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Evolution proven right yet again

Started by Iason Ouabache, June 26, 2008, 01:30:47 AM

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Vene

Kai, I knew there was a reason I liked you.

Kai

Quote from: Regret on August 14, 2008, 11:40:14 PM
Quote from: Kai on August 14, 2008, 10:55:49 PM
Holy shit, YES, we have a live one here and they can take my snark!  :D

Okay, to your first point, yes, they are different. Why? Because in sexual selection (a subset of natural selection), mate selection is not random. Natural Selection is not a random process. Genetic Drift, however, IS a random process. The greatest controversy in evolutionary biology is which of those two are more important? Most biologists agree that both natural selection and genetic drift occur in some amount, but very few agree as to what proportion each occur. Are there situations where one is irrelevant?

Natural selection, at least when we speak of it including sexual selection, does not deal with probabilities, as I said. Darwins thesis was that individuals with favorable traits are more likely to reproduce because they are A. more fit with the environment (environmental selection) and b. more attractive to a mate (sexual selection), and that these traits are passed on to the offspring and become a larger precentage of the population. This is counting, however, only for traits that are visible and would be considered detrimental or favorable. The other traits, hidden or neutral, will change according to probability. This change is called genetic drift. Like I said above, biologists argue alot about which one is more important in evolutionary change.

Now, compairing that to chemicals is like compairing apples and oranges. The biological process is a combination of random and deterministic elements with billions of variables. The chemical process is relatively simple. You can't compare the two because they are completly dissimilar. The reduction in allele frequency (I'm guessing you are reffering to peppered moth populations) occured because of a thousand different variables coming together at once, habitat selection for the moth, prey selection and availability for the birds, climate and human population effects. Its such a mixture of complex random and deterministic events that comparing it to chemical processes is oversimplfying to the point where it bears no resemblance to the truth. Its too unpredictable.

When you talk about probability of continued existance, I believe you are talking about variables, whereas with evolutionary biology you are talking about alleles within a genepool. Mixed metaphors, different processes, too many variables.

Also, unnatural selection is a bad misspelling, a satyrical meme, and has nothing to do with the scientific theory of natural selection.

random? do you think that molecular stability is random? which is easier to degrade starch or ethanol and why? these processes are not even nearly random, it strongly depends on their surroundings just as mate selection. it depends partly on properties of the molecule itself (for example the strength and number of its covalent bonds) and partly on properties of its surroundings/environment (the presence of enzymes, temperature, pH)

Is 'more likely' not equal to increased probability?
as to chemical processes being dissimilar, this is of course true but if you think of the effects of the environment on the subject(organism or otherwise) as a black box then the output of said black box is the probability of continued existence(regardless of the processes inside the black box or what it is acting on). Now when i talk about continued existence i do not mean physical existence but the continued existence of this particular bit of information wether this information is encoded in DNA or in the presence of the actual subject does not matter. it does not matter if your genes survive to 2050 inside your body or inside the bodies of your onyl surviving offspring, as long as they can still interact with the other genes in the genepool.

Don't forget that selection takes places at the genetic level and that genes are molecules.

PS i'm really enjoying this :D

PPS i'm not attacking the theory of natural selection, i just do not understand why it is stil called natural selection when natural implies that it is not influenced by human industry while the theory has the same predicting power when the selection is not natural.
hmmm just had a thought: maybe 'natural' was simply used to set it apart from supernatural i.e. divine, or just used as we use the world 'real' in this day and age.

PPPS my reasoning skills are deteriorating under the influence of beer and exhaustion so i am going to sleep, goodnight Kai.

I'm sorry but, while I can see some similarities between chemical "selection" and natural evolutionary processes, I still don't believe they make a good comparison. I'm glad you are enjoying this; at the moment I am exausted from a 1000 mile/24 hour drive which I haven't slept yet from. Natural Selection is called that because that is the name that Charles Darwin gave the process when he outlined the main details  more than 100 years ago. Natural selection was most likely used to set the processes outlined apart from a divine order. Christianity was the main force against which Darwin fought to publish and make widely known his findings.

