Bill Maher’s “Religulous” documentary mocking religion in the United States opening weekend box office revenues were 10% higher than “Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed”. Our atheist Darwinian friends proclaimed that Expelled was a flop. By that standard so is Religulous. Correction: That should read our atheist and theistic Darwinian friends… the common denominator is being in the tank for Darwin. Mibad.

British physicist David Tyler looks at a recent find in cichlid fish which has been vastly overhyped as evidence for new species. He means hype like this Nature News story (1 October 2008), which proclaims “What you see is how you evolve: Differences in vision could give rise to new species.”

Here’s the abstract of the paper he discusses:

Speciation through sensory drive in cichlid fish

Ole Seehausen, Yohey Terai, Isabel S. Magalhaes, Karen L. Carleton, Hillary D. J. Mrosso, Ryutaro Miyagi, Inke van der Sluijs, Maria V. Schneider, Martine E. Maan, Hidenori Tachida, Hiroo Imai & Norihiro Okada

Nature 455, 620-626 (2 October 2008) | doi:10.1038/nature07285

Abstract: Theoretically, divergent selection on sensory systems can cause speciation through sensory drive. However, empirical evidence is rare and incomplete. Here we demonstrate sensory drive speciation within island populations of cichlid fish. We identify the ecological and molecular basis of divergent evolution in the cichlid visual system, demonstrate associated divergence in male colouration and female preferences, and show subsequent differentiation at neutral loci, indicating reproductive isolation. Evidence is replicated in several pairs of sympatric populations and species. Variation in the slope of the environmental gradients explains variation in the progress towards speciation: speciation occurs on all but the steepest gradients. This is the most complete demonstration so far of speciation through sensory drive without geographical isolation. Our results also provide a mechanistic explanation for the collapse of cichlid fish species diversity during the anthropogenic eutrophication of Lake Victoria.

Tyler comments:

“The strongest evidence yet” involves a correlation between the visual system, body colour and ecology. Instead of this being used to support a hypothesis of sexual selection based on body colouration, the authors claim to have demonstrated sexual selection in action. This has been picked up by the media as fact: “a fish species in the cichlid family has been observed by scientists in the act of splitting into two distinct species in Lake Victoria” (Source). The cover of Nature proclaims that this is “a textbook example of evolution in action”.

Let us suppose that the hypothesis is tested and confirmed, and the “sensory drive speciation” is validated. What are the implications for our understanding of evolution? It means that an ancestral fish population can split into two or more populations on the basis of colour. The daughter populations have differences in sensitivity to light frequencies and differences in body colouration. These may be accompanied by other ecological adaptations. There is no new genetic information – just fine-tuning of existing genetic systems. There is no evidence that these new species lack the potential to interbreed. Indeed, the differences are so slight that hybridisation to produce fertile offspring can be predicted with some confidence.

Talk about textbook examples- as the study authors themselves observe, for their particular proposed path by which new species may occur, “empirical evidence is rare and incomplete.”

Now, to their delight, they may have finally found an example (if the two schools of fish don’t just interbreed back into hybrids after a few decades).

The problem isn’t with the researchers, who sound suitably cautious. It’s the pop science media that jump on something like this and make far more of it than the current state of knowledge would justify. That wouldn’t matter if they were just speculating about some celeb’s tummy bump, but unfortunately, they help skew science textbook and science teaching. Tyler observes,

The punchline: ID scientists are not opposed to the teaching of evolution in schools, but want it taught properly – allowing critical appraisal and the recognition of spin. Let speciation in cichlid fish enter the textbooks, not as a proof of evolution, but as an example of how evidence is brought to bear on current hypotheses of the origin of species.

That would be higher quality teaching, but would lead to too many embarrassing questions. My guess is, both the pop sci mags and the textbooks will stick to “proof of evolution” for the present.

