The Darwin Spin Off

[Love Zhaoying]

2 hours ago, Madelaine McMasters said:

Viruses of the Mind?

I hold a (likely incorrect) belief that I carry a little bit of immunity.

Immunity from infection, or transmission?

[Madelaine McMasters]

1 hour ago, Love Zhaoying said:

Immunity from infection, or transmission?

Infection.

Transmission is my favorite pastime. 

[Profaitchikenz Haiku]

6 hours ago, Arielle Popstar said:

Makes me wonder if Reds are more the Thinkers and Blues more the Feelers leading to neither side being able to understand where the other is coming from.

"I mix with other colours, and the nurse doesn't care"

[Arielle Popstar]

I've not read any of these brainy sort of books but quite a few years back I wanted to do a pencil sketch of a horse. I tried numerous times without any real success until one day while at a used book store I picked up a cheap copy of a book called Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain which contained some exercises which helped a left brain thinking student tap into the artistic right brain to help with being able to draw. It worked really well and on the first try I was able to draw a reasonable facsimile of a pictured horse so it didn't look like a deformed pygmy pony.

Just as an aside, a couple friends in past who were artistically inclined, found they lost their ability when they were on some types anti depressant medicine. It was like they lost access to that part of their brain. I don't know how common it is but because I heard it from 2 different people wondered about it.

[FairreLilette]

7 hours ago, Luna Bliss said:

Forget the problems with Religion -- Richard Dawkins and his ilk are the biggest and most destructive viral memes to ever infect the planet.

I had to look him up in the Wikipedia.  

While I agree about his opinion on dogma and indoctrination, I am not sure if schools should get involved and teach things about a lot of other gods and/or myths as I don't see that is going to help a child grow up and out of school to get a job.  I think schools, especially in America, need to help kids have skills they can apply to a job other than fast food.  Plus, I think the biggest problems with religion lie within the organization and how it makes others "puffed up" with money and power all the while they are hypocrites.  It's hypocrisy that is the biggest evil, not to mention much of it fake, as in an Eminence front, it's a put on, as a lyric in the song "Eminence Front" by The Who goes...."it's a put on".  The biggest evil is not faith as Dawkin's concluded.  Plus, he still could not say there is absolutely no way there was a designer or design to the universe.  

 

Edited April 5, 2021 by FairreLilette

[Ceka Cianci]

I just thought this was cute.. hehehe

[Orwar]

1 minute ago, Ceka Cianci said:

I just thought this was cute.. hehehe

   Platypuses were happier back in the day?

[Ceka Cianci]

Just now, Orwar said:

   Platypuses were happier back in the day?

So were the Crocs.. Now they are Deadpools favorite shoes.. hehehe

[Orwar]

4 minutes ago, Ceka Cianci said:

So were the Crocs.. Now they are Deadpools favorite shoes.. hehehe

[Profaitchikenz Haiku]

Something that has been nagging at me for a few years now is, why aren't we or the animals or birds changing? According to the theory of evolution, random mutations occur (often, frequently, rarely, only when a comet strikes), but looking over stories from as far back as the Sumerians, paintings, other historical records, people and their animals have stayed the same (apart from the actions of breeders trying to improve certain strains in pets and herds).

So, what happened? Why no further mutations?

You could try saying "Oh well, we're so well adapted to our environment now that no changes are needed to survive". But that is then suggesting that previous mutations weren't random, they were in direct response to something the organism detected in it's environment.

You could then try saying "Oh well, you need to look at a much longer timescale". That gives the problem that random mutations are therefore far less frequent than you might suppose, say, 1 every 20,000 years. But in that case, there wouldn't be enough of them to account for the way colonies of finches on the Galapagos were supposed to have adapted to the different islands. One bird changing every 10,000 years isn't going to out-breed the other non-mutated types fast enough to take over.

You might try to claim that some cosmic or nuclear radiation was more prevalent in the past and without it, less mutations occur. If that were the case, things like carbon-14 dating and other similar techniques ought to have found variations from century to century, but there is no such evidence being touted.

