correctly.

Or did you not know that there is an exponent in that?

 

[tas8831]

Mutations can still occur on the DNA, but these are not truly random out of the context of 3-D. They may appear random to the untrained 2-D eyes of last century biology.

Cool.

Well, use your trained eye on this, and tell us all which is a random mutation and which is not - and don't forget to use "random with respect to fitness", since that is what we mean in evolutionary biology:

 

[It Aint Necessarily So]

One of the problems with the contemporary version of evolution, is it violates the 2nd law, which is Entropy.

This is incorrect. Life on earth is not a closed system. It is powered by the sun. Order from disorder is common in nature when there is an external energy supply. I'll just copy and paste a post I left on RF this past Monday:

Likewise with dissipative structures like tornadoes, hurricanes, the red spot on Jupiter, and the hexagon at Saturn's poles. They are all far from equilibrium structures that would have nearly zero chance of occurring without there being a pressure to have the ingredients come together and function cooperatively. This occurs when a system is channeling energy, and is frequently associated with energy (heat) sources like atmospheres and oceans that function as thermal reservoirs:

• "A Dissipative Structure is a thermodynamically open system operating far from. thermodynamic equilibrium, that exchanges energy, matter, and information with. the external environment. In this kind of systems, organization can emerge through a spontaneous self-organization process"

• "A thermal reservoir, also thermal energy reservoir or thermal bath, is a thermodynamic system with a heat capacity so large that the temperature of the reservoir changes relatively little when a much more significant amount of heat is added or extracted. As a conceptual simplification, it effectively functions as an infinite pool of thermal energy at a given, constant temperature. Since it can act as a source and sink of heat, it is often also referred to as a heat reservoir or heat bath. Lakes, oceans and rivers often serve as thermal reservoirs in geophysical processes, such as the weather. In atmospheric science, large air masses in the atmosphere often function as thermal reservoirs."

Life is another example of a dissipative structure, a high level of self-organization to a far from equilibrium position that channels energy that it uses to maintain that status. From A New Physics Theory of Life | Quanta Magazine :

• "From the standpoint of physics, there is one essential difference between living things and inanimate clumps of carbon atoms: The former tend to be much better at capturing energy from their environment and dissipating that energy as heat. Jeremy England, a 31-year-old assistant professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, has derived a mathematical formula that he believes explains this capacity. The formula, based on established physics, indicates that when a group of atoms is driven by an external source of energy (like the sun or chemical fuel) and surrounded by a heat bath (like the ocean or atmosphere), it will often gradually restructure itself in order to dissipate increasingly more energy. This could mean that under certain conditions, matter inexorably acquires the key physical attribute associated with life. “You start with a random clump of atoms, and if you shine light on it for long enough, it should not be so surprising that you get a plant,” England said."

According to this way of viewing life, it is seen as inevitable whenever the conditions are right for it, just like a tornado or hurricane. Now we understand why these occur more frequently in the summer, and more frequently and more violently as the temperature of the air and water warm. These are structures channeling the energy which causes them to form.
​

Here's more refutation of your claim:

The Second Law of Thermodynamics in the Context of the Christian Faith (itgo.com) - this was written by an evangelical Christian chemical engineer, who ought to know a thing or two about thermodynamics.

Does Life On Earth Violate the Second Law of Thermodynamics (gmu.edu)

Five Major Misconceptions about Evolution (talkorigins.org) - argument two of five in this link, a quick read

The Second Law of Thermodynamics, Evolution, and Probability (talkorigins.org)
​

 

[tas8831]

One of the problems with the contemporary version of evolution, is it violates the 2nd law, which is Entropy.

How does creation overcome that?

 

[cladking]

I saw an episode of Nova recently about slime molds claiming that they were intelligent because they solved problems like finding food and going through a maze. Here's a brief trailer. I remember my wife and I agreeing that what we were witnessing should not be called intelligence, since the creatures don't appear to be aware.

The question isn't so much whether it appears to be aware as, what is it aware of. This can be relatively easily deduced. Since it acts "intelligently" we must grant that it is intelligent. Where humans or chipmunks have a self contained intelligence slime molds and other simple creatures do not. They leave mnemonics, parts of themselves, behind. Some animals like chipmunks display very low level of intelligence while other insignificant species, like cockroaches, display much higher levels of intelligence. Some plants, like yews, show more intelligence than others like hostas.

What we're really looking at isn't "intelligence" in the terms we define it though I like your definition more than most. The closest thing that actually exists to intelligence is "cleverness" but this is an event rather than a condition. Cockroaches generally display cleverness more frequently than chipmunks. While numerous parameters define cleverness much of what we take as "intelligence" is more a measure of "consciousness". All life is consciousness and some species need more to survive. Each individual is different and, no doubt, some chipmunks are more "intelligent" than some cockroaches or people.

Consciousness is a gift from Nature/ God that allows each individual to survive and be successful. It allowed beavers to invent dams and us to control vast swathes of our environment. But all life is individual and not every beaver invented dams. Most beavers will work their entire lives looking to improve on them. Beavers and dams are as intimately related as humans and language just as life and consciousness are inseparable.

