Venus of Willendorf
Can you say “breast implants”? Standard of beauty same as 30,000 years ago. That is more than 1,000 generations of NO “evolution”!
When no one can address their “fitness” function – because there is no such thing as a “fitness” function – it’s clear that “evolution” is dead in the water and nothing more needs to be added to disprove the failed hypothesis. And yet proponents never learn. Still, shooting the Darwinist fish in a barrel is fun. Enjoy.
- Sexual selection tries to explain sexual dimorphism and more. According to the theory, certain conspicuous physical traits, such as pronounced coloration, increased size, or striking adornments have “evolved” through sexual selection. The selecting sex often displays similar but subdued ornaments, indicating a sort of sexual selection leak from the selected to the selecting if the theory is true. Sexual selection is independent and often in conflict with “natural selection” when the sexually selected traits appear detrimental to general survival of the species. The extinct Irish Elk Deer is the standard example of detrimental sexual selection.
- At least two incompatible mating behaviors have been randomly grouped under “sexual selection”. One is “select the display”, while the other is “fight for mating rights”. The first one looks somewhat like selection. In the second case the dominant male mates indiscriminately, so there is no selection of the female and the female cannot turn down the dominant male, so there is no selection there either. Other schemes are “save the sperm” and “adopt a male”, both of which are not associated with any selection.
- Sexual selection would be just “natural selection” if such thing existed, contrary to Darwin’s contrived distinction. Fighting males for instance do not give females any choice. The “better fit” simply has more offspring by force. The female, predator, pray, parasites, community, and the environment in general, they all “select” the “best fit” whatever that means. If sexual selection were true, then there were also be predator selection as well as pray, parasite, community, kin, and so on ad infinitum selection, all conflicting with each other. Or to sum, no “natural selection”. No wonder Alfred Russel Wallace thought the idea of sexual selection as a driving force in “evolution” crazy.
- There is no sexual selection distinct from ‘Attraction to Universal Beauty’. Our tastes differ from bugs to humans in large part due to sensory limitations. But otherwise we all have the same standards of beauty. All organisms are intrigued by shapes, colors, contrasts, movements, sounds. We like other beautiful organism and inanimate objects. The cat likes the mouse and the mouse appreciates the cat’s beauty. Just as humans like both the dangerous lion and the cute, tasty pig. And everyone finds everyone’s babies more attractive. What animals like in one another is hard to tease due to their limited communication, but humans like the peacock as the peahen does, the lion as the lioness, the butterfly, the puppy, kitten, dragonfly, cricket, pup seal, cub bear, and many, many more as their own kind do. We can’t even get enough of the ugliest – pug dog, sphynx cat, lizards, snakes, vultures, and more – devoting much to bring them near us. And if we humans like them all, they would probably appreciate each other too across all species, were it not for fear, sensory and intelligence limitations. ”At least humans are not sexually attracted to animals” would be the counterargument. Would any human have sex with a peacock? A rabbit?? A cat, bat, fish (well, mermaid)??? Oh no, they would… as erotic animal costumes show. What a shame!
- Contrary to sexual selection that is expected to drift randomly, the standards of beauty remain essentially unchanged. Consider an “evolutionary” proto-bird. Million of years later, suppose the proto-bird split due to random events and various environments into the many bird species we see today. Then – to take one example – the current beautiful peacock is just the product of a series of random events and of its own female’s search for beauty. There is nothing in its current environment that demands that particular look. And why exactly is the peahen so desperate for that particular look? She isn’t. There is nothing in her little skull, genes, environment, or anywhere else that demands that particular look. She is only intrigued by beauty like the rest of us. Any beauty, not just the standard peacock beauty. If some peacock decides to build a beautiful bower (not suddenly, just amassing shiny objects in a first gen) or another peacock finds his voice, another becomes more protective, or goes for a modern look, she’s liable to fall for that new fellow and change the course of peafowl history. Which in the end turns out to be no different than random. So why does the peacock look the way he does? Just random. Why do all dimorphic birds look and behave as they do? Just random. Why the lion’s mane, the woman’s breasts and on and on? Random again and again. Yet the “just random” Darwinist reply does not work as “easy come, easy go” – “random come, random go” whereas the standards of beauty remain essentially unchanged. As Venus of Willendorf shows, the human standard of beauty has not changed in at least 30,000 years or 1,000 generations, these days aided by breast and buttock implants. A hypothesized trend (“evolution”) that doesn’t budge for that long cannot be a real trend.
