"Best" evidence for evolution.

Australopithecus. Also the Laetoli footprints. Look it up.The feet seemed to change first, so even with Australopithecus they were most of the way there.Edited by dwise1, : Laetoli

duplicateEdited by dwise1, : duplicate of Message 355

Already answered in Message 337. Stop ignoring it.

Why is why we keep telling you that that is not what we are talking about. Rather, we are talking about how it would have evolved! Instead, you keep prattling on about your nonsensical "trial and error" that you continually refuse to describe and which has nothing to do with evolution and definitely not with how life even works. Learn something instead of pontificating about things that you know nothing about! And refuse to learn anything about while falsely claiming to know more than a great many who have taken the time to study and to learn the subject.Ambassador Londo Mollari could just as well have had you in mind: "Ah! Arrogance and shtupidity all in the same package. How efficient of you." Edited by dwise1, : added "and definitely not with how life even works"

First she needs to explain just what she's talking about. Which she refuses to do despite repeated requests/demands.

Except for the inconvenient truth that that is completely wrong!If you just keep repeating the same groundless false assertion over and over again, then we cannot get anywhere. And you steadfastly refuse to describe or explain or discuss it which only generates unnecessary confusion and acrimony.Though I wouldn't be surprised to learn that that is exactly your purpose, which would be to create a ludicrous strawman that you refuse to describe or explain just so you can throw your hands up and shout "Impossible!". The confusion and acrimony that that generates is a side-effect which you welcome. Typical creationist dishonesty!Evolution works because of how life itself works. More specifically, evolution is the collective result of populations of individuals doing what living individuals do (ie, mature, survive in their environment, reproduce, etc). Every description of how evolution would work must be according to how life works. By all appearances, whatever your idea of "evolution" must be has nothing to do with how life works, which is the problem.Here in yellow is what I see you as describing your "model" -- if you disagree with this list, then please submit (finally!) your description:

1. All changes are because of mutations. (Wrong! Changes are the result of selection acting upon genetic variability. While genetic variability is increased over generations by mutations, it is also increased by other mechanisms such as chromosomal cross-over.)
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2. All changes are enormous, effectively single steps to the final result. (Wrong! While single large changes are possible, the vast majority of changes are small and cumulative.)
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3. All changes are to happen within a single or a few generations -- again a single step. (Wrong! It takes many generations for these small changes to accumulate.)
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4. All related changes must occur at the same time or at least within a generation or two. (Wrong! Different traits change at different times and at different rates, as is demonstrated repeatedly in the fossil record.)
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5. Your idea of selection is trial and error in which one single massive attempt is made to arrive at the final result. When that one single massive attempt fails (as it almost inevitably must), then you go back to scratch and make another single massive attempt which similarly fails, etc ad infinitum. (Absolutely wrong and completely contrary to how life even works! Where to even begin?
   1. Trial and error normally entails making a single complete attempt with a binary outcome: total success or total failure.
      There is normally no allowance made for partial success nor any method for keeping track of partial successes or factoring them into the next attempt.
      ​
   2. Upon failure, you start all over from scratch. By what mechanism does that happen here? "Scratch" was the parent generation, which in many species (in the real meaning, not yours) would be gone once their offspring failed. With no "scratch" starting point to go back to, however could you possibly go back and start all over from scratch? Life simply does not work like that!
      ​
      Obviously, given the way that life does work, each generation (AKA "attempt") results in a changed genome. It is that changed genome which forms the starting point of the next attempt (ie, the next generation of offspring), which in turn creates further change in the genome and hence yet another new starting point for the next attempt after that. And so on.
      Of course, that gets us back to cumulative selection which a) is far more descriptive of how life works than your single-step selection does and b) you vehemently deny even exists. Yet, compared to your "trial and error" "model", it is the only solution that actually works.
      ​
   3. Who's making each attempt? A single individual in the population? All individuals in the population? The population as a whole effectively acting as an individual? The answer to this question will have profound effects on the probability model for your "model".
      ​
   4. Trial and error is a learning method by which an intelligent agent makes a series of attempts and learns from each failure what does not work, which can help to suggest what to try in the next attempt. Obviously, there is no intelligent agent in your "model" nor can there be any learning. Therefore, instead of trial and error, you actually have nothing more than a random walk, which is even more nothing at all like evolution.
   )
   
