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Evolutionary psychology: The grandmother thesis, yet again

Darwinists have long had a problem with the fact of human longevity, compared to that of chimps. Presumably, that is because they need equivalence between humans and chimps. The article referenced here, from Nature, takes, for once, a skeptical view of Darwinist claims.

I don’t see why an explanation is required at all. If you live like a chimp, you will die like one. Nowadays, if you live like a responsible human being with a mind, you can reach eighty years old quite easily in a technologically advanced democracy. (You know, Rabbi ben Ezra, and “Grow old along with me/The best is yet to be …) The rabbi’s  thoughts are only meaningful for creatures with a mind.

So this  skepticism re the “news from Darwinism”, rightly casting doubt on how grandmothers help natural selection, points to  the ridiculous disgrace that Darwinism has become, while dominating the academy for so long:

These researchers found that among Tanzanian hunter-gatherers, the Hadza, mothers faced a trade-off between foraging for food for themselves and any weaned offspring, and caring for new infants. But if grandmothers helped with foraging, they were rewarded with healthier, heavier grandchildren who weaned at a younger age. Over evolutionary time, this fitness boost could have selected for women who survived long past menopause, an anomaly among humans’ evolutionary kin.

“Chimps almost never live into their forties in the wild, but most humans, if they’re lucky enough to make it to adulthood, live beyond the childbearing years,” says Hawkes.

Further support for the grandmother hypothesis came from studies of other subsistence cultures, as well as from historical records, although not all studies back up the hypothesis. (Ewen Callaway, 24 August 2010 Nature )

Contrary to such claims, aged seniors can be a considerable burden on their families, and are normally cared for due to reasons of affection, morality, religion, etc. In other words, reasons that begin with the assumption that we are thinking beings in real time, making decisions.

Some true key causes of increased human longevity (all of which require an active mind) are Read More ›

Evolutionary psychology: Evolutionary psychologists get stressed and start to cry over the evolution of crying

If you want to hear some silly explanations of crying (weeping), go here. One theory is that crying may have evolved as a kind of signal — a signal that was valuable because it could only be picked up by those closest to us who could actually see our tears. Tears let our intimates in — people within a couple of feet of us, who would be more likely to help. “You can imagine there’d be a selection pressure to develop a signaling system that wouldn’t let predators in on the fact that you’re vulnerable,” says Randy Cornelius, a psychologist at Vassar College. College is often a waste of money. Any human can see when another is crying, close or Read More ›

Further news from The End of All Things department

I was writing about this earlier. Michael Moyer at Scientific American notes,

Once again, the world is about to end. The latest source of doomsday dread comes courtesy of the ancient Mayans, whose calendar runs out in 2012, as interpreted by a cadre of opportunistic authors and blockbuster movie directors. Not long before, three separate lawsuits charged that the Large Hadron Collider would seed a metastasizing black hole under Lake Geneva. Before that, captains of industry shelled out billions preparing for the appearance of two zeros in the date field of computer programs too numerous to count; left alone, this tick of the clock would surely have shaken modern civilization to its foundations.

And more. Well, there is always a catastrophe somewhere; right now, the floods in Pakistan.

It looks like an interesting SciAm issue, though I don’t think that fear of catastrophe is – as claimed – the outcome of “pattern-seeking brains.” That’s just another neuro Darwinism crock. For one thing, for most catastrophes, there is no pattern. That’s the problem. Read More ›

Coffee!! Bats more dangerous than mothballs?

A reader kindly shares this BBC story with me, “Bat and moth arms race revealed” (19 August 2010 ) by Jason Palmer.

In a strategy that may be a moth-hunting adaptation, some bats are known to use clicks that are at a frequency, or pitch, either above or below moths’ hearing ranges.

High-pitched clicks have a larger range, while lower-pitched clicks are absorbed less by the atmosphere It remains unclear whether these pitch-shifting techniques adapted specifically to bypass moth defences or simply to cope in certain environments or situations.

Dr ter Hofstede and her colleagues were able to listen in on the Barbastella bat as it hunted, demonstrating that it had a completely different approach – its clicks were much reduced in volume, becoming even quieter as it closed in on prey.

“It seems like the majority of bats… call very loudly because they need as much information as possible from their surroundings,” Dr ter Hofstede told BBC News.

