Religion and Ethics Forum
General Category => Science and Technology => Topic started by: Sriram on May 16, 2023, 07:45:12 AM
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Hi everyone,
Hers is a video talk by Denis Noble. He proposes a new approach to evolution and suggests that evolution is directional.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j3WenGjyokg
Interesting!
Sriram
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Hers is a video talk by Denis Noble. He proposes a new approach to evolution and suggests that evolution is directional.
No, I'm not going to waste an hour on another non-specialist who doesn't know what he's talking about:
Denis Noble goes after Darwinian evolution again, scores own goal (https://whyevolutionistrue.com/2022/08/07/denis-noble-goes-after-darwinian-evolution-again-scores-own-goal/)
"Noble shows us that you can be a great physiologist but a lousy evolutionary biologist."
Also: Famous physiologist embarrasses himself by claiming that the modern theory of evolution is in tatters (https://whyevolutionistrue.com/2013/08/25/famous-physiologist-embarrasses-himself-by-claiming-that-the-modern-theory-of-evolution-is-in-tatters/)
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Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha!
As always....cherry picking the bad press. People probably said such things about Darwin too....
I expected some such mud slinging anyway.
I knew you wouldn't even have the courage to hear him through. Too many reluctant memes.
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I knew you wouldn't even have the courage to hear him through. Too many reluctant memes.
Now that really is comical coming from you. The guy who couldn't even be arsed to read and respond to a short description
of natural selection and a real world example. Not to mention totally misunderstanding 'meme' because he didn't even read the book he referenced.
(https://i.pinimg.com/originals/d8/27/fe/d827fe112256adc7cb4eee6e884754e0.gif)
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Hi everyone,
Hers is a video talk by Denis Noble. He proposes a new approach to evolution and suggests that evolution is directional.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j3WenGjyokg
Interesting!
Sriram
Noble's problem is that he introduces some genuinely intriguing questions - about where the borderline between epigenetics and genetic inheritence might be, for instance - but uses the fact that he has no answers to deduce that therefore something is fundamentally broken about the modern synthesis whilst not proposing anything else. He waffles about information transfer up and down inheritance streams, but offers no mechanisms, no hypotheses and nothing evidentiary.
His question do require answers, but to use them to try to undermine evolutionary theory is flawed because, at best, they just highlight areas we need to understand better, they don't call into question the fundamental established elements of how the gene-centred modern synthesis does work.
O.
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Some points I could note from the video....
1. Cells possess specific mechanisms to optimize their genome in response to the environment.
2. Darwin was a Lamarckian....inheritance of acquired characteristics
3. Epigenetic effects persist for many generations and are as strong as conventional genetic inheritance.
4.The belief that the soma and germline do not communicate is patently incorrect.
5. Darwin would not have recognized neo darwiinism as his inheritance
6. how can we prove that mutations are purely random?
7. Evolution can be directional
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1. Cells possess specific mechanisms to optimize their genome in response to the environment.
2. Darwin was a Lamarckian....inheritance of acquired characteristics
And on that Darwin has been shown to be wrong. Just because Darwin included something in his brilliant work doesn't mean that it's all correct - it's called the modern synthesis and neo-Darwinian for a reason.
3. Epigenetic effects persist for many generations and are as strong as conventional genetic inheritance.
But they aren't persistent in evolutionary timescales - they last for three or sometimes four generations, but then the population reverts. Evolution doesn't happen over four generations, or forty.
4.The belief that the soma and germline do not communicate is patently incorrect.
And is not a particularly controversial take - suggesting that it's a controlled evolutionary mechanism, though, is several steps beyond what the evidence provides.
5. Darwin would not have recognized neo darwiinism as his inheritance
Not at first glance - Darwin proposed evolution before we'd discovered genes. What's a more important question is whether, once shown the evidence, he'd have accepted it.
6. how can we prove that mutations are purely random?
Again, we don't need to, we need to show that they are random with respect to the environmental pressures that will select for them. Variation is random WITH RESPECT TO EVOLUTIONARY PRESSURES, not absolutely random.
7. Evolution can be directional.
Only if, after the fact, you've identified what you want to be a direction. Evolution works in the direction of survival (it just happens that survivability appears to be crab-shaped...)
O.
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2. Darwin was a Lamarckian....inheritance of acquired characteristics
To be precise, he thought that Lamarckian inheritance may play a small part in evolution, but that the main driver was natural selection. He was wrong about that, but that just strengthens the case for ne-Darwinian evolution.
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Many things you people insist play only a small part in evolution....epigenetic, phenotypic plasticity, Lamarckian inheritance....except that they are probably the main drivers of evolution...
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Many things you people insist play only a small part in evolution....epigenetic, phenotypic plasticity, Lamarckian inheritance....except that they are probably the main drivers of evolution...
Well, in Darwin's case, as Steve and Outrider have said, he did think inheritance of acquired characteristics might play a small part in evolution. He certainly didn't consider it the main part of his thesis, which is why, when he read abstracts of Alfred Wallace's ideas on Natural Selection, he was quite alarmed that the research he had been painstakingly conducting for many years might be sidelined by another man's studies (but since both Darwin and Wallace were such jolly decent British chaps there wasn't likely to be much animosity).
As for Darwin not considering neo-Darwinism to be the logical outcome of his views, that is of course pure speculation, and rather illogical speculation at that. He was certain that Natural Selection was the main driving force behind evolution, but was perplexed that he could not find a mechanism whereby changes could be passed on from generation to generation. The esoteric researches of an Austrian monk obsessed with cross-fertilising peas took quite some time to be taken up by the scientific community in any case, but Mendel's researches proved to be the missing factor that Darwin had been searching for.
Of course, there may be other factors yet to be established, as others have admitted. It is ironic that Stephen J Gould's ideas of Punctuated Equilibrium, have just like Denis Noble whom you have cited, been seized upon, distorted and misinterpreted by the 'enthusiasts' of the Intelligent Design camp.
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Many things you people insist play only a small part in evolution....epigenetic, phenotypic plasticity, Lamarckian inheritance....except that they are probably the main drivers of evolution...
And your basis for that claim is what, exactly? It's not that we insist, it's that the body of evidence supports that conclusion. What's your basis for thinking that acquired characteristics have an evolutionary influence? What's your basis for thinking that phenotypic plasticity is something more than a trait that a small number of primarily aquatic organisms display, and is actually a widespread evolutionary mechanism?
O.
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Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha!
As always....cherry picking the bad press. People probably said such things about Darwin too....
I expected some such mud slinging anyway.
I knew you wouldn't even have the courage to hear him through. Too many reluctant memes.
Jerry Coyne is an expert in evolutionary biology and he wrote the widely acclaimed book "Why Evolution is True". If he says Noble is wrong, on the subject of evolution and speciation in particular then Noble is wrong.
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Hi everyone,
Hers is a video talk by Denis Noble. He proposes a new approach to evolution and suggests that evolution is directional.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j3WenGjyokg
Interesting!
Sriram
I thought evolution was directional once too. I thought humanity was evolving towards the 'Superman'. Reality is a stern teacher. What do you think evolution is tending towards? Hinduism has a tendency to view the whole material world as Maya, illusion, and that ultimate salvation is attained by absorption into 'spirit'. Are you looking forward to a race of Supermen and Women?
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2. Darwin was a Lamarckian....inheritance of acquired characteristics
It's important to realise that Darwin discovered the Theory of Evolution by Natural Selection and before he did, he was just as in the dark about how evolution worked as everybody else.
5. Darwin would not have recognized neo darwiinism as his inheritance
Why not?
Neo Darwinism is the synthesis of Darwin's ideas with those of Gregor Mendel (genetics). Darwin himself knew there was a problem with his theory in that he had no workable mechanism for how inheritance worked. Mendelian genetics fills the gap and I think he would have been delighted to hear about it.
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I thought evolution was directional once too. I thought humanity was evolving towards the 'Superman'. Reality is a stern teacher. What do you think evolution is tending towards? Hinduism has a tendency to view the whole material world as Maya, illusion, and that ultimate salvation is attained by absorption into 'spirit'. Are you looking forward to a race of Supermen and Women?
Many have believed they have achieved the ultimate and gained superman status, but it usually turns out that they are just showing symptoms from syphilis.
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Many have believed they have achieved the ultimate and gained superman status, but it usually turns out that they are just showing symptoms from syphilis.
Alas, too true!
The composer Scriabin thought he was well on the way there, but unfortunately died of a septic boil on his lip. Hubris is often so rewarded, but unfortunately often not before a lot of harm has been done.
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Experts are all very well but they often get so immersed in their specialized field that they do not see the woods for the trees. They can't think out of the box or see the big picture.
Secondly, the physiological aspects of evolution are probably as important as the genetic aspects, maybe more. Too much emphasis on genetic aspects of evolution and the 'done and dusted' impression that many people have about the random variations and Natural Selection theory, can be an obstacle to better understanding of evolution and life in general.
Denis Noble being the eminent scientist that he is, is doing a great job thinking out of the box and bringing in relevant issues, at his age too!
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Experts are all very well but they often get so immersed in their specialized field that they do not see the woods for the trees. They can't think out of the box or see the big picture.
Secondly, the physiological aspects of evolution are probably as important as the genetic aspects, maybe more. Too much emphasis on genetic aspects of evolution and the 'done and dusted' impression that many people have about the random variations and Natural Selection theory, can be an obstacle to better understanding of evolution and life in general.
Denis Noble being the eminent scientist that he is, is doing a great job thinking out of the box and bringing in relevant issues, at his age too!
A asked before, on what do you base that claim?
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Experts are all very well but they often get so immersed in their specialized field that they do not see the woods for the trees. They can't think out of the box or see the big picture.
*YAWN* Many subjects today are way to complicated for amateurs and non-specialists to really get to grips with well enough to move them on.
Secondly, the physiological aspects of evolution are probably as important as the genetic aspects, maybe more.
Since you are somebody who knows next to nothing about the subject, this opinion is valueless.
Too much emphasis on genetic aspects of evolution and the 'done and dusted' impression that many people have about the random variations and Natural Selection theory...
The evidence for genetic variation and natural selection the major part in evolution is way beyond reasonable doubt but nobody thinks the entire subject is 'done and dusted'. We can see the evidence of genetic mutations that have been selected for and those that have lost their use as they were no longer important throughout the genomes of every species alive today. That isn't going to suddenly disappear because so clueless poster on a forum doesn't like it. And let's not forget that for all his daft ideas, Denis Noble still accepts natural selection (see quote in previous post here (http://www.religionethics.co.uk/index.php?topic=19946.msg862869#msg862869)). Clueless as he is, he still has a better grasp than you do.
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https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9543272/
Nice article...quite elaborate....
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https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9543272/
Nice article...quite elaborate....
https://whyevolutionistrue.com/2022/08/07/denis-noble-goes-after-darwinian-evolution-again-scores-own-goal/
Nice article, interesting points.
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Trouble is that Noble is a perfectly good scientist presenting various results and interpretations.
The results and interpretations can be reviewed and errors or objections raised and discussed, but generally criticising his views in a blog smacks too much of the kind of rubbishing Lynn Margulis faced when she presented symbiogenesis.
His work needs to be further researched rather than disregarded in trying to maintain the status quo.
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Trouble is that Noble is a perfectly good scientist presenting various results and interpretations.
The results and interpretations can be reviewed and errors or objections raised and discussed, but generally criticising his views in a blog smacks too much of the kind of rubbishing Lynn Margulis faced when she presented symbiogenesis.
His work needs to be further researched rather than disregarded in trying to maintain the status quo.
Jerry Coyne is not just a blogger, he is an evolutionary biologist with an acclaimed book on the subject to his name. When he says "Noble is wrong" it's not because Noble's ideas are unconventional but because the evidence tells us Noble is wrong.
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Trouble is that Noble is a perfectly good scientist presenting various results and interpretations.
The results and interpretations can be reviewed and errors or objections raised and discussed, but generally criticising his views in a blog smacks too much of the kind of rubbishing Lynn Margulis faced when she presented symbiogenesis.
His work needs to be further researched rather than disregarded in trying to maintain the status quo.
One bold sane voice .....finally!
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Experts are all very well but they often get so immersed in their specialized field that they do not see the woods for the trees. They can't think out of the box or see the big picture.
Yes, let's listen to the uninitiated or partly-educated rather than the 'experts' with their 'evidence' and 'well established and evidenced science'. You realise that, and I'm sorry to have to say this, but you've lowered yourself to the level of Michael Gove.
Secondly, the physiological aspects of evolution are probably as important as the genetic aspects, maybe more.
Except in every single well-evidenced piece of research into evolution. Except for the mountains of evidence that we have, yes.
Too much emphasis on genetic aspects of evolution and the 'done and dusted' impression that many people have about the random variations and Natural Selection theory, can be an obstacle to better understanding of evolution and life in general.
It's like the way people place too much emphasis on gravitational effects when it comes to things hitting the planet, and why they can't therefore realise the truth of intelligent falling. It's not a failing to see what's causing something and focus on it.
Denis Noble being the eminent scientist that he is, is doing a great job thinking out of the box and bringing in relevant issues, at his age too!
Denis Noble is a great cardiologist, and when he does cardiology he's using science. He's not a great evolutionary biologist, and when he does evolutionary biology he's using logical fallacies and personal incredulity. The argument fails on its merits, not on whether it's proffered by Denis Noble.
O.
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Outy,
...but you've lowered yourself to the level of Michael Gove.
Ouch!
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Jerry Coyne is not just a blogger, he is an evolutionary biologist with an acclaimed book on the subject to his name. When he says "Noble is wrong" it's not because Noble's ideas are unconventional but because the evidence tells us Noble is wrong.
I expect Coyne is both generally knowledgeable and at the top of his field. But in his blog he is attacking ideology rather than science. He is not disputing actual results put forward by Noble, (either his own or earlier results by others) but attacking Nobles interpretation of the results - even, it seems to me, straw-manning to some extent on some of the points - though Noble does himself no favours by pushing philosophical positions.
Whether there can be inheritance of acquired characteristics or not can be decided by a single validated result - but the argument about whether this can be adaptive or not, important or not, long lasting or not, or how this affects evolution and so on, is currently a battle of words rather than facts.
Again, reminds of all the various arguments about multi-regional vs out-of-Africa human evolution or whether Neandertals were able to breed with modern humans or not. All resolved in the end by actual data.
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Yes, let's listen to the uninitiated or partly-educated rather than the 'experts' with their 'evidence' and 'well established and evidenced science'. You realise that, and I'm sorry to have to say this, but you've lowered yourself to the level of Michael Gove.
Except in every single well-evidenced piece of research into evolution. Except for the mountains of evidence that we have, yes.
It's like the way people place too much emphasis on gravitational effects when it comes to things hitting the planet, and why they can't therefore realise the truth of intelligent falling. It's not a failing to see what's causing something and focus on it.
Denis Noble is a great cardiologist, and when he does cardiology he's using science. He's not a great evolutionary biologist, and when he does evolutionary biology he's using logical fallacies and personal incredulity. The argument fails on its merits, not on whether it's proffered by Denis Noble.
O.
Experts may know a lot about something small but they lack a vision of the overall picture generally. They focus so much on the nose or the eye that they never see the face. They are unreliable while taking a philosophical position and to present a big picture view. They just don't have the zoom-out view.
You are comparing too many natural phenomena such as gravity and the water cycle with evolution. This is not correct. Evolution has direction, development, change and complexity with plenty of emergent properties arising all along.
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Experts may know a lot about something small but they lack a vision of the overall picture generally. They focus so much on the nose or the eye that they never see the face. They are unreliable while taking a philosophical position and to present a big picture view. They just don't have the zoom-out view.
Perhaps that is just as well - perhaps it is possible to 'zoom out' too far when it comes to being competent at gathering sound evidence and coming to reasoned and justified interpretations of that evidence. From too far a distance a 'big picture' may be insufficiently detailed and brings risks of mistakes and misinerpretations that may also encourage magical thinking: perhaps that is why woo merchants like the 'big picture' approach and dislike approaches that are more disciplined and methodological.
You are comparing too many natural phenomena such as gravity and the water cycle with evolution. This is not correct. Evolution has direction, development, change and complexity with plenty of emergent properties arising all along.
Depends on what you mean by 'direction': it's important not to conflate that term with 'directed'.
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Experts may know a lot about something small but they lack a vision of the overall picture generally. They focus so much on the nose or the eye that they never see the face. They are unreliable while taking a philosophical position and to present a big picture view. They just don't have the zoom-out view.
Whereas on the other hand if you fly too high, you can lose sight of the detail and end up constructing some grand narrative that does not respect the (inconvenient) facts on the ground.
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I am not saying that expertise is not required in the world. There are specific people for that. That is fine.
Point is that we cannot expect an 'expert' or specialist to take a overall view. His view is likely to be microscopic and detailed, without the necessary vision required.
There are different people who can be relied upon to take a big picture view....who are capable of a zoom-out view
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I am not saying that expertise is not required in the world. There are specific people for that. That is fine.
Point is that we cannot expect an 'expert' or specialist to take a overall view. His view is likely to be microscopic and detailed, without the necessary vision required.
There are different people who can be relied upon to take a big picture view....who are capable of a zoom-out view
Just non-sense on stilts - if you have no understanding of aspects of the details then you are no position to take a wider view on the truth. And why on earth do you think that experts in a particular aspect of a topic are worse at taking a 'big-picture' view than people with no expertise.
Leaving things to those without expertise rather than experts (which let's face it is another name for people with evidence-based knowledge), leads to ignorance of or ignoring of actual evidence and 'explanations' that are completely false - anyone for sun moving around the earth, creation in 6 days, infections due to bad air etc etc.
Sure experts will have expertise in a particular area, but if you want the best approach to getting to the big picture then bring together a groups of people with complementary expertise, not a hypothetical 'big picture' person. And that groups may well conclude from pooling their expertise that we currently don't have sufficient evidence to be fully convinced of the 'big picture' - but much better to recognise your lack of expertise and the need to know more rather than have 'big picture' certainty based on lack of evidence.
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There are different people who can be relied upon to take a big picture view....who are capable of a zoom-out view
And who exactly are these non-expert experts - knowing nothing of the detail but expert in the 'zoomed-out view'. Oh do you really mean religious and spiritual leaders Sriram. In which case they are just as much 'experts' in their little mini-microcosm as, for example, scientific experts. The difference being that the latter actually based their expertise on evidence and knowledge while the former base theirs on un-evidenced faith.
I know who I'd rather rely on to give a zoomed out view on the origins of the universe between a theoretical physicist and Catholic priest, or on the evolution of species on earth between an evolutionary biologist and a yogi.
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I didn't bring in religion at all. You are bringing it in.
The over all view is not just a matter of putting together all the microscopic details. It is a matter of a different perspective with a great degree of synergy.
Secondly, there are many other aspects of life that are not covered by any of the experts in the different fields of science. It requires insight and a philosophical mind to include these in the big picture. These 'exotic' elements need to be taken into account even to understand the basis of the physical sciences and the objective of evolution itself. The 'why' question, in other words.
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Experts may know a lot about something small but they lack a vision of the overall picture generally. They focus so much on the nose or the eye that they never see the face.
Unlikely, experts usually have a better understanding of the context in which their discipline sits than the layman, but regardless of that you aren't alleging that they can't see the woods because they're too focussed on the tree, you're alleging that they're so focussed on the tree that they don't understand what a tree is. You are saying that the evolutionary biologists shouldn't be listened to regarding evolutionary biology because of a cardiologist. Think about that for just a moment.
They are unreliable while taking a philosophical position and to present a big picture view.
But you aren't talking philosophy, you're suggesting that they don't have the science right, that their description of the mechanisms of evolution are wrong.
They just don't have the zoom-out view.
The zoom out view that you've failed to demonstrate. Why should they dribble down your rabbit-hole of unsubstantiated assertions?
You are comparing too many natural phenomena such as gravity and the water cycle with evolution. This is not correct. Evolution has direction, development, change and complexity with plenty of emergent properties arising all along.
Evolution does not appear to have direction, development is a subjective idea. Evolution IS change.
Complexity, again - how are you attempting to measure that? Is the banana more complex than the tomato? Is the sea urchin (with its phenotypic plasticity) more complex than bacteria? Emergent properties are part and parcel of evolutionary biology.
You've got nothing but incredulity and the fact that science isn't finished yet, and you're trying to revamp primitive superstition as 'post-science' woo to fill a gap that's in your understanding rather than in the incredibly well evidenced science.
O.
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Sriram,
If you really believe in the 'zoom out' view, then rather than simply selecting one view which seems to go some way in backing your own ideas(e.g. Denis Noble), wouldn't it be a good idea to actually get a grasp of all the various strands which are current and look at them with an open mind.
To this end, I suggest you read this recent summary of where evolutionary theory stands today which I think is an excellent attempt to bring all the prominent players and all the competing ideas together. If you truly believe in an 'overall view' you will read this in its entirety. Put your money where your mouth is.
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2022/jun/28/do-we-need-a-new-theory-of-evolution
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I didn't bring in religion at all. You are bringing it in.
So who exactly are these - non-expert experts. In other words with no expertise on the detail but sufficiently expert on 'zoomed out' for us to take notice of them.
To posit a 'zoomed-out' view without an understanding of the detail is to build a castle on quicksand.
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The over all view is not just a matter of putting together all the microscopic details.
Really?!? I think it is exactly that, albeit needs to consider all the scale-lengths.
It is a matter of a different perspective with a great degree of synergy.
Which a detailed understanding will, of course, address. The issues of interactions, whether synergetic or otherwise, feedback, feedforward etc etc is very much part of understanding the detail.
Without an understanding of the detail how on earth can you even begin to get a grip on higher level complexities that involve complex interactions.
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I didn't bring in religion at all. You are bringing it in.
The over all view is not just a matter of putting together all the microscopic details. It is a matter of a different perspective with a great degree of synergy.
Secondly, there are many other aspects of life that are not covered by any of the experts in the different fields of science. It requires insight and a philosophical mind to include these in the big picture. These 'exotic' elements need to be taken into account even to understand the basis of the physical sciences and the objective of evolution itself. The 'why' question, in other words.
Have you considered that some 'why' questions are instinsically invalid (being examples of begging the question)?
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Have you considered that some 'why' questions are instinsically invalid (being examples of begging the question)?
And also achingly anthropocentric.
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Every 5 year old knows "why" questions lead nowhere. At first the answers are all answers to "how" questions, as you go on, the answers are just speculation or imaginings - a collection of ex post facto stories.
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I expect Coyne is both generally knowledgeable and at the top of his field. But in his blog he is attacking ideology rather than science. He is not disputing actual results put forward by Noble, (either his own or earlier results by others) but attacking Nobles interpretation of the results - even, it seems to me, straw-manning to some extent on some of the points - though Noble does himself no favours by pushing philosophical positions.
Noble's interpretation that is scientifically wrong. Did you read the posted article?
Whether there can be inheritance of acquired characteristics or not can be decided by a single validated result - but the argument about whether this can be adaptive or not, important or not, long lasting or not, or how this affects evolution and so on, is currently a battle of words rather than facts.
Experimental results tell us that inheritance of acquired characteristics does not happen. Experimental results tell us that epigenetic effects don't last more than a few generations.
