A very nice post by Barry at UD struck me as worth reposting here (as I can’t post there), inspired by Neil Rickert:
Phinehas asks Neil Rickert a fascinating question about the supposed direction of evolution. Neil says he will address it in a separate thread, and I started this one for that purpose. The rest of the post is Phenehas’ question to Neil:
@Neil I also appreciate the professional tone. I am a skeptic regarding what evolution can actually accomplish. In keeping with your demonstrated patience, I’d be grateful if you would give serious consideration to something that keeps tripping me up. I’ve often thought of natural selection as the heuristic to random mutations’ exhaustive search.
A path-finding algorithm can be aided in finding a path from point A to point B by using distance to B as a heuristic to narrow the search space. Without a heuristic, you are left to blind chance. It is said that evolution has no purpose or goal, so there is no point B. It is also claimed that evolution isn’t simply the result of blind chance, so a heuristic would seem to be required. Somehow, natural selection is supposed to address both of these concerns. Nature selects for fitness, we are told, so somehow we have a heuristic even without a point B.
But what is fitness? How does it work as a heuristic? How is it defined? Evidently, it is all about reproductive success. But how does one measure reproductive success? This is where things get fuzzy for me. Surely evolution is a story about the rise of more and more complex organisms. Isn’t this how the tree of life is laid out? Surely it is the complexity of highly developed organisms that evolution seeks to explain. Surely Mt. Improbable has man near its peak and bacteria near its base. But by what metric is man more successful at reproducing than bacteria? If I am a sponge somewhere between the two extremes, how is a step toward bacteria any less of a point B for me than a step toward man? Why should the fitness heuristic prefer a step upward in complexity toward man in any way whatsoever over a step downward in complexity toward bacteria?
It seems that, under the more obvious metrics for calculating reproductive success, bacteria are hard to beat. Even more, a rise in complexity, if anything, would appear to lead to less reproductive success and not more. So how can natural selection be any sort of heuristic for helping us climb Mt Improbable’s complexity when every simpler organism at the base of the mountain is at least as fit in passing on its genes as the more complex organisms near it’s peak? And without this heuristic, how are we not back to a blind, exhaustive search?
Excellent questions.
While I certainly agree with your premises here, Phinehas, I have to wonder about your standards. And for the record, stating that I question your standards is not bullying. Here’s an example of bullying:
Yeah…we’re all terrified of Barry (rolls eyes). But that’s his schtick. He tries to be intimidating through threats.
Better still:
Or heck just read through After the Bar Closes Blog Czar years:
http://www.antievolution.org/cgi-bin/ikonboard/ikonboard.cgi?s=5155a7f218838262;act=ST;f=14;t=5141;st=750
Here’s the thing – no one on these boards has threatened you with anything, Phinehas. So in what way are any of us bullying you? Is it bullying to ask you questions and press upon you the irony of your weak position when you won’t answer? If that’s the case, I can’t imagine how you think a rational discussion could ever be conducted.
Further, I can’t imagine what you are referring to when you say, “There is a difference between questioning an opposing argument and trying to silence any opposition.”
There most definitely IS a difference, but nobody here is or has engaged in any tactics to try and silence any opposition. The irony is, it’s a UD Trademark. That’s what bannination is! I’m really curious – in what way do you feel people on this board are trying to silence you?
I don’t think “bullying” is quite the right term here.
What is happening is often called “piling on” or “dog piling”. It can be very frustrating for the recipient of that piling on (in this case, you).
Here’s how I have suggested that people deal with it. Set yourself a pace, say two post per day (or whatever you think is reasonable). Maybe announce that you are pacing yourself this way. When you have made your two posts for the day, don’t make any more until the next day.
What happens without this, is that you feel pressured to make lots of replies. And every reply you make stimulates another reply by each of the folk who disagree. It gets into a kind of feeding frenzy. By pacing yourself, you reduce that positive feedback loop. And that allows a better reasoned discussion (in my opinion).
Ah, I’d forgotten that post of Barry’s about my ban:
It was posted some time after I’d actually been banned, and to my knowledge, prior to the ban I hadn’t even waded in on the “three laws of thought”. So I think that was an after-the-fact justification. But I could be wrong. I certainly thought Barry’s shibboleth absurd. But I don’t think even Barry could accuse me of “bullying” at UD.
