Here's some of the most important books I've read (or re-read) in the past few months.
I've also read a lot of papers and scribbled notes on what's important and what's
Everyone has their own method. What works for me is to keep an electronic reference with key words and links to a file folder on a particular topic. (I use EndNote.) Here are the folders with all the papers I've been reading in the past few months.
I don't know how other authors behave but for me the most difficult thing about writing a book is organizing my thoughts and planning how to present them in the most effective manner. I tend to write too much on too many topics so the initial drafts usually have to be pared down considerably. Keeping that in mind, what are YOUR favorite topics?
258 comments :
«Oldest ‹Older 201 – 258 of 258Gary, please do explain progeria, HIV, klinefelter, melanoma, blind cave fish and Paris japonica using guided evolution?
Furthermore, you write really nice stories. And in your eyes you think these stories to be scientific, but let met tell you a secret, they aren't.
Your stories are based on the assumption your model is true. Problem is, you haven't produced any evidence yet to support your model. You present nice stories as evidence, which is circular logic: My model = true, thus my story = true. Because my story = true, it means my model = true. Check mate evo's.
About 15 years ago Terry Pratchett wrote the first of three books in the Science of discworld series. In the first book he describes education in the school system, as a series of lies to children. First you learn an atom is like a miniature solar system. Once you get a grasp with this, the school peels of another layer and all of a sudden you have clouds of electrons flying all over the place. Peel of another layer and you get into the realms of quarks, quantum and stuff. For day to day things, the solar system model is sufficient for the layman, but for real scientists it won't work.
It's like Newton's laws are OK for day to day stuff, but once need GPS or want to land a space probe on a comet you need Einstein.
Same thing applies to genetics, Mendelian laws are fine for many simple things, but for a deeper understanding of genetics and heritage science turns to natural selection, genetic drift etc.
While your models and stories are comparable to the solar system model of an atom, science has gone way beyond that and is now looking at Higgs bosons.
Oh yeah Gary, there are lots of animals which mourn their dead and form couples for life. Mostly primates, but elephants and some birds show this behavior too.
Thus your assertion (I quote) "Humans would be "meat robots" that have no need for marriage ceremonies and discard their young soon after birth." is false, because behavior like couples for life and mourning of the dead isn't restricted to humans only.
"I'm on sabbatical this term, working on a possible book whose working title is "What's in Your Genome?: 90% of your genome is junk."
HAHAHA...LOTFLMPO!
The salmon example was your example -- you said that ordinary unguided evolutionary forces such as mutation and natural selection could not explain how a salmon could come to place its eggs in a well-chosen location.
Are you really saying that random mutations cannot include ones that lead to placing the eggs nonrandomly? Are you really saying that there will be no differences in fitness between different phenotypes?
I must misunderstand you rather thoroughly, because I take you to be making an impossibility argument about this adaptation where everyone else sees possibilities.
Mutation and selection generalizations are not a multiple level cognitive model for explaining how intelligence of any kind (including the brains of animals) work, as I provided in the earlier links. Without that you are just guessing whether the mechanism responsible for "evolution" qualifies as intelligent or not.
My primary area of study is cognitive science, which is needed for the predictions you're attempting to make. If you want to learn how the cognitive model works then study the provided information until you understand the basics. I will then answer relevant questions.
Mutation and selection are not a model for explaining how intelligence works. They're a model for explaining how phenotypic and behavioral features arise and are maintained. Some of those behavioral features might count as intelligence. Doesn't matter. Mutation and selection don't explain how jaws or fingers work either, but we are supposedly talking about evolution here, right?
Gary, still having lots of trouble understanding you. So if a mutation happens to change the brain of a fish so that it prefers to lay its eggs on the gravel at the bottom of a stream, instead of just strewing them about, and this increases the fitness of the genotype, you say that this involves intelligence. Maybe, if we mean the intelligence of the fish.
But how does it involve intelligence guiding the evolutionary process?
John Harshman agrees: Mutation and selection are not a model for explaining how intelligence works.
Whether "evolution" is "guided" by a previously unexplained (intelligent designer) intelligence or not requires a more explanatory scientific model and theory than this forum is used to. The mutation and selection generalizations are now being antiquated.