- Whatever happens to organisms is outside their control, hence sexual selection cannot shape organisms as Darwin imagined. The peahen is not responsible in the slightest for the peacock’s plumage. Even if it had an objective, the “selecting” sex has no means to get to that objective. The best example of what selection can do and cannot do is breeding. Human breeders indeed have the long term targets and the best technology available. Yet all they can do is fragile deformed variants of the wild that require a lot to survive and propagate and that under no circumstance will “diverge” into new “species”. Contrast that with the “selecting” bird. Why is she having sex? She doesn’t know. What is she looking for? She doesn’t know… whatever her beauty instinct tells her. She doesn’t read, write, or talk. Cannot correlate the beauty seen to underlying health of her peer. Doesn’t know she will have offspring, let alone how to improve their lot… if she even cares. We know all these because we, the humans, are also automatons with regard to our descendants. We know very little and can influence almost nothing. Countless number of parents hope for more from their children, yet are badly disappointed. Where are the descendants of famous rulers, scientists, artists, and athletes? Nowhere in particular. They all regressed to the mean. And it is even worse for some of those afflicted by “reason” as they decide to “save the planet” by not even having any offspring at all.
- Incorrect assumptions drive the confused “evolution through sexual selection” narrative: that the selection has a direction – without a direction, there is no output different than random; that the selected passes most of his characteristics to the progeny – this disregards regression to the mean as well as the contribution of the other parent, meaning the selector; that the phenotype is entirely encoded in the genotype – if this were the case, we would be able to control 100% of the phenotype by changing the genome, but it’s clear that’s not possible even theoretically; that successive mutations can accomplish anything as long as sexual selection guides the output – this is clearly false as breeding shows when comparing the robustness of crossbreeds with the feebleness of purebreds. Of course Darwin was clueless about genetics. But even with our current best knowledge of genetics – knowledge that the selecting sex completely lacks – it is not clear what sexual selection accomplishes, given that the Y chromosome is just a very small percentage of the genome. After all, offspring inherit both lineages regardless of sex. So if the male progeny is attractive like the male parent (a positive), that may be offset by both the male and female offspring becoming more attractive to the predator too (two negatives). For instance, in some peafowl, even the peahen has some conspicuous blue streaks that cannot help her camouflage.
- In conclusion, “evolution” by sexual selection is one confused mess because:
- The distinction between sexual selection and “natural selection” (if such thing existed) is contrived
- Incompatible mating behaviors are incorrectly grouped under the same banner
- Attraction to Universal Beauty is what is incorrectly interpreted as sexual selection
- The standard of beauty is essentially unchanged contrary to the Darwinist narrative
- Whatever happens to organisms is outside their control, hence sexual selection cannot shape organisms as Darwin imagined
- Darwin’s sexual selection hypothesis is based on a number of incorrect and ignorant assumptions
Links:
https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/224257/the-evolution-of-beauty-by-richard-o-prum/
https://www.britannica.com/science/sexual-selection
https://www.treehugger.com/ugliest-animals-on-the-planet-4869328
https://www.amazon.com/peacock-costumes-women/s?k=peacock+costumes+for+women
https://www.amiclubwear.com/costume-animal.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Y_chromosome
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venus_of_Willendorf#/media/File:Venus_of_Willendorf_-_All_sides.jpg
Or it could mean that he/she was being sarcastic.
CharlieM,
You’re overestimating Nonlin a hell of a lot, and you’re missing the point.
It’s what you implied you little idiot. It’s you who wrote that in an OP about sexual selection. It’s you who exposed himself so shamelessly in public.
Not an error I make.
That’s my take too.
And this is the stupid self-referential part I exposed in 5. Of course, you cannot either forecast nor explain the peacock’s tail. Factor in the persistent standard of beauty (as shown) and you see why “sexual selection” fails so miserably.