You might end up having to try and graft bits of Darwin, Wallace and Lamark all together to come up with a theory that an animal responds to it's environment when necessary and therefore biological changes originating from the genetic code is actually subject to conscious or unconscious will. That knocks a large proportion of the tenets of evolution/natural selection on the head.

If you argue for the action and intervention of a/some creator(s) there arises the twin interesting questions "Why has he/she/it/they stopped?" and "Does that mean we are now at the pinnacle of perfection?"

I have concentrated my observations mainly on humans because of a mixture of self-interest, and also because they live in just about every variation of the environment one can think of (ocean-depths and volcanic interiors being the main exceptions). If any species were to show frequent variation because of environmental pressures, it should be us. But we don't. Ears, eyes, nose, mouth, fingers, thumbs, toes, organs, we remain remarkably stable.

Edited April 5, 2021 by Profaitchikenz Haiku

[Rowan Amore]

But we have changed in some areas.

https://www.cnn.com/2016/07/26/health/human-height-changes-century/index.html

[Luna Bliss]

27 minutes ago, Profaitchikenz Haiku said:

Something that has been nagging at me for a few years now is, why aren't we or the animals or birds changing? According to the theory of evolution, random mutations occur (often, frequently, rarely, only when a comet strikes), but looking over stories from as far back as the Sumerians, paintings, other historical records, people and their animals have stayed the same (apart from the actions of breeders trying to improve certain strains in pets and herds).

So, what happened? Why no further mutations?

Just from a cursory glance at this topic it appears many Scientists don't believe humans ceased changing:

The 10, 000 Year Explosion: How Civilization Accelerated Human Evolution: Cochran, Gregory, Harpending, Henry: 9780465020423: Amazon.com: Books

Other Scientists believe it's mainly a cultural adaptation, and that this actually changes the brain.

[Arduenn Schwartzman]

29 minutes ago, Profaitchikenz Haiku said:

why aren't we or the animals or birds changing? [...] Why no further mutations?

We are and we have further mutations. There are numerous peer-reviewed scientific articles that describe animal speciation over the course of recorded human history. Non-problem solved.

[Profaitchikenz Haiku]

I'd be interested to see one of them that addresses observed variations in Humans. The height variation mentioned by Rowan is usually attributed to dietary changes (such as the increase in Japanese stature following the rise of hamburger-eating over the past 20 years).

The more numerous the populations, the greater the numbers of actual genetic variations we ought to be seeing, according to the standard theory. ('m not saying there would be a greater proportion of the human race exhibiting changes, I'm saying there would be more to draw attention).

[Luna Bliss]

12 hours ago, FairreLilette said:

I think schools, especially in America, need to help kids have skills they can apply to a job other than fast food.

How would a child know what job they desired unless they had a broad education in the sciences, philosophy, psychology, literature, music, and all the liberal arts courses taught in colleges?

[Arduenn Schwartzman]

This video just came out. It summarizes an simplifies recent findings that humans and chimpanzees share 205 retroviral insertions at the exact same chromosomal locations, suggesting that the chanced of humans and chimps not having a common ancestor is absurdly small:

 

[Luna Bliss]

38 minutes ago, Profaitchikenz Haiku said:

You could try saying "Oh well, we're so well adapted to our environment now that no changes are needed to survive". But that is then suggesting that previous mutations weren't random, they were in direct response to something the organism detected in it's environment.

Why couldn't the changes be both random and a direct response to something the organism detected in its environment?

[Theresa Tennyson]

15 minutes ago, Profaitchikenz Haiku said:

Something that has been nagging at me for a few years now is, why aren't we or the animals or birds changing? According to the theory of evolution, random mutations occur (often, frequently, rarely, only when a comet strikes), but looking over stories from as far back as the Sumerians, paintings, other historical records, people and their animals have stayed the same (apart from the actions of breeders trying to improve certain strains in pets and herds).

