Uncommon Descent Serving The Intelligent Design Community

Darwinian Debating Device #3: Moving Goalposts

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One of the Darwinists’ favorite tricks is known as “moving the goalpost.” The essence of this trick is deflecting away from having been defeated in a debate by pretending the debate was about something else. Thus, if the ID proponent meets a Darwinist’s challenge with respect to issue X, the Darwinist will pretend the issue was something else and say “Ah hah, you utterly failed to address issue Y,” thereby deflecting from the fact that the Darwinist has just lost with respect to issue X.

In the following example, a Darwinist insisted that “survival of the fittest” was not central to Darwinian theory. The ID proponent cited a prominent Darwinist (Stephen Jay Gould) for the proposition that “survival of the fittest” is indeed central to Darwinian theory. Instead of admitting his error, the Darwinist moved the goalpost by pretending that the issue the ID proponent was addressing with the Gould quotation was whether that phrase is a tautology:

Darwinist:

Well, it’s staggering to me that anyone could spend years arguing about evolution and end up thinking “Survival of the fittest” was a central idea in “Darwinism”, rather than a slightly silly slogan.

ID Proponent:

So, dear readers, we have [Darwinist] denying that “survival of the fittest” is a central idea in Darwinism. Interesting, because Stephen Jay Gould, one of the leading proponents of evolutionary theory in the last 50 years says this:

Natural selection is the central concept of Darwinian theory – the fittest survive and spread their favored traits through populations. Natural selection is defined by Spencer’s phrase, “survival of the fittest” . . .”

Whom shall we believe about whether “survival of the fittest” is a central concept in Darwinian theory? And here’s another interesting question. Why would Darwinist think he could get away with such an egregious falsehood?

At this point the Darwinist is well and truly stuck. He got caught in a falsehood. Of course, the honorable thing to do would be to admit his error and apologize. Does he do the honorable thing? Of course not. Being a Darwinist means never having to say you are sorry. The story continues:

Darwinist:

[ID proponent], I’ll credit you that this little trip to the quote mine was sloppy, rather than a deliberate misrepresentation.

In case it’s not now abundantly clear: if “fittest” means “those that survive” then “survival of the fittest” is not the core idea in Darwinism. For that phrase to adequately describe evolutionary biology “fittest” must mean something else. Most importantly, the theory of natural selection let’s us do science, test ideas svc develop new models (and has been very successful at that ).

Really, the only interfering question that remains is how [ID proponent] can be so ignorant of evolutionary biology, but so sure he is right.

Notice how the Darwinist moved the goalpost. The specific issue under discussion was whether the phrase “survival of the fittest” is a central tenant of Darwinian theory. Darwinist says it is not, that it is just a “silly slogan.” ID proponent crushes that assertion by quoting one of the most prominent Darwinists in the last 75 years saying that the phrase is another way of saying “natural selection,” and that natural selection is a “central concept of Darwinian theory.”

Game over. ID proponent has won the debate.

Goal post moving: Instead of admitting his error, Darwinist retorts that a tautological conception of “survival of the fittest” is not the core idea of Darwinism and implies that a non-tautological scientifically testable conception of the phrase is indeed part of the theory.

Set aside whether the phrase “survival of the fittest” is tautological. That is a discussion we are happy to have, but it was not the issue being debated at this moment. The issue under debate [issue “X”] was Darwinist’s assertion that the phrase “survival of the fittest” is “a slightly silly slogan” instead of a central idea in Darwinian theory. When Darwinist’s falsehood is exposed, instead of admitting his error, he changes the subject and pretends the issue [issue “Y”] was whether a tautological conception of natural selection is part of the theory. The Darwinist adds insult to his deceit by calling the ID proponent “ignorant of evolutionary biology.”

Note that it makes no difference whether this sub-discussion over issue X occurred in the context of a larger discussion about whether natural selection is tautological (issue Y). The specific issue under debate was issue X, whether the phrase “survival of the fittest” was part of Darwinian theory.

Darwinist’s behavior in this example is, of course, equal parts shameful, deceitful and pathetic. Sadly, similar antics from Darwinists are seen all too often in these pages.