Quote from: Vene on August 15, 2008, 01:33:24 AM
Kai, I knew there was a reason I liked you.

:D
If there is magic on this planet, it is contained in water. --Loren Eisley, The Immense Journey

Her Royal Majesty's Chief of Insect Genitalia Dissection
Grand Visser of the Six Legged Class
Chanticleer of the Holometabola Clade Church, Diptera Parish

Triple Zero

i'm gonna try to oil this discussion a littlebit. cause i think it's possible for it to go into some more useful direction than an authorative knowledge show-off battle :-P

- first, Kai don't diss his misspellings, he's not a native english speaker (i've seen his avatar on the Dutch discordian Hyves group)

- second, Regret, i think Kai is trying to say (and sorry if i get it wrong here, Kai) that natural selection and "chemical selection"/memetic selection/etc, while having a superficial similarity, when you go into detail and actually study why these systems work the way they do, are constructed out of fundamentally different mechanisms and mainly, that it's important to be aware of these differences instead of ignore them or look the other way because it's so easy (and i understand why it's easy, Regret, see the next point :) ) -- cause once you call everything "the same process", you don't get very far in studying its specific workings (remember you're talking to a person who's literally studying "mierenneuken"! :lol:)

- third, Kai, what i think Regret is trying to say (also sorry Regret, i regret if i'd interpret you wrong here) is that on some other fundamental level, natural selection, "chemical selection", memetic selection (i could add more to this list btw) are all examples of a same (very) general process, which should have a kind of name, but i can't think of a better term than "evolution" (strictly in its generic meaning, not the specific biological sense). the terms "complexity" and "emergence" are kind of related, but not really in the chemical sense, at least not that often.

- fourth, to me this seems like a process where complex systems of combinatorial information packets are continously reconstructing themselves, with their continued existence determined in one sense by rules based on the (often physical) carrier of the information, but in another sense can be seen as determined by rules based on the meaning of  the information in relation to the system itself. thereby (IMO) creating the meaning--in some sense--from the purely physical properties of the system... maybe call that semiogenesis?

sorry if i might have flown off a tangent.
Ex-Soviet Bloc Sexual Attack Swede of Tomorrow™
e-prime disclaimer: let it seem fairly unclear I understand the apparent subjectivity of the above statements. maybe.

INFORMATION SO POWERFUL, YOU ACTUALLY NEED LESS.

Kai

Quote from: triple zero on August 28, 2008, 01:23:04 PM
i'm gonna try to oil this discussion a littlebit. cause i think it's possible for it to go into some more useful direction than an authorative knowledge show-off battle :-P

- first, Kai don't diss his misspellings, he's not a native english speaker (i've seen his avatar on the Dutch discordian Hyves group)

- second, Regret, i think Kai is trying to say (and sorry if i get it wrong here, Kai) that natural selection and "chemical selection"/memetic selection/etc, while having a superficial similarity, when you go into detail and actually study why these systems work the way they do, are constructed out of fundamentally different mechanisms and mainly, that it's important to be aware of these differences instead of ignore them or look the other way because it's so easy (and i understand why it's easy, Regret, see the next point :) ) -- cause once you call everything "the same process", you don't get very far in studying its specific workings (remember you're talking to a person who's literally studying "mierenneuken"! :lol:)

- third, Kai, what i think Regret is trying to say (also sorry Regret, i regret if i'd interpret you wrong here) is that on some other fundamental level, natural selection, "chemical selection", memetic selection (i could add more to this list btw) are all examples of a same (very) general process, which should have a kind of name, but i can't think of a better term than "evolution" (strictly in its generic meaning, not the specific biological sense). the terms "complexity" and "emergence" are kind of related, but not really in the chemical sense, at least not that often.

