No, you don't understand. The variations due to mutation are completely random, the individuals then compete for food; escaping the predators, mating and the ones better adapted to the current conditions are the more likely to survive. But there's nothing not random there. Someone (a scientist) once described evolution as being a drunk walking along a wall, each time he hits the wall, he bounces back. It's a very apt metaphor.
Not a Drill: SETI Is Investigating a Possible Extraterrestrial Signal From Deep Space
- Thread starter timtonruben359
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Exactly.
But let's assume aliens with advanced spacefaring technology are, by default, infallible gods. Because even compared to our 10,000 year old ancestors, we're totally immune to their weapons, germs, and them jumping us while we're asleep. Heck, let's go back millions of years, seeing as how we're so immune to a T-Rex.
Heck, I bet if we invented a FTL drive tomorrow, that same day we'd become infailible gods, too. I mean, how could we not? We'd have a FTL drive!
Yes, Stephen Jay Gould's attempt to 'fix' a problem in evolutionary biology that had already been fixed thirty years earlier by George Williams. Gould was attacking a thirty year old straw man, and using a bizarre analogy which was largely wrong and made the assumption that evolution works as a macro process from 'simple' to 'complex' - the old error that humans are inevitably more 'complex' than, say, horses, who are more 'complex' than dinosaurs, combined with the incorrect view of evolution as one process when in fact every branch of the tree has its own evolution going on unaffected by everyone else's.
Natural selection is not random
Yeast study suggests there are many evolutionary roads up the mountain
Mutation may not be itself all that random after all.
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I've read his book cover to cover. He never said anything about horses being more complex than dinosaurs, or things to the same effect. You must be mistaken. Maybe if you read the actual books instead of internet cliff notes, you'd make more adequate comments. But feel free to disregard my advice.
With the scientific acumen you've displayed so far, I really doubt if you've read any science books.
Given your contribution to this thread I don't doubt that you know very little about science beyond how it is spelled.
You may note that the article says about Gould exactly the opposite of what cultcross just said.
Looks the same to me.
But you're capable of forming an opinion about things, right?
Gould sees simple to complex as some kind of statistical inevitability, moving from one form to another in a kinds of inevitable drunk walk of progress, ignoring all non random forcings which act on it, so that each species that evolves, from dinosaur to horse to human is just a bit further out to 'complexity' by chance (well, statistical inevitability to be fair). This ignores both the selective pressures which adapt species in specific and very non random ways (humans don't have big brains because drunken random evolution man happened to stumble that way, but because natural selection pushed them in that direction and favoured the right mutations to achieve it) and also the separate progress of different branches. Take the bombardier beetle discussed as developing complexity. Gould would have it that the drunken man just inevitably ended up making the simple beetles more complex. But in fact the more accepted theory would hold that they gain their increased defensive complexity through a wide variety of very non random forcings. Crucially too it has no effect on, if you like, the macro complexity of evolution a whole except where it produces selective pressure on other organisms. Interestingly though, studies like the big yeast experiment suggest that given similar circumstances, other life forms would evolve similarly, if by a different path.
What am I paying you for man?
Lol -- I'm waiting for the cheque to clear.
I'm having real problems editing responses in Chrome at the moment -- very laggy and numerous shockwave flash crashes. Is anyone else having the same problem? Is this the old adware problem that can only be fixed by upgrading?
I'm having real problems editing responses in Chrome at the moment -- very laggy and numerous shockwave flash crashes. Is anyone else having the same problem? Is this the old adware problem that can only be fixed by upgrading?
No I'm not - chrome on android and windows.
How do you explain that an elephant's brain is about five times as big as a human's on average? Where is the necessity?
I assume mods aren't bombarded by ad feeds though.
Not knowing the answer, I was able to find it with a very quick search. Why don't you try that?
Brain mass to body size varies by a power law on average across all mammals. However, families vary from what would be expected for their body size roughly in line with the complexity of their behaviour (/their intelligence if such a thing can be measured) with primates topping out at 5 to 10 times more chunky brain goodness than would be expected.
True.
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But where is the necessity for an elephant brain to be five times the size of a human's? If anything their brain should be smaller and their skull thicker that way it'd be better protected. So why is it BIGGER?
Not the point.
Please enlighten us then. What is the point?