Phinehas, this is why I do tolerate a somewhat boisterous atmosphere – I’d far rather err on the side of letting people expess dissenting views than on the side of silencing dissent. But, equally, I ask people to do their best to put aside rancour and concentrate on substance.
And especially when a view is in the minority – numbers matter when you are on the receiving end of flak, as I know from experience!
Good advice, Neil! Not one I’ve taken often enough in the past.
ETA: but the dogs could use some restraint too.
Neil Rickert,
I agree that we pile on, but that isn’t bullying. It’s just expressing all the questions we have accumulated over the years at places like UD and were not allowed to ask.
Or asked, but never received an answer.
This is not a timed debate. When you participate in a forum you are under no obligation to respond to everyone. Nor are you required to have an excuse when you fail to respond to a question.
I have been called both stupid and dishonest at UD. So has Lizzie. Probably most of us. I can’t recall anyone flouncing away from UD because the regular members were mean. On the internet you just have to learn to ignore or slough off mean comments.
But I don’t consider piling on to be mean. It’s just an attempt to get questions answered that have been avoided since forever.
ID is on the outside looking in. If it wants to join the party it has to be better than those on the inside. It can be done.
For my own part, it is not fear of theocracy that leads to my bitterness and frustrations. It is the double standard and duplicity. It irks me to be told I’m being foolish by someone being foolish. It irks me to be told I’m being impolite by someone folks who think nothing of mocking science and scientific explanations and who have zero respect for eduction. It irks me to be told I’m lying when I’m not. It also irks me to be treated this way and yet allow those with whom the person agrees to behave in such a manner and allow it to slide.
Yes, me too. I’d deleted UD from my bookmarks, finding myself temporarily allergic to the whole debate, and it’s still uncomfortable to read stuff that a few posters write about me over there, and difficult to sit on my hands and not respond here (just as well I can’t respond there!). Mostly I think my skin is plenty thick enough, but then something will get through the chain mail and itch like crazy!
You are right, I think, Petrushka, that piling on isn’t mean, but it can feel that way from under the pile! And it does take courage to come over to a place where one is in a minority, and tempting for the regulars to expect the visitor to address all our frustrations at one go!
I tend to save my anger, though, for the academics – Dembski, Meyer, Axe – who are smart enough to know that their case against evolution is not as simple as they make it out to be. Dembski certainly knows, because he has more or less conceded some key points in recent years. And constantly shifting the goalposts back to OOL whenever the case for evolution, given OOL, becomes too strong, just isn’t honest. If you want to make your case for ID based on the non-feasibility of “Natural” OOL, fine – but then let poor Darwin off the hook. And if you really think the problem is with Darwin, then leave OOL for a different day.
Phinehas,
I will second Neil’s and Elizabeth’s recent remarks.
If you want to start focusing on these issues, stay on one concept at a time. Don’t throw in irrelevant side tracks.
ID/creationism has a long history of the “Gish Gallop” that simply amounts to an extreme case of attention deficit disorder. Nothing gets addressed because the subject gets changed immediately.
ID/creationist “skepticism” has been a socio/political tactic ever since the formation of the Institute for Creation Research by Henry Morris and Duane Gish back in 1970. It is a way to get attention and “legitimacy” by riding on the back of a working scientist while not addressing any research questions or correcting any misconceptions and misrepresentations.
And I will also reemphasize my advice to start thinking about how you would answer a research question with a program of scientific research. Nothing focuses one’s attention better than to have to lay out a proposal for a research program that will answer a question. You either know your “stuff” or you don’t. It pushes your understanding of concepts at every level. Fuzziness and hand-waving doesn’t get you anywhere.
Countless times. Barry’s ban notice was not the first, nor even the last. And yet I don’t think I’ve ever called anyone stupid, and very rarely dishonest. I honestly think that it is the case that the bullying at UD is worse than the bullying here. It is certainly no better. The big difference is that I don’t ban for dissent, and have not, so far, banned for rudeness (though things get moved to guano).
At the risk of sounding like a stuck record or whatever the digital equivalent is: dissent is not silenced or hidden here. Undue ferocity might be the price we pay, but then you get ferocity AND silencing at UD, so I think that ferocity is simply the price of the debate, not the price of tolerance. So I think we have chosen the better path.
Lizzie,
I’ve never thought it took courage, and I posted for years at a site run by YECs. What it takes is willingness to pulll one’s punches and allow others to beat you up. There’s no physical pain involved, so I don’t see the need for courage.