Also, just up at The Post-Darwinist: Read More ›

   In a new spin to the “Random Mutations and Natural Selection produces all the wonderful things we see around us” belief system, mature aged geneticist (of “I’ve spent a long time working on snails, although I have now moved into slugs” fame) Steve Jones of England seems to harp back to the days when old men like him could get a young girl, and half the children died in their youth. Social Darwinism comes out with another great contribution to the welfare of our society. If human evolution has been driven by fathers being over 35, there would have been little or no evolution during times when life expectancy was under 35.  The science community generally believes life expectancy for Read More ›

A computer engineer of some importance has written to say that he thinks me a bit off the mark here, where I deny that computers actually think. He writes,

modern computers are often programmed to be adaptive, in that rules are given for learning (e.g, generalizing or updating “beliefs”) based on experience. So in fact computers can be (and are) programmed to “learn” things that their programmers don’t know.

He argues that behaviorally, this is thinking, but that it does not include consciousness (which means that he disagrees with Kevin Warwick).

He does, however, say,

And the important part that you and I apparently agree on is that there is no compelling reason to believe that a computer program is doing something altogether like what a human being does.

Now, there, he must certainly be right. In the original post, I had discussed a problem I was having with a computer-based book order system that did not allow me to buy ten copies of a book (because no one had thought to program in the possibility of multiple orders). The stupidest human clerk would have understood immediately.

He is really annoyed with my saying that “Most people will believe that the computer is human if it just sounds wittier or sexier than they do. In fact, the only reason this isn’t yesterday’s news is that so many computer nerds are inarticulate, and wouldn’t have any idea what to program the
computer to say.”

He calls it “gratuitous” and “wrong!”.

Hey, I only said that to see who I would get a rise out of. Turned out to be him, imagine!

Anyway, he advises me that making computers respond convincingly to unscripted dialogue (natural language processing) is “an extremely hard computational problem.”

But I am hardly surprised. Dialogue is fiendishly difficult to write well. It is one reason why I went into non-fiction rather than fiction.

Also just up at The Mindful Hack … Read More ›

Commenting on the fact that scientists are typically poorly trained in philosophy of science, one friend remarks,

As a Ph.D. student in biology I was actively discouraged from taking courses in philosophy — or, for that matter, any courses outside my department, including evolution. My adviser’s attitude was that I should focus exclusively on my own specialty.

This wouldn’t be a problem except that folklore counts for wisdom among the ignorant. You know, “Europeans in Columbus’s day believed the Earth was flat,” and all that stuff is retailed as if it were fact.

Probe’s Ray Bohlin, who has a degree in molecular biology, also writes to tell me

I have been saying for years that most of our science PhDs, especially in biology of which I am one, are little more than highly trained technicians. We know how to design an experiment, interpret the results and figure out what the next step is. Read More ›

In another venue where I participate this article published at arXiv, Evidence for Correlations Between Nuclear Decay Rates and Earth-Sun Distance, and previous articles from the same source published in recent months, is undergoing a lively discussion. In a nutshell, a couple of earth based research programs measuring the half lives of radioisotopes have a significant seasonal variation in the raw data values which correlate with distance from the sun. It was brought to our attention by scientific creationists who are constantly on the lookout for things which might dispute the widely accepted yardsticks used to measure geologic age. I accepted those yardsticks as much as anyone short of being dogmatic about it. Upon reading this I immediately pointed out Read More ›

A great article on the Big Bang and the Large Hadron Collider.

The big bounce vs. the big bang

Joseph Brean, National Post
Published: Friday, October 03, 2008

WATERLOO, Ont.. — Among the crushing throng of physics enthusiasts who gathered this week for a lecture by Sir Roger Penrose, who is to the University of Oxford what Stephen Hawking is to Cambridge, the very mention of the Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland elicited a resounding throaty chuckle.

Everyone knew that when the world’s biggest particle accelerator was switched on last month, its computers were promptly hacked and its superconducting magnets accidentally melted. And provided one is skeptical of all the press reports about how this “Big Bang machine” might create an apocalyptic black hole somewhere beneath Geneva, this is all pretty hilarious, just a few broken eggs for the omelette of discovery.

The capacity crowd of several hundred had a similarly blasé reaction to the nub of the lecture.

