on another blog called pandas Thumb Joe Felsenstein directed readers to the 2019 evolution videos. i canned them, watch numerous summeries, and a few whole programs.
Added by moderator: This appears to be the Panda’s Thumb post that is being referenced. The videos appear to be HERE.
The only one i gave thumbs up to was by a dude called Bowen. It was called adaptative radiations. What the flock is going on?
I really like this as a creationist. He talks about flocks of specification that turns up everywhere now in the sees. they find, like in the cichlid fishes of africa, clusters/flocking of dozens of species from a parent one.
This is not what evolutionists should expect and Bowen suggests there must be some NEW evolutionary rule guiding this. He finds it everywhere.
The reason a creationist loves this is because it does show a sudden speciation of something that fills every niche it possibly can. including changing bodyp[lan as needed.I would add this happemns on the dry land and in the fossil record. This is very predicted by creationist models to show speciation fast and furious and done and no time needed. that it hardly changes bodyplans after the initial explosion of flocking. And its very likely the morm for speciation and not the exception. Flocking is the normal common way how diversity in biology happened. iThis is unwelcome in evolutionist circles. They want very chance happening that coupled withy mutations and selection make trees/nests of relationships.They want PE concepts with start and stop events creating lineages.indeed randomness. Yet investigation shows speciation is a explosion every time. It doesn’t need to wait for mutations. i think from this flocking can be why theropod dinosaurs had so much variety because they were just a flocking of flightless ground birrs. lIkewise marsupials and placentals and others are just a flocking episode fast and furious. So the evolution talks of 2019 really do have something to offer progress.
It’s not a bad question, it’s a question that shows poor understanding about evolution on the part of the questioner. But not a bad question if you don’t understand evolution. I think we shouldn’t get angry. Ignorance and poor understanding can be fixed. Well, as long as the questioner wants to listen and understand.
1. Because it’s not the only way to survive. It’s not the only one advantage.
2. Because not every way leads to “Rome.” Not every evolutionary history has accumulated the necessary ingredients for intelligence to evolve. What can evolve in a lineage depends on its evolutionary history, on what the population’s genetics have accumulated. Evolution is not magic phoodoo.
If “evolutionists” weren’t curious we would not understand one tiny bit about evolution phoodoo, and I’d be unable to spot the problems in your understanding and try and help you out (as if you cared, right?). But it seems like it’s you who lacks curiosity. You don’t even try reading my answers for their content. You seem to just want to be angry at someone.
Corneel,
Yes where morphology is clear there is a actual relationship. Yet going beyond that to common descent ideas is just lines of reasoning. its not shown by morphology.
The flocking shows a great wall has been effected in biology change. this very unlikely if evolutionism was true.
CharlieM,
thats just a evolutionist excuse. Flocking is unlikely if evolutionism was true. Evolutionism should not be retarded , in such great timelines, to explode in speciation for any possible niche. INSTEAD , as Bowens found, species are only slightly different to justify the concept of flocking.
Thats why it was surprising to find it everywhere. WHAT it shows is that speciation has been very trivial despite claims of long history of the parent/ancestors existence.
instead we find a creationist model of trivial speciation in small numbers of thousands of years. Flocking should not be seen, much less quite common.
How would you know?
You don’t. You have no idea why ONLY ONE animal ever evolved to conscious intelligence. You don’t have a clue why. All you can do is spout your talking points. “There are many solutions to survive…” Its easy because evolutionist can just make up a story for anything. You don’t evidence for your just so stories, just say bullshit, who knows.
Just like Alan saying drift is important at low population numbers, but selection is responsible for other numbers. That’s just your numbskull skeptic rationalizing-you haven’t a clue. You haven’t a clue what features are so called beneficial, and what are neutral, and what are detrimental. What is the explanation for a gene which determines gayness? You haven’t a clue. You can make up a story and call it beneficial, you can make up a story and call it detrimental, and you can just as easily call it neutral, because ignorance is the platform of the skeptic. Spout a talking point, ling to talkorigins or pandas thumb, and pretend you have solved anything. You don’t think Entropy. You spout.