The many researchers on mutation will be surprised to hear that they are studying something which doesn't exist. (Not to mention researchers on natural selection).
Joe, if you cannot explain even the basics of the underlying intelligence levels that cause neural self-organization of a fish's brain then you are out of your field. Dwelling on mutation and selection generalizations is in comparison childish, as well as annoying.
Speaking of guiding intelligence, the blog pages are behaving weirdly. If I add a comment, then click on the thread and display its comments, it isn't there. But if I look at the Recent Comments list, find it there, and click on my name there, I get to the thread comments and do find my comment there.
This is even stranger than Gary Gaulin's terminology.
And I "selected" a chicken pie for dinner. If I and others were to eat ever chicken in the world then chickens would become extinct. Therefore I have no doubt that "selection" exists. The problem is that it's a child level concept, not an explanatory model for explaining how the brains the do most of the selecting work.
I'm just a stick-in-the-mud who keeps investigating evolutionary processes such as mutation, natural selection and such. And finds them not too different in species that have brains and species that have nothing like a brain. And therefore thinks that if the processes can be described in a brainless species, they can be described in a brained species.
Gary, please feel free to ignore my field, we're obviously hopeless.
Joe I'm not impressed by your snobbery. If that's all you got then you should not be making predictions related to "intelligence".
Gary, the way things are going, if you were impressed, I'd worry.
I stopped being impressed by Darwinian theory after finding out how to antiquate it. If you're happy with only that then fine. Just don't expect me to be impressed by those who are unwilling to learn something new and would rather be left behind, in science.
Ahh, so for stuff without brain, it's ok to do experiments according to good ole Darwinism. And things with brains we perform experiments according to Gaulinism.
Gary, if we want to perform experiments with Toxoplasma gondii, do we follow Darwinism or Gaulinism as guideline in our experiments?
Gary, if you think evolutionary theory predicts:
"Salmon would squirt out their eggs in the ocean then let the other fish eat them. Alligators and crocodiles would eat their young. Humans would be "meat robots" that have no need for marriage ceremonies and discard their young soon after birth."
then you need to go study evolution textbooks and read some empirical literature on the subject, until you understand the basics. Then we can answer your relevant questions.
The prediction you attributed to evolutionary theory doesn't make any sense to anyone with a rudimentary understanding of the concepts. Your example is both childish and annoying. If that's all you have got you should not be making predictions related to evolutionary theory.
At your website theoryofid you claim that your theory generates scientifically testable hypotheses. Can you provide an example?
requires a more explanatory scientific model and theory than this forum is used to
No, Gary; as others have pointed out, and I have in a previous comment as well, it requires you to learn more about the "more explanatory scientific model" (evolutionary theory) than you currently know. Luckily this should not be difficult, since what you currently know, based on your statements here, is zilch.
Chris B: The prediction you attributed to evolutionary theory
I did not attribute the prediction to your "evolutionary theory".
Ed asks: if we want to perform experiments with Toxoplasma gondii, do we follow Darwinism or Gaulinism as guideline in our experiments?
A brain manipulatory parasite requires a model/theory related to how brains work, therefore the Darwinian model is the wrong one to use.
I think the thread exceeded a length limit - try clicking on "Load more" near the very bottom of the thread.
Make that reload the thread and click on "Load more...."
A brain manipulatory parasite requires a model/theory related to how brains work
Therefore a tree parasite requires a model/theory related to how trees "work"?
The way this is going, it can only be a matter of time before Gary asks "But how does the beer know how to make you drunk?"
Gary,
"Chris B: The prediction you attributed to evolutionary theory
I did not attribute the prediction to your "evolutionary theory". "
You attributed it to "Unguided evolution". Evolutionary theory describes an unguided process.
Many thanks, that was the problem.
Chris, as I already indicated evolution by natural selection theory leaves the question of whether "evolution" is guided or unguided by intelligence up to the imagination. The need to invoke a guiding religious deity similar to Santa Claus is not even a scientific comparison, it's a thinly veiled religious/philosophical argument. See:
http://ncse.com/rncse/17/6/many-scientists-see-gods-hand-evolution
You are entitled to your religious belief. But it's not a scientific prediction.