“The universe seems to go through cycles of some kind … Our universe is what I call an aeon in an endless sequence of aeons,” Prof. Penrose said in an address enlivened by his breezy Oxbridge banter (10 to the power of 64 years is, for example, “a jolly long time”), and illustrated by overhead transparencies so artful in their multi-coloured, hand-drawn penmanship that they would not have been out of place alongside a baking-soda volcano at a grade school science fair.

But this was top level, cutting-edge physics, hosted by the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics. He described data he received just this week that appears to show traces of the previous aeon in the microwave background radiation that fills the universe and is regarded as the lingering “flash” of the Big Bang. If it actually does, a lot of science will have to be reconsidered.

Read More ›

Everybody’s talking politics now. It’s enough to make me replace my “ant motel” traps with “politician motel” traps.

Oh, wait. The National Enquirer beat me to it. Yesterday, I voted in the advance poll (Canadian General Election October 14), so I can mostly just plug my ears in peace.

But passing by in the news stream, I noticed a column explaining why Teddy Roosevelt had his flaws as a US Prez. In “Choosing the right role model” (October 5, 2008), George Will offers some interesting information about Teddy:

Having read Darwin’s “The Origin of Species” at age 14, and having strenuously transformed himself from an asthmatic child into a robust adult, he advocated “warrior republicanism” (Hawley’s phrase). TR saw virtue emerging from struggle, especially violent struggle, between nations and between the “Anglo-Saxon” race and lesser races. Blending “muscular Christianity,” the “social gospel” — which sanctified the state as an instrument of moral reclamation — and Darwinian theory, TR believed that human nature evolved toward improvement through conflict.

Well, that’s classical Darwin fascism, all right.

TR invested the materialist doctrine of evolutionary struggle with moral significance for the most manly “races.” He wanted the state to rescue America from the danger, as he saw it, that a commercial republic breeds effeminacy. Government as moral tutor would pull chaotic individualists up from private preoccupations and put them in harness for redemptive collective action.

Sounds to me like a recipe for government paying a ton of tax money for a zillion civil servants to poke their collective nose into the smallest corner of everyone’s business and promote laws against everyone who offends them, on the theory that we are “helping” evolution.

It’s nice to see that someone other than the usual suspects like Richard Weikart ( From Darwin to Hitler) and John West (Darwin Day in America) is talking about Darwinism’s actual effects on society.

Also just up at The Post-Darwinist: Read More ›

I posted this a week or so ago but Universal and Warner shut it down for copyright infringement of the background music. It’s about the sub-prime mortgage meltdown and those involved. View the original with the great sound track by clicking here.

This just in from a colleague: I encourage you to take a look at the Panda’s Thumb and follow the entire thread devoted to the optimality of the genetic code. It is simply priceless. Someone styling himself Chunkdz dominates the discussion and by virtue of a very considerable gift for profane abuse, succeeds in doing what I never thought possible, and that is reducing the entire PT crowd to sputtering, dim-witted incoherence. You must link to it. Here is the link.

One reason the artificial intelligence fantasy (“Soon computers will think and feel just like people!”) has enjoyed such a long shelf life is a fundamental misunderstanding: The computer is thinking.

Actually, the computer is not thinking. A programmer has developed a series of responses to our inputs. To the extent that the programmer can guess what we need, things will work. One way of seeing this is “thought, in the past tense.”

Just yesterday, for example, I was trying to order ten copies of a book from an automated book ordering site. But the programmer apparently forgot to build in the option of ordering ten copies at once. Needless to say, I was hardly going to order one copy ten times. But it’s no use trying to talk to the computer. I e-mailed the office and asked to have someone phone me.*

That’s what I mean by “thought, in the past tense.” If the programmer didn’t think of it, the computer won’t either.

Now, fast forward to the Turing test (can a machine fool you into believing it is a person?), which is once again being tested. David Smith, the Observer’s technology correspondent reports,

Can machines think? That was the question posed by the great mathematician Alan Turing. Half a century later six computers are about to converse with human interrogators in an experiment that will attempt to prove that the answer is yes. 

