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Author Topic:   How long does it take to evolve?
MrHambre
Member (Idle past 1392 days)
Posts: 1495
From: Framingham, MA, USA
Joined: 06-23-2003


Message 122 of 221 (770601)
10-08-2015 8:45 PM
Reply to: Message 119 by Percy
10-08-2015 11:04 AM


DNA as Magical Thinking
Percy writes:
DNA has to contain the information, else the information is nowhere and we couldn't exist.
Or maybe we just belabor the computer metaphor past its usefulness when we talk about the complex cellular machinery in living organisms.
Harvard geneticist Richard Lewontin is no creationist crank, but he seems to think the DNA-as-program metaphor is something we respond to because it panders to the high-tech chauvinism that privileges the master-plan over the microscopic drones that do the work of building a living thing:
The problem is not one of dimension, but one of size. The nucleus of a cell of the fruit fly Drosophila, the favorite organism of geneticists, has enough DNA to specify the structure of about five thousand different proteins, and about thirty times that much DNA is available to provide spatial and temporal instructions about when the productions of proteins by those genes should be turned on and turned off. But this is simply too little, by many orders of magnitude, to tell every cell when it should divide, exactly where it should move next, and what cellular structures it should produce over the entire developmental history of the fly. One needs to imagine an instruction manual that will tell every New Yorker when to wake up, where to go, and what to do, hour by hour, day by day, for the next century. There is just not enough DNA to go around.
-from "The Science of Metamorphoses," New York Review of Books, April 27, 1989.
Edited by MrHambre, : Attribution

This message is a reply to:
 Message 119 by Percy, posted 10-08-2015 11:04 AM Percy has seen this message but not replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 125 by dwise1, posted 10-09-2015 3:14 PM MrHambre has replied

  
MrHambre
Member (Idle past 1392 days)
Posts: 1495
From: Framingham, MA, USA
Joined: 06-23-2003


Message 142 of 221 (770651)
10-11-2015 10:43 AM
Reply to: Message 125 by dwise1
10-09-2015 3:14 PM


Re: DNA as Magical Thinking
dwise1 writes:
I do agree that the computer metaphor continually gets taken way too far. However, in the current discussion it may help Lamden understand something.
He's trying to look at a particular length of DNA and figure out how much "information" it contains. That would be like looking at how many lines of code a program contains to figure out how much it does.
Right, you don't object to the DNA-is-code metaphor, in fact you're using the capabilities of code to refute Lamden's assertions. What I'm saying is that we've become so used to characterizing DNA as computer code that we only pay lip service to the weakness of the analogy.
I agree with your claim that life is complex and messy. But as a software engineer, you're in thrall to the machine fantasy of DNA as a program that somehow instructs the cells. Lewontin sees this as an ideological bias, just another way we privilege the planners over the doers. Writers like Dawkins have a tech-savvy audience that responds to oversimplifications like this, because they make evolution seem like a straightforward process that's easy enough to be understood by the amateur and blunt enough to be wielded against creationists.
If it's complex, let's treat it that way.

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 Message 143 by NoNukes, posted 10-11-2015 1:27 PM MrHambre has not replied

  
MrHambre
Member (Idle past 1392 days)
Posts: 1495
From: Framingham, MA, USA
Joined: 06-23-2003


Message 167 of 221 (770692)
10-12-2015 10:01 PM
Reply to: Message 160 by Lamden
10-12-2015 2:38 PM


The View From Elsewhere
Lamden writes:
Over the weekend, I have discovered a blurb from none other than Thomas Nagel himself decrying the portrayal of Darwinism as gospel. Had I known about it earlier, I certainly would have drawn from such a celebrated name. Although he remains an atheist for reasons that he admits amount to a convenience, his statement as a philosopher is notable.
A "blurb"? I don't know whether you mean Nagel decries that Darwinism is treated as gospel or that he decries that it's mischaracterized as gospel. Do you even know what you mean?
I assume you're referring to Nagel's much-maligned Mind and Cosmos, wherein Nagel critiqued materialism. I prefer Nagel's The View from Nowhere, his fascinating treatise on the illusion of objectivity. However, I felt that his ideas on materialism deserved more than the scorn that science cheerleaders heaped on them, and he certainly wasn't claiming that species don't evolve.
So what is it that Nagel said that you find so compelling?