Not if one sticks to a strictly empiricist epistemology. Remember the correspondence theory of truth: "the truth or falsity of a statement is determined only by how it relates to the world and whether it accurately describes (i.e., corresponds with) that world." If one resists calling ideas not meeting that criterion truth or reality, one's map of reality contains no false roads.

Fine and dandy except that no matter how little mysticism an individual displays he is always still seeing what he believes. He still perceives reality in terms of his beliefs. Individuals who are least mystical call these beliefs "models" which are four dimensional and construct them from the results of one dimensional experiments but as such, they are still "beliefs" because no experiment has ever been able to put everything back together again. Reductionistic science has so far only been able to yield the lumber and nails to make models and each builder MUST make his own; not from blueprints but from his own interpretation of the operation of the sawmill we call "experimentation".

There is no means to completely escape this mysticism and we haven't even begun to try. There are many ways to mitigate it but very few even recognize its existence so nothing is done.

When we moved to Mexico, we brought our Garman GPS, which map of Mexico was inaccurate.

Rand McNally. Getting people lost for over half a century.

Perhaps by thought you mean linguistic thought, or thinking in words.

All life thinks in words but only homo omnisciencis experiences thought. Apparently thought is driven by the wiring of whatever is doing the "thinking" and when this occurs in natural language there is no experience of thought. Essentially natural language is metaphysical in nature and digital like every brain and reality itself. Individuals are in step with reality and act on their knowledge. Since their languages are far too simplistic to pass complex knowledge from generation to generation they can not build on the work of past greats so they are all born nearly completely ignorant leaving instinct as the primary driver of behavior at "birth". As they gain experience and learn simple things from their parents more and more of their behavior is driven by consciousness.

Humans began 40,000 years ago when a mutation allowed the creation of complex language. This first complex language was merely an elaboration of the language already being used. Because it was metaphysical it became geometrically more complex as learning increased arithmatically and it failed spectacularly at an event we know only as "The Tower of Babel". "Nature/ God" was removed from the language and all science and history were lost. Only technology allowed the species to survive until modern science was invented. Language no longer rhymed with reality and people became out of step with it. Thought arose in individuals which is in many ways an interpretation of what the brain is doing; an interpretation of individual consciousness. But from our perspective it is impossible to see things like "consciousness" and nearly impossible to see things like how a species changes. This is because every change is usually impossibly complex and we must reduce it to build the lumber to see it. Consciousness can't really be reduced any more than metaphysics; to understand science all of its axioms and definitions must be held in mind. Consciousness is most easily seen from the inside but if you think it becomes virtually as invisible as an abstraction.

 

[It Aint Necessarily So]

The question isn't so much whether it appears to be aware as, what is it aware of. This can be relatively easily deduced. Since it acts "intelligently" we must grant that it is intelligent.

We use words differently. I don't consider slime molds to be aware, and I don't use the word intelligent to refer to the behavior of unconscious entities. But one could define intelligence otherwise, as you have to include unconscious reactions to the environment, but I think it dilutes the meaning of the word. We could also call planets intelligent for following orbits around stars, but I prefer not to call passive, necessary physical reactions like slime molds doing their thing just as unconsciously as an orbiting planet intelligence.

no matter how little mysticism an individual display he is always still seeing what he believes. He still perceives reality in terms of his beliefs. Individuals who are least mystical call these beliefs "models" which are four dimensional and construct them from the results of one dimensional experiments but as such, they are still "beliefs" because no experiment has ever been able to put everything back together again.

I don't know what point you are making. What do you mean by mysticism, and what does it have to do with model building?

Also, do you see a problem with understanding reality in terms of beliefs? How could it be any other way? That's what learning animals do. They abstract beliefs from experience by induction, beliefs which inform future actions. They accumulate these beliefs into a model of what they think is out there on the other side of the theater of consciousness and use that model to make predictions about future experience.

I ask for no more than that. No more is possible, and no more is necessary. The model might be completely wrong, but if it allows one to control outcomes, it's a keeper. A young child driving a virtual car in a video game may thing that there is a car in the works the way my dog, when he sees another dog on the TV, thinks there's another dog in the room. Neither is aware that what they are witnessing is the rendering of electronics with no moving parts apart from electrons.

But the model still works. When the child turns the wheel of the car, it turns like a physical car would. As long as that remains true, the model works, however little it resembles what's really out there out of view underlying the video experience. I've long said that even were I to learn that there is no reality outside of my mind, what would change? I used to think I had a physical finger that would burn and hurt if I stuck it in a flame. Suppose I knew for a fact that neither the finger nor the flame actually existed, but that when I issued the command for the nonexistent finger to enter the imaginary flame, I still felt the pain of fire? What do I do with that information? The same as before. I still don't will the finger into the fire even though neither exists. The old model of a real finger and flame still works just like it does for the video game driver once he learns that there is no car "out there" in the video game.

Reductionistic science has so far only been able to yield the lumber and nails to make models and each builder MUST make his own; not from blueprints but from his own interpretation of the operation of the sawmill we call "experimentation".

My world view doesn't come from science. It is derived from the application of reason to experience, which may be what you mean by experimentation. Nor is it strictly reductionist. One of those things that I have learned from experience is that some properties can not be predicted or understood looking at the parts, so called emergent phenomena.