Its why idiots like Brian Dunning can say others don’t know when they are idiots but he knows he is not an idiot. And that’s not idiotic to him, because, well he is a skeptic.
You are just like him.
Are you saying that phoodoo is not conscious — that I am the only conscious animal? Or are you saying that you are the only conscious animal?
Many people will tell you that their dogs are conscious.
Neil Rickert,
Can a dog be self-effacing?
phoodoo,
I think some dogs are like that. However, I’ve never been a dog owner, so I’m not the person to ask about that.
Capital! So we agree that within a flock, species can be ordered in a nested evolutionary tree?
Yes, but now “common descent ideas” follow from your line of reasoning. No problem right?
Drift is always present, even if selection is operating. And in evolutionary time, it becomes important in large populations as well.
How would you? We seem constrained by prejudice but you seem reluctant to explain the source of your disdain.
I haven’t a clue. So what is the explanation?
I’m not querying that an effect referred to as drift happens. I have difficulty in apprieciating how drift influences adaptive outcomes.
Perhaps the better way to think about is asking how selection modifies the distribution of possible outcomes of genetic drift.
Sure. But isn’t drift simply an effect like (as Joe Felsenstein remarks) Brownian motion, without bias? Isn’t the modification, the bias added by selection, the essential element in adaptation. Though an environment and a population are also essential! 😉
As is variation due to mutations etc!
I thoroughly recommend borrowing a dog if there is a suitable example available. Like grandkids, you get the pleasure without the responsibility.
The ability to communicate thoughts through the use of language. Being able to speak using language equivalent to human language.
So you would agree that the common ancestor lacked these features which, in the meantime,have evolved in humans but not in apes?
We haven’t even worked out the nuances of human to human communication 🙂
Just depends on physics? Some physics is more self-effacing than others?
Well if they only use physical methods of communication I’m certain that, without the aid of human inventions, they cannot indulge in world wide communication. And I’ve never heard of a parrot creating a work of art for purely aesthetic purposes, or cooperating to build a machine.
I’ve been mulling this over and would hope you (or anyone who has a more positive view on drift than me) to expand on this.
That’s for sure! But then…
IMO the difference here in our points of view stems from the way we see things. Your position is reductionist while mine is holistic. You are focusing on molecular evolution where as my view on evolution includes molecular, morphological, behavioural, and consciousness evolution.
The way I see bacteriophage evolution, it is like a fish pointing upstream swimming at the same speed as the river is flowing. It is expending a lot of effort just to remain stationary with respect to the surrounding terrain. There may be a lot of molecular change going on but the bacteriophage just carries on doing what it has always done, infecting bacteria in order to multiply.
Vertebrates have progressed so much more from their beginnings as single cellular life forms which just divided and multiplied.
Are there social species in the parrot family? Why, yes, there are! Cockatiels, Lovebirds, Parakeets. But corvids show highly developed social behaviour.A Comparative Analysis of Social Play in Birds (PDF)
And you do, do you?
You are missing the point again, Charlie: Vertebrates are awful at multiplying in comparison to most other life forms, so vertebrates have deteriorated from this perspective. You can only claim we have “progressed” by cherry picking exactly those characteristics at which we happen to excel.
Your attempt to privilege your own position by buffing up your own viewpoint (“ooh look, I consider molecular, morphological, behavioural, and consciousness evolution, you pathetic reductionist”) only drives Jock’s point home.
From reading the paper it is obvious that there is an obvious progression in behaviour from fish and reptiles where there is slight evidence for social play to the most playful of animals, wolves, chimpazees and humans. There may be huge swarms of phages moving around but there is not the slightest sign of any social play among them.
Humans have taken social play to a whole new level. Individuals can even play games with strangers on separate continents who they have never even met in the flesh.
Quick question. Does anyone have an evolutionary answer as to why carrion crows are solitary compared to rooks which are very social birds?
So if the game of evolution is to multiply as much as possible and vertebrates are so bad at it, how on earth did we get this far? It seems we are still here in spite of natural selection.
