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Post 140

Wednesday, January 23, 2008 - 10:27pmSanction this postReply
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Claude,

but you need to reduce your scope to the total number of biologically-possible mutant combinations.

That’s incorrect.

You are clearly clueless as to what we’ve been talking about all along. I’ll try once more.
But that is an incorrect way to respond to me, Claude. For if I were truly "clearly clueless" at this advanced stage of rational discussion of a matter, then trying "once more" would be simply irrational. You are not being sincere in your response. Instead, you feign a counterfeit sympathy with my so-called deficient understanding, and then proceed to patronize me. I write about this not only for a defense of personal value, but so that 3rd-party onlookers will be privy to your "tactics." You pander ...

Suppose a guy named Chucky Darwin had a theory that there’s no such as “authorship.” After all, that would smack of mystical concepts like “consciousness” and “purpose”. So in order to explain the obvious appearance of things like books and magazine articles, he comes up with a hypothesis: all these things appear by chance. Stochastic shuffle of letters.
This is the Fallacy of Weak Analogy. The reason why this analogy is weak is because it conflates the Man-Made with the Metaphysical. It is a variant of anthropomorphism. It also capitalizes on unnecessary ambiguities of 2 undefined terms: authorship and chance. In reality, the word "authorship" implies prior consciousness -- a consciousness that's conscious of something (rather than conscious of "nothing"). And -- also in reality -- there is no such thing as chance; when chance is taken to it's logical definition of "uncaused event" [*].

*Even though every action or event has a cause (i.e., caused by an entity, or some entities; identifiable either actually, or in principle), there is such a thing as a "chance coincidence" -- wherein 2 unlinked actions or events coincide

I'll stop there, Claude, having shaken the very foundation of your reasoning. I will pause and give you time to answer these 2 bold criticisms of your recent participation in this debate: the one about pretending to be the patient and kind educator of a clueless disciple; and the one about putting words in Darwin's mouth and trading on 2 ambiguities.

I know that, if the shoe was on the other foot, that I would like to be given the chance to respond to such bold criticisms of MY actions -- so I'm merely extending that courtesy to you; in a fair but dispassionate way.


Ed

Post 141

Friday, April 4, 2008 - 10:14pmSanction this postReply
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Back on January 10th (Post 106), I wrote, "Time IS the measurement of motion in the sense that when you say that a person has existed for a certain period of time -- e.g., for five years -- you're saying that he has existed for five revolutions of the earth around the sun. You're taking the motion of the earth around the sun as your standard or unit of measurement and calculating the duration of the child's existence in relation to it."

On January 23, (Post 139), Claude Shannon replied to me in a post that I overlooked. His reply is interesting, well written and civil enough that I think it deserves a response.

He wrote,
And motion IS the measurement of time, in the sense that when you say that the earth has revolved around the sun once, or twice, or thrice, it is a fully distinguishable thing called "time" that permits you to distinguish the first revolution from the second revolution from the third. The very words "first" "second" "third" imply the prior concept "sequential time."
Right, but only because you already have the concept of motion or change; without the latter, the concept of time wouldn't exist. "First," "second" and "third" in temporal succession necessarily involve motion and change. We call the second revolution of the earth around the sun, "the second," because it occurs when the motion of the first revolution is completed. We observe a change. Without any motion or change, there would be no temporal succession.

But I don't think you can say that motion IS the measurement of time. As you acknowledge elsewhere in your post, you can have motion without the measurement of time. But time does require relating one motion to another. You could say that we measure time by the motion of a clock, but you wouldn't have time without motion or change, so that ultimately what you're measuring is motion or change by means of a standard of motion or change, just as you measure weight by means of a standard of weight, such as a balancing scale.