Simon says: The way this is going, it can only be a matter of time before Gary asks "But how does the beer know how to make you drunk?"
Shove your insults up your ass, creep.
judmarc: Therefore a tree parasite requires a model/theory related to how trees "work"?
Botanists do not combat invasive species by sitting around all day saying "mutation and selection didit" while planning birthday parties for Charles Darwin.
The model and theory I provided also works for unintelligent systems, and would work for modeling trees and tree parasites even though trees do not (or at least yet) qualify as having multicelluar intelligence. In the case of trees the highest intelligence level I can qualify is cellular intelligence. For at least some plants that may in the future change but that will be due to discoveries being made by botanists. For example:
https://www.ted.com/talks/stefano_mancuso_the_roots_of_plant_intelligence?language=en
Gary:
Chris, as I already indicated evolution by natural selection theory leaves the question of whether "evolution" is guided or unguided by intelligence up to the imagination.
Unfortunately Gary, what you think (you know) about evolutionary theory isn't where science is these days. Your models and ideas are still in the atoms look like miniature solar systems phase, while science is working on Higgs bosons.
You assume a lot and write nice stories, but it's all wishful thinking.
Because unlike what you think:
Botanists do not combat invasive species by sitting around all day saying "mutation and selection didit"
Botanists like virologists are combating diseases in plants and humans, and they do actually use modern evolutionary theory to find out why some plants are resistant, and how to combat for example HIV infections in humans. I'd suggest, you really should open a biology book for once and learn how scientists in the real world use evolutionary theory.
And perhaps you should also check out how they use natural selection on computer programs, to get the computer to solve programming issues human engineers can't.
Gary continues:
while planning birthday parties for Charles Darwin.
I think you know where to stick these derogatory comments yourself.
Gary,
"Chris, as I already indicated evolution by natural selection theory leaves the question of whether "evolution" is guided or unguided by intelligence up to the imagination. "
No, it does not. There is no element of 'guided' in evolutionary theory, it is not needed at all for evolutionary theory, and there is no scientific evidence there is any guided element to evolution.
That's not a "religious belief", it's a fact. I don't need to invoke Santa Clause or any other "intelligent" actor to explain evolution. It's just not necessary.
Provide a scientifically testable hypothesis predicted from "guided" evolution. Then test it.
The model and theory I provided also works for unintelligent systems
So, of course, does evolutionary theory. The math was worked out long ago (both with regard to population genetics and the molecular clock), and needs no guiding intelligence, whether for trees, salmon, or humans. Sorry, Gary, you're trying to solve a problem that is no longer a problem - hasn't been for decades (regarding the molecular clock) or almost a century (regarding population genetics). The math works - period.
@Gary:Shove your insults up your ass, creep.
I'm not sure where I have insulted you. But you stated that Toxoplasma "requires a model/theory related to how brains work". Saccharomyces cerevisiae very successfully gets humans to supply it with nutrients under favorable conditions in terms of temperature and acidity. It does so by producing alcohol when provided with barley and alcohol certainly has an effect on the human brain. Most evolutionary biologists would certainly hold this ability to turn barley into beer to be a good example of a spandrel. But if Toxoplasma releasing chemicals that affect a hosts brain requires intelligence on Toxoplasmas part, indeed according to you it requires a model of the hosts brain, then clearly the same must hold for Yeast, which gets its human hosts to grow it in copper basins in enormous numbers by producing a chemical that interacts with our nervous systems. I'm not insulting you, I'm trying to clarify your position by using an easy to follow example.
