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Optimism in Evolution

6 points by robg 18y ago

jsmcgd 18y ago
Agreed. Also, evolution should be taught because it's rock solid fact.
- Retric 18y ago
  I think evolution should be treated as an approach for understanding a type of complex system. Take collage football over time several ideas have competed and while talent and drive are always important the top team’s strategies have clearly spread around, competed, and mutated. No single approach is always optimal the top team today would still crush the top team 30 years ago because changes in the quality of the players alters optimal strategy etc. Anyway, as a framework it helps to explain how things are going to change from year to year which is useful outside of biology. PS: It also works the other way it's easy to see how a successful strategy (single play) only works within a framework which helps people understand the creation of new species.
  - j2d2 18y ago
    Evolution, change we can believe in!
ars 18y ago
As usual, people talking about evolution are unable to distinguish from macro-evolution and micro. One evolves one species to another, then other basically amplifies changes that are already there, but doesn't create them/say where they came from. No one has any problem with talking about micro-evolution, so the article is basically a straw-man argument, and thus pointless. Macro-evolution is much more controversial.
- byrneseyeview 18y ago
  I don't think that a tolerance for high levels of alcohol, or the ability to spread among humans, could be considered an 'amplified' trait. I also don't think it's useful to argue that there is a difference between believing in small changes from one generation to the next, and the large changes that result from the sum of this process. It's like saying that you believe in counting, but there's a big difference between that and believing that 41,217 comes after 41,216.
ehmunro 18y ago
Why is it that science writers for the New York Times seem unable to grasp basic concepts like eugenics? (I'm speaking of course of the claim of evolutionary proof in human hunting of bighorned rams resulting in rams being born with smaller horns. No shit, sherlock, if I took over Sweden and began hunting down and killing the blondes there will be a whole lot fewer born as the gene markers are winnowed from the available pool.) Has the New York Times joined American police forces in setting a limit on the IQ of their employees lest they be too intelligent? (Just to forestall argument all the mentioned case actually proves is that traits are inherited, and that the subset of rams less desirable to human hunters have outbred the more desirable ones, which is basic common sense. Their greater numbers assure greater numbers of offspring and that their genetic traits will predominate.)
- robg 18y ago
  The writer is a evolutionary biologist. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olivia_Judson http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olivia_Judson
  - ehmunro 18y ago
    So? The case is still one of eugenics and inherited traits and not really related to evolution. (Unless she's making the claim that "Evolution predicts that genetics works", except that I doubt that even the most moronic of creationists would deny that.)

6 points by robg 18y ago

jsmcgd 18y ago

Agreed. Also, evolution should be taught because it's rock solid fact.

Retric 18y ago
I think evolution should be treated as an approach for understanding a type of complex system. Take collage football over time several ideas have competed and while talent and drive are always important the top team’s strategies have clearly spread around, competed, and mutated. No single approach is always optimal the top team today would still crush the top team 30 years ago because changes in the quality of the players alters optimal strategy etc. Anyway, as a framework it helps to explain how things are going to change from year to year which is useful outside of biology. PS: It also works the other way it's easy to see how a successful strategy (single play) only works within a framework which helps people understand the creation of new species.
- j2d2 18y ago
  Evolution, change we can believe in!

ars 18y ago

As usual, people talking about evolution are unable to distinguish from macro-evolution and micro. One evolves one species to another, then other basically amplifies changes that are already there, but doesn't create them/say where they came from. No one has any problem with talking about micro-evolution, so the article is basically a straw-man argument, and thus pointless. Macro-evolution is much more controversial.

byrneseyeview 18y ago
I don't think that a tolerance for high levels of alcohol, or the ability to spread among humans, could be considered an 'amplified' trait. I also don't think it's useful to argue that there is a difference between believing in small changes from one generation to the next, and the large changes that result from the sum of this process. It's like saying that you believe in counting, but there's a big difference between that and believing that 41,217 comes after 41,216.

ehmunro 18y ago

Why is it that science writers for the New York Times seem unable to grasp basic concepts like eugenics? (I'm speaking of course of the claim of evolutionary proof in human hunting of bighorned rams resulting in rams being born with smaller horns. No shit, sherlock, if I took over Sweden and began hunting down and killing the blondes there will be a whole lot fewer born as the gene markers are winnowed from the available pool.) Has the New York Times joined American police forces in setting a limit on the IQ of their employees lest they be too intelligent? (Just to forestall argument all the mentioned case actually proves is that traits are inherited, and that the subset of rams less desirable to human hunters have outbred the more desirable ones, which is basic common sense. Their greater numbers assure greater numbers of offspring and that their genetic traits will predominate.)

robg 18y ago
The writer is a evolutionary biologist. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olivia_Judson http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olivia_Judson
- ehmunro 18y ago
  So? The case is still one of eugenics and inherited traits and not really related to evolution. (Unless she's making the claim that "Evolution predicts that genetics works", except that I doubt that even the most moronic of creationists would deny that.)