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It could be falsified by finding fossil evidence of ancestors that had no flight yet, did have feathers, but had some other mechanism of thermoregulation suffic

It could be falsified by finding fossil evidence of ancestors that had no flight yet, did have feathers, but had some other mechanism of thermoregulation sufficient for their needs. The fossil record is incredibly limited and I'd bet against such a fossil ever being found even if the animal existed, but in principle it is a falsifiable theory.

EGreg 7y ago
Well in principle string theory is falsifiable too. But at least string theory has a lot of math that always seem to work out. Here we have a bunch of stories and a lot of politics. When the stories don’t even make consistent sense (eg how do exclusively gay or asexual people exist if many theories of evolution predict such a trait would have been practically weeded out of the population by now, but it keeps coming back) people grasp at straws to say “well it HAS TO have SOME fitness advantage” because they just stick to the same basic theoretical framework no matter what the data says.
- flukus 7y ago
  > eg how do exclusively gay or asexual people exist if many theories of evolution predict such a trait would have been practically weeded out of the population by now, but it keeps coming back Evolution works on populations not individuals. Exclusively gay people are the non-breeding worker ants of humanity, they don't pass their genetics along but the do their bit for the survival of the colony. That's only if there is a genetic component to homosexuality of course, which is heavily disputed.
  - foldr 7y ago
    > Exclusively gay people are the non-breeding worker ants of humanity, they don't pass their genetics along but the do their bit for the survival of the colony And that's a just so story. There is zero evidence that this actual reason for the continued existence of non-heterosexual humans in the population. It's not clear to me that same gender attraction requires any more of an explanation than opposite gender attraction. It's only a particular, narrow evolutionary lens that makes homosexuality look like a puzzle to be solved, rather than a fairly obvious consequence of the fact that people of the same gender can get each other off and have feelings for each other. Honestly, we gays seem to have the worst luck in this respect. A couple hundred years ago people didn't think we fit into "God's plan". Now they agonize over how exactly to fit us into evolutionary theory. (I think there are about as many theories of the evolutionary origins of homosexuality as there are evolutionary biologists.) Hamlet got it right: "There are more things in heaven and earth...Than are dreamt of in your philosophy".
    - flukus 7y ago
      > There is zero evidence that this actual reason for the continued existence of non-heterosexual humans in the population. I'm not looking for evidence of their continued existence, I was correcting the parents incorrect claim that evolution would eliminate homosexuality. > rather than a fairly obvious consequence of the fact that people of the same gender can get each other off and have feelings for each other. The fact that we want to get each other off at all is driven by evolution, a species that doesn't have an urge to get each other off goes extinct pretty quickly. > Honestly, we gays seem to have the worst luck in this respect. A couple hundred years ago people didn't think we fit into "God's plan". Now they agonize over how exactly to fit us into evolutionary theory. Really, you think quest for knowledge is at all comparable to the 2000 years of active persecution?
      - foldr 7y ago
        > The fact that we want to get each other off at all is driven by evolution, This begs the question. Gay sexual desire is a counterexample to this claim. > a species that doesn't have an urge to get each other off goes extinct pretty quickly. Evolutionary considerations may set boundary conditions. It doesn't follow that the sexuality that humans in fact have has an evolutionary explanation. There's a dilemma here. If you're going to paint a picture of evolution as a ruthlessly fitness-optimizing process, then you have to take gay sexual desire seriously as a counterexample. If, on the other hand, you accept that evolutionary theory per se only rules out extreme possibilities (e.g., a completely asexual species that reproduces sexually), then you also have to accept that the specifics of human sexuality may not have any explanation in evolutionary terms. >Really, you think quest for knowledge is at all comparable to the 2000 years of active persecution? The persecution of gay people continues. Non-religious bigots will often justify it on alleged evolutionary grounds ("it's not natural"), just as religious bigots will often justify it in terms of Biblical proscriptions.
- Scarblac 7y ago
  Does evolution even predict that it would have been practically weeded out? As far as I know we don't even know what causes people to be gay. Some things can't be weeded out by evolution, e.g. we will never lose major traits that are developed in the first weeks of an embryo's development, as everything that develops in the later stages depend on the first. Non-hereditary traits aren't obviously weeded out either, and I don't think homosexuality is (always) hereditary. Has there really been any research by evolutionist biologists suggesting that homosexuality should have been weeded out and it's an anomaly in our theories?
  - foldr 7y ago
    > As far as I know we don't even know what causes people to be gay. We don't know what causes people to be straight either, but that doesn't seem to stop evolutionary biologists proposing evolutionary explanations for the existence of straight sexual desire.