So are parrots, and bacteriophages. If we take mere presence as the measure of evolutionary success, then all extant species are doing equally well.
The point is that you cannot establish one objective measure by which humans outperform all other groups. Everybody agrees that humans are pretty darn smart, but only humans (including me) value that as a neat trick. For most measures that you might be able to defend as somewhat objective (number of individuals, biomass, species richness) we are not king of the hill.
LOL. I was just thinking in terms of efficiency. You, with your “molecular, morphological, behavioural, and consciousness” is the one who is being reductionist here. I’m the holistic one. Ha!
Well, you are wrong. Bacteriophage expend an absolute minimum of effort. Mammals, on the other hand, have to expend butt-loads of effort merely to avoid asphyxia or hypothermia. There isn’t much molecular change going on: they are highly OPTIMIZED, unlike vertebrates, which resemble Heath Robinson (Rube Goldberg) machines.
Like I said, your anthropocentrism is showing.
Nematodes rule!
ETA: The nematode crack was a shout-out to Biomass, but since I have been ninja’d by Corneel here, I will add:
“Beetles also rule!”
to cover diversity…
i agree, except for the species richness bit which makes no sense from the evolutionary point of view of humans being one species among many just like any other species. But a comparison of quantities should be left for subjects such as economics. In trying to understand life I don’t find these comparisons tell us much. Should the value of life be measured in weights and numbers? Should we regard an elephant as being equivalent to a tree of equal weight and so treat them in a similar fashon? Human individuals have something which no animal has, we can take responsibility for our own actions. And if you don’t see that as a very important attribute in terms of the evolution of life, the I don’t know what else I can say.
This paper has a diagram that illustrates biomass by kingdom which whilst interesting, is also pretty alarming.
ETA link to diagram (PDF)
ETA2 right link
I don’t but there are many examples of closely related species where some are social and some solitary, hymenopterans being a prime example.
DNA_Jock,
You’re welcome to your game of, “My dad’s bigger than your dad” 🙂
This measure works reasonably well at higher taxonomic levels, e.g. the order Rodentia has on the order of ~2000 species whereas Primates has somewhere around 300. If we consider insects, say Hymenoptera (ants and wasps) with over 150,000 species, it’s clear we aren’t winning this race.
No need to say anything. I agree with everything you wrote here. The only thing I oppose is your suggestion that there is some evolutionary thrust towards human-like cognitive abilities which justifies us feeling superior to the rest of creation. Rather, I humbly propose this to be the result of our inclination to imagine everything revolves around ourselves.
“Species” is a human constructed concept. So we are making judgements between life forms according to the way we have divided up the biosphere. So you have moved from “we as humans” to “we as primates”. What about “we as mammals”, “we as animals”, “we as organisms”? Life is a unity and we belong within that unity. The unity is higher than any individuals whether these individuals be bacteria or humans.
IMO evolution is an evolution of consciousness. We can’t get away from the fact that physical reality is seen though the eyes of humanity, and for us through the eyes of modern Western humanity. As Alan pointed out it’s not through parrot’s eyes but our eyes, no matter how objective we think we are being.
I might believe that I have a higher form of consciousness than an individual bacterium, but I do not think I have a higher form of consciousness than the group as a whole to which the bacterium belongs. Bacteria belong to an entity which may be more diffused than a recognised individual vertebrate,but there is nothing to say that this entity does not possess a higher, although different, type of consciousness from my own. I think there is a certain wisdom in bacteria in the way they share genetic material within the group. Humans have only recently been able to manipulate DNA in this way.
That’s a very slippery concept. Do you think consciousness is a distinct property? Of what? Is it defined enough to be measurable? I’m skeptical.
By this criterion then, bacteria (as a group) are “no less evolved” than humans, and transducing bacteriophage are frikking God-like!
You still remind me of a famous amphibian, however.
The problem phoodoo is that you didn’t care reading all of what I wrote for understanding, which is what I said you’d do. If you did read, you’d notice that I’m not just giving you “talking points.”