All life thinks in words but only homo omnisciencis experiences thought.

You've lost me again. You can't possibly mean what I mean by thought and words if you make that statement.

the language already being used. Because it was metaphysical it became geometrically more complex as learning increased arithmatically and it failed spectacularly at an event we know only as "The Tower of Babel". Nature/ God was removed from the language and all science and history were lost.

This is a religious belief I don't share and for which I find insufficient evidence to believe.

 

[cladking]

This is a religious belief I don't share and for which I find insufficient evidence to believe.

No. This is not a religious belief whatsoever for me.

It is a contention of what reality must be in order to explain all the evidence from slime mold intelligence to the nature of consciousness.

 

[GardenLady]

What? I fail to see what Russia has to do with it?

During the Cold War, many Americans were deeply concerned about "Godless Communism." Hence the addition of "under God" to the pledge of allegiance in 1954 as well as other groundswells of religiosity.

 

[cladking]

I don't know what point you are making. What do you mean by mysticism, and what does it have to do with model building?

"Mysticism" is believing in things that are not supported by evidence and experiment. It therefore includes virtually every single belief held by virtually every single human being. If you believe Moscow is a city in Russia then you are a "mystic" to a greater or lesser extent. Of course if you've been there or have other experience to tell you it's real then it's less mystical. It's certainly possible to have a very high degree of confidence in such things and the older we get, the more experience we get, the more confident we can be. But keep in mind most people, most human beings are not only certain that Moscow is a city (even though you can't disembark in the same city twice) they are equally certain that change in species is gradual and caused by survival of the fittest. They are as certain as that the sun came up this morning. They know gravity holds them to the earth and always will though somehow forget that the planet "can't" change directions or that it revolves around the moon/ earth center of gravity. We are all and each "all-knowing" and much of what we know we learned on our parents' knees and has never been tested or questioned. All the assumptions that come with language are for most practical purposes as applicable to metaphysics as any experiment or anything we take as being axiomatic or definitionally true.

Our models are founded on quicksand as surely as ANY belief. The belief reality can be reduced to experiment and we can understand change in species without understanding consciousness are essentially artefacts of having a brocas area; ie- thinking. While obviously facets of reality are disclosed by experiment it is non sequitur to extrapolate all of reality even from all of experiment and we know all experiment has yet to be performed anyway. We can not deduce the number of facets to reality with any number of experiments and OBVIOUSLY not when we haven't even been able to devise experiment(s) to determine the nature of the elemental forces. We are far out of our depth but we remain homo omnisciencis.

Ancient people considered themselves almost perfectly ignorant but with their limited knowledge they could still accomplish the impossible. Even with the extensive knowledge we have today we can't do the simplest damn things like figure out how the pyramids were built or keep from rewarding CEO's who are destroying the planet with shoddy products and gross inefficiency. Instead of punishing them we throw ever more billions of dollars at them. We can't even design an experiment to "prove" that evolution exists and is caused gradually by survival of the fittest. And most remarkable we don't understand the nature of consciousness as well as a slime mold. For a race that knows everything this is all pretty pathetic.

 

[cladking]

Also, do you see a problem with understanding reality in terms of beliefs?

Yes and no. Yes, it is highly problematical for the individual who is not aware of it and for entire societies when its leaders are not aware of it.

It is unavoidable because we must be mystical due to the way we process information. It is wholly impossible to use a fully metaphysical language because with our extensive knowledge it would be "nearly" as complex as reality itself.

The problem isn't our mysticism or our ignorance. The problem is we see reality in terms of our beliefs which fools us into believing we know everything. Id we recognized these things we'd be far less destructive and far less suicidal.

I've long said that even were I to learn that there is no reality outside of my mind, what would change?

Curiously this was one of my first considerations. I have no means of knowing and, believe me, things have become sufficiently surreal that one might posit it true, but I simply take it as being axiomatic that reality is exactly what it appears to be to most individuals. Indeed, this is apparently the exact same axiom imparted by consciousness itself. I had no way of knowing this when I took it as axiomatic but the state of it underlying everything I believe made it easier for me to see it in ancient writing. Primarily I took it axiomatically only because I assumed any other path led to madness. Obviously I try to always keep in mind that while Moscow has a 99.999% chance of being a city in Russia it is dependent on everything being what it appears to be. I have no means of estimating the odds of things like that life is a dream but experience and my beliefs all suggest it is low.

It sometimes seem the odds of my survival from one day to the next have always been so low that there must be millions of other realities where I don't exist. But this just becomes another thing to teach children besides "be careful what you believe because you'll become your beliefs"; "take good care of yourself". Otherwise even the simplest beliefs might seem long shots.

My world view doesn't come from science. It is derived from the application of reason to experience, which may be what you mean by experimentation.

We are each a product of our time and place and you are obviously a (well) educated individual. "Reason" to you obviously includes scientific understanding.

By "experimentation" I usually mean it in the strictest metaphysical way. There is some wiggle room sometimes because some things can only be interpreted in "one" way. I like to read an abstract and have enough detail to make reasoned judgement on the quality of the experiment. That e coli experiment never did have enough data to rule out changes in the media. I would perform a series of experiments to see just how sensitive they are to subtle changes in media.

