…the noyau, an animal society held together by mutual animosity rather than co-operation
Robert Ardrey, The Territorial Imperative.
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The Skeptical Zone
"I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, think it possible that you may be mistaken."
Allan,
No need for that. This is Noyau.
Mung and phoodoo are grade-A idiots.
And you think it’s the organism that is increasing in number?
one mung. two mungs four mungs?
keiths,
I know – I preferred to frame it archly, though
And it dodn’t take you long to equivocate. They are copied. They are not replicating entities. And it’s exactly this sort of constant double-speak that phodoo is pointing out.
Mung,
Yep, that’s it. Evolution destroyed. Kaboom!
I’m happy to get an A at anything. It doesn’t come easy for me.
But biologists do sometimes set up competition experiments for that exact purpose.
Mung,
Fuck me, Mung, you’re as lame as him. Replicating or replicated; is this vital for understanding?
Evolution is destroyed. Woe is us! Perhaps we could now make some capital of the word ‘is’?
Corneel,
Indeed they do; there is an empirical aspect to fitness, but population genetics per se isn’t about it.
Allan,
a) it would require effort on Mung and phoodoo’s part;
b) they most likely wouldn’t understand it; and
c) in any case, their goal is merely to attack, not to understand.
It must suck to be them. Angry, frustrated, and impotent.
Just to note, the term ‘replicating entities’ was intended to cover the fact that anything of which copies are made has the same common property of fitness. It’s not just individuals, or alleles.
It is gobsmackingly pathetic to quibble over whether that replication is done by the thing itself, or by something outside it. If copies can be made, there is the capacity for a rate of change.
The empirical aspect may be important to stress. Mathematics and statistics don’t go down so well here at TSZ.
The gravitational constant is a hypothetical value in a mathematical framework. So stop trying to force it into physics. 😁
See what I mean? Yet we do measure fitness, proving it is not a mere hypothetical value in a mathematical framework.
Spare us your fake humility. You are a (super?)natural idiot. 🙂
Preternatural, even.
Corneel,
Mmmm, let’s see if this makes a dent in the more general word-gaming. The Orr piece covers this in more depth, under “Empirical issues: measuring fitness in contemporary populations”, but seems more about difficulties than successes.
Competition experiments with fruitfly eye-color mutants are reliable enough to serve as an exercise for students. The survivor survives*. Yeah sure, it just happens to be the wildtype allele nine times out of ten. If the fitness differences are large enough, it becomes hard to word-game your way out of it.
*Actually, it’s the male mating advantage that confers the competitive advantage.
God forbid.
But God is good. He has provided you to help us.
meh. I suppose that explains all the books by Ben-Naim I’ve read. Or not.
I have no children that I am aware of, so you could be at least partly right. But angry? LoL. No.
That’s true. When I tell dazz that even natural selection is stochastic he doesn’t believe me. And no one else here has the heart to tell him. Poor guy. But a model skeptic.
ok, sure.
What do we measure the fitness of, and how is fitness defined when we do that? Is it defined as Allan has defined it?
Losos defined fitness as survival in one of his experiments. Are there different definitions then of fitness when the term is applied to actual biological cases? Do they at all differ from the mathematical definition?
Why don’t we start there. In the mathematical framework known as population genetics how many different definitions of fitness are there and what are they?
If you ask me this is part of the problem. People switch back and forth between different definitions without making it clear which one they are talking about and applying the wrong definition to the wrong scenario. As if every use of the term has the exact same meaning.
Lame as phoodoo? No phooking way.
Is there a book then that is more fit than the Bible? I wonder what the mean rate of increase of the Bible is.
Mung:
The real problem is that you simply aren’t very bright. You and phoodoo need to be spoon-fed in situations that brighter folks are able to handle on their own. And even then, your effort goes not into understanding, but into making faces and spitting out whatever we’ve just fed you.
I want to become bright. Teach me.
By the way, Allan posted a comment that totally applied to you. It didn’t make you look bright at all, it made you look like an ass. Did you read it?
derp
Copies? Are you a copy of your mom? Are you and your mom the same entity? And if you are different entities, how do I measure the mean rate of increase of each of you?
Moron. Coward. Just admit you don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.
He’s a half the mean rate increase of one fourth of his cousins.
This Allan. This is why (your latest) definition is so bad.
Its meaningless, there is no rate of increase of two distinct entities. Then three distinct entities. Then four…
Because they are entities. Which is what I have been telling you all along.
Ok, I don’t understand why you don’t understand that alleles don’t have offspring, entities do. And then they become OTHER entities.
So I don’t understand, why you don’t understand that. Is it because of Monsanto? Because of Jim Henson? Or is it something else. Please help me to understand why you struggle to understand.