What I hope to achieve in these debates is not converting opponents, but rather improving my own game.
This is why I get frustrated by the flounce. Phinehas should be less concerned with the meanness of his questioners and more concerned with improving his ability to respond.
My advice hasn’t been requested, but I’ll give it anyway. It applies to everyone. You will be much happier here and everywhere if you spend less time time trying to win and more time trying to improve yourself.
There is no question that it’s easy to put forth an honest and elaborate comment and then followup in a place where one feels safe and taken seriously. It definitely takes courage to come to a place and state a position that will be unpopular.
However, I’m personally skeptical (heh!) of the honesty underlying any place that holds a “civility” policy. Over several years, I’ve found that “civility” is really just a euphemism for “an arbitrary basis on which to find you offensive.” For one thing, “Civility” is subjective and vague. If you genuinely want to establish a specific atmosphere and culture, you set specific prohibitions – no cuss words, no name calling, no more than three repeats of the same question – and hold everyone to those. Arbitrary and unstated offenses come across as grade school playground tactics.
It’s no wonder that sites like UD are not taken seriously when its monitors do not appear to take themselves seriously.
Just FYI – I took a look to see what you moved to guano, but there’s a note there that the comments are closed and no comments have been added since 2012.
Actually, it is’t so much the dog piling that puts me off, though to be fair, it is often difficult to try to answer five objections to parts of what I’ve written while what I believe to be reasonable answers to some of the objections slip by apparently unnoticed only to have the objection raised again later in the thread. I’m betting everyone here can wholeheartedly empathize with that feeling though. 🙂
Honestly, what really got under my skin was the whole, “who are you to criticize science?” I believe that any search for truth should be open to be criticized by anyone, and it is precisely this spirit that I would expect to prevail at a blog priding itself in its skepticism. Likewise, I feel that appeals for me, a designer, to propose research programs implicitly communicate a snobbish view of science as having a privileged role in the search for truth. Though the message isn’t quite as blatant as, “If you are not a scientist, you have no right to be skeptical of our conclusions,” it doesn’t seem far removed. In general, the feeling I take away from these sorts of demands is, “You don’t belong here,” and I start to wonder if maybe I don’t.
Though I often fall short, I try to approach issues with the sort of humility that would be appropriate in either creatures created in God’s image or extremely fortuitous descendants of pond goo. 🙂
I am pretty sure every scientist who has been aware of ID/creationist taunts over the years has felt exactly the same way. I certainly have.
But stepping back and recognizing ID/creationist taunts as the socio/political tactic that it actual is helps to take the edge off the itch. They have become masters at taunting. It is the only way that they can get attention. They simply cannot do science. UD appears to be a place where they can practice their taunts.
It also helps to place the ID/creationist movement in its larger context of the Right Wing culture war here in the US. The dysfunctional nature of our current Congress is directly linked to the political power they achieved when Lee Atwater and his protégé, Karl Rove, induced them with red meat politics and demagoguery to vote against any candidate who was moderate in any way. It’s a socio/political war using every nasty tactic that anyone can dream up.
I get that Lizzie, but that history has nothing to do with me, and it is surely unfair (though understandable) to act as though it does.
Phinehas,
Science holds a privileged position because it has earned it. I won’t try to speak about TRVTH, just about useful knowledge.
These days when we say something is true, we are not talking about philosophy or theology. We are making an assertion about how reliable the knowledge is when applied to commerce , engineering or the like.
I guess such an impression depends on one’s perspective. I certainly don’t get the impression that anyone here overtly or indirectly dismissed your claims on the basis that you have no authority to criticize science. However, I do agree with Mike and OM’s perspectives that there is not a lot of credibility in a criticism from ignorance. In other words, if you are going to criticize a particular aspect of science – say one relying on chemistry -, it would certainly strengthen your criticism to actually know something about that aspect. Merely stating, “this just doesn’t feel right to me. I’m skeptical.” when there are others who have studied the area and say it makes perfect sense doesn’t do much for your skepticism or your criticism.
I’ve never seen any explanation on the origin of morality (as we routinely and universally conceive of it) through purely natural phenomena that comes even close to being compelling, but I’d be happy to give any “proximal” one a good listen.