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MrHambre
Member (Idle past 1392 days)
Posts: 1495
From: Framingham, MA, USA
Joined: 06-23-2003


Message 183 of 221 (770777)
10-13-2015 10:04 PM
Reply to: Message 173 by Tanypteryx
10-13-2015 1:19 PM


Eunuchs in the Whorehouse
Tanypteryx writes:
[Thomas Nagel] may be well known, but I had never heard of him. He is a respected thinker, by whom? Anyone can think about biology, why are his thoughts about biology of any importance?
As a scientist and a biologist, I have run across very few people who characterize themselves as philosophers whose thoughts or opinions about science I respect, or about any subject for that matter. Most of the ones I have had experience with think they know about science but are actually failures at science and understanding science.
It never fails to amuse me that people who have low opinions about philosophers usually don't recognize the name of even a prominent living philosopher. Anti-intellectualism is ironic coming from people who otherwise pride themselves on their grasp of human knowledge. Science, after all, is just as much a philosophical pursuit as an empirical one. I can only assume the disdain for philosophy among prominent scientists like Lawrence Krauss derives from an aversion to having one's beliefs questioned and one's sense of certainty undermined.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 173 by Tanypteryx, posted 10-13-2015 1:19 PM Tanypteryx has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 184 by Tanypteryx, posted 10-13-2015 11:19 PM MrHambre has replied
 Message 185 by Dr Adequate, posted 10-13-2015 11:22 PM MrHambre has not replied
 Message 191 by Percy, posted 10-14-2015 8:58 AM MrHambre has not replied

  
MrHambre
Member (Idle past 1392 days)
Posts: 1495
From: Framingham, MA, USA
Joined: 06-23-2003


Message 186 of 221 (770783)
10-13-2015 11:33 PM
Reply to: Message 184 by Tanypteryx
10-13-2015 11:19 PM


Re: Eunuchs in the Whorehouse
My work is mine, whether it is science, photography, or art. I didn't ask them for their opinions so they can blow them out their ass.
Your internet tough talk doesn't change the fact that you snidely dismiss an entire legacy of human thought with which you're obviously unfamiliar. Anti-intellectualism is tragic no matter whether it's fundie Christians or science-thumpers peddling it.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 184 by Tanypteryx, posted 10-13-2015 11:19 PM Tanypteryx has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 187 by Tanypteryx, posted 10-13-2015 11:45 PM MrHambre has replied

  
MrHambre
Member (Idle past 1392 days)
Posts: 1495
From: Framingham, MA, USA
Joined: 06-23-2003


Message 190 of 221 (770800)
10-14-2015 8:57 AM
Reply to: Message 187 by Tanypteryx
10-13-2015 11:45 PM


Re: Eunuchs in the Whorehouse
I haven't dismissed anything.
Sure you did. You explicitly said that no philosopher had ever told you anything worthwhile, and that philosophers in general are just failed scientists.
It isn't anti-intellectualism.
It's not? Nobody here even knows what Nagel supposedly said. However, no one's giving him the benefit of the doubt, or assuming that our creationist buddy is quoting him out of context. No, we just figure he's a failosopher, so he's wrong. Talk about a leap of faith.
Hey, if you think creationism is old hat, anti-philosophy has whiskers on it too.

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 Message 187 by Tanypteryx, posted 10-13-2015 11:45 PM Tanypteryx has seen this message but not replied

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MrHambre
Member (Idle past 1392 days)
Posts: 1495
From: Framingham, MA, USA
Joined: 06-23-2003


Message 202 of 221 (770878)
10-15-2015 5:36 AM
Reply to: Message 196 by Tanypteryx
10-14-2015 3:18 PM


Re: Eunuchs in the Whorehouse
Thanks, food for thought......I see he doesn't have a good grasp of science or the scientific method.
We should be familiar enough with creationist quote-mining not to judge anyone's thought by the diced-up bits we find spat out into com-boxes online. You wouldn't know it by the quotes Lamden provided, but the author claims to disagree with the ID hypothesis, is "strongly averse" to design explanations, and touts the "remarkable achievements" of reductive materialist scientific inquiry. But if we're just relieved that we can conclude on such scant evidence that another failosopher has shown his ignorance of the scientific method, how open-minded can we consider ourselves about the definition and limitations of science?
I wonder what conceivable critique of science we'd be receptive to at all. If the problem is that the criticism has to come from a scientist and not a philosopher, I recently posted a review of a book by Harvard geneticist Richard Lewontin here that generated not one response. It seems like we don't want to be reminded that things like reductionism and scientism are biases; that Darwinian explanations are better for organs and traits than for complex human phenomena; that certain subjects like consciousness remain mysteries; and that not everyone who points these things out is a fundie or a fool.
I guess it's easier and more fun to swat the low-hanging fruit on the fundie tree. If creationism didn't exist, we would have had to have invented it.