   
6. Every single change must be the result of a mutation. (Wrong! There are other sources for change and for variation; eg:
   • Recombination. When germ cells are formed in meiosis, sections of the chromosome pairs can get swapped within the pair, such that a gene that was associated with particular genes on one member of the pair will now be associate with different genes on the other chromosome in the pair.
     ​
   • Allele frequency within the population having changed through natural selection.
     ​
   • Nothing. That is to say that the normal expression of genes can be "changed" as a result of physical changes caused by other means (eg, mutation, recombination, allele frequency). For example you recently made much of changes in the "flesh" (AKA "soft body parts") of the chimp foot to make it human claiming that that required mutations. Not so. Tendons and ligaments have attachment points on bone as determine by the genotype. If the bone length changes, then those attachment points will have moved. You do not need further changes in the genotype to get the tendons and ligaments to "move" along with their attachment points, but rather the same old genotypic code will still have them attach to those moved attachment points.
   ​
   )
   ​
7. A mutation is any change, be it physical or genetic (but preferably physical). (Wrong! In these discussions, mutations are purely genetic. Further, the only mutations of any interest in evolution are those that show up in the germ cells, which makes them heritable; if a mutation is not heritable, then it serves no purpose in evolution.
   When we speak of physical changes, then we are talking about the expression of changes in the genotype regardless of the source of those changes (which could be mutations or not). Furthermore, many mutations will not even show up as physical changes. A further complication is that genetic and physical changes are not proportional: a small amount of genetic change could create a lot of physical change, while a lot of genetic change could amount to little if any physical change -- each individual case is different.)

That is a list of the best guesses I can make of what the hell you are talking about. It details many of the questions that you must answer in order for us to figure out just what the hell you are talking about. If any of my guesses are incorrect (which is likely, since you are forcing us into a guessing game), then you must provide us with corrections. Not just a say-nothing "nope, not what I said", but rather an actual explanation of what you are actually saying.

​

Obviously, if any of my guesses are correct, then you must acknowledge that fact.

​

And if you refuse to do either and just remain silent, then I will have to assume that I was correct on every count and that your entire "model" has nothing to do with evolution.

Except that you are not even trying to "get across what [you're] talking about."Instead, you are actively preventing "[getting] across what [you're] talking about."In Message 385 I laid out a series of simple questions that you need to answer so that you can finally get across what you're talking about. Your "response" was the ultimate creationist non-response of vaguely suggesting that you're get to it later -- in over three decades of dealing with creationists, I have seen that promise many times and have never ever seen any creationist honor that promise. It's a damned dishonest trick almost known as "smiling you out the door".As I concluded: Why are you fighting so hard to avoid telling us what you are talking about?

• Are you trying to hide the fact that you have absolutely no clue what you are talking about?
• Are you trying to bluff, to hide the fact that you have nothing to support your position so you instead are trying to deceive us? (BTW, doing that knowingly is also known as lying)

Those few questions I raised are what you must answer at a bare minimum. By refusing to do so, you are refusing to allow anybody to understand "what [you're] talking about." 
I'm reminded of a scene in Chasing Amy, which I've tailored for our situation here:

quote:

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There's a four-way road, okay? And dead in the center is a crisp, new, hundred dollar bill. Now, at the end of each of these streets are four people, okay? You following?

​

Over here, we have an honest truthful creationist, one who will engage in honest discussion and present researched evidence and sound reasoning to support his position. Down here, we have a dishonest, lying, deceitful creationist who will avoid any and all honest discussion by using every and any dirty dishonest trick in the book, plus some he just makes up as he goes along. Over here, we got Santa Claus, and up here the Easter Bunny. Which one is going to get to the hundred dollar bill first? The honest creationist, the dishonest creationist, Santa Claus, or the Easter bunny?

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The dishonest creationist. Why? Because the other three are figments of your imagination!

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RAZD replying to Faith: As I pointed out to Faith with my modest list in Message 385 of very simple direct questions that she must answer, while she is not almost completely unclear about what she is talking about she has also been dropping clues about her misunderstanding (or deliberate misrepresentation) of evolution that she is using.

• While she has given occasional lip service to mutations being genetic (in our usage, we are only talking about genetic mutations which are heritable), I strongly suspect that by "mutation" she primarily means only physical changes, which would include physical changes caused by genetic mutation.
  ​
  We need to nail down just what she means by "mutation".
  ​
• Her view of the appearance of a new trait (eg, chimp foot to human foot) appears to be that it must happen abruptly as within a single generation or within a few generations at most. This is coupled with her assertion that all these physical changes must all suddenly arise and come together randomly "at the same time".
  ​
  That is of course saltationism:

  quote:

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  In biology, saltation (from Latin, saltus, "leap") is a sudden and large mutational change from one generation to the next, potentially causing single-step speciation. This was historically offered as an alternative to Darwinism. Some forms of mutationism were effectively saltationist, implying large discontinuous jumps.

