Darwin Unhinged: The Bugs in Evolution

[Ninshub]

 Contrast that to your way of thinking which is certainly emotional and intuitive. Your approach I doubt will ever lead to revelations.

Not to single you out, Steve, but I'll use this post as a general reminder to everyone about the respect rule of the forum (no. 1). Characterizing other people, including their thinking, starts bordering on a personal attack. The aim should be to stick to arguments a person is making, if the intention is to debate.

It's not that you jumped into a thread, you jump into threads to provide worthless commentary, some insults, but when pressed you slink off only to troll another thread. Or worse you start going off about field effects being Psi when they are part of accepted physics, but you see a proponent posting and just react. A decade since you begged for help to argue against Maaneli and some simple physics basics (field effects) available to college students who take the "Physics for Poets" or "Physics of Star Trek" courses eluded you? 10 years and you never picked up one of those "For Dummies" books to brush up before posting?

It's been years but we're still waiting for you to explain exactly why Tallis' reasoning is so wrong he's a "damned fool".

It's odd that you mention how I missed it but can't seem to produce a link? ==>

You said Tallis was a damn fool, here's the thread for you to explain why his argument is wrong.

You said Rosenberg, a physicalist who says there is nothing mental in matter , was also a damn fool for saying thoughts are illusions. But when asked where his reasoning is flawed you balked (if I missed a reply feel free to point that out). Here's the thread, I await your reply.

Also odd you assume I don't discuss these questions with people who disagree with me just because I won't go a site you selected (note I'm discussing/debating in this very thread, just not insulting my interlocutors). I could just as easily ask why you don't go to Feser's Catholic theology blog, or Bernardo' forum? Or why you don't email Raymond Tallis or Alex Rosenberg with your arguments --> you can CC a few of us so we know the replies are genuine?

Or why don't either of us write up our thoughts and publish them on Academia.edu so academics can critique us? Or take the same online courses and see what we score? Someone can always up the ante in this fashion.

Tallis is an idiot to argue the brain does not produce consciousness when all the neuroscience research says otherwise. That is my only point of contention with him. As for Rosenberg he has a very narrow point of view.

Why don't either of us.... I don't know why you don't but for me I might change some lurker's mind. I've given up on changing the minds of the usual suspects.

I'm sure you have field effects bookmarked, provide a link please I want to see if you've misrepresented what I might have said if I said anything at all, which I don't recall. I'm old an can't remember what I had for breakfast.

This continuous dredging up stuff that happened years ago indicates you might have a vindictive nature. Could that be true? If it is that's ashame.

One last observation. Notice how many threads are started (especially by you) all of  which I read and not a peep do you hear from me. Do you notice or is selective memory at work and you think I post on each and every thread? No I don't for these reasons, a. I don't care to post. b. the topic is uninteresting, c. I have no opinion on that topic. So your troll characterization is a bit off.

Not to single you out, Steve, but I'll use this post as a general reminder to everyone about the respect rule of the forum (no. 1). Characterizing other people, including their thinking, starts bordering on a personal attack. The aim should be to stick to arguments a person is making, if the intention is to debate.

But you did.

Tallis is an idiot to argue the brain does not produce consciousness when all the neuroscience research says otherwise. That is my only point of contention with him. As for Rosenberg he has a very narrow point of view.

You do know that Tallis himself, before his retirement, worked in the field of neuroscience? He's actually written a few things on the limits of the field, the following perhaps most apt to the immediate discussion:

What Neuroscience Cannot Tell Us About Ourselves

To say Rosenberg's view is narrow is not an argument. Are his premises wrong about matter in your opinion? Or is it the conclusions? To simply say you have faith he'll be proven wrong on the latter while agreeing with the former is fine, but that just puts you on the level of everyone else posting with some given beliefs about the nature of reality.

As for bringing things up that occurred in the past, I mention them b/c it shows the accusations you make are just the pot calling the kettle black. It deflates these constant attempts at emotional appeal, where you've taken on this "I'm a man of facts" slogan as a marketing attempt. It clogs up interesting discussion/debate that has substantive value, and the fact this marketing occurs across threads in lieu of actual arguments germane to the actual topic degrades the quality of the forum.

Vindictiveness would be acting as you do--> Playing armchair psychologist in the hopes of emotionally manipulating someone's opinions, calling someone an "idiot" or a "damn fool" over and over, etc. Pondering motivation is inevitable, I suspect, but this seems to be the card you play at the expense of insightful discussion rather than in tandem with it.

I'll dig up the argument over field effects later.

I'll dig up the argument over field effects later.

Here you go Steve, just one more thread with potential for good discussion ruined by your crass entrance.

Not wanting to butt in, but it seems to me that if we were open to the possibility of the laws of physics allowing retro-causation, in principle that would open the door to an alternative evolutionary mechanism that wouldn't necessarily involve intelligence - and might not even involve anything non-material.

It's a little late for a reply, but it occurred to me that this idea of retro-causation could invoke what looks like a science fictional irrational non-causal sequence where complex specified information exists  without any origin mechanism whatsoever, neither sentient designers or even RM + NS or some other mechanism. The design information would just exist with no cause whatsoever.   

Suppose that in the year 2500 a time machine is invented that allows information to be transferred to humans in the past. Retro-causation of a sort. Then the time machine inventors decide to interfere with the past by sending the design information for Edison's carbon filament light bulb (and the necessary electrical generator and power transmission technology) back to individuals who could do something with the information in the year 1830. 