I think that Cannabis evolved its ability to produce THC to fend off herbivorous insects by having the THC interact with the insects nervous system. Your view seems to say that Cannabis not only has a working model of the insect brain, but of the human brain as well, utilizing the method of getting people stoned to make them grow additional cannabis plants. Not only does Cannabis know more about neuroscience than we do, it also has a more than cursory understanding of multitrack recording (because how else could you explain Sgt. Pepper?). It seems that the most pressing issue in science is finding a way to communicate with all these sentient beings around us, since they know so much more than we do. If Toxoplasma is better than us at neuroscience, then maybe E.coli has a general analytic solution to the Navier-Strokes equation. And for sure squirrels have proven (or disproven) the Riemann hypothesis. Where's St Francis when you need him (or for a secular alternative Dr. Doolittle, BTW, why is there so far no childrens book where the main character can talk to the Fungi? That seems far cooler than being able to just talk to eumetazoans. "Johnny and the marvelous mold")?
At this point in time it's obvious that the challengers are unable to provide a scientific model that can differentiate between "guided evolution" and "unguided evolution".
It would be pointless for me to respond to the usual hand-waving and insults. In regards to how useful Evolutionary Algorithms actually are in science and engineering:
http://www.kurzweilai.net/forums/topic/evolutionary-algorithms-community-versus-deep-learning
Glorified examples like the radio antenna example are no match for what now exists, which were not EA designed they were intelligently designed.
challengers
You glorify yourself if you think you have "challengers." What you have are people rather gently (in spite of you feeling so apparently insulted) letting you know that what you have is a crackpot obsession, not a theory. I apologize for speaking so plainly, but I don't see what benefit shading the truth would be.
There is no element of 'guided' in evolutionary theory,
Therein lies your problem.
What else does he have left?
The issue is though; does Larry really believe that every cell type of human body contains 90% junk DNA?
If he does, then we have to find proof that he is wrong or move on...
That's not a problem, Gary, that's a fact. For all your blather in this thread and despite being asked many times here, you have yet to provide one single scientifically testable hypothesis unique to your theoryofid.
At this point in time it's obvious that your "challenge" to evolutionary theory is unable to provide any scientifically testable hypothesis that can differentiate between "guided evolution" and "unguided evolution".
Eric, it has been rather entertaining to read your posts, so bereft of scientific knowledge of the subject, peppered throughout this thread. You have been like a demented chihuahua, constantly yapping and nipping at everyone's heels. Thanks for your contribution.
This is what you have Chris:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_ignorance
No, Gary, I have decades of empirical scientific evidence supporting evolutionary theory, none of it resorting to some underlying "intelligence" or "guidance" because such concepts are not needed to explain the observations. You, on the other hand, still have nothing.
In debates, appeals to ignorance are sometimes used in an attempt to shift the burden of proof.
Since this thread has already turned into a Gaulin-related disaster, I’m going for another comment, although first, good luck with the book, Larry - I look forward to reading it.
Gary, you are the one with the exceptional claims, so you are one with the burden of proof. More amusingly, you’ve scored yet another Own Goal here, in that your source refutes your own argument. Specifically, your Wikipedia citation says, "Argument from ignorance ....... asserts that a proposition is true because it has not yet been proven false (or vice versa).” You cite this ridiculously soon after you argued, “If you cannot find a problem with the testable model and theory I have then I won."
Beyond that, note that many people here and elsewhere have found countless problems with your model: your ignoring the criticisms does not make them disappear.
Moreover, as you've shown through numerous examples here and elsewhere, when you habitually make unsupported assertions (molecular intelligence), are wrong on facts (hippocampi in insects), misuse technical terms (intelligence), do not understand the basics of biology, mischaracterize both the science you are criticizing (your absurd "predictions from unguided natural selection") and the science that you think supports you (the Blencowe press release!), you are arguing from ignorance in a truly profound and embarrassing sense.
It seems that you could learn a useful lesson from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zKhEw7nD9C4 .
Reciprocal cause/causation between levels goes in both the forward and reverse direction. These communicative behavioral pathways cause all of our complex intelligence related behaviors to connect back to the behavior of matter, which does not necessarily need to be intelligent to be the fundamental source of consciousness.
(1) Molecular Level Intelligence: Behavior of matter causes self-assembly of molecular systems that in time become molecular level intelligence, where biological RNA and DNA memory systems learn over time by replication of their accumulated genetic knowledge through a lineage of successive offspring. This intelligence level controls basic growth and division of our cells, is a primary source of our instinctual behaviors, and causes molecular level social differentiation (i.e. speciation).
