New Homo erectus Skull Shakes up Palaeontology (page 11)

braincleaned

" As a side note, why the f#ck does every other thread about science need to be derailed by this perspectivism/relativism/navelgazism trolling."

"Navelgazism"... :D Haha!

Guilty, bohm — sorry about that.

2+2=5

So if I stood on the earth, with 4 coins in my pocket and a orange in my hand, I can't presume to know if the orange is in fact sweet, even if I taste it, or even if the earth I am standing on is round or flat.

The SBF style of questioning everything and it all being about perspective reminds me of The Mighty Boosh episode Jungle. The character Tommy taught Howard Moon to never stop questioning the nature of reality.

We all dream...... But do we really dream.

Okay, I think the thread is off topic enough now....... But is it really off topic?

Satanus

Here is natgeo's write up on it, getting back to the topic...

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2013/10/131017-skull-human-origins-dmanisi-georgia-erectus/

S

Comatose

It's quite interesting that the skull is in such great shape. It looks like a "Punisher" style skull a little. Haha.

adamah

Cofty said on an earlier page:

When we make statements that don't describe reality we have not stated a fact no matter how convinced we may be.

True, but the problem is, 'facts' ARE relative and the abiliity to see that is generally correlated by how much command of the facts the person has on the subject under discussion. What suffices as a 'fact' for a layperson or someone who lacks experience in the subject is wholly-inadequate for someone who is a researcher, as the very difference between the definition of 'fact' as used in scientific vs laypeople should demonstrate.

For example, the fact I provided above about 23 chromosomes technically WAS (and still is) incorrect, but you didn't detect it. Why not?

So when you ask this:

Is it also a fact that we have 22 chromosomes?

The factually-correct answer is NO (unless you want to argue as Eden does, claiming it's true by saying it implies AT LEAST 22 chromosomes, which is a semantic argument, AKA quibbling, when the implied context is that it means EXACTLY 23 chromosomes).

But it's not even a FACT that all human cells have 23 chromosomes. The critical missing distinction is that human cells have 23 PAIRS of chromosomes, eg 46 total per cell (22 pairs of autosomes, and 1 pair of sex-linked chromosomes).

But the FACT IS, even THAT'S NOT the whole story, and hence calling it a "fact" is a matter of degrees of truth (where some facts are more "true" than others).

A more-accurate and FACTUALLY-BASED answer would be a bit more complicated, since the simple answer presupposes a 'normal' individual, thus overlooking the known-exceptions which are just as factual, being found in those humans with chromosomal abnormalities called 'aneuploidy' (abnormal number of chromosomes).

These individuals are either missing a chromosome of a pair (monosomy) or have more than two chromosomes of a pair (trisomy, tetrasomy). Such numerical chromosomal disorders result in conditions such as Kleinfelters, Down, and Turner Syndrome, where individuals might have 44, 45, 46, 47, or even 48 total choromosomes.

Furthermore, the simple answer of 46 also ignores mosaicism, where some autosomal cells will have different chromosome counts; it also overlooks chimerism, which is a similar phenomenon where all bets are off for the number of chromosomes found in a human cell.

So it's not so simple to declare something as a fact unless you're VERY CAREFUL to define what you mean. Once someone learns the complexity of how the World of biological sciences actually operates, it doesn't seem so cut-and-dry and easy to declare certain statements as "facts" without needing to constantly being called on the carpet when you're flat-out wrong, and hence why dogmatic statements and curt answers ARE inevitably wrong and overly-simplistic (esp if the individual chooses to deny the complexity, and only tells themselves THEIR current understanding is "correct").

The flip-side of that kind of brazen self-assuredness of the uneducated is SBFs going overboard and approaching with overly-cautious "we can't know anything"; that's as unwarranted as going too extreme in the other direction. There's a balance to be sought.

Now, back to this:

If I say "I have 5 coins in my pocket right now" that may be a fact or it may be an erroneous belief.

I use the definition of "belief' as those ideas which we accept as truths (which ideally would be a status reserved for 'facts': we should only believe that which is true, if you care about that sort of thing, and many do NOT). However, an 'erroneous belief' IS possible, as it's simply another way to say 'delusion', a belief which is based on lying to oneself, self-deception, or even being sincerely wrong.