I've always known people believe too many things with little or no justification but my recent work suggests a lot of what we believe simply is not true. While I've had extensive evidence for many years that "Evolution" is not true I now have more and have found many more things that probably are not true. They are ultimately founded not on experiment or observation but rather on assumptions that come as part of language. These assumptions show up in experiment design but more in its interpretation.

 

[cladking]

You've lost me again. You can't possibly mean what I mean by thought and words if you make that statement.

I could have phrased that better but it would have required paragraphs to get it right. Suffice to say that the "words" in which life thinks are (nearly) unique to the species, digital, and representative. When arranged to create meaning they are also metaphysical and the individual who has them or hears them does not experience them like we do.

Humans are unique in experiencing thought. One species (dogs) try to imitate humans but don't really experience thought. They are more attuned to what their masters are thinking so they sometimes seem not only to think but to read minds. Other animals are dumbstruck by humans and don't comprehend how such stupid creatures get all the luxuries. Teaching humans even the simplest tricks requires genius. It took them years to teach me when to put out more food or change the water in the birdbath. Then I'm a little thicker than most people.

 

[It Aint Necessarily So]

"Mysticism" is believing in things that are not supported by evidence and experiment.

I call that unjustified belief, or faith. I don't know anybody else who uses language the way you do.

[Mysticism] therefore includes virtually every single belief held by virtually every single human being.

You seem to think that there is no such thing as a belief supported by evidence. I have to return to what I so frequently do in these discussions, and that you must have different meanings for these words than I do, because as I use them, that comment is wrong. I believe, for example, that I live five blocks north and three blocks east of the pier. That belief is derived from evidence, from experiencing the region around my house, and noting how the pier and house relate spacially. And it is confirmed by experience. Walking five blocks south and three west gets me to the pier every time.

But you know this. You do these things, too. So why you make the comment you made escapes me. You can't possibly believe what those comments say to me, that no belief has evidentiary support and it is all mysticism. Those words must mean something to you that is closer to my experience than it sounds, but if so, I don't know what.

most people, most human beings are not only certain that Moscow is a city (even though you can't disembark in the same city twice) they are equally certain that change in species is gradual and caused by survival of the fittest.

Including me, and for good reason. I've never been to Moscow, but I am as sure that it is there (or was as of yesterday) as I am that the sun dawned this morning and will do so again tomorrow barring destruction of the sun or earth or some similar catastrophe between then and now. How can I be so sure? You already know. You're sure it's there as well using the same evidence. For me, that evidence includes the fact that every other city I had heard of the same way as I have heard of Moscow before visiting was there when I got off the airplane or cruise ship that took me there. The first time I visited Paris, it never occurred to me that there would be no city there when we landed. Why? Because of the robust evidence I had in advance that it would be - mentions in school, images on the news, the reports of those that had been there.

I keep finding myself thinking, he can't possibly believe the things he's telling me or what it seems he's telling me. So I ask myself what does he mean when he says them? I'm sure you're not lying, and I've seen no evidence of cognitive impairment in you that would suggest that you are delusional or have trouble using language. I doubt you're kidding.

Your resistance to evolution is likely based in your religious beliefs, but what about your belief that other creatures don't experience though, but ideas such as that they don't think but also that they think in words are a puzzle: "It never occurs to us that other species aren't like this, don't think this way, and don't even experience thought" and "All life thinks in words."

we don't understand the nature of consciousness as well as a slime mold

And here we go again. What can this possibly mean? Surely not what it appears to say - that slime molds understand the nature of consciousness better than human beings. So what then?

Anyway, I've enjoyed our discussion. You do your part, which I appreciate, by which I mean you carefully consider what is written to you and address it responsively, and you are always polite and friendly, not playing games, and seem genuinely committed to the exchange of information.

 

[cladking]

And here we go again. What can this possibly mean? Surely not what it appears to say - that slime molds understand the nature of consciousness better than human beings. So what then?

I mean it quite literally. A slime mold knows it's alive and it is to eat and reproduce. It knows how to seek food and it knows that knowing these things is life itself. It has little understanding of its world or itself but it knows enough to be what it is.

A human is born knowing these things but in order to learn language it will forget and once it thinks in modern language it will probably never again be able to see it. We can't experience consciousness in the way Nature/ God intended; metaphysically. We have far too much knowledge to think metaphysically, or at least, too much to use metaphysical language to think. So to us "consciousness" is our thoughts and we think we are unconscious while we sleep and that plants and animals aren't conscious because they don't think or understand abstraction.

Perhaps I did define "mysticism" poorly. What I was thinking is that believing in things that aren't supportable causes one to ascribe causations that aren't supportable and it is belief in these causations that make a better definition. But, again, we are all mystics because nothing is knowable in terms of our language which is the language in which we think. No matter what words are put to something they are deconstructed by each observer. Nothing can be true if every individual has a different understanding of it.

You seem to think that there is no such thing as a belief supported by evidence.