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 Message 196 by Tanypteryx, posted 10-14-2015 3:18 PM Tanypteryx has seen this message but not replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 203 by Pressie, posted 10-15-2015 7:33 AM MrHambre has not replied
 Message 204 by Percy, posted 10-15-2015 7:51 AM MrHambre has replied

  
MrHambre
Member (Idle past 1392 days)
Posts: 1495
From: Framingham, MA, USA
Joined: 06-23-2003


Message 205 of 221 (770902)
10-15-2015 12:18 PM
Reply to: Message 204 by Percy
10-15-2015 7:51 AM


Re: Eunuchs in the Whorehouse
Percy writes:
Am I reading that right? Does this actually say that Lewontin rejects the genetic foundation of how creatures' bodies look and work?
Since Lewontin is a geneticist at Harvard, the odds are that's not quite what he's saying. According to the book I reviewed, Lewontin takes issue with the gene-centered concept of evolution (and the notion that what we are is encoded in our DNA) that the Wiki article claims no one actually affirms. One can only imagine whether Wiki has ever heard of The Selfish Gene.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 204 by Percy, posted 10-15-2015 7:51 AM Percy has seen this message but not replied

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 Message 207 by Tangle, posted 10-15-2015 1:06 PM MrHambre has not replied

  
MrHambre
Member (Idle past 1392 days)
Posts: 1495
From: Framingham, MA, USA
Joined: 06-23-2003


Message 208 of 221 (770932)
10-16-2015 6:16 AM


The Limits of Skepticism
Okay. I still say that no one would have proposed that billions of dollars of taxpayers' money be spent on the Human Genome Project if there weren't a popular misconception of how crucial a detailed knowledge of DNA is to the good of society. The progressive in me wonders how much improvement in personal and social well-being those billions could have generated if we were as adamant about understanding the environmental and socioeconomic aspects of phenomena like disease and deviance.
And my question still stands: is there any conceivable critique of modern science that we would find acceptable? We make sport, for good reason, of creationists whose understanding of the philosophy and practice of scientific inquiry is sorely lacking. But is ours that much better, or have we just internalized a lot more of the myths that idealize the scientific process?
It seems like we're just really adept at handwaving away any critique of modern science on the grounds that the person delivering it must be ignorant, otherwise he wouldn't be critiquing science. If a philosopher points out problems in the foundational assumptions of empirical inquiry (or even asserts that there are such assumptions), we don't bother engaging with his ideas; we simply express outrage that his amateur presumption didn't lead him to the same conclusion as our amateur presumption. If a career scientist discusses the economic, political, gender, and cultural issues involved in modern empirical inquiry, we accuse him of creating a straw man with which to sully the objective, unbiased, self-correcting process by which we come to the knowledge of the truth about our universe.
It sounds like, for all our freethinking rhetoric, that there are some things we don't want to be skeptical about.

Replies to this message:
 Message 209 by Percy, posted 10-16-2015 7:59 AM MrHambre has replied
 Message 210 by Pressie, posted 10-16-2015 8:24 AM MrHambre has not replied
 Message 211 by Dr Adequate, posted 10-16-2015 8:46 AM MrHambre has not replied
 Message 216 by Tangle, posted 10-16-2015 4:51 PM MrHambre has not replied

  
MrHambre
Member (Idle past 1392 days)
Posts: 1495
From: Framingham, MA, USA
Joined: 06-23-2003


Message 212 of 221 (770963)
10-16-2015 1:24 PM
Reply to: Message 209 by Percy
10-16-2015 7:59 AM


Re: The Limits of Skepticism
Percy writes:
If you're criticizing those who are skeptical of philosophical criticisms of scientific inquiry and modes of thought, then I don't we are, at least not all of us.
Fair enough. There just seems to be a siege mentality where people would rather not acknowledge problems with scientific inquiry. And it's certainly not as if every attempt to describe such problems has done so in good faith, so a certain amount of defensiveness is to be expected. I think Nagel and Lewontin succeeded in at least producing food for thought.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 209 by Percy, posted 10-16-2015 7:59 AM Percy has seen this message but not replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 213 by ringo, posted 10-16-2015 1:30 PM MrHambre has not replied
 Message 214 by Tangle, posted 10-16-2015 2:26 PM MrHambre has not replied
 Message 215 by Tanypteryx, posted 10-16-2015 3:05 PM MrHambre has not replied
 Message 218 by Dr Adequate, posted 10-16-2015 9:20 PM MrHambre has not replied

  
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