Comments
"Fitness is the expected contribution of a genotype to the next generation" Expected by whom? "increasing fitness" over long time scales is certainly not to be expected from the empirical evidence. “The First Rule of Adaptive Evolution”: Break or blunt any functional coded element whose loss would yield a net fitness gain - Michael Behe - December 2010 Excerpt: In its most recent issue The Quarterly Review of Biology has published a review by myself of laboratory evolution experiments of microbes going back four decades.,,, The gist of the paper is that so far the overwhelming number of adaptive (that is, helpful) mutations seen in laboratory evolution experiments are either loss or modification of function. Of course we had already known that the great majority of mutations that have a visible effect on an organism are deleterious. Now, surprisingly, it seems that even the great majority of helpful mutations degrade the genome to a greater or lesser extent.,,, I dub it “The First Rule of Adaptive Evolution”: Break or blunt any functional coded element whose loss would yield a net fitness gain. http://behe.uncommondescent.com/2010/12/the-first-rule-of-adaptive-evolution/bornagain77
October 16, 2014
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wd400:
Fitness is the expected contribution of a genotype to the next generation. Remembering that “expected” just means average over a long-run, that’s pretty easy to measure.
It's only "expected" because it was observed over X number of generations. It's an after-the-fact assessment.Joe
October 16, 2014
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You claimed fitness could be measured. How does one measure fitness before the fact?
Before what fact? Fitness is the expected contribution of a genotype to the next generation. Remembering that "expected" just means average over a long-run, that's pretty easy to measure. What's your problem?
You also claimed that fitness was an “expected value” and that it can be understood as a “random variable.”
Yes. Both in the statistical sense. Do you have a problem with this?
Youv’e also provided example which have nothing to do with biology, as far as I can tell.
You objected to the claim "that what is expected in the future can be measured in the present." I provided an example that proved this was not the case (it was a silly example, to match the claim). The claim that I was defining the fitness of the globetrotters, that I thought the globetrotters were guaranteed to win or that they could never lose are all from your own mind.
Perhaps wd400 could give us an example of non tautological fitness as measured in a natural population. Can you, or do you just choose not to?
I don't know what you mean by non-tautological fitness. What I have said is that fitness is not a vacuous idea, and there is no tautology at the heart of evolution biology. I've provided several examples of that across theses posts. Here's one more, and open acess paper that I happened to read recently which measures fitness of hatchery-rared and wold-born salmon: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3490153/?report=classicwd400
October 16, 2014
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wd400:
Mung, you appear to have completely lost the plot. If you find a way to back, please try and address the things I have actually said.
You claimed fitness could be measured. How does one measure fitness before the fact? You also claimed that fitness was an "expected value" and that it can be understood as a "random variable." Youv'e also provided example which have nothing to do with biology, as far as I can tell. Mung:
Perhaps wd400 could give us an example of non tautological fitness as measured in a natural population.
Can you, or do you just choose not to? I am trying to understand your argument, and I obviously don't find the Harlem Globetrotters a coherent example, so I'm asking for something that better illustrates your claims. Do you have a reference to a publicly available published scientific paper on the fitness of the Harlem Globetrotters?Mung
October 16, 2014
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Good points, Mung. Plus the environmental changes that drive evolutionary change at relevant time scales are not at all like the fixed Harlem Globetrotters' basketball games as wd400 suggests, or the probability of Tay-Sachs disease. They're like the stock market where "Past Performance is Not Necessarily Indicative of Future Results." It's a typical chaotic system that cannot be measured with static linear extrapolation from the present based on "expected value." And this is why genomic variability, the results of which would be statistically invisible in the short run, are vital in the long. -QQuerius
October 14, 2014
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Mung, you appear to have completely lost the plot. If you find a way to back, please try and address the things I have actually said.wd400
October 14, 2014
