Re: Serious proof of why the theory of evolution is wrong
On 8/11/2013 7:55 PM, Chris de Morsella wrote: I would not be surprised to find that there is evidence of cross species conglomerates of organisms that have evolved to survive together, in other words that the Darwinian selection mechanism could potentially be extended to take into account both group survival dynamics within one species and in the larger meta-groups of two or more species that get through life together by cooperating across species lines. Yeah, no need to be surprised by dogs and cattle. Brent -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
RE: Serious proof of why the theory of evolution is wrong
Hello Chris ~ When one factors in group dynamics in addition to the individual ones at play it is as you suggest more nuanced. I have heard this survival of the community dynamics being used to suggest why for example we still have behaviors such as altruism still quite common amongst members of our species when from a simple game theory perspective altruistic behavior is a handicap, as the cheater always comes out ahead. However when one factors in social transaction costs into the larger equation and compares between groups with a high degree of altruism and those lacking any altruism the difference in this cost for each social transaction is so large that the groups that behave altruistically - at least amongst themselves - have a significant survival advantage over similar groups that instead have very low levels of altruism. To make it more colorful imagine how high the transaction cost for a simple business deal is amongst two rival drug gangs. how many men with guns on each side need to show up and how when things don't work out things can suddenly go horribly wrong. the high transaction cost scenario versus a deal between two good friends that is just based on a handshake and maybe sharing a beer or something. It is certainly also true that information - i.e. DNA - is exchanged laterally between individuals and sometimes jumping from species to species, and that this would have been more the norm in the early epochs of life on earth before highly differentiated and specialized multicellular communities of animals and plants began to appear. In the case of horizontal transfer of DNA, if one looks at it from an abstract point of view this becomes another mode or vector by which the phenotype of the resulting organism will mutated or changed. It is a pathway for the introduction of alteration of the code but in itself is not the entire process of evolution. For that we need natural selection - driven by whatever environmental pressures are the most limiting - i.e. the gating factors. You raise a good point by pointing out group or community dynamics that are also probably influencing the whole selection outcome. It makes things more complex which some find irksome, perhaps, but which, I think, rather more reflects the messy fuzzy noisy nature of reality, life and consciousness. I would not be surprised to find that there is evidence of cross species conglomerates of organisms that have evolved to survive together, in other words that the Darwinian selection mechanism could potentially be extended to take into account both group survival dynamics within one species and in the larger meta-groups of two or more species that get through life together by cooperating across species lines. For example I wonder if there is any statistically discoverable evidence of this kind of process going on amongst those tropical forest monkeys of several different species and niches that travel the forest together in multi-species bands that apparently also include some bird species as well. Apparently these closely linked species have learned each other's specific call sounds for the various predators - say leopard, snake, harpy and shout out for each other's shared benefit. On one level this seems culturally evolved, but I wonder if perhaps evolutionary adaptions could be discovered say for example in brain evolution favoring individuals with increased (albeit rudimentary) language abilities that the monkeys individuals who more closely tune into the calls of other types of monkeys and of the birds as well and can make sense of their meaning are more likely to be alerted in time of impending danger than the individuals that do not or are not able to listen in on the languages of other species - i.e. to multi-lingual monkeys. Over many generations of these unfortunate linguistically challenged monkeys being taken out of the evolutionary equation by becoming leopard food or a digesting bulge in an twelve foot boa would not language abilities be selected for? As always a fascinating subject. Cheers, -Chris From: everything-list@googlegroups.com [mailto:everything-list@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of chris peck Sent: Sunday, August 11, 2013 5:44 PM To: everything-list@googlegroups.com Subject: RE: Serious proof of why the theory of evolution is wrong Hi Chris and John The paper I linked to describes a evolutionary dynamic which emphasizes horizontal over vertical genetic transfer. I think it is described in the paper as Lamarckian because changes to the coding mechanism can occur in their model within a single generation of organisms rather than over the course of many. I understand (perhaps incorrectly?) that horizontal transfer is not uncommon within bacteria and other 'simple' organisms. And of course in the evolutionary epoch they discuss organisms were far simpler again. I suspect also that their model goes against the neo-Darwinian grain insofar as it possibly emphasizes group selection over genetic
RE: Serious proof of why the theory of evolution is wrong