  ---

  ​
  That is popularly known as geneticist Goldschmidt's "hopeful monster". Not only does that appear to be what Faith is thinking of, but over the decades I have also observed many creationists using the same kind of arguments which would lead them to the same false conclusions (though none of them were ever willing to discuss it).
  ​
  Of course, that is almost the exact opposite of current ideas of evolution.
  ​
  We must get Faith to clarify what her ideas are of how evolution would work. Of course she will refuse to do so.
  ​
• Since Faith's ideas appear to be saltationist, that would mean that in her "trial and error" claims each "trial" would be a saltation event, such as a chimp foot becoming a human foot (along with all the other body changes needed for walking upright) all in one generation.
  ​
  The probability of all that happening by chance is so small as to be virtually impossible. And that appears to be the basis of all creationist probability arguments, which Faith is echoing. The big problem with that probability argument is that it has absolutely nothing to do with evolution.
  ​
  What Faith is pushing with her "trial and error" nonsense is single-step selection which is notorious for its extremely low chances for success. Life does not use single-step selection, but rather cumulative selection in which a population accumulates small changes for generation to generation. In the third chapter, "Accumulating Small Changes", of The Blind Watchmaker, Richard Dawkins compared single-step and cumulative selection and created the first WEASEL program to demonstrate the power of cumulative selection. I couldn't believe it, so I wrote my own program which I called MONKEY, basing its specification on Dawkins' description of his program. It succeeded so incredibly fast and without fail that I still couldn't believe it, so I performed an analysis of the probabilities involved: MONKEY PROBABILITIES (MPROBS). Even though the probability of any one step succeeding is low, the probability of every single step of every single generation of the population failing is vanishingly small (ie, virtually impossible). Another strength of cumulative selection is that it is what life uses, whereas life does not use single-step selection.
  ​
  At the very least, Faith must describe just exactly what one of her "trials" would be, as well as to described exactly how her "trial and error" is supposed to apply to how life works.

I think that's a good point being raised that in life, every individual who has survived long enough to reproduce and pass its genes on to the next generation can be counted as having succeeded that "trial".

I have no doubt that her "model" (purposefully in scare quotes, because actual models need to be built and tested, like scientific theories, and not just some BS made up ad hoc on the spot) is full of inconsistencies and contradictions. And I have no doubt that she does not understand any of it herself.There's also a mentality that I've seen typical of creationists which is disjointed and heavily compartmentalized. We normals see science as representing a unified whole wherein each part depends on all other parts such that we expect a certain consistency in reality and we see contradictions as a serious problem that requires investigation and resolution (primarily by correcting our misunderstanding of how things work). For that matter, we find it important to learn how things work and all our conclusions must be in accord with how things work.In contrast, creationists seem to view science as a collection of disassociated unrelated factoids from which they can cherry-pick whatever they want, even different ones on different occasions, very much how they approach their own theologies. They do not expect consistency nor are they bothered by inconsistencies; it's for apologetics to explain away that kind of stuff. Nor are they the least bit concerned by contradictions.Another important aspect of the creationist mindset is that it's disjointed and compartmentalized. Part of that comes from right-wing authoritarian psychology which is heavily compartmentalized. I think that part of the disjointedness, especially regarding science, comes from science being taught the wrong way as a collection of unrelated facts to be memorized.When I started discussing "creation science" online in 1986, I was taken aback by how hostile creationists became whenever I would take their claims seriously and try to discuss those claims with them. After a while I finally realized why that was: they didn't understand their own claims, so therefore they were incapable of discussing them and the hostile displays were intended to kill the conversation. What was happening was that these creationists were just repeating the typical creationist claims that they had read, heard, or been taught in church. Then, not knowing any better, they would sally forth to do battle with all their "latest scientific evidences that will blow those evolutionists away." To quote ex-creationist Scott Rauch (from my cre/ev quotes page, originally from a once extensive late-80's discussion forum):

quote:

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"I still hold some anger because I believe the evangelical Christian community did not properly prepare me for the creation/evolution debate. They gave me a gun loaded with blanks, and sent me out. I was creamed."

