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Also, the main reason no one responded to his Great Idea™ was that Kai took issue with the very premise the Idea was built upon; and until that can be resolved, there's no need to discuss it.

Are we getting close yet?

Maybe. It was more inspired by the idea, not using it as a premise. On the other hand, I can understand why you would ignore it for that.

Kai - it was never my intention to start a scientific discussion. Frankly - this clusterfuck on my part is the product of an isolated summer and lack of familiarity with the forum. I should have made the OP short and clear and there was actually no need for the evolutionary stuff. I was just following my line of thought, but I just realize how cruel it is to subject other people that mess. My sincere apologies.

LMNO - I appreciate your response. I did not intend this as a hippie-anarchist commune that is completely self sustaining, but as a decentralized and replicating business model in the world as it is today. I will try and -snip- my future posts similarly.

Because, also as I suspected, metaphysics. Gotcha. Bowing out of thread.

Well, metaphysics in the sense of, "Are species an actual physical thing or a human concept? And if they are a physical thing, are they a collection of individuals or can they be treated like an individual themselves?" People are /still/ arguing about this after hundreds of years. I say, you point at a species in reality, and I'll pay you a hundred bucks for that solution. Of course you can't. You can show me pictures of an individual or individuals. You can't show me a species. You can't even show me the /signature/ of a species (like you can with quanta). And I'm supposed to believe that such a thing can be selected upon?

That is very important issue. I agree this is a very tricky methodological issue. However - this difficulty does not in and of itself exclude higher order selection. There are equally great difficulties in defining individuals in many cases (for example in eusocial insects and organisms which spend part of their life cycle as a colony). If it makes you feel more comfortable - you can rename it frequency dependent selection. I suspect however that the methodological issues with that approach will be greater.

On a more general note, I will do my best to clarify and simplify future posts and drop the jargon out of them as much as possible. I am still adjusting to the climate.

Yes, of course, your failure to communicate is everybody else's problem, dick measuring, etc. just like the others warned you and you aren't getting the attention you deserve. Got it.

If you have a problem with me, take it up with me. I'm an individual. And this morning, as of this post in fact I, personally, have grown to dislike you, personally. But feel free to blame everybody else on the board for this, as it's clearly their fault that I should be allowed to speak so insolently to you.

I was planning on just going about the business of ignoring you because there's nothing here for me, but never mind. 

I am trying to learn how to communicate better, and I am not trying to shift the blame for my communication failure to others (although passions tend to spill this kind of thing over, so apologies if I did). Some replies have been constructive, others not. That is all xD

I think Ixxie just got burned and didn't notice?

He didn't get burned. He got a recommendation with a story for illustration.

Go take a look at some of the science posts under my old B_M_W account, especially the stuff from late undergrad, and you find them awfully familiar in the context of this thread. This is a "been there, done that" moment.

I'm pretty sure there was reasonably parsable content in your posts, even if much of it was of little interest to your average PDer. When I did read them, they made sense. This guy has whole PARAGRAPHS of

Admittedly I am of the Gouldian camp. I feel Dawkins' reductionist approach is naive, and fails to model many of the higher order dynamics. I feel the attempt to reduce phenomenon in complex systems to a purely bottom-up edifice could never be satisfactory in describing evolutionary process. Instead - this perspective might be combined with the top-down effects of evolution on the higher levels pushing down. The nativity of Dawkins' position stems, in my opinion, from a naive rationalistic tendencies. Species, Genes, Organisms, Cell Lineages, Clades - all qualify as a Darwinian Individual. I would definitely agree lower level process constitutes the primary dynamic, but think that higher order dynamics create significant punctuations to stasis best modeled separately. Thus perhaps the null hypothesis is to try and explain by lower level process, but if this fails look for higher level causes. The evolution of Social Cognitive Mechanisms for example could be explained by individual level evolution but once such an adaptation fixates in the group it may have a great advantage compared to other groups. The spread from this point onwards is best modeled on the group selection level. We can only assume the spread of a gene between groups and within groups operates on different levels, and the statistical properties would be different. But this idea of modeling this kind of system only on one level seems absurd to me.

Now, I'm a fairly clever bear, but even though the subject matter is possibly of interest to me and even though I most likely read the books he's referring to, having  gone through a phase of reading everything by Gould and Dawkins several years ago, the reward for parsing that block of schizophrenic-looking (and I mean that literally, based on my dealings with schizophrenic people who write with that level of unnecessary, obfuscating density because they think it reflects their inner genius) bullshit looks pretty minimal from here.