Mung,
It’s more of a gift than a teachable skill, and God was evidently feeling stingy when you and phoodoo came off the assembly line. Have you ever asked him why?
And to the extent that it is learnable, you seem unwilling to put forth the effort.
If I could teach you something, it would be first to recognize your (rather severe) limitations, and second to adopt more of a cooperative attitude toward those who are trying to help you, against steep odds, to understand the things we discuss here.
So God gifted you. Give thanks. By giving you a skill that you can’t teach. That must be frustrating. Have you ever asked Him why?
No need to ask. It’s so you can feel your superiority. And your inferiority.
Boring and repetitious. How do you explain all the books by Ben-Naim that I have read?
Why would you want to teach me something I already know? That doesn’t reflect well on you. Maybe you’re missing one of the gifts.
Your primary means of interaction consists of hurling insults, and you’re certainly not alone. Who should exhibit more humility, the teacher or the student?
keiths:
Mung:
Because the lesson clearly hasn’t sunk in. If it had, then you’d have thought twice before raising your idiotic “replicating vs replicated” challenge above, for instance. You barged ahead because you don’t recognize your limitations. You’re a classic case of Dunning-Kruger.
False humility is not a virtue. You have much more reason to be humble than most of your opponents here. Why not give it a try?
You didn’t answer my question.
Who should exhibit more humility, the teacher or the student?
Humility should be proportionate, which is why you — the student — have far more reason to be humble than most of your opponents here, who are your teachers.
Still doesn’t answer the question.
And humility should be proportionate to what? You don’t say.
In my thinking, and to use your language, humility should be proportionate to knowledge. Those who know more, should be more humble. If I am more humble than my teachers as you suggest, that would show that I know more than they do.
Perhaps to be a true teacher, one must be more humble than the lowest student.
Are you sure you want to be a teacher? You can always fall back to false humility. But first you’d have to know humility.
You’re totally screwed.
Mung,
Why? That makes no sense.
That tells me exactly where you are on the ladder. Thanks.
Because, grasshopper, the more we know, the more we come to realize the vast enormity of what we do not know.
Not only that, but because the more we know, the more we come to understand that we are not the source of that knowledge.
You’re welcome. And no charge.
Mung,
None of that makes sense. Like your Christianity, this appears to be something you swallowed blindly when you should have thought things through.
Far better to be realistic and honest about our capabilities and knowledge.
None of that makes sense to you. But at least I offered an explanation, which is something you failed to do. In fact, you didn’t even answer the question.
Who should exhibit more humility, the teacher or the student?
Is your answer that the teacher should exhibit more humility than the student? I am guessing not. But why not? Has the teacher not learned more reasons to be humble, or has the teacher learned that it is better to conceal his humility?
I didn’t blindly swallow Christianity, so that dog don’t hunt. And I am trying to reason through this with you, but you are the teacher, not the student, so teach.
Humility should be proportionate to what?
So why not just say that humility has nothing to do with it?
I admit that there is a great deal that I do not know. But I also know things that you could never know.
Are there things that I am incapable of knowing? I’d say that the odds are at least even with the things you are incapable of knowing.
I don’t see how this helps you. Are you going to help me understand what I am incapable of knowing?
In order to teach me what I do not know but am capable of knowing do you need me to bow in your awesome presence?
Why don’t you just try not being a complete dick all the time and see where that gets you?
Why don’t you try it first?
Mung,
Damn, you’re slow.
If the teacher is more capable and knowledgeable than the student, then the student has more reason to be humble than the teacher. If the student is more capable and knowledgeable than the teacher, as sometimes happens, then the teacher has more reason to be humble than the student.
Because your knowledge and capabilities are so limited relative to most of your opponents’ here, you have far more reason to be humble.
Again, it’s about being honest and realistic.
Mung,
It isn’t about bowing and scraping. It’s about being honest and realistic.
If you were more realistic about your limitations, you’d be less inclined to jump in with dumb objections like the “replicating vs replicated” one I mentioned above. When you find yourself disagreeing with an opponent who is much more capable than you are, it’s more likely that you are mistaken than vice-versa. Act accordingly.
For the same reason that I don’t accept advice from someone known to be a lying piece of shit who makes false accusations against someone else and refuses to support them with any actual evidence. Your claim that I have a long and sordid history of anti-gay bigotry springs to mind.
A claim which, I might add, in spite of its ad hominem nature was not sent to Guano. A fundamental example of why moderation here at TSZ is a joke.
You fall cleanly into the “useful idiot” bin.
So you don’t take your own advice. Got it.
I learned from the best!
Whereas you end up in the “useless idiot” one.