Again, reminds of all the various arguments about multi-regional vs out-of-Africa human evolution or whether Neandertals were able to breed with modern humans or not. All resolved in the end by actual data.
I think I'll call this the "out of the box" fallacy. "Controversial idea x was right, therefore you can't dismiss controversial idea y that I am emotionally invested in."
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Noble's interpretation that is scientifically wrong. Did you read the posted article?
Experimental results tell us that inheritance of acquired characteristics does not happen. Experimental results tell us that epigenetic effects don't last more than a few generations.
I think I'll call this the "out of the box" fallacy. "Controversial idea x was right, therefore you can't dismiss controversial idea y that I am emotionally invested in."
Yes, of-course I read it - which of Noble's ideas is scientifically wrong?
Epigenetic effects are "acquired characteristics" and are inherited, possibly over a couple of generations. And, as with genetic assimilation, could, probabilistically lead to longer term adaptations - we don't any have any evidence in support of that, so it is discounted.
It is not that a controversial idea can't be dismissed because of previous ideas that were shown to be right, but that you can't dismiss a falsifiable idea until you have evidence that shows it is wrong. Of-course, you can't make claims based on it until you do have evidence in support.
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Yes, of-course I read it - which of Noble's ideas is scientifically wrong?
FTA
1. Mutations are not random
2. Acquired characteristics can be inherited
3. The gene-centered view of evolution is wrong [This is connected with #2.]
4. Evolution is not a gradual gene-by-gene process but is macromutational.
5. Scientists have not been able to create new species in the lab or greenhouse, and we haven’t seen speciation occurring in nature.
All wrong except number 2 which Jerry characterises as irrelevant.
Epigenetic effects are "acquired characteristics" and are inherited, possibly over a couple of generations.
But they are not adaptive. They go away.
you can't dismiss a falsifiable idea until you have evidence that shows it is wrong. Of-course, you can't make claims based on it until you do have evidence in support.
And most of Noble's ideas in this respect are known to be wrong.
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Sriram,
If you really believe in the 'zoom out' view, then rather than simply selecting one view which seems to go some way in backing your own ideas(e.g. Denis Noble), wouldn't it be a good idea to actually get a grasp of all the various strands which are current and look at them with an open mind.
To this end, I suggest you read this recent summary of where evolutionary theory stands today which I think is an excellent attempt to bring all the prominent players and all the competing ideas together. If you truly believe in an 'overall view' you will read this in its entirety. Put your money where your mouth is.
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2022/jun/28/do-we-need-a-new-theory-of-evolution
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2022/jun/28/do-we-need-a-new-theory-of-evolution
Enki...thanks a lot. Your link is one of the most useful ones I have seen yet. You probably didn't mean it to be so but all the same... Thanks once again!
The article points out all the quibbles and conflicts and personal attacks within the evolutionary research community and also brings out how much disagreement is there about the modern synthesis.
I want to provide excerpts from the article....where do I start...?!! Well...here goes
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A new wave of scientists argues that mainstream evolutionary theory needs an urgent overhaul.
Strange as it sounds, scientists still do not know the answers to some of the most basic questions about how life on Earth evolved.
“The first eye, the first wing, the first placenta. How they emerge. Explaining these is the foundational motivation of evolutionary biology,” says Armin Moczek, a biologist at Indiana University. “And yet, we still do not have a good answer. This classic idea of gradual change, one happy accident at a time, has so far fallen flat.”
In 2014, eight scientists took up this challenge, publishing an article in the leading journal Nature that asked “Does evolutionary theory need a rethink?” Their answer was: “Yes, urgently.” ........from the study of the way organisms alter their environment in order to reduce the normal pressure of natural selection – think of beavers building dams – to new research showing that chemical modifications added to DNA during our lifetimes can be passed on to our offspring. The authors called for a new understanding of evolution that could make room for such discoveries. The name they gave this new framework was rather bland – the Extended Evolutionary Synthesis (EES)
Behind the current battle over evolution lies a broken dream. From today’s vantage point, it seems obvious that Darwin’s theory of evolution – a simple, elegant theory that explains how one force, natural selection, came to shape the entire development of life on Earth – would play the role of the great unifier. But at the turn of the 20th century, four decades after the publication of On the Origin of Species and two after his death, Darwin’s ideas were in decline.
One major problem was that it lacked an explanation of heredity. Reproduction appeared to remix genes – the mysterious units that programme the physical traits we end up seeing – in surprising ways. Think of the way a grandfather’s red hair, absent in his son, might reappear in his granddaughter. How was natural selection meant to function when its tiny variations might not even reliably pass from parent to offspring every time?
If another force, apart from natural selection, could also explain the differences we see between living things, Darwin wrote in On the Origin of Species, his whole theory of life would “utterly break down”.
The modern synthesis arrived at just the right time. While information piled up at a rate that no scientist could fully digest, the steady thrum of the modern synthesis ran through it all.
From the start, there had always been dissenters. In 1959, the developmental biologist CH Waddington lamented that the modern synthesis had sidelined valuable theories in favour of “drastic simplifications which are liable to lead us to a false picture of how the evolutionary process works”.
... they found that natural selection was not the all-powerful force that many had assumed it to be. According to the modern synthesis, even if mutations turned out to be common, natural selection would, over time, still be the primary cause of change, preserving the useful mutations and junking the useless ones. But that isn’t what was happening. The genes were changing – that is, evolving – but natural selection wasn’t playing a part. Some genetic changes were being preserved for no reason apart from pure chance. Natural selection seemed to be asleep at the wheel.
Theodosius Dobzhansky. He was visibly distraught at the “non-Darwinian evolution” that some scientists were now proposing. “If this were so, evolution would have hardly any meaning, and would not be going anywhere in particular,” he said. “This is not simply a quibble among specialists. To a man looking for the meaning of his existence, evolution by natural selection makes sense.” Where once Christians had complained that Darwin’s theory made life meaningless, now Darwinists levelled the same complaint at scientists who contradicted Darwin.
Other biologists simply found that the modern synthesis had little relevance to their work. As the study of life increased in complexity, a theory based on which genes were selected in various environments started to seem beside the point. It didn’t help answer questions such as how life emerged from the seas, or how complex organs, such as the placenta, developed.
Perhaps the biggest change from the theory’s mid-century glory days is that its most ambitious claims – that simply by understanding genes and natural selection, we can understand all life on earth – have been dropped, or now come weighted with caveats and exceptions. This shift has occurred with little fanfare.
Laland and his fellow proponents of the Extended Evolutionary Synthesis, the EES, call for a new way of thinking about evolution.... Ultimately, they want their sub-fields – plasticity, evolutionary development, epigenetics, cultural evolution – not just recognised, but formalised in the canon of biology.
The geneticist Eva Jablonka has proclaimed herself a neo-Lamarckist, after Jean-Baptiste Lamarck,
The case for EES rests on a simple claim: in the past few decades, we have learned many remarkable things about the natural world – and these things should be given space in biology’s core theory. One of the most fascinating recent areas of research is known as plasticity,
Standen told me. According to the traditional theory of evolution, this kind of change takes millions of years. But, says Armin Moczek, an extended synthesis proponent, the Senegal bichir “is adapting to land in a single generation”.
The crucial thing about such observations, which challenge the traditional understanding of evolution, is that these sudden developments all come from the same underlying genes.
"Plasticity is perhaps what sparks the rudimentary form of a novel trait,” says Pfennig.
To some scientists, though, the battle between traditionalists and extended synthesists is futile. Not only is it impossible to make sense of modern biology, they say, it is unnecessary. Over the past decade the influential biochemist Ford Doolittle has published essays rubbishing the idea that the life sciences need codification. “We don’t need no friggin’ new synthesis. We didn’t even really need the old synthesis,” he told me.
Eugene Koonin thinks people should get used to theories not fitting together. Unification is a mirage. “In my view there is no – can be no – single theory of evolution,”
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I think all of you should read the full article.
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https://www.theguardian.com/science/2022/jun/28/do-we-need-a-new-theory-of-evolution
Enki...thanks a lot. Your link is one of the most useful ones I have seen yet. You probably didn't mean it to be so but all the same... Thanks once again!
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Oh I did, Sriram, in the full knowledge that you would quite understandably cherry pick the parts that you think support your ideas. However, I read it as a whole and as such I find it very informative. There is much to digest from the ideas of the early mutationists, through the trajectory of the modern synthesis and into the ideas of the proponents of the extended evolutionary synthesis to the idea that we simply continue building on the insights of Darwin including those who emphasised the importance of randomness and mutation. I'm glad you liked it. ;D
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FTA
All wrong except number 2 which Jerry characterises as irrelevant.But they are not adaptive. They go away.
And most of Noble's ideas in this respect are known to be wrong.
It takes a lot of time to go into each of those wrong claims, but could make a start with the first:
"Mutations are not random".
This is Coyne (from his earlier blog post):
1. Mutations are not random. This is a central tenet of evolutionary biology, which Noble says has now been disproven. It hasn’t. He argues that there are mutational hotspots in the genome, and that mutation rates can change in response to the condition of the organism or its environment.
That is true, but says nothing about the randomness of mutations. What we mean by “random” is that mutations occur regardless of whether they would be good for the organism. That is, the chances of an adaptive mutation occurring is not increased if the environment changes in a way that would favor that mutation. The word “random” does not, to evolutionists, mean that every gene has the same chance of mutating, nor that mutation rates can’t be affected by other things. What it means is that mutation is not somehow adjusted so that good mutations crop up just when they would be advantageous. My friend Paul Sniegowski, a professor at Penn, uses the term “indifferent” instead of “random,” and I think that’s a better way to describe the neo-Darwinian view of mutations.
And there are no experiments—none—showing that mutations are not indifferent, and plenty showing they are. In other words, Noble’s characterization of neo-Darwinism’s error is simply misguided.
Noble claims that "Mutations are not random" as mutations are not evenly distributed across the genome - because of the structure of the genome mutations occur more often in certain places than others. Coyne agrees this is true, but then, righty, goes on criticise the general claim - but it turns out to be a matter of wording rather than a disagreement on fact.
If Noble then went on say that this due to some conscious (or unconscious) effort on the part of the mutating organism - that would obviously be nonsense. But he doesn't. It is just that the biology involved is more complex than we previously thought; a mechanism that causes faster mutation in particular areas rather than others has itself evolved. The actual individual mutations are of-course random - but the organism incorporates a stochastic (ie. random) process as part of its survival mechanism.
In fact there is growing body of work identifying this effect in different organisms (podcast and link to article here: Genome mutations may be less random than previously thought (https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-00142-2) if you can access it.
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Oh I did, Sriram, in the full knowledge that you would quite understandably cherry pick the parts that you think support your ideas. However, I read it as a whole and as such I find it very informative.
It's almost like you're suggesting that a non-expert needs to not focus on particular details, but rather needs to zoom out and see things in a broader context.... ::)
O.
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It's almost like you're suggesting that a non-expert needs to not focus on particular details, but rather needs to zoom out and see things in a broader context.... ::)
O.
Perhaps from a 'zoomed-out' distance some find it hard, due to their biases, to avoid conflating woo and science, and since they prefer not too look to closely at any details they can still cling to the woo and pretend it is as robust as science while avoiding those pesky problems of method and evidence that are intrinsic to sound science; they offer no equally sound equivalents but they do have lots of incredulity and lashings of magical thinking.
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Noble claims that "Mutations are not random" as mutations are not evenly distributed across the genome - because of the structure of the genome mutations occur more often in certain places than others. Coyne agrees this is true, but then, righty, goes on criticise the general claim - but it turns out to be a matter of wording rather than a disagreement on fact.
You're claiming that Noble is right in but only in an absolutely trivial sense that doesn't have any effect on evolution. I think that's hair splitting.
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Perhaps from a 'zoomed-out' distance some find it hard, due to their biases, to avoid conflating woo and science, and since they prefer not too look to closely at any details they can still cling to the woo and pretend it is as robust as science while avoiding those pesky problems of method and evidence that are intrinsic to sound science; they offer no equally sound equivalents but they do have lots of incredulity and lashings of magical thinking.
Relax! The Doctor Woo series is coming back soon.
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Hi everyone....what happened? All quiet on the western front!
With reference to my post no 44 about Enki's link.....there have been no verbal abuses, no mud slinging, no.... 'that guy is an idiot....the other guy is not an expert....this guy is a Christian....that website has religious afflictions.... we know all these things anyway'.... and so on....
I don't wish to rub it in....but that article does take the wind off your sails somewhat!
Certain things are clear...
1. The theory of evolution (modern synthesis) is far from accepted by all experts.
2. Natural Selection is a metaphor and not as fundamental as earlier supposed. Of course, traits that enable an organism to survive and reproduce in a specific environment will obviously get passed on.....but it is not quite as simple as that.
3. How novel traits arise is not known.
4. Mechanisms such as Epigenetics and Plasticity are probably much more important and fundamental in evolution.
5. Lamarckism needs to be reconsidered.
6. Certain changes in organisms happen within a single generation.
Interesting!
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Well,
1. The modern synthesis is not a hypothesis to be accepted or rejected
2. Wrong
3. Wrong.
4. More important than what ?
5. Not really
6. Environmetal influences have little intergenerational consequence
Must try harder !
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Hi everyone....what happened? All quiet on the western front!
I have already replied and because of the predictability of your response that I replied to, saw little reason to go further.
With reference to my post no 44 about Enki's link.....there have been no verbal abuses, no mud slinging, no.... 'that guy is an idiot....the other guy is not an expert....this guy is a Christian....that website has religious afflictions.... we know all these things anyway'.... and so on....
As I don't deal in such unpleasantries as mud slinging etc. I have no comment to make.
I don't wish to rub it in....but that article does take the wind off your sails somewhat!
I am at a loss to understand what there is to 'rub in' or why you should even contemplate doing so. The article is basically a resume of the differing strands of evolutionary thought
Certain things are clear...
really!
1. The theory of evolution (modern synthesis) is far from accepted by all experts.
But, as the article makes clear, it has the overriding acceptance of most scientists and remains mainstream.
2. Natural Selection is a metaphor and not as fundamental as earlier supposed. Of course, traits that enable an organism to survive and reproduce in a specific environment will obviously get passed on.....but it is not quite as simple as that.
The article says nothing about natural selection being a metaphor. What it does say is that everyone agrees that natural selection plays a role, as does mutation and random chance.
3. How novel traits arise is not known.
It would depend on which novel traits you are talking about. For instance, scientists believe the compound eye results from primitive eye spots whereas the insect wing has at least two competing hypotheses on how they originated.
4. Mechanisms such as Epigenetics and Plasticity are probably much more important and fundamental in evolution.
Plasticity is certainly relevant but there is no evidence to suggest that it is not an evolutionary adaptation. Epigenetics is only referred to in three sentences and suffers from the evidence that after multiple generations its effects die out.
5. Lamarckism needs to be reconsidered.
The article devotes only one sentence to this, describes Eva Jablonka as a firebrand and says nothing about her ideas. That says nothing as to whether Lamarckism needs to be reconsidered or not.
6. Certain changes in organisms happen within a single generation.
There is some evidence that new species can develop in as little as two generations I believe, as Galapogos studies seem to show. https://sage-advices.com/can-a-population-evolve-in-one-generation/
However it makes complete sense that a change in an individual organism can become entrenched by natural selection over time. Indeed, that is how Darwinian evolution works. However the idea that an organism can change during its lifetime is related to epigenetics which is referred to above.
Interesting!
Certainly is. ;D
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Hi everyone....what happened? All quiet on the western front!
With reference to my post no 44 about Enki's link.....there have been no verbal abuses, no mud slinging, no.... 'that guy is an idiot....the other guy is not an expert....this guy is a Christian....that website has religious afflictions.... we know all these things anyway'.... and so on....
I don't wish to rub it in....but that article does take the wind off your sails somewhat!
Certain things are clear...
1. The theory of evolution (modern synthesis) is far from accepted by all experts.
2. Natural Selection is a metaphor and not as fundamental as earlier supposed. Of course, traits that enable an organism to survive and reproduce in a specific environment will obviously get passed on.....but it is not quite as simple as that.
3. How novel traits arise is not known.
4. Mechanisms such as Epigenetics and Plasticity are probably much more important and fundamental in evolution.
5. Lamarckism needs to be reconsidered.
6. Certain changes in organisms happen within a single generation.
Interesting!
Haven't you noticed how Jewish boys still need to be circumcised. If Lamarckism was correct, they would be born without foreskins.
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Haven't you noticed how Jewish boys still need to be circumcised. If Lamarckism was correct, they would be born without foreskins.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7768451/
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Although August Weismann in his 1872 book was correct that the sperm and egg were the only cells to transmit molecular information to the subsequent generation, the concept that somatic cells do not impact the germline (i.e., the Weismann barrier) is incorrect.
The discovery of epigenetics, and more recently environmentally induced epigenetic transgenerational inheritance of phenotypic variation and pathology, have had significant impacts on evolution theory and medicine today. Environmental epigenetics and the concept of epigenetic transgenerational inheritance refute aspects of the Weismann barrier and require a re-evaluation of both inheritance theory and evolution theory.
************
Italics mine.
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Well,
1. The modern synthesis is not a hypothesis to be accepted or rejected
2. Wrong
3. Wrong.
4. More important than what ?
5. Not really
6. Environmetal influences have little intergenerational consequence
Must try harder !
FYI....I am copying below relevant sentences from the linked article at post 44.
1. A new wave of scientists argues that mainstream evolutionary theory needs an urgent overhaul.
2. “The first eye, the first wing, the first placenta. How they emerge. .....says Armin Moczek, a biologist at Indiana University. “And yet, we still do not have a good answer. This classic idea of gradual change, one happy accident at a time, has so far fallen flat.”
3. Think of the way a grandfather’s red hair, absent in his son, might reappear in his granddaughter. How was natural selection meant to function when its tiny variations might not even reliably pass from parent to offspring every time?
4. they found that natural selection was not the all-powerful force that many had assumed it to be. ..... The genes were changing – that is, evolving – but natural selection wasn’t playing a part.......Natural selection seemed to be asleep at the wheel.
5. Other biologists simply found that the modern synthesis had little relevance to their work. As the study of life increased in complexity, a theory based on which genes were selected in various environments started to seem beside the point.
6. its most ambitious claims – that simply by understanding genes and natural selection, we can understand all life on earth – have been dropped,
7. the EES, call for a new way of thinking about evolution.... Ultimately, they want their sub-fields – plasticity, evolutionary development, epigenetics, cultural evolution – not just recognised, but formalised in the canon of biology.
8. One of the most fascinating recent areas of research is known as plasticity,
9. the Senegal bichir “is adapting to land in a single generation”.
10. "Plasticity is perhaps what sparks the rudimentary form of a novel trait,” says Pfennig.
Italics mine.
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4. Mechanisms such as Epigenetics and Plasticity are probably much more important and fundamental in evolution.
And how do you think epigenetics (which typically involves enzymatic methylation or acetylation of DNA or histone molecules) arose other than through evolution.
Likewise plasticity.
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And how do you think epigenetics (which typically involves enzymatic methylation or acetylation of DNA or histone molecules) arose other than through evolution.
Likewise plasticity.
Plasticity and epigenetics are some possible mechanisms through which evolution could happen. You are saying they arose due to evolution... What does that even mean?
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https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7768451/
************
Although August Weismann in his 1872 book was correct that the sperm and egg were the only cells to transmit molecular information to the subsequent generation, the concept that somatic cells do not impact the germline (i.e., the Weismann barrier) is incorrect.
The discovery of epigenetics, and more recently environmentally induced epigenetic transgenerational inheritance of phenotypic variation and pathology, have had significant impacts on evolution theory and medicine today. Environmental epigenetics and the concept of epigenetic transgenerational inheritance refute aspects of the Weismann barrier and require a re-evaluation of both inheritance theory and evolution theory.
************
Italics mine.
That's not a defence of Lamarckism.
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That's not a defence of Lamarckism.
Lamarckism was discredited mainly because of the Weissmann barrier according to which somatic cells cannot influence germ line cells. This has been found to be wrong.
Read the link. there is a section on neo Lamarckism. Just to help you out....
"The concepts of environmentally induced epigenetic transgenerational inheritance allow for the “environment to directly impact phenotypic variation and be heritable”, which is the basic concept put forward by Lamarck"
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Plasticity and epigenetics are some possible mechanisms through which evolution could happen. You are saying they arose due to evolution... What does that even mean?
Epigenetics is typically controlled through the action of enzymes, with are proteins coded for by DNA in exactly the same manner as any other protein. Mutations in DNA can lead to a change in a protein which allows it to catalyse reactions on either DNA itself or on the histones which interact with DNA in the chromatin in the nucleus. Those actions can lead to silencing of regions of the DNA or allowing it to be active. If that trait is evolutionarily advantageous it will be selected for in the normal evolutionary manner, as ultimately it leads back to the genetic (rather than epigenetic) coding of the DNA. If it is evolutionarily disadvantageous it will disappear, if neutral it may be retained within the gene pool alongside other, perhaps advantageous traits, but if conditions change then the epigenetic trait would become advantageous or disadvantageous.
That's what epigenetics and it is perfectly compatible with standard evolutionary theory.
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Epigenetic mechanisms allow acquired characteristics to be passed on to offspring. This is not a part of the standard evolution theory because no change in the DNA was expected.
But inheritance itself is now being redefined to include epigenetic inheritance, because phenotype changes happen also due to epigenetic causes.
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Epigenetic mechanisms allow acquired characteristics to be passed on to offspring. This is not a part of the standard evolution theory because no change in the DNA was expected.
But inheritance itself is now being redefined to include epigenetic inheritance, because phenotype changes happen also due to epigenetic causes.
In the short term, yes, so it is inheritance, but not in the long term, so as far as evolution is concerned there's currently no evidenced to suggest that it plays a significant role.
O.
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Just google for it. There are plenty of articles about epigenetics and its role in evolution.
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Just google for it. There are plenty of articles about epigenetics and its role in evolution.
And they're all either misunderstandings, overstatements or pointing out that despite the superficial short term inheritances there is no significant evolutionary mechanic in epigenetic effects, although the propensity for epigenetics might itself be an evolutionary mechanism.
O.
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Epigenetic mechanisms allow acquired characteristics to be passed on to offspring.
But standard epigenetic modifications are driven by enzymes coded for by DNA in the standard manner. So we have a standard evolutionary mechanism in place fundamentally driven by genomic modifications which themselves are essential for the epigenetic modifications to exist.
This is not a part of the standard evolution theory because no change in the DNA was expected.
Except it does - see above. You cannot epigenetically modify a histone (for example) with histone acetylase without the DNA coding for the enzyme histone deacetylase.
Realistically this is no different to any other behavioural characteristic that can be passed on from parent to offspring not directly by DNA inheritance albeit requiring DNA coding in the first place. For example, teaching and learning. The transfer of knowledge via teaching/learning clearly isn't directly driven by DNA inheritance - the offspring doesn't directly 'inherit' that knowledge. But the cognitive ability to teach and learn is clearly driven by our genes and DNA and completely consistent with standard evolutionary theory.
And just like epigenetic transmission - it isn't long range. It only lasts for one or a small number of generations and is therefore transitory. True evolutionary selection traits needs to be transmitted over a far longer range of inheritance steps.
But inheritance itself is now being redefined to include epigenetic inheritance, because phenotype changes happen also due to epigenetic causes.
