natural selection is wrong

Dear Syamsu, Re-read the thread Syamsu, that is exactly what you did, therefore you yourself admit you are lying. You still have no reason to assert that your interpretation is any more 'literal' than the intended one. If you think that literal meaning is wholly subjective then that is A) Idiosyncratic and B) makes the way youpresented things as being my opinion as even more lamentable. Basically what you were saying was 'I think that WK is saying' but what you actually said was 'WK said'. Surely you see the difference between these. This totally fails to explain any underlying assumptions or what you actually think you are showing. You say it is a reasonable formalising of common understanding of intensity of competiton, I say it is a simplistic formula designed to show a particular mathematical trend which says nothing about competition between organisms. Now you are just showing an ignorance of the development of the field. Doesn't it make sense when you have built individual pieces up to finally integrate them. You are looking at the latest incarnations where work on various seperate issues have been integrated and accusing evolutionary biologists of just throwing them together. If you took the time to research and understand the methods you would see that in fact all of the assumptions and methodologies are clear and can be isolated for specific situations. It just so happens that combined they act to model or allow the study of 1 specific but broad kind of scenario. That is not a failing, that is the point. Everything in science is designed to apply to specific kinds of scenarion, that is what you seemed to fail to understand when you claimed that Newton's laws of motion would have to apply in an evolutionary. I mean sure the laws of motion apply to the organism physical beings, and you could argue that the laws of motion are one of the many environmental factors which act upon the organism but that is not a clarificationyou have ever made.TTFN,WKThis message has been edited by Wounded King, 06-17-2004 02:33 AM

That is simply not true, I did not misrepresent you, I only critized your choice of words.I don't really know what you're talking about with underlying assumptions, apart from what I already told you what the assumptions are, that the intensity is greatest when the chances of the mutually exclusive outcomes are equal.Again, the startingpoints of darwinists is one variant or the other variant reproducing, that should be the one organism reproducing or not, as a simple matter of organization of knowledge. Since the fundament of a theory resounds througout whatever is built on it, all this development you talk about is shaky.regards,
Mohammad Nor Syamsu

I thought that was what the formula was supposed to show. How can your assumptions be what you are trying to demonstrate? You have a serious fundamental lack when it comes to explaining yourself Syamsu. As you say you don't know what I am talking about, but you should know if you want people to take what you put forward as a serious model for something rather than just an abstruse exercise in mathematics.As to the shakiness of the fundamentals of neo-darwinian theory, you have yet to show one instance. What has happened to individuals does constitute the fundamental basis of what is being observed but in and of itself it shows nothing, you have to actually analyse the data to extrat meaningful information, and this is what the evolutionary methods do.How could you apply your alternative approach? How could you do it? How, in the real world?! It isn't a question about organisation of knowledge, it is about how you can actually do science that works and shows something rather than simply accumulating data for its own sake while navel gazing and refusing to analyse it.Do you seriously expect to study every single individual of every generation in a population? It is not totally impossible in a very limited experiment in a lab. You could monitor a breeding population of a few hundred mice and take tail clippings from every single individual but unless you culled them the population would soon exceed your ability to sequence every individual, even just for one gene.So how could you possibly expect to put this into practice in the wild?TTFN,WKp.s. All you need to do is look back up the thread to see this is not true. Sadly this seems to be turning into another of your arguments about the confusing nature of evolutionary language and the perjorative connotations of words such as fitness or success. If you are prepared to admit that this was just your interpretation of what I said then thats fine, it isn't what you said but thats fine.

No the individual doesn't constitute the fundamental basis of what is being observed, a pairing of variants constitutes the basis, the observations being prejudicially jaded that way. In the new formulation of the theory the focus is shifted from a pairing of variants, to an ensemble, I read.Your assertion is evidently untrue, by observing the theory you can see that,that's no way to debate. It is of course ridiculous that you assert that standard theory is individual, when I propose an alternative theory that is actually individual. That you like to say it is the individual is because that's where the scientfic interest of biology in general is, despite your numerous claims to the contrary.I guess it is mostly a matter of careful observation of individuals. You don't need to identify how a trait works with every individual, you can just identify how it works in one individual, and extrapolate your finding to all other individuals, as by general rule that same thing will produce same kind of result.As before the formula is just consistent with common knowledge about intensity of competition, it just expresses it more clearly, and definitively. You can contest the assumptions in it if you want, but I don't see you getting anywhere soon in criticizing, because you are yourself trapped in very vague Darwinist notions of competition.regards,
Mohammad Nor Syamsu

Dear Syamsu, This is an unsupported assertion which totally misses the point. What is being observed is the result of events affecting individuals, but it is not the study of those individual events which is relevant. Are you claiming that you read relevant material, there is no evidence of this, or that you have read something about your new formulation? Which assertion? This is not of course what I assert, what I assert is that what is measured by the standard theory is integrating the various factors acting on numerous individuals. Obviously instances of reproduction and death actually happen to individuals but which specific member of a sub population is immaterial to the outcome. No, I say that beacause obviously individual instances are what statistical measures are composed of. Your idea that that is where the scientific interest of biology lies is still a totally unsupported assertion to which I have provided several arguments which you have failed to address. This is a ludicrous and totally unscientific methodology compared to looking at several samples and drawing conclusions about general traits from comparing them. If this is supposed to be an explanation of the application of your theory then it is sadly lacking. How could you possibly know this was a general rule without masses of previous comparative analysis? As before this is an unsupported assertion, why not show us how this formula is consistent with 'common knowledge'. No I can't, because you haven't told me what they are.TTFN,WK

