(2018-12-26, 02:20 PM)fls Wrote: [ -> ]1. I’m not sure where you see value in discussions among people who don’t know what they’re talking about. There are plenty of interesting discussions to be had by referring to useful/valid information.
2. The idea that scientists are under pressure not to reveal the unvarnished truth is incorrect. Whether or not “experts” are, speaks strongly as to whether or not someone can be regarded as an expert.
It is highly unlikely that someone with knowledge and experience would agree with your characterization of evolution. So where’s the value in discussing what would be considered a caricature of evolution?
Linda
Well I suppose everyone finds kicks in different things. If Nbtruthman, and I want to share our totally baseless ideas about evolution with other consenting adults on this site, what is the harm in that? Although you clearly support the idea of evolution by natural selection, it doesn't sound as if you have any great ideas how to explain how it works in a world where mutations happen on a string of hundreds of DNA bases.
Perhaps you might like to join us in some baseless speculation.
I'd still like someone to explain how natural selection can operate on the gene for a potentially useful protein, when, say, another 40 steps are needed to reach a useful product. I'd also love to know where the various proteins that make up the first ribosomes came from. In a world before life, natural selection doesn't seem to have much meaning.
(2018-12-26, 09:15 PM)David001 Wrote: [ -> ]I'd still like someone to explain how natural selection can operate on the gene for a potentially useful protein, when, say, another 40 steps are needed to reach a useful product. I'd also love to know where the various proteins that make up the first ribosomes came from. In a world before life, natural selection doesn't seem to have much meaning.
Maybe this would help? ->
Without a Library of Platonic Forms, Evolution wouldn't work
Quote:In an ever-changing Darwinian world, species incessantly spew forth new species whose traits can shade into one another. The 20th-century biologist Ernst Mayr called Plato the ‘great antihero of evolutionism’, and in fact it was Mayr who replaced the essentialist concept of species with a modern biological alternative, based on individuals in the same population that can interbreed.
But as has happened many times before, Plato might have the last word. We just need to look deeper than the ephemeral appearance of living things.
OTOH:
The Neo-Platonic Argument for Evolution Couldn’t Be More Wrong
Quote:The question Wagner believes he’s answered is: “Since mutation is random, how does natural selection ‘know’ how to find its way in the very, very large library of possible forms?” As he says: “Without these pathways of synonymous texts, these sets of genes that express precisely the same function in ever-shifting sequences of letters, it would not be possible to keep finding new innovations via random mutation. Evolution would not work.”
Yes it would! Natural selection does the work of “walking” a population through the library, and it is the combination of a random process (mutation) and a non-random one (selection) that yields evolutionary change. But the library doesn’t exist before natural selection “walks” through it. The analogy is misleading: It is better to think of a library that is created (and partially destroyed) moment by moment as life evolves. There is no mystery here, and there hasn’t been for about a century. Thinking in terms of libraries and Platonic Forms is simply not helpful to the biologist.
Wagner is forced to compound the unnecessary complexity of his solution by trying to answer a further mystery: “So nature’s libraries and their sprawling networks go a long way towards explaining life’s capacity to evolve. But where do they come from? They exist in a world of concepts, the kind of abstract concepts that mathematicians explore. Does that make them any less real?”
I don't know if Wagner wrote a response, I'd have to dig deeper...I do think it is a bit odd Massimo doesn't really mention his long love affair with Mathematical Platonism which strikes me as dishonest...
Just to confirm the the bankruptcy of Darwinism in explaining the Cambrian explosion, I previously
posted (#843) about new research that establishes that thousands of new genes would have been necessary for the origin of animals. This work was in a new paper (at
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-018-04136-5), summarized
here . It's title is "Reconstruction of the ancestral metazoan genome reveals an increase in genomic novelty”. They conclude that “many new” genes were necessary during the origin of animals. According to the paper, for the origin of the Bilatera (animals with symmetrical left and right sides), an additional 1580 gene groups were required.
Of course the Darwinians here will carefully avoid addressing the science of the problem, preferring to keep jabbing at the supposed Christian Creationism connection, and suggesting that because those here are not professional evolutionary biologists we can't intelligently discuss the issues. Guess why this position. Don't bother them with the science, with the details, because with them this is a losing proposition. They will carefully avoid the problem of explaining the origin of 1580 new genes during the transition to the Cambrian, especially if as the other new research shows, it took approximately 400,000 years. Needless to say, there is no sign in the fossil record of any precursors despite many places where conditions were excellent for preservation of small animal fossils. Nothing has ever been found despite very much assiduous digging over the century and a half since Darwin's day.
(2018-12-26, 09:15 PM)David001 Wrote: [ -> ]Well I suppose everyone finds kicks in different things. If Nbtruthman, and I want to share our totally baseless ideas about evolution with other consenting adults on this site, what is the harm in that?
The harm is in the Illusory Truth effect, and the Continued Influence effect.
Basically, it makes you more likely to regard false information as true, and make it difficult to update your knowledge away from falsehoods. You have more success if you avoid false information in the first place.
Linda
(2018-12-26, 11:43 PM)Enbtruthman Wrote: [ -> ]Of course the Darwinians here will carefully avoid addressing the science of the problem, preferring to keep jabbing at the supposed Christian Creationism connection, and suggesting that because those here are not professional evolutionary biologists we can't intelligently discuss the issues.
