Darkhole
Number one grandson
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Young birds flee away for birds of prey silhouette.
Evolution: the Facts.
- Thread starter The Atheist
- Start date
Young birds flee away for birds of prey silhouette.
Dancing David
Penultimate Amazing
Is it the sihouette or the shadow? Now birds do start with a lot more hardwiring as well, especially some song birds, they have strong hardwiring to learn and retain songs.
ThunderChunky
Master Poster
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Humans are hardwired not to mate with siblings (or, more accurately, people they grew up with). Humans are hardwired to find certain characteristics attractive. Babies have the instinct to cry.
And an example of a dog that was raised by humans and doesn't kill small animals, does not mean dogs do not have the instinct to hunt.
ufology
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I'm no theist, but neither am I ruling out the possibility that some intelligence may have had a hand in the design of things. I have heard proponents of evolution explain a lot of things, and it's good stuff. But it doesn't explain everything and there are anomalies, especially with humans.
At some point in our evolution our intelligence jumped exponentially in a very short period of time. This was due to a rapid thickening of the cerebral cortex and a refined interationship between the various lobes. The problem with this in evolutionary terms is that evolution is glacially slow and that in evolutionary time what has happened with humans is the equivalent of evolving a supercomputer ( in fact we are still smarter than supercomputers ) virtually overnight.
Coincidentally we also find that it wasn't long after that that our creation myths started popping up, with many common factors in widely dispersed peoples. Sure evolution is a fact, I'm not denying that it may have gotten us from plankton to primates, but then things get weird. Most of that weirdness is explained by assuming a series of anomalous chance mutations.
However again, I say that the liklihood of a chance anomalous mutation suddenly sprouting a perfectly working bio-supercomputer just doesn't seem likely. My skeptical side goes into automatic yellow alert. Even with our present technology we can't put together any CPU that complex, let alone hope it will just spring into existence.
If you doubt what I'm saying have a look at a highly magnified image of a CPU and ask yourself if it could have just "evolved" without our help. And don't be tempted to think that this is just another "watchmaker" analogy, because it's not. Actually look at one. They are out there on the net. Then after doing that realize that your brain is millions of times more powerful and that the part that makes it so powerful somehow "evolved" in a time span that simply does not fit normal evolutionary models.
Evolutionary time is a lot like geologic time, it moves really slowly unless there is some outside force to initiate a rapid change, something to cause a "rapid mutation". So what caused it? I dunno ... but fast random mutations are typically caused by radiation or chemistry that breaks down the established genetic patterns. It would be exceedingly rare to see such a mutation produce an improvement. Certainly it's possible, like maybe webbed toes to swim better, but a cerebral cortex? We're talking about going from abacus to I7 processor in a week of evolutionary time. It is a genuine evolutionary mystery.
j.r.
At some point in our evolution our intelligence jumped exponentially in a very short period of time. This was due to a rapid thickening of the cerebral cortex and a refined interationship between the various lobes. The problem with this in evolutionary terms is that evolution is glacially slow and that in evolutionary time what has happened with humans is the equivalent of evolving a supercomputer ( in fact we are still smarter than supercomputers ) virtually overnight.
Coincidentally we also find that it wasn't long after that that our creation myths started popping up, with many common factors in widely dispersed peoples. Sure evolution is a fact, I'm not denying that it may have gotten us from plankton to primates, but then things get weird. Most of that weirdness is explained by assuming a series of anomalous chance mutations.
However again, I say that the liklihood of a chance anomalous mutation suddenly sprouting a perfectly working bio-supercomputer just doesn't seem likely. My skeptical side goes into automatic yellow alert. Even with our present technology we can't put together any CPU that complex, let alone hope it will just spring into existence.
If you doubt what I'm saying have a look at a highly magnified image of a CPU and ask yourself if it could have just "evolved" without our help. And don't be tempted to think that this is just another "watchmaker" analogy, because it's not. Actually look at one. They are out there on the net. Then after doing that realize that your brain is millions of times more powerful and that the part that makes it so powerful somehow "evolved" in a time span that simply does not fit normal evolutionary models.
Evolutionary time is a lot like geologic time, it moves really slowly unless there is some outside force to initiate a rapid change, something to cause a "rapid mutation". So what caused it? I dunno ... but fast random mutations are typically caused by radiation or chemistry that breaks down the established genetic patterns. It would be exceedingly rare to see such a mutation produce an improvement. Certainly it's possible, like maybe webbed toes to swim better, but a cerebral cortex? We're talking about going from abacus to I7 processor in a week of evolutionary time. It is a genuine evolutionary mystery.
j.r.