Further, regressive appeals to the environment, the character of molecules, or even the laws of physics to explain our incredible fortune typically only end up prompting me to wonder how we were fortunate enough to end up with the environment/molecules/laws/constants/universe that we did.
I tend to suspect that if there is a God worthy of the name, he might tend to not fit so easily into the spaces we create for him.
Definitely! That’s one of the intrinsic dogpile problems, I’d say – lots of people wanting responses, and not being able to address all of them. Ideally, I’d like to set this site up with the kind of threaded format of places like Daily Kos, where each comment becomes its own mini OP as it were – rather like the crown group in a phylogeny 🙂 But I don’t think Scoop is available ab initio any more.
Actually, I think that’s a miscommunication, although I can see how it would occur. To a scientist (and I’ve been on the non-science side of the fence most of my life, although I married into it – I only became a scientist 10 years ago), proposing a research program is the way that one tests the validity of a question – and you don’t need, in theory, to be as scientist to do it. In practice, of course, you do, and in fact, not all science students even are properly trained to do it, whereas non-scientists sometimes are, even if they give it another name. So I don’t think anyone was being “snobbish” – rather they were saying: if you’ve got a question, design an investigation that will give you the answer. Rather as I, when faced with a student who wants “help with the stats”, reply (clearly approaching fogeydom): “what question are you trying to answer?” If they can answer that, they can do the stats. If they can’t, I can’t help them! Operationalising the question is a prerequisite for getting an answer (even the answer “we don’t know”. Which is one thing that I find frustrating about UD – they seem to think that operationalising questions is obfuscation, or retreat into definitionalism, but it isn’t.
And a designer does the same thing. I don’t know what you design, but I’ve designed buildings (or bits of them) and music, and books, I guess, to commission. And of course where you start is with a clear statement of the brief – what is the problem you want to solve? You can’t proceed until that is clear! Getting a clear problem statement is the key to solving problems. As I’m sure you agree 🙂
Well, you do. Anyone interested in discussing these things belongs here. And being in an echo chamber isn’t much fun, so please stay 🙂
Well, humility has its survival advantages 🙂 And the fact is that most of us take a heck of a lot on trust – we hone skills of evaluating the reliability of sources, we mostly don’t have the skills to check the quality of the information independently. or even the time. I don’t want to have to invent Fourier analysis every time I need it, I’m happy that I can use it when I need it. And it does us all good to remember how much we do take on trust, however well-founded that trust seems to be.
But as one who is here in the spirit of open and sincere discussion regarding areas about which I am skeptical, wouldn’t it appear that any ignorance on my part (especially when openly admitted) is imminently remediable?
So why not engage my ignorance instead of being dismissive? (I mean, of course, if one is interested in such. Certainly no one is required to do so. All are welcome to ignore me completely.)
I must confess that I have never understood this perspective and I would really like to understand it. My dad and I actually got into a rather heated discussion about the fortunateness of certain organs and all I could think the entire time was, “how can one calculate such as “fortunate” when there is no such thing as the alternative?”
Seriously Phinehas, the argument to fortune seems to me special pleading because it’s question begging. For instance, how fortunate is it that water just happens to fit exactly into a pothole?
Robin,
It is particularly difficult to remain civil when the work and opinions of Nobel Prize winning biochemists is dismissed out of hand by people who couldn’t pass a high school chemistry final exam. Not necessarily referring to Phinehas, but definitely referring to many posters at UD.
I estimate I’ll have another 20 years of healthy life, based on family history. I do not expect to see the OOL problem solved in my lifetime. I don’t know if it will be solved in my children’s lifetime.
But when you speak of the “best” explanation for phenomena, or the most useful tactics for exploring phenomena, it seems like the assumptions favored by ID advocates would be pretty low on the list. That doesn’t mean they are wrong, just that they have not paid off in a long time.
Most scientists prior to the 20th century were theists and most believed in ID to some extent. But if you look at productive scientific work done by these people you will find mostly the same methodology that is dominant today.
My observation — probably oversimplified — is that theistic scientists have mostly been deists or have thought like deists when doing science. Even our nemesis Karisofocus has supported the position that miracles need to be few and far between if they are to stand out against the background of regular phenomena.
In recent years I have see two competing versions of ID emerge. I don’t think they are compatible.
One version of ID seems to postulate that an invisible designer constantly twiddles with ongoing processes — presumably at the quantum level, where the twiddling is indistinguishable from chance.