Hi Chris and John The paper I linked to describes a evolutionary dynamic which emphasizes horizontal over vertical genetic transfer. I think it is described in the paper as Lamarckian because changes to the coding mechanism can occur in their model within a single generation of organisms rather than over the course of many. I understand (perhaps incorrectly?) that horizontal transfer is not uncommon within bacteria and other 'simple' organisms. And of course in the evolutionary epoch they discuss organisms were far simpler again. I suspect also that their model goes against the neo-Darwinian grain insofar as it possibly emphasizes group selection over genetic selection. They suggest that in this very early period it was in fact communities of organisms that were being selected for or against rather than individual genes. But, that might be a misread. They say: " The key element in this dynamic is innovation-sharing, an evolutionary protocol whereby descent with variation from one ‘‘generation’’ to the next is not genealogically traceable but is a descent of a cellular community as a whole" Ofcourse, it might be the case that this kind of adaptation sits happily under the umbrella of Darwinism even neo-Darwinism. In fact as a layman I am (perhaps naively?) unconcerned about the taxonomy of their model within evolutionary theory. What really interests me isn't even the plausibility of their model but rather the bare possibility that it might offer an argument against Statham's in this thread's original post. All the best. From: cdemorse...@yahoo.com To: everything-list@googlegroups.com Subject: RE: Serious proof of why the theory of evolution is wrong Date: Sun, 11 Aug 2013 17:15:13 -0700 John, Russell ~ Speaking from the perspective of information science, one can abstract out the underlying information encoding scheme(s), actually employed by life & by conscious self-aware life as well, which could be any number of suitable candidates. We know of three known currently employed encoding schemes DNA, RNA (RNA viruses for example) and epigenetic coding of how this DNA is expressed that can cross generational boundaries and mutate or change the resulting phenotype expressed in progeny.As Russell pointed out there is the matter of memes acting as a kind of encoded piece of cultural DNA that can culturally form individuals even after many generations have past. In some senses, in more advanced cultural creatures such as our species -- though some would argue that last statement J -- ideas transmit and evolve in a Darwinian manner.If we abstract away the details of how information is encoded, preserved, transmitted etc. and deal instead in the abstract, we can avoid a whole mess of confusion and focus in on the essential common characteristics that are shared.From this perspective what is required in order for evolution to occur is the following sequence: 1) A new abstract information entity or a mutation on an existing one is introduced into an individual organism or a population of individual organisms through some process. This process may be hereditary, in the special case of a mutated or new information entity that has been introduced in some earlier generation and is going through a new generation of natural selection.2) This new information must be remembered by one or more individuals in the initial population set and be able to be encoded and preserved in a durable and high fidelity manner in those individuals.3) It must also be able to be transmissible across generational boundaries and through some abstract hereditary process (again leaving out all details) and durable high quality copies of the original must exist and also be able to be expressed in the individuals in these successive generations – e.g. the process of heredity stated in an abstract way. Copying flaws and mutations are of course allowed and considered integral to the way things actually work.4) Crucially, in each succeeding generation, it must undergo and survive a process of Darwinian selection being driven by the given environmental pressures in its world. Only the abstract information entities that make it through each generational selection obstacle course survive – amongst some individual members in the population of the succeeding generation – to be passed on to the next generation in the evolutionary chain.5) Many generations of natural selection must occur – i.e. loop through steps 1,2,3,4 – in order to enable the bubbling up of beneficial mutations and the weeding out of harmful mutations. How many generations does it take? No easy answer for that but certainly more than say two or three. Only when new abstract information entities satisfy and survive through (step number 4) repeated over many generations (step 5) can evolution be said to have occurred.-Chris From: everything-list@googlegroups.com [mailto:everything-list@googlegro
RE: Serious proof of why the theory of evolution is wrong
John, Russell ~ Speaking from the perspective of information science, one can abstract out the underlying information encoding scheme(s), actually employed by life & by conscious self-aware life as well, which could be any number of suitable candidates. We know of three known currently employed encoding schemes DNA, RNA (RNA viruses for example) and epigenetic coding of how this DNA is expressed that can cross generational boundaries and mutate or change the resulting phenotype expressed in progeny. As Russell pointed out there is the matter of memes acting as a kind of encoded piece of cultural DNA that can culturally form individuals even after many generations have past. In some senses, in more advanced cultural creatures such as our species -- though some would argue that last statement J -- ideas transmit and evolve in a Darwinian manner. If we abstract away the details of how information is encoded, preserved, transmitted etc. and deal instead in the abstract, we can avoid a whole mess of confusion and focus in on the essential common characteristics that are shared. >From this perspective what is required in order for evolution to occur is the following sequence: 1) A new abstract information entity or a mutation on an existing one is introduced into an individual organism or a population of individual organisms through some process. This process may be hereditary, in the special case of a mutated or new information entity that has been introduced in some earlier generation and is going through a new generation of natural selection. 2) This new information must be remembered by one or more individuals in the initial population set and be able to be encoded and preserved in a durable and high fidelity manner in those individuals. 3) It must also be able to be transmissible across generational boundaries and through some abstract hereditary process (again leaving out all details) and durable high quality copies of the original must exist and also be able to be expressed in the individuals in these successive generations - e.g. the process of heredity stated in an abstract way. Copying flaws and mutations are of course allowed and considered integral to the way things actually work. 4) Crucially, in each succeeding generation, it must undergo and survive a process of Darwinian selection being driven by the given environmental pressures in its world. Only the abstract information entities that make it through each generational selection obstacle course survive - amongst some individual members in the population of the succeeding generation - to be passed on to the next generation in the evolutionary chain. 