Evolution? That's crazy talk!!!

[barfo]

That wasn't my point, but then again, we don't to ever be on the same page. Call it a cruel twist of nature, I suppose.

Ok, so what did you mean?

barfo

 

[PapaG]

Ok, so what did you mean?

barfo

It doesn't matter, because you would not understand, and vice versa.

 

[barfo]

It doesn't matter, because you would not understand, and vice versa.

If only we could learn each others language! The things we could discuss!

barfo

 

[Minstrel]

Right. And following that hypothesis (which doesn't seem far-fetched) is ok, if you go with the assumption that Creature X had toes, and some were born with twisted ones, which got more food, etc. That would seem logical. I'm just asking where the first bellows lung came in (I just picked one of the 9 OP links...don't think that I know more about bellows lungs than anything else). It doesn't meet with the "many generation, millions of years" thing. You don't go from having a "normal" set to a "99% normal, 1% bellows", and on until you find one that is 0% normal, 100% bellows. What am I missing?

Middle stages. It's probably not that there was a discrete stage "normal lungs" that gradually morphed into the discrete stage "bellows lungs" on a percentage basis.

More likely, small differences began to appear in different members of the species. Most of these would have been unhelpful and perhaps even deadly. But perhaps some of them conferred a bit of an advantage in blood oxygenation of the creature, leading to an increase in endurance, for example. Those creatures tended to be selected for as per the standard natural selection paradigm and now you have a slightly better lung system proliferating. Over time, as small changes appear to Lungs v2.0, the bad changes die out and the good ones proliferate and you have a newly slightly improved system. Ultimately, you end up with an optimal lung system, which scientists will later dub a "bellows lung system."

(By "optimal," I mean that further changes to it don't improve chances of surviving to reproductive age, so they don't proliferate and keep the development going. That doesn't mean that they are actually unimproveable from an engineering perspective.)

 

[BrianFromWA]

Hmm. You are a nuke guy, right? You have a degree, you have practical experience, you know the field.

If someone said that everyone in your field was biased and unscientific, like you suggest about those in evolution or climate change, what would your response be?

barfo

Well, going back to our nuke thing...I put out a hypothesis (technically, a question "why don't we...?", but the underlying hypothesis was that it wouldn't be that bad). You had a disagreement about the facts of it. We hashed that out, each had sources, am came relatively bloodlessly to the point that you considered that there may be merit to it, and said you'd take a look. I harbor no hopes one way or another that I changed your mind, but I feel confident that you know where my hypothesis came from and the underlying observations/science that my hypothesis came from, and you're considering that it could be true. I don't feel that you had a vested interest in "your side" being right (as I didn't really, either, since it's not like I'll profit or be harmed if we start building reactors or creating more waste), other than a search for the truth.

In climate change and evolution/creation, there is a very heavy "faith" factor. They are (and they're not the only things, only the most polarizing things) based heavily on assumptions (for instance, the climate change models are programmed by humans with "best guesses" built in, not "fact"...radio-dating and other geological/atmospheric assumptions in evolution/archaeology, the "God" aspect of creation) that are hard to prove or disprove--but they're the underlying assumptions. And they're highly disagreed upon, by both sides. Going back to the nuke thing, you and I can agree about "facts" like the periodic table, the curve of fission products, decay half-lives, etc. because they've been borne out through experimental iterations that are relatively free of human assumptions.

The similarity I see in climate change and evolution/creation (and I'll submit that maybe I'm being simplistic) is that they're taking observations, assigning a hypothesis (ok so far), but then sticking to it through biased means, whether it's trying to stick up for religion, oppose religion, reduce dependency on oil, save the environment, keep gas cheap, etc. You don't necessarily see that when you're trying to figure out orbital physics for a satellite placement, or which isotope of Uranium to use in your next reactor. But Denny's put out lists upon lists of highly trained scientists who are on both sides of the climate change issue. If they're just going after "scientific truths", why the rancor?

I don't pretend to be the smartest cookie in here. I'm attempting to show that there is often another side to these arguments. I generally enjoy talking through these things with those who care enough to have an informed opinion. I fear that generally mine is not considered as such, b/c it's a polar opposite of what many in here (which may be a representative sample of the rest of the world, i don't know) think.

 

[barfo]

Well, going back to our nuke thing...I put out a hypothesis (technically, a question "why don't we...?", but the underlying hypothesis was that it wouldn't be that bad). You had a disagreement about the facts of it. We hashed that out, each had sources, am came relatively bloodlessly to the point that you considered that there may be merit to it, and said you'd take a look. I harbor no hopes one way or another that I changed your mind, but I feel confident that you know where my hypothesis came from and the underlying observations/science that my hypothesis came from, and you're considering that it could be true. I don't feel that you had a vested interest in "your side" being right (as I didn't really, either, since it's not like I'll profit or be harmed if we start building reactors or creating more waste), other than a search for the truth.