Well, I didn’t just make this up. I have watched you guys discuss issues on which I do have expertise (medicine and research methods), and the results are awful. I have no reason to think you will somehow perform differently on any other subject, especially given that you fall prey to the same methods which led you astray previously.
Linda
(2018-12-27, 12:50 AM)fls Wrote: [ -> ]Well, I didn’t just make this up. I have watched you guys discuss issues on which I do have expertise (medicine and research methods), and the results are awful. I have no reason to think you will somehow perform differently on any other subject, especially given that you fall prey to the same methods which led you astray previously.
Linda
Well, as I expected, the prediction of my last post has come true.
(2018-12-26, 11:43 PM)nbtruthman Wrote: [ -> ]Just to confirm the the bankruptcy of Darwinism in explaining the Cambrian explosion, I previously posted (#843) about new research that establishes that thousands of new genes would have been necessary for the origin of animals. This work was in a new paper (at https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-018-04136-5), summarized here . It's title is "Reconstruction of the ancestral metazoan genome reveals an increase in genomic novelty”. They conclude that “many new” genes were necessary during the origin of animals. According to the paper, for the origin of the Bilatera (animals with symmetrical left and right sides), an additional 1580 gene groups were required.
Of course the Darwinians here will carefully avoid addressing the science of the problem, preferring to keep jabbing at the supposed Christian Creationism connection, and suggesting that because those here are not professional evolutionary biologists we can't intelligently discuss the issues. Guess why this position. Don't bother them with the science, with the details, because with them this is a losing proposition. They will carefully avoid the problem of explaining the origin of 1580 new genes during the transition to the Cambrian, especially if as the other new research shows, it took approximately 400,000 years. Needless to say, there is no sign in the fossil record of any precursors despite many places where conditions were excellent for preservation of small animal fossils. Nothing has ever been found despite very much assiduous digging over the century and a half since Darwin's day.
What do you think of certain potential cases of [non-local] information transfer - for example bacteria exceeding the expected rate of adaptability? (I believe there are extant cases suggesting this, but for our purposes let's assume they're hypothetical.)
Would such a thing be enough to account for these issues? Could Psi effects account for them?
Or does it take some kind of top-down guidance in your view, whether that is God or Tutelary Spirits?
(2018-12-27, 12:44 AM)fls Wrote: [ -> ]The harm is in the Illusory Truth effect, and the Continued Influence effect.
Basically, it makes you more likely to regard false information as true, and make it difficult to update your knowledge away from falsehoods. You have more success if you avoid false information in the first place.
Linda
Ah right - I dare say the Communist party in China, the Catholic Church at the height of its power, or the former USSR, and maybe NK (it isn't yet clear if they are freeing up or not) would justify their control over the media on roughly the same grounds - the need to crack down on falsehoods. I am sure they felt that they were doing what they did for the common good, and I suppose you feel the need to preserve Darwin's theory.
It is hard to find a good historical example of a movement to preserve truth that looks good with the benefit of hindsight.
A truth only remains true if it is open to challenge. I remember reading how a famous physicist (I forget who) received many letters from crackpots, and gave them to his students to answer, explaining precisely what was wrong with the ideas expressed. The idea was that by explaining the errors in other people's thinking they would strengthen their grasp of physics.
The famous mathematician, G.H Hardy received lots of junk mail like that, and one day he opened a letter from a self taught mathematician in India - the rest is history. The scientists who hide away from debates with doubters, lose a lot of respect.
(2018-12-27, 12:08 PM)David001 Wrote: [ -> ]It is hard to find a good historical example of a movement to preserve truth that looks good with the benefit of hindsight.
If something is hard to find, it may be because it was buried beneath mountains of something else. That which is lost may be the most precious, or it may be worthless. But the mere fact of its loss doesn't allow us to conclude whether it was positive or negative, or neutral.
(2018-12-27, 12:08 PM)David001 Wrote: [ -> ]Ah right - I dare say the Communist party in China, the Catholic Church at the height of its power, or the former USSR, and maybe NK (it isn't yet clear if they are freeing up or not) would justify their control over the media on roughly the same grounds - the need to crack down on falsehoods. I am sure they felt that they were doing what they did for the common good, and I suppose you feel the need to preserve Darwin's theory.
It is hard to find a good historical example of a movement to preserve truth that looks good with the benefit of hindsight.
I’m an advocate of free speech. I’m talking about taking personal responsibility for what you fill your head with. I agree with you that attempting to “preserve truth” as a top down approach is likely to fail. Much better to teach individuals about valid and reliable information and leave it to them to choose what they want to read.
For example, if I wish to understand the impact of a Nature paper on reconstruction of the ancestral metazoan genome and genomic novelty, I go to the article and look at the citations of that article. I then read those citations and look at what the authors have to say about the original Nature article (e.g.
https://elifesciences.org/articles/38726) and its impact. I most definitely don’t go looking at a website whose agenda is to present a specific, ideologically motivated, perspective, since there will be a conflict of interest between what I am looking for (a reasonable representation of the unvarnished truth) and what they can offer ((mis)represent the results in a way which supports their ideology). Note that this applies to websites devoted to either side of a debate.
Linda