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In summary, special definitions are non-tautologous, explanatory, testable, and true for a narrow special case. Yet they have two drawbacks: 1) They are false for the general case 2) They do not unify our understanding of nature in the manner claimed of natural selection. - Walter James ReMine
Mung
October 14, 2014
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franklin, How do you propose to measure something that does not exist? Do all non-existent things share the same units of measurement? Say you like to roll them bones. How do you measure what appeared on the dice before they were tossed? Is a seven "more fit" than the other possibilities? How so?Mung
October 14, 2014
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I am not objecting to the use of “expected.” I am objecting to the claim that what is expected in the future can be measured in the present.
seems pretty far fetched doesn't it, mung. So far fetched one wonders why some couples would even bother having genetic testing done, e.g., tay sachs, Yup, no way the methodology could work on predicting what would be expected in the future based on testing in the present.franklin
October 14, 2014
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Mung:
Many basketball teams start out unbeaten in a season. No reasonable person thinks this means they will continue to be unbeaten.
In fact, the expectation is that no basketball team will continue to be unbeaten, indefinitely. So the appeal to the Harlem Globetrotters hardly seems scientific, at all. More like cherry picking.Mung
October 14, 2014
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wd400 asserts that the Harlem Globetrotters have a 100% fitness based on the measurement of their past wins and that we can infer from this that they will win their next game, and that this is a prime example of the scientific use of fitness (and non-tautological). I'm not buying it. The Harlem Globetrotters win because they are the Harlem Globetrotters. Fitness got nothing to do with it. The game is fixed. Many basketball teams start out unbeaten in a season. No reasonable person thinks this means they will continue to be unbeaten. Further, if fitness means some average of wins and losses in basketball, then that just is the definition of "fitness." The teams who win more are more fit, by definition. And now we are back to the original objection, which wd400 has done nothing to deflect, but has merely reinforced. Perhaps wd400 could give us an example of non tautological fitness as measured in a natural population.Mung
October 14, 2014
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I am not objecting to the use of “expected.” I am objecting to the claim that what is expected in the future can be measured in the present. Well, want to bet on who will win the Harlem Globetrotters their next game? I mean, they might have one their last several hundred, but that's not guide to what will happen in the future, right?wd400
October 14, 2014
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p.s. Thinking of fitness as a random variable just gives me the warm fuzzies.Mung
October 14, 2014
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wd400, I am not objecting to the use of "expected." I am objecting to the claim that what is expected in the future can be measured in the present. If that's something you feel like explaining, please do. From your link:
To empirically estimate the expected value of a random variable, one repeatedly measures observations of the variable and computes the arithmetic mean of the results.
In the context of "natural selection" or "fitness" in biology, my expectation is that these measurements would be taken after the fact. Since the measurements takes place first, and then "fitness" is assigned, I fail to see how this helps your case at all.Mung
October 14, 2014
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“I have said many times fitness is central to evolution biology” - wd400 and yet,,, Testing Evolution in the Lab With Biologic Institute's Ann Gauger - podcast with link to peer-reviewed paper Excerpt: Dr. Gauger experimentally tested two-step adaptive paths that should have been within easy reach for bacterial populations. Listen in and learn what Dr. Gauger was surprised to find as she discusses the implications of these experiments for Darwinian evolution. Dr. Gauger's paper, "Reductive Evolution Can Prevent Populations from Taking Simple Adaptive Paths to High Fitness,". http://intelligentdesign.podomatic.com/entry/2010-05-10T15_24_13-07_00 Is Antibiotic Resistance evidence for evolution? - 'The Fitness Test' - video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rYaU4moNEBU Thank Goodness the NCSE Is Wrong: Fitness Costs Are Important to Evolutionary Microbiology Excerpt: it (an antibiotic resistant bacterium) reproduces slower than it did before it was changed. This effect is widely recognized, and is called the fitness cost of antibiotic resistance. It is the existence of these costs and other examples of the limits of evolution that call into question the neo-Darwinian story of macroevolution. http://www.evolutionnews.org/2010/03/thank_goodness_the_ncse_is_wro.html Testing the