The other version seems to belong to baraminology and postulates that things go along regularly except for episodes of creation. Punctuated creation, so to speak.
This gets to the earlier point about the history some of us have experienced. We are more than happy to provide detailed explanations and some instruction on these things, but you have to understand that we have done so over the years and either been argued with or ignored. That gets old really quick, particularly when folks could take the time to get the proper education on their own if they wanted to really discuss those subjects.
Then there’s the other issue: in many cases, it isn’t as simple as just teaching the concepts surrounding the topic at hand. In many cases, there’s the issue of needing the underlying science concepts before we can even begin to tackle the science surrounding the topic. That’s part of Mike’s point in bringing up the energy scaling exercise. There’s no way to really understand and discuss the things like DNA and evolution if one is still under the impression that matter itself is just inert “stuff”. I has actual behaviors in a variety of conditions, and it’s the misunderstanding of those sorts of fundamentals that lead to such inane misconceptions that many ID proponents are so fond of – like evolution violating the 2nd law or DNA being computer code.
Absolutely!
Phinehas,
I’m traveling until Sunday, so I’m only reading this thread infrequently. I’m glad to see you’re still participating.
While I do agree with you that addressing any demonstrated ignorance is to be preferred over dismissing your statements, I do think you bear some responsibility for rectifying your own lack of knowledge of the topics at issue here.
Have you actually read Climbing Mount Improbable? It’s an easy read and would give you more background for the discussion. It might even address some of your skepticism. I would also recommend Shubin’s Your Inner Fish and Coyne’s Why Evolution Is True for the same reasons.
By no means am I suggesting that you stop participating until you’ve read these books, but you will get more out of the conversation if you work to educate yourself about what you criticize.
petrushka,
Many times I’ve asked the IDist how their designer does the actual twiddling necessary to implement those changes which we see as evblution. I don’t ask them to write a research proposal to prove that a designer twiddles specific atoms in a specific molecule of DNA – oh, nothing so rigorous as that! – but merely how do they picture it to themselves. Yes, yes, we know the designer works in mysterious ways, but nonetheless it had to have physically interacted with physical atoms of DNA to give our proto-human ancestors, for example, the upgraded version of FOXP2 which eventually led to humans with our capability for speech. What do the IDists think that physical interaction looked like at that moment? Did their designer use sophisticated tools? Bare fingers? Magic incantations? What?
I find it astonishing that not a single ID proponent has the courage to put into words how (they picture) this physical interaction might have taken place. I’m also astonished that not a single IDist has the courage to bluntly admit “Well, I have NO idea HOW it happened, but I’m sure that it MUST HAVE happened, because god”.
Why not? They’re supposed to be proud of their faith, satisfied that they’re on the side of the righteous. Why not come out and admit it?
If not, then evolution did it. By an unguided unplanned mutation to an already-existing gene, which happened to lead to more reproductive success for those who inherited it …. just like the neoDarwinian biologists have been saying all along!
[edited to quote the point to which I’m responding]
Phinehas
If that was directed at me – it immediately followed an observation of mine on tenacity – then I apologise; no offence was meant. But if one is genuinely skeptical of an issue, one is not in a position to challenge within a bubble such as is provided at UD. IMO that is all about confirming prejudices, not evaluating.
But my expression of empathy was genuine. I once had the temerity to write a speculative post on sex at talk.origins, and the reaction was bilious. I found myself in the Creationist’s shoes, going against the vociferous mainstream who ALL know that sex is a mystery beyond the understanding of a pipsqueak like me. One particular gent invited me to f*** off back to high school and understand meiosis. I already did, and a lot more besides, and found I was getting snotty lectures from people whose own understanding was stuck at a high school level. I quietly closed the door and have not been back since. But I have learnt a lot about what I think and why.
How about P reads the book already and then whenever that is, months, days, years later we can start a new thread about it and talk about it?
I’ll happily give it a re-read to take part in that, it’s been a long time.
What say you P?
Allan Miller,
I once commented at Phryngula. I know what it is like to be ridiculed by people I somewhat agree with.
But it was politics, and I don’t argue politics. Much worse than evolution.
“For instance, how fortunate is it that water just happens to fit exactly into a pothole?”
Are you suggesting it does so by design?! 😉
Honestly, I’ve not read CMI in large part because I have such very little trust in Dawkins’ ability to be objective. I’d much prefer an author who didn’t have such an obvious anti-religious ax to grind.