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six7s
veretic
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Please define "a very short period of time" and cite evidence that supports this claim
TYIA
six7s
veretic
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Yep, reality sure is counter-intuitive, ain't it?
Check out 'Evolution IS a Blind Watchmaker' on youTube
This approach is actually being used in real engineering now. Check out about Evolvable hardwareWP.
There are other non-electronic situations but analogue "design" is particularly interesting for this because the circuit behaviour is hard
Several analogue circuits have been developed using evolutionary algorithms, and the resulting circuits have been very space-efficient, but used odd parasitic effects that analytical approaches would have struggled to model in advance. The behaviour can be explained once they have been developed, but the particular solution couldn't have been developed with other techniques.
*I am not an analogue designer, because my brain doesn't work like that, but in some large semiconductor companies, top analogue designers are paid more than the CEO, which gives an idea as to how valuable that skill can be...
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ufology
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Thank you for your response. It maight take us a few posts to get this really on track, but at least we're off to a good start. Please note that I cautioned against thinking my example was the same logic as the blind watchmaker, because it's not. In fact, I agree that the blind watchmaker analogy is flawed and I understand it perfectly well. In a nutshell; evolution is the dynamic change of organisms involving many many small changes over such a long period of time that humans are not privy to observing it directly and therefore have a hard time accepting it as fact. Here is what makes my example different:
First, the CPU analogy is just to provide an appreciation for the level of complexity we are dealing with in a brain, not as a rationale for denying evolution. Thertefore the blind watchmaker analogy doesn't apply to my example. As mentioned in my post, I believe evolution takes place. Second, my reason for being skeptical is because the norms of the evolutionary model that are used to explain the evolutionary process are incongruous with the facts in my example.
Sure, less complex biological features do evolve over the course of millenia, but really complex stuff takes much much ... much longer. That is unless we throw in random chance "mutation" as a causal factor. Normally, with respect to human intelligence and the biological mechanism behind it ( a bio-supercomputer: Reminder: we aren't talking about a whole brain here. I agree that brains on the whole do evolve.), we are dealing with a facet of our biology that shouldn't just pop into existence overnight in evolutionary time, but it did, and therein lies the mystery.
But does this mean there was some "intelligent intervention"? It's possible. But I don't know for certain. I don't think it's all that unreasonable to suggest it as a possibility. Right now I'm hoping that genetic research will lead to some definitive answers, and I welcome any furher solid data on this issue ( actual science ) as well as other thoughts that contribute in a constructive way.
j.r.
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Why do you need to posit that?
The Earth has existed for 4.5-billion years.
Life has existed for more than 3.5-billion years.
Eukaryotic cells (non-bacterial cells) have existed for about 1.8-billion years.
Chordates (animals with structures similar to spinal cords, including all vertebrates) have existed for over 500-million years.
Tetrapods have been on land for just under 400-million years.
Mammals and dinosaurs were around more than 210-million years ago
65-million years ago, most large land life was wiped out, which allowed new groups to occupy niches vacated by dinosaurs, for example.
Primates have existed for 60-million years.
Higher primates have existed for 40-million years.
10-million years ago, savannah grasslands appeared.
6-million years ago the human ancestor diverged from the chimpanzee family.
Chimps and Bonobos are pretty good at using "complex" tools (made from more than one element - indeed the tools for getting at panda nuts are almost indistinguishable from similar human tools except that the Chimps, being stronger, can use heavier "hammer stones" and with more dexterity (according to Frans de Waal in "Our Inner Ape")
For the last 10-million years there has been a combination of an environment where increased brain power has generally been a reproductive advantage (as opposed to a drain on scares food) as well as organisms that unequivocally had the potential to utilise this with hands.
That is a lot of generations for evolution to work.
If you make the reasonable assumption that the evolution of sentience requires large complex organisms, these have been around for 200-million years or so and given the abilities of corvids and parrots, it is reasonable to suppose that some of their dinosaur ancestors would otherwise have had the potential for their descendants to evolve sentience if mammals hadn't occupied that evolutionary niche due to the KT-impact .
ufology
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The arrival of homo sapiens sapiens with our advanced brain is much more recent. The fossilized skulls of two adults and one child discovered in the Afar region of eastern Ethiopia have been dated at 160,000 years, making them the oldest known fossils of modern humans, or Homo sapiens. So we aren't talking millions of years here.