What could be the result? A world line in which the complex specified information for the design of the light bulb (which required much effort on the part of Edison) and the necessary electrical power technology appeared out of nowhere and simply exists as a complex electromechanical design. Which though it requires a sentient inventor had no inventor (or even any other origin mechanism). Of course, there would also be the grandfather and other paradoxes. 

It looks to me like this little thought experiment pretty much shows that the idea of retro-causation is purely science fantasy and absolutely could not happen.

The idea that you have to prove yourself to get your ideas accepted, rather than ‘anything which goes with the status quo gets accepted without question’, is one of the strengths of the practice of science.

Linda

Linda,

I am of a very different mind.  Science is not about the "image" and character of the the scientist.  Not at all.  Sure....there is a lot of public interest writing about the part of the discovery story where the personalities interact and the "story" of the politics is detailed.

In fact, the working science is the reductive equations, test methods and careful observation.  The lab tech notebook kept over a decade, is the raw meat of science.  The proving of the work and the response to it -- is not in the style of the conclusions -- but on the quality of the data and statistical analysis of the theory.

The foundational changes to Bio-Evolutionary Theory did not come from some consensus based in the 1980's.  It came from people who were excluded and rejected -- even when the data was presented to back the ideas.  In each case, it took years to be acknowledged.  I am not talking about glittering generalities.  I am citing the actual words of those who emerged as the giants of the times.

 The Tangled Tree traces the full arc of Woese’s life and career. We see the fiercely determined young scientist struggling to collect the data that he intuited would be important, and the brooding, combative mid-career professor fighting to have his beloved archaea and three-domains tree accepted by the scientific community. Finally, there is the jaded, curmudgeonly legend wracked by a Darwin complex. None of the accolades showered on Woese seemed to matter (he and many others clearly felt he deserved a Nobel prize, but he never got one). Around 2010, Woese and Canadian science historian Jan Sapp began to collaborate on a book tentatively entitled Beyond God and Darwin. The project never moved beyond Sapp’s draft introduction, on which Woese wrote: “Jan, you accord Darwin so much more substance than the bastard deserves.”

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-05827-1

Does that sound like someone who was comfortable in academic circles with being the man who changed the theory?  Why is he not more acknowledged today?

Is there still a neoDarwinian theory of evolution?  What does it claim?  Take a look at Panda's Thumb.  He (PZ Meyers) is pushing Climate Change Science.
https://pandasthumb.org/

It's a little late for a reply, but it occurred to me that this idea of retro-causation could invoke what looks like a science fictional irrational non-causal sequence where complex specified information exists  without any origin mechanism whatsoever, neither sentient designers or even RM + NS or some other mechanism. The design information would just exist with no cause whatsoever.   

Suppose that in the year 2500 a time machine is invented that allows information to be transferred to humans in the past. Retro-causation of a sort. Then the time machine inventors decide to interfere with the past by sending the design information for Edison's carbon filament light bulb (and the necessary electrical generator and power transmission technology) back to individuals who could do something with the information in the year 1830. 

What could be the result? A world line in which the complex specified information for the design of the light bulb (which required much effort on the part of Edison) and the necessary electrical power technology appeared out of nowhere and simply exists as a complex electromechanical design. Which though it requires a sentient inventor had no inventor (or even any other origin mechanism). Of course, there would also be the grandfather and other paradoxes. 

It looks to me like this little thought experiment pretty much shows that the idea of retro-causation is purely science fantasy and absolutely could not happen.

This idea of a self-consistent causal closed path is central to the ideas Eric Wargo puts forward in his book "Time Loops". He argues that self-consistent loops pose no problem, but loops involving inconsistency - such as the one involved in the "grandfather paradox" - would be impossible.

I agree that the idea of such time loops is rather mind-boggling, and defies "common sense". But if we allow for the possibility of retrocausation I don't think we can say they are impossible. Indeed, if retrocausation existed, this kind of thing would be commonplace, unless there were some special mechanism to prevent it.

This idea of a self-consistent causal closed path is central to the ideas Eric Wargo puts forward in his book "Time Loops". He argues that self-consistent loops pose no problem, but loops involving inconsistency - such as the one involved in the "grandfather paradox" - would be impossible.

I agree that the idea of such time loops is rather mind-boggling, and defies "common sense". But if we allow for the possibility of retrocausation I don't think we can say they are impossible. Indeed, if retrocausation existed, this kind of thing would be commonplace, unless there were some special mechanism to prevent it.

That's interesting. However, it seems to me that any retro-causative time loop that actually introduced new complex specified information into the past (that must have had a sentient creative origin or at least some creative origin process), would invoke paradox. And the grandfather paradox would happen if any change is introduced that changes or deletes the origin process of a human being, and that would seem to be inevitable for any significant evolutionary innovation introduced far enough in the past by retro-causation. I would like to know how Wargo's ideas somehow get around this. 

How does a "self-consistent" retro-causative time loop differ from my suggested thought experiment, or to pose it in another way, does a "self-consistent" time loop permit introduction of truly new complex specified information (such as a new design in the area of human invention) into the past? It would seem to me that the only type of retro-causative time loop of interest here would be one that can introduce new information that required a designer or a design process of some kind, and that type would inevitably be "inconsistent".