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Thank you for your detailed response. I was under the impression that “evolution” suggests a gradual process or development toward a given attribute as opposed

Thank you for your detailed response. I was under the impression that “evolution” suggests a gradual process or development toward a given attribute as opposed to the sheer presence of the attribute “from the beginning of time”, so to speak.

moloch-hai 4y ago
Evolution is a random walk among myriad effects on reproductive success. Parasites figure prominently, and they evolve right behind. It is never, ever "toward" anything. It is often "away".
kergonath 4y ago
That’s the thing, there was no beginning, for all intent and purposes. You can go back to the point where all mammals’ ancestors were what we would recognise now as mice, or even before when they were therapsids, and you would have a hard time recognising a bison in that. Everything you can see in an animal is the result of evolution.
Tor3 4y ago
Evolution is never a gradual process toward something. It only looks like that when looking back after the fact. If you take a random walk, and, because the valleys, lakes, mountains, boulders blocking certain paths, somehow led you to end up in a particular city, then you could state that "Aha, you planned to come here!". But no. Evolution is simply one static sorting event following another, on and on, with no gradual element towards something long-term. You only need variation in a population (same as in when a rock field includes various sizes of rocks but are otherwise similar), and the ability to inherit the properties of the parent. Imagine a batch of bacteria, similar but slightly different from each other. One sorting event could be that someone applies some disinfection agent to the batch. Some bacteria die, some survive, and if that's because the survivors were slightly different then when they divide (as bacteria do) you suddenly have a lot more bacteria which handles the disinfection agent better than many of the previous generation. If someone re-adds the same disinfectant then again some die, some survive - presumably the ones which are better at it. Sometimes, but not always, that could be because of random mutations and "just" that one, existing in a subset, will fare better. And, if this continues, you end up with a batch of bacteria which doesn't really react much to that particular disinfectant at all. But - the next day some other disinfectant may be applied. Now things change. Maybe completely different properties will fare better. If you have a lot of different-sized rocks rolling down a mountain, and passing an area with holes - the smaller ones will fall down the holes, the larger ones pass - then you have the whole physical "law" of evolution, almost. You only need to add reproduction and inheritance to have biological evolution as we know it. And it's something that you just can't avoid. Which is why we have to fight antibiotic resistance all the time, and new Covid variants fare better than older ones - it's just sorting. Nothing gradual as such. And, contrary to what anti-evolutionists claim, that to get a "new" functioning species, subspecies or variant, you need "an impossible number of just-so-happens-to-be-functional mutations" - no, it's not so. Dogs, for example, compared to the wolf ancestor of dogs, only have something like two major mutations: One for large size dogs (think Irish wolfhound) and one of very small dogs (think Chihuahua). The rest, e.g. the ability to digest lots of starch, which is present in many dogs, is simply that the genes for starch digestion came from wolves but were sorted for in dogs during domestication (i.e. it was easier for proto-dogs if they could actually survive on human foodstuff/leftovers/etc). So it became much more dominant than in wolves, which can't really for the most part get much out of starch unlike many (but not all) dogs.
- the-printer 4y ago
  Thank you for putting the effort into this response (and everyone else too). I think that some people may be under the impression that I’m trolling by trying to court the delineation that I’ve mentioned. I’m not here for that.
- moloch-hai 4y ago
  Often enough there were features that made an intermediate state of a feature functional supporting further development, that were later lost. Flight developed independently four times in dinosaurs alone, besides the pterosaurs. All the flying dinos relied on ancestral feathers.
  - the-printer 4y ago
    Could you recommend a good entry-level book on evolution? Nothing pop-science though, please.
    - moloch-hai 4y ago
      Darwin is still very readable.

moloch-hai 4y ago

Evolution is a random walk among myriad effects on reproductive success. Parasites figure prominently, and they evolve right behind. It is never, ever "toward" anything. It is often "away".

kergonath 4y ago

That’s the thing, there was no beginning, for all intent and purposes. You can go back to the point where all mammals’ ancestors were what we would recognise now as mice, or even before when they were therapsids, and you would have a hard time recognising a bison in that. Everything you can see in an animal is the result of evolution.

Tor3 4y ago

Evolution is never a gradual process toward something. It only looks like that when looking back after the fact. If you take a random walk, and, because the valleys, lakes, mountains, boulders blocking certain paths, somehow led you to end up in a particular city, then you could state that "Aha, you planned to come here!". But no. Evolution is simply one static sorting event following another, on and on, with no gradual element towards something long-term. You only need variation in a population (same as in when a rock field includes various sizes of rocks but are otherwise similar), and the ability to inherit the properties of the parent. Imagine a batch of bacteria, similar but slightly different from each other. One sorting event could be that someone applies some disinfection agent to the batch. Some bacteria die, some survive, and if that's because the survivors were slightly different then when they divide (as bacteria do) you suddenly have a lot more bacteria which handles the disinfection agent better than many of the previous generation. If someone re-adds the same disinfectant then again some die, some survive - presumably the ones which are better at it. Sometimes, but not always, that could be because of random mutations and "just" that one, existing in a subset, will fare better. And, if this continues, you end up with a batch of bacteria which doesn't really react much to that particular disinfectant at all. But - the next day some other disinfectant may be applied. Now things change. Maybe completely different properties will fare better. If you have a lot of different-sized rocks rolling down a mountain, and passing an area with holes - the smaller ones will fall down the holes, the larger ones pass - then you have the whole physical "law" of evolution, almost. You only need to add reproduction and inheritance to have biological evolution as we know it. And it's something that you just can't avoid. Which is why we have to fight antibiotic resistance all the time, and new Covid variants fare better than older ones - it's just sorting. Nothing gradual as such. And, contrary to what anti-evolutionists claim, that to get a "new" functioning species, subspecies or variant, you need "an impossible number of just-so-happens-to-be-functional mutations" - no, it's not so. Dogs, for example, compared to the wolf ancestor of dogs, only have something like two major mutations: One for large size dogs (think Irish wolfhound) and one of very small dogs (think Chihuahua). The rest, e.g. the ability to digest lots of starch, which is present in many dogs, is simply that the genes for starch digestion came from wolves but were sorted for in dogs during domestication (i.e. it was easier for proto-dogs if they could actually survive on human foodstuff/leftovers/etc). So it became much more dominant than in wolves, which can't really for the most part get much out of starch unlike many (but not all) dogs.

the-printer 4y ago
Thank you for putting the effort into this response (and everyone else too). I think that some people may be under the impression that I’m trolling by trying to court the delineation that I’ve mentioned. I’m not here for that.
moloch-hai 4y ago
Often enough there were features that made an intermediate state of a feature functional supporting further development, that were later lost. Flight developed independently four times in dinosaurs alone, besides the pterosaurs. All the flying dinos relied on ancestral feathers.
- the-printer 4y ago
  Could you recommend a good entry-level book on evolution? Nothing pop-science though, please.
  - moloch-hai 4y ago
    Darwin is still very readable.