Again, like I said in 3. – this would be “natural selection” if such thing existed. But we know there’s no such thing as “fitness”. Which guarantees no “natural selection” either.
Utterly false. We know that recessive characteristics are conserved and not “selected” either way. As Mendel first showed.
Doublecheck your math. Your compass is stuck too.
Don’t mind the angry little monkey. He doesn’t get explanations.
You must mean you, since I understood the explanation all right.
I won’t bother linking back to my comment about it. What for? It’s not as if you’d read it this time around. It’s not as if you’d be able to read it this time around.
Then it is not clear why you mention the Y at all. Here’s your sentence again:
If you recognise that gender specific differences are distributed throughout the genome, why does the Y, and its percentage of the genome, matter?
What’s forecasting got to do with anything? I see this criticism of evolution a lot. It’s moronic.
You replace it with nothing of value. If peacock tails represent a ‘persistent standard of beauty’, why don’t we all fancy peacocks?
We know no such thing. You simply declare it.
Utterly true.
Mendel never mentioned selection. Still, the ‘characteristics’ are only phenotypically visible in the homozygous state, so are not available to even hypothetical selection in heterozygotes.
Nonlin.org,
That is an admission of wilful ignorance. Which is refreshing. Yes, there is a subject going by the name of ‘Genetics’ which is a substantial update on Darwin’s understanding of heredity. I realise it is something of a closed book to you.
Nope. You still haven’t said why it is a development in genetics. It is increasingly clear you don’t even know what genetics even is.
Infringing? On what? What’s transferred if genes don’t actually transfer between lineages? How do you detect it if you don’t have a vertical descent pattern to detect it against? What is HGT to a Creationist?
If you want a stupid story, there’s this one about some Cosmic Bloke creating everything …
Equivocation on ‘code’. It is at best an encoding, not a program written by a ‘coder’.
Not quite true, but does it need to? Evolution does not mean that everything is guaranteed to change. The observation of something unchanging does not mean that nothing changes. This is like arguing against running because you saw someone standing still.
You brought it up. You reckon its unexpectedly small size is a problem for “evolution”, implying bigger would be OK. Can’t defend your own points?
4.: “Everybody would want to have sex with that saucy peacock”
6.: “It’s not planned ahead like design, so it doesn’t count”
Not convincing.
and
and
Typically Nonlin. You don’t actually know what sexual selection is, do you?
To make sure we are on the same page: Could you define sexual selection in your own words, please?
Although I appreciate your mode of delivery, you seem to be missing the fact that the female widowbirds discriminate between different males. The paper establishes empirically that they have preferences.
To point out one entity is NOT “selecting” another entity. There is no “other entity”. The population would be “selecting” itself which is stupid.
A theory that doesn’t forecast is moronic. Theories must forecast to be useful and to be validated.
Are you a peacock?
No. I don’t declare it. I proved it and you proved it right back by not providing the “fitness” of anything. Not even yours. You (or someone else?) once pitifully attempted to pass some reproductive statistic as “fitness”. That didn’t fly, remember?
We know that recessive characteristics are conserved and not “selected” either way. That makes your statement on “selection” false.
Of course he didn’t. There’s none. Like I said.
OK. But this doesn’t help your initial statement.
I don’t dispute that they have preferences.
But just look at how restrictively narrow the choices of a suitable mating partner is compared to human choices regarding sexual activity.
You keep trying to link genetics to Darwinist deadweight. Yet you never prove this imaginary link.
Of course there’s a “vertical” descent pattern within the same population. And now you find DNA that seems to belong to other populations that clearly don’t fit the Darwinist narrative. I call that an opportunity to disprove “evolution”.
So you claim, but:
1. We see nature is exquisitely designed
2. We know there is no bottom-up design (despite you assuming that which you try to prove)
3. We see plenty of top-down design examples
Yet a code IS executed to make all kind of wonderful things. Code absolutely requires a coder. Plenty of examples and NOT ONE contrary example.
So you say someone that stands still is also running at the same time?
If “evolution” were not disproven by many other observations, the DNA would still have to be big enough to contain all the code for making organisms. You try to write that code and see that it has no chance to fit in the DNA.