You know, fair enough. I can understand your position. I  am just trying to express and develop my understanding, and I often do this by trying to start dialogue. I was just responding to the posts to my best understanding. It might not be much, but its all I have. And I don't need you telling me its bullshit - I know it is. Its all about polishing turds.

Say too little and you are vague and unscientific, say too much and you are writing with 'obfuscating density because they think it reflects their inner genius'. I come from a different discipline - my way of communicating might be different than yours. I am trying to learn how to improve it, and I appreciate Kai's constructive feedback, and I will try my best to take it to heart.

Of course, I disagree, and I've already stated my reasons. The important point I made was that there's a difference between modeling and metaphysics. You can /model/ groups as individuals, but that doesn't mean the groups are then some sort of intrinsic entity which selection is /acting directly upon/. Selection still is acting on organisms, which, regardless of whatever phantasmagorical altruism you might imagine, are in competition with each other, and cheaters still exist.

I agree, but as I said - I feel selection as acting on organisms is equally and abstraction. I thought we were past the whole map/territory issue, so I fail to see how selection on one level is any more 'real' than on another. Some are better models of course, even the best models are just models. I never denied cheaters exist, and there are multiple mechanisms mitigating this - and they are often strong enough to be significant imo.

As for the rest of - some of the replies on this thread and others make it seem like *some* people here are engaged in a cock-measuring contest. Whatever my flaws - I made an sincere attempt to communicating an idea because I thought this might be a place where productive dialogue occurs. This was not supposed to be a thread about evolutionary theory, the first post is not about that. Nobody even responded directly to the actual idea.

I should have listened to the #discord peeps. I won't attempt productivity here again.

Well I am trying to figure out a way to communicate this better. My usual approach is to speak without parsing my language because I generally don't like it when people do it to me; when there is a term I am unfamiliar with I ask for an explanation. However - I guess there is a point where you get so deep into this shit to a degree blind to the incomprehensible jargon in your logorrhea.

I guess maybe I should post a more chronological sequence and develop the ideas more slowly instead of using my usual retroactive explanations. This and other experiences make me start to seriously doubt my abilities to explain these issues clearly, so maybe I should do it to improve my communication skills.

you guys read slashdot right?

ok, I wasn't sure about you with the ayahuasca church stuff and the OOBE stuff, but I officially like you now.  Please share more Indian cooking wisdom.

He's good people.  Kinda cerebral and I have to break out my dictionary to follow him sometimes but he's cool...I'll vouch for him--not that he needs a voucher, of course.

Why thank you! We appreciate that verily much. I know I tend to wander into discussions about questionable and/or overly complex topics, but occasionally I muster the will to unwind that bear-trap on ma balls and get twisted into some spaggery.

I don't have that much else specific on the Indian front. Basically I got the main tricks from some British guy (an asshole, but a good cook) around 6-7 years ago, and have been working on the spice balances ever since. Of course its different every single time you make it - but that's the fun part. Every time you meet with new or old friends, contingency of ingredients and skills produces a new creation.

I have a friend who more frequently does a tomato-based curry, and uses safran for the rice. I don't know how to pull off that direction. I posted this here because I was hoping to learn more Indian cooking tricks myself xD but I do have a bunch of other recipes up my sleeves, so I will post some in the coming weeks (maybe a chilli or a couple strudel recipes).

Ixxie, I gladly encourage you to continue your line of thought, but I must caution you: Kai KNOWS HIS SHIT. You had best do your research and have a SOLID ground to speak from. But I kind of want you to half-ass it, because it's been a long time since I've seen Kai go off on someone, and I kind of miss it.

To be honest, I don't really understand most of the posts. It's all theoretical evolutionary biology. I work with "experimental" evolutionary biology (in so far as historical sciences can be considered experimental; some people call them "natural experiments". I prefer the terms "observational", "historical", or just plain "natural history"). So I could only really address the points that I was familiar with, the parts about MLS and metaphysics of species. The rest, I'm really stretching, or completely lost. On the other hand, if I hadn't posted Ixxie might have gotten no replies. If I can barely follow some of it, and it's nearly up my alley, then I doubt anyone else reading it can either.

I do have a hard time with throwing the word "emergence" around like a noun. Might as well say "phlogiston". And that's /after/ a semester of chaos/complexity theory.

Questioning the validity of these entities as valid units in evolutionary models is critical, so I completely understand where you are coming from. Some units are far more potent than others in describing the process. However - I would point out that all biological entities are equally theoretical constructs. How 'real' these constructs are depends not only on empirical data - but also on your particular philosophy of science.