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Back around 1990 the owner of a local mall's creationist fossil shop ran a few amateur-night creation/evolution debates in which anyone with something to present could get up and present it. That's when I learned that creationists also know nothing about "creation science". They had never heard of the "Two Model Approach", the foundation of "creation science", nor had they ever heard of the leading creationists like the ICR's Drs. Henry Morris and Duane Gish. All they knew were the claims. Even when an online creationist would repeat a claim verbatim and I would identify the creationist source for that claim, that creationist would deny ever having heard of the guy (which I do not doubt).At one of these events, a young creationist got up and announced that he had recent scientific evidence that will "blow you evolutionists away." It was Setterfield's "speed of light slowing down" claim that had been presented and soundly refuted over a decade previously. Immediately, half the audience (BTW, I had gotten a mailing list and got the word out about these events resulting in an audience roughly divided equally between creationists and normals; otherwise it would have been the typical almost completely creationist crowd found in most debates) broke into both uncontrollable laughter and shouting over the noise trying to explain everything that was wrong with that claim. It was the creationist who was blown away as he learned what crap his claim was. Whether he learned something from that experience, I don't know. Netflix in the USA has a fairly complete collection of Monty Python programs, movies, live performances, and documentaries, including their two German episodes (Monty Python's Fliegender Zirkus). I came to understand a few things:

• In Applied Cryptography, Bruce Schneier offered an example secure-enough password, MLivA, based on the phrase, "Mein Luftkissenfahrzeug ist voller Aale." ("My hovercraft is full of eels." -- German offers far greater opportunity for mixed case)
• YouTube has a number of videos called "Confuse a Cat" (eg, jumping over an invisible obstacle, placing Saran Wrap across a doorway). Then I saw that sketch ([voice=military_command]Confuse aaaa ...{wait for it, wait for it} ... CAT![/voice]).
• Every time I drive by Larchwood Drive, the street sign catches my eye. I had never even heard of a larch before.
• My ex-wife is Mexican. I have known her as "The Spanish Inquisition" even before the divorce, but originally for a different reason.

Interesting bit of history that was completely new to me was how Monty Python found its way onto US TV (I think it was in "Monty Python Conquers America"). After every TV network and station had turned them down, Bob Wilson, advertising executive and operator of a public television station (in Texas, as I seem to recall), liked it and decided to put it on late at night. It became very popular and spread to other PBS stations and the rest is history. Bob Wilson also produced three sons, all of them actors, the better known ones being Owen Wilson and Luke Wilson.

That use of "conferring a benefit" confuses the matter.If a trait already exists, isn't that because it somehow benefits the organism? If a mutation results in zero physical change (very common), then doesn't it automatically confer the same benefit as before the mutation?If a mutation reduces the benefit of that trait, then it will be selected against.But if a mutation results in a physical change, regardless of how little, that works better, regardless of how little better, then that would be selected for, become more prevalent in the population, and serve as the starting point for the next change that works better, regardless of how little better, and so on.

I wasn't talking to you. Yet.Odd how readily you accuse others of your own transgressions.BTW, I was indeed addressing very relevant things, namely my observations of typical creationist mentality which you repeatedly display. RAZD predicted that your position will be found full of inconsistencies and contradictions and I pointed out that that is in the nature of the beast.Edited by dwise1, : BTW

