natural selection is wrong

This may be an idiosyncratic definition of reproductionrate, but I explained how I was using the definition in using it, so there shouldn't have been any misunderstanding.I am counting *all* individuals in calculating a mean average reproduction rate, not just the ones who live until reproductive age, or something like that. Obviously when the populationsize stays the same, the mean average reproductionrate over all individuals must be one.You could also argue that it must be 2 with sexual reproduction, but then you have overlapping offspring, it would be counting individuals twice.I used this idiosyncratic definition, which seems much straightforward to me actually, to illustrate the binary nature of selection on a populational level, of reproduction or no reproduction, that it tends to go towards 1 or 0.I think this may be clearer if you imagine, like I said before, a population in an environment where everything repeats itself time after time. You see a moth being eaten by a bird, and one repetition later you again see a moth eaten by a bird. The moth being eaten by the bird would still be counted in calculating an average reproductionrate. As you can see, in imagination, that there is one mirror individual between each repetition, you can see that the reproductionrate on average must be one.(edited to add: it helps to imagine the organism just before it's death. as everybody knows all organisms die. The fact that you can see another organism in the same situation in the next repetition must therefore be, because of reproduction)Although of course, nature is never repeated exactly the same in reality, this kind of stability of the relationship of the organism to the environment is also conveniently assumed in standard natural selection theory. There is a change in environment and after the change, the reproductionrate gets recalculated again. That is reproductionrate doesn't get calculated over 2 different environments, but get's calculated seperately for 2 different environments.regards,
Mohammad Nor SyamsuThis message has been edited by Syamsu, 05-26-2004 07:14 AMThis message has been edited by Syamsu, 05-26-2004 08:50 AM

I already explained this in the first post. The reason for inclusion of variation in Darwinism is because there is supposed to be a difference in likelyhood to reproduce corresponding to variation. What the authors call the core of Darwinist logic. Since the paper includes lightningstrikes as a legitimate example of natural selection, this logic is lost, and therefore the reason to include variation in the definition is lost. So now the reason to include variation is shifted from Darwinist logic, to the observation that there is a lot of variation in populations. If now somebody asks you to explain natural selection, you might say like:take one organism with bad eyesight, and one organism with good eyesight, they are equally likely to be hit by lightning, that is natural selection.As shown, there isn't neccesarily any logic anymore in including variation in the redefined natural selection, it's inclusion becomes tenuous.The view is obviously not diametrically opposed (I wish you would not argue so defensively, how on earth can you say that describing the relationship of an organims to the environment in terms of reproduction is diametrically opposed to *any* formulation of natural selection), the authors have taken away an obstacle to reformulating natural selection without variation.They have said more things that allude to a formulation without variation, as in the part I quoted to you about growthrates, where the authors are saying things like selection is only describing the spreading. (does this sound familiar from a year ago?)About teleology, as far as I can tell the authors see the teleology because of the separation of natural selection from other things like neutral drift. The authors are essentially not arguing some old fault which has been argued before, but they assert that the fault of teleology is directly related to excluding lightningstrikes etc. from natural selection, the new fault which they found.The teleology appears to be that Darwinists conceive of natural selection having the goal of producing optimal fitness. This teleology seems to be based on prejudicially confining oneself to Darwinist logic, of one variant having a higher reproductionrate corresponding to structure."This invites the following question in light of item 2 in the characterization of theories of force in section II: what would happen if selection were to act by itself? For in order to estimate how much of an evolutionary outcome should be ascribed to non-selective constraints, and how much to natural selection, we need first to appreciate the action of the latter acting alone.In the context of the debate about adaptationism, it is clear that the supposed action of natural selection as a single factor is construed in terms of optima. The idea is that if natural selection were to act on its own, it would achieve optima. Evolution does not always produce optima, however, because natural selection is opposed by constraints.But this is an illegitimately teleological way of conceptualizing the action of natural selection, that is, by specifying a result, and a value-laden one at that. (Of course, the critics of adaptationism would say that their opponents bear the blame for this. Still, they seek to mitigate the teleology of their opponents by putting brakes on it. This is not the right move: they should reject the teleological conception right from the start.)"regards,
Mohammad Nor Syamsu