And before you claim again DNA is not code, very well, take a memory stick the size of the DNA differential between monkey and human and write the full differential specification between a human and a monkey. Can you?
Don’t know what you’re reading, but you’re way off.
Read 1. 2. and 3.
Nonlin.org,
The topic was Darwin’s particular understanding of heredity – “gemmules and blending” – which has now been superseded by the science of genetics.
You can only detect them by assuming evolution. This point evades you. You can’t disprove the thing which that disproof relies on!
Still a ridiculous idea. “Let there be zebras! Lot’s of ’em! Let their methylmalonyl CoA epimerase differ from those of the horse just so! And Yea, from the snake in much greater measure! But at the same time let proteins not be variable in the minutest degree, lest their functions break. For verily I like a bit of irony”
It’s not that kind of code. Saying it again don’t make it so! I spent my working life as a ‘coder’, and never once came up with an encoding – still less one involving interacting moving parts on the molecular scale.
I thought you had a downer on Affirming the Consequent?
No.
So you think if it were bigger evolution would be on a surer footing, if you think its actual size an issue.
This is hopelessly confused. The difference between human and monkey does not need to fit anywhere.
Nonlin.org,
Selection increases the frequency of the trait, represented by the genes involved in the differential, wherever they reside.
Haha. What does ID forecast?
Yes, but that’s beside the point. You seem to have an interesting take on ‘universal’.
Ah yes. You don’t declare it, you proved it. So you declare.
My fitness is 3. But it’s not about individuals. The relative performance of two alleles is the differential in the mean fitness of carriers and that of non-carriers. There must be such a differential, even if its value is zero. It has to be something or nothing; I can’t think of any other possibilities.
Not if you understood the statement it doesn’t.
So he didn’t disprove anything in regard to it, did he?
Just a few comments ago you basically denied intraspecies variation:
But if all males within a species are the same, then what use are female preferences? So now you are backpedaling again, arguing that there is less variation in animals than in humans. This is false too.
What you want to be saying is that humans have more variation in personality than non-human animals and that this variation is more valuable. Why does variation in personality trump other types of variation? Because it makes humans special compared to non-human animals.
The perfect circular argument. If only you would admit as much.
Isn’t it annoying when people don’t invest in trying to understand your position?
The closest to a definition I could find is:
So sexual selection is defined as the theory that states that certain traits evolved through sexual selection. Yep, clear as mud. It’s as I expected: you don’t know what sexual selection is.
My copy of Freeman and Herron’s Evolutionary analysis defines sexual selection as:
So sexual selection occurs whenever there is variation in mating success among members of the same sex. Perhaps now you understand why your mention of puppies, kittens and babies strikes other people as a bit perverse in this particular context?
What I was pointing out was not that there is no intraspecific variation. It was that within species there is no extraordinary range of variation.
I am just pointing out the facts about mating and partner preferences. In humans it can be down to purely physical attributes, but I think that is the exception in long term relationships.
What attracted Mrs Trump living in Florida to her mate? Or Mrs Ecclestone living in Switzerland? What were the reasons why Mrs Muhammad living a strict Muslim life in Pakistan became the mate of Mr Muhammad? What about Mr John from the U.K., how did he select his partner?
That gives us a sample of humans to think about. Now let’s take a look at widowbirds.
What attracted Mrs Widowbird living in South Africa to her mate? What about Mrs Widowbird living in Angola, how did she choose her mate? Or their cousin, goodness knows how many times removed, Mrs Widowbird living in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, how did she choose her mate?
I can understand why they would never dream of setting up home in the U.K.. In wet weather, they are unable to fly due to their elongated tails. 🙂
No. The topic is “sexual selection”. First link is to a dude that wrote something quite recently.
No. You may think HGT presupposes “evolution”. All I see is code that doesn’t belong according to “evolution”. And since you haven’t actually seen the transfer, your assumption is provisionally wrong.
You’re not pointing to anything wrong or discordant. Think of the car analogy. It works pretty much the same way.
What I want to know is: why would “proteins not be variable in the minutest degree” on the account of “evolution”?!?
It’s executable code. You think the molecular scale is an impediment?!? It isn’t.