I wrote, "[Time]is a measure of motion in the following sense. When we ask, how much time something takes, we're asking how many units of a particular kind of motion it takes to be completed. For example, if I ask, how much time in days it takes for someone to finish a job, I'm asking for the relationship between the motions (or work) required for its completion and the number of rotations of the earth on its axis." Shannon replied,
You can't have it both ways. Either time is used to measure motion, or motion is used to measure time.
Time is used to measure motion, in the sense that a certain motion (such as a job) can be said to take a certain amount of time, say two days. But the time it takes (the two days) is simply another motion, which involves the rotation of the earth on its axis. And motion can, in turn, be used to measure time, in the sense that the rotation of the earth on its axis serves as a standard of motion by which the amount of time that it takes to finish a job is measured. So we can say that in one respect, time is used to measure motion, and that in another, motion is used to measure time. But, of course, you can't have it both ways using these terms in exactly the same respect.
If I have a sack of potatoes and I want to know, "How heavy is it?", I put it in an old-fashioned scale and stack unit weights on the other side until a certain number of unit weights and the sack of potatoes balance. I am using the WEIGHTS to measure the SACK (not the sack to measure the weights).
Right, but you are using one weight to measure another, just as in regard to time, you are using one motion to measure another.
If I ask of someone, "How much time will the job require?", I wish to know the number of unit revolutions of a clock, unit revolutions of the earth about its axis, or unit revolutions of the earth about the sun. Analogous to the sack of potatoes above, I use the MOTION to measure the TIME (not the time to measure the motion).
Well, you can ask how much time it takes to do the job, and if the answer is two days, then you're measuring the job by the time it takes to complete it (namely two days). In that respect, you're using time to measure motion (the motion of the job). By the same token, you can use a unit of motion (e.g., one rotation of the earth on its axis) to measure time -- to measure how much time it takes to complete the job. In that respect, you're using motion to measure time.
Rand’s error here might not be an error at all if we understand that there are two ways of using the preposition “of” in the sentence at issue. For example, in the phrase “the leadership of children” we might be implying that it is the children who are being led by someone else; or we might be implying that it is the children themselves who are leading others (“of” has the meaning of “by” here). We need more context to decide. In the sentence “time is a measure of motion”, the meaning could be that it is the motion that is doing the measuring of time; or it could mean that the motion is being measured by time. Hard to say without more context.
I don't think either is a correct interpretation. The definition of time as the measure of motion (or of change) doesn't simply say that motion is doing the measuring of time, nor does it say that motion is being measured by time. As I understand that definition -- which was also Aristotle's -- it simply says that time IS the measurement of motion by means of a standard of motion, just as weight IS the measurement of gravitational force by means of a standard of gravitational force.

I wrote, "We don't look to Newton's first law of motion to explain biological reproduction, but that doesn't mean that biological reproduction isn't a physical process."
Nothing about biological reproduction violates Newton's laws. If we were interested in the kinematics of sperm, then we could very easily apply Newton's laws. Additionally, nothing about biological reproduction violates thermodynamics. Nothing about biological reproduction violates quantum mechanics. Conversely, mind in no way functions according to these laws, or can be reduced to them, or can be specified by them.
Right, but that's because a consciously generated action is goal-directed; it is not an action that is passive or reactive. Newton's laws don't apply to the process of initiating actions, only to actions that constitute a reaction to previously generated forces. But that doesn't mean that goal-directed action is not a function of material entities. It's simply a different principle of action that characterizes a different class of material entities.