There are several kinds of knowledge and cross-over from one to another. There's plastic memory or muscle memory which is the most innate but usually least useful. What good was Brooks Robinson's remarkable ability to catch a screaming foul ball at a dinner party? There is visceral knowledge or experiential knowledge which is most important for most people and can lay the groundwork for virtually all knowledge in some people. This is learned from experience and is as much a part of you as even muscle memory. It always works but errors are always possible. Then there's the knowledge we get from standing on the shoulders of giants. This can be critically important to specialists and almost anyone but this knowledge is far more often simply wrong. Even state of the art is frequently just wrong. It can be wrong for generation after generation.

It's this last category that lead so many to believe they know everything. They take a few physics classes and believe they know everything about reality even though their professor knew little and nobody knows any of the things needed to make prediction.

Of course belief is often supported by evidence. Even if you believe in ghosts you can find some evidence. The world is a complicated place with complicated events and even though we don't see most anomalies (anything that defies our beliefs) they occur continually and anyone can see one sometimes. Nature/ God provides no rulebook on how anything must be interpreted but we normally just see our beliefs.


Long and short of it is that if I'm right it is simply impossible to understand evolution or more specifically what drives change in species without understanding that each individual is conscious and that there are subtle variations in consciousness caused by subtle variations in the brain and by experience. But there are gross variations in behavior caused by genetics and its interplay with consciousness. It is this variation in behavior that drives change in species because some or most bottlenecks select not for "fitness" but for behavior. If a bottleneck selects for fitness there is no change. When it selects for behavior it virtually by definition selects for unusual behavior or there would be no bottleneck and no change.

Unusual genes manifest as unusual behavior and the survivors of bottlenecks have unusual genes that suddenly create a new species. Of course an ocean going whale doesn't need legs so the unusual behavior probably won't involve the use of legs and the new species will have less leg or more flipper. Conversely the individual land animals that became a whale probably were selected for something that also didn't require a leg. Whale probably arose suddenly when the only survivors were those living mostly in the water already because it suited their consciousness better.

There is no evidence for evolution or that one individual is more fit than another. There's no evidence any species changes gradually. Perhaps they would if niches lasted long enough but they do not.

 

[It Aint Necessarily So]

I mean it quite literally. A slime mold knows it's alive and it is to eat and reproduce. It knows how to seek food and it knows that knowing these things is life itself. It has little understanding of its world or itself but it knows enough to be what it is.

An interesting idea. I'm going to reserve knows, like aware and intelligent. for conscious entities, where conscious means aware of one's surroundings.

So to us "consciousness" is our thoughts and we think we are unconscious while we sleep and that plants and animals aren't conscious because they don't think or understand abstraction.

My definition of consciousness is similar to degree of wakefulness or awareness. A medical exam mentions degree of consciousness from alert through lethargy (like drunkenness) and stupor (difficult to rouse to wakefulness as with extreme drunkenness) through coma. Also, agitated or confused conscious states such as delerium, and wakeful unresponsive states like catatonia..

But, again, we are all mystics because nothing is knowable in terms of our language which is the language in which we think. No matter what words are put to something they are deconstructed by each observer. Nothing can be true if every individual has a different understanding of it.

My definition of true doesn't involve the estimations of others. I may have already given it to you. If so, here it is again: truth is the property common to all facts and only to facts, facts being sentences that accurately map a part of reality determined and confirmed empirically. Knowledge is the collection of beliefs considered fact, a concept related to worldview and one's mental map. I tend to avoid the word truth because of the likelihood of hearing about objective truth, absolute truth, ultimate truth and the like, which is a digression into metaphysics that I find unhelpful, so I tend to say an idea is correct rather than true.

Even if you believe in ghosts you can find some evidence.

You're describing what I call faith based thinking, where one begins with a premise held on faith such as that ghosts exist, and then tendentiously massages evidence through a faith-based confirmation bias to support that belief, and make that belief look like a conclusion derived from that evidence when it never was, something I call pseudo-conclusion - an unsupported premise backloaded with an a posteriori, specious argument.

Nature/ God provides no rulebook on how anything must be interpreted but we normally just see our beliefs.

Man has devised such a rulebook. Interpreting evidence can be difficult, but it can also be straightforward. The proof is in the pudding - does the conclusion derived from that evidence accurately predict outcomes. If so, the rules work, and this has been confirmed repeatedly for centuries. The rules that do this successfully become the rule book. It's an empirical test.

This is some of the argument for the correctness of the theory of evolution - it successfully predicts outcomes. It tells us what we might and will never find in nature. For example, it predicts that we will never find irreducible complexity. And it has been applied to fields like medicine and agriculture to improve the human condition. Those facts support the contention that the theory is the correct interpretation of the evidence used to suggest and support it.

It is this variation in behavior that drives change in species because some or most bottlenecks select not for "fitness" but for behavior.

If what you mean by bottleneck is the dramatic shrinking of a gene pool due to say a founder effect, this is a relatively minor contribution to genetic variation.

There is no evidence for evolution or that one individual is more fit than another. There's no evidence any species changes gradually.

I have good reason to believe that none of that is true. So you deny that evolution occurs? I thought you accepted that it occurs, but not for the reasons given by the theory, natural selection applied to populations experiencing genetic variation over generations. I thought that you were saying that it occurs, but is driven by consciousness or behavior, which would be a form of Lamarkianism, since changes from whatever cause need to be stored in the genome to be heritable. The scientific theory has genetic variation driving behavior, not the other way around.

