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Something really makes me question all just-so stories. It’s not science. It paints a target around an arrow, the arrow being that all speciation must occur th
by EGreg 3y ago
Something really makes me question all just-so stories.
It’s not science. It paints a target around an arrow, the arrow being that all speciation must occur through random mutation and natural selection. Basically, the theory is unfalsifiable. It violates what Karl Popper was talking about.
Now, don’t get me wrong. The theory of common descent is falsifiable. The phylogenic tree can be discerned. But the idea that we have discovered all the mechanisms by which speciation (or “macroevolution”) has ever occurred despite never having seen any of them in practice, is in my opinion bad science.
And just-so stories are almost self-admitting that it’s more folklore than science.
If you think I’m being too heterodox with my opinions, consider the just-so stories in the field of evolutionary psychology and extrapolate to all the phenotypes that are being described.
But actually it seems worse than that because the math doesn’t seem to work out. What evolutionary advantage does a wing give before you can even glide? In the generations where it doesn’t accomplish much, it would seem that a random mutation would be far mord likely to disappear than take over a population. A mutation like proto—wings is likely to be extremely rare while the individuals’ genetic fitness may have increased by say 10%, although that is extremely generous considering the proto-wing confers no advantage and might be seen as freaky and unusual by the mates in the intermediate state. But even with an increase in genetic fitness, it is a tiny tiny effect. For it to take over the entire population eventually, or create a major branch within the population that has some “Lamarckian” direction towards a fully-working wing, seems extremely far-fetched.
- jakear 3y ago[flagged]
- koliber 3y agoThe word "falsifiable" does not mean the thing that you are using it for. It sounds like you are using it to mean "it was proven wrong." When talking about theories, a theory that is not falsifiable is one that could not be ever proven wrong. The best theories are falsifiable, but have a lot of evidence pointing for the theory, and little or no against it.
- jakear 3y agoIf something has been falsified, then it is clearly not unfalsifiable. If something is false, it's a much stronger claim than that it is simply falsifiable. That is the case here. What's your point?
- DonHopkins 3y agoSo by your definition, is the bible false, unfalsifiable, or has it been falsified?
- jakear 3y agoAre you being intentionally difficult in leaving out "falsifiable, but not yet falsified" and repeating "false" twice?
- DonHopkins 3y agoHave you done the math on the Noah's Ark story? Please argue in good faith, not argue from blind faith.
- jakear 3y agoYou also left out "allegorical".
- DonHopkins 3y agoSo you're a "Cafeteria Christian"? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cafeteria_Christians https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cafeteria_Christians
- jakear 3y agoI follow Jesus, that's what it means to be a Christian. He never said we have to take all of the Old Testament at face value (even though I never claimed I didn't). In fact His earthly mission was to inform us that it was out of date and He had the new Gospel, and many of his recorded words were dedicated to deriding those who followed the Old Testament legalistically. Edit: if you actually would like a literalists interpretation of the flood, you could do worse than call up The Narrow Path radio show I linked above from 2-3 PM Pacific time and ask. The host is a full literalist and would be happy to talk.
- michaelmrose 3y agoAre you fundamentally dissatisfied with the current limitations of our understanding and believe they need improvement or do you believe they ought to be abandoned? Just so stories can certainly be unsatisfying as they are insufficient pictures we feel compelled to create even when we lack too much in fine details like assembling bits of bone into fanciful and sometimes wrong creations that never walked the earth but consider that logically the fidelity of such pictures ought to improve over time as those fine details are studied. Changes even revolutionary changes in our understanding of the fine details are apt go go unnoticed by most until such time as they fundamentally alter large scale pictures people outside the sciences are apt to want to attend to. Consider the wing there is reason to believe that it may have been beneficial before it was useful for flight. https://academic.oup.com/bioscience/article/56/5/437/234719 https://academic.oup.com/bioscience/article/56/5/437/234719 Perhaps the canonical example of such a question oft popular with creationionists is eyes but proto eyes are apt to have provided value. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution_of_the_eye https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution_of_the_eye
- EGreg 3y ago”there is reason to believe” is a very low standard that falls short of what most people use in life. When there is no proof one way or the other, belief is a personal choice. But when one theory is systematically pushed against all others, I think it is normal for thinking people to subject it to critical scrutiny. In any other area of life, we’d require this if we wanted to be objective. For example, when solving murders, the idea that they can only be committed by men (ie random mutstion and natural selection) might lead to problematic cases (ie wings) where there is no clear scenario that fits all the data. One might question the underlying premise (all murders have always been commited by men) and suspect a woman. Suppose this leads to a bunch of plausible hypotheses that a woman committed the specific murder in question. But a trained “detective” could concoct lots of plausible-sounding just-so stories of how various men did it, instead. In this situation, let’s take a step back and see what we have. We have just-so stories, with some connection of reality, because they have been selected out of possible stories to have that quality. We also have evidence against each story. Let’s say that in a specific case, all stories about men doing murders have a lot more evidence against them than the woman stories. What then? The situation here is actually more empirical than neo-Darwinianism because we have compelling evidence and argument for men committing murders which we have observed. We know we have been able to prove it beyond a reasonable doubt many times. Whereas we have not been able to observe how speciation occurs in the vast, vast majority of (perhaps all) cases. We just know it occurs. So to say that it occurs excludiveky by method X is simply a hypothesis. And you can’t prove the hypothesis by concocting fanficul just-so stories and claim victory because they have some connection to reality! Perhaps the reason this isn’t scientific is because the stories have been selected to fit the conclusion, rather than being picked from the evidence in the environment. If you are exercising selection on the side of the story to such an extent, then you can find “reason to believe” anything anywhere. Just like a Marxist or a Freudian psychoanalyst. The theory is unfalsifiable!