(2) Cellular Level Intelligence: Molecular level intelligence is the intelligent cause of cellular level intelligence. This intelligence level controls moment to moment cellular responses such as locomotion/migration and cellular level social differentiation (i.e. neural plasticity). At our conception we were only at the cellular intelligence level. Two molecular intelligence systems (egg and sperm) which are on their own unable to self-replicate combined into a single self-replicating cell, a zygote. The zygote then divided to become a colony of cells, an embryo. Later during fetal development we made it to the multicellular intelligence level which requires a self-learning neural brain to control motor muscle movements1 (also sweat gland motor muscles).
(3) Multicellular Level Intelligence: Cellular level intelligence is the intelligent cause of multicellular level intelligence. In this case a multicellular body is controlled by a brain made of cells, expressing all three intelligence levels at once, which results in our complex and powerful paternal (fatherly), maternal (motherly) and other behaviors. This intelligence level controls our moment to moment multicellular responses, locomotion/migration and multicellular level social differentiation (i.e. occupation). Successful designs remain in the biosphere’s interconnected collective (RNA/DNA) memory to help keep going the billions year old cycle of life, where in our case not all individuals must reproduce for the human lineage to benefit from all in society.
The combined knowledge and behavior of all three intelligence levels guides spawning salmon of both sexes on long perilous migrations to where they were born and may choose to stay to defend their nests "till death do they part" from not being able to survive for long in freshwater conditions. Motherly alligators and crocodiles gently carry their well guarded hatchlings to the water, and their fathers will learn to not eat the food she gathers for them. If the babies are scared then they will call and she will be quick to come to their aid and let them ride on her head and body, as they learn what they need to know to succeed in life. For humans this instinctual and learned knowledge has through time guided us towards marriage ceremonies to ask for "blessing" from a conscious part of us that our multicellular intelligence level (brain) may be able to sense coming from the other intelligence levels we cannot directly experience, which at the genetic intelligence level has for billions of years been alive, and is now still alive inside of us..
We are part of a molecular learning process that keeps itself going through time by replicating previous contents of genetic memory along with best (better than random) guesses what may work better in the next replication, for our children. The resulting cladogram shows a progression of adapting designs evidenced by the fossil record where never once was there not a predecessor of similar design (which can at times lead to entirely new function) present in memory for the descendant design to have come from.
From:
https://sites.google.com/site/theoryofid/home/TheoryOfIntelligentDesign.pdf
The theory of intelligent design holds that certain features of the universe and of living things are best explained by an intelligent cause, whereby here the behavior of matter powers a coexisting trinity of systematically self-similar (in each others image, likeness) intelligent systems at the molecular, cellular and multicellular level.
Behavior from a system or a device qualifies as intelligent by meeting all four circuit requirements that are required for this ability, which are: (1) A body to control, either real or virtual, with motor muscle(s) including molecular actuators, motor proteins, speakers (linear actuator), write to a screen (arm actuation), motorized wheels (rotary actuator). It is possible for biological intelligence to lose control of body muscles needed for movement yet still be aware of what is happening around itself but this is a condition that makes it impossible to survive on its own and will normally soon perish. (2) Random Access Memory (RAM) addressed by its sensory sensors where each motor action and its associated confidence value are stored as separate data elements. (3) Confidence (central hedonic) system that increments the confidence level of successful motor actions and decrements the confidence value of actions that fail to meet immediate needs or goal. (4) Ability to guess a new memory action when associated confidence level sufficiently decreases. For flagella powered cells a random guess response is designed into the motor system by the reversing of motor direction causing it to “tumble” towards a new heading.
For machine intelligence the IBM Watson system that won at Jeopardy qualifies as intelligent. Word combinations for hypotheses were guessed then tested against memory for confidence in each being a hypothesis that is true and whether confident enough in its best answer to push a button/buzzer. Watson controlled a speaker (linear actuator powered vocal system) and arm actuated muscles guiding a pen was simulated by an electric powered writing device.