Syamsu,Message 30 pls.Thanks,Mark

Hello Again Syamsu: This makes no sense. Are you telling me that the average reproduction rate for a population of mosquitoes is one? That’s ridiculous! Do you not see the utter meaningless of that statement? If I take the average income of myself and Bill Gates, I come out looking pretty goodbut it’s meaningless! My actual income in nowhere near this calculated average income (that you seem to think is so vital a measurement). What in the hell are you talking about? Overlapping offspring? Counting the same individuals twice? Look, in order for a sexually reproducing organism to replace itself, it needs to have two offspring because it is, on average, only 50% related to its offspring. That means that if you only have one kid, you have only contributed 50% of your genes to the next generation. I'm not counting the same individual twice, I counting two genetically unique individuals once each. Bull shit! Fine, the moth that was eaten is used to calculate the average reproductive rate. Big deal. You are ignoring two very important questions that I think Crashfrog has been trying to point out to you since the beginning of this thread. They are:
1. Why did the moth get eaten?
2. Had it reproduced yet?
Natural selection deals with these two questions, and I’ll let you figure out for yourself why they are evolutionarily important.

I do not agree that the paper shows what you say it does. Please could you do as I asked and explain your reasoning, rather than leaping to your conclusions.If you think the teleology argument concerns seperating neutral drift from natural selection then you clearly failed to understand that argument. As I pointed out, and as you yourself highlighted in the quote, this refers to an adaptionist view that natural selection unopposed will produce optimal solutions. This is not an intrinsic feature of darwinism or natural selection it is one interpretation, and a particularly misleading one. To borrow from another ongoing debate on suboptimal adaptation, our designation of an optimal endpoint for NS relies on the rather arrogant assumption that we know exactly the optimal solution for a given problem and that we can unfailingly determine what problem a given adaptation was intended to solve, if any.TTFN,WKP.S. Please now give a step by step description of how you reach your conclusions from that article, otherwise there is no point, certainly as far as I am concerned, trying to discuss the validity of your conclusions as they are by no means as transparently obviously as you seem to feel.P.P.S. I can say your view is diametrically ipposed as the paper produces a formulation whose entire raison d'etre is inherently wrapped up in variation while you wish to wholly exclude variation from the formulation. Just to note, once again, you thereby render your formulation not a form of natural selection as you are not selecting anything meaningful in an evolutionary sense, there being no heritable component contributing to the reproduction or otherwise of members of the population.

I’ve read through the paper you referenced in the original post for this thread and do not see where they reach the conclusions that you are claiming (although, I will admit, some of it is a bit confusingbut then again, I don’t speak philosophy babble). Having said that, let’s look at your latest claims. You seem to be implying that there is no link between variation and reproductive success. You cannot be serious. There is most definitely a connection between reproduction and variation. How can you claim otherwise? I’m asking you seriously, do you really think that an animals’ genotype has no bearing on whether it will or will not mate? What, do you think animals simple run around and randomly mate with each other? That no choices are madethat no evaluations are utilizedthat no comparisons are developed? Come onget real. To say that variation is nonexistent as a tool of natural selection may be one of the dumbest things I have ever read. Again, I believe you have reached conclusions that the authors themselves have not. I’ll even argue that your claim (that who may or may not get struck by lightning is not dependent on variation) is itself not true. I’ll argue that NS has in many cases selected for organisms that have some ability to detect and therefore avoid lightning strikes in general. Oh sure, the occasional animal may be killed by lightning, but again the question: why was it killed? needs to be asked. Accidents happen. You seem to be equating a random lightning strike as an example of Natural Selection. No...that’s not exactly true. Shit happens, but a one time stochastic even, such as getting struck by lightning, is not necessarily an example of natural selection.
Let's look at two individuals in a population and see how they behaved during a thunder storm. One of them was behaving in such a manner as to avoid lightning but still somehow managed to get killed by it anyway. This type of event is not an example of lightning acting as selective force for lightning avoidance behavior. Why? Well the removal of this individuals genes from the gene pool will have no effect on future generations lightning avoidance behavior. Now let's look at the other individual and say the it has a genetic variation that programs it to behave in such a manner as to increase the likelyhood of being struck by lightning, and sure enough he is successful. This, I would argue, is an example of NS at workand I say this because the genes that led to the behavior (that resulted in the organism being struck and killed by lightning) have now been removed from the gene pool. Variation!! Variation is absolutely required for natural selection to operate. Bull shit. I'd never say anything like that...for the reasons stated above.