So, what happened? Why no further mutations?

You could try saying "Oh well, we're so well adapted to our environment now that no changes are needed to survive". But that is then suggesting that previous mutations weren't random, they were in direct response to something the organism detected in it's environment.andYou could then try saying "Oh well, you need to look at a much longer timescale". That gives the problem that random mutations are therefore far less frequent than you might suppose, say, 1 every 20,000 years. But in that case, there wouldn't be enough of them to account for the way colonies of finches on the Galapagos were supposed to have adapted to the different islands. One bird changing every 10,000 years isn't going to out-breed the other non-mutated types fast enough to take over.

 

You don't seem to be taking into account one very important thing about genetics - every higher animal and plant has two of each chromosome. Mutations occur one chromosome at a time, and they tend to be "recessive" traits that are cancelled out by the non-mutated chromosome. There are many mutations that are invisibly carried on that will never be visible until two individuals with the same mutation mate and each passes on the mutated chromosome. This usually happens only in situations with inbreeding. Most animals/plants  will occasionally turn up with an unusual trait - say a different color. 

Now if that color proves to be an advantage then it will become more and more common. This will especially happen if the standard configuration somehow becomes a disadvantage and the population crashes leaving only the unusual ones, who will then inbreed and create what will become a new species. 

15 minutes ago, Profaitchikenz Haiku said:

 

I have concentrated my observations mainly on humans because of a mixture of self-interest, and also because they live in just about every variation of the environment one can think of (ocean-depths and volcanic interiors being the main exceptions). If any species were to show frequent variation because of environmental pressures, it should be us. 

Yes, it's remarkable that humans all look so similar and never developed geographic variations that biologists would call "races."

 

Oh, wait...

[Profaitchikenz Haiku]

Just now, Luna Bliss said:

Why couldn't the changes be both random and a direct response to something the organism detected in its environment?

I m prepared to believe that an organism could effect some change in itself and offspring as a direct result of what it detected in it's surroundings, but that is putting me in Lamark's camp, not the accepted Darwinian camp.

[Arduenn Schwartzman]

Happy camping everyone. Happy moving goalposts and picking whatever popular fake scientific theory you choose to believe in.

Edited April 5, 2021 by Arduenn Schwartzman

[Profaitchikenz Haiku]

2 minutes ago, Theresa Tennyson said:

es, it's remarkable that humans all look so similar and never developed geographic variations that biologists would call "races."

 

Oh, wait...

I agree, races developed. And then, what? Why no new races once we had the major ones we're all well aware of?

[Arielle Popstar]

Just now, Profaitchikenz Haiku said:

I agree, races developed. And then, what? Why no new races once we had the major ones we're all well aware of?

Maybe it is the Stabilization Theory:

 

[Luna Bliss]

6 minutes ago, Profaitchikenz Haiku said:

7 minutes ago, Luna Bliss said:

Why couldn't the changes be both random and a direct response to something the organism detected in its environment?

I m prepared to believe that an organism could effect some change in itself and offspring as a direct result of what it detected in it's surroundings, but that is putting me in Lamark's camp, not the accepted Darwinian camp.

Ahhh, well I don't know enough about the specifics of evolution to even be commenting perhaps.

Basically I just think it's wrong to think of any life form evolving as a single, individual agent separated from the whole, as they are interacting with all other life forms surrounding them as they evolve. An ecosystem.

Edited April 5, 2021 by Luna Bliss

[Profaitchikenz Haiku]

My work here is done...

[Theresa Tennyson]

2 minutes ago, Profaitchikenz Haiku said:

I agree, races developed. And then, what? Why no new races once we had the major ones we're all well aware of?

We're now mobile enough that it isn't likely a population will inbreed enough to change that much. Meanwhile, the "Latino/Latina" group that is often treated like a "race" is actually no older than the 16th century when Iberian Europeans started breeding with native Central/South Americans.