“Plenty of examples” would be “Affirming the Consequent” were it not for “NOT ONE contrary example”. Get your logic straight. IOW, “if and ONLY if” is not “Affirming the Consequent”.
Who’s “it” and “its”?
You were confused from before. DNA1 makes a human. DNA2 makes a monkey. Difference must yield difference. (DNA1-DNA2) makes (human-monkey).
Self(!) selection. So humans can fly as they always dreamed if they just self select properly?!? Which one’s the gene for the peacock look? How about the gene for flying? Corneel is still thinking about this last one. Ain’t that so, Corneel?
That life is exquisitely designed. That we can learn from God (and His designs) and apply what we learn to our own designs. And every single day we learn something new about medicine, biology, physics, chemistry, math…, this forecast is proven. Again and again and again…
That we will never ever understand the universe in full.
That design is always top-down and never bottom-up (loosers still smash their feeble brains against this rock). That there will NEVER be a machine “singularity”.
In fact, the single most important idea that drives science is that the universe is rational. This only comes from the belief in a superior intelligence.
You confuse ‘universal’ with ‘uniform’.
It’s got to be the individual because each individual gets “selected”. Based on what, if not on “fitness”? So if your fitness is 3, then show your work. This is not a multiple choice exam. OK, you might say that’s a noisy variable. Then calculate that mythical average mean or whatever. Yes, even the differential. What else you need? Extra exam time? You got it. What else?!? You must do better than “It’s got to be”. Until then, you actually prove for me that there’s no such thing as “fitness” or “selection”. Every second of delay. So take your time…
What am I missing?
His results do that for him.
Not one bit. To each his own.
Is it not the theory that tries to explain dimorphism?
So it is not a theory? It’s a “difference”?!? And the “average” is taken over what time, space, what individuals exactly? And what is “other phenotype”? Isn’t every one his own particular phenotype? “Clear as mud” indeed.
The context changed to Universal Beauty. Maybe you’re a bit slow. But this slow???
Really? Because this is how your “point” ends:
So, it seems like the context remained being sexual. You are indeed saying that all of that attraction to universal beauty is sexual. That means that the one who’s slow is you. You don’t even remember what you write, which is also evident in your “responses” to many other comments.
Let’s not forget the title of that monstrosity:
Seems like the context remained sexual attraction from the very title to the very end of that “point.”
You’ve portrayed yourself as depraved, and then you tried to project your depravity on those who pointed it out. For shame indeed.
I nominate this comment for the most Orwellian comment ever to be posted at TSZ.
Nonlin has demonstrated again and again and again that he lacks even the most rudimentary understanding of medicine, biology, physics, chemistry and math. It is clear that his blind commitment to ID creationism is to blame for this.
I appreciate this is a bit difficult for proponents of ID creationism, but real scientific theories do not just state that they explain something; They actually include an actual explanation. I realize this may be a bit of an eye-opener.
There you go. Very good. You’ve just discovered the mechanism which the theory proposes will result in, for example, pronounced sexual ornaments.
Don’t panic! Now it is important to focus, Nonlin. If you study the case of the widowbirds, you will see that the relevant phenotype is tail length in male birds, and that there are differences between individuals. It turns out that female widowbirds have a preference for the males that have the longer tails and this may very well explain why the males of this species have conspicuously long ornamental tails. This argument is valid at every time, in every space where female widowbirds have to choose suitable mates among the available males.
If you have any questions, do not hesitate to ask them. I can post pictures, if that helps.
And also that “this does not hold for humans”. Is there an extraordinary range of variation within humans? I might agree there is, but I will not deny this is anything else than us humans thumping our own chests.
I don’t know. Neither do you.
I don’t know. Neither do you.
You haven’t done anything but make an appeal to my human chauvinism. No need; I think we humans are hot stuff too! But this is a subjective judgement. It’s MY judgement. I will not pretend that humans are something millions of year of evolution have been aiming at.
It is an undeniable fact that humans choose mates and procreate for a great variety of reasons. One important factor which distinguishes human procreation from animal procreation is foresight. Animals may not be aware of it but the whole point of them mating is to produce offspring.