But epigenetic changes are merely one element of phenotype that are driven by standard genetic (not epigenetic) modifications. No DNA to code for histone acetylase, no epigenetic acetylation of histones.
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Lot of detail but missing the point. The idea of random variations and natural selection that you people have been touting is just not good enough to explain evolution.
Organisms are able to adapt and change in line with environmental requirements sometimes within one generation. Plasticity is an important feature of inheritance and evolution.
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Lot of detail but missing the point. The idea of random variations and natural selection that you people have been touting is just not good enough to explain evolution.
Organisms are able to adapt and change in line with environmental requirements sometimes within one generation. Plasticity is an important feature of inheritance and evolution.
Any system that comprises elements of variation and selection will evolve. This is fundamental. Phenotype plasticity etc add layers of nuance and complexity to the overall mechanisms of evolution as it plays out for life on Earth.
If NASA's Europa Clipper mission, due to launch in 2024, were to find life in the subsurface oceans of Europa, you can bet it will exhibit evolution by mutation and natural selection, but epigenetics etc may well not be a feature of life there.
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The idea of random variations and natural selection that you people have been touting is just not good enough to explain evolution.
Why? There is plenty of evidence to suggest it is perfectly 'good enough' to explain evolution. We aren't 'touting' this in a speculative kind of manner - nope, we are following the evidence.
If you want to challenge the evidence for this, you'll need to provide evidence which is more compelling for an alternative mechanism.
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Quite clearly, the talk by Denis Noble and the other articles that I have referred above, have had no effect what so ever. ::)
Shows how dogmatic science enthusiasts can be.....
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Quite clearly, the talk by Denis Noble and the other articles that I have referred above, have had no effect what so ever. ::)
It doesn't matter whose prestigious name you can put on a non-scientific claim it's not going to trump actual well-established science. It's been pointed out to you why Noble's questions, while valid to a degree, are not sufficient to overturn the scientific consensus.
Shows how dogmatic science enthusiasts can be.....
Yeah, following the evidence and all that, not ignoring it to cleave to their... pet... superstit... Oh.
O.
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Dogma! Dogma! Dogma! Tut...tut! :)
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Dogma! Dogma! Dogma! Tut...tut! :)
Nope - evidence, evidence, evidence.
Seems to me that it is you who dogmatically latches onto a tiny number of people who may have views that you seem to like in an unevidenced manner.
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Quite clearly, the talk by Denis Noble and the other articles that I have referred above, have had no effect what so ever. ::)
I've met Noble a few times at scientific meetings - he is extremely well regarded as a heart electro-physiologist, known both for his experimental and modelling work. Indeed I've been on the organising committee for a conference where we invited him as a key note speaker ... a key note on his area of expertise, which is ... err ... electrophysiology.
He is not, and I don't believe he claims to be, an evolutionary biologist. Indeed I don't think he has published any of his own research in the field of evolutionary biologist. That is why his talk is sub-titled 'A physiologist enters the lions' den of evolutionary biology' - he is positing ideas as a non-expert.
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It is well known that.....if you want a fresh look at things don't talk to experts.
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It is well known that.....if you want a fresh look at things don't talk to experts.
No - you talk to a range of complementary experts.
Sure if you talk to someone who isn't an expert you'll get a 'fresh look' but one that is likely not to be correct and not to be supported by evidence.
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It is well known that.....if you want a fresh look at things don't talk to experts.
It's well know that if you're talking shit you try to smear it as widely as possible so that everyone looks as shitty at the end. Anyone who launches their case with 'don't listen to experts' - Goving, as it's known - is basically admitting that they don't have a valid argument before they start. If you had a case, if you had a point, if you had even the vestige of an argument you'd not be ignoring the experts you'd be talking to them, and they'd by and large follow any evidence you had and then you'd have the experts on your side.
What makes them experts isn't that we like what they say, it's that they can justify what they say. Listen to experts, it's what they're there for.
O.
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Experts can be respected in their limited area of expertise. I agree. But not when we need to look at something differently or when other factors need to be considered.
Problem is that experts generally have a very microscopic perspective and cannot see the woods for the trees. I am not saying that just about anyone can comment on their area of expertise. No! However, other scientists and philosophers who have a bigger picture view can comment very constructively on the subject.
Any area of study does not exist in isolation in the world. It is a part of a bigger reality and it is necessary to see how it fits into the totality.
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Experts can be respected in their limited area of expertise. I agree.
That seems self evident.
But not when we need to look at something differently or when other factors need to be considered.
Sure, so bring in other experts on those 'other factors'.
Problem is that experts generally have a very microscopic perspective and cannot see the woods for the trees.
No more nor less than others with other or no expertise. But at least those people have relevant expertise to the problem at hand. You seem to be implying that we should somehow give greater weight to complete non-experts. We shouldn't.
I am not saying that just about anyone can comment on their area of expertise.
That seems to be exactly what you are saying as time after time you link to people making claims about things way outside their expertise or people with no expertise at all.
No! However, other scientists and philosophers who have a bigger picture view can comment very constructively on the subject.[/quote]Which is why you bring in others with complementary expertise - but those people will only credibly be able to talk about things within their area of expertise.
Any area of study does not exist in isolation in the world. It is a part of a bigger reality and it is necessary to see how it fits into the totality.
Hence the need for complementary expertise to build a broader evidence base. Your approach seems to be to dismiss the actual evidence and base conclusions on what you want to be true rather than where the evidence takes you.
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You don't get it. Two microscopes don't make a telescope. It is about someone with a broader perspective not expertise.
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You don't get it. Two microscopes don't make a telescope. It is about someone with a broader perspective not expertise.
I'm sorry Sriram - it is you who doesn't get it.
If you want to design either a microscope or a telescope you want to bring in complementary expertise - for example someone with optical physics expertise, another who understands the designs of lenses, another who is a general design engineer etc etc. You may also bring in end user experts, e.g. a biologist who can input into what the microscope needs to assess in terms of magnification/resolution etc. Same for the telescope, but perhaps and end user astronomer.
What you don't want to do is reject all those experts and decide that the best way to design a microscope is to employ a philosopher and a poet who decide that the cardboard inner for kitchen roll is going to work 'cos microscopes and telescopes are kind of long thin tubes'!
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Experts can be respected in their limited area of expertise. I agree.
Why the presumption that their fields are limited? If you're looking for a broader remit there's likely someone who is an expert at that level.
But not when we need to look at something differently or when other factors need to be considered.
First you have to justify why you think there's a 'broader perspective', then you have to ask if you're talking to the right expert - look back to your attempts to use the output of a cardiologist to justify calling evolutionary biology's established findings into question.
Problem is that experts generally have a very microscopic perspective and cannot see the woods for the trees.
No, the problem is that you keep trying to justify presuming there's something more on no more basis than your personal incredulity.
I am not saying that just about anyone can comment on their area of expertise. No! However, other scientists and philosophers who have a bigger picture view can comment very constructively on the subject.
You're mixing philososphy and science here, and they are massively different fields of expertise. People can always comment constructively, can always ask interesting questions, but it takes something spectacular to overturn generations of well-established science and whatever that might be you don't have it.
Any area of study does not exist in isolation in the world.
And in my experience, experts in a field are pretty good at understanding how their field of expertise fits in - it's almost like expertise involves having a context.
It is a part of a bigger reality and it is necessary to see how it fits into the totality.
But what it doesn't have to do is to fit into your interpretation of the totality. If you want to overturn expertise and established science you need new science, not questions (valid or otherwise), woo and people talking outside of their own areas of expertise being used as attempted justification for throwing out the established scientific consensus on a question of science.
O.
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I'm sorry Sriram - it is you who doesn't get it.
If you want to design either a microscope or a telescope you want to bring in complementary expertise - for example someone with optical physics expertise, another who understands the designs of lenses, another who is a general design engineer etc etc. You may also bring in end user experts, e.g. a biologist who can input into what the microscope needs to assess in terms of magnification/resolution etc. Same for the telescope, but perhaps and end user astronomer.
What you don't want to do is reject all those experts and decide that the best way to design a microscope is to employ a philosopher and a poet who decide that the cardboard inner for kitchen roll is going to work 'cos microscopes and telescopes are kind of long thin tubes'!
I am referring to a broader perspective...a zoom-out perspective instead of a zoom-in perspective. These perspectives require different mind sets. Its not just about putting different experts (zoom-in people) together. That is what I meant by saying that putting several microscopes together doesn't make a telescope.
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Why the presumption that their fields are limited? If you're looking for a broader remit there's likely someone who is an expert at that level.
First you have to justify why you think there's a 'broader perspective', then you have to ask if you're talking to the right expert - look back to your attempts to use the output of a cardiologist to justify calling evolutionary biology's established findings into question.
No, the problem is that you keep trying to justify presuming there's something more on no more basis than your personal incredulity.
You're mixing philososphy and science here, and they are massively different fields of expertise. People can always comment constructively, can always ask interesting questions, but it takes something spectacular to overturn generations of well-established science and whatever that might be you don't have it.
And in my experience, experts in a field are pretty good at understanding how their field of expertise fits in - it's almost like expertise involves having a context.
But what it doesn't have to do is to fit into your interpretation of the totality. If you want to overturn expertise and established science you need new science, not questions (valid or otherwise), woo and people talking outside of their own areas of expertise being used as attempted justification for throwing out the established scientific consensus on a question of science.
O.
It is not that someone just decides to over turn an expert opinion. It is because the expert opinion does not fit into the overall perspective that it is questioned.
A philosophical view is not an expert view. It is a overall view ...a look at the totality.
Also, some experts get bogged down in dogma and established theories without being able to think out of the box.
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It is not that someone just decides to over turn an expert opinion. It is because the expert opinion does not fit into the overall perspective that it is questioned.
Science is not trumped by 'a perspective'. You have a 'perspective' they have a hundred years and more of painstakingly gathered and evaluated experimental and observational evidence. These two are not equal.
A philosophical view is not an expert view. It is a overall view ...a look at the totality.
Those experts know where their expertise fits into the broader picture. You are presuming that because you have an opinion in which there INCREDIBLY WELL EVIDENCED AND RESEARCHED understanding of one of the fundamental building blocks doesn't fit into your ABSOLUTELY ARBITRARY OPINION on the broad picture that therefore their expertise is questionable and your hunch is valid.
Also, some experts get bogged down in dogma and established theories without being able to think out of the box.
They aren't being asked to think outside the box. You're looking into their box, saying that you had a feeling the inside was blue and they must be wrong about it being green and just dismissed thousands of highly qualified people and thousands of collective years of work. The arrogance is only rivalled by the sheer fucking ridiculousness of it.
O.
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Whatever may be the expertise of a group of scientists...it is still only a subset and a small segment of the total reality of life. That will not change.
Unless we understand the role and function of the segment in the totality, we understand very little. It is a microscopic understanding in isolation to other realities.
To have a broader zoom-out vision, we need a different mindset which the individual experts in the individual fields of study will not have. This limitation of specialists is well known.
We need more people like Denis Noble who have a background in evolutionary biology and also a overall perspective.
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his limitation of specialists is well known.
So your happy with a plumber removing your prostate?
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We need more people like Denis Noble who have a background in evolutionary biology and also a overall perspective.
For crying out loud Sriram - Noble isn't an evolutionary biologist. I know this as I've met him a few times and invited to a bioengineering meeting to be key note on a session on physiological modelling (his area of expertise). And he knows it to - hence the title of his talk, which reflects on him entering the 'Lions' Den' of evolutionary biology as a non specialist.
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To have a broader zoom-out vision, we need a different mindset which the individual experts in the individual fields of study will not have.
Says the person on this MB who continually poses questions and see things through an achingly anthropocentric prism. Sriram - the least 'zoomed out' mindset is surely someone who cannot see things beyond the perspective of a single species that has existed for a blink of an eye on cosmic terms on a single planet. But that, Sriram, is exactly what you do time and time again.
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Whatever may be the expertise of a group of scientists...it is still only a subset and a small segment of the total reality of life.
We don't know if it's a small segment or almost the entirety - what we don't have is a verified description of that total reality of life. So you have the option of going with our best current explanation or some unjustified claim.
That will not change.
Apparently not, but I'll keep trying anyway.
Unless we understand the role and function of the segment in the totality, we understand very little.
Arguably; we know at least some of what does work, and at least some of what doesn't work.
It is a microscopic understanding in isolation to other realities.
What 'other realities'?
To have a broader zoom-out vision, we need a different mindset which the individual experts in the individual fields of study will not have.
Or we can collectively build the bigger picture by having informed experts working at various levels, so that you might have, say, specialists in DNA inheritance and specialists in mitonchondrial inheritance informing evolutionary biologists who are also informed by archaeologists and palaeontologists who are all informed by chemists and physicists and geographers... rather than just throwing validated information out of the window and going 'but woo!'.
This limitation of specialists is well known.
Which is why we also have generalists.
We need more people like Denis Noble who have a background in evolutionary biology and also a overall perspective.
Noble does not have a background in evolutionary biology, he's a cardiologist.
O.
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A collection of experts will only add more data to the pool. More pieces of the puzzle. They will not bring a new perspective or a view of the totality.
It is not about more data. It is about a different programming. A different way of looking at and analyzing the same data. A different way of putting the pieces together.
We need a zoom-out philosopher.
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A collection of experts will only add more data to the pool.
That's not 'only', that's an achievement, it's a continual incremental increase in our understanding.
More pieces of the puzzle. They will not bring a new perspective or a view of the totality.
If you think revealing more pieces and where they fit will not bring about a more total view of reality I invite you to attempt a jigsaw puzzle. You keep saying about this 'new perspective' but you've manifestly failed to justify the need for one.
It is not about more data. It is about a different programming.
Why? Because you don't understand the current picture and there assume, arrogantly, that the current picture must be wrong, it couldn't possibly be a limitation of your capabilities?
A different way of looking at and analyzing the same data. A different way of putting the pieces together.
Again, that's not how a jigsaw works, you can't just arbitrarily decide to put edge pieces in the middle and say 'look at my genius'.
We need a zoom-out philosopher.
Why? We are dealing with observable, testable phenomena - we need scientists. Oh, look at that, we have shit-load of those already, let's stick with what's been shown to work rather than inventing a market for woo because you don't like the justified answers you're getting.
O.
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We need a zoom-out philosopher.
No we don't - we need a community of complementary experts each of which are experts in their own field but have the broader expertise to be able to understand and interpret scientific data and evidence.
It is unlikely that a philosopher would have this expertise in interpreting data and therefore would not be able to base the 'broader' view on the evidence. Leaving such matters to philosopher leads us down the line of dogmatic adherence to a philosophical position that is not supported by the evidence and we have many, many examples from the view that the sun orbited around the earth, that the earth was created in a short timeframe, that diseases were due to sin etc etc. None of these philosophical positions are evidence based, but those philosophical adherents clung to them dogmatically to the extent that those who challenge those views with evidence we persecuted.
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No we don't - we need a community of complementary experts each of which are experts in their own field but have the broader expertise to be able to understand and interpret scientific data and evidence.
It is unlikely that a philosopher would have this expertise in interpreting data and therefore would not be able to base the 'broader' view on the evidence. Leaving such matters to philosopher leads us down the line of dogmatic adherence to a philosophical position that is not supported by the evidence and we have many, many examples from the view that the sun orbited around the earth, that the earth was created in a short timeframe, that diseases were due to sin etc etc. None of these philosophical positions are evidence based, but those philosophical adherents clung to them dogmatically to the extent that those who challenge those views with evidence we persecuted.
That reads like 'dogmatic adherence to a philosophical position'
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That reads like 'dogmatic adherence to a philosophical position'
I suspect only to the guy who can start a fight in an empty room.
In what way - a position based on actual reproducible and verifiable evidence seems to me to be neither dogmatic (as it will change as and when new evidence arises), nor a philosophical position in the sense that we commonly consider philosophy today (i.e. as something distinct from science with its requirement for evidence).
But even if you consider philosophy in its more general sense, ie. encompassing science then basing something on evidence is, almost by definition, not dogmatic unless you consider that evidence can never change, which science doesn't.
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I suspect only to the guy who can start a fight in an empty room.
In what way - a position based on actual reproducible and verifiable evidence seems to me to be neither dogmatic (as it will change as and when new evidence arises), nor a philosophical position in the sense that we commonly consider philosophy today (i.e. as something distinct from science with its requirement for evidence).
But even if you consider philosophy in its more general sense, ie. encompassing science then basing something on evidence is, almost by definition, not dogmatic unless you consider that evidence can never change, which science doesn't.
Because it read like you are saying to be a philosopher you have to adhere to a dogmatic philosophical position
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No we don't - we need a community of complementary experts each of which are experts in their own field but have the broader expertise to be able to understand and interpret scientific data and evidence.
It is unlikely that a philosopher would have this expertise in interpreting data and therefore would not be able to base the 'broader' view on the evidence. Leaving such matters to philosopher leads us down the line of dogmatic adherence to a philosophical position that is not supported by the evidence and we have many, many examples from the view that the sun orbited around the earth, that the earth was created in a short timeframe, that diseases were due to sin etc etc. None of these philosophical positions are evidence based, but those philosophical adherents clung to them dogmatically to the extent that those who challenge those views with evidence we persecuted.
Do you have evidence for this piece that seems a monumental example of scientism. Portraying philosophers as akin to geocentric is particularly egregious.
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No we don't - we need a community of complementary experts each of which are experts in their own field but have the broader expertise to be able to understand and interpret scientific data and evidence.
It is unlikely that a philosopher would have this expertise in interpreting data and therefore would not be able to base the 'broader' view on the evidence. Leaving such matters to philosopher leads us down the line of dogmatic adherence to a philosophical position that is not supported by the evidence and we have many, many examples from the view that the sun orbited around the earth, that the earth was created in a short timeframe, that diseases were due to sin etc etc. None of these philosophical positions are evidence based, but those philosophical adherents clung to them dogmatically to the extent that those who challenge those views with evidence we persecuted.
There is plenty of evidence for all sorts of things if only we can notice them.
https://tsriramrao.wordpress.com/2019/01/13/evidence/
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There is plenty of evidence for all sorts of things if only we can notice them.
Excellent. Given that you've offered no evidence that science would follow through to the conclusion you're starting from, all you need now is some validated methodology to examine your evidence that leads to the conclusion you want to proffer, and we'll have a basis for accepting your claims. Until then, we're still at the point where you're peddling woo.
O.
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There is plenty of evidence for all sorts of things if only we can notice them.
Really - I'm all ears. Lead me to this validated credible, reproducible evidence.
https://tsriramrao.wordpress.com/2019/01/13/evidence/
Oh - but that's just your blog Sriram - that's not evidence. It doesn't even cite any sources.
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We have to go back to the example of a village full of born blind people. Light is everywhere but they are unable to notice it.
Do you realize that no one noticed gravity for thousands of years till Newton came along?
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We have to go back to the example of a village full of born blind people. Light is everywhere but they are unable to notice it.
Do you realize that no one noticed gravity for thousands of years till Newton came along?
I think they might have noticed that things that go up tend to come down again and that a fall from 20 feet tended to be more injurious than a fall from just 3 feet - even if they didn't understand why.
That they didn't call it 'gravity' or have any understanding of, say, the mathematics of acceleration doesn't mean that they didn't 'notice' the phenomena we now call 'gravity'.
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Do you realize that no one noticed gravity for thousands of years till Newton came along?
Complete and utter non-sense.
Everyone noticed gravity as it was what kept them on the ground. What Newton did was attempt to understand and explain its mechanism - that is entirely different from a situation where no-one had noticed it before.
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That bastard Newton. Until he came along everyone floated.
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We have to go back to the example of a village full of born blind people. Light is everywhere but they are unable to notice it.
Do you realize that no one noticed gravity for thousands of years till Newton came along?
Don't be silly, Sriram, there have been many theories relating to gravity from Aristotle onwards, including, by the way, an Indian astronomer of the 7th Century.
As for your tired 'blind people and light' allusion, that has been done to death on this board, even though you stubbornly stick to it. :D
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And as for Darwin! He wiped out the crocoducks!
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Einstein, prick. Before him light could go as fast as it wanted to
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And don't get me started on that mass feckin murderer Pasteur. Before him everyone lived for ages but his germ theory killed billions.
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Complete and utter non-sense.
Everyone noticed gravity as it was what kept them on the ground. What Newton did was attempt to understand and explain its mechanism - that is entirely different from a situation where no-one had noticed it before.
No...no one noticed gravity. They just took it for granted. No one questioned why they stayed on the ground or why things fell down (except some philosophers and thinkers perhaps). Probably there are even today many tribals and such others who do not think about why they stay on the ground.
The point is that we need to be taught about gravity.
The evidence is there all along but no one notices.
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No...no one noticed gravity. They just took it for granted. No one questioned why they stayed on the ground or why things fell down (except some philosophers and thinkers perhaps). Probably there are even today many tribals and such others who do not think about why they stay on the ground.
The point is that we need to be taught about gravity.
The evidence is there all along but no one notices.
99.99 % of life we all take for granted. If we didn't we would be dead. Writing no one questioned something apart from the people that questioned it is a spectacular own goal.
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99.99 % of life we all take for granted. If we didn't we would be dead. Writing no one questioned something apart from the people that questioned it is a spectacular own goal.
'Writing no one questioned something apart from the people that questioned it is a spectacular own goal'.
Now...that's a own goal I think! :D
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'Writing no one questioned something apart from the people that questioned it is a spectacular own goal'.
Now...that's a own goal I think! :D
You appear to have no understanding of the term 'no one'.
No one ever played football apart from the people who played football
No one ever left their home town apart from the people who left their home town
No one ever breathed apart from the people that breathed
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No...no one noticed gravity. They just took it for granted.
Yes they did - you don't seem to understand that noticing something and taking it for granted aren't the same thing. Actually I cannot see how you can take something for granted if you aren't aware it exists - in order to take something for granted you need to have an awareness of its existence in the first place.
And there were plenty of people who not only noticed gravity before Newton, but not only didn't take it for granted but used it. For example armies who positioned themselves at the top of a hill, or used gravity to allow spears etc to fly and fly further due to trajectory. How about people who used water wheels for power. All not just noticing gravity but making use of it.
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The point is that we need to be taught about gravity.
Are you on a totally separate planet Sriram.
So what happens if we aren't taught gravity? Does it cease to exist? Do we just float away? Of course not - nothing changes whatsoever except that in an anthropocentric fashion we wouldn't understand its mechanisms. That doesn't, of course, mean that we wouldn't be aware of it - we would, we just wouldn't understand it.
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The evidence is there all along but no one notices.
You really don't understand the difference between the evidence and understanding the mechanism, do you Sriram.
The evidence (that we didn't float off) was always there and everyone noticed (pretty well all the time) regardless of whether we understood the mechanisms or we didn't.
That we might have taken it for granted that we weren't about to float off is a completely separate matter to noticing that we didn't.
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We have to go back to the example of a village full of born blind people. Light is everywhere but they are unable to notice it.
Do you realize that no one noticed gravity for thousands of years till Newton came along?
Of course they noticed gravity.
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Einstein, prick. Before him light could go as fast as it wanted to
:D :D
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We have to go back to the example of a village full of born blind people. Light is everywhere but they are unable to notice it.