- fourth, to me this seems like a process where complex systems of combinatorial information packets are continously reconstructing themselves, with their continued existence determined in one sense by rules based on the (often physical) carrier of the information, but in another sense can be seen as determined by rules based on the meaning of  the information in relation to the system itself. thereby (IMO) creating the meaning--in some sense--from the purely physical properties of the system... maybe call that semiogenesis?

sorry if i might have flown off a tangent.

1. Don't know if I was dissing his spelling. Sorry if I was.

2. Correct on that point.

3. See the Six elements of Bootstrapping quality thread for more details.

4. Unfortunatly biology is seldom based around meaning. Its whatever works. The species that are around today are around because they survived billions of years of environmental changes within their lineages as well as random chance events and if something happened tomorrow to wipe them out before they could all reproduce the lineage would simply be gone, a lineage that goes all the way back to the begining, to the hydrothermal vents if you will. You could say that all we have left are the bedraggled remains of what once was, and as amazing as those are, just think about how amazing those in the past were, or how amazing /those in the future/ will be. The unrolling (heh, Darwin really hated that term) continues. How long before the human lineage is wiped out by disease or lack of resources? We'll be just another footnote in the fossil record, a HC layer, like the K-T layer, a line of dust in the rock.

On the other hand, meaning = survival? In other words, the packets of DNA have meaning in their phenotypic form as a mechanism for survival....we would simply call that adaptation in biology. I'm not sure what you are getting at. Semio....some kind of mark, standard, a symbol? The birth of symbols?
If there is magic on this planet, it is contained in water. --Loren Eisley, The Immense Journey

Her Royal Majesty's Chief of Insect Genitalia Dissection
Grand Visser of the Six Legged Class
Chanticleer of the Holometabola Clade Church, Diptera Parish

lemurdue

Quote from: Calendula! on July 30, 2008, 06:58:32 PM

The thing about the "extraterrestrial seeds" problem is that it doesn't actually answer the question of "Why Did Life"; it just moves it to another starting point. It's not any easier to explain why life evolved on Planet Whatserface than it is to explain why it evolved on Earth, and in the end we'd probably come up with the same reasons anyway.  :monkeydance:

--Calendula,
really needs to start reading about biology again!

Conciousness is an odd thing. Sure, it centers around our brains, but there have been normally functioning people discovered to have essentially no brains at all. So, if the brain isn't it, then what is? Is our brain a receptor for something else? I've pondered if life came into being because of cross dimensional leaks similar to the theory of weak gravity.

Iason Ouabache

You cannot fathom the immensity of the fuck i do not give.
    \
┌( ಠ_ಠ)┘┌( ಠ_ಠ)┘┌( ಠ_ಠ)┘┌( ಠ_ಠ)┘

Kai

Quote from: lemurdue on August 29, 2008, 04:09:51 AM
Quote from: Calendula! on July 30, 2008, 06:58:32 PM

The thing about the "extraterrestrial seeds" problem is that it doesn't actually answer the question of "Why Did Life"; it just moves it to another starting point. It's not any easier to explain why life evolved on Planet Whatserface than it is to explain why it evolved on Earth, and in the end we'd probably come up with the same reasons anyway.  :monkeydance:

--Calendula,
really needs to start reading about biology again!

Conciousness is an odd thing. Sure, it centers around our brains, but there have been normally functioning people discovered to have essentially no brains at all. So, if the brain isn't it, then what is? Is our brain a receptor for something else? I've pondered if life came into being because of cross dimensional leaks similar to the theory of weak gravity.