Well I do know that in some of these cases it wasn’t due to any recognisable physical secondary sexual characteristics of the opposite sex. Another striking distinguishing feature of humans is the way in which sexual practices are disconnected from procreation.
But I do know that at a certain time of year these birds get irresistible urges and physical appearance plays a large part in how they satisfy these urges.
It is interesting to compare the mating activity of widowbirds to that of mallards. Female mallards don’t have the same privileges that female widowbirds do. They are basically gang raped.
Neither do I think that humans are what evolution has been aiming at. Present humanity is but a transitory stage during the ongoing process of evolution. We are far from being at the summit of evolutionary potential.
Really? Pan paniscus?
Not having any line of attack, some resort to making up controversies that aren’t there. As if that’ll save “sexual selection”.
Corneel,
Huh? What heavy stuff are you smoking ?
So “sexual selection” is NOT trying to explain dimorphism?!? I thought it did (tried and failed that is). Then what’s its purpose?
A difference is a mechanism?!? Something wrong with you, buddy? Is that heavy stuff again?
Are you aware you’re not answering the clarifying questions I asked? Are you at all aware? How’s that hangover going?
I do, as you see. But what good are they if you don’t answer them?
Poet zombies.
Really? What feedback do you base this claim (vague as it is) on, other than “everyone else is like me”?
Really? Irresistible urges? How do you know this?
Think on this Charlie.
Irony of the year award?
Nonlin, you have nothing but a convoluted mess. You don’t even remember what you said, and how you said it. You don’t remember your own contexts.
You’re the one who has nothing against sexual selection, except in your imagination. The kindest summary of your OP would be “there’s sexual selection, but it’s limited to the pursuit of universal beauty, therefore doesn’t go in a random direction, therefore it doesn’t count as evolution.”
However, there’s no such thing as universal beauty, and there’s nothing about evolution that requires it to go into random directions. Thus, even if there was such a thing as universal beauty, and then there was such a thing as a pursuit for universal beauty, it would still be sexual selection, and it would still have evolutionary consequences.
Sorry, but your mistaken notions don’t rule reality. Evolution happens whether you understand what the words used to describe it mean or not. Hell, it happens whether scientific theories and hypotheses about how it happens are right or not.
Nonlin.org,
The topic of the thread might be that, but the topic to which the comment you are referring to was responsive was regarding Darwin’s understanding of heredity. You weren’t talking of sexual selection at that point. Exercise your scroll finger; take a peek. I’m sure this subdiscussion is an absolute treat for the onlookers. “You said … no you said…
Therefore you can only detect them by assuming evolution. They are incongruities on evolution. But without the clear signal of evolution, there would be nothing to be incongruous in respect of.
Haha. Seen any zebras pop into existence lately?
No, I’m pointing to something stupid.
Zebras work like cars? They’re developed like cars? What? Next time someone says ID isn’t an argument from analogy, I’ll point them over here.
I was lampooning the Creationist “Islands of Function” argument, but you’re too dumb to realise.
Nope.
One does not have to provide the exception. You are simply declaring that there is none.
The thing we were talking about.
It still doesn’t need to fit anywhere.
How did ‘self’ arrive in this discussion?
Well, this is all damned useful stuff. There should be a journal where they put all the latest ID ‘forecasts’. If they are of this quality, it’ll be a goldmine.
It’s still not about the individual.
What, you want a picture of my dick?
That selection only operates on a genotype in those lives in which it has a phenotypic expression.
What, all of ’em? You might want to handwave a little less vigorously; you’ll have someone’s eye out.
You scroll and see: no one cares about his stupid gemmules. The end.
Such a stupid thing to say. Like “only with the clear signal of humors, we see blood letting doesn’t help the patient”.
Your opinion is worthless.
Why would they need to work like cars? Such a stupid question! But yes, they are developed like cars. They are Intelligently Designed.
I see you’re too dumb to realise you’re talking to someone else. Perhaps that’s why you’re not making any sense. You don’t even know whose position to attack.
You’re in denial. Who cares?
You’re not making any sense. Again.
Right. But do you know what you’re saying and who you’re talking to?
You’re too confused. Go see a doctor.
Ditto.