Biological Fitness of Antibiotic Resistant Bacteria - 2008 Excerpt: Therefore, in order to simulate competition in the wild, bacteria must be grown on minimal media. Minimal media mimics better what bacteria experience in a natural environment over a period of time. This is the place where fitness can be accurately assessed. Given a rich media, they grow about the same. http://www.answersingenesis.org/articles/aid/v2/n1/darwin-at-drugstore (Ancient) Cave bacteria resistant to antibiotics - April 2012 Excerpt: Antibiotic-resistant bacteria cut off from the outside world for more than four million years have been found in a deep cave. The discovery is surprising because drug resistance is widely believed to be the result of too much treatment.,,, “Our study shows that antibiotic resistance is hard-wired into bacteria. It could be billions of years old, but we have only been trying to understand it for the last 70 years,” said Dr Gerry Wright, from McMaster University in Canada, who has analysed the microbes. http://www.scotsman.com/news/health/cave-bacteria-resistant-to-antibiotics-1-2229183# The Diseaseome Could Take Medicine Beyond the Genome By Cynthia Graber on Thu, 09 Oct 2014 Excerpt: Today, antibiotic resistance is thought to emerge because, scientists have believed, there are a few bacteria in a given community that are naturally resistant to a drug, and they thrive after the drug kills off the bacteria’s brethren. But instead, as Collins’ research has demonstrated, antibiotics themselves induce mutations, leading to antibiotic-resistant bacteria. With this new understanding, Collins and his lab set out to combat antibiotic resistance. Collins’ lab introduced an extra protein to antibiotics that flips on DNA repair activity within the cells. Repairing the DNA prevents the mutations that create antibiotic-resistance in the first place. In studies, this process boosted the efficacy of a drug such as Cipro from ten times to a thousand fold. Collins has since founded a company, EnBiotix, to attempt to commercialize this approach and improve the efficacy of existing antibiotics. He expects that the newly improved antibiotics—based on a network approach—could be tested in clinical trials within the next couple of years. “Biology is complicated,” Collins says. The idea that scientists and drug companies can target all the physical expressions of a disease by going after just one gene is mostly wishful thinking, he notes http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/next/body/network-medicine/ “The First Rule of Adaptive Evolution”: Break or blunt any functional coded element whose loss would yield a net fitness gain - Michael Behe - December 2010 Excerpt: In its most recent issue The Quarterly Review of Biology has published a review by myself of laboratory evolution experiments of microbes going back four decades.,,, The gist of the paper is that so far the overwhelming number of adaptive (that is, helpful) mutations seen in laboratory evolution experiments are either loss or modification of function. Of course we had already known that the great majority of mutations that have a visible effect on an organism are deleterious. Now, surprisingly, it seems that even the great majority of helpful mutations degrade the genome to a greater or lesser extent.,,, I dub it “The First Rule of Adaptive Evolution”: Break or blunt any functional coded element whose loss would yield a net fitness gain. http://behe.uncommondescent.com/2010/12/the-first-rule-of-adaptive-evolution/bornagain77
October 14, 2014
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wd400, The comparison is of a normal expected curve to a one "under changing environmental stresses." The second curve is in flux. -QQuerius
October 14, 2014
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Here is a newer ‘horrendously complex’ metabolic pathway map: ExPASy - Biochemical Pathways - interactive schematic http://biochemical-pathways.com/#/map/1bornagain77
October 13, 2014
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wd400, in order to explain a level of optimal fitness that "couldn’t get faster, more sensitive or more efficient without first relocating to an alternate universe with alternate physical constants", you would need the fittest mutations' possible to fix and the less than optimal mutations to be weeded out, yet "The researchers found that the ‘fittest’ (mutations) simply did not have time to be found, or to fix in the population over evolutionary timescales" Moreover,,, The Fairyland of Evolutionary Modeling – May 7, 2013 Excerpt: Salazar-Ciudad and Marín-Riera have shown that not only are suboptimal dead ends an evolutionary possibility, but they are also exceedingly likely to occur in real, developmentally complex structures when fitness is determined by the exact form of the phenotype. http://www.evolutionnews.org/2013/05/the_fantasy_wor071901.html Your refusal to accept this evidence is just further evidence to how unreasonable Darwinists are!bornagain77
October 13, 2014