I can only speak for my position - and I am skeptical of our ability to know the reality of even the simplest of systems, let alone complex systems (especially those which such a ancient and opaque history). However, from my perspective, this makes the discussion of emergence all the more important. The concept is vague and broad - but this in itself doesn't invalidate its value in research. I use the term Emergence to describe a class of processes describing how local microscopic processes spontaneously produce global macroscopic phenomena. I agree that any theories regarding emergence (and indeed any complex process) would always be crude approximations of the reality. Moreover - its a statistical nightmare, and there are great methodological issues with the empirical study of these processes. But can you deny that even the most conservative theories of evolution stipulate emergence in this sense? I think the history of science points to great success from thinking in these terms. If you know of a solid critique of emergence - I would love to read it; the wikipedia article does not even seem to have a 'criticisms' section.

Now the distinction you seem to make between using the term as noun or verb seems moot; we can very well assume there is no such thing as a noun at all and translate all nouns into verbs. In fact there are even languages that seem to have no distinction of noun and verb. Comparing emergence to "phlogiston" seems to me misguided, even backwards. A phlogiston is a hypothetical unobserved microscopic object which was proposed as a cause of a macroscopic process. Emergence is a theory of how observable microscopic phenomenon aggregate to observable macroscopic phenomenon.

I have a hard time throwing the word emergence out of my scientific vocabulary. Might as well embrace it. And that's /after/ 4-5 years of biomathematics.

I look forward to more discussion Kai - I definitely have a lot to learn from you. I am shamefully lacking in my knowledge of actual empirical work, I was only permitted a couple of courses in this direction in my master. It's good at least somebody replied; I am increasingly realizing how incomprehensible I have become, even after trying very hard to make my point clearly. I guess I'm one of *those* guys now. 

I am not on your root, but a couple of tips:

1. Couchsurfing.org might help you out in finding a sleeping spot, and in meeting fun people.
2. http://www.mitfahrgelegenheit.de/  - carpooling service from Germany, useful for traveling in and out of Germany/Austria/Switzerland.
3. Vienna is fucking awesome and if you want an extended list of recommendations for what to do there, just ask.

This recipe calls for equal parts red onion and eggplant, and a jar of mango chutney.

Slice the eggplant and make a Salting tower to drain the bitter liquid; add salt on a plat, then a slice of eggplant, then a layer of salt, then another slice, etc. After 15-20 minutes the liquid should be released and you can wash them off. Once done, slice the slices into strips.

Cut the red onions into half-rings, roast them on a medium flame adding sweet paprika generously until its nice and sweet. Add the eggplant and fry until its quite tender. Finally - add copious amounts of Mango Chutney and stirring until sweet awesome gooeyness is ready. Adding dry ground chilly optional.

This makes for a nice sweet side dish to a curry.

a vegetarian curry, to give an example of the type of curry I typically make, in this case using Chestnut Mushrooms, Chickpeas, Courgette, Tofu, Bell Peppers

Start soaking the rice in water as described in the indian rice recipe above. Make the above listed curry base with two cans of coconut milk, letting it simmer and optionally add 2-3 peeled tomatoes (stick them in a bowl of boiling water for a couple of minutes and fish them out with a fork for convenient pealing). While this stews, dry up a relatively firm tofu chopped in sugar-cube sized blocks in a high flame until it gets nice and crispy. I usually throw in some sliced garlic, salt and pepper maybe cumin and freshly chopped chili about half way through the frying - sesame or pumpkin seed oil are probably also a nice additions. Marinading the tofu is probably also a nice idea but I have no idea what kind of marinade I would use. Once nice and crispy, add the tofu to the curry and let it cook for a while.

Add chestnut mushroom cut in quarters with a about a third or half a nut-meg and some black pepper ground. Now - the rest of vegetables in this particular curry are generally quite fast cooking, so it might be a good idea to let the sauce thicken and take on a medium or low flame simmer for 10 or 20 minutes. By now the rice has probably soaked its 20 minutes and you have strained the water out, so you can take the time to prepare the rice as described above. I have never tried it - but I think this curry would benefit from maybe 3-5 boiled eggs cut in half and added at this point (although they might better be added in the end). You can grind a spice mix now to focus the taste of the curry and add it - maybe some smoked paprika, a couple of Annis star seeds and a pinch of Saffron. I would usually need to add more curry powders, salt and pepper at this point as well, to taste.