You got that right. Now, what does “evolution” forecast?
You’re just not making sense.
Your dick, your brain, what’s the difference? A very dumb reply expected from a confused guy caught with his pants down in public.
Meanwhile, your dick-brain confirms to everyone that “fitness” is still a pipe dream. Can anyone help the confused old man with his pants down in public? No takers? Oh well.
Really? This was about Mendel’s experiments.
Were I be talking to a sane person, I’d ask: can you prove “selection only operates on a genotype in those lives in which it has a phenotypic expression”?
Very well. If there’s “selection” in Mendel’s experiments, how come the recessive-dominant ratios were conserved?
Nonlin.org,
This is not responsive to the point. I can see why you like analogies; they allow you to say any old shit.
Right back atcha. But you offer it freely enough.
So you say. Can you establish this without resort to analogy?
It was a joke for the hopeful amusement of onlookers familiar with the debate. That it sailed over your head adds to the chuckles.
You do, clearly.
That would be your shoddy grasp of logic at work.
Yep.
Will a doctor help me see why the difference between two things needs to be put somewhere? 🤔
Mornington Crescent.
To the same standard? Oh, there’s all this stuff, you see, and it just kind of … evolved. Something something cars. I’m going to publish it in The Big Book of Evolutionary Stuff, and we’ll see how it does against Nonlin’s Compendium of Intelligent Design Forecasts.
That’s because evolutionary theory is evidently not the subject for you. If you don’t comprehend the principles, you can’t discuss them
No, a hilarious reply for those who understand the standard definitions of fitness – which I’d even referenced. My fitness, the way I was using it, is the number of my kids. For a larger collection, when considering the longer term performance of an allele, you take the mean fitness of carriers vs non-carriers. Doing similar in, say, a double-blind trial of a medication (measuring something in two groups with and without), is accepted without too much toddleresque spoon-avoidance. But evolution is a special arena in which simple principles (100%!) suddenly become impossibly hard.
Ah, more ‘I-said-you-said’. Quality stuff. If you’d scroll upwards, you’d see that this was in relation to my statements on sexual selection. I pointed out that gender-specific genes could only be even hypothetically selected in lives in which they achieve phenotypic expression, in the same way as a recessive character. Because you only have two nails in this area – ‘Darwin!!!’ and ‘Mendel!!!!’ you constantly flip from pounding the one to the other.
It seems a strange thing to dispute. If selection operates, it can only act on genotype via phenotype, since genotype requires molecular biological or genetic techniques to establish.
There isn’t selection in Mendel’s experiments. So he neither proved nor disproved it. I don’t really know what you think selection is, but it’s clearly not what everyone else understands by the term. Do you think selection is the only way things can be inherited or something?
Yet you and I still went ahead and had children 😀
Unless you are talking about forced marriage, I strongly doubt this is the case.
I am pretty sure you can have your pets sterilized. Just go visit your vet.
Really? Then why do male mallards have ornamental colours, I wonder? Pretty sure “gang rapes” are incidental, just like in humans.
But other species are not, or have not progressed as far, right?
Philistine!
This is getting tedious, Nonlin. Are you misunderstanding on purpose? It looks like you just misunderstand on purpose.
Oh, for Pete’s sake. Do you know how to tie your shoelaces? Do you know what you like on your sandwich? Do you know anything?!? You must know something!
We went over all that stuff in the thread to your “natural selection” OP. I’ll be damned if I rehash all that. Go back and read over there, if you please. So far I am not seeing a lot of this “every single day we learn something new” stuff.
What good are answers if you don’t listen to them?
I was distinguishing between humans and animals in general. It is interesting that you chose as your example a species that is about as close to humans as any animal can be. It is understandable that the more closely related an animal species is to humans the closer their respective behaviours will be.
But the human sex industry is unique. In which other species do individuals gain long term benefit from encouraging and manipulating the sexual behaviour of fellow members without themselves getting involved?
Speaking of Pan paniscus, it is thought that humans are more generally Neotenic than other primates, also bonobos are considered to be more generally neotonic than their closest relatives.