I only have about 20 minutes before I need to leave for class (Cyber Security and Warfare), after which I'll need to get home to get ready to assist in tonight's dance classes (Country Two Step and West Coast Swing). So this will be rushed. You are trying to change the subject! Here is what I said in Message 401, to which you are replying: Are you talking physical mutations or genetic? That is and has been the question. The question that you keep avoiding for who the hell knows what reason! And now you have avoided it yet again!The mutations we are talking about are genetic. They may or may not also result in physical change. And only certain genetic mutations can be inherited.Plus you still have not answered the questions I raised in Message 385, question which you must answer. Finally! Why did you have to keep that so secret for so long?Also, why do all your descriptions of what must happen all point to your believing in sudden change? You now state that you don't hold to sudden change, but your other writings require sudden change (eg, everything having to come together all at the same time). That is an inconsistency. Which is contrary to the single-step selection nature of trial-and-error.Rather, what you are now describing is cumulative selection which you pronounce as not existing! The accumulation of tiny changes over huge swaths of time, one little selection per generation.Does this mean that now suddenly you accept cumulative selection? Or are you just being inconsistent and self-contradicting yet again? Why not? The original form was beneficial, wasn't it? Tiny changes that make it work better would increase its benefit regardless of how little. Even if the tiny change didn't make any difference, that form would still be just as beneficial as before. That's the basic criterion: just as beneficial as before or more so.Go through it with something even easier to visualize, the evolution of the vertebrate eye. Refer to a later edition of On the Origin of Species in the chapter on the evolution of complex organs. After the all too frequent creationist misquote, Darwin went through a few paragraphs of examples in which the organ of sight is beneficial to its possessor at each and every stage -- in later editions that expanded to a few pages of examples. Richard Dawkins repeats that exercise in The Blind Watchmaker. Yes it will, but not as well as a chimp foot would. But something that is more like a human foot would be of more benefit for an ape who is moving out of the forest into the savanna where bipedalism is more important. If we had the knowledge and technology (which we are nowhere close to possessing), we could construct any genome. The imaginary limits you place on genetic change are just that, imaginary.There are two processes at work: one reduces genetic variation while the other increases it. They work at different rates, with the increase of variation being the slower. When you speed up selection artificially as in breeding of livestock, then you will hit a limit when you exhaust the currently existing variability. Even after that, variation will continually increase, except that you as a breeder will interfere with that and continually select against variation.But in nature, variation is allowed to continue to increase while it is the environment that selects against what doesn't work. That limit that you had artificially and arbitrarily imposed does not exist in nature. That is how you are deceiving yourself. I have to hit the road now. I will be back. And you still have questions to answer. Please stop avoiding them.

Ah, Jebus! We have to explain simple English to you yet again? And yet again it's that complex English concept of the plural."Plural" means "more than one." It's really not that difficult to understand. Why the idea of "more than one" would be so taxing for you quite frankly boggles our minds.Read again (assuming you had read it even one time) the part where JonF says "the cumulative effect of those tny changes"."those" is the plural form of the demonstrative "that". It refers to more than one thing.What things (HINT: that word that I had just used is also plural)? "changes". That "s" indicates the plural when appended to a noun (hopefully you are not also baffled by the concept of nouns). Therefore, "changes" means "more than one change".Hopefully, we haven't lost you yet again. Go over it a few times (or a few dozen times, whatever it takes) and you should eventually be able to understand it. 
So then what JonF was saying was that there are many tiny changes, each of which spreads through the population and contributes to the accumulation of small changes. And that accumulation of small changes can result in large changes.

I have a little time before dance classes. What the f*ck are you talking about?It sounds like you're saying that when a subpopulation splits off from the main population, then it takes some of the genome with it. An analogy to what I see you saying is that it's kind of like a tribe having a central treasury containing x monetary units, so when a third of the tribe leaves to form its own tribe then it takes a third of the treasury with it (x/3) leaving the original tribe with only two-thirds of the treasury (2x/3). That is absolutely bizarre!In reality, both subpopulations start off with near-exact copies of the population's composite genome. From that point on in isolation from each other, each subpopulation's composite genome will change on its own independent of the other such that they will over many generations become increasingly different from each other. Those changes would be due to different selective pressure from differing environments and from the accumulation of different mutations which can only spread through the subpopulation and not be shared with the other. First, you have bastardized the word "species" beyond all recognition, so nobody has any idea what you could possibly mean by "evolution beyond a species". Your use of those words is absolutely meaningless.Since nobody can know what that "idea" is, nobody can even begin to figure out how it could happen. Besides which you have so far refused to explain what that "only way it COULD happen" could possibly be.That is why we have to keep asking and demanding that you explain what you are talking about and you keep refusing to do so.Why do you persist in keeping that secret? My money is on you being engaged in deliberate deception.

WHY CAN'T THEY? Give us a valid reason. Give us a mechanism. So why can't they? Uh, no. Not even close. How we work artificially with animals we wish to breed (or have already bred) and what happens in the wild are completely different. The underlying mechanisms are still in place, but how have your breeding actions perverted those mechanisms into being unnatural?A PhD Chemistry friend told me that he could not ever do anything in the lab that couldn't also happen in nature under the exact same conditions. What breeders do is to create conditions that do not exist in the wild. Artificial selection in breeding served as a basic analogy for natural selection, but that analogy falls apart as all analogies do.Therefore, it is fallacious for you to misrepresent evolution in the wild as being the same as artificial selection in breeding human-domesticated plants and animals.Have to rush off to school now. Today's class is in evolution.