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of supplemental note to 'optimal' metabolic pathways: Here is, what a Darwinist termed, a ‘horrendously complex’ metabolic pathway,,, ExPASy - Biochemical Pathways - interactive schematic http://web.expasy.org/cgi-bin/pathways/show_thumbnails.pl And remember, Darwinian evolution has yet to demonstrate how a single gene/protein of those ‘horrendously complex’ metabolic pathways arose. "Charles Darwin said (paraphrase), 'If anyone could find anything that could not be had through a number of slight, successive, modifications, my theory would absolutely break down.' Well that condition has been met time and time again. Basically every gene, every protein fold. There is nothing of significance that we can show that can be had in a gradualist way. It's a mirage. None of it happens that way. - Doug Axe PhD. - Nothing In Molecular Biology Is Gradual - video http://www.metacafe.com/watch/5347797/ Moreover, dimensionally speaking, Natural Selection is now known to not even be on the right playing field in the first place in order to explain the 'optimal' fitness of metabolic pathways (or anything else): “Although living things occupy a three-dimensional space, their internal physiology and anatomy operate as if they were four-dimensional. Quarter-power scaling laws are perhaps as universal and as uniquely biological as the biochemical pathways of metabolism, the structure and function of the genetic code and the process of natural selection.,,, The conclusion here is inescapable, that the driving force for these invariant scaling laws cannot have been natural selection.” Jerry Fodor and Massimo Piatelli-Palmarini, What Darwin Got Wrong (London: Profile Books, 2010), p. 78-79 The predominance of quarter-power (4-D) scaling in biology Excerpt: Many fundamental characteristics of organisms scale with body size as power laws of the form: Y = Yo M^b, where Y is some characteristic such as metabolic rate, stride length or life span, Yo is a normalization constant, M is body mass and b is the allometric scaling exponent. A longstanding puzzle in biology is why the exponent b is usually some simple multiple of 1/4 (4-Dimensional scaling) rather than a multiple of 1/3, as would be expected from Euclidean (3-Dimensional) scaling. http://www.nceas.ucsb.edu/~drewa/pubs/savage_v_2004_f18_257.pdfbornagain77
October 13, 2014
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BA, again, the paper (and not just the headline) says some globally fittest triats don't get fixed because other fitter-than-wild-type mutations enter the population and fix first. Why would that be an exception to the idea that fitness is important in evolution. Querius. I'm beginning to think you are an idiot. Expected values apply to any probability distribution that can be summed or integrated, not just the normal.wd400
October 13, 2014
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Translation: That didn't hurt. I'm not bleeding. ;-) Since when is the "expected value" based on a normal distribution identical to the "expected contribution of a genotype" under changing environmental stresses, which is more likely in a loose sense to be skewed or perhaps leptokurtic? -QQuerius
October 13, 2014
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“I have said many times fitness is central to evolution biology” - wd400 read slowly if it helps Study demonstrates evolutionary ‘fitness’ not the most important determinant of success – February 7, 2014 – with illustration The researchers found that the ‘fittest’ simply did not have time to be found, or to fix in the population over evolutionary timescales. http://phys.org/news/2014-02-evolutionary-important-success.html Yet despite the fact that the 'fittest' mutations never fix in a population, embryonic development and metabolic pathways are as 'fit' as can possibly be,,, Seeing the Natural World With a Physicist’s Lens – November 2010 Excerpt: Scientists have identified and mathematically anatomized an array of cases where optimization has left its fastidious mark, among them;,, the precision response in a fruit fly embryo to contouring molecules that help distinguish tail from head;,,, In each instance, biophysicists have calculated, the system couldn’t get faster, more sensitive or more efficient without first relocating to an alternate universe with alternate physical constants. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/02/science/02angier.html?_r=2&scp=1&sq=seeing%20the%20natural%20world%20with%20a%20physicist%27s%20lens&st=cse Optimal Design of Metabolism – Dr. Fazale Rana – July 2012 Excerpt: A new study further highlights the optimality of the cell’s metabolic systems. Using the multi-dimension optimization theory, researchers evaluated the performance of the metabolic systems of several different bacteria. The data generated by monitoring the flux (movement) of compounds through metabolic pathways (like the movement of cars along the roadways) allowed researchers to assess the behavior of cellular metabolism. They determined that metabolism functions optimally for a system that seeks to accomplish multiple objectives. It looks as if the cell’s metabolism is optimized to operate under a single set of conditions. At the same time, it can perform optimally with relatively small adjustments to the metabolic operations when the cell experiences a change in condition. http://www.reasons.org/articles/the-optimal-design-of-metabolism This is not a minor discrepancy wd400!bornagain77
