Summations Only

Hi, Larni. And the opposite is also true: if you have successful physical adaptations, you don't have as big a selective force to evolve the ability to think through the problem.

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-Bluejay (a.k.a. Mantis, Thylacosmilus)Darwin loves you.

Hi, Zi Ko. Given this, we would predict that younger siblings will be fitter than their older siblings, because empathy will allow the mother to subconsciously improve her later offspring in relation to her earlier offspring.I'm quite certain that this prediction will fail.

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-Bluejay (a.k.a. Mantis, Thylacosmilus)Darwin loves you.

Hi, Zi Ko. 我有一點困惑。The mother will feel the need for faster offspring, and this feeling will translate through the rest of her progeny until, hundreds or thousands of generations later, it makes the next offspring faster?What is your mechanism for the inheritance of these empathic states? How does what the mother feels upon seeing her offspring killed translate into evolution many generations later?

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-Bluejay (a.k.a. Mantis, Thylacosmilus)Darwin loves you.

Hi, Zi Ko. Were you trying to add something in there (the "Ho" isn't mine)? It got cut off.Also, are you replying with the "rquote" button or the "reply" button? If you click the "peek" button, you can see how I made separate quote boxes for each quote.It's easy:

1. Copy the text you want to quote, and paste it in the window.
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2. Then, type [qs=writer's name] in front of the quote, and [/qs] after the quote.
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3. Press "enter" twice and type your response.

----- Again, what is your mechanism?How does the mother's knowledge get transferred to the next generation?
And, what signals does her nervous system send to "DNA-level structures."

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-Bluejay (a.k.a. Mantis, Thylacosmilus)Darwin loves you.

Hi, Zi Ko. "Reaction" is a poor way to view evolutionary change.The changes (mutations) do not actually happen as a reaction to the environment: rather, changes happen, and the environment filters out the bad ones.Natural selection acts after mutation. Because of this, mutation cannot really be a reaction to natural selection.Think about the antelope example. There is variation in all species. A slow antelope is killed by the cheetah, and a fast antelope escapes.The antelope was already slow or fast before the cheetah arrived.The fast antelopes didn't become fast as a reaction to the cheetah: they survived because they were already fast.

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-Bluejay (a.k.a. Mantis, Thylacosmilus)Darwin loves you.

Hi, Zi Ko. With our current understanding of science, there is no reason to think neurons can affect heredity, or that experience can be transferred from mother to offspring. In fact, there is good reason to think that this cannot happen.So, you need a mechanism that could cause this to happen. Until you do, there is no reason why anybody should give any consideration to your hypothesis.

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-Bluejay (a.k.a. Mantis, Thylacosmilus)Darwin loves you.

Hi, Zi Ko. I don't think either of these is a fact, so neither of them currently needs to be explained.And I'm not sure how your hypothesis explains punctuated equilibrium, anyway.----- Yes, they could.But, I still don't see a reason why we need a new causative factor in evolution when the current causative factors seem to work just fine.

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-Bluejay (a.k.a. Mantis, Thylacosmilus)Darwin loves you.

Hi, Dash. I have no idea how the knowledge of an organism's lifetime could be passed on genetically. Knowledge is, by definition, an acquired trait, and we've seen precious little reason to believe that acquired traits can be passed on hereditarily.I can't think of a feasible means of taking a mother's knowledge and experience, and encoding it somehow in genes, or in epigenetic chemical states, or somewhere in the cytoplasm, such that it can be "hardwired" into a one-celled embryo (that lacks specialized tissues for storing knowledge in the traditional way) that will later grow up into a new adult with all the mother's experience and knowledge available to it.If there is such a feasible means of accomplishing this, it would certainly be very interesting and I would want to learn about it. However, Zi Ko's approach to the topic is highly questionable, and I have no confidence that any revolutions or innovations of the magnitude of this "neurogenic evolution" idea are going to come from this avenue.

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-Bluejay (a.k.a. Mantis, Thylacosmilus)Darwin loves you.

Hi, Zi Ko. Epigenesis is not a very likely mechanism: it doesn't result in sustained changes over time.Mirror cells only explain how individual organisms feel empathy: they don't provide a way for empathy to be transferred from one organism to another, or for empathy to be recorded in epigenetic states.----- I don't see why punctuated equilibria and stasis need a new explanation. There are already other, better explanations for these things.For example, environmental change may only rarely become severe enough to cause species to change measurably.
Or, large, beneficial changes may be so rare that a species can go for a long period of time without experiencing one just by chance.By themselves, these ideas (I don't think they should be called "facts") are not problematic enough to the current Theory of Evolution that we new a whole new theory just to explain them.

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-Bluejay (a.k.a. Mantis, Thylacosmilus)Darwin loves you.

Hi, Zi Ko. Evidence that empathy is real is not evidence that empathy is a cause of evolutionary change.----- Evidence that epigenetics is real is not evidence that empathy is inherited epigenetically, or that epigenetic empathy is a cause of evolutionary change.-----It's like saying, "I think my wife ate pancakes for breakfast this morning. The reason I think this is because my wife is real and pancakes are real."What you need is evidence for your hypothesis that epigenetically-inherited empathy causes evolutionary change, not evidence that empathy and epigenetics are real.

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-Bluejay (a.k.a. Mantis, Thylacosmilus)Darwin loves you.

Look at all these nerds demonstrating their geekiness by making subtle references to a science fiction television show......which, by the way, was written by a Mormon.

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-Bluejay (a.k.a. Mantis, Thylacosmilus)Darwin loves you.

Hi, Zi Ko. But, other hypotheses also explain this quite well, and some of those hypotheses have evidence for their mechanisms.That's why we accept those hypotheses, and not yours.----- And, until their is clear evidence of its direct action on DNA, there is no reason to accept your hypothesis.直道有了它向DNA作用的清除的證據以後，都沒有接受 你假設的原因。This is how science works.

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-Bluejay (a.k.a. Mantis, Thylacosmilus)Darwin loves you.

Hi, Larni. That's not going to work on me twice. Edited by Bluejay, : added "on me"

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-Bluejay (a.k.a. Mantis, Thylacosmilus)Darwin loves you.