5) Many generations of natural selection must occur - i.e. loop through steps 1,2,3,4 - in order to enable the bubbling up of beneficial mutations and the weeding out of harmful mutations. How many generations does it take? No easy answer for that but certainly more than say two or three. Only when new abstract information entities satisfy and survive through (step number 4) repeated over many generations (step 5) can evolution be said to have occurred. -Chris From: everything-list@googlegroups.com [mailto:everything-list@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of John Clark Sent: Sunday, August 11, 2013 9:21 AM To: everything-list@googlegroups.com Subject: Re: Serious proof of why the theory of evolution is wrong On Sat, Aug 10, 2013 at 3:52 PM, Chris de Morsella wrote: >> It's not news that some chemicals increase the rate of mutation. > Epigenetic changes that effect what is transcribed is not mutation - at least in the classic sense of changing - i.e. mutating - the underlying DNA. The DNA is not mutated; the underlying sequence of bases remains unaltered. It's true that epigenetic changes don't effect the underlying DNA, but that is a distinction of little or no importance to Evolution because all it's interested in is the resulting phenotype and how well the animal does in getting its inheritance factors (regardless of if those factors are made of DNA base pairs or methylation) into the next generation. Perhaps on a distant planet there is a ecosystem that doesn't use DNA or methylation at all, but it must have some mechanism of inheritance and that mechanism must be very reliable but not perfectly so because there must be some way to generate random changes. And on that distant planet Darwinian natural selection would still be needed to separate the good changes from the bad. > it seems to me - that life dances on the knife edge between order and chaos. Stray too far towards either chaos or order and life very quickly stops living. Yes, I agree. John K Clark -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everythi
Re: Serious proof of why the theory of evolution is wrong
On Sun, Aug 11, 2013 at 12:36:27PM -0400, John Clark wrote: > On Sun, Aug 11, 2013 at 7:14 AM, Russell Standish > wrote: > > > Re Larmarkian evolution, cultural evolution is usually considered to be > > an examplar of Lamarkian evolution. Knowledge accumulated in one life is > > passed onto the next via books, or in the very olden day oral stories. > > > > Yes but even there Darwinian natural selection is at work. Some ideas are > good at infecting other minds and getting reproduce and thus can survive > for thousands of generations, while other ideas are not good at that and > vanish after a single generation. Of course minds work a lot faster than > embryology so cultural evolution is vastly faster than biological evolution. > I never said otherwise. What is missing from cultural evolution is an equivalent of the central dogma. All evolutionary processes have variation, selection and heredity. Lewontin said so. Not all evolutionary processes have the central dogma - and even in biological evolution, epigenetic changes violate the central dogma. The central dogma and Lamarkianism is in contradiction. Whether the central dogma is required for the label "Darwinian" to be applied seems to be a matter of scholar's taste. I usually avoid the label, unless I happen to be talking about biological evolution, just to avoid confusion. -- Prof Russell Standish Phone 0425 253119 (mobile) Principal, High Performance Coders Visiting Professor of Mathematics hpco...@hpcoders.com.au University of New South Wales http://www.hpcoders.com.au -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: Serious proof of why the theory of evolution is wrong
On Sun, Aug 11, 2013 at 7:14 AM, Russell Standish wrote: > Re Larmarkian evolution, cultural evolution is usually considered to be > an examplar of Lamarkian evolution. Knowledge accumulated in one life is > passed onto the next via books, or in the very olden day oral stories. > Yes but even there Darwinian natural selection is at work. Some ideas are good at infecting other minds and getting reproduce and thus can survive for thousands of generations, while other ideas are not good at that and vanish after a single generation. Of course minds work a lot faster than embryology so cultural evolution is vastly faster than biological evolution. John K Clark -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: Serious proof of why the theory of evolution is wrong
On Sat, Aug 10, 2013 at 3:52 PM, Chris de Morsella wrote: > >> >> It's not news that some chemicals increase the rate of mutation. >> > > > > > Epigenetic changes that effect what is transcribed is not mutation – at > least in the classic sense of changing – i.e. mutating – the underlying > DNA. The DNA is not mutated; the underlying sequence of bases remains > unaltered. > It's true that epigenetic changes don't effect the underlying DNA, but that is a distinction of little or no importance to Evolution because all it's interested in is the resulting phenotype and how well the animal does in getting its inheritance factors (regardless of if those factors are made of DNA base pairs or methylation) into the next generation. Perhaps on a distant planet there is a ecosystem that doesn't use DNA or methylation at all, but it must have some mechanism of inheritance and that mechanism must be very reliable but not perfectly so because there must be some way to generate random changes. And on that distant planet Darwinian natural selection would still be needed to separate the good changes from the bad. > it seems to me – that life dances on the knife edge between order and > chaos. Stray too far towards either chaos or order and life very quickly > stops living. > Yes, I agree. John K Clark -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: Serious proof of why the theory of evolution is wrong
Re Larmarkian evolution, cultural evolution is usually considered to be an examplar of Lamarkian evolution. Knowledge accumulated in one life is passed onto the next via books, or in the very olden day oral stories. Cheers -- Prof Russell Standish Phone 0425 253119 (mobile) Principal, High Performance Coders Visiting Professor of Mathematics hpco...@hpcoders.com.au University of New South Wales http://www.hpcoders.com.au -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