Of course it could be argued that other primates have aged prematurely. Higher consciousness cannot be rushed. It takes time to develop physical bodies that are suitably equipped to display this higher consciousness. Likewise fish and amphibians can be thought of as having reached their adult stages even more prematurely than mammals and birds. Physically the former have remained at an earlier stage of development. Mammals and birds have passed through and evolved beyond an aquatic stage of their evolution.
This may warrant a separate thread on animal evolution in general.
We’re more than just poets. Here I am singing while Corneel struts his stuff in drag. 🙂
Personal experience among other things.
Someone I know has just got married to a woman who lived in Pakistan because his father had returned there and chosen her to be his bride. A few of my friends decided to get married because their girlfriends had become pregnant by accident. My wife and myself had two children on purpose, We did try for another but we had left it a bit late.
Some people choose same sex partners, some decide against having children, some are attracted by looks others by power or money. Some women have babies for other couples.
All of this seems obvious to me, but obviously not to you.
For starters, from observation. Have you ever sat and watched birds at this time of the year. I can see the wood pigeons out of my window and we go for frequent walks where we can see mallards cavorting about.
Ducks don’t seem to practice much restraint on the <a href="canals of Venice
“The Duck Wars : Mating season is a brutal time for the female birds, who often are injured or die. Residents along the canals have created a sanctuary.”
They do a very good impression of acting on their impulses.
I can’t do much about Corneel’s chauvinism.
What can I say, masochistic tendencies. 🙂
I’m not sure that Elton John was forced into it.
And it’s a good job that they can’t reciprocate.
As far as I’m aware it’s more to do with the timing of the males acquiring their colourful plumage that gives them mating advantage.
According to Richard Prum
“Forced copulations are “pervasively common in many species of ducks,”
They haven’t acquired such individual creativity. Other animals may show a higher wisdom than that of humans but any superiority other species posses lies in the creativity of them as a group. A wisdom shared by the group.
The poet in you escapes again. Human sexual urges are hormonal. As are those in other species.
Yes, and celibates through strength of will can resist these hormonal urges. Animals show no signs of doing so. Also some people engage in sex just to please a partner or to make money even if they don’t have the urge.
Where do you find this information?
Are you speaking from personal experience here? Humans lie a lot to third parties and sometimes to themselves.
Bear in mind I’m not necessarily disagreeing with some of your claims, merely your confidence in asserting them.
It is. The only way we can know “evolution” to be false for sure is to look for observations incompatible with your “theory”. HGT (so called) is one of those observations.
I did. Repeatedly.
Not my debate. That you don’t know whom you’re debating is indeed hilarious.
Look here: https://www.nature.com/scitable/topicpage/translation-dna-to-mrna-to-protein-393/
Code:
If new protein
If start codon
Start making protein
Else …
Else…
So on and so forth.
Everyone knows DNA is code: https://www.genome.gov/genetics-glossary/Genetic-Code
Yes.
Sure, “the principles”. “Evolution” is sooo difficult to “comprehend”. Oh, wait. It’s just me.
What a coincidence! I too, find your replies hilarious. For entirely different reasons.
Too bad you have it backwards in time. You don’t have kids and then you’re “fit”. So called “fitness” must come first. Because, how would you be “selected”? And what if you have one more kid? That’ll make you literally unfit. And even if you had vasectomy, what about the next guy?
You mean time travel?
“Selection” was not ‘hypothetical’ before. That was a problem.
Big “If” (that was the dispute). But we know “selection” cannot operate because there’s no “fitness” until after you already had your kids. You admitted that much.
Of course there’s no “natural selection” whatsoever. As Darwin implied by misusing breeding to illustrate his myth.
Haha. Not the only option though.
See? This kind of non answers won’t help.
Ditto.
We dissected your definition of “sexual selection”?!? Can you at list link?
Non answers are NOT answers.
Anyway, this essay is about sexual selection and its impossible task of modeling organisms. I offered some clues. And you should attack those if you think they’re weak. Your definition apparently doesn’t explain anything, much less provide valid counterarguments.
Good one too.
Oh no, another one. Run for your lives!
@ nonlin
Fished your comment out of moderation. It ended up there because it exceeded the preset limit of 20 links in a comment. You might consider splitting a comment into two or more shorter ones.