What good was Brooks Robinson's remarkable ability to catch a screaming foul ball at a dinner party?

I remember Brooks well, and admired him greatly. He was an Oriole. I was a young Dodger fan beginning the mid-sixties, the Koufax and Drysdale years. Haven't forgotten the 1966 World Series when Brooks and Frank swept the Dodgers in four. Ouch! Or 1969 against the Miracle Mets. But Brooks was the best defensive third basemen ever in many people's estimation. Those who watched him were dazzled.

 

[cladking]

I remember Brooks well, and admired him greatly. He was an Oriole. I was a young Dodger fan beginning the mid-sixties, the Koufax and Drysdale years. Haven't forgotten the 1966 World Series when Brooks and Frank swept the Dodgers in four. Ouch! Or 1969 against the Miracle Mets. But Brooks was the best defensive third basemen ever in many people's estimation. Those who watched him were dazzled.

Cats envied his reflexes. I saw him snag screaming fouls in the air when pulled forward with runners on base. Not one player in 100 would even try for them and he'd catch them on a leap. The more the pressure the fewer errors he'd make and the better he got. He also had a tendency to get his hits when the Orioles won with his RBI's. As a White Sox fan he was a nemesis.

I thought you accepted that it occurs, but not for the reasons given by the theory, natural selection applied to populations experiencing genetic variation over generations.

This is largely semantics here. I strongly avoid usage of the term "Evolution" because it invokes in most listeners the concept of mother nature as some brute that kills the weak so the strong can slowly turn into a better species. I don't believe any of this and most believers SAY they don't believe it but this is very much the most common model. I say "change in species" because I believe most species do periodically make dramatic changes which are caused by the interplay of genetics and consciousness: all of which is individual. "Species" is an abstraction anyway. We are wholly blind to change in species because it is so complex and based on things we can't understand at this time. Few people even seem to be aware we see our beliefs instead of reality so they don't even see it when I say all observation supports my theory. Life and consciousness are the same thing and all individuals are equally fit. They just blow it all off because they believe in "Evolution" despite any amount of evidence and logic to the contrary.


...Later

 

[cladking]

My definition of consciousness is similar to degree of wakefulness or awareness

Until consciousness has a definition and its various aspects can be measured our perceptions of it mean nothing. As you said we don't really know anything else even exists.

My definition of true doesn't involve the estimations of others.

So long as you accept that what is true for you has no application to what is true for others I have no dispute with this. As I say often everything looks different from different perspectives and we don't even really know if we are seeing the same thing. But Egyptologists tell us that superstitious and changeless bumpkins dragged tombs up ramps and they never mention this is true only from their own perspective. They suggest this is the reality just like biologists believe that Evolution is real. These things simply aren't really true from any perspective but seem to be true given the assumptions. Truth and reality exist but the former can't be stated in English and the latter can only be found through experiment.

You're describing what I call faith based thinking, where one begins with a premise held on faith such as that ghosts exist, and then tendentiously massages evidence through a faith-based confirmation bias to support that belief, and make that belief look like a conclusion derived from that evidence when it never was, something I call pseudo-conclusion - an unsupported premise backloaded with an a posteriori, specious argument.

We ALL begin with assumptions. No matter how good your models are they still differ between individuals and they still rely on many assumptions. I have little doubt someone somewhere has good cause and empirical evidence to believe in ghosts. I suspect he is wrong anyway. His justification is an anomaly and his evidence is being misinterpreted.

Just like Evolutionists are misinterpreting evidence anyone can misinterpret any evidence and see things that do not exist.

The proof is in the pudding - does the conclusion derived from that evidence accurately predict outcomes.

Yes!!! Prediction is a very important part of real understanding. Successful prediction can not prove real understanding but is strongly indicative. ONLY experiment can test theory.

Ancient people called scientists "prophets" which meant "those who can predict". Prophets invented agriculture by the imposition of artificial bottlenecks on existing species. Where we "invent" through understanding of experiment ancient people directly saw the results of understanding. The "Holy Trinity" was Knowledge > Understanding > Creation. There were no steps between these, no science, and no "thinking". We misinterpret for the same reasons we misinterpret evidence about "Evolution", consciousness, and the nature of life. We must reason literally and deconstructably so we can't understand any other means to see reality. Then we forget that metaphysics DEMANDS experiment. When someone complains there is no experiment these heretics are beaten with "Peers" and "expertise". They are beaten with opinion and irrelevancies.

Then science changes one funeral at a time.

If what you mean by bottleneck is the dramatic shrinking of a gene pool due to say a founder effect...

Yes! Essentially yes.

Nature/ God imbues its creatures different "sexes". By this I mean that half of individuals swim upstream to look for more food or a place to colonize and half swim downstream. In any given situation where all else is equal half a population will do one thing and half the opposite. But these are otherwise normal, fit, and random individuals other than that most individuals will tend to stand pat no matter how bad the conditions. Environments change one (funeral) death at a time. All individuals are fit but they are each different and their behavior is caused by consciousness and experience.

