In a prior post RDFish starts off with a promisingly cogent observation: We’re not arguing about “evolutionary adaptation”, but rather about the highly intricate, multi-component mechanisms we observe in organisms. Of course large populations and crossovers can help a bit with local optima, but saying these things will “tend to avoid” them is wishful thinking – there is just so much that can be assembled that way, which is why GAs come up with optimizations and not novel mechanisms. The important point, though, is not to argue about this in the abstract, because there is no way to demonstrate (yet) whether or not the combinatorial resources were sufficient or not. Leading Mapou to respond: Wow. RDFish is moving dangerously close Read More ›

From ScienceDaily: Among other findings, a bonobo was observed for the first time making and using spears in a social setting for the purpose of attack and defense. “I believe that the current study will break down our cultural hang-up as humans concerning the inherent capabilities and potential of bonobos and chimpanzees,” says Itai Roffman of the Institute of Evolution at the University of Haifa, who undertook the study … Interestingly, the bonobos are considered less sophisticated than their chimpanzee siblings. Chimpanzees have been observed in nature using branches to dig for tubers in the ground and to break into termite nests and beehives. As part of their cultural diversity, they have also been documented breaking nuts with hammer and Read More ›

Not the comb jellies? From ScienceDaily: Who came first – sponges or comb jellies? A new study reaffirms that sponges are the oldest animal phylum – and restores the classical view of early animal evolution, which recent molecular analyses had challenged. Sponges (Porifera), comb jellies (Ctenophora), the true jellyfish and corals (Cnidaria) and plate animals (Placozoa) together make up the so-called non-bilaterian animals. All four phyla are evolutionarily ancient, and were already in existence more than 600 million years ago. However, unraveling the interrelationships between them — and how they relate to the Bilateria, to which all other animals, including humans, belong — has turned out to be one of the most challenging problems in evolutionary biology. “If we are Read More ›

So whose dictation is it taking? From ScienceDaily: Looking Back 3.8 Billion Years Into the Root of the ‘Tree of Life’ … NASA-funded researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology are tapping information found in the cells of all life on Earth, and using it to trace life’s evolution. They have learned that life is a master stenographer — writing, rewriting and recording its history in elaborate biological structures. Nw her is an interesting admission: “The ribosome recorded its history,” said Williams. “It accreted and got bigger and bigger over time. But the older parts were continually frozen after they accreted, just like the rings of a tree. As long as that tree lives, the inner rings will not change. Read More ›

… is like trusting five-year-olds to edit the Constitution From International Conference on Human Gene Editing (A Global Summit): It would be irresponsible to proceed with any clinical use of germline editing unless and until (i) the relevant safety and efficacy issues have been resolved, based on appropriate understanding and balancing of risks, potential benefits, and alternatives, and (ii) there is broad societal consensus about the appropriateness of the proposed application. Moreover, any clinical use should proceed only under appropriate regulatory oversight. At present, these criteria have not been met for any proposed clinical use: the safety issues have not yet been adequately explored; the cases of most compelling benefit are limited; and many nations have legislative or regulatory bans Read More ›

Despite evolutionary distance, researchers say. From ScienceDaily: Ever wonder how animals see the world? New research suggests that animals, or mammals at least, see the world the same way humans do. In a study published in the Nov. 25th issue of Biology Letters, researchers from Japan and France report that the eye view of ponies, dolphins, chimps, and humans are surprisingly similar despite having evolved in different environments. … In the study, the researchers used touchscreens to test the visual perception of three ponies: Ponyo, Nemo, and Thomas. The ponies were shown two shapes on the touchscreen, one of which the researchers arbitrarily decided was correct. The ponies received a carrot piece as a reward when they tapped their muzzle Read More ›

Professor Michael Egnor is not only an accomplished neurosurgeon, but also an articulate exponent of Aristotelian philosophy. In his latest article, however, he makes a fantastic claim which is foreign to Aristotle’s thinking: he asserts that whenever you perceive a distant object, your perception of that object occurs outside your body, rather than inside it. In Egnor’s own words: When you perceive music from your radio, your perception of the music occurs at your radio. When you perceive a tree in your yard, your perception of the tree occurs at the tree. When you perceive the moon, your perception of the moon occurs at the moon. Perceptions occur at the object perceived, regardless of distance, regardless of location. It seems Read More ›