Don't forget the rice - at sometime it should be ready the pot should be put in the over to get it crispy. Add a small broccoli in medium sized pieces to the curry, with perhaps a dash of nut-meg. While this cooks, chop a courgette lengthwise in half and then diagonally to produce elongated slices. Precook them in a separate pan in the juice of half or a whole lemon, adding freshly ground coriander seeds. This is to get the flavors in - so when you feel that has been achieved, add it to the curry (it should not be over cooked - it will keep cooking in the curry). After stirring this in, add 3-500g of chickpeas (I used canned ones - too lazy to pre-soakem), with some pepper and maybe a dash of freshly ground cumin. After this as cooked for a bit but before these veggies get too soft - add one or two bell peppers cut in long strips. These are added last to ensure nice crunchy bite. You can now turn of the heat and let the sauce take.

When your rice is sufficiently crispy or your people sufficiently hungry - the curry can be reheated and served on the rice with fresh coriander leaf to finish it off. The side dish in the next post would make a perfect complement to this curry.

a Curry Base:

chop 5-10 large onions, 5-10 cloves of garlic, a similar quantity of fresh ginger. Fry it on medium or low flame until the onions are nice and glazed, then add lots of curry powder or paste, maybe some gara masala and freshly chopped chilli.

After this is good and soft you can add coconut milk / tomato sauce to kick of a curry, or add lentils and turn it into a Dall.

Indian Rice:

Soak basmati rice in water for 20m then dry it off. Fry up an onion in a pot on a medium flame, after a minute or two add 0.5-1 teaspoon of cumin, 1-2 sticks of Cinnamon and 8-10 green cardamom seeds . Keep stirring for 2-3 more minutes making sure the cumin doesn't burn. Add the rice and fry it up for 2-3 minutes and add water and salt. Now because of the soak you only need about 1.5 cups of water per cup of rice. I usually add 1 cup of water initially, and add more if needed - tasting the rice as I go.

When the rice is ready - you can eat it. OR you can put the lid on the pot and roast it in the oven at 80-100 degrees C. In principle, I understand you can roast it for hours and it will get crispier and crispier. Last time I did it on 100 degrees for 1-2 hours and it was awesome. I still wanna experiment with the temperatures and times and see how to get it better.

From what I have seen in even very simple models - ignoring emergence and top-down effects like this is folly. At the very least, top-down pressures are theoretically possible. Of course this might be empirically invalid, but I doubt that too. You can reformulate such things back to lower level processes, but it doesn't change the fact that the joint fitness distribution is fundamentally different than the marginals. One could attempt to reduce the object of selection to a lowest level, but the intensity will always depend on higher order structures. When you construct the mean field equations for the frequency of a low level network structure, it always depends directly on higher order moments (just as they depend on lower level structures).

You seem to contend that apparent higher order process is a phantom that emerges from 'real' lower level process. It seems to me that this position is mostly a byproduct of a long tradition of reductionism and mechanism. I would agree that bottom-up process seems to dominates but contend that in a similar way lower level effects can be considered as phantoms emerging from higher order process.  All the levels are always modeling a process so complex and opaque I would hardly call any of these simplifications 'real', let alone dare to point to a seeming dynamic on any particular level and say that this and this level alone is the causal source. I remain skeptical about the realism of any model of evolutionary process. However - I much prefer making the null hypothesis co-causal and asymmetric - for it seems that most of the time bottom up process predominates but once in a while top down dynamics are critical.

I was referring to power law distributions in other contexts. I don't know much about taxonomy and systemics to be honest. It just seems to me at the moment that hierarchical selection theory - which could be conceived as thing else but a separation of temporal and phylogenetic scales for the purpose of theoretical analysis -  provides a far more lucid perspective. I admittedly lack experience and erudition here, so consider this my naive theoretical position for the moment. I will hopefully learn more - especially on the empirical domain - and be able to reevaluate this position with either empirical support or refutation.

Species, Genes, Organisms, Cell Lineages, Clades - all qualify as a Darwinian Individual.

No, they don't. Species is not a "Darwinian individual" (have I mentioned yet how much I hate the use of "Darwinian?), nor are clades. If you want to pose such a thing you are going to actually point to a species. And I don't mean a vague concept of meta populations, I mean an actual physical thing. Given that my primary work is taxonomy and systematics, and given one of the long term major questions of those fields is "what is a species?", I am unwilling to let you stand on that statement because my experience tells me it doesn't have legs.

Edit: nor frankly are the rest of those things except "Organisms".

Like any model is "the real thing" xD never mind, I will do more reading and prove you wrong one day ^^ or not, who cares.