In a village of blind people, though, you could set up a simple photometer to register the light and play a tone. What you're suggesting is that there's a village of blind people and you're trying to convince them that there are ghosts, and then putting the fact that they don't accept your claims down to the fact that they're blind, not the fact that you can't demonstrate the ghosts.
Do you realize that no one noticed gravity for thousands of years till Newton came along?
You could tell by all the first hand accounts of people floating off into space in the 1500s... people noticed the effects of gravity, they didn't rationalise an explanation. You have exactly the opposite, you have an explanation desperately looking for a phenomenon to be attached to.
O.
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Ha..Ha..Ha!
I am amazed at the way you people manage to skirt around the issue making inane comments.....and how you supposedly intelligent people, don't understand the basic point that is being made.
Noticing that we don't fly off the ground is not the same as noticing gravity. They are two different things. Everyone knew that we don't fly off the ground but no one knew why we don't fly off the ground or why things fall down.
No one knew that there was any force or field or whatever, that was keeping us on the ground....in spite of the fact that it was a basic part of life on earth, experienced by everyone.
The idea of gravity did not come about because someone produced the evidence at that point of time. The evidence was here all along but was noticed and examined only at that point.
It is a natural and all encompassing aspect of nature but which no one was aware of. Some individual thinkers might have suspected the existence of some kind of a force but that was neither here nor there.
Similar to this is the existence of bacteria and viruses that no one knew of, even though everyone fell ill and got infected. It required technology to catch up.
There was plenty of evidence for both gravity and microbes but no one knew of these things till someone discovered them and made the necessary connection between the phenomenon and the cause.
This shows that evidence may be available all around us and we might experience something everyday but we might still not notice it or make the necessary connection to formulate a suitable hypothesis.
Claiming that evidence is not available is often not correct. Evidence may be there but most of us just may not see it.
Grow up guys! ::)
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Evidence may be there but most of us just may not see it.
You've got yourself mixed up.
There has been consistent evidence of the effects of gravity since time immemorial - 'what goes up must come down' was as true for the inhabitants of Skara Brae some 5,000 years ago as it is for us today, it's just that today we also now have an explanation for gravity - but the evidence for it was always there, in the sense of its consistent effects. However, if there is no strong, consistent and repeatable evidence for something, or a theory on which investigations can be based, then there can be no supplementary explanation since there is then no sound evidence from which an explanation can be derived and tested.
What you are essentially saying is that there is maybe evidence for stuff but that we can't see it yet - that is true, since there may be 'unknown unknowns', but you are over-reaching when you claim, say, that 'reincarnation' is believable even if there is yet no sound evidence to support it. Your "most of us just may not see it" gives the game away, since it implies that only special people can detect and understand this evidence or are prepared to just accept that there must be undetectable evidence for their claim in order to maintain their faith in the likes of 'reincarnation': among other flaws, that approach is confirmation bias writ large.
Sound evidence, or a testable theory, is a prerequisite for any subsequent verifiable explanation and to think otherwise is just wishful/magical thinking, and especially so when accompanied by handwaving about the methods of science being inadequate but where, crucially, no alternative method is ever proposed. To maintain certain claims in that context is a characteristic of woo.
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You've got yourself mixed up.
There has been consistent evidence of the effects of gravity since time immemorial - 'what goes up must come down' was as true for the inhabitants of Skara Brae some 5,000 years ago as it is for us today, it's just that today we also now have an explanation for gravity - but the evidence for it was always there, in the sense of its consistent effects. However, if there is no strong, consistent and repeatable evidence for something, or a theory on which investigations can be based, then there can be no supplementary explanation since there is then no sound evidence from which an explanation can be derived and tested.
No...I am not mixed up. In fact what you are saying is precisely what I am saying. Evidence has been available for gravity from time immemorial but no one realized that there was some kind of a force or field or whatever, that was keeping us on the ground. It was just a normal part of life and everyone just carried on the same way animals and birds run and fly etc.
What you are essentially saying is that there is maybe evidence for stuff but that we can't see it yet - that is true, since there may be 'unknown unknowns', but you are over-reaching when you claim, say, that 'reincarnation' is believable even if there is yet no sound evidence to support it. Your "most of us just may not see it" gives the game away, since it implies that only special people can detect and understand this evidence or are prepared to just accept that there must be undetectable evidence for their claim in order to maintain their faith in the likes of 'reincarnation': among other flaws, that approach is confirmation bias writ large.
There is no game here. There are naturally occurring phenomena that require special abilities ...just as eyes are required to detect light. If we don't have that faculty we cannot detect that aspect of reality. As simple as that.
Sound evidence, or a testable theory, is a prerequisite for any subsequent verifiable explanation and to think otherwise is just wishful/magical thinking, and especially so when accompanied by handwaving about the methods of science being inadequate but where, crucially, no alternative method is ever proposed. To maintain certain claims in that context is a characteristic of woo.
Physically tests are possible only for certain phenomena not for all aspects of reality. Lot of real things may not be physically testable. We just have to experience them and take a philosophical view.
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Physically tests are possible only for certain phenomena not for all aspects of reality. Lot of real things may not be physically testable. We just have to experience them and take a philosophical view.
Which is insufficient if you are proposing 'reincarnation' as an objective fact: in reality your belief in reincarnation is just as much a faith claim as Christians who believe that a dead person didn't stay dead. Neither claim can be justified by method and evidence.
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I am amazed at the way you people manage to skirt around the issue making inane comments.....and how you supposedly intelligent people, don't understand the basic point that is being made.
There is a well-regarded school of thought (I know you're not strong on those, but bear with me) which says that if a large group of people have failed to appreciate what you, as a communicator, are trying to convey, the fault lies with your communication not with their understanding.
As it is, I think by and large we do understand what you're saying, we're just not accepting that what you're saying is right.i
Noticing that we don't fly off the ground is not the same as noticing gravity. They are two different things.
Really? What is the other thing that makes people hit the ground when they fail to walk, correctly. Your suggestion that people were unaware of the notion of gravity and its effects before Newton is belied by, amongst other simple things, the Greek myth of Daedalus and Icarus - if things don't fall, why do you need artificial wings to fly?
Everyone knew that we don't fly off the ground but no one knew why we don't fly off the ground or why things fall down. No one knew that there was any force or field or whatever, that was keeping us on the ground....in spite of the fact that it was a basic part of life on earth, experienced by everyone.
Not knowing why something happens is not the same as not knowing that it happens. If this is your understanding, no-one knew about gravity until Einstein, because Newton was fundamentally wrong about gravitation when he considered it an attractive force not understanding that it's a mass-induced warping of space-time.
The idea of gravity did not come about because someone produced the evidence at that point of time. The evidence was here all along but was noticed and examined only at that point.
Not just examined it, not just hypothesised about a potential causitive mechanism AND TESTED THAT HYPOTHESIS. It's not science to spout possibilities, it's science to test those ideas and to either validate or refute them.
It is a natural and all encompassing aspect of nature but which no one was aware of.
Again, having an explanation isn't what's required for awareness. Do you think no-one realised the sky was blue until Lord Rayleigh came along?
Some individual thinkers might have suspected the existence of some kind of a force but that was neither here nor there.
Ironic that you should pick Newton and gravity to try to make this stance, given that Newton famously quoted the far less well-known Bernard of Chartres in saying 'If I have seen far it is because I have stood on the shoulders of giants'. Newton knew that his discovery was just one more iterative step in a series of works by eminent, hard-working, insightful experts.
Similar to this is the existence of bacteria and viruses that no one knew of, even though everyone fell ill and got infected. It required technology to catch up.
There was plenty of evidence for both gravity and microbes but no one knew of these things till someone discovered them and made the necessary connection between the phenomenon and the cause.
Nobody knew of the mechanisms, but as much I'm pretty sure people understood the idea of falling, you can be damned sure that the Black Death made sure they understood diseases existed, if nothing else. (I'm aware early forms of the germ theory of disease were formulated in the 1500s, but they weren't widely accepted).
This shows that evidence may be available all around us and we might experience something everyday but we might still not notice it or make the necessary connection to formulate a suitable hypothesis.
Absolutely. However, you are not citing a like for like - you're trying to compare the 'no theory promulgated' history of gravitation before Newton and his insights against the massively well-defined, researched and understood entire field of science that is evolutionary biology with your personal incredulity and wish to try to wedge something spiritual into it without understanding either evolutionary biology or spirituality well enough to make it creditable.
Claiming that evidence is not available is often not correct. Evidence may be there but most of us just may not see it.
If some people can't see it then what you have is not evidence, it's a claim. Evidence is, it is a phenomenon. What people can't 'see' is the evidence you provide leading to the conclusion you're coming to, and that's because the 'evidence' you're bringing is not testable. It's not that you're definitively wrong, it's that there is insufficient reason to accept your claims as correct: there isn't a gap in the current understanding that needs filling; there aren't elements we don't understand for which your woo claims are the best explanation; and, most importantly, neither you nor anyone else is providing any means by which these claims can be tested.
Grow up guys! ::)
Always good to round off a failure to argue effectively with an ad hominem. Straight back at ya.
O.
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Noticing that we don't fly off the ground is not the same as noticing gravity. They are two different things. Everyone knew that we don't fly off the ground but no one knew why we don't fly off the ground or why things fall down.
You are confusing the phenomenon with the mechanism. People always know about the phenomenon, they noticed the phenomenon, they used the phenomenon in all sorts of ways and needed to take into account the phenomenon in all sorts of ways.
Sure they might not have understood the mechanism - but that isn't something you 'notice' but something you have knowledge about. What you 'notice' is the phenomenon itself.
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Sriram,
It seems that your problem, as always, is that you have certain ideas with no evidence to justify or support them so, in your eyes quite reasonably, you think that it is a case of other people who cannot see what you can see. Hence, you try to turn the word 'evidence' on its head by suggesting that your personal 'spiritual' feelings are in themselves evidence. Unfortunately you then go further and then try to impress upon others on this forum that because they can't see that you are correct then they must be lacking in your special ability. Your next problem is in your attempts to justify why your feelings are correct and how it is that others cannot see that. For this you turn to the world of science and try to relate how scientific breakthroughs are similar in some ways to you having your 'spiritual' insights. Unfortunately you go about it in such a cack-handed way that you ignore the fact that each breakthrough has been accompanied by evidence(actual evidence, not your distortion of it) and you make statements which are patently untrue(and funny, to boot) such as your idea that no one noticed gravity until Newton came along. It seems that you have this fixation on science such that you will attempt to cherry pick any scientific or even pseudo scientific ideas that you can find on the internet which seem to support your views without looking at the overall scientific picture.
One way forward might be to accept that your communication skills might just be lacking sometimes and try to see the funny side of the comments that can ensue from this rather than asking people to 'grow up'. :)
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No...its not about the mechanism. Being unable to fly is a natural part of life. We know nothing else from birth. Even animals and birds live heir lives and do all sorts of things within the laws of gravity, doesn't mean they actually recognize the phenomenon.
Humans are no different. Most tribals and other such people even today, may not be aware that they are kept on the ground due to some force or field called gravity. They just live their lives naturally without analyzing such matters.
Gravity is a concept, a way of understanding the fact that we cannot fly etc. This needs to be taught. It is not the same as knowing that we cannot fly.
Knowing that we cannot fly is different from knowing that there is a force that prevents us from flying. Every child knows that he cannot fly and how high he can jump etc.....but he will not know of gravity till he is taught about it.
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No...its not about the mechanism.
It's exactly about the mechanism. We have an explanation for the mechanism of evolution and you're asserting that it's inadequate.
Being unable to fly is a natural part of life.
So is evolution.
We know nothing else from birth. Even animals and birds live heir lives and do all sorts of things within the laws of gravity, doesn't mean they actually recognize the phenomenon.
Of course they do. Children learn that when they throw stones they come back to Earth, they learn that if they don't balance they will fall over. They don't automatically recognise the mechanism, they don't identify the cause, but they recognise the phenomenon.
Humans are no different. Most tribals and other such people even today, may not be aware that they are kept on the ground due to some force or field called gravity.
But they recognise that they aren't going to fly away, the recognise the phenomenon.
Gravity is a concept, a way of understanding the fact that we cannot fly etc.
No, gravity is a phenomenon. Newton's theory of gravitation and Einstein's theory of gravitation are ways of understanding it.
This needs to be taught. It is not the same as knowing that we cannot fly.
The fact that Newton and Einstein came up with their theories shows that it doesn't NEED to be taught, but that is the typical method, yes.
Knowing that we cannot fly is different from knowing that there is a force that prevents us from flying.
Perhaps, in some instances.
Every child knows that he cannot fly and how high he can jump etc.....but he will not know of gravity till he is taught about it.
But the gravity is still there, and they are still aware of the phenomenon, and that phenomenon can still be tested and examined, and is effective on everyone. All of which makes it a very, very different concept from your spiritual future-predicted evo-woo claims.
O.
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You people are getting paranoid. Very insecure. You people are seeing spirituality where I have not mentioned it at all.
My point is very simple. There is lots of evidence around us for lots of things that we are today unable to recognize. This could be because of our natural inability to see it or due to our biases or due to lack of suitable technology or lack of suitable background and various other reasons.
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Sriram,
You people are getting paranoid.
No-one has shown any indication of paranoia.
Very insecure.
No-one has shown any indication of insecurity.
You people are seeing spirituality where I have not mentioned it at all.
No-one has shown any indication of "seeing spirituality" (although, ironically, you keep wrongly throwing antipathy to religion at the people who simply falsify your (occasional) attempts at justifying your various claims).
My point is very simple. There is lots of evidence around us for lots of things that we are today unable to recognize.
If we are unable to recognise a phenomenon then there can’t be evidence for it.
This could be because of our natural inability to see it or due to our biases or due to lack of suitable technology or lack of suitable background and various other reasons.
No it couldn’t. This is actually because you’ve provided no reason to think that there’s any such evidence at all.
Look, if you’ve managed to convince yourself that you have magic powers of discernment not available to others that’s a matter for you, but until you finally manage to produce some actual evidence for it (and no, “it makes sense in my head” is not evidence) then you give the rest of us no reason to think you’re not simply delusional.
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You people are getting paranoid.
Again with the ad hominem. Are that many people paranoid, are you just so manifestly wrong that this many people can see it?
Very insecure. You people are seeing spirituality where I have not mentioned it at all.
It's you, it's always spirituality lurking in the background.
My point is very simple.
It's not the difficulty level that's the issue.
There is lots of evidence around us for lots of things that we are today unable to recognize.
Potentially, yes.
This could be because of our natural inability to see it or due to our biases or due to lack of suitable technology or lack of suitable background and various other reasons.
No, those are different scenarios.
If there's a natural inability (say, the wavelengths of electromagnetic radiation that we can or cannot percieve) that's something that we devise technological equipment to eliminate.
If it's a bias or cultural background issue that's for the person making the claim to demonstrate the step-by-step logical process from the evidence to the claim - that's culturally independent, or your claim is not robust enough.
In this instance you are citing your inability to accept that the current model of evolution is sufficient to explain the diversity of life as evidence of a failure in the explanation, not a failure of your understanding. When that's pointed out, rather than make an argument, you tell people to 'grow up' or allege 'paranoia' - if you have a case, make it.
So far, you haven't made your case, so I (and probably others) will continue to call you on your failure.
O.
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In this instance you are citing your inability to accept that the current model of evolution is sufficient to explain the diversity of life as evidence of a failure in the explanation, not a failure of your understanding.
This whole thread is full of videos and articles about why the current theory of evolution is inadequate. Just read them please.
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This whole thread is full of videos and articles about why the current theory of evolution is inadequate. Just read them please.
We have, we've addressed those. They are either baselessly wrong or, like most of Professor Noble's, questions about the boundaries of current understanding pitched as somehow calling everything else into question.
That we don't have a complete understanding of fringe case A doesn't mean that our robust understanding of the bulk of evolutionary science is wrong. That epigenetics has short term hereditary effects does not mean it has long-term evolutionary effects - if you want to make that claim you need to provide the evidence to back it up, and you haven't. If you want to suggest that nature pre-emptively prepares variations with some sort of foreknowledge of what selection pressures are coming you need to back that up with evidence, not just your incredulity at the idea that it isn't guided. If you want to suggest that the niche examples of morphological plasticity are more both more widespread than is currently understood AND somehow not a mechanism which has resulted from evolutionary pressures but is instead a predominant mechanism of variation you need to provide the evidence to support that.
All of these are potentially plausible to one degree or another, but they go against the convention of the moment because that's not where the collective of the world's evolutionary biologists get led by the evidence: by all means, go write a paper and submit it and overturn the convention and I promise I'll buy you a biscuit when you collect your Nobel Prize. But don't come here with the questions of an (admittedly eminent) cardiologist and expect the rest of us just to accept that all our understanding of evolutionary biology is wrong.
O.
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But don't come here with the questions of an (admittedly eminent) cardiologist and expect the rest of us just to accept that all our understanding of evolutionary biology is wrong.
O.
Just to be clear Noble is an cardiac electrophysiologist, not a cardiologist - there is an important difference. What he isn't (as I think he would freely admit) is an evolutionary biologist.
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For a moment yesterday, I thought all of you were super geniuses who when you first fell as 1 year olds, immediately knew that there was a force pulling you down towards the earth. Then I realized that you people were merely having difficulty in understanding my simple point about noticing gravity as different from noticing our natural limitations. :)
Be that as it may.... coming back to evolution, I am not a biologist and really don't worry about the mechanisms involved in evolution per se. I am more concerned about the purpose and meaning of life and death.
Towards this objective I also try to see if science points the way in certain directions. As I have discussed in other threads, I do find that science helps in certain ways.
The mechanisms of plasticity and epigenetics in evolution for example, do help in providing evidence that there is some objective and direction to evolution. Seen together with the philosophical ideas of panpsychism and cosmopsychism that are increasingly becoming important, it is becoming clear that consciousness probably drives evolution from inside organisms.
Of course, there are lots of ifs and buts....but then, this journey of trying to bridge science and spirituality has just begun. Long way to go ....
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I am more concerned about the purpose and meaning of life and death.
You're presuming that there is 'purpose' and 'meaning', and since you seem to be talking generally I suspect you are further presuming that this 'purpose' or 'meaning' is overarching and influences everyone/everything. Can't see it myself.
I'd say life is just what we make of it - no more and no less - and that any 'meaning' or 'purpose' we might feel is inherently subjective and that we may naively overreach in our thoughts, leading to feelings of faux profundiity.
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Neo Darwinism is the synthesis of Darwin's ideas with those of Gregor Mendel (genetics). Darwin himself knew there was a problem with his theory in that he had no workable mechanism for how inheritance worked. Mendelian genetics fills the gap and I think he would have been delighted to hear about it.
One of the marks of a good scientific hypothesis is that later discoveries confirm it, and that is emphatically true of neo-Darwinian evolution.
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For a moment yesterday, I thought all of you were super geniuses who when you first fell as 1 year olds, immediately knew that there was a force pulling you down towards the earth. Then I realized that you people were merely having difficulty in understanding my simple point about noticing gravity as different from noticing our natural limitations. :)
No, you're making a poor analogy by trying to equate falling and gravity with your take on some guiding force behind evolution - no-one doesn't fall, gravity is universal, but the phenomenon that you're asserting is influencing evolution is not apparent. You're then trying to parallel yourself with Newton by suggesting that because before him there wasn't a coherent theory of gravitation you are somehow the same, forgetting that there's an immense amount of evidence supporting the new-Darwinian model of evolution.
Be that as it may.... coming back to evolution, I am not a biologist and really don't worry about the mechanisms involved in evolution per se.
Which is probably why you keep getting it wrong. Can I suggest that if you want to talk about it you learn something about it first?
I am more concerned about the purpose and meaning of life and death.
What 'purpose' would that be? And in what way is this bringing it back to evolution?
Towards this objective I also try to see if science points the way in certain directions. As I have discussed in other threads, I do find that science helps in certain ways.
But then when it doesn't lead where you like you dismiss 'experts' and cite yourself instead.
The mechanisms of plasticity and epigenetics in evolution for example, do help in providing evidence that there is some objective and direction to evolution.
No, and no. You remember, just a bit above this, when you said you don't really know much about evolution? Take that wisdom, that admission of not knowing, and run with that a while.
Seen together with the philosophical ideas of panpsychism and cosmopsychism that are increasingly becoming important, it is becoming clear that consciousness probably drives evolution from inside organisms.
And here comes the woo... are we talking science, or are we talking philosophy? If you want people to accept panpsychism or cosmopsychism you need to provide reasons to accept those ideas, not suggest that your (self-confessed) lack of understanding of evolutionary biology means that therefore the logical plausibility of the concept is sufficient to accept them.
Of course, there are lots of ifs and buts...
There's not even that, there's just a whole lot of personal incredulity and woo. You need evidence and a methodology to get from that evidence reliably to a conclusion, and you don't have any of that.
...but then, this journey of trying to bridge science and spirituality has just begun.
You need to show that 'spirituality' actually means something, first, before you start firing woo-bombs at it in the hope that something sticks.
Long way to go ....
The journey of a single circle ends up where it began...
O.
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You're presuming that there is 'purpose' and 'meaning', and since you seem to be talking generally I suspect you are further presuming that this 'purpose' or 'meaning' is overarching and influences everyone/everything. Can't see it myself.
I'd say life is just what we make of it - no more and no less - and that any 'meaning' or 'purpose' we might feel is inherently subjective and that we may naively overreach in our thoughts, leading to feelings of faux profundiity.
Yes....meaning and purpose is something you have to feel in your bones. It is an insight. By looking at objects externally this will not be evident.
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No, you're making a poor analogy by trying to equate falling and gravity with your take on some guiding force behind evolution - no-one doesn't fall, gravity is universal, but the phenomenon that you're asserting is influencing evolution is not apparent. You're then trying to parallel yourself with Newton by suggesting that because before him there wasn't a coherent theory of gravitation you are somehow the same, forgetting that there's an immense amount of evidence supporting the new-Darwinian model of evolution.
Which is probably why you keep getting it wrong. Can I suggest that if you want to talk about it you learn something about it first?
What 'purpose' would that be? And in what way is this bringing it back to evolution?
But then when it doesn't lead where you like you dismiss 'experts' and cite yourself instead.
No, and no. You remember, just a bit above this, when you said you don't really know much about evolution? Take that wisdom, that admission of not knowing, and run with that a while.
And here comes the woo... are we talking science, or are we talking philosophy? If you want people to accept panpsychism or cosmopsychism you need to provide reasons to accept those ideas, not suggest that your (self-confessed) lack of understanding of evolutionary biology means that therefore the logical plausibility of the concept is sufficient to accept them.
There's not even that, there's just a whole lot of personal incredulity and woo. You need evidence and a methodology to get from that evidence reliably to a conclusion, and you don't have any of that.
You need to show that 'spirituality' actually means something, first, before you start firing woo-bombs at it in the hope that something sticks.
The journey of a single circle ends up where it began...
O.
Your first para is more convoluted than your theory of Natural Selection.
One doesn't need to know the finer details of evolution or anything else to see how it fits into the totality. That's the difference between a Zoom-in and a Zoom-out view. Work from top down rather than bottom up.
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Your first para is more convoluted than your theory of Natural Selection.
Because it's trying to follow the tortured failure of an analogy that you've been throwing around. It might be convoluted, but it's not wrong, and that says more about your analogy than anything else.