“We’re saying that this [low-volume tactic] is an adaptation to get around the moths’ defence – it doesn’t have any other useful purpose.” Read More ›

Neuroscience: Memory treatment is possible, when impairment is not disastrous

This is a media release, obviously, but I know from experience that its basic thesis is true, and that it can work, even with seniors of advanced age: Increasing scientific evidence shows that actively participating in appropriately designed brain fitness workouts aids mental agility. Scientific Brain Training PRO exercises were developed by a team of neurologists, cognitive psychologists and educational scientists to offer unique and challenging configurations that target various areas of cognitive impairment. The Memory Treatment Program is the latest program to take advantage of the SBT PRO online platform features of clinician-managed patient accounts and consistent patient records to meet the need of professionals who treat patients with cognitive impairment. One caution: Success is greatly increased if the Read More ›

End of the world news: Most recent update

We are told by Howard Falcon-Lang, science reporter for BBC news, that the fate of the universe is now revealed by the galactic lens and that the universe will expand forever (19 August 2010): Knowing the distribution of dark energy tells astronomers that the Universe will continue to get bigger indefinitely. Eventually it will become a cold, dead wasteland with a temperature approaching what scientists term “absolute zero”. Professor Priyamvada Natarajan of Yale University, a leading cosmologist and co-author of this study, said that the findings finally proved “exactly what the fate of the Universe will be”. Hmmm. I thought that pulpit-splintering, Bible-whacking fundamentalists had settled that one along time ago. And I give about as much credit to each Read More ›

Coffee!!: You’re lucky enough if you even find the other sock anyway, as I often don’t

In “Is quantum theory weird enough for the real world?”, Richard Webb explains why we might need a new theory of quantum mechanics: In our day-to-day world, we are accustomed to the idea that two events are unlikely to be correlated unless there is a clear connection of cause and effect. Pulling a red sock onto my right foot in no way ensures that my left foot will also be clad in red – unless I purposely reach into the drawer for another red sock. In 1964, John Bell of the CERN particle physics laboratory near Geneva, Switzerland, described the degree of correlation that classical theories allow. Bell’s result relied on two concepts: realism and locality. Realism amounts to saying Read More ›

Science’s Blind Spot

A friend of mine likes to invest in stocks. He understands computer companies so he trades only those stocks. This limitation makes for a simple and straightforward investing strategy. Evolutionists also limit themselves. They investigate only those phenomena that are the result of strictly natural causes. This limitation makes for a simple and straightforward research strategy, though it does create a blind spot.  Read more

Cenes and Cnome

Eric Werner of the University of Oxford published a blog piece in PLOS which I have liberally edited below. I think it is an important development in thinking about design in biology.

“The chimp really started people wondering if genes can account for the difference between humans and animals. Since the genes of chimps and humans are 98.8% identical, the differences between chimps and humans cannot be the result of the information in those few different genes.

Humans, chimps and mice are very different even if made of the many of the same parts. The information for construction and structure lies not in the information that describes the parts, rather in an architectural plan that is used by agents to construct the organism.

The information resides in the genome, but not in the genes. It is in the network architecture that consists of coding and non coding areas that determine the timing and spatial patterning of cells that ultimately results in the development of the organism.

Many traits are the result of the mutation of genes. However most genes are instructions for building parts so a mutation in a gene results in a change of a part not the overall architecture. The information for the form is not in the parts-genes. It is in the control architecture, the regulatory networks of control units, most likely contained in the vast non parts coding regions of the genome.

Read More ›

Fossil Find: Fungus Controlled Ant Just Like Today

The fossil record cannot usually tell us about the soft body parts or the behavior of its specimens. For these, we look to the extant species. But now a clever finding reveals an odd behavior in carpenter ants from the distant past.  Read more

Reasons for caution about comments on early humans or ancestors

Nowhere better illustrated than in this article from Wired Science about claims of stone tool use by supposed prehumans. How about “Australopithecus was a very primitive, ape-like early human,” said biological anthropologist Craig Stanford at University of Southern California, who edited a book on meat eating and human evolution. “The fact that they were using tools and eating meat indicates this was something that was widespread very early in human history.” The ability to carve meat off large mammal carcasses likely put Australopithecus in competition with dangerous scavengers, Alemseged says. It is unlikely they were hunting for the large game because their body shape would not have allowed them to run fast, which is necessary to chase down an antelope Read More ›

Smart reptiles watch: So much for the dumb, unfeeling “reptilian brain.”

This NOVA program looks interesting. They look like dragons and inspire visions of fire-spitting monsters. But these creatures with their long claws, razor-sharp teeth, and muscular, whip-like tails are actually monitors, the largest lizards now walking the planet. With their acute intelligence, these lizards—including the largest of all, the Komodo dragon—are a very different kind of reptile, blurring the line between reptiles and mammals. Thriving on Earth essentially unchanged since the time of the dinosaurs, they are a very successful species, versatile at adapting to all kinds of settings. This program looks at what makes these long-tongued reptiles so similar to mammals and what has allowed them to become such unique survivors. I have never been a fan of the Read More ›

Darwin/Chicago 2009 Video Talks Available

For anyone interested in current evolutionary thinking, the Darwin/Chicago 2009 conference has posted their video talks online. I haven’t had a chance to watch any, but many of them look interesting.