I haven’t read CMI either, though not for that reason. I presume that he can separate his views on religion from his science.
I did read “The Extended Phenotype” and thought that pretty good. I skimmed through “The Selfish Gene” and “The Blind Watchmaker”, but found them not very interesting. I don’t much care for his “Selfish Gene” metaphor.
Why? Or why not?
I think that’s a fair enough criticism. Dawkins non-polemical writing on biology is pretty good, but he has sacrificed his credibility with his anti-religious stance. And, to be honest, I sometimes find his attempts to simplify biology results in his being misleading, as in his insistence that mutation is “random” but selection is not.
He doesn’t define “random” clearly, and then he uses it in conflicting ways. If “random” means “stochastic”, then both mutation and selection are stochastic. If he means “unintended”, both are unintended. If he means “non-predictable” both are statistically predictable. If he means “drawn from a flat probability distribution”, neither are.
So I wish he’d stop saying it! What he is trying to say is actually quite simple – that mutations happen whether or not they are potentially advantageous, but natural selection is the process by which the more advantageous ones will tend to become most prevalent.
You don’t need to use the word “random” at all.
For the same reason that Denis Noble doesn’t 🙂
Yes, because CMI is all about religion. It’s anti-religious to the max.
pah. poor excuse. It’s not the god delusion you know. There you might have a point. Excuse after excuse.
What about “Why Evolution Is True”? then?
Tell you what, you pick the book. Seems to me there are plenty you can choose from.
Phinehas, I think you would be well-advised to ask yourself one question:
What, exactly, are you trying to do here? Or, if you like, what goal are you working towards when you post comments to The Skeptical Zone?
You want people to know that you are skeptical of evolution
If this is your goal, well done! You have succeeded in communicating your skepticism, and having done so, there is little or no need for you to post any more comments here.
You want people to accept that you have a right to your own opinion of evolution, an opinion which is very different from the opinions of real scientists
If this is your goal, there was no need for you to have posted any comments here in the first place, as everyone here already acknowledged that people have a right to their own opinion.
You want people to respect your different-from-that-held-by-real-scientists opinion of evolution
If this is your goal, you’ve got problems. Because as far as anybody can tell up to now, your opinion of evolution is not based on hard evidence, nor yet on an understanding of the relevant biological issues; rather, your opinion of evolution is based on ignorance. Worse, you do not display a genuine desire to remedy your ignorance! This is a problem because, while the locals can respect the opinion of an ignorant person who is willing to remedy their ignorance… I very much doubt that anybody here is willing to respect the opinion of an ignorant person who chooses to remain ignorant. This does not contradict the previous point, as it’s very possible for people who think you’re just wrong about evolution, to also think that you have the right to be wrong about evolution.
If you want people to respect your opinion of evolution, you would be well-advised to learn about evolution, which is something you have not yet done.
You want people to recognize that the version of Intelligent Design which is promoted by the likes of Dembski & Behe, is just as good a scientific theory as evolution
If this is your goal, you’re screwed, end of discussion. Because the version of Intelligent Design which is promoted by the likes of Dembski & Behe, just plain isn’t a scientific theory at all, let alone a scientific theory “as good as evolution”. Instead, the version of Intelligent Design which is promoted by the likes of Dembski & Behe, is a wholly-owned subsidiary of good old Creationism. It is of course philosophically possible for there to be a version of ID which is not a wholly-owned subsidiary of Creationism, but the version of ID which is promoted by the likes of Dembski and Behe is not such a version. See also: the Wedge Document and “cdesign proponentsists”, among other… many other… pieces of evidence which support the ID-is-Creationism hypothesis.
I don’t, to be honest! If one suspects an author of bias, it should be possible to read them, with one’s ‘skeptical glasses’ on, and ascertain directly whether they are displaying that bias. In fact I read everyone with skeptical glasses on. One can gain a balanced view by reading someone else on the same topic. Not reading someone because you think they won’t be objective is not very objective! Read ’em; make your own mind up.
I like Dawkins’s biological perspective, though I don’t agree with everything he says. Looking at matters from the gene’s-eye-view (or the haploid-genome’s-eye-view) can be a very useful way of focussing one’s thinking on the mechanistic options available to change.Sometimes the metaphor is over-applied, but not actually by Dawkins himself.
