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>"Who We Are and How We Got Here" by David Reich IMHO, I'd take the conclusions offered here with a grain of salt. It's applying statistical methods to very i
by treis 4y ago
>"Who We Are and How We Got Here" by David Reich
IMHO, I'd take the conclusions offered here with a grain of salt. It's applying statistical methods to very improbable events (ancient bones surviving with DNA) to determine other very improbable events (evolutionary DNA change). The conclusions at least somewhat rest on the assumption that those two things have relatively consistent probabilities. That could be true but it's probably not and if it's not it's somewhat unclear how that would bias the results that the book draws its conclusions from.
- 11101010001100 4y ago> statistical methods to very improbable events What is the alternative?
- treis 4y agoIf I had one I'd be clearing a space on my shelf for my Nobel Prize Seriously though, I don't think there's any way to know for sure. Like imagine if it were dice rolls. You can look at the results and draw conclusions to see if it's a weighted dice. But what if my table biased rolls or if some results were lost? It's probably reasonable to conclude that they weren't but no way that I can see to be sure.
- enviclash 4y agoRandom walks.
- diego_moita 4y ago> other very improbable events (evolutionary DNA change) Sorry, I don't understand this part. Are you suggesting that evolution is a "very improbable event"? Among serious scientists evolution is already settled and beyond dispute. I don't see any basis for an argument if you're suggesting that. Denying evolution belongs to religion, not science.
- dekhn 4y agoNo, they are referring to the fact that the events that lead to permanent changes in the genome are extremely rare- the vast majority of mutations are not fixed.