- huijzer 3y agoYes. The author of Darwin's Blind Spot: Evolution Beyond Natural Selection agrees with you. The view that only natural selection determines evolution is the (neo-)Darwinism view, but there are more modern views as presented by Frank Ryan in aforementioned book.
- _a_a_a_ 3y agoThe most trivial bit of research would have given you an answer. I put in "wing evolution wiki" which got me a top hit of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Origin_of_avian_flight https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Origin_of_avian_flight, which has an entire list of hypotheses: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Origin_of_avian_flight#Hypotheses https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Origin_of_avian_flight#Hypothe... including Pouncing Proavis model Cursorial model Wing-assisted incline running Arboreal model
- jibal 3y agoIndeed. All these evolution-denying arguments have been repeatedly refuted in great depth.
- brap 3y agoI don’t think he was denying evolution. He was suggesting that maybe slow, random natural selection is not the only mechanism by which organisms evolve. I’m not saying there’s an intelligent creator (I personally don’t believe in one), but perhaps the way genes mutate is more “intelligent” than we think. In some cases it sure looks like there was a “goal” to achieve, even at the cost of sacrificing something for a while. That seems kind of “intelligent”. Maybe it’s kind of like the exploration/exploitation tradeoff in RN.
- _a_a_a_ 3y ago> random natural selection is not the only mechanism by which organisms evolve. maybe. What is it? > In some cases it sure looks like there was a “goal” to achieve, even at the cost of sacrificing something for a while. Wiki link suggests wing evolution didn't need that. Even crap wings were better than none.
- EGreg 3y agoWiki link says that there is a lot of evidence against these just-so stories In any case, this isn’t how science is done. You’d be laughed out of the room if this was tried in most areas of life, including detective work etc. Now, let me refine my statement. Non-rigorous scientists have done this a lot throughout ancient history, and it has produced a ton of false theories with apparent explanatory power. The four humors. The theory of spontaneous generation. The luminiferous ether. Phlogiston. Have you studied the history of science and why people believed these theories for centuries, when they were so wrong? In my opinion, it should be required reading in school so people can see what mistakes were made in the past, to at least be aware of the patterns. Even the age of the earth, until radioactivity was discovered, hovered around 100 million years because of dogma. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planck%27s_principle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planck%27s_principle However it is exactly the sort of thing that adherents of, say Marx or Freud’s theories, use. They see “confirming evidence” everywhere, and all they are doing is concocting narratives which are fitting every observed case into their framework. They add details that perhaps weren’t there. But if after a century all you have is just-so stories, many people will call that pseudoscientific. It’s fine to admit you don’t know, but shaming skeptical people into submission — like a sister comment does — betrays the insecurity that adherents of neo-Darwinism should probably feel if they are intellectually honest. > maybe. what is it? Well, we don’t know what can fill the gaps in our knowledge. But people who adhere to this or that school of thought insist it must be what they believe, and often their passive-aggressive tactics seem similar to each other.
- melagonster 3y agoif the main point is about speciation, mainstram theory is not just random mutation and natural selection. one of old typical theory is Allopatric speciation, just random mutation accumulate and then cause mating become imposible, so this is easier than random mutation and natural selection. in current 30 years, vast amount of possible mechanisms of speciation has proposed.