For typical intelligent multicellular systems: At the multicellular level there is a reciprocal neural connection from the brain to its muscle cells, then a neural sensory feedback connection from the muscle cells back to the brain. At the cellular level of each muscle cell there are metabolic pathway connections to activate muscle cell motor protein molecules which produce muscle cell contraction, then a metabolic pathway sensory feedback connection from motor protein molecules to the surface of the muscle cell to add its internal state (such as fatigue) to the signal that the feedback neuron receives from the muscle. At the molecular level there is the genome that produced and maintains the cell, which also requires sensory feedback for proper control of its internal environment.
At all biological intelligence levels whatever sensory the system has to work with addresses a memory system that works like a random access memory chip used in computers. It is possible to put the contents of a RAM into a Read Only Memory (ROM) but using a ROM takes away the system's ability to self-learn, it cannot form new memories that are needed to learn something new. Unless the ROM contains all-knowing knowledge of the future and all the humans it will ever meet in its lifetime it can never recall memories of meeting them, or their name and what they look like. The result is more of a zombie that may at first appear to be a fully functional intelligence but they are missing something necessary, a RAM in the circuit, not a ROM. For sake of theory the behavior of matter does not need to be intelligent, therefore a fully trained (all knowing) ROM could theoretically be used to produce atomic/molecular behavior.
Considering how the know-it-alls in this and a couple other forums just throw pompous insults I would have to post the entire theory before they would even bother to acknowledge that it exists. Unfortunately the forum software is making that nearly impossible.
I think I posted enough of it to show that it is serious theory,. Those who are hand-waving it away by showing how ignorant they are of cognitive science are now just wasting space. And I need to get back to other discussions with people who are genuinely interested in scientific theories like this.
Gary,
At your website theoryofid you claim that your theory generates scientifically testable hypotheses. Provide an example that can distinguish between intelligent design and modern evolutionary theory.
Your not-a-theory is poorly written word salad (“ the billions year old cycle of life, where in our case not all individuals must reproduce for the human lineage to benefit from all in society”?) It comprises unsupported assertions (“molecular intelligence”) and conflation of metaphorical versions of technical terms (DNA as collective memory). You have neither justified nor redefined your non-standard uses of terminology (intelligence, memory, learning, cladogram). Your lack of justifiable definitions and especially operational definitions has you jumping between technical terms with no way of quantifying anything, or even knowing exactly what you are talking about. For example, “motors and sensory to control” (sic) are not a “requirement of intelligence”: apart from “requirement” instead of “characteristic” or “diagnostic”, etc., intelligence undoubtedly began by coordinating sensory inputs and muscular and other responses, but your wording excludes mental activities that epitomize the highest levels of intelligence, such as making plans, evaluating your life, remembering a loved one, and thinking up hypotheses and tests.
You conflate unrelated concepts (molecular species and biological species), and talk rubbish (“molecular-level social differentiation”).
Your examples are poorly chosen and readily countered: mate, spawn, and die does not exemplify parental devotion, and even if it did, there are plenty of organisms with no parental care whatsoever (all plants, many invertebrates, many fish). Our eggs and sperm don’t reproduce on their own, but ours is not the only workable reproductive cycle (e.g., parthenogenesis, gametophytes in plants, unicellular fission, etc.).
Your nonsense is topped off with “facts” that are mostly wrong as initially presented. Father crocodilians don’t learn not to eat the babies’ food that mothers gather for them (it’s doubtful that they even learn not to eat the babies), in part because (AFAIK), mother crocodilians do not feed their young (other than unintentionally dropping fragments of prey that their young snap up: baby crocodilians find their own food). A mother crocodilian does not let her young ride on her at times of danger, because she responds to most threats by attacking them. (The babies clamber over their mothers when everything is peaceful). At least you retracted your notion that they scurry into their mothers’ mouths when threatened. Salmonids vary in whether or not they die after spawning, even within individual species, but describing dying versus returning to the ocean as a “choice” is silly. Moreover, they do not uniformly die because they “can’t survive for long in freshwater” - they vary considerably in their ability to readapt to freshwater. Some cannot readapt, but others (e.g., arctic char) shift back and forward numerous times.
