What evolution is NOT, Installment 1: "How coud it all happen by chance?" (page 3)

Euphemism

SeattleNiceGuy wrote:
as my friend Dr. Evil would say

*sigh* I can't stand name-droppers.

seattleniceguy

Hey stilla, glad to hear it!

LOL @ Euph.

SNG

Narkissos

SNG,

As a non-scientific reader I enjoy your posts very much.

Quite intuitively I feel that the common concept of "random" should be modified, in the "case" of evolution, in at least two opposite ways: (1) there is no thrower of cards, but (2) each card is somehow "willing" to land on a white tile -- although only a part of the set will make it. Perhaps (just a little more speculatively) the tiles have a "will" of their own too.

I don't feel attracted at all by any "intelligent design" theory, as I fail to see any evidence of a central, transcendant or unifying "will" in the universe. However, creationist talk about random usually fails to see that the drive for survival (which may be related to mutations and adaptations) within beings and species, which are related to the environment they come from. And answering it requires questioning the very concept of random.

Iow, the universe requires no clockmaker because it is not a clock.

Just rambling here...

GetBusyLiving

Thanks for these awesome threads.. I have next to no knowledge on evolution so its really facinating.

GBL

Euphemism

Narkissos... it's true that creatures have a 'will' to survive, but they cannot will themselves--or their offspring--to have adaptations.

In fact, it's possible that some adaptations may not only reduce an organism's ability to survive, but--in the case of a creature with a sufficiently advanced nervous system--their 'will' to do so. In the long run, there'd be no difference between that and any other unsuccesful adaptation.

Golf

OK, meal and golf are done. Let me begin by saying, I'm glad your nose didn't get out of joint because of me asking you questions. It seems that some people get upset when questioned.

I guess we can go back and forth on this subject and we're not exactly going to see eye to eye, but that's no problem with me. People's opinion is their opinion and my life doesn't change. It's not a death and life issue with me. If I'm interested in knowing why a person believes in a certain thing or way, I just ask. They say, if you don't ask, you'll never know.

Thanks for your comments and ideas.

Golf

Narkissos

Euphemism,

First note that I wrote "will" with quotations marks, which means I use this term analogically -- just as we may say that an animal doesn't want to die.

You may be right in saying "they cannot will themselves--or their offspring--to have adaptations," frankly I don't know: have you got some sources about that -- implying that adaptations are completely independent from the drive for survival? The fact that many adaptations do fail in this respect seems irrelevant to me, but perhaps I didn't get your point.

As much as I am not prone to believe in a central, unifying teleology, I am inclined to think that "random" is somehow modified by what we commonly call "instinct of self-preservation" (regardless of the anthropomorphism of that expression) -- but I may be wrong about that.

Euphemism

Narkissos... I certainly don't mean to be dogmatic, but I am not aware of any known mechanism by which an animal could deliberately cause itself or its offspring to have a genetic mutation.

But perhaps I misunderstood what you were saying.

Abaddon

Fun thread.

Golf

Can I assume that the person who 'hurled' the cards was once upon a card that landed on the white tile? If so, how, where and when does this person enter the picture?

There is no person; it's a description of a random process; a dice-thrower is the same.

About this environment thing, am I to assume that if 'you' grew up in a warm environment you wouldn't be able to adjust to a cold climate? Am I to underatnd that an Eskimo wouldn't be able to survive in Jamaica and a Jamaican can't survive in the Arctic?

Given food and shelter, neither environment exceeds the survival limits of either person. What's more, the Inuit will have various physiological adaptation making cold-climate survival easier, just as an Amazonian tribesman would have adaptations suiting a warm environment. Little ones - often morphological - but they are there.

So, mankind was 'randomly' thrown into an environment and 'if' he so happens to land on the black tile, he's unfit? This person is not given a chance to adjust to the environment, that explains evolution?

Nobody said it was fair 8-)

A black tile stops reproduction. It doesn't mean there are not situations in which an organism will survive some threat. The black tiles are merely when it doesn't.

Narkissos

The tiles don't attract the cards nor do the cards have a predispostion to a certain hue of tile. Not in a classical sense; there is no 'message' between tile and card. No transfer of data.

There is a seeming attraction between the environment and the organism. People with the gene for sickle-trait fair better in malaria infested areas just as certain cards might be more liable to land on the right tiles..

Imagine hand-cut cards that are far from a uniform shape, cut free-hand. Imagine a scatter of black and white tiles where there are far less white tiles near the thrower. Further away there's s strip of red tiles; land there you 'double' rather than 'surviving'. You throw the cards. The ones that hit white tiles get to breed. Red tiles breed twice. You can trace the shape of a survivor and cut it out. It won't be a perfect copy, but it will be close.

You throw the children. You let them 'breed'. The cards would change shape over time; rather than being little oblongs for playing with, they would be a throwing card designed by eliminating all those cards that weren't good for throwing.

If you make occasional random cuts out of them, then occasionally one would make the card fly well, and very rapidly a new shape could propogate throught the population.

In this sense the cards that became throwing discs are attracted to the red tiles, but only because selection pressure has made them good at getting to them.

Golf

Abaddon, his words were, "In your hands you hold a deck of cards. You hurl the cards into the room..." There is no person?

About them black cards representing people, how do we know that, that person wasn't fit?

"Nobody said it was fair" true, but isn't life what you make it?

As I said, the black tile wasn't tile but the white one was.

Fun Thread.

Golf

What evolution is NOT, Installment 1: "How coud it all happen by chance?"

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