One doesn't need to know the finer details of evolution or anything else to see how it fits into the totality.
Yes, you do. You can't say what evolution can or can't explain, or why it can or can't account for something if you don't understand what it is and how it works.
That's the difference between a Zoom-in and a Zoom-out view. Work from top down rather than bottom up.
And what's your methodology for validating your top-down claims? What's your justification for discarding the incredibly well-researched and evidence-supported bottom-up current scientific consensus in favour of your woo?
O.
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Yes....meaning and purpose is something you have to feel in your bones. It is an insight. By looking at objects externally this will not be evident.
No - I see no overarching 'meaning' or 'purpose' to life, or death, at all.
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Sriram,
Yes....meaning and purpose is something you have to feel in your bones. It is an insight. By looking at objects externally this will not be evident.
How would you propose to justify your claim that you’ve had an “insight” rather than just an unqualified guess?
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i have no intention of justifying anything. I have certain reasons for believing what I believe. Why would I want your approval?!
You really must stop the school master role that you have adopted.....wait...or was that Stranger?!!! ???
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Because it's trying to follow the tortured failure of an analogy that you've been throwing around. It might be convoluted, but it's not wrong, and that says more about your analogy than anything else.
Yes, you do. You can't say what evolution can or can't explain, or why it can or can't account for something if you don't understand what it is and how it works.
And what's your methodology for validating your top-down claims? What's your justification for discarding the incredibly well-researched and evidence-supported bottom-up current scientific consensus in favour of your woo?
O.
I talked of gravity as an example of a force (or field) that humans have experienced every day without noticing it. (Let me reiterate that noticing that we fall down is not the same as noticing gravity as a force). It needed someone to notice it, think about it and come up with an explanation before we realized that there was something pulling us down. Similarly, bacteria and viruses which we could not notice even though people fell ill regularly.
This was to show that evidence for something could exist all around us and we might even experience it regularly, but we might not notice or realize what it is.
I know these analogies probably make you nervous with the possibility that evidence for spiritual realities might really exist all around but you people may not be noticing. It could be a little disconcerting. But we should be prepared to face such possibilities if we want to understand reality in all its dimensions.
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But we should be prepared to face such possibilities if we want to understand reality in all its dimensions.
I don't think being open to all possibilities is so much the problem. One of the problems is that many people can be conditioned to believe, that when some possibilities are presented as actualities, this is the truth. Scientific method is one way to help separate objective evidence from subjective belief. I suspect that the,so called, spiritual methods are to separate the subject 'I' from the subjective 'me' and the objective 'my body'. As this is usually an inner process, I doubt whether this could be presented objectively or even philosophically.
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I know these analogies probably make you nervous with the possibility that evidence for spiritual realities might really exist all around but you people may not be noticing. It could be a little disconcerting. But we should be prepared to face such possibilities if we want to understand reality in all its dimensions.
As things stand, knowledge-wise, "spiritual realities" is an oxymoron.
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I talked of gravity as an example of a force (or field) that humans have experienced every day without noticing it. (Let me reiterate that noticing that we fall down is not the same as noticing gravity as a force). It needed someone to notice it, think about it and come up with an explanation before we realized that there was something pulling us down. Similarly, bacteria and viruses which we could not notice even though people fell ill regularly.
It needed someone to focus on it certainly, present an hypothesis and produce the evidence to support that hypothesis. if you take bacteria for instance, it needed evidence that such things existed(Antonie Van Leeuwenhoek 1676) and then evidence that particular types of bacteria are related to certain diseases.(Robert Koch, TB, 1882).
This was to show that evidence for something could exist all around us and we might even experience it regularly, but we might not notice or realize what it is.
Of course, but that is a long way from your rather naive and strident idea that 'no one noticed gravity for thousands of years until Newton came along'.
I know these analogies probably make you nervous with the possibility that evidence for spiritual realities might really exist all around but you people may not be noticing. It could be a little disconcerting. But we should be prepared to face such possibilities if we want to understand reality in all its dimensions.
Not at all, except perhaps in your mind. However, if you are really going to make a point about 'spiritual realities' then, as with bacteria above, you need some hard evidence to ground your ideas. So far you have given none, so why on earth should we take such ideas as a universal consciousness or reincarnation particularly seriously?
The best you seem to be able to come up with is the idea that it is an insight, that you can feel it in your bones.
Well, from a very young age I occasionally had powerful feelings that there was no particular overriding purpose to the natural world. This feeling has stayed with me all my life but, as I got older, I realised that simply to have a feeling or an 'insight' wasn't good enough. Simply to have something that you feel in your bones does not make it so. Hence the only way that I would find meaning and purpose in the natural world would have to be evidence of this. I have found none.
And it is at this point you always fall down(figuratively, of course). You seem to be able to provide no real evidence for your subjective beliefs and, when pressed, resort to the idea that you possess some sort of subjective quality which others are blind to. Far from that idea being disconcerting, it's one we could all use from our particular viewpoint if we so wished.
I suspect all this will fall upon deaf ears, although one might hope... ;D
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Sriram,
i have no intention of justifying anything. I have certain reasons for believing what I believe. Why would I want your approval?!
You really must stop the school master role that you have adopted.....wait...or was that Stranger?!!!
As with so much else that you fail to understand, you fail to understand too how rhetorical argument works. When you make an unqualified statement like “Yes....meaning and purpose is something you have to feel in your bones. It is an insight. By looking at objects externally this will not be evident” they’re epistemically just dumb guesses. So by the way are the unqualified statements “Paris is the capital of France”, “objects thrown out of windows will fall to earth” etc.
The difference between your dumb guess and the other dumb guesses though is that the latter can be elevated to the more robust epistemic status of “fact” by the application of rhetorical argument. One such type of rhetorical argument is logic (ie, “logos” – the others being ethos, pathos and kairos). Logos is the appeal to logic by the application of reason. I can do this easily for my two statements, which is why they are facts.
You on the other hand either don’t bother with reason at all or, when you do attempt it, you routinely fall into one or several fallacies for support. A fallacy is a wrong argument, so relying on them leaves your statements marooned as still just dumb guesses – ie, you can claim an "insight" as a dumb guess if you want to, but not as a fact.
If it helps you at all (and it won’t because you’ll ignore it and then run away as you ignore and then run away from everything else that falsifies you) here’s a quick guide to logical fallacies. You should recognise quite a few of them:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qf03U04rqGQ
So, when I ask you a question like “how would you propose to justify your claim that you’ve had an “insight” rather than just an unqualified guess?” and you reply “I have no intention of justifying anything” that's fine. You can keep posting dumb guesses to your heart’s content if you wish.
And when you add: “I have certain reasons for believing what I believe” unless you tell us what those reasons are so they can be examined and tested then you give us no reason to think you aren’t just dumb guessing still.
And when you finish with: “Why would I want your approval?!” you’re unwittingly committing a straw man (yet another fallacy). I haven’t suggested that I need to give you my “approval”. What I actually asked you is whether you have anything sufficiently persuasive to say that would justify treating your various claims and assertions as something other than just dumb guesses.
So far the answer has been “no”, but who knows – maybe now you’ll see the problem you’ve given yourself and will try to find a way out of it that isn’t rhetorically hopeless.
Good luck with it!
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This thread is about a new approach to evolution. Based on Noble's and other people's views, the usual random variations and natural selection explanation of evolution clearly seems to be wanting.
Other mechanisms such as Lamarckian inheritance, epigenetics, plasticity now seem to be the more appropriate mechanisms.
These mechanisms indicate that there are internal regulatory systems within organisms that enable them to change their phenotype in line with environmental requirements. This is a way forward and there is no reason for staunch materialists to keep fending these new findings off.
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This thread is about a new approach to evolution. Based on Noble's and other people's views, the usual random variations and natural selection explanation of evolution clearly seems to be wanting.
Other mechanisms such as Lamarckian inheritance, epigenetics, plasticity now seem to be the more appropriate mechanisms.
These mechanisms indicate that there are internal regulatory systems within organisms that enable them to change their phenotype in line with environmental requirements. This is a way forward and there is no reason for staunch materialists to keep fending these new findings off.
As has been pointed out already, epigenetics, phenotypic plasticity etc are themselves mechanisms which have evolved. It's not an either / or situation.
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You are trying to have your cake and eat it also. :D
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Sriram,
You are trying to have your cake and eat it also. :D
What else should people do with cake?
Your mistakes about epigenetics etc have been explained to you several times already without rebuttal. This leaves you in dumb (and science-denying) guessing territory again for the reasons I took the time to explain to you and that you, predictably, have ignored.
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You are trying to have your cake and eat it also. :D
Life on Earth has become incredibly successful and in part this is due to the fact that evolution itself has evolved over time, incorporating more sophisticated features like phenotype plasticity. The evolution of sex is another example, something that happened quite early on in the history of life on Earth. By providing an efficient means to eliminate harmfull mutations at reproduction, life generally became more successful overall.
And more enjoyable, of course :D
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Life on Earth has become incredibly successful and in part this is due to the fact that evolution itself has evolved over time, incorporating more sophisticated features like phenotype plasticity. The evolution of sex is another example, something that happened quite early on in the history of life on Earth. By providing an efficient means to eliminate harmfull mutations at reproduction, life generally became more successful overall.
And more enjoyable, of course :D
You are talking as though evolution has agency and as though it is an entity.
Evolution is a process. For it to evolve and acquire more and more complex systems, it needs agency and clear objectives of survival, reproduction and development. It cannot happen merely through random variations.
As Denis Noble asks...how do you prove that the mutations are purely random?!
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As Denis Noble asks...how do you prove that the mutations are purely random?!
I have a feeling that they are, using my zoom out reasoning.
Proof enough for me.
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Sriram,
For it to evolve and acquire more and more complex systems, it needs agency and clear objectives of survival, reproduction and development.
I don't suppose there's any point in asking you why on earth you would think that to be true is there?
It cannot happen merely through random variations.
Your deep and abiding ignorance of the T of E is showing again here. No part of the Theory proposes that evolution happens "merely through random variations".
Could you not at least try to find what what the Theory actually says rather than straw man it?
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You are talking as though evolution has agency and as though it is an entity.
Evolution is a process. For it to evolve and acquire more and more complex systems, it needs agency and clear objectives of survival, reproduction and development. It cannot happen merely through random variations. ..
No, the opposite is true. Evolution is undirected. The patterns we see emerging merely reflect the designs for living organisms that are more successfully reproductive within their context. No evidence for 'guidance', that is not necessary to understand life on Earth.
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As Denis Noble asks...how do you prove that the mutations are purely random?!
You don't need to prove that, it is merely evident. How could a copying error not be random with respect to outcome ?
It may be the case that the distribution of mutations that are conserved is not random as some parts of the genome enjoy better DNA repair mechanisms providing better stability over long time periods. But that doesn't mean that mutations are not random in the first place, just that in highly protected regions they are more likely to get repaired.
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I talked of gravity as an example of a force (or field) that humans have experienced every day without noticing it. (Let me reiterate that noticing that we fall down is not the same as noticing gravity as a force).
Recognising gravity does not require you to be able to rationalise a cause for gravity, but let's presume that you meant 'explain' rather than 'notice'.
It needed someone to notice it, think about it and come up with an explanation before we realized that there was something pulling us down. Similarly, bacteria and viruses which we could not notice even though people fell ill regularly.
So there are phenomena, and we need to look more closely to deduce the causes of those phenomena - that's science.
This was to show that evidence for something could exist all around us and we might even experience it regularly, but we might not notice or realize what it is.
Except that what you're talking about isn't something that we all experience - expressly you keep saying that some of us just aren't attuned to it, somehow, that you need some combination of a special preconception and the right sensory apparatus which not everyone has - except that 'phenomenon' we have examined and fairly conclusively shown is a mixture of delusion and cognitive bias. What you're claiming as a 'phenomenon' is actually not something that's observed by anyone, even you - it's a conclusion you've aimed at and hit in the absence of any observation because it fits your preconception, and now you're having to try to dismiss that rigorous, methodical, evidence based investigation of phenomena that you lauded for teaching us about germ theory and gravitation because it doesn't give you the answer that you like.
And gravity's a great example, because the classical view of gravity as a force has been shown to be definitively wrong, not because it failed to explain the entirety of the situation (it didn't, as it had no explanation for where the energy was coming from to do the work of all the acceleration due to gravity) but because reality failed to conform to the predictions of the model in extreme circumstances.
It is possible that your pet theories of panpsychism and universal consciousness guiding evolution are correct; but you've not offered sufficient basis here to think that's the case, and you've not offered anything that distinguishable from personal incredulity as a reason to throw out the current scientific model.
I know these analogies probably make you nervous with the possibility that evidence for spiritual realities might really exist all around but you people may not be noticing. It could be a little disconcerting. But we should be prepared to face such possibilities if we want to understand reality in all its dimensions.
Why would I be nervous about a potentially entirely new aspect of reality for humanity to investigate, that's potentially a spectacular thing. Think of the cultural and civilisational adjustments that could be fostered if we could definitively show that there was something grander than us, that we had significance, that we mattered in some cosmic way? I'm not dismayed by the potential of your conclusion, I'm dismayed by the dire nature of the methodology by which you've come to it.
It's not that your definitively wrong, it's that you don't have a basis to be as definitive about anything as you're trying to be.
O.
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Recognising gravity does not require you to be able to rationalise a cause for gravity, but let's presume that you meant 'explain' rather than 'notice'.
So there are phenomena, and we need to look more closely to deduce the causes of those phenomena - that's science.
Except that what you're talking about isn't something that we all experience - expressly you keep saying that some of us just aren't attuned to it, somehow, that you need some combination of a special preconception and the right sensory apparatus which not everyone has - except that 'phenomenon' we have examined and fairly conclusively shown is a mixture of delusion and cognitive bias. What you're claiming as a 'phenomenon' is actually not something that's observed by anyone, even you - it's a conclusion you've aimed at and hit in the absence of any observation because it fits your preconception, and now you're having to try to dismiss that rigorous, methodical, evidence based investigation of phenomena that you lauded for teaching us about germ theory and gravitation because it doesn't give you the answer that you like.
And gravity's a great example, because the classical view of gravity as a force has been shown to be definitively wrong, not because it failed to explain the entirety of the situation (it didn't, as it had no explanation for where the energy was coming from to do the work of all the acceleration due to gravity) but because reality failed to conform to the predictions of the model in extreme circumstances.
It is possible that your pet theories of panpsychism and universal consciousness guiding evolution are correct; but you've not offered sufficient basis here to think that's the case, and you've not offered anything that distinguishable from personal incredulity as a reason to throw out the current scientific model.
Why would I be nervous about a potentially entirely new aspect of reality for humanity to investigate, that's potentially a spectacular thing. Think of the cultural and civilisational adjustments that could be fostered if we could definitively show that there was something grander than us, that we had significance, that we mattered in some cosmic way? I'm not dismayed by the potential of your conclusion, I'm dismayed by the dire nature of the methodology by which you've come to it.
It's not that your definitively wrong, it's that you don't have a basis to be as definitive about anything as you're trying to be.
O.
Recognizing gravity means knowing that some force is pulling you down when you fall. Almost all humans in the world (baring a few thinkers perhaps....once they are old enough) will not know of even notice that something is making them fall down. It is not about the mechanism....which I think even today we are not completely sure of.
Falling down, not flying, birds flying, monkeys jumping up trees....are all a normal part of life that no one questions. Even if someone questions, it will be attributed to God's plan. Similarly with bacterial and viral infections.
Point being that even today we could be influenced and surrounded by so many forces that we are not aware of....even though evidence for them could be readily available. We need to acknowledge this.
Spiritual experiences are personal and cannot be shared with others. But the experience can be discussed and understood by people who have had similar experiences. This is well known practice in spiritual circles.
Based on these experiences, we come up with philosophical interpretations which could be accepted by others within the circle. We are not concerned with mechanisms or the detailed microscopic aspects of the experience. But some research findings such as NDE investigations, reincarnation cases documented by Jim Tucker, could confirm these interpretations.
It is not that I am definitely correct but that the ideas are necessary to explain certain experience and also some of these research findings.
Problem however is that scientists and science enthusiasts have this problem with anything that could indicate possible non physical phenomena. This results in summary dismissal of such ideas. This is what creates the divide.
If scientists even accept the possibility of such phenomena existing, it will reduce the ideological gap somewhat and pave the way for possible research and investigations....in whatever way it is possible.
Cheers.
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Problem however is that scientists and science enthusiasts have this problem with anything that could indicate possible non physical phenomena. This results in summary dismissal of such ideas. This is what creates the divide.
If scientists even accept the possibility of such phenomena existing, it will reduce the ideological gap somewhat and pave the way for possible research and investigations....in whatever way it is possible.
Sriram
I think you are seeing this 'divide' because you are heaviliy invested in a 'spiritual' outlook where you are prepared to accept ideas such as reincarnation, so you'd prefer it if the rest of us took your ideas seriously.
But many of us don't, and we see 'spiritual' claims (and for me that also includes mainstream religions) as no more than dressed-up woo, and professional scientists won't engage because there is no theory or testable hypothesis they can work with - assuming they wish to continue their scientific careers.
Citing people like Tucker is pointless too, though no doubt through his book sales to the gullible he is laughing all the way to the bank.
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Recognizing gravity means knowing that some force is pulling you down when you fall. Almost all humans in the world (baring a few thinkers perhaps....once they are old enough) will not know of even notice that something is making them fall down. It is not about the mechanism....which I think even today we are not completely sure of.
Falling down, not flying, birds flying, monkeys jumping up trees....are all a normal part of life that no one questions. Even if someone questions, it will be attributed to God's plan. Similarly with bacterial and viral infections.
No, people wonder why these things happen and if they can't find other answers they attribute things to god/spirituality/fate. We've just got better, over time, at finding those answers.
Point being that even today we could be influenced and surrounded by so many forces that we are not aware of....even though evidence for them could be readily available. We need to acknowledge this.
We already have, science's output is always provisional.
Spiritual experiences are personal and cannot be shared with others.
And therefore at best questionable. The overwhelming majority of us experience the sensation of vision, but we have no direct way of comparing those entirely subjective experiences, so we develop a common framework of calibrated references to define concepts like colour and shape, and then machinery that can objectively measure those colourse and shapes and then we have some confidence of an independent confirmation of those concepts. If you want to throw 'spirit' into the mix you need an equivalent to spectrophotometer.
But the experience can be discussed and understood by people who have had similar experiences.
The fact that so many people don't experience it can also be discussed and understood, and conclusions drawn from that evidence.
This is well known practice in spiritual circles. Based on these experiences, we come up with philosophical interpretations which could be accepted by others within the circle. We are not concerned with mechanisms or the detailed microscopic aspects of the experience.
Which is why you have no valid basis for presuming that any of your conjectures is an accurate account, and why no-one here is under any obligation to take what you say seriously.
But some research findings such as NDE investigations, reincarnation cases documented by Jim Tucker, could confirm these interpretations.
Except that they've all been fairly thoroughly refuted, repeatedly.
It is not that I am definitely correct but that the ideas are necessary to explain certain experience and also some of these research findings.
No, they aren't necessary at all. They aren't even warranted for most of us who don't have these experiences that, themselves, have been given undue consideration in your assessment.
Problem however is that scientists and science enthusiasts have this problem with anything that could indicate possible non physical phenomena.
Not ideologically, they don't. They have a problem with claims being made without sufficient basis, and you don't have a reliable methodology for moving from your concept to validation. Scientests are rigorous people, they quantify their claims. If you want to suggest that something's somehow intrinsically beyond science's remit (despite the claim that it somehow elicits a sensory responsed, at least in some people) then you're going to have to provide a methodology for testing it or it's going to be ignored.
This results in summary dismissal of such ideas.
It isn't a summary dismissal, it's a reasoned dismissal. You have a claim, you have a logic, but you have not methodology for testing, so all you have is a claim, and no way to differentiate your claim from any other baseless assertion. The claim is dismissed, the idea remains a vague possibility awaiting a methodology.
This is what creates the divide.
No, what creates the divide is the expectation that because you believe everyone else should lower their rigorous standards and just accept your claim.
If scientists even accept the possibility of such phenomena existing, it will reduce the ideological gap somewhat and pave the way for possible research and investigations....in whatever way it is possible.
I expect pretty much every scientist in every field is open to the possibility of new phenomena, but if you want to suggest that there's something centuries of the most capable people on the planet have missed you need something more than your tingly feeling.
O.
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Gordon...you are not getting the point. Its not about me digging in my heels and you digging in your heels. That is easy.
As Outrider says ....you cannot say that I am definitely wrong. There is enough reason for anyone to accept the possibility of such phenomena which cannot be directly investigated through empirical methods. Accepting this possibility is all that is required to bridge the gap.
It is clearly wrong to brush off every serious investigator who claims evidence off the mainstream ideas, as a money making charlatan.
Its not about accepting religious ideas and myths and all such claims. You should be able to see the difference.
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Sriram,
Gordon...you are not getting the point. Its not about me digging in my heels and you digging in your heels. That is easy.
As Outrider says ....you cannot say that I am definitely wrong. There is enough reason for anyone to accept the possibility of such phenomena which cannot be directly investigated through empirical methods. Accepting this possibility is all that is required to bridge the gap.
Yet another piece of fallacious reasoning here. Your criticism is that your claims cannot be disproved, therefore they should be taken seriously. Trouble is, the same is true for claims about pixies, tap dancing aliens on Alpha Centauri and anything else that pops into anyone’s head. All of these things are “possible”, but only in the sense that that cannot be shown to be impossible.
See Russell's teapot (again) for where you went wrong:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell%27s_teapot
It is clearly wrong to brush off every serious investigator who claims evidence off the mainstream ideas, as a money making charlatan.
Who does that? Straw man fallacy.
Its not about accepting religious ideas and myths and all such claims. You should be able to see the difference.
Why do you keep dragging diversionary accusations of anti-religiosity into this? All people here do is to falsify your (frankly hopeless) attempts to reason your way to your conclusions, a simple thing to do even though you routinely just ignore the falsifications you’re given.
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if you want to suggest that there's something centuries of the most capable people on the planet have missed you need something more than your tingly feeling.
O.
Centuries of the most capable people have not missed it. Many many very wise and capable people have known it (but had different models or cultural interpretations).
It is only the rational thinkers who have missed it.
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It is only the rational thinkers who have missed it.
As opposed, presumably, to the irrational thinkers.
Give me rational thought any day.
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Centuries of the most capable people have not missed it.
Having the same unsubstantiated sense of something that can't be demonstrated isn't evidence of capability...
Many many very wise and capable people have known it (but had different models or cultural interpretations). It is only the rational thinkers who have missed it.
Read that again, I couldn't have put it any better myself. The rational people, as opposed to...
O.
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Sriram,
Centuries of the most capable people have not missed it.
Does it occur to you that that could be because “the most capable people” were more able than the least capable people to determine that there was no “it” to be missed?
Many many very wise and capable people have known it (but had different models or cultural interpretations).
No they haven’t. That many may have believed "it", thought "it", or just liked the notion of "it" may be true, but absent sound reasoning to justify those beliefs “knowing” is overreaching.
It is only the rational thinkers who have missed it.
As opposed to the dumb guessers who haven’t?