Over the Thanksgiving holiday LK and I visited my sister in New York.  While we were there we did all of the touristy things one might expect, including an obligatory ferry ride over to check out the Statue of Liberty, and I can assure you it is just as beautiful and majestic as ever. Meanwhile, over at The Skeptical Zone Tom English has posted an article entitled The Law of Conservation of Information is defunct.  Apparently they are mighty proud of English’s article, because they have had it glued to the top of their homepage for nearly a month. Anyone who has been following the ID debate for any length of time knows that reports of ID’s demise are issued by Read More ›

From Evolution News & Views: What can we hope to learn about animal minds? Consciousness (a mind) perceives and acts on information. But there are at least two — more basic and probably unconscious qualities — that distinguish life from non-life, and seem to act by processing information: self-preservation and adaptability. Life forms constantly try to preserve themselves in a living state — that is, they try to survive. They adapt their methods as needed, whenever possible. A rock falls from a high cliff and breaks; a cat has somehow learned to relax, turn in mid-air, and land on his feet. Or consider Slijper’s goat and Faith the dog, both of whom, born without forelegs, adapted to a lifestyle that Read More ›

So reports Ethan Siegel at Forbes: Yesterday, results were released from an international team led by Alexandre Santerne from Instituto de Astrofísica e Ciências do Espaço, where they measured 129 objects-of-interest identified by Kepler for a period of five years. They did spectroscopic analysis, which means they studied the individual wavelengths of light coming from the star, and expected a false positive rate of about 10-to-20%, which is what most scientists estimated. But they found, instead, that over half (52%) of the planetary candidates were, in fact, eclipsing binaries, with another three candidates turning out to be brown dwarfs. … But perhaps the biggest surprise is that the majority of these thought-to-be planets aren’t planets at all, but are massive Read More ›

Six new kind of brain cells discovered, maybe don’t form until later in life From Popular Mechanics: “Just asking ‘what types of cells make up the brain’ is such a basic question… that establishing a complete census of all neuron cell types is of great importance in moving the field of neuroscience forward,” says Tolias, at Baylor College of Medicine. Most previous studies investigating the odd menagerie of brain cells have used juvenile mice, mostly because it’s easier to get high-resolution pictures of their brains. But there’s a problem: Brains keep maturing and complicating as they get older, and Jiang’s team believes that their new-found neurons might not form until adulthood. More. But stop, wait, the brain is a machine, Read More ›

The core challenge being addressed (as we respond to abuse of a critical thinking curriculum)  is the notion that belief in the reality of God is a culturally induced, poorly grounded commonplace notion. An easily dismissed cultural myth or prejudice, in short. Let us remind ourselves of the curriculum content used by teachers in a district in Texas until protest led to removal of the focal question: Having: shown that such belief is deeply rooted in key, serious thought (also note vids 1: Kreeft, 2: Zacharias, 3: Craig, also 4: Stroebel on Jesus), (exposing the flying spaghetti monster parody as strawman fallacy) and noting (cf here in op and here as a comment)  how it underpins the moral fabric of Read More ›

From Alva Noe at NPR, we learn: For some time now, I’ve been skeptical about the neuroscience of consciousness. Not so much because I doubt that consciousness is affected by neural states and processes, but because of the persistent tendency on the part of some neuroscientists to think of consciousness itself as a neural phenomenon. Nothing epitomizes this tendency better than Francis Crick’s famous claim — he called it his “astonishing hypothesis” — that you are your brain. At an interdisciplinary conference at Brown not so long ago, I heard a prominent neuroscientist blandly assert, as if voicing well-established scientific fact, that thoughts, feelings and beliefs are specific constellations of matter that are located (as it happens) inside the head. Read More ›

Stimulated by the nth discussion with Zachriel on this point, I would like to offer here some thoughts about the difference between Natural Selection and Artificial Selection. First of all, the dramatic limitation of NS is the following: it works on one functional specification, and one functional specification only: reproductive advantage. In a sense, that specification is the byproduct of the system: biological beings that reproduce, that use limited resources to do that, and that compete for those resources. So, NS is a selection made possible by the existence of a complex functional system, and it selects for improvement in a function critically predefined in that system: reproductive success. So, it is a byproduct of the functional complexity already existing in the Read More ›

Here.