Reproduction does not consist of guessing what may work better in the next generation. In organisms with random mating (wind-pollinated plants, animals that release eggs & spawn en masse, like corals), this is indisputable. In animals that select mates, mating is not random, but the choice is strictly based on the phenotypes that have worked well in their own generation, not on what will work better in the next. Beyond that, however, recombination is random, in that organisms do not edit out unfortunate combinations of genes or pick which chromosomes will work best together. Genes mix, and unfavorable combinations do less well in the next generation than fortunate combinations. That’s natural selection – you denigrate it, but it is well documented in countless lab and field studies, unlike your nonsense.
Hey Gary, exactly *what* is it that your theory explains better than natural selection when it comes down to explaining the current speciation on this globe? And where does this 'intelligence' fit in?
The 3 posts you wrote above explaing your 'theory' are just word play, so-so stories with absolutely no scientific value. It doesn't explain fossils, it doesn't explain behaviour, it doesn't explain the life cycle of Toxoplasma.
And could you answer Chris's question for once please?
[Beware! Pedantic botanist on the rampage!]
Good points, N. Wells. However, as a botanist I both concede your point "organisms with no parental care whatsoever (all plants . . ." and dispute it.
Plants that produce seeds don't care for the young after the seeds disperse, but they vary greatly in the amount of food they pack into the seed and how much development the embryo undergoes before the seed disperses. These features are analogous to the parental care seen in vertebrates and can be explored by the same K vs r models used for vertebrates.
The alternation of generations in plants introduces a different wrinkle. In the plants we commonly see, the sporophytes care for their gametophyte offspring so completely that we generally don't realize the gametophytes are there. (Pollen is not sperm, but a tiny specialized gametophye plant which will produce sperm if it gets to an appropriate flower.) In some plants, like mosses, the female gametophyte parent supports its parasitic sporophyte offspring throughout its life. Parental care in plants!
Yes, mea culpa, I knew those were oversimplified when I trimmed everything zealously in order to get the post below the character limit. You are of course absolutely right on both points. I mentioned gametophytes because Gary thinks reproduction starts and ends with diploid adult mammals, and for parental care I intended "post-separation" care because Gary keeps insisting that "intelligence" leads to doting mothers actively caring for infants. Regardless, you're right.
What you wrote was fine, N. Wells. Totally understandable simplifications, especially necessary because GG was one of the intended audience. But sometimes I can't resist writing things like this, especially when I have work I'm trying to avoid.
For how the theory applies to the origin of life is this I wrote for the Reddit Creation & ID forum:
https://originoflifeaquarium.blogspot.com
I still expect a walk on the beach would often have a concentrated protoplasmic biomass-like pile along the high tide line, but what's in it did not yet comprise the seaweed with things like crabs that later came from it. In either case there was already plenty of starter material being skim deposited in different environments making stones slippery when wet, not crystal clear water washing everything squeaky clean and slime free. In either case you have to start with a tremendous amount of life giving compounds already in the comets and other cosmic debris. Even frozen and/or liquid methane lakes would like drop from the sky, which is honestly the next best thing to starting off with plenty of cow manure. The single carbon monomers link up into fats and oils that make cell membranes stay together to cover watery surfaces while those that are not end up on one side of the membrane or the other.
Self-assembly has a way of putting everything that the tornado separated into its most basic chemical parts back together again, in a way where if there is something to form a membrane around the molecules that can concentrate around then it will soon be fully membrane enclosed. Then it's a lipid versus lipid competition where the best for that environment bumps out ones with less membrane binding power. It's a sorting back out of what goes where to make cells like we are made of filled with all kinds of stuff that concentrates inside especially after getting a good squeezing of its watery contents down to the biomolecules that still best help hold their shape, from the inside too.
The sorting out of the cell forming compounds preceded the special moment of breathing of life into them part where self-learning genetic systems came to life in a self-assembling meant to be way, not lucky accidents. It's another way to defeat the "evolution by natural selection" based thinking. It starts with all that on its own self-assembles that does not genetically "evolve" then goes right to an intelligent causation coming from the inside out of the once lifeless protocells that gave them life, and are still learning. Our design in turn takes three intelligence levels working together as one to sustain, which is ironically consistent with Trinity which further helps the model/theory turn the tables on the "natural selection" minded thinking. It then does not even matter that the early planet were way rich in barnyard type gasses complete with smelly icky primordial stuff on the ground in some places to even way back then be careful not to step in.