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Centuries of the most capable people have not missed it. Many many very wise and capable people have known it (but had different models or cultural interpretations).
But if these people were capable and wise, they'd have recognised the need for evidence to support their faith and belief, not merely to take things on trust. That is, of course, exactly what the rational thinkers did and concluded that they should not accept something to be true until or unless the evidence supported that notion.
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But if these people were capable and wise, they'd have recognised the need for evidence to support their faith and belief, not merely to take things on trust. That is, of course, exactly what the rational thinkers did and concluded that they should not accept something to be true until or unless the evidence supported that notion.
And thereby came in the zoom-in, microscopic experts! They did lot of good things no doubt....but left much wanting...
Rational thinking is not the panacea you might think it is. It has severe limitations.
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Sriram,
And thereby came in the zoom-in, microscopic experts!
Utter bullshit for reasons that keep being explained to you but that you're too dishonest to address.
They did lot of good things no doubt....but left much wanting...
But just guessing about stuff doesn't provide answers to what's "wanting".
Try to remember this.
Rational thinking is not the panacea you might think it is. It has severe limitations.
Rational thinking is the only method we have to distinguish truths from dumb guesses. If you have some other method in mind to do that job though, then it's your job to tell us what it is.
Try to remember this too.
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And thereby came in the zoom-in, microscopic experts!
Says the person who I consider to be one of the most 'zoomed-in' on this MB., seemingly unable to see anything beyond the achingly anthropocentric.
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Microscopic, rational thinking while very useful in certain ways, has been responsible for many of the short sighted inventions and activities in recent centuries.
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And thereby came in the zoom-in, microscopic experts! They did lot of good things no doubt....but left much wanting...
You keep saying that, but you can't even demonstrate the alleged phenomenon that you think defies current explanation.
Rational thinking is not the panacea you might think it is. It has severe limitations.
That's debatable, but given that your alternative appears to be not thinking at all and just accepting at face value subjective experience from a small subset of the populace, I'll stick with rational thinking if it's all the same to you.
Microscopic, rational thinking while very useful in certain ways, has been responsible for many of the short sighted inventions and activities in recent centuries.
Whether the applications of science have been necessarily wise is absolutely open to debate, but importantly those 'short-sighted' inventions only worked because the science was correct, that's actually how things work. If science had misunderstood, say, atomic theory, then we wouldn't have a debate about whether nuclear weapons or nuclear power was a wise choice, because it wouldn't be a choice at all.
If we didn't understand heredity and evolutionary biology we wouldn't have the efficacy we have of antibiotics, organ transplants, treatments for inherited medical conditions etc. Again, in a world we aren't providing adequately for all, you could argue that medical improvements to keep even more people alive aren't justified, but that doesn't undermine the fact that the science works, we appear to have an accurate understanding of how it works.
Which makes your unsubstantiated assertions that we need to stop doing science and start accepting woo-claims instead even more ridiculous. You can, potentially, displace science, but you need a BETTER methodology, not 'no methodology at all, just trust me guys, I'm special'.
O.
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Microscopic, rational thinking while very useful in certain ways, has been responsible for many of the short sighted inventions and activities in recent centuries.
Whereas unevidenced woo has been responsible for nothing, except shysters bilking marks.
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Which makes your unsubstantiated assertions that we need to stop doing science and start accepting woo-claims instead even more ridiculous. You can, potentially, displace science, but you need a BETTER methodology, not 'no methodology at all, just trust me guys, I'm special'.
O.
Where did that come from? You people are deliberately misunderstanding. A straw man as you people keep saying.
I have never said that we should stop doing science or anything of that sort. That is nonsense. Science has its place and its usefulness. But scientism is wrong.
There are realities beyond the physical that cannot be proved or shown physically using standard scientific methods. These realities need to be acknowledged and bridged with the findings of science to create a total picture.
That is all it is about!
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Where did that come from? You people are deliberately misunderstanding.
It came from your complete failure to provide an argument in support of your assertion, and the subsequent cry to arms for a programme to cut short science as finished and accept woo as the furtherance of human knowledge.
A straw man as you people keep saying.
I'm reasonably confident that, whilst done in a sarcastic tone, the summary of your posts is accurate.
I have never said that we should stop doing science or anything of that sort. That is nonsense. Science has its place and its usefulness. But scientism is wrong.
But you are suggesting that science doesn't have any capacity to move us forward with evolutionary biology because to do so it would have to forego evidence and testing and measurement and instead rely on unsubstantiated beliefs of panpsychism which are, arbitrarily, beyond science's remit.
There are realities beyond the physical that cannot be proved or shown physically using standard scientific methods.
There might be. If you want to show that there are you need to demonstrate that, not just claim it. If, for whatever reason, you think that these concepts are beyond science's capacity to investigate (despite their stated impact on the physical world) you'll need to provide an alternate methodology rather than just 'feeling' like it's true.
These realities need to be acknowledged and bridged with the findings of science to create a total picture.
No, these claims need to be justified before they can be counted as a depiction of reality.
That is all it is about!
Just that. Just that you have post-science reality to share with the world, but they'll just have to trust you because you have the square root of shit and shower-gel by way of a justification for your claims. That's all!
O.
Moderator editing to make quotes work
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??? ???
Why are you people getting so upset about me wanting to see the big picture?! Whew!!
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??? ???
Why are you people getting so upset about me wanting to see the big picture?! Whew!!
We all want to see the big picture. We're getting 'upset', to the extent we are, by the fact that you are claiming to have a big picture, you can't explain it without resorting to woo, and you suggest some combination of physiological or spiritual ineptitude on the part of people who don't agree with the unsubstantiated claims you're making.
O.
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We all want to see the big picture. We're getting 'upset', to the extent we are, by the fact that you are claiming to have a big picture, you can't explain it without resorting to woo, and you suggest some combination of physiological or spiritual ineptitude on the part of people who don't agree with the unsubstantiated claims you're making.
O.
Unless you come out of this concept of 'woo'....you can never see the big picture. The two boxes syndrome!
https://tsriramrao.wordpress.com/2018/03/03/the-two-boxes-syndrome/
Anyway....have a good day.
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Unless you come out of this concept of 'woo'....you can never see the big picture. The two boxes syndrome!
https://tsriramrao.wordpress.com/2018/03/03/the-two-boxes-syndrome/
Anyway....have a good day.
It's not woo because of the formulation, it's woo because you assert it and then can't offer any validity to back it. It's not woo vs reality, it's woo vs science, it's in the (lack of) way that you justify your claims, not the nature of those claims.
O.
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Sriram,
More corrections for you to ignore…
Unless you come out of this concept of 'woo'....
Why should anyone “come out of the concept of woo” when woo is precisely all you offer here?
“Woo” is:
“...a pejorative term for pseudoscientific explanations that share certain common characteristics, often being too good to be true (aside from being unscientific). The term is common among skeptical writers. Woo is understood specifically as dressing itself in the trappings of science (but not the substance) while involving unscientific concepts, such as anecdotal evidence and sciencey-sounding words.”
https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Woo
An uncannily accurate description of your efforts here right?
…you can never see the big picture.
Just asserting that you can see a supposed “big picture” does not mean that you do any such thing.
Try to remember this.
The two boxes syndrome!
https://tsriramrao.wordpress.com/2018/03/03/the-two-boxes-syndrome/
Your “two box syndrome” idiocy that has been falsified here many times without you even attempting a rebuttal, and just linking to your own error-riddled blog about it doesn’t change that.
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I don't claim to see the big picture. I am trying to see it.
You people have managed to piece together a small picture based on the findings of science and you are looking for remaining pieces related to that picture to complete it. Any pieces seemingly unrelated to the already formed picture is thrown off the table as useless.
I on the other hand, believe in keeping all the pieces, however unrelated they may seem, on the table and make an attempt to fit it in with the current picture.
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I don't claim to see the big picture. I am trying to see it.
You people have managed to piece together a small picture based on the findings of science and you are looking for remaining pieces related to that picture to complete it. Any pieces seemingly unrelated to the already formed picture is thrown off the table as useless.
I on the other hand, believe in keeping all the pieces, however unrelated they may seem, on the table and make an attempt to fit it in with the current picture.
Sounds like you're doing a jigsaw.
Maybe some pieces you think you have just don't belong, but you're trying to use them anyway, or maybe they don't fit together very easily but you're tempted to force them, or maybe where you think you see a gap you're tempted to just make up your own pieces and colour them in just to get it done in line with what you'd prefer the finished jigsaw to look like - but crucially, you don't have the 'picture on the box' showing what it's supposed to look like, but that doesn't stop you creating your own 'big picture' from the pieces you think you have: whether they actually fit or not, or even whether they actually exist or not.
But if there is no complete 'picture on the box' the risk is that 'big picture' you are trying to assemble doesn't really exist at all outwith your imagination - and even if you think 'reality' is a bit like a jigsaw you can ever be sure you have all the pieces and how they fit together, or that the gaps you think you see can eventually be filled in since there is no 'picture on the box' to work from.
Or maybe there is no overarching 'picture on the box', that will also give an impression of meaning and purpose. So even if you have a few pieces that seem to fit together, for now anyway, the idea that there must be some form of ultimate 'big picture' with no gaps is speculative, unknowable and is begging the question - and that trying to presume one from just a few pieces is a fool's errand.
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I don't claim to see the big picture. I am trying to see it.
You people have managed to piece together a small picture based on the findings of science and you are looking for remaining pieces related to that picture to complete it. Any pieces seemingly unrelated to the already formed picture is thrown off the table as useless.
I on the other hand, believe in keeping all the pieces, however unrelated they may seem, on the table and make an attempt to fit it in with the current picture.
OK, but you will not get to an authentic overall picture by dismissing or skewing the pieces that we have discovered to date. You have to be true to the pieces gathered so far.
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I don't claim to see the big picture. I am trying to see it.
You people have managed to piece together a small picture based on the findings of science and you are looking for remaining pieces related to that picture to complete it. Any pieces seemingly unrelated to the already formed picture is thrown off the table as useless.
I on the other hand, believe in keeping all the pieces, however unrelated they may seem, on the table and make an attempt to fit it in with the current picture.
You need to show that these unrelated pieces that you allege we are throwing off the table even exist.
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Sounds like you're doing a jigsaw.
Maybe some pieces you think you have just don't belong, but you're trying to use them anyway, or maybe they don't fit together very easily but you're tempted to force them, or maybe where you think you see a gap you're tempted to just make up your own pieces and colour them in just to get it done in line with what you'd prefer the finished jigsaw to look like - but crucially, you don't have the 'picture on the box' showing what it's supposed to look like, but that doesn't stop you creating your own 'big picture' from the pieces you think you have: whether they actually fit or not, or even whether they actually exist or not.
But if there is no complete 'picture on the box' the risk is that 'big picture' you are trying to assemble doesn't really exist at all outwith your imagination - and even if you think 'reality' is a bit like a jigsaw you can ever be sure you have all the pieces and how they fit together, or that the gaps you think you see can eventually be filled in since there is no 'picture on the box' to work from.
Or maybe there is no overarching 'picture on the box', that will also give an impression of meaning and purpose. So even if you have a few pieces that seem to fit together, for now anyway, the idea that there must be some form of ultimate 'big picture' with no gaps is speculative, unknowable and is begging the question - and that trying to presume one from just a few pieces is a fool's errand.
The picture is not available on the box...that is the problem. Perhaps even if it was available, we wouldn't understand it. Who would have understood a picture with pieces like the big bang, QM, relativity, genetics and evolution....500 years ago?
But we have the need to understand and get a better idea of our lives. That cannot be helped. Point is that this quest is not just about the external physical universe, but is more about our lives, death and absolute morality. You people conveniently dismiss all this as not meaningful and forget about it. I am not able to do that.
My experiences tell me that life and death do have a meaning and that there is an absolute morality. So....I find that the extra pieces that you dismiss, do have a meaningful place in the total picture. They do fit in somewhere.
The problem is in rearranging the accepted materialistic picture with the additional pieces and fitting them all together in as grand a picture as we can manage with present knowledge and capabilities.
I am sure it will be done sometime.
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OK, but you will not get to an authentic overall picture by dismissing or skewing the pieces that we have discovered to date. You have to be true to the pieces gathered so far.
It depends. It need not change dramatically. If however, some pieces of the present picture need to be rearranged to fit in the additional pieces, it needs to be done. Like for example, including Lamarckism, epigenetics and plasticity in evolution instead of the metaphoric natural selection and random variations.
Such changes could help in expanding the picture somewhat thereby enabling other pieces to probably fit in by and by.
It remains to be seen how well the pieces will fit. As I have said...long way to go.
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OK, but you will not get to an authentic overall picture by dismissing or skewing the pieces that we have discovered to date. You have to be true to the pieces gathered so far.
There is a big picture, and we do not know just how much there is yet to discover about the reality we exist in.
We have some pieces derived from what we can discover with our physical senses, which is somewhat limited to what can be detected through our physical senses. These pieces are materialistic in nature because of these limitations.
Then we have the mysteries of the human mind and its capability to contemplate that there may be aspects of reality beyond what can be detected by our physical senses. In particular, our ability to contemplate such matters goes beyond what can be defined by material explanations alone. We have a yearning, a desire to seek the truth behind our existence - a yearning which in itself is evidence that the human mind comprises more than the mere consequence of material reactions. A yearning which is directed from the entity of conscious awareness which is you - not from the inevitable, unavoidable consequence of material reactions alone. This yearning is evidenced by the many religious beliefs derived from our conscious awareness that there is more to reality than what we see. Our human nature has a natural instinct to search for God - and there is just one religion which can claim to have encountered God as a living being on this earth.
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Sriram,
The picture is not available on the box...that is the problem.
If you want to know what the “picture on the box” represents then you need to assemble the pieces of the jig-saw one at a time. There is no other method – or at least none that you’ve managed to propose here, preferring instead as you do a dispiriting mix of woo, evidence denial and wishful thinking.
Perhaps even if it was available, we wouldn't understand it. Who would have understood a picture with pieces like the big bang, QM, relativity, genetics and evolution....500 years ago?
No, but the reason we understand them now (to varying degrees) is due entirely to the patient, evidence-based work of the people on whose shoulders we now stand. None of them are now understood because of pseudo-science, false reasoning and dumb guessing.
Try to remember this.
But we have the need to understand and get a better idea of our lives. That cannot be helped. Point is that this quest is not just about the external physical universe, but is more about our lives, death and absolute morality.
What on earth would make you think that there’s any such thing as “absolute morality”?
You people…
Why is it that when you begin a sentence with “you people” a straw man will follow as night follows day?
…conveniently dismiss all this as not meaningful and forget about it. I am not able to do that.
And there is it. “We people” don’t “conveniently forget” any such thing – you’re no more interested in “getting a better idea of our lives” than anyone else. The difference though is that you cleave to beliefs you find most comforting based on very bad reasoning, whereas others set the epistemic bar somewhat higher.
My experiences tell me that life and death do have a meaning and that there is an absolute morality. So....I find that the extra pieces that you dismiss, do have a meaningful place in the total picture. They do fit in somewhere.
But “your experiences” are worthless for anyone other than you unless you can find some way to distinguish them from bad reasoning, manufactured evidence and dumb guessing.
That’s your problem remember?
The problem is in rearranging the accepted materialistic picture with the additional pieces and fitting them all together in as grand a picture as we can manage with present knowledge and capabilities.
No, “the” problem (ie, your problem) is that these supposed “additional pieces” you claim to exist cannot be shown to exist at all. I suggest you start with justifying these claims without collapsing into fallacious arguments before you make demands about "rearranging" the evidence we actually do have.
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I don't claim to see the big picture. I am trying to see it.
Perhaps you should start from the bits of the picture that we do appear to know, rather than baselessly presuming that it has no capacity for expansion, rather than throwing it out in favour of ... whatever it is that you think you do or don't know based on... something.
You people have managed to piece together a small picture based on the findings of science and you are looking for remaining pieces related to that picture to complete it.
Yep.
Any pieces seemingly unrelated to the already formed picture is thrown off the table as useless.
No, they're put back in the box to be checked again later - it might be that they will fit when we have a bigger picture, or it might be that they're from a different picture entirely, or it might be that they're pieces of dust that you've mistakenly thought are part of the picture, or it could be that you've presumed there is a piece to go somewhere, but actually there just isn't.
O.
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Perhaps you should start from the bits of the picture that we do appear to know, rather than baselessly presuming that it has no capacity for expansion, rather than throwing it out in favour of ... whatever it is that you think you do or don't know based on... something.
Yep.
No, they're put back in the box to be checked again later - it might be that they will fit when we have a bigger picture, or it might be that they're from a different picture entirely, or it might be that they're pieces of dust that you've mistakenly thought are part of the picture, or it could be that you've presumed there is a piece to go somewhere, but actually there just isn't.
O.
Absolutely - Sriram's approach is to ignore the pieces we have already fitted into the jigsaw and decide, based on an evidence-free preconception what all the gaps 'must show'.
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There is a big picture, and we do not know just how much there is yet to discover about the reality we exist in.
We have some pieces derived from what we can discover with our physical senses, which is somewhat limited to what can be detected through our physical senses. These pieces are materialistic in nature because of these limitations.
Then we have the mysteries of the human mind and its capability to contemplate that there may be aspects of reality beyond what can be detected by our physical senses. In particular, our ability to contemplate such matters goes beyond what can be defined by material explanations alone. We have a yearning, a desire to seek the truth behind our existence - a yearning which in itself is evidence that the human mind comprises more than the mere consequence of material reactions. A yearning which is directed from the entity of conscious awareness which is you - not from the inevitable, unavoidable consequence of material reactions alone. This yearning is evidenced by the many religious beliefs derived from our conscious awareness that there is more to reality than what we see. Our human nature has a natural instinct to search for God - and there is just one religion which can claim to have encountered God as a living being on this earth.
Can't see that 'a yearning, a desire to seek the truth' is 'evidence that the human mind comprises more than the mere consequence of material reactions.'.
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It depends. It need not change dramatically. If however, some pieces of the present picture need to be rearranged to fit in the additional pieces, it needs to be done. Like for example, including Lamarckism, epigenetics and plasticity in evolution instead of the metaphoric natural selection and random variations.
There you go again, throwing out major pieces of the puzzle and proffering up some minor ones instead. You will never get anywhere near the big picture thataway, airily dismissing natural selection as a mere metaphor when in fact it is one of the most solid, well evidenced insights in all of science. All the other processes of evolution that you seem to value more are themselves products of descent with variation plus selection. This is like trying to understand subduction or orogeny or earthquakes whilst denying plate tectonics which gives rise to the aforementioned in the first place.
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There is a big picture, and we do not know just how much there is yet to discover about the reality we exist in.
We have some pieces derived from what we can discover with our physical senses, which is somewhat limited to what can be detected through our physical senses. These pieces are materialistic in nature because of these limitations.
Then we have the mysteries of the human mind and its capability to contemplate that there may be aspects of reality beyond what can be detected by our physical senses. In particular, our ability to contemplate such matters goes beyond what can be defined by material explanations alone. We have a yearning, a desire to seek the truth behind our existence - a yearning which in itself is evidence that the human mind comprises more than the mere consequence of material reactions. A yearning which is directed from the entity of conscious awareness which is you - not from the inevitable, unavoidable consequence of material reactions alone. This yearning is evidenced by the many religious beliefs derived from our conscious awareness that there is more to reality than what we see. Our human nature has a natural instinct to search for God - and there is just one religion which can claim to have encountered God as a living being on this earth.
As for 'yearning' I think there is a widespread yearning to not die and this goes a long way to explaining why religions that teach that we don't really die when we die remain popular even in this supposedly modern age. I put this down as a head game, one of many that we indulge, that we channel to help manage our existential angst.
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What is the big picture you people have created? The big bang.... with no idea of what causes it in the first place. No idea of 95% of the matter in the universe. Dark Matter, Dark Energy....what are they....do they even exist? QM and relativity don't add up.
Evolution....based largely on chance and random events. Inheritance is still not understood. Technology ....yes... it has helped somewhat but also created many problems.
All very well....but what does it all add up to? Nothing. A vast universe with us on a tiny planet with no idea why we are here. Oh...I am not even supposed to raise that question...!
Human mind and consciousness...still a great mystery. Death....no idea, except some silly definition about permanent cessation of vital functions... All morality decided by unreliable activists and cranky judges.
Important and personally relevant areas to humans such as NDE's, reincarnation research etc. brushed off as nonsense.
Where really are we?! What big picture?!
It is only when we understand consciousness and death will we really understand our lives in the right context. At that point the picture created so far by science will seem insignificant and unimportant.
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Can't see that 'a yearning, a desire to seek the truth' is 'evidence that the human mind comprises more than the mere consequence of material reactions.'.
And the material definition of 'a yearning, a desire to seek the truth' is .... ? ???
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And the material definition of 'a yearning, a desire to seek the truth' is .... ? ???
What's a 'material definition'? What other type(s) of definition are there?
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And the material definition of 'a yearning, a desire to seek the truth' is .... ? ???
A materialist might say that desires arise from the brain cortex and are based upon the attraction of pleasure and the avoidance of pain. Whatever its origin, the fact that you have included 'yearning and desire' in your previous post surely contradicts your notion of 'free will'? i.e. your will is not free from desire.
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Sriram,
What is the big picture you people have created?
The “big picture” so far is a mix of theories and hypotheses that together take a us a far as we can reasonably go toward understanding the universe.
The big bang.... with no idea of what causes it in the first place. No idea of 95% of the matter in the universe. Dark Matter, Dark Energy....what are they....do they even exist? QM and relativity don't add up.
Yes, there are lots of unanswered questions still. Exciting isn’t it?
Evolution....based largely on chance and random events.
Depends what you mean by “largely” though remember? For practical purposes mutations are "random”, but their interactions with environments are anything but random.
You really should understand this by now.
Inheritance is still not understood.
To a significant degree, yes it is.
Technology ....yes... it has helped somewhat but also created many problems.
“Somewhat”? Seriously?
All very well....but what does it all add up to? Nothing. A vast universe with us on a tiny planet with no idea why we are here. Oh...I am not even supposed to raise that question...!
You can ask anything you like, but you need to understand too that a “why” question is incoherent unless you can establish first that there need be a why. This is the begging the question mistake you’re so fond of.
Human mind and consciousness...still a great mystery.
Largely yes, though inroads into that are being made all the time. So?
Death....no idea, except some silly definition about permanent cessation of vital functions...
What makes you think that definition to be silly?
All morality decided by unreliable activists and cranky judges.
“All morality” isn’t “decided” that way.
Important and personally relevant areas to humans such as NDE's, reincarnation research etc. brushed off as nonsense.
They’re not “important” when they fail basic tests of reason and evidence. That these daftnesses may be “personally important” to you nonetheless tells us more about your credulity than about these supposed phenomena.
Where really are we?! What big picture?!
Where we “really” are is inching our way slowly and painstakingly toward a greater understanding of reality.
It is only when we understand consciousness and death will we really understand our lives in the right context.
We already understand death, and the consciousness claim is debatable.
At that point the picture created so far by science will seem insignificant and unimportant.
No, the “picture created so far by science” will seem what it will be – important steps along the way which enable(d) richer understandings in due course.
What you’ve tried here is just the old “science doesn’t know everything” trope. No-one claims otherwise though (least of all people who do science), but absent its tools and methods your blind guessing about a supposed “big picture” is worse than useless.