October 13, 2014
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Mung, What are you on about? Are you objecting to "expected" meaning the long-run average? If so you are objecting to the standard statistical definition BA, That paper says the globally-optimal variant won't fix in a population when there is a more accessible route to a local optimum. That's news to no one who studies evolution, each arch-adaptationist Richard Dawkins has a chapter on this topic.wd400
October 13, 2014
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Mung,
Nonsense statements are not likely to be a tautology. Cold comfort though.
Looks like the goring has begun. ;-) -QQuerius
October 13, 2014
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Uh oh. Seems like the bull has inserted his horn into the unfortunate Darwin matador and lofted him high into the air! The next act is the trampling and goring part as the matador struggles to get away . . . Nice one, bornagain77. ;-) -QQuerius
October 13, 2014
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wd400:
Fitness is a measurable property of genotypes and phenotypes. There is no tautology in saying “the fitness of a genotype is that expected contribution of that genotype to the next generation”.
Mung:
Can you please explain how it is possible to measure the expected contribution of a genotype to the next (future) generation?
wd400:
You go out an measure it, over several generations.
I'll take that as a no.
There is no tautology in saying “the fitness of a genotype is that expected contribution of that genotype to the next generation”.
Nonsense statements are not likely to be a tautology. Cold comfort though.Mung
October 13, 2014
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"I have said many times fitness is central to evolution biology" - wd400 and yet,,, Study demonstrates evolutionary ‘fitness’ not the most important determinant of success – February 7, 2014 – with illustration Excerpt: An illustration of the possible mutations available to an RNA molecule. The blue lines represent mutations that will not change its function (phenotype), the grey are mutations to an alternative phenotype with slightly higher fitness and the red are the ‘fittest’ mutations. As there are so few possible mutations resulting in the fittest phenotype in red, the odds of this mutation are a mere 0.15%. The odds for the slightly fitter mutation in grey are 6.7% and so this is far more likely to fix, and thus to be found and survive, even though it is much less fit than the red phenotype.,,, By modelling populations over long timescales, the study showed that the ‘fitness’ of their traits was not the most important determinant of success. Instead, the most genetically available mutations dominated the changes in traits. The researchers found that the ‘fittest’ simply did not have time to be found, or to fix in the population over evolutionary timescales. http://phys.org/news/2014-02-evolutionary-important-success.htmlbornagain77
October 13, 2014
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The Fairyland of Evolutionary Modeling - May 7, 2013 Excerpt: Salazar-Ciudad and Marín-Riera have shown that not only are suboptimal dead ends an evolutionary possibility, but they are also exceedingly likely to occur in real, developmentally complex structures when fitness is determined by the exact form of the phenotype. http://www.evolutionnews.org/2013/05/the_fantasy_wor071901.htmlbornagain77
October 13, 2014
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I have said many times fitness is central to evolution biology, so we agree there. As for the rest, it's not simplicity but clarity that you lack. It's not clear to me that you are saying anything at all, or that any of your sentences connect to each other.wd400
October 13, 2014
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wd400,
That definition is very nearly the same as the one give above.
The simplest parts are. Did you purposely miss the part of the quote where Wikipedia states that fitness is "is a central idea in evolutionary theory"? If you think they're wrong, maybe you should try to convince them.
The rest is, again, completely opaque.
I don't know how to put it any simpler. As I said, maybe reading the Wikipedia article would help.
If you want to address my comment 54, please have a go.
The definitions you provided are so simplistic, they're hardly saying anything at all that's not circular. I suppose I'd object to the implication that phenotype is directly heritable, although epigenetics might have a hand in it. I'd also venture that the fitness model should not be taken out of the context of the fitness of the ecosystem as a whole, but I suppose you'd find that opaque as well. So, I guess not. -QQuerius
October 13, 2014
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