The problem is obvious: how do we determine we're deceiving ourselves, if we are? Hence discriminating between a 'fact' and 'delusion' is challenging, and usually requires a comparison to others (AKA a headcheck) to confirm our perceptions and logic.

For example it is almost impossible to talk about evolution without talking as if things learned to adapt to pressures and evolve new features.

That's a pet peeve of mine, when some TV show made for the general public invariably says an animal "wants" to survive and hence it changes into something else. That's evolution for goobers, but sadly it's a common misunderstanding of the process of natural selection, since the process occurs when some members of the species just happen to be pre-equipped to survive a change in their environment due to possessing the variability that's present in the entire genome. Thus some members are already genetically-gifted to be prepared for the challenge, and the process doesn't require them to be aware of that fact (provided the selection barrier isn't too high, eg no dinosaur in the entire World was able to survive the selection pressure caused by a meteor strike in the Yucatan; there were no individuals who were "fit enough" to survive that kind of test). For millenia, the selection pressure of meteors was obviously absent, but no dinosaur had evolved the ability to survive a strike, since the climatic conditions generated by the meteor strike was so anomalous such that evolution didn't favor the dinosaurs (and their disappearance likely paved the way for mammals to become the dominant species).

Since I mentioned it, "survival of the fittest" meme is also a vast over-simplification which is common amongst non-biologists; it actually would be more accurate to think of natural selection as "survival of those who just happen to be better-adapted to survive" since the factor(s) that allows a differential in survival rates has to be present in the population BEFORE the selection pressure is applied, thanks to random mutations.

It's kind of like taking a pop-quiz where you don't know what the subject is that you'll be tested on, and don't know it's coming: so there's no possibility for 'cramming' to pass the pop-quiz, and of course an animal has no control over their mutations (beneficial or harmful alike). The individual who survives the threat either does or doesn't, and passes on beneficial traits (encoded in it's genes) to its progeny that allowed it to survive.

Adam

EdenOne

Adamah:

(...) the process occurs when some members of the species just happen to be pre-equipped to survive a change in their environment due to possessing the variability that's present in the entire genome. Thus some members are already genetically-gifted to be prepared for the challenge, and the process doesn't require them to be aware of that fact. (...) it actually would be more accurate to think of natural selection as "survival of those who just happen to be better-adapted to survive" since the factor(s) that allows a differential in survival rates has to be present in the population BEFORE the selection pressure is applied, thanks to random mutations.

Well, now here is something VERY useful. One of my main issues with the evolutionary theory (obviously I come from social sciences, I don't come from a biology science background) was precisely the notion that species "adapted themselves" to their environmental challenges, as if they had some sort of conscientiousness that would direct them into doing those morphs, when, in fact, all happens, as I suspected, entirely by accidental causes ... in a way, "happy anomalies" that happen to equip certain species to cope with environmental challenges more successfully than others. Thank you Adamah for explaining that in a way that someone like me can understand.

Eden

bohm

adamah:

Communication require a desire for the people who are trying to communicate to understand each other. When Cofty ask if it is a fact we have 23 cromosomes then sure, you can find a way to add context to that such that the statement becomes technically false. But if we dont want to delibrately misunderstand each other what the statement mean is quite clearly roughly "with the popular definition of chromosome the median of the number of chromosome pairs observed in humans is 23" (or some such).

Perhaps you could explain if you think that statement is factually true and if not, why?

Comatose

This was a very interesting thread. Now we are reduced to arguing over the abstract. This is so very silly. Can't we keep it normal?

slimboyfat

Communication require a desire for the people who are trying to communicate to understand each other. When Cofty ask if it is a fact we have 23 cromosomes then sure, you can find a way to add context to that such that the statement becomes technically false.

This is exactly the point. Meaning is context dependent. Meaning simply does not exist as an absolute divorced from sitation. So when someone insists that something is a fact and will never change and it doesn't matter how you look at it it is always the same, they betray that they do not really understand how meaning and language work.

cofty

I have no patience for pedantic people.

Can you imagine a forum for perspectivists? It would take 3 pages of bullshit to say absolutely nothing.

It's not clever, it's obtuse.

New Homo erectus Skull Shakes up Palaeontology

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