The more that is already "Poof!" and it's there, by how the chemistry sorts out, the better for eliminating the "evolution by natural selection" thinking from an origin of life model. It from there needs cognitive science basics where we end up with a genetic/molecular intelligence level that after billions of years is still a developing brain going from one thought to the next, in the same way our brain made of neurons develops in just months than keeps learning for as long as it can. We its expression have limited time but it's the same kind of "development" as in cells and us as opposed to an ambiguous word like "evolution" that only complicates understanding of three self-similar levels with the same self-learning systematics, just different size scale and time rates.
Thanks, Gary.
That post answers all of my questions.
Good luck in your endeavors.
P.S. You could have just posted that at the beginning and saved a lot of people a lot of time.
Just to be picky I'll post the text after I improved grammar and detail. Reddit encourages making further improvements like this.
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I still expect a walk on the beach would often include a concentrated protoplasmic biomass-like pile along the high tide line, but what's in it did not yet comprise the seaweed with things like crabs that later came from it. In either case there was already plenty of starter material being skim deposited in different environments making stones slippery when wet, not crystal clear water washing everything squeaky clean and slime free. In either case you have to start with a tremendous amount of life giving compounds already in the comets and other cosmic debris. Even frozen and/or liquid methane lakes would like rain from the sky, which is honestly the next best thing to starting off with a steady supply of plenty of cow manure. The single carbon monomers link up into fats and oils that make cell membranes stay together to cover watery surfaces while those that are not end up on one side of the membrane or the other.
Self-assembly has a way of putting everything that the Big-Bang's cosmic tornado separated into its most basic chemical parts back together again, in a way where if there is something to form a membrane around the molecules that can concentrate around then it will soon be fully membrane enclosed. Then it's a lipid versus lipid competition, where the best for that environment bumps out ones with less membrane binding power. It's a sorting back out of what goes where to make cells like we are made of, which are filled with all kinds of stuff that concentrates inside especially after getting a good squeezing of its watery contents down to the biomolecules that from the inside still best help hold their shape.
This sorting out of the cell forming compounds preceded the special moment of breathing of life into them, where self-learning genetic systems were by self-assembly created in a meant to be way, not lucky accidents. It's a scientific way to defeat the "evolution by natural selection" based thinking. It starts with all that on its own self-assembles that does not genetically "evolve" then goes right to a life-giving intelligent causation coming from the inside out of the once lifeless protocells. Our design takes that intelligence level and two other levels (cellular behavior and multicellular brain behavior) working together as one to sustain itself, which is ironically consistent with Trinity which further helps the model/theory turn the tables on the "natural selection" minded thinking. It then does not even matter that the early planet were way rich in barnyard type gasses complete with smelly icky primordial stuff on the ground in some places, to even way back then be careful not to step in.
The more that is already "Poof!" and it's there, by how the chemistry sorts out, the better for eliminating the "evolution by natural selection" thinking from an origin of intelligent life model. It from there needs cognitive science basics where we end up with a genetic/molecular intelligence level that after billions of years is still a developing brain going from one thought to the next, in the same way our brain made of neurons develops in just months then keeps learning for as long as it can. We its expression have limited time but it's the same kind of "development" as in cells and us as opposed to an ambiguous word like "evolution" that only complicates understanding of three self-similar levels with the same self-learning systematics, just different size scale and time rates.
I have an idea for your book Larry; or something you could mention in your book that may or may not relate to "junk DNA".
What would any distinguished Darwinist predict about this scenario:
I've read this post once about Japanese Pearl Divers that have been doing pearl diving for many generations. Some of them date back as far as 3500 year ago...
Since those men and women are in the water most of the day, what evolutionary changes would a Darwinist predict in those close but fertile populations? Joe F?
The fact that you would ask such a stupid question proves that you know nothing about "Darwinism" or any other version of evolutionary theory.
Goodbye Eric. I've put up with you long enough.
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