I wrote, “All I was saying is that we have no evidence that mind or consciousness exists apart from living organisms. Are you honestly disputing this?”
Lack of evidence is not evidence of lack.
I agree, but you are not entitled to assert the existence of something for which you have no evidence.
I dispute your claim that to make such an assertion involves a logical contradiction.
It's a logical contradiction, because it violates the necessary preconditions of awareness. Awareness must always have a certain character; an entity must be aware in some manner or form, which is determined by its organs of perception. The awareness needn't take the form of one of our five senses. It's certainly possible for a species to have a different perceptual apparatus than ours, but it would have to possess some form of awareness. A pure, disembodied consciousness, however, would have no sensory organs, in which case, there is literally no way in which it could perceive reality.
We also have no evidence, despite your assertions about the “incontrovertible” findings of neuroscience (which you no doubt would have posted had they actually existed), that consciousness is “inside” the brain in the same way that a liquid or a gas is “inside” a solid container. And in any case, even if this were the case, it would hardly follow that consciousness is a property of the brain. Coca-Cola is not a property of the glass bottle or aluminum can in which it is contained.
Consciousness is not inside the brain in the same way that a gas or liquid is inside a solid container. It is “inside” the brain, only in the sense that conscious experiences are localized within the brain and nervous system of the person or animal possessing them. In a similar vein, one could ask: Where is the activity of running located? Is it “inside” the legs of the animal that's performing it? Not in the same way that a gas or a liquid is “inside” a container. But that doesn’t mean that running has no physical location. It is located in the same place as the legs of the animal that is doing the running. In the same way, perception is located in the same place as the sense organs, brain and nervous system of the animal that is doing the perceiving. Neuroscience does tell us that certain mental processes are manifestations of a particular kind of brain activity – that if that part of the brain is diseased, damaged or destroyed, the corresponding mental processes are themselves disabled or destroyed.
Finally, it occurred to me that though we might have no evidence of a consciousness existing apart from a living biological organism, we also have no evidence of living biological organisms that do not have at least some degree of consciousness; all living organisms are aware of reality to some degree.
I disagree with this – unless you are using “awareness” so broadly as to include any form of sensitivity to the external environment, such as the movement of a plant’s leaves toward the sun. I would confine consciousness to animal life, but this disagreement isn't crucial to the issue at hand. If you were to agree with me, you could make the same point by saying that we have no evidence of consciousness existing apart from animal life.
Consciousness appears not to exist without living biological organisms; living organisms appear not to exist without consciousness. [or Consciousness appears not to exist without animal life; animal life appears not to exist without consciousness.] One is not the “property” of the other. The most we can say is that they accompany each other; two realms that intersect.
The capacity for pain appears not to exist in non-vertebrates, and vertebrates appear not to exist without the capacity for pain, but that doesn’t mean that vertebrates and the capacity for pain are two intersecting “realms." On the contrary, vertebrates can be said to possess the capacity to experience pain, which means that that capacity is one of their attributes or characteristics. Similarly, animals can be said to possess consciousness, which means that consciousness is one of their attributes or characteristics, but animals and consciousness are not two intersecting realms. In order for two things to intersect, each must be capable of existing independently of the other. For example, two circles can be said to intersect, but only because they are capable of existing as separate figures. But attributes do not "intersect" with entities. When a person dies, his physical body remains, but his consciousness goes out of existence. There is, however, no such thing as his body's going out of existence, while his consciousness remains. Whereas after he dies, his body is capable of existing without a consciousness, his consciousness is not capable of existing without a body. Not only do we have no evidence of the soul's surviving death; by the nature of consciousness, it's a sheer, logical impossibility.

- Bill



Post 142

Thursday, July 24, 2008 - 6:29pmSanction this postReply
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Pmub.

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Post 143

Thursday, July 24, 2008 - 10:02pmSanction this postReply
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Ted, what's "Pmub"?

In post #7 Regi says,
"...these two kinds of nature [volitional and instinctive] cannot exist in the same beings, a being is either volitional or instinctive. An animal must be able to consciously choose on the basis of knowledge, or its choices must all be provided automatically, instinctively.
I don't think that this is true - on several levels.  As I remember reading in the Objectivist, I belive, there was an article that threw out "instinct" altogether.  That what existed was one of the following:
  • Learned behavior (knowledge) which would be present in humans and in other animals, say dogs, or
  • It was knowledge acquired in a volitional being - our uniquely human form of consciousness, or 
  • It was a reflex (like a new born's sucking reflex). 
If I remember correctly the argument was that no knowledge could not exist inside of an organism prior to conscious