Try to remember this too.
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AB,
And the material definition of 'a yearning, a desire to seek the truth' is .... ? ???
Don't know (though it seems likely to be just a manifestation of our species' inherent characteristic of pattern- and explanation-seeking that's brought with it significant evolutionary advantages).
So?
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What is the big picture you people have created? The big bang.... with no idea of what causes it in the first place. No idea of 95% of the matter in the universe. Dark Matter, Dark Energy....what are they....do they even exist? QM and relativity don't add up.
Evolution....based largely on chance and random events. Inheritance is still not understood. Technology ....yes... it has helped somewhat but also created many problems.
All very well....but what does it all add up to? Nothing. A vast universe with us on a tiny planet with no idea why we are here. Oh...I am not even supposed to raise that question...!
Human mind and consciousness...still a great mystery. Death....no idea, except some silly definition about permanent cessation of vital functions... All morality decided by unreliable activists and cranky judges.
Important and personally relevant areas to humans such as NDE's, reincarnation research etc. brushed off as nonsense.
Where really are we?! What big picture?!
It is only when we understand consciousness and death will we really understand our lives in the right context. At that point the picture created so far by science will seem insignificant and unimportant.
it is better to be true to the discoveries that we have made so far, rather than fantasising some imagined grand narrative into which human consciousness and values will one day find their proper place. Be evidence-led, start from the ground up, put the pieces together as you find them, not as you would like them to be in order to construct some pleasing anthropocentric artifice. Reality has an inconvenient habit of puncturing such illusions sooner or later.
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it is better to be true to the discoveries that we have made so far, rather than fantasising some imagined grand narrative into which human consciousness and values will one day find their proper place. Be evidence-led, start from the ground up, put the pieces together as you find them, not as you would like them to be in order to construct some pleasing anthropocentric artifice. Reality has an inconvenient habit of puncturing such illusions sooner or later.
We have already discussed how evidence can be all around us but we may not notice. We have to start noticing..... for which the mind has to be suitably prepared.
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Sriram,
We have already discussed how evidence can be all around us but we may not notice.
That can be true, yes.
We have to start noticing.....
Er, no. Before you can “start noticing” evidence you need determine what actually is evidence, how you’d obtain it and how you’d evaluate it once you had it. Otherwise you could call anything you like “evidence” when it’s just as likely to be no such thing.
…for which the mind has to be suitably prepared.
Depends what you mean by “prepared”, but inasmuch as you might for example consider it to mean something like, “removing so far as possible subjective biases so as to approximate the best available objective explanatory model” then fair enough. Your problem though is that, so far at least, you’ve never managed even to suggest that you’ve “prepared” your mind in that direction. That is, subjectivity and biases are all you have.
By the way, if you insist on routinely just ignoring every correction you’re given here how do you expect ever to learn anything?
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And the material definition of 'a yearning, a desire to seek the truth' is .... ? ???
You said 'We have a yearning, a desire to seek the truth behind our existence - a yearning which in itself is evidence that the human mind comprises more than the mere consequence of material reactions.' so really need to back that up. Asking what is the alternative isn't doing that. I don't have to provide an alternative - if I did I would then need to provide evidence to back it up.
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What is the big picture you people have created?
The point is not to create the picture, it's to reveal it.
The big bang.... with no idea of what causes it in the first place. No idea of 95% of the matter in the universe. Dark Matter, Dark Energy....what are they....do they even exist? QM and relativity don't add up.
Why does 'I don't know' scare you so much that you need to cling to a baseless attempt at explanation that doesn't resolve anything?
Evolution....based largely on chance and random events.
That's where the evidence leads, yes.
Inheritance is still not understood.
There are always nuances to uncover, but as a principle it's pretty well understood.
Technology ....yes... it has helped somewhat but also created many problems.
Arguably the technology merely is, it's the people applying it, and how they choose to do so, that's problematic at times, and people have never needed technology to be problematic.
All very well....but what does it all add up to? Nothing. A vast universe with us on a tiny planet with no idea why we are here.
Worse than that, no obvious reason to the think that there IS a reason why we're here.
Oh...I am not even supposed to raise that question...!
You can raise any question you like, but if you do you should have a genuine interest in what the possible answers are, and a basis for accepting the one that you do.
Human mind and consciousness...still a great mystery. Death....no idea, except some silly definition about permanent cessation of vital functions...
Still struggling with that 'I don't know' situation, it seems. Does mystery upset you, frighten you, unsettle you? What is it?
All morality decided by unreliable activists and cranky judges.
When instead it should be alleged by unreliable witnesses to be the revealed wisdom of cranky gods? Think for yourself, take responsibility for your own actions, don't abrogate your moral conscience to obey someone else's directive because they claim 'holy'.
Important and personally relevant areas to humans such as NDE's, reincarnation research etc. brushed off as nonsense.
They aren't brushed off at all, they are extensively and deeply researched because that degree of commonality of response to a stimulus is indicative of something. What they aren't, necessarily, is just accepted at face value because we know that human beings are unreliable witnesses at the best of times, and under the physiological and psychological stresses of a near death event that unreliability is only magnified.
Where really are we?! What big picture?!
The big picture appears, at the moment, to be a whole lot of darkness with just a patch of human exploration lighting a corner - maybe we'll spread across the picture, maybe we'll find different coloured lights brightening other areas.
It is only when we understand consciousness and death will we really understand our lives in the right context.
How can you be confident of a what the implications of knowledge of death and consciousness (notwithstanding the understanding we have of those already which you've offered no reason to think is wrong) will be, until and unless they happen? You don't - can't - know the 'right context' of something that, by your own telling, no-one understands.
At that point the picture created so far by science will seem insignificant and unimportant.
Hardly surprising that would be your conclusion given that a) you've not really looked at it, b) the bits you have looked at you've looked at from the wrong side, and c) you started looking at it with the preconceived notion that it was wrong.
O.
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I said the tiny picture already created would be insignificant....not wrong. Present materialistic picture could be right and still be unimportant compared to more significant findings about consciousness and death. These are the more relevant aspects that we need to know about.
I never said that science is wrong (though some fondly held theories such as random variations and NS could be wrong). I am only saying that the focus on the material aspects alone is wrong. We need to focus more on the mind, consciousness and death.
But research in these areas is limited to neuroscience where merely peering into the brain is considered as sufficient.
The mind and the brain are different. We have insufficient and the wrong tools for the kind of research required. People need to think out of the box and shed their fear of non physical realities.
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I said the tiny picture already created would be insignificant....not wrong. Present materialistic picture could be right and still be unimportant compared to more significant findings about consciousness and death. These are the more relevant aspects that we need to know about.
I never said that science is wrong (though some fondly held theories such as random variations and NS could be wrong). I am only saying that the focus on the material aspects alone is wrong. We need to focus more on the mind, consciousness and death.
But research in these areas is limited to neuroscience where merely peering into the brain is considered as sufficient.
The mind and the brain are different. We have insufficient and the wrong tools for the kind of research required. People need to think out of the box and shed their fear of non physical realities.
You keep on claiming that science is wrong whilst denying that you are claiming such. This is evident in the above post. If evolution by mutation and selection is 'wrong' then we can we might as well throw out the entirety of science, as there is hardly anything else that is so well attested and supported by evidence as this founding principle of biology. The picture we have from science may well be incomplete but really you are not going to get anywhere by dismissing the main peices of the puzzle that we have discovered to date. Whatever grand narrative you care to come up with, it has to respect this or it is worthless fantasy.
Mind and brain are the same thing in the sense that they are best understood as aspects of the same thing, the experiential, or subjective aspect and the objective, or material aspect. Going by the evidence, the two are intimately bonded, you cannot have one without the other.
Everything has a subjective and an objective aspect. Blueness for example is the experiential aspext of lightwaves with wavelengths of 450 to 495 (nm). You don't get to have blueness if such lightwaves don't exist.
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You keep on claiming that science is wrong whilst denying that you are claiming such. This is evident in the above post. If evolution by mutation and selection is 'wrong' then we can we might as well throw out the entirety of science, as there is hardly anything else that is so well attested and supported by evidence as this founding principle of biology. The picture we have from science may well be incomplete but really you are not going to get anywhere by dismissing the main peices of the puzzle that we have discovered to date. Whatever grand narrative you care to come up with, it has to respect this or it is worthless fantasy.
Mind and brain are the same thing in the sense that they are best understood as aspects of the same thing, the experiential, or subjective aspect and the objective, or material aspect. Going by the evidence, the two are intimately bonded, you cannot have one without the other.
Everything has a subjective and an objective aspect. Blueness for example is the experiential aspext of lightwaves with wavelengths of 450 to 495 (nm). You don't get to have blueness if such lightwaves don't exist.
Just because natural selection is just a metaphor and you have no idea whether the genetic variations are actually random or not....does not mean that the big bang or QM or relativity are wrong. That is what I mean.
Understanding subjectivity (consciousness) is fundamental. Once that is understood...it is like looking outside the VR headset at the real world. We will have a top down view and will see everything in context. At that point....evolution, its purpose and its true mechanisms will also become obvious.
This is when....instead of continuing with the microscopic perspective as at present....we will have a bigger picture view (not necessarily the complete picture).
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The mind and the brain are different. We have insufficient and the wrong tools for the kind of research required. People need to think out of the box and shed their fear of non physical realities.
Just no: the mind, as we experience it, is but a function of the brain: no functional human brain = no human mind, and vice versa.
What is a "non physical reality" - can you cite one and explain its 'non physical' characteristics?
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Understanding hardware is not the same as understanding software. Software is hardware dependent...I agree.... but that does not mean they are the same thing.
You cannot understand software by merely poking around into the hardware.
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Just because natural selection is just a metaphor and you have no idea whether the genetic variations are actually random or not....does not mean that the big bang or QM or relativity are wrong. That is what I mean.
Understanding subjectivity (consciousness) is fundamental. Once that is understood...it is like looking outside the VR headset at the real world. We will have a top down view and will see everything in context. At that point....evolution, its purpose and its true mechanisms will also become obvious.
This is when....instead of continuing with the microscopic perspective as at present....we will have a bigger picture view (not necessarily the complete picture).
Natural Selection is not a metaphor, this has been explained to you dozens of times already. A metaphor is a linguistic construct. NS can no more be a metaphor than photosynthesis or electromagetism can. These are all phenomena that we observe with regard to how the natural world works. This is really elementary science but you seem to have some sort of mental block about it and you aren't going to make any progress until you get your head round these basic insights.
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Understanding hardware is not the same as understanding software. Software is hardware dependent...I agree.... but that does not mean they are the same thing.
You cannot understand software by merely poking around into the hardware.
Have you considered that in the case of mind/brain the 'hardware' and 'software' might well be one and the same: and that the computer vs programme analogy doesn't really fly.
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I said the tiny picture already created would be insignificant....not wrong.
What reasoning have you undertaken to determine how much of the picture has already been revealed? You can't say whether it's right or wrong, the best you can do is reailse that it's possible.
Present materialistic picture could be right and still be unimportant compared to more significant findings about consciousness and death.
Could be. Do you have a reason to think that's the case, or just your devotion to your preconception?
These are the more relevant aspects that we need to know about.
Again, what methodology are you using to make that determination?
I never said that science is wrong (though some fondly held theories such as random variations and NS could be wrong).
You're actually going further than that - you're not saying that the notion of scientific enquiry is inherently wrong, I'll grant you, but you are claiming that it is inherently limited to the point where it is no longer useful for further exploration of evolution, and at the same time specifically saying that random variation is not the case. I'm still unclear as to whether you think Natural Selection is actually a thing or not, I suspect you don't think it's unguidedly natural, but that's not important to this point.
I am only saying that the focus on the material aspects alone is wrong.
But you've provided no basis for that. You've suggested that you'd like the explanation to be woo, but you've offered absolutely nothing in defence of that proposition. Even if you could, somehow, comprehensively debunk random variation and natural selection, that still wouldn't in any way actually support your claims of panpsychism or any of the other spiritu-mystic witchcraft that you propose. You need a methodology that you currently don't have, a basis to consider that methodology reliable which you don't have, and then the application of that methodology over a broad range of people, cultures, backgrounds, timeframes and examples to come close to having a basis to put it up against the current explanation based on scientific enquiry.
We need to focus more on the mind, consciousness and death.
Because you (and one eminent heart specialist) have reservations about natural selection and random variation (and different qualms, at that).
But research in these areas is limited to neuroscience where merely peering into the brain is considered as sufficient.
If you have an alternative, reliable methodology go get your Nobel prize, but if all you have is 'what if woo...' then I'll hold off on discarding two centuries of accumulated understanding from conventional science just yet.
The mind and the brain are different.
No-one is suggesting any different, but if you want to suggest that mind is something more than activity in a brain you need a basis for that, and you don't appear to have it.
We have insufficient and the wrong tools for the kind of research required.
And your basis for that claim is, what, because it seems from here like your basis for that is that you don't like the answers that science comes to.
People need to think out of the box and shed their fear of non physical realities.
I am exactly as afraid of non-physical realities as I am of gods, given that I don't have a basis to accept that either of them exists. I'm not afraid of the Jabberwocky, Cthulu or Slaanesh either, for the same (non-) reasons.
O.
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Sriram,
I said the tiny picture already created would be insignificant....not wrong. Present materialistic picture could be right and still be unimportant compared to more significant findings about consciousness and death. These are the more relevant aspects that we need to know about.
Do you have any reason to think that the answers to questions about “more significant findings about consciousness and death” won’t be materialistic in character (or indeed that there’s even such a thing as a non-materialistic)?
I never said that science is wrong (though some fondly held theories such as random variations and NS could be wrong). I am only saying that the focus on the material aspects alone is wrong. We need to focus more on the mind, consciousness and death.
You’ve consistently misrepresented the findings of science, and anything science has discovered “could be” wrong – that’s why it deals in theories rather than in proofs.
But research in these areas is limited to neuroscience where merely peering into the brain is considered as sufficient.
Wrong again – it’s not that it’s necessarily “sufficient” but rather than currently that’s the only approach we have that’s distinguishable from dumb guessing. Whether it turns out to be sufficient is unknown. You’ve been asked many times for a method to distinguish your claims from dumb guessing, but you always run way rather than answer that.
The mind and the brain are different.
Current thinking is that the former is an emergent property of the latter if that’s what you mean?
We have insufficient and the wrong tools for the kind of research required.
Perhaps – so suggest some different tools instead to do the job then. What’s stopping you?
People need to think out of the box and shed their fear of non physical realities.
And the straw man to finish. No-one has a “fear of non-physical realities”. Your a priori problem is to demonstrate that there are such things as non-physical realities at all.
Just because natural selection is just a metaphor…
No it isn’t
…and you have no idea whether the genetic variations are actually random or not....does not mean that the big bang or QM or relativity are wrong. That is what I mean.
Whether anything is “truly” random is unknown, but for practical purposes it’s reasonable to treat genetic mutations as random.
Understanding subjectivity (consciousness) is fundamental. Once that is understood...it is like looking outside the VR headset at the real world. We will have a top down view and will see everything in context. At that point....evolution, its purpose…
What makes you think evolution has a “purpose”?
…and its true mechanisms will also become obvious.
Evolution is already one of the best-understood and most robust “mechanisms” science has explained with the T of E.
This is when....instead of continuing with the microscopic perspective as at present....we will have a bigger picture view (not necessarily the complete picture).
“Microscopic” is just you poisoning the well with pejorative language again. If you want a more accurate understanding of the picture on the jig-saw box you need to assemble the pieces one at a time. Anything else is just dumb guessing.
Try to remember this.
Understanding hardware is not the same as understanding software. Software is hardware dependent...I agree.... but that does not mean they are the same thing.
You do know that hardware and software are both material phenomena right?
You cannot understand software by merely poking around into the hardware.
Actually you can, provided by “poking around” you mean something like “apply the right diagnostic tools” – by reading the code for example.
Oh, and yet again: when you routinely ignore every correction you’re given how do you expect ever to learn anything?
Or should we just conclude that you have no interest in learning anything?
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Natural Selection is not a metaphor, this has been explained to you dozens of times already. A metaphor is a linguistic construct. NS can no more be a metaphor than photosynthesis or electromagetism can. These are all phenomena that we observe with regard to how the natural world works. This is really elementary science but you seem to have some sort of mental block about it and you aren't going to make any progress until you get your head round these basic insights.
And...I am not alone in calling NS a metaphor.....
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12304-021-09405-3
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Charles Darwin (1859) introduced the idea of natural selection (a non-intentional filter) as a metaphorical comparison with artificial (intended) selection. There is no actual selection carried out by natural ‘selection’. Nature – in this case the different rates of survival – is simply a passive filter. Yet it is often presented as the active driver of evolution.
There are active drivers of evolution, to which I will return later, but it is an illusion to think that ‘blind’ natural selection is really ‘selecting’ or could be an ‘active’ driver. It is an illusion with important consequences because it can lead people to think that real selection, by organisms themselves with the power to do so, cannot even exist. ........ That idea is itself an illusion generated by a conceptual mistake, which is to confuse the metaphor of selection with reality. If all evolutionary change is produced by natural (unintended) selection, then no organisms can have the power of real, intended selection. As I have already noted, this move to exclude genuine agency was first made in the nineteenth century by Alfred Russel Wallace, leading him to disagree with Darwin’s distinction between natural and artificial selection.
I think Darwin was right and was brilliantly foresighted to resist Wallace’s attempt to subsume intentional sexual (and by implication other forms of social) selection to natural selection. Brilliant because I think he must have been aware of the importance of the distinction he was making. He did not use the word agency, but I think he would have agreed with biosemioticians that the concept is necessary to understand the meanings organisms give to the signs and communicative paradigms they use (Tønnessen 2015a).
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Italics mine.
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And...I am not alone in calling NS a metaphor.....
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12304-021-09405-3
Yes, the term 'Natural Selection' is a metaphor.
[quote source=wiktionary.org]metaphor - The use of a word or phrase to refer to something other than its literal meaning, invoking an implicit similarity between the thing described and what is denoted by the word or phrase.[/quote]
There cannot actually be selection because there is nothing to choose, no selector, but the process has the effect of selection, and therefore the metaphor has arisen. The fact that it's a metaphor does not mean that it is not happening exactly as described.
Charles Darwin (1859) introduced the idea of natural selection (a non-intentional filter) as a metaphorical comparison with artificial (intended) selection. There is no actual selection carried out by natural ‘selection’. Nature – in this case the different rates of survival – is simply a passive filter. Yet it is often presented as the active driver of evolution.
Not by science it isn't, it's not depicted as an active anything, it's a reactive process that happens as an inevitable result of ecological pressure on the natural variation already present in organisms.
There are active drivers of evolution, to which I will return later, but it is an illusion to think that ‘blind’ natural selection is really ‘selecting’ or could be an ‘active’ driver. It is an illusion with important consequences because it can lead people to think that real selection, by organisms themselves with the power to do so, cannot even exist. ........ That idea is itself an illusion generated by a conceptual mistake, which is to confuse the metaphor of selection with reality. If all evolutionary change is produced by natural (unintended) selection, then no organisms can have the power of real, intended selection. As I have already noted, this move to exclude genuine agency was first made in the nineteenth century by Alfred Russel Wallace, leading him to disagree with Darwin’s distinction between natural and artificial selection.
See this, this here - this is EXPLICITLY repudiating your idea that there is an active selection process, that something is choosing particular traits because they will be useful in the future. This isn't undermining our case, it's undermining yours.
O.
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See this, this here - this is EXPLICITLY repudiating your idea that there is an active selection process, that something is choosing particular traits because they will be useful in the future. This isn't undermining our case, it's undermining yours.
O.
No....it doesn't. He is clear......."There are active drivers of evolution, to which I will return later, but it is an illusion to think that ‘blind’ natural selection is really ‘selecting’ or could be an ‘active’ driver."
He talks of active drivers of evolution further down the article.
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No....it doesn't. He is clear......."There are active drivers of evolution, to which I will return later, but it is an illusion to think that ‘blind’ natural selection is really ‘selecting’ or could be an ‘active’ driver."
There are active drivers, he asserts - you've not copied the part where he explains what he thinks those are, so I can't comment - but the rest of what he says explicitly says that natural selection happens, and is not guided.
He talks of active drivers of evolution further down the article.
If you don't cite that bit, we can't talk about that bit.
O.
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There are active drivers, he asserts - you've not copied the part where he explains what he thinks those are, so I can't comment - but the rest of what he says explicitly says that natural selection happens, and is not guided.
If you don't cite that bit, we can't talk about that bit.
O.
I have given the link. Read it.
He says clearly in the para quoted by you...."It is an illusion with important consequences because it can lead people to think that real selection, by organisms themselves with the power to do so, cannot even exist. ........ That idea is itself an illusion generated by a conceptual mistake, which is to confuse the metaphor of selection with reality. If all evolutionary change is produced by natural (unintended) selection, then no organisms can have the power of real, intended selection. As I have already noted, this move to exclude genuine agency was first made in the nineteenth century by Alfred Russel Wallace, leading him to disagree with Darwin’s distinction between natural and artificial selection."
Read that again please.
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I have given the link. Read it.
He says clearly in the para quoted by you...."It is an illusion with important consequences because it can lead people to think that real selection, by organisms themselves with the power to do so, cannot even exist. ........ That idea is itself an illusion generated by a conceptual mistake, which is to confuse the metaphor of selection with reality. If all evolutionary change is produced by natural (unintended) selection, then no organisms can have the power of real, intended selection. As I have already noted, this move to exclude genuine agency was first made in the nineteenth century by Alfred Russel Wallace, leading him to disagree with Darwin’s distinction between natural and artificial selection."
Read that again please.
What is the evidence to support his claim?
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I have given the link. Read it.
The characterisation of Weismann removing Darwin's acceptance of inherited characteristics being passed on is, at best, misleading. Darwin explicitly spoke out against the LaMarckian idea of inherited characteristics being passed on, but expressed that there might be mechanisms which could influence heredity which could be passed on - today we'd call these mutagens, but given that he didn't have any idea about genetics, let alone anything that could affect them, that caveat doesn't really put the credit on Weissman who merely codified Darwin's ideas in the language of genetics once it had been discovered.
Noble's problem throughout is dualism. His argument is predicated on the idea that when, say, a female bird is attracted to the bright plumage of a male, that sexual selection is somehow artificial selection by a conscious agency, ignoring the implicit agreement in modern biology that this sexual preference is also an inherited, natural trait which has been selected for over time. He's suggesting that bird consciousness is something 'other', something non-biological, and in starting with that premise - which he at no point attempts to justify - he presumes an outside force acting upon nature for which there's no evidence.
He then tries to suggest that the modern synthesis somehow precludes physiological effects on sex-cells - it doesn't - but then goes on to confuse those mutagenic and terratogenic effects with epigenetics, which is a different mechanism, and from that conclude ...something? It's not really clear where he's going with that.
He then goes on to claim that he accepts the limits on mutagenic and terratogenic effects, but immediately contradicts himself to suggest that organisms undertake 'self-mutagenic' or 'self-terratogenic' internal biological activities, for which he doesn't offer any basis.
None of this, by the way, suggests any conscious activity causing any of this - nothing that Noble is suggesting here, even if proved to be true, backs up your panpsychism notion that any of this is guided.