In nature "founder effect" (I don't use these words) is far more extreme than in the lab because bottlenecks select for behavior. NOT FITNESS because all individuals are equally FIT. When the behavior selected is extremely strange to the species there is speciation; is these fit individuals create a new species. The very first generation is a new species; no muss, no fuss, and no missing links. This and mutation are the primary drivers of change in species. There is no survival of the fittest because all individuals are fit and life is consciousness. "Species" is just a word, merely an abstraction, which refers to a group of equally fit individuals. It is impossible to understand change in groups of individuals without understanding life, consciousness, and the specific causations of change. It can be observed because you can select tame wolves to create dogs. When you do it you can't see the cause if you believe in "survival of the fittest".

 

[It Aint Necessarily So]

Until consciousness has a definition and its various aspects can be measured our perceptions of it mean nothing.

The word and the phenomenon have meaning to me. I know what I am referring to when I use the word - a state of awareness of the self apprehending surrounding reality. I do not know what the substance of consciousness is of any, nor how it is generated by the brain, but that doesn't diminish what can be known about consciousness, such as that it is intermittent (sleep), it is a dance of assorted phenomena such as sounds heard, feelings felt, desires, intentions, without which, we lose contact with our environment and body.

So long as you accept that what is true for you has no application to what is true for others I have no dispute with this.

We might not mean the same thing here. I am not saying that what is true for me is only true for me, but rather, that I don't decide what is true for myself or others based on their opinions of truth. Somebody telling me that they know God or that they know that gods don't exist is not understood as truth by me even if it is by the one making the claim, and my understanding of the truth applies to the other even if he doesn't agree. Nobody knows that gods do or do not exist is the truth for me, whether others agree or not.

we don't even really know if we are seeing the same thing

Agreed, but that's not important to me. As long as what I see and how I see it are consistent and allow me to make accurate predictions, what others see doesn't matter to that process. Suppose that you and I could momentarily see through one another's eyes. We already agree that on a sunny day, the sky appears blue and the sun yellow. Suppose the retinal color receptors (cones) were reversed between the two of us, and when I looked through your eyes, the sky appeared what I call yellow (but you call blue) and the sun blue. That would be surprising and interesting, but unimportant. I could learn to use that information to predict the weather as well and decide whether to take a coat and umbrella when going out just as well as before. The truth here isn't what colors we are seeing, but what they signify will follow if anything.

From the Grateful Dead's Scarlet Begonias:

Wind in the willow's playin' "Tea For Two"
The sky was yellow, and the sun was blue
Strangers stoppin' strangers just to shake their hand
Everybody's playing in the heart of gold band, heart of gold band

We ALL begin with assumptions. No matter how good your models are they still differ between individuals and they still rely on many assumptions.

But those assumptions can be tested and empirically confirmed to be valid if they are. Physics has many such assumptions, such as that nothing should be considered true without empirical support, which ought to be observable and any processes observed repeatable and that the laws of physics are the same everywhere and constant. When we apply these principles, we derive laws and theories to account for these observations that then make predictions which can be tested, as when the first eclipse was accurately predicted, or when a manned space probe successfully landed on the moon. When these things happen, the assumptions go from being mere assumptions to tested and confirmed principles.

Successful prediction can not prove real understanding but is strongly indicative.

I don't need more understanding of nature than that.

The use of the word real before understanding reminds me of why I try to avoid these metaphysical considerations such as what is absolute truth or ultimate truth, what's really out there before it is transformed by consciousness into something apprehensible. What is the real essence of what appears to be the chair in the room. These questions not only can't be answered, they need not be answered, and have the answers wouldn't be useful unless they allowed us to make predictions about reality more effectively. What is the ultimate nature of the sun and sky beyond what can be gleaned by the application of reason to the evidence of the senses? Does it matter? Even if it's a deity, how does that knowledge matter if it wasn't discernible through the senses and doesn't impact experience?

We're going back to Descartes' demon, last Thursdayism, and brain in a vat or matrix scenarios. What if we were to discover that one of these was the case, was the 'ultimate' reality, knowledge of which was true understanding. Recall the imaginary finger in the imaginary flame. If nothing changes after ascertaining such knowledge, if the knowledge cannot be used to modify experience and affect or accurately predict outcomes more effectively, what use is it, and why all the fuss about not having such answers?

In nature "founder effect" (I don't use these words) is far more extreme than in the lab because bottlenecks select for behavior. NOT FITNESS

Yes, but natural selection selects for fecundity, which is what fitness means in an evolutionary sense, and which is closely allied with behavior but is not limited to it. Camouflage, for example, or threatening coloration, or thorns, makes a living thing more likely to survive to produce fertile offspring apart from its behavior. Consider coronavirus, not a living thing, but something that evolves genetically, gifting the world with new variants even better adapted to spreading in its human reservoir. The fittest virus is the one that is most contagious and causes the least disease. You can't be out there spreading it to new victims of you're dead or at home in bed. Imagine a virus that only created asymptomatic infection, and nobody got sick from it. We'd have never developed a vaccine or put on masks, nor would we quarantine. We'd be trading this virus unimpeded, with the maximum number of copies of it floating around until an even more contagious variant supplanted it. That's a fit virus.

 

[tas8831]

And he never did....

Cool.