I did explain my reasoning, I can only explain it in a more extended way.Natural selection: The black moth is more suited for camouflage to the black tree, then the white moth, so there is a difference in likelyhood to reproduce of the black moth and the white moth, corresponding to their variation.Natural Selection: Either black moth or white moth is equally likely to be hit by lighting, so there is no difference in likelyhood to reproduce corresponding to their variation.I couldn't be bothered to search for a varying trait which actually has no corresponding difference in likelyhood to reproduce, but the principle still holds, and you are failing to argue that obviously the inclusion of variation becomes tenuous in the second explanation of natural selection. Would I be wrong to explain natural selection with a varying trait that has no difference in likelyhood to reproduce? If yes then why, if not then wouldn't this tend to make the inclusion of variation seem pointless?The paper is saying that the standard formulation confined to vernacular fitness is teleological. Where before people like Gould sought to put breaks on the teleological nature of the theory, by referring to neutral drift etc., he should have in stead denied the teleology by uniting neutral selection and adaptive selection in one theory of natural selection, which we must do according to Newton's principles which apply in all sciences. What Darwinists are doing is positing vernacular fitness, and then say that vernacular fitness results in an optimum, except for other factors constraining this optimum. But what Darwinists should do is also posit neutral variation as part of what results in reproductive success (because neutral variation contributes to mean average growthrate as well), and not just posit vernacular variation. It is prejucidial of Darwinists to just posit vernacular variation as what causes differential reproductive success, and the teleology towards optima is a consequence of that prejudice.Essentially this thread is actually supposed to be about the paper referenced. You can ignore my commentary on it, and just solely address the paper."Note that this does not tell us much about vernacular fitness, that is, about the causes of growth in a sub-population, or about progress. In fact, the theorem tells us nothing about the improvement of any given type. The pre-existent type that grows fastest comes in time to dominate the population. This type does not get any better in itself; it just contributes more to the mean growth rate of the population."regards,
Mohammad Nor Syamsu

Yes the average rate of reproduction of an individual mosquito is 1, and the average rate of reproduction of a mosquite that belongs to the share of the population that reproduces is 1000 or something.regards,
Mohammad Nor Syamsu

Syamsu,Message 30, please.Mark

No, this is not what the paper says near its conclusion. "Natural selection sits on top, as it were, of all these influences; it is a trend that sums up all of them. It follows that natural selection is not just a part of evolution: heritable variation leading to differential retention is all that evolution amounts to in the biological domain." The point is that random factors unaffected by heritable differences, such as your hypothetical lightning strikes, are just one more statistical factor thrown in to the interplay of the population genetics. The presence of non-selective pressures such as lightning strikes does not mean that natural selection is not still being driven by selective pressures.To take, once again, your moth example the actual nature of the observations should be.Of a population of 400 hundred moths consisting of 200 black and 200 white,125 Black moths survive to reproduce while only 60 white moths survive to reproduce. For simplicitys sake lets assume reproductive success leads to 2 progeny and furthermore that all the moths are genetically identical apart from the melanic allele and furthermore are homozygotes for that allele and only breed within that homozygotic population, i.e. no heterozygotes ever. In the next generation there are 250 black moths and 120 white moths. Of this 2nd generation 179 black moths and 40 white moths survive to reproduce. Given the low frequency of moth death associated with lightning strikes, unless they were all on the one tree at the time, it is reasonable to assume that the differences in reproductive success are not related to any inheritable resistance to lightning strikes associated with the melanic trait.The paper actuall shows that a statistical population genetic study of evolution does not allow a detailed dissection of the interplay of forces leading to a specific outcome. It does not suggest that selective pressures acting upon heritable variation are a trivial factor which can be cast aside as a sop to your ideological fixation. The paper strongly argues against your idea that looking at individual life histories is meaningful in terms of evolution.In fact the main thrust of the paper is that, as has been pointed out to you many times, in evolution fitness should be seen as a post hoc measurement of an individuals reproductive success and is in no way a value laden judgement of what the observer wishes to consider the most fit.Vernacular fitness is what the paper is concerned with, not vernacular variation. You have appropriated the papers terminology and are now missapplying it. This is not what darwinist in general do it is what adaptionists in particular do.Once again you misinterpret the argument concerning newtonian mechanics. The paper certainly doesn't argue that there is some problem with evolution as it does not follow Newton's laws. If you think that "Newton's principles...apply in all sciences" you are merely showing a grasp of all areas of science as tenuous as your grasp of biology. Please show how quantum physics, for example, acts in accordance with Newton's principles.As to addressing the paper rather than your commentary on it. I thought the paper was pretty good. I don't think it is fair to dissmiss it as some sort of philosophical post-modernist babble. I quite agree with its conclusions that the correct way of looking at evolution is as a probabilistic study of population genetics and not as some sort of newtonian mechanics of evolution. I would also agree that factors like developmental constraints and genetic drifts are important as factors shaping the balance of a populations genetics but are not usefully thought of as factors acting against NS. NS acts as the filter through which all the heritable attributes of the population pass to determine the constitution of the next generation. I certainly agree that "heritable variation leading to differential retention is all that evolution amounts to in the biological domain".TTFN,WK