We've lacked intermediate fossils between pre-humans and modern humans, between 100,000 and 300,000 years ago, and that's where the Herto fossils mentioned above fit. With these new crania we can now see what our direct ancestors looked like and the change happened somewhere during a 160,000 year period, which isn't that long in evolutionary time, and may have in-fact been even shorter, but no fossils have been found yet to provide a really smooth transition.
j.r.
We've lacked intermediate fossils between pre-humans and modern humans, between 100,000 and 300,000 years ago, and that's where the Herto fossils mentioned above fit. With these new crania we can now see what our direct ancestors looked like and the change happened somewhere during a 160,000 year period, which isn't that long in evolutionary time, and may have in-fact been even shorter, but no fossils have been found yet to provide a really smooth transition.
j.r.
I'd disagree:
look at this link:
http://pandasthumb.org/archives/2006/09/fun_with_homini.html
I won't post the picture because I don't know about the copyright, but there doesn't seem to be any sudden increase to me, when you plot it on a log plot as in this, which is appropriate for proportional changes.
Ah, I see it is posted under the creative commons license, so here is the relevant graph:
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Dancing David
Penultimate Amazing
Um, perhaps you need to read some evolutionary biology, in the 1980 a theory called Punctuated_equilibriumWP was put forward, evolution the record often does NOT occur through gradual developments but it staggers ahead at times very quickly.
The earliest proto humans we have are roughly 3 mya, that is a very long time, if proto homo sap had breeding every 15 years that is 20,000 generations, which is quite a few for selective pressure to occur.
So where is this metoric rise of a trait?
Pure speculation, the oldest mysths we have might be 5,000 years old or a little older. Homo sapiens sapiens is ~150,000 years old.
[/quote]
Sure evolution is a fact, I'm not denying that it may have gotten us from plankton to primates, but then things get weird. Most of that weirdness is explained by assuming a series of anomalous chance mutations.
[/quote]
Really, how many apes were there in the Miocene?
At some point in our evolution our intelligence jumped exponentially in a very short period of time. The error you're committing is in what you consider a very short period of time. If it's a few thousand generations (10,000 generations would be 200,000 years, roughly), it's geologically very rapid but it has plenty of time biologically, and can by no means be considered a short period of time in human standards.
Pure speculation. While we can make some inferences about the brain, we certainly don't have the type of data you're suggesting. Nerves rot fast, and all paleoanthropologists have to work with is the skull. As for biological arguments, they have some merit, but I'd still consider them to be hypotheses, and to not be terribly well tested (you can hypothesize about when things happened given modern forms, but until you find the rocks you don't know).
Wowbagger
The Infinitely Prolonged
The more one learns about evolutionary concepts, the more one can rule out intelligence being necessary to design things.
No, we are NOT ruling out the possibility that some intelligence may have had a hand in designing life. Hey, it's always possible. Of course, that doesn't say very much: Lots of things are possible. It possible that the Pope is really a Jewish woman, under heavy disguise, for example.
But, the more we learn about the proceses involved in evolution, including the emergence of the human mind, the less we would want to invoke such an intelligence to explain anything.
Kuko 4000
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This is a misconception, and a common one. Nothing in evolution sprouts out full-formed. Feathers started as shafts of, essentially, hair. Limbs started off as bulges. The brain is no different. Flatworms have nerve clusters. Roundworms have cerebral ganglia. Crustaceans have slightly more complex nerve clusters. The brain has actually been evolving for over a billion years. After a billion years of trial and error, and incremental improvements, it's not surprising that in a few cases really, really good brains came about. And ours aren't perfect. Mine, for example, only used data from one eye for the first 12 years or so. In general, we're subject to many types of brain errors, from paradolia to olfactory fatigue to the ape and basketball video. So we've got a way to go.
Look at the graph I posted. To further emphasise your point, there is no sudden change; the cranial capacity is increasing roughly according to an exponential trend* over the last 2-million years at least. ETA: There does seem to be a new trend starting about 2-million years ago, where it looks as if the cranial capacity started to increase, but this is well-discussed, and there is speculation that this was linked to the onset of the ice ages
*Not a figure of speech, but at a certain percentage of brain capacity every x-hundred thousand years
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Hm. The sentence you're discussing was supposed to be in quotes. Odd. I'm on your side here--I've seen that graph (and better), and there's no sudden increase in cranial capacity, or even a general increase when you look at all homonids (which is how those graphs were better--they included everyone).
Fair enough,
I can't edit my post, so I'll say that to support your point - I was posting a graph showing no sudden increase...