Well, use your trained eye on this, and tell us all which is a random mutation and which is not - and don't forget to use "random with respect to fitness", since that is what we mean in evolutionary biology:

View attachment 61714

 

[cladking]

The word and the phenomenon have meaning to me. I know what I am referring to when I use the word - a state of awareness of the self apprehending surrounding reality. I do not know what the substance of consciousness is of any, nor how it is generated by the brain, but that doesn't diminish what can be known about consciousness, such as that it is intermittent (sleep), it is a dance of assorted phenomena such as sounds heard, feelings felt, desires, intentions, without which, we lose contact with our environment and body.

Every individual is 100% conscious all the time so long as it lives. A deciduous tree during the winter is only aware that it is alive and a tree. An acorn is aware it is a living oak seed and very little else. Of course "oak" means something else to an acorn. It is representative and digital.

It's impossible to understand consciousness except through experiment and no experiment has ever been performed vis a vis a definition for "consciousness". We do not know anything at al;l about consciousness except through Look and See Science which has no metaphysics and hence no meaning at all.

We might not mean the same thing here. I am not saying that what is true for me is only true for me, but rather, that I don't decide what is true for myself or others based on their opinions of truth.

I have no problem with this so long as it is recognized that this truth is not necessarily a reflection of reality. I even agree with you. I never got my beliefs or truths out of a bottle or a book either.

...

and my understanding of the truth applies to the other even if he doesn't agree.

Only to the degree your "truth" is a reflection of reality. Even then your truth and the reality will be deconstructed.

But those assumptions can be tested and empirically confirmed to be valid if they are.

This is very much my point. Axioms and definitions can not be tested (by definition). There are assumptions that underlie definitions and axioms which also can't be tested. "I think therefore I am" is simple claptrap for most practical purposes since stones and acorns do not think but couldn't be more different. The concept that more than one thing can exist is assumed by mathematics and science. Yet all observation says every single thing is unique and changes throughout its (typically) brief existence. Simple observation also shows that all things affect all other things so in a very real way there is one thing in existence and this is reality. It is impossible to add apples and oranges and it is impossible to count "rabbits" because they are each unique. Math is merely logic quantified but any resemblance to reality is mere coincidence because reality is logic manifest. Of course math seems to work; it is a reflection of reality just as the brains of animals is a reflection of reality hence so too are their languages and consciousnesses.

Humans are the odd man out because we no longer have a natural language. We use a pidgin form of a natural language where meaning musty be deconstructed just as we deconstruct reality to hold beliefs which we hope reflect reality. Science and its metaphysics necessarily exist within this reality. There is a single reality so science must exist within it. This means everything that applies to humans and everything else also applies to every individual's understanding. Metaphysics DEMANDS experiment for these exact reasons and no experiment shows a gradual change in species caused by survival of the fittest. Science has been drifting away from experiment for 150 years and away from reality for this reason. Darwin was patently wrong but we see a separate "reality" that doesn't exist.

Science must split in two pieces to progress. Indeed, the economy which runs on ever lower efficiency needs this bifurcation as well. We need a philosophical language and practical science. Endless splintering and specialties demand more individuals trained in more diverse (comprehensive) areas. We have messes in education, science, and leadership caused by a very poor understanding of metaphysics and a comprehensive understanding of science and its meaning. The mess was created by bad 19th century science and a century of trying to force it to work.

When we apply these principles, we derive laws and theories to account for these observations that then make predictions which can be tested, as when the first eclipse was accurately predicted, or when a manned space probe successfully landed on the moon. When these things happen, the assumptions go from being mere assumptions to tested and confirmed principles.

Not necessarily. We simply come to understand things in terms of false assumptions. Sometimes technology and prediction is still possible but this is because science is also logical. Reality is logic manifest so unsurprisingly even understanding based on bad assumptions, bad definitions, or even bad experiment might still be useful.

Reality is logic and life is consciousness.

There should be no surprise that math reflects reality even though it is wrong.

 

[cladking]

I don't need more understanding of nature than that.

It's impossible to know thyself without knowing consciousness.

What is the real essence of what appears to be the chair in the room.

This must be determined. We must build ever more accurate models. Modern humans must do this through experiment and no other means.

We're going back to Descartes' demon, last Thursdayism, and brain in a vat or matrix scenarios. What if we were to discover that one of these was the case, was the 'ultimate' reality, knowledge of which was true understanding. Recall the imaginary finger in the imaginary flame. If nothing changes after ascertaining such knowledge, if the knowledge cannot be used to modify experience and affect or accurately predict outcomes more effectively, what use is it, and why all the fuss about not having such answers?

I seriously doubt that reality will differ too much from what is apparent. But it really doesn't matter because we must seek the answers. If we are a brain in a vat what thing created the apparent reality? How did we get in a vat and how do we emerge from it?

Yes, but natural selection selects for fecundity,...

I think you're still imagining natural selection to argue against the absence of natural selection. This appears to be the equivalent of saying nuh uh.

Obviously there are individual differences in fecundity but this hardly makes one individual more fit than another and the fact that all else being equal will have more off spring does not make it more fit nor do the off spring cause a gradual change in species. Species simply don't change in this way. Show an experiment or empirical evidence that supports a gradual change and win the argument.