In climate change and evolution/creation, there is a very heavy "faith" factor.

But, you understand, some would say the same about nuclear power. Some would say that conclusions that the waste and/or operational dangers will/will not be harmful rest upon assumptions that amount to faith. Neither of us happen to agree with that, but it is easy to find people who do.

The similarity I see in climate change and evolution/creation (and I'll submit that maybe I'm being simplistic) is that they're taking observations, assigning a hypothesis (ok so far), but then sticking to it through biased means, whether it's trying to stick up for religion, oppose religion, reduce dependency on oil, save the environment, keep gas cheap, etc.

Who is 'they'? Scientists? Or others?

You don't necessarily see that when you're trying to figure out orbital physics for a satellite placement, or which isotope of Uranium to use in your next reactor. But Denny's put out lists upon lists of highly trained scientists who are on both sides of the climate change issue. If they're just going after "scientific truths", why the rancor?

Same as for nuclear power. If it gets made into a political issue, the gloves are off. Denny's list is (sorry Denny) a con, because many of the people on the list are not in fact practicing, qualified, climate scientists. If you accept as expert testimony the words of everyone with a microphone, then naturally you are going to get an unresolvable conflict.

I don't pretend to be the smartest cookie in here. I'm attempting to show that there is often another side to these arguments. I generally enjoy talking through these things with those who care enough to have an informed opinion. I fear that generally mine is not considered as such, b/c it's a polar opposite of what many in here (which may be a representative sample of the rest of the world, i don't know) think.

I enjoy hearing your opinions. It's nice that they are the polar opposite of mine. It would be boring otherwise.

barfo

 

[Denny Crane]

Middle stages. It's probably not that there was a discrete stage "normal lungs" that gradually morphed into the discrete stage "bellows lungs" on a percentage basis.

More likely, small differences began to appear in different members of the species. Most of these would have been unhelpful and perhaps even deadly. But perhaps some of them conferred a bit of an advantage in blood oxygenation of the creature, leading to an increase in endurance, for example. Those creatures tended to be selected for as per the standard natural selection paradigm and now you have a slightly better lung system proliferating. Over time, as small changes appear to Lungs v2.0, the bad changes die out and the good ones proliferate and you have a newly slightly improved system. Ultimately, you end up with an optimal lung system, which scientists will later dub a "bellows lung system."

(By "optimal," I mean that further changes to it don't improve chances of surviving to reproductive age, so they don't proliferate and keep the development going. That doesn't mean that they are actually unimproveable from an engineering perspective.)

This is about right, Brian.

You should read that article I posted, though the formatting is bad and perhaps the rhetoric is harsh. The key points are that creationists have pointed to the bellows lung thing as if it poked holes in evolution and then scientists actually went looking for the intermediate life forms AND FOUND THEM. When they specifically look for something to fill a gap, they do find it.

In this case, it's fish with lungs; they adapted to living in shallow pools by developing a crude ability to breath air. The flaw in your presentation of things is that it wasn't sudden, and it didn't occur out of thin air in one being. Rather it occurred in many of these fish at the same time, a generation previous that could not breath air but had lungs that almost could, followed by a generation of several/many who could and several/many who couldn't.

I do find merit that there are some real faults with evolution as THE rule to how things became as they are now. Evolution implies a sort of straight line from the crudest single celled lifeform to human beings over billions of years of selection, while the reality is that catastrophes like the dino asteroid rebooted the whole process a few times along the way. But that is, in fact, one of the tweaks to the theory over the past 200 years.

 

[crowTrobot]

I keep bringing up the "plum pudding model" of atomic theory

and i keep telling you that's not a relevant comparison because it was just a theory with nothing remotely close to a scientific consensus that was shown to be false by empirical evidence as soon as it was tested and was immediately discarded.

nothing that has ever been accepted as scientific consensus based on empirical evidence ("fact") on the level that speciation by descent with modification is now has ever been later found to be false. it would be like discovering that the earth doesn't revolve around the sun.

figuring out the specifics of how evolution happened is a different matter, but that it happened is not a matter of debate.

 

[drexlersdad]

for most people they have to decide whether they want to believe that we evolved from pond scum, or are a product of adam and eve and their kids having sex with each other.

i choose neither.

its all about the space aliens. book it.