If one is prepared to lower one’s defence shields, I would recommend The Ancestor’s Tale.
I’m inclined to call a foul on that. I don’t see that Phinehas’ personal motives are relevant. If he (or she) is participating in honest discussion, that should be sufficient.
Come on, guys, TSZ is not a stronghold of evolutionary materialism that non evolutionary materialism must only come to attack. It’s a discussion site (or supposed to be). I’d like to know why Phinehas thinks what he does, and I expect he’d like to know why we think as we do.
He doesn’t have to make a case for our lack of persuasiveness. Or Dawkins’. We all take things on trust, and many theists would have good grounds for not trusting Dawkins. I don’t trust Ken Ham.
Thanks, Elizabeth. Denis Noble does make the point rather well.
I see the selfish gene metaphor as a kind of “tail wags the dog” way of looking at evolution.
Indeed. I once had the temerity to be in the minority on Democratic Underground over whether Kerry had in fact got more votes than Bush in 2004.
*shudder*
Of course not! I’m simply urging an open mind on the Dawkmeister. You’d have to read him to know if he’s persuasive or not. I’m not even slightly interested in his atheism, but like his approach to biology. The full stops don’t read “There Is No God. Now Stop Worrying”! 🙂
And there ain’t nothing wrong with that! Change only occurs through change in DNA. Inasmuch as DNA is the ‘tail’, it wags the dog, in its entirety. Dogs are a means of preserving and replicating DNA. Placing genotype at the centre is not just an ‘either-way-is-up’ preference, but a matter of sequential accuracy. Phenotype exists ‘for’ genotype continuation, not the other way around.
Yes, that’s my favorite.
I’m a huge fan of Denis Noble. I continue to be surprised at how little he is cited in the ID vs evolution kerfuffle.
I’ve watched Noble expound his ideas in a video, and have skimmed a paper in J Physiol. I think he actually misunderstands Dawkins. He is interested in complex phenotype, and finds the ‘selfish’ metaphor to be of no use in that, and nor is it intended to be. The ‘selfish gene’ is essentially a linkage unit, a fuzzy-boundaried haplotype of ‘reasonable’ persistence, but organisms are an undivided whole. DNA’s inherent ‘selfishness’ – tendency to increase by hook or by crook – is largely silenced in favour of collective co-operation (though cancer bucks this tendency).
It is an evolutionary issue, not one intended to deal with phenotypic complexity. From an evolutionary perspective, the organism is a black box, into which go genes and out of which come copies of those genes. A succession of these ‘black boxes’ live their lives and selection delivers verdicts upon the many genes that occupy the genetic loci, integrating the complexities into their net effects on offspring production in a succession of lives.
Genes are entirely favoured to behave in a co-ordinated, ‘unselfish’ manner in an organism, because their futures are linked. On the scramble for the gamete lifeboats, or spilling out into the wider population of loci, genes are instead favoured to beat each other up – but the ‘competition’ is mainly between alleles of a locus, less readily between different genes in the same linked team. You need them; you don’t need your allele, and indeed it is in the way.
A gene’s options are limited. Mostly, the best a gene can hope for is to enhance offspring production over invisible allelic rivals. But there are certain mechanisms that can be employed to more directly influence matters. One such is direct attack on the allele in meiosis, to enhance segregation over the Mendelian 50%. Mechanisms are limited, though, and the allele soon starts to encounter copies of itself and gains nothing by beating up such copies – the mechanism is self-limiting. Another is in competitions between internally-borne offspring and the mother, but this cannot impact more than a subset of genes.
Although Dawkins is most known for his catchy title, his book is actually as much about the opposite – given the thesis (a reasonable one) that DNA sequences in a finite world compete for their share of ‘resources’ (instances of a locus), just as ecologically-overlapping organisms do, how are co-ordination and co-operation sustained?
Neil Rickert,
Note that I said Phinehas should ask themself that question. I, personally, don’t much care what P’s personal motives for posting here may be, but presumably they care; and depending on what actual goal Phinehas is attempting to accomplish by posting here, their current mode of operation may or may not be helpful vis a vis achieving that goal. If Phinehas’ current mode of operation is counterproductive with respect to whatever goal they’re working towards, perhaps they may want to switch over to a different mode of operation. Or perhaps not. [shrug]
Allan Miller,
So in line with my dumb question, Dawkins’ book should be called the selfish allele. That would make it non-controversial.