EGreg 7y ago

Well in principle string theory is falsifiable too. But at least string theory has a lot of math that always seem to work out. Here we have a bunch of stories and a lot of politics. When the stories don’t even make consistent sense (eg how do exclusively gay or asexual people exist if many theories of evolution predict such a trait would have been practically weeded out of the population by now, but it keeps coming back) people grasp at straws to say “well it HAS TO have SOME fitness advantage” because they just stick to the same basic theoretical framework no matter what the data says.

flukus 7y ago
> eg how do exclusively gay or asexual people exist if many theories of evolution predict such a trait would have been practically weeded out of the population by now, but it keeps coming back Evolution works on populations not individuals. Exclusively gay people are the non-breeding worker ants of humanity, they don't pass their genetics along but the do their bit for the survival of the colony. That's only if there is a genetic component to homosexuality of course, which is heavily disputed.
- foldr 7y ago
  > Exclusively gay people are the non-breeding worker ants of humanity, they don't pass their genetics along but the do their bit for the survival of the colony And that's a just so story. There is zero evidence that this actual reason for the continued existence of non-heterosexual humans in the population. It's not clear to me that same gender attraction requires any more of an explanation than opposite gender attraction. It's only a particular, narrow evolutionary lens that makes homosexuality look like a puzzle to be solved, rather than a fairly obvious consequence of the fact that people of the same gender can get each other off and have feelings for each other. Honestly, we gays seem to have the worst luck in this respect. A couple hundred years ago people didn't think we fit into "God's plan". Now they agonize over how exactly to fit us into evolutionary theory. (I think there are about as many theories of the evolutionary origins of homosexuality as there are evolutionary biologists.) Hamlet got it right: "There are more things in heaven and earth...Than are dreamt of in your philosophy".
  - flukus 7y ago
    > There is zero evidence that this actual reason for the continued existence of non-heterosexual humans in the population. I'm not looking for evidence of their continued existence, I was correcting the parents incorrect claim that evolution would eliminate homosexuality. > rather than a fairly obvious consequence of the fact that people of the same gender can get each other off and have feelings for each other. The fact that we want to get each other off at all is driven by evolution, a species that doesn't have an urge to get each other off goes extinct pretty quickly. > Honestly, we gays seem to have the worst luck in this respect. A couple hundred years ago people didn't think we fit into "God's plan". Now they agonize over how exactly to fit us into evolutionary theory. Really, you think quest for knowledge is at all comparable to the 2000 years of active persecution?
    - foldr 7y ago
      > The fact that we want to get each other off at all is driven by evolution, This begs the question. Gay sexual desire is a counterexample to this claim. > a species that doesn't have an urge to get each other off goes extinct pretty quickly. Evolutionary considerations may set boundary conditions. It doesn't follow that the sexuality that humans in fact have has an evolutionary explanation. There's a dilemma here. If you're going to paint a picture of evolution as a ruthlessly fitness-optimizing process, then you have to take gay sexual desire seriously as a counterexample. If, on the other hand, you accept that evolutionary theory per se only rules out extreme possibilities (e.g., a completely asexual species that reproduces sexually), then you also have to accept that the specifics of human sexuality may not have any explanation in evolutionary terms. >Really, you think quest for knowledge is at all comparable to the 2000 years of active persecution? The persecution of gay people continues. Non-religious bigots will often justify it on alleged evolutionary grounds ("it's not natural"), just as religious bigots will often justify it in terms of Biblical proscriptions.
Scarblac 7y ago
Does evolution even predict that it would have been practically weeded out? As far as I know we don't even know what causes people to be gay. Some things can't be weeded out by evolution, e.g. we will never lose major traits that are developed in the first weeks of an embryo's development, as everything that develops in the later stages depend on the first. Non-hereditary traits aren't obviously weeded out either, and I don't think homosexuality is (always) hereditary. Has there really been any research by evolutionist biologists suggesting that homosexuality should have been weeded out and it's an anomaly in our theories?
- foldr 7y ago
  > As far as I know we don't even know what causes people to be gay. We don't know what causes people to be straight either, but that doesn't seem to stop evolutionary biologists proposing evolutionary explanations for the existence of straight sexual desire.