In the ‘Turing test” a machine seeks to fool judges into believing that it could be human. The test is performed by conducting a text-based conversation on any subject. If the computer’s responses are indistinguishable from those of a human, it has passed the Turing test and can be said to be ‘thinking’. (“‘Intelligent’ computers put to the test. Programmers try to fool human interrogators,” October 5, 2008)

October 12, the designers of six computer programs are competing for the Loebner Prize in Artificial Intelligence – an 18-carat gold medal and $100,000. Volunteers will sit at a computer, half of whose split screen is operated by another human and half by a program. After five minutes of text-based talk, they must guess. If 30% are unsure, then the computer is said to be “thinking.”

I’ve always felt there was something pretty fishy about this “Turing test”, and I agree with philosopher A.C. Grayling who points out,  Read More ›

Little did I realize that in a few years I would encounter an idea — Darwin’s idea — bearing an unmistakable likeness to universal acid: it eats through just about every traditional concept, and leaves in its wake a revolutionized world-view, with most of the old landmarks still recognizable, but transformed in fundamental ways. Daniel Dennett, Darwin’s Dangerous Idea (NY: Simon & Schuster, 1995), pg. 63 Unfortunately, Darwin’s idea, the Greatest Idea Anyone Ever Had — which is a totally naive and preposterously simplistic notion concerning macroevolution and the complexity of the cell, and which is based upon 19th-century ignorance about how biological stuff works — is more like Sodium Hydroxide (a universal Lye) than a universal acid. Dennett got Read More ›

In a column explaining why Teddy Roosevelt had his flaws as a US Prez (“Choosing the right role model, October 5, 2008”), George Will offers some interesting information: Having read Darwin’s “The Origin of Species” at age 14, and having strenuously transformed himself from an asthmatic child into a robust adult, he advocated “warrior republicanism” (Hawley’s phrase). TR saw virtue emerging from struggle, especially violent struggle, between nations and between the “Anglo-Saxon” race and lesser races. Blending “muscular Christianity,” the “social gospel” — which sanctified the state as an instrument of moral reclamation — and Darwinian theory, TR believed that human nature evolved toward improvement through conflict. Well, that’s classical Darwin fascism, believe it or not (and I don’t). TR Read More ›

What Makes Science ‘Science’? Trainee teachers don’t have a clue, and most scientists probably don’t either. That’s bad news.

So says James Williams, kvetching in The Scientist, 22(10) October 2008, Page 29:

As a science educator, I train science graduates to become science teachers. Over the past two years I’ve surveyed their understanding of key terminology and my findings reveal a serious problem. Graduates, from a range of science disciplines and from a variety of universities in Britain and around the world, have a poor grasp of the meaning of simple terms and are unable to provide appropriate definitions of key scientific terminology. So how can these hopeful young trainees possibly teach science to children so that they become scientifically literate? How will school-kids learn to distinguish the questions and problems that science can answer from those that science cannot and, more importantly, the difference between science and pseudoscience?

And, in “Why the Philosophy of Science Matters” (The Scientist, October 2008), Richard Gallagher follows up, grousing:

You might expect that newly minted science graduates – who presumably think of themselves as scientists, and who I’d thought of as scientists – would have a well-developed sense of what science is. So it’s pretty shocking to discover that a large proportion of them don’t have a clue. At least that’s the case in the UK, going on the evidence of our Opinion author James Williams (“What Makes Science ‘Science’?”). He found that a sizeable proportion of science graduates entering teacher training couldn’t define what is a scientific fact, law or hypothesis.

No, but why should that matter? Gallagher goes on to announce that the reason this ignorance is a problem is that the grads won’t be able to properly diss “climate change deniers, GM modification scaremongers, or creationists.” Read More ›

David Berlinski & Brad Monton vs. Denis Alexander & Larry Krauss on the topic of ID. For details go here: www.st-andrew.com/content/7794_GreatDebate_Email.pdf