He says clearly in the para quoted by you...."It is an illusion with important consequences because it can lead people to think that real selection, by organisms themselves with the power to do so, cannot even exist. ........ That idea is itself an illusion generated by a conceptual mistake, which is to confuse the metaphor of selection with reality.
Yes. He's saying that there isn't really any consciousness 'selecting' anything, the idea of nature as a selector is a metaphor. He's explicitly saying that nothing is choosing these traits.
If all evolutionary change is produced by natural (unintended) selection, then no organisms can have the power of real, intended selection. As I have already noted, this move to exclude genuine agency was first made in the nineteenth century by Alfred Russel Wallace, leading him to disagree with Darwin’s distinction between natural and artificial selection."
That's an explanation of the origin of the distinction, although I disagree that it was Wallace in isolation that made the distinction. Darwin was on record as saying that, amongst the various reasons he held off publishing his work was the realisation that the implications of it were that evolution was not planned, not guided, and what the impact of that realisation might be on the comprehensively religious culture in which he lived.
Read that again please.
Read it again. It still doesn't agree with you.
O.
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You are now misrepresenting me deliberately!
The idea of consciousness and panpsychism are mine. They are not Noble's. Noble merely states that Natural Selection is a metaphor and cannot be seen as selecting anything in reality. By thinking of NS as a real mechanism we are overlooking the real and active mechanisms by which organisms choose their traits.
"It is an illusion with important consequences because it can lead people to think that real selection, by organisms themselves with the power to do so, cannot even exist. ........ That idea is itself an illusion generated by a conceptual mistake, which is to confuse the metaphor of selection with reality. If all evolutionary change is produced by natural (unintended) selection, then no organisms can have the power of real, intended selection."
This means that real intended selection is being overlooked by attributing the process to Natural Selection (unintended). He has stated elsewhere (see the OP) that the real process of evolution is Lamarckian inheritance, epigenetics, plasticity etc.
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Sriram,
...we are overlooking the real and active mechanisms by which organisms choose their traits.
Organisms don't "chose their own traits". You don't (I presume) have the trait of echo location. Why not then just choose to have it and report back on how you got on?
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You are now misrepresenting me deliberately!
The idea of consciousness and panpsychism are mine. They are not Noble's. Noble merely states that Natural Selection is a metaphor and cannot be seen as selecting anything in reality. By thinking of NS as a real mechanism we are overlooking the real and active mechanisms by which organisms choose their traits.
"It is an illusion with important consequences because it can lead people to think that real selection, by organisms themselves with the power to do so, cannot even exist. ........ That idea is itself an illusion generated by a conceptual mistake, which is to confuse the metaphor of selection with reality. If all evolutionary change is produced by natural (unintended) selection, then no organisms can have the power of real, intended selection."
This means that real intended selection is being overlooked by attributing the process to Natural Selection (unintended). He has stated elsewhere (see the OP) that the real process of evolution is Lamarckian inheritance, epigenetics, plasticity etc.
So the Delta variant of Sars-Cov-2 evolved into Omicron not because of 'natural selection' but because it 'intended to'. Think again, you're just wrong.
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You are now misrepresenting me deliberately!
I promise you I'm not - I might have it wrong, and if so I apologise, but it's not deliberate. I'm a conceptual thinker, I don't hold lists of information well, so when you make a claim but don't give me a concept to hang that on I struggle.
The idea of consciousness and panpsychism are mine. They are not Noble's.
OK.
Noble merely states that Natural Selection is a metaphor and cannot be seen as selecting anything in reality. By thinking of NS as a real mechanism we are overlooking the real and active mechanisms by which organisms choose their traits.
I'm not sure you're understanding that correctly. He's saying that there isn't something consciously making a selection, but that filtering (his word) process is happening - natural selection is a real mechanism, the use of the phrase 'natural selection' is a metaphor for the filtering process that's actually happening.
"It is an illusion with important consequences because it can lead people to think that real selection, by organisms themselves with the power to do so, cannot even exist. ........ That idea is itself an illusion generated by a conceptual mistake, which is to confuse the metaphor of selection with reality. If all evolutionary change is produced by natural (unintended) selection, then no organisms can have the power of real, intended selection."
This means that real intended selection is being overlooked by attributing the process to Natural Selection (unintended). He has stated elsewhere (see the OP) that the real process of evolution is Lamarckian inheritance, epigenetics, plasticity etc.
No, it doesn't mean that. It means that people think there is a selector, but there isn't - he then contends that there are OTHER selective forces which he fails (in that paper, at least) to adequately flesh out.
O.
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I promise you I'm not - I might have it wrong, and if so I apologise, but it's not deliberate. I'm a conceptual thinker, I don't hold lists of information well, so when you make a claim but don't give me a concept to hang that on I struggle.
Its okay.... :D
I'm not sure you're understanding that correctly. He's saying that there isn't something consciously making a selection, but that filtering (his word) process is happening - natural selection is a real mechanism, the use of the phrase 'natural selection' is a metaphor for the filtering process that's actually happening.
No, it doesn't mean that. It means that people think there is a selector, but there isn't - he then contends that there are OTHER selective forces which he fails (in that paper, at least) to adequately flesh out.
O.
Please refer to my post 216.
Let me repost it for you....
And...I am not alone in calling NS a metaphor.....
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12304-021-09405-3
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Charles Darwin (1859) introduced the idea of natural selection (a non-intentional filter) as a metaphorical comparison with artificial (intended) selection. There is no actual selection carried out by natural ‘selection’. Nature – in this case the different rates of survival – is simply a passive filter. Yet it is often presented as the active driver of evolution.
There are active drivers of evolution, to which I will return later, but it is an illusion to think that ‘blind’ natural selection is really ‘selecting’ or could be an ‘active’ driver. It is an illusion with important consequences because it can lead people to think that real selection, by organisms themselves with the power to do so, cannot even exist. ........ That idea is itself an illusion generated by a conceptual mistake, which is to confuse the metaphor of selection with reality. If all evolutionary change is produced by natural (unintended) selection, then no organisms can have the power of real, intended selection. As I have already noted, this move to exclude genuine agency was first made in the nineteenth century by Alfred Russel Wallace, leading him to disagree with Darwin’s distinction between natural and artificial selection.
I think Darwin was right and was brilliantly foresighted to resist Wallace’s attempt to subsume intentional sexual (and by implication other forms of social) selection to natural selection. Brilliant because I think he must have been aware of the importance of the distinction he was making. He did not use the word agency, but I think he would have agreed with biosemioticians that the concept is necessary to understand the meanings organisms give to the signs and communicative paradigms they use (Tønnessen 2015a).
***************
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So the Delta variant of Sars-Cov-2 evolved into Omicron not because of 'natural selection' but because it 'intended to'. Think again, you're just wrong.
The intent is to survive and reproduce. Towards this instinctive objective....organisms tend to change their phenotype in line with environmental requirements (plasticity, polyphenism)....with the genotype remaining the same.
It is a deliberate attempt to survive and reproduce in changing environments through suitable adaptations. It is not just chance and randomness.
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The intent is to survive and reproduce. Towards this instinctive objective....organisms tend to change their phenotype in line with environmental requirements (plasticity, polyphenism)....with the genotype remaining the same.
It is a deliberate attempt to survive and reproduce in changing environments through suitable adaptations. It is not just chance and randomness.
Incorrect. A virus does not have a brain and so is incapable of complex emotional states like needs or desires. By the strictest definition, a virus is not even a living thing. The Omicron strain is a viral population whose pattern of mutations due to inexact copying is such that it happens to be better an bypassing the human immune system. It is classic Darwinian evolution by natural selection, and you are talking uneducated nonsense.
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Charles Darwin (1859) introduced the idea of natural selection (a non-intentional filter) as a metaphorical comparison with artificial (intended) selection. There is no actual selection carried out by natural ‘selection’. Nature – in this case the different rates of survival – is simply a passive filter. Yet it is often presented as the active driver of evolution.
This simply refers to people like you who don't seem to 'get' the concept of metaphor.
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Incorrect. A virus does not have a brain and so is incapable of complex emotional states like needs or desires. By the strictest definition, a virus is not even a living thing. The Omicron strain is a viral population whose pattern of mutations due to inexact copying is such that it happens to be better an bypassing the human immune system. It is classic Darwinian evolution by natural selection, and you are talking uneducated nonsense.
Why don't you get it....!? It is not a conscious objective. Organisms are driven to do what they do, by their instincts.
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Why don't you get it....!? It is not a conscious objective. Organisms are driven to do what they do, by their instincts.
A virus does not have 'instincts'. An instinct is a complex unlearned behaviour, such as nest building, parental care, hibernation etc. A virus does not have complex behaviours, either learned or unlearned. Viruses are simply stretches of genetic material that interact deterministically via biochemical processes with living cells.
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Instinct is just a word ...that refers to an innate impulse in organisms. There is no reason why it cannot refer to the tendency to replicate or reproduce in simple organisms.
There is thereby an innate objective in all organisms towards which they act.
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Instinct is just a word ...that refers to an innate impulse in organisms. There is no reason why it cannot refer to the tendency to replicate or reproduce in simple organisms.
There is thereby an innate objective in all organisms towards which they act.
No - to 'act' in any certain way toward any 'objective' implies agency: and viruses don't have agency.
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Instinct is just a word ...that refers to an innate impulse in organisms. There is no reason why it cannot refer to the tendency to replicate or reproduce in simple organisms.
There is thereby an innate objective in all organisms towards which they act.
A virus does not have impulses or instincts. it's reproduction is an entirely deterministic process; it is not something that it might 'tend' to do, it cannot help doing it. By your reasoning balls tend to roll downhill rather than uphill. These things are not tendencies or instincts, they are deterministic.
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Instinct is just a word ...that refers to an innate impulse in organisms. There is no reason why it cannot refer to the tendency to replicate or reproduce in simple organisms.
There is thereby an innate objective in all organisms towards which they act.
You seem unable to describe simple organisms and viruses (that aren't really living) except through the language of human higher consciousness. Viruses and bacteria aren't just mini-humans with instincts, objectives, impulses. As Gordon has pointed out, those attributes require consciousness and agency which simple organisms lack.
So bacteria and viruses don't have objectives, nor impulses (innate or otherwise), nor instincts. Nope what they do exhibit is the ability to demonstrate certain chemical processes depending on the particular conditions. And of course should those processes change, for example due to mutations in DNA/RNA in such a manner that it makes that simple organism better able to survive and replicate then those new processes will be selected for. But not due to any kind of objective, impulse or instinct, but just because there is now an evolutionary advantage. Just as likely (in fact almost certainly way more likely) other mutations will render the organism less likely to survive/replicate or may have no difference. In the former case those traits (and those organisms) will not survive - so under your bizarre view then there must be an objective, impulse of instinct for non-survival.
Where changes may no effect they will likely be retained (somewhat dormant) in the gene pool, but if there are alterations in the environment those changes may reveal themselves as being advantageous or disadvantageous etc, providing evolutionary advantage or disadvantage.
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Its okay.... :D
Please refer to my post 216.
Let me repost it for you....
And...I am not alone in calling NS a metaphor.....
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12304-021-09405-3
**************
Charles Darwin (1859) introduced the idea of natural selection (a non-intentional filter) as a metaphorical comparison with artificial (intended) selection. There is no actual selection carried out by natural ‘selection’. Nature – in this case the different rates of survival – is simply a passive filter. Yet it is often presented as the active driver of evolution.
There are active drivers of evolution, to which I will return later, but it is an illusion to think that ‘blind’ natural selection is really ‘selecting’ or could be an ‘active’ driver. It is an illusion with important consequences because it can lead people to think that real selection, by organisms themselves with the power to do so, cannot even exist. ........ That idea is itself an illusion generated by a conceptual mistake, which is to confuse the metaphor of selection with reality. If all evolutionary change is produced by natural (unintended) selection, then no organisms can have the power of real, intended selection. As I have already noted, this move to exclude genuine agency was first made in the nineteenth century by Alfred Russel Wallace, leading him to disagree with Darwin’s distinction between natural and artificial selection.
I think Darwin was right and was brilliantly foresighted to resist Wallace’s attempt to subsume intentional sexual (and by implication other forms of social) selection to natural selection. Brilliant because I think he must have been aware of the importance of the distinction he was making. He did not use the word agency, but I think he would have agreed with biosemioticians that the concept is necessary to understand the meanings organisms give to the signs and communicative paradigms they use (Tønnessen 2015a).
***************
I've read it. He's not saying what you say he's saying. Yes he's saying that the phrase 'natural selection' is a metaphor.
He's not saying that it's not happening. He's not saying that it doesn't have the exact effects that science suggests it has. He's saying that nature isn't actually making a choice, because nature doesn't have that capacity.
Where he differs from me (and, I'd suggest, from conventional scientific wisdom) is that he's saying the variation upon which natural selection operates is not random, that organisms have some capacity to preordain their variation or... something, it's not very clear exactly what he is suggesting, from this.
Essentially, the natural selection part is a metaphor, it always has been, he's calling that out because - he says - people misinterpret that mean that nature is choosing, and it isn't.
He doesn't think variation is random for... reasons... and conventional scientific wisdom thinks that, at the scale of evolutionary biology, it functionally is random.
O.
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And...I am not alone in calling NS a metaphor.....
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12304-021-09405-3
So, the Sriram comedy of ignorance just goes on and on. ::)
You quote the article by Noble: "Charles Darwin (1859) introduced the idea of natural selection (a non-intentional filter) as a metaphorical comparison with artificial (intended) selection. There is no actual selection carried out by natural ‘selection’. Nature – in this case the different rates of survival – is simply a passive filter."
So, even this guy, who is widely regarded as wrong about most things about evolution (see my post #1 (http://www.religionethics.co.uk/index.php?topic=19960.msg862853#msg862853)), is basically telling you that you're wrong to dismiss natural selection as a metaphor. Only the name is metaphorical. It is actually a (non-intentional) filter. This is exactly what I've tried to tell you multiple times and you keep on dismissing it, For example here (http://www.religionethics.co.uk/index.php?topic=19946.msg862607#msg862607): "Natural selection is a very real filtering process on variations." and here (http://www.religionethics.co.uk/index.php?topic=19946.msg862638#msg862638): "There is no intelligence doing a deliberate selection, nevertheless, some traits do spread through populations and some die out, so there is a filtration process."
Much of the rest of what Denis Noble believes has already been dismissed by most experts but in this respect he's entirely right and you're entirely wrong.
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The intent is to survive and reproduce. Towards this instinctive objective....organisms tend to change their phenotype in line with environmental requirements (plasticity, polyphenism)....with the genotype remaining the same.
It is a deliberate attempt to survive and reproduce in changing environments through suitable adaptations. It is not just chance and randomness.
Don't be so utterly silly. We know the genotype changed, that's how the variant was identified. We also know the exact genotype mutations that have led directly to many, many cases of evolution, including the classic peppered moth example (https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-36424768) of natural selection.
We know that genotypes change by mutation in evolution otherwise everything would have the same genotype. Your ideas make the word 'absurd' seem totally inadequate.
There is no intention to survive and reproduce. Any organism that isn't good at surviving and reproducing it the environment won't survive and reproduce, so will die out. That is pretty much what natural selection means.
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The very concept of polyphenism is about changes in phenotype to suit environmental conditions, without corresponding changes in genotype.
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The very concept of polyphenism is about changes in phenotype to suit environmental conditions, without corresponding changes in genotype.
I know what it is, Sriram, and it obviously exists, but it simply can't be the main driver of evolution. It can't account for the Sars-Cov-2 example because we know that it was a genetic mutation. One of the main tools for detecting and responding to variants was genetic sequencing. It also can't possibly account for vast numbers of other evolutionary change that we know were caused by genetic mutations and exactly what those mutations were (e.g. trichromatic vision (https://genome.cshlp.org/content/9/7/629.long)). Neither does it even account for speciation.
Even Denis Noble basically accepts natural selection as a real filtration process - something you appear not to understand even when quoting a passage from him that directly says so.
Your total ignorance about evolution is astounding, obviously self-inflicted due to your own dogmatic beliefs, and totally impervious to reason and solid evidence. In other words, you are relying on blind faith and must protect the ignorance that allows it to exist.
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The very concept of polyphenism is about changes in phenotype to suit environmental conditions, without corresponding changes in genotype.
FFS Sriram, what are the mechanism that control these abilities and how do these mechanisms arise?
Sure the ability for an organism to adapt to altered environmental conditions can confer survival advantage, but these mechanisms are the product of either genomic or epigenetic processes - and the latter involve either the ability for the genome to be altered (which is ultimately genomic) or proteins to be altered and those proteins are coded by DNA, so also ultimately genomic.
So rather than these mechanisms sitting outside the classical evolutionary approach they are simply examples of it.
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FFS Sriram, what are the mechanism that control these abilities and how do these mechanisms arise?
Sure the ability for an organism to adapt to altered environmental conditions can confer survival advantage, but these mechanisms are the product of either genomic or epigenetic processes - and the latter involve either the ability for the genome to be altered (which is ultimately genomic) or proteins to be altered and those proteins are coded by DNA, so also ultimately genomic.
So rather than these mechanisms sitting outside the classical evolutionary approach they are simply examples of it.
You are trying to have your cake and eat it too. The point is that evolution is not just a chance based process relying entirely on random variations and chance environmental conditions. It is a process where organisms adapt and develop traits to suit the environmental conditions. Simple.
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You are trying to have your cake and eat it too. The point is that evolution is not just a chance based process relying entirely on random variations and chance environmental conditions. It is a process where organisms adapt and develop traits to suit the environmental conditions. Simple.
I'm not having my cake and eating it, just explaining how evolution works.
Imagine a random mutation in the gene for a protein arises which means that protein is now sensitive to e.g. temperature or pH or osmotic conditions etc and that protein is part of a physiological network that might regulate a cell's ability to function under altered temperature or pH or osmotic conditions. Those members of that species, through that random mutation are now better able to adapt to changes in temperature or pH or osmotic conditions. That may well confer a survival advantage and if so those members of the species with this random mutation are more likely to survive and reproduce so that gene mutation becomes dominant within the population of that species.
The random mutation confers the ability to adapt to environmental changes and as it is at the genome level that ability to adapt is heritable. This is standard evolutionary theory - No cake-ism needed.
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You are trying to have your cake and eat it too. The point is that evolution is not just a chance based process relying entirely on random variations and chance environmental conditions. It is a process where organisms adapt and develop traits to suit the environmental conditions. Simple.
Yet another utterly absurd and ignorant claim. It's been explained to you exactly how evolution by natural selection works many times, and I see the Prof has just done so again. You always totally ignore them and continue with your mindless, dogmatic nonsense.
Instances where individual organisms adapt to an environment are very limited, in both scope and heritability, and simply cannot account for vast amounts of evidence. Only genetic variation and natural selection can do that.
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I'm not having my cake and eating it, just explaining how evolution works.
Imagine a random mutation in the gene for a protein arises which means that protein is now sensitive to e.g. temperature or pH or osmotic conditions etc and that protein is part of a physiological network that might regulate a cell's ability to function under altered temperature or pH or osmotic conditions. Those members of that species, through that random mutation are now better able to adapt to changes in temperature or pH or osmotic conditions. That may well confer a survival advantage and if so those members of the species with this random mutation are more likely to survive and reproduce so that gene mutation becomes dominant within the population of that species.
The random mutation confers the ability to adapt to environmental changes and as it is at the genome level that ability to adapt is heritable. This is standard evolutionary theory - No cake-ism needed.
I am not contesting that advantageous adaptations enable an organism to survive. That is obvious.
I am contesting your claim that evolution entirely happens through random mutations because of which an organism happens to have a certain phenotype and because of which it happens to survive and reproduce in a specific environment.
Organisms adapt and change their phenotype to suit the environment. It is a deliberate attempt to survive and reproduce and not something that just happens by chance.
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I am not contesting that advantageous adaptations enable an organism to survive. That is obvious.
I am contesting your claim that evolution entirely happens through random mutations because of which an organism happens to have a certain phenotype and because of which it happens to survive and reproduce in a specific environment.
Organisms adapt and change their phenotype to suit the environment. It is a deliberate attempt to survive and reproduce and not something that just happens by chance.
Most species are incapable of deliberate adaptation. This is anthropomorphising on steroids. Humans may plan ahead how to better survive, but we have no evidence of cauliflowers or cucumbers plotting or planning ahead, for instance. Humans are unusual in this ability, most life forms cannot plan ahead.
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Most species are incapable of deliberate adaptation. This is anthropomorphising on steroids. Humans may plan ahead how to better survive, but we have no evidence of cauliflowers or cucumbers plotting or planning ahead, for instance. Humans are unusual in this ability, most life forms cannot plan ahead.
I think I have discussed this already. You just don't want to get it.
Deliberate adaptation is not a conscious effort of the organism sitting at a drawing board and planning things out. It is an inner drive an inner objective that makes the organism do what it does.
Now...don't ask me how this inner drive happens because I'll tell you that it is the inner consciousness (collective consciousness) working through its DNA. You will not accept it.
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Deliberate adaptation is not a conscious effort of the organism sitting at a drawing board and planning things out. It is an inner drive an inner objective that makes the organism do what it does.
'Deliberate' implies an inner conscious effort. This is what the word means. Cucumbers are not capable of deliberation, neither are carrots or cauliflowers. Did the Delta variant evolve into the Omicron variant because of an inner objective ? of course not, it evolved as a consequence of mutations that gave it a competitive advantage. It did not go out looking for mutations to acquire. It just happens though copying errors.
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I am not contesting that advantageous adaptations enable an organism to survive. That is obvious.
And the only long term way in which that happens is via mutation and natural selection. By long term I mean something that lasts over evolutionary time-scales.
I am contesting your claim that evolution entirely happens through random mutations because of which an organism happens to have a certain phenotype and because of which it happens to survive and reproduce in a specific environment.
Then you are denying the evidence. Once again this is appears to be unreasoning blind faith.
Organisms adapt and change their phenotype to suit the environment. It is a deliberate attempt to survive and reproduce and not something that just happens by chance.
Although some organisms can adapt their phenotype, that is an ability that itself had to evolve and it doesn't last in subsequent generations. Many organisms do not do anything deliberate. Suggesting this as a significant driver of evolution is just absurd. Evolution requires genetic alteration and, as I've said before, there are vast numbers of examples in which we know exactly what mutations led to what evolutionary steps. Just ignoring that fact won't make it go away in order to suit your blind faith.
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'Deliberate' implies an inner conscious effort. This is what the word means. Cucumbers are not capable of deliberation, neither are carrots or cauliflowers. Did the Delta variant evolve into the Omicron variant because of an inner objective ? of course not, it evolved as a consequence of mutations that gave it a competitive advantage. It did not go out looking for mutations to acquire. It just happens though copying errors.
"Cucumbers are not capable of deliberation,"
You just keep repeating the same irrelevant argument. You don't have to agree with me....but at least try to understand what I am saying....
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You just keep repeating the same irrelevant argument. You don't have to agree with me....but at least try to understand what I am saying....
I think everybody does understand what you're saying, it's just that it's utterly absurd and goes against solid, objective evidence. This is also stunning hypocrisy because you keep on totally ignoring points that you don't like and/or have no answer for and just go on repeating your irrelevant and many times refuted claims yourself.