Did you even read what you just wrote? You are saying the average reproductive rate for an individual mosquito is both one and one thousand.
It's really quite simple. The average reproductive rate of an individual in a population of mosquitos would be the total number of offsrping produced divided by the number of individuals in the population. What you are prehaps trying to refer to is the survival rate to reproductive age. That might be a number approaching one. And why do we see such a low survivability rate? Certainly there are many factors involved, but genetic variation plays a much much larger role than random lightning strikes.

I'm not sure if this was addressed to "me" because of my earlier comment in post #36, but I do agree with you. It was a good paper, but I had read it rather quickly the first time through (I wanted to post a reply before I went home for the day). Honestly, I'm not very good at absorbing those kinds of papers and need to read them v e r y s l o w l y a few times before I get a grasp of what it all means. I didn't mean to imply that I thought the paper was "babble" and I'm sorry if my comment came across as flippant.

It wasn't particularly directed at you, although it was your post that I got 'babble' from, Mr. Jack also dismissed it on the grounds that it came from a philosophy department. Of course people might not have jumped to the wrong conclusions about the paper if Syamsu hadn't misrepresented the findings and implications of it quite so grossly.TTFN,WK

Good Morning Syamsu: No. You’re wrong yet again. If we assume an equal starting distribution for both the white phase and the black phase of moths and we also assume random mating as it pertains to color (and let’s make the same assumptions as Wounded Knee does in post 40 in regards to heterozygotes and homozygotes) then there is an equal likelihood for either type of mating. However, if the black phase is indeed more suited to the environment (black = better camouflage) then we will see a difference in the survival rate between the two phases.which will result in a shift in the distribution such that the back phase becomes much more prevalent. In other words, the color of the moth does not determine who mates with whom, but rather the environment dictates (via NS) which of these matings will produce offspring that themselves survive to reproduce. But this totally ignores so many other factors. Basically, are you trying to tell me (and others that read your posts) that because lightning strikes are random in nature, that variation within a species is meaningless? How ridiculous. How absurd. How pathetic. That statement is true only if we look at the probability to mate as it relates to the probability to detect and avoid lightning strikes. So yes, in that sense (and only in that sense) there is no difference in the likelihood that a black moth will reproduce versus the likelihood that a white moth will reproduce. In other words (and I’m just guessing hereI’m not an expert of moth mating behavior) when assessing a potential mate, the ability to detect and avoid lightning strikes is NOT a consideration, regardless of color.
Let me ask you this. Since you seem to think that variation plays no role in natural selection, what if a mutation occurred in a moth population such that some of the males are blind, have no wings, and lack the ability to produce sperm? By your rather ridiculous definition of natural selection, these moths would have an equal likelihood to reproduce as any other male in the population (unless they get hit by lightning I guess). Do you really believe that?

Ya know, I hate to keep beating a dead horse, but here’s another problem with this statement. I could be wrong (it has been known to happen) but by just going through Syamsus idea in my mind, I don't even think it's possible for a sexually reproducing population to have a reproductive rate of "one" (at least not one the exhibits semelparity). The population would be doomed to extinction. Here's an extreme example: Let’s say we have a sexually reproducing population that has reached its carrying capacity, is strictly monogamous, has a 1:1 ratio of males to females, a 1:1 ratio of male births to female births, is semelparous, and produces offspring only in the spring. Tell me, Syamsu, how is it possible for this population to have a reproductive rate of one and still remain viable? I assume you realize that in a sexually reproducing population it takes two individuals in order to be successful. If each couple in the above population only leave one offspring to the next generation, the population size is reduced by half each spring. Not a very stable strategy now is it.
But you don't even need an example this extreme. If a semelparous population reproduces sexually, and the females can only give birth to one individual, then the next generation will only contain as many individuals as there were females in the previous generation...correct? Think about salmonthey swim upstream, reproduce, and then die. If 35,000 of them make the journey and 30,000 of them are female, then guess what the maximum population size of the next generation will be (and note that this completely ignores lightning strikes ). Hell, even if 34,999 of them are females and the lone male somehow manages to successfully reproduce with them all, the population size of the next generation is still one lessand will continue to decrease each year.
So, unless I’m way off base here, or am completely misinterpreting what Syamsu is trying to say, I think he needs to re-think his idea.