You have to look at the fundamental concept you employ, which is of two variants, and not of an individual. Therefore within the framework of your theory things are happening to a pairing of variants, not to individuals. You confuse reality for the theory about it, you step outside your theory when you say it really is about individuals.As before starting from an individual approach you can arrive at natural selection / differential reproductive success of variants, as you can also arrive at differential reproductive success of same, and any type of other reproduction theory which are all essentially subsets to viewing in terms of the environment testing an individual organism's fitness to reproduce.As before, it is a matter of organization of knowledge. You can't posit a theory as fundamental, and then deconstruct it to arrive at for instance comparison of same. If you have given any counterargument to my argument about the organization of knowledge then I haven't seen it.The prejudice to have natural selection as the fundament is sustained because evolution tends to deny creation by God, and the moral sort of language gives Darwinists a substitute pseudoscientific religion. It is sustained by atheism and scientism, rather then scientific merit.regards,
Mohammad Nor Syamsu

Thats funny I though the concept of natural selection was sustained because it was the best SCIENTIFIC model to explain evolution. What does God have to do with it? Claiming that natural selection is wrong is all well and good if thats what gives you peace.
Saymsu.

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"One is punished most for ones virtues" Fredrick Neitzche

Well you are wrong, and the odd place of natural selection or differential reproductive success in the structure of knowledge that follows from an environmental testing theory shows it, that it isn't about scientfic merit. Obviously your concept of science doesn't have much to do with standards of organizing knowledge, making your claim that it is scientific just empty pseudoscientific rhetoric.regards,
Mohammad Nor Syamsu

Dear Syamsu,Care to provide some evidence? or indeed anything other than bald assertions.TTFN,WK

This is simply wrong. You can have only 1 'variant' but then you won't see any selection. You can easily have more than 2 'variants' and in most case you will have more than 2 although many may be functionally equivalent with no differential in fitness. The examples we have looked at have focussed on populations composed of 2 sub-populations because that is the simplest system, not because the theory requires it. Once again you show a total failure to understand evolutionary theory and natural selections place in it. Your claim that I am somehow violating the integrity of te theory by discussig the factors contributing to it shows again that you have no understanding of how science is crried out and makes your insulting of other peoples grasp of science look absoloutely ridiculous. This is totally beside the point, your whole argument has been centred on the fact that natural selection relies on comparisons it is flawed. Therefore by your reasoning any analysis of your individual dat which involved comparisions would be equally flawed. You are basically sayin here what I have always told you, your individual theory is just a very reductionist form of population dynamics which can, with a little bit of genetics thrown in, be built up into the neccessary populationn genetics tools for studying natural selction.That is what I have always said. You seem to have suddenly conceded that comparisons are fine as long as you do all the data collection on individuals, which seems stupidly obvious since until shotgun sequencing is more routinely used to study populations that is how genetic data is gathered, just not from every single individual in the population. All this says is that you don't know the first thing about how both historical and modern theories of natral selection came to be formulated. A theory can be fundamental to evolution and not be the fundamental theory of life, which is what you now seem to be claiming yours is, although you have yet to show how it is suitable for studying anything other than population dynamics, in fact you haven't shown how it could be used to study anything at all. A theory does not spring up fully formed from nowhere it is based upon observations and assumptions, those of natural selection are clear, your own are decidedly fuzzy. And this is just your usual rubbish. A huge raft of unsupported assertions.TTFN,WK

No you can't have just 1 variant in a theory based on a differential pairing of variants, without stepping outside your theory.So what am I supposed to think now about what your objection is to having as fundamental an individual being tested by the environment in terms of fitness to reproduce, over having a pairing of variations?Sorry, I can't make out what your objection is, there's only a lot of hot air about me not understanding science, as far as I can tell. It is not the point of science when somebody makes a very specific objection like I do, to then just blurt out that what you do is science and therefore apparently objections aren't applicable.A comparitive theory like natural selection can never be a fundamental theory, because it is comparitive. It is simply preferrable in science to have theories based on physical relationships rather then comparitive relationships. I can't deny that it would have some use, to for instance compare how some organisms are doing in Europe compared to the USA, but to posit such comparing as some kind of law of nature is quite absurd. Natural selection doesn't apply to organisms on separate continents, the example just makes it more clear why such comparing is not desirable to have as a fundamental theory.regards,
Mohammad Nor Syamsu

WK,Akin to trying to run a rapier through fog, ain't it?Mark

It is just like over a year ago when Quetzal and someone else said that selection is really about the individual, but just that variation had to be included because there is so much of it (a nonsense argument in view of the stasis of most traits and organisms). Now Wounded King is saying the same sort of thing, natural selection is really about the individual but....The fog is all in the objections against an individual theory, objections which you are all not too sure of in respect to the glaring disorganization of natural selection theory shown, when it laid side to side with numerous other theories which view organisms in terms of fitness to reproduce.regards,
Mohammad Nor Syamsu

There is no fog on my part, Syamsu.I have NEVER claimed what you say doesn't happen, just that you deny yourself the ease of explanation. How can you effectively look at & understand evolutionary stable strategies, & maintainence of variation etc. without knowledge of, & ability to juxtapose, other variation within any given population?You would be right to say an individuals reproductive success can be measured against the environment, including all members of the same reproductive population, even within an ESS. But how does this efficiently explain the existence of the above?If you refuse to allow the comparisons of variants with respect to differential reproductive success within a population, then you remove the explanatory efficacy that NS has regarding evolution. It is populations that evolve, it is therefore logically correct, if we are to understand NS's role fully, to include populations & all variation within that synthesis.Mark

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There are 10 kinds of people in this world; those that understand binary, & those that don't

Tell mw specfically what you don't understand and I can explain it, if you just say don't understand anything its going to be a bit tricky.TTFN,WK