Do you think there’s only one way to survive then? Why would there be just one way to survive phoodoo?
Do you really think that once someone accepts evolution then they should believe that each and every species should be able to evolve into anything? Why would we accept evolution and immediately expect everything to evolve intelligence? On what basis? Don’t give mt some creationist bullshit, some actual explanation would be great. (I doubt you’ll get this far in your reading though).
Did you even try and understand why that would be so? Nah. You just assumed that to be a talking point. There was no “why would this guy say so?” But there’s a reason, and it’s simple to understand: in small populations the probability that some random mutation will predominate after a few generations is high. This is obvious. Small populations mean that a mutation has less “space” to fill. In large populations a mutation would have a hard time getting fixed (be the predominant after a few generations), because the mutation would have many “competitors” (mutations in other individuals), and much more “space” to fill.
Well, in your case, it’s obvious that in your ignorance you still feel qualified to tell a “talking point” from a reasonable inference. Yet, it’s clear to me that it’s you who has no clue. Otherwise you would understand why someone would infer that drift has a larger effect in small populations than in large populations.
A flock is not from evolutionary concepts. jUst agreeing its from a parent population.
Its variation of species is unlikely if evolutionism was active.
No it doesn’t imply common descent.
The “game” of evolution is divergence. That’s it. Some lineages die off, some continue going on, but there’s no “plans” for everything to reproduce like crazy. If something works, the lineage continues.
Surely some lineages have survived very long because they produce loads and loads and loads of offspring, but other lineages have survived due to other characteristics, like being good at feeding off those loads and loads of offspring of those other species, in which case if they reproduced just as much, they die off because they would not have enough of that food to feed everybody.
Entropy,
I find it amusing that you feel the answer to the question of why only one species ever evolved conscious higher intelligence is because, well, there are lots of ways to survive, is is a satisfying enough answer for your limited powers of wonder.
I guess you found other ways to survive.
Personally, I find it rather surprising that ANY species developed what we call “higher” intelligence. I’d guess that if we were to rerun the evolution on earth many times, we’d never see it again, or at least incredibly rarely. I’m also willing to bet that such intelligence is NOT a survival characteristic, and that our species will have an abnormally short lifespan. Our intelligence enables us to be far more destructive than any other, both of other species and of our own environment (and let’s not forget the first application we find for any new idea is military). Rationally considered, human intelligence must be considered one of the many evolutionary failures.
So the species in a flock have descended from a common ancestor, but this doesn’t imply common descent?
And the changes that were introduced to give the variation of species we see today do not imply evolution?
Can I ask what you mean by “common descent” and “evolution”? You appear to be using the words in a different way from everybody else.
Enlighten us oh wise one. What is the true answer?
If you don’t know, how do you know that was not the true answer?
Consciousness is a property we can observe and things don’t always need to be measured in order to have knowledge of them. Mathematics is not the only tool available to us. We can learn from personal experience. We become conscious of the world through our sense organs and adjoining nervous system and we observe that other animals have similar organs and nervous systems.
And scientists devise experiments to assess whether or not other animals have a consciousness of self. So self consciousness can be distinguished as one specific form of consciousness.
Do you deny that consciousness is a feature of life, that different forms of consciousness can be distinguished, and that self consciousness is a recent addition to the evolution of life?
A major difference that distinguishes humans from bacteria (as a group) is that our bodies are concentrated to the point where we are somewhat separated off from the environment by the barrier of the skin with differentiated internal organs. This allows us to be conscious of our distinction from the world around us.
Whatever consciousness a bacterial group has it won’t be an exclusive human-like self consciousness. For that an advanced nervous system is needed.
Yours pondly,
CharlieM
Right, and yet we can make excuses for it too. There is nothing that can destroy the faith of the evolutionist. So what if its hard for evolution. So what if it doesn’t make sense. Unroll the tape-it can happen once. Unroll the tape can happen dozens of times. How many times can we make tigers? How many times can we make wolves? How many times can we make squirrels? How many times can we make antelopes? How many times can we make eyes. Nothing is too hard!
Evolution can explain anything!!