O.o
If there is magic on this planet, it is contained in water. --Loren Eisley, The Immense Journey

Her Royal Majesty's Chief of Insect Genitalia Dissection
Grand Visser of the Six Legged Class
Chanticleer of the Holometabola Clade Church, Diptera Parish

Kai

Another thing: I was reading last night and came to the conclusion that selectivism in chemistry and natural selection in biology are not comparable largely because the former can be reduced (reductionism "all arrows point down"), while biology can not, it is an example of emergence.
If there is magic on this planet, it is contained in water. --Loren Eisley, The Immense Journey

Her Royal Majesty's Chief of Insect Genitalia Dissection
Grand Visser of the Six Legged Class
Chanticleer of the Holometabola Clade Church, Diptera Parish

Vene

Quote from: lemurdue on August 29, 2008, 04:09:51 AM
Quote from: Calendula! on July 30, 2008, 06:58:32 PM

The thing about the "extraterrestrial seeds" problem is that it doesn't actually answer the question of "Why Did Life"; it just moves it to another starting point. It's not any easier to explain why life evolved on Planet Whatserface than it is to explain why it evolved on Earth, and in the end we'd probably come up with the same reasons anyway.  :monkeydance:

--Calendula,
really needs to start reading about biology again!

Conciousness is an odd thing. Sure, it centers around our brains, but there have been normally functioning people discovered to have essentially no brains at all. So, if the brain isn't it, then what is? Is our brain a receptor for something else? I've pondered if life came into being because of cross dimensional leaks similar to the theory of weak gravity.
Does the 50 post rule apply when the level of bullshit is this high?  Creationists make more sense than this guy.  Hell, the recent "bigfoot" incident is more believable, even after it was definitely exposed as a costume.

LMNO

Take it easy.  Let's ease him into this.


Quote from: lemurdue on August 29, 2008, 04:09:51 AM
Conciousness is an odd thing. Sure, it centers around our brains, but there have been normally functioning people discovered to have essentially no brains at all. So, if the brain isn't it, then what is? Is our brain a receptor for something else? I've pondered if life came into being because of cross dimensional leaks similar to the theory of weak gravity.

Ok, first, we're gonna have to do a :cn: on the first part.

Second, I suggest you employ Occam's razor more judiciously.

lemurdue

Quote from: LMNO on August 29, 2008, 02:03:41 PM
Take it easy.  Let's ease him into this.


Quote from: lemurdue on August 29, 2008, 04:09:51 AM
Consciousness is an odd thing. Sure, it centers around our brains, but there have been normally functioning people discovered to have essentially no brains at all. So, if the brain isn't it, then what is? Is our brain a receptor for something else? I've pondered if life came into being because of cross dimensional leaks similar to the theory of weak gravity.

Ok, first, we're gonna have to do a :cn: on the first part.

Second, I suggest you employ Occam's razor more judiciously.

No, this is the internet so fuck Occam's razor.

Here you go: http://www.unexplainedstuff.com/Mysteries-of-the-Mind/Living-without-a-Brain.html. If you want longer stuff, it's out there under a lot of the holographic universe stuff.

But anyway, fuck Occam's razor. This is the internet. You can say any sort of shit you want behind the cloak of anonymity.

Payne

Quote from: lemurdue on September 08, 2008, 10:04:36 PM
Quote from: LMNO on August 29, 2008, 02:03:41 PM
Take it easy.  Let's ease him into this.


Quote from: lemurdue on August 29, 2008, 04:09:51 AM
Consciousness is an odd thing. Sure, it centers around our brains, but there have been normally functioning people discovered to have essentially no brains at all. So, if the brain isn't it, then what is? Is our brain a receptor for something else? I've pondered if life came into being because of cross dimensional leaks similar to the theory of weak gravity.

Ok, first, we're gonna have to do a :cn: on the first part.

Second, I suggest you employ Occam's razor more judiciously.

No, this is the internet so fuck Occam's razor.

Here you go: http://www.unexplainedstuff.com/Mysteries-of-the-Mind/Living-without-a-Brain.html. If you want longer stuff, it's out there under a lot of the holographic universe stuff.

But anyway, fuck Occam's razor. This is the internet. You can say any sort of shit you want behind the cloak of anonymity.

Just because you're anonymous, doesn't mean you shouldn't at least make an attempt to be logical and scientific in a science thread.

I would click that link and read through it, but something tells me it's all going to be bullshit.

Fuck Occam's Razor indeed...

lemurdue

You can find Lorber's work in a variety of places. It's a fact that there are people functioning normally with practically no brain. So yeah, call it illogical all you want, but the universe is consistently an illogical place.

Vene

Quote from: lemurdue on September 08, 2008, 10:30:46 PM
You can find Lorber's work in a variety of places. It's a fact that there are people functioning normally with practically no brain. So yeah, call it illogical all you want, but the universe is consistently an illogical place.
No, it's a logical place.  It's our minds that are illogical.  That's why the higher level science is so counter intuitive.

Kai

Land Of Big Science
from Newsweek

The eyes of the world are on Geneva, where scientists are expected to throw the switch this week on what may be the biggest experiment ever conducted. It's certainly the most expensive.

... Probing more deeply than ever before into the stuff of the universe requires some big hardware. It also requires the political will to lavish money on a project that has no predictable practical return, other than prestige and leadership in the branch of science that delivered just about every major technology of the past hundred years.

... The Large Hadron Collider, as the Geneva machine is called, is a symptom of America's decline in particle physics and Europe's rise. Many scientists and educators fear that it also signals a broader decline in scientific leadership on the part of the United States.

http://snipurl.com/3ns2q


Sea Level Rise Won't Be a "Hollywood Cataclysm"
from National Geographic News

Sea levels will rise a bit higher—but not catastrophically high—in the coming century, according to a new study. The oceans will likely rise between 2.5 and 6.5 feet by 2100, researchers say.

This is not as high as the predictions from some scientists, who have warned that sea levels may rise as much as 16 feet by 2100.

Just because the amount of sea-level rise predicted in the new study is "not a Hollywood cataclysm, it doesn't mean it's not important," said study leader Tad Pfeffer of the University of Colorado in Boulder. ... In the new study, Pfeffer and colleagues examined estimates of 16 feet or more of sea level rise, which they thought seemed unrealistic.

http://snipurl.com/3nehb


Assessing the Value of Small Wind Turbines
from the New York Times (Registration Required)

SAN FRANCISCO—With the California blackouts of 2001 still a painful memory, Chris Beaudoin wants to generate some of his own electricity. He marveled the other day at how close he is to that goal, gazing at two new wind turbines atop his garage roof. They will soon be hooked to the power grid.

"I don't care about how much it costs," said Mr. Beaudoin, a flight attendant with United Airlines. That would be $5,000 a turbine, an expense Mr. Beaudoin is unlikely to recoup in electricity savings anytime soon.

No matter. After shoring up the roof and installing the two 300-pound, steel-poled turbines in January, Mr. Beaudoin found himself at the leading edge of a trend in renewable energy.

http://snipurl.com/3mz1n


Scientists Get Death Threats Over Large Hadron Collider
from the Telegraph (UK)

Scientists working on the world's biggest machine are being besieged by phone calls and emails from people who fear the world will end next Wednesday, when the gigantic atom smasher starts up.

The Large Hadron Collider near Geneva, where particles will begin to circulate around its 17 mile circumference tunnel next week, will recreate energies not seen since the universe was very young, when particles smash together at near the speed of light.

Such is the angst that the American Nobel prize winning physicist Frank Wilczek of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology has even had death threats, said Prof Brian Cox of Manchester University .... There have also been legal attempts to halt the start up.

http://snipurl.com/3ncpe


New Robot Legs Have a Spring in Their Step
from New Scientist

Walking comes naturally to humans but is one of the greatest barriers facing roboticists. Legs with joints driven by motors struggle to recycle energy during walking in the way biological legs with springy tendons and muscles do.

A new design driven by steel cable tendons and with built-in springs could provide the answer. "The spring is important. That's something that is fundamental to being able to run in an efficient way," says Jonathan Hurst, a roboticist at Oregon State University, Oregon.

Studies of humans walking and running show that our tendons and muscles store and release up to 40% of the total energy expended. Other animals, for example kangaroos, recycle even more, says Hurst.

http://snipurl.com/3nek3


Gene Regulation Makes the Human
from Science News

Genes alone don't make the man—after all, humans and chimps share roughly 98 percent of their DNA. But where, when and how much genes are turned on may be essential in setting people apart from other primates.

A stretch of human DNA inserted into mice embryos revs the activity of genes in the developing thumb, toe, forelimb and hind limb. But the chimp and rhesus macaque version of this same stretch of DNA spurs only faint activity in the developing limbs, reports a new study in the Sept. 5 Science.

The research supports the notion that changes in the regulation of genes—rather than changes in the genes themselves—were crucial evolutionary steps in the human ability to use fire, invent wheels and ponder existential questions, like what distinguishes people from our primate cousins.

http://snipurl.com/3nfg1


Download Free Books and Movies from Local Libraries
from the Christian Science Monitor

In a time when practically any question can be answered through a Google search, brick-and-mortar libraries are evolving to remain relevant.

Rather than cede ground to search engines, e-book readers, and download services, more than 7,500 US libraries are adopting their competitor's tricks and offering digital means to access books, music, and movies—free of charge. The embodiment of this effort parked outside Boston's City Hall last week.

Inside the 75-foot-long, 18-wheel bookmobile are computer workstations, portable download devices, even a souped-up lounge replete with a "pleather" couch and a flat-screen TV—all designed to teach Bostonians how to use the newest in librarian tech: the digital lending library.

http://snipurl.com/3nfhg


Rosetta Probe Makes Asteroid Pass
from BBC News Online

The Rosetta space probe has made a close pass of asteroid Steins. The European Space Agency mission flew past the 5km-wide rock at a distance of about 800km, taking pictures and recording other scientific data.

The information was sent back to Earth for processing late on Friday and released to the public on Saturday. The asteroid pass is a bonus for Rosetta. Its prime goal is to catch and orbit Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko out near Jupiter in 2014.

Friday's pass occurred about 360 million km from Earth, in between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter, in the asteroid belt.

http://snipurl.com/3nryj


Tiny Bug Takes Large Toll on Europe's Forests
from the Los Angeles Times (Registration Required)

CASTINCAL, PORTUGAL (Associated Press)—Manuel Coimbra watches in silence, his hands on his hips, as a lumberjack saws down one of his pine trees to stop a killer bug that experts say could wipe out large belts of European woodland.

The dense forests that blanket the hillsides of this rural area of west-central Portugal are the latest international conquest for the pest, which has caused ecological catastrophes in East Asia. Thousands of trees here are already dead, according to locals.

His land is on the front line of Europe's attempt to check pine wilt disease, which is spreading out of control in this southwestern corner of the continent and is a menace from Scandinavia to Italy and Greece.

http://snipurl.com/3ns0c


FDA to List Drugs Being Investigated
from the Washington Post (Registration Required)

The Food and Drug Administration will begin posting every three months a list of drugs whose safety is under investigation because of complaints brought to the agency's attention by drug companies, physicians and patients.

The FDA will name the drug and the nature of the "adverse events" but will not describe their seriousness or the number of complaints received, officials said [Friday]. Being on the list does not mean the drug is unsafe, only that the FDA is looking into that possibility.

FDA officials said they realize that the new policy, required by changes to federal law enacted last year, may unintentionally alarm some patients.

http://snipurl.com/3ns1h

If there is magic on this planet, it is contained in water. --Loren Eisley, The Immense Journey

Her Royal Majesty's Chief of Insect Genitalia Dissection
Grand Visser of the Six Legged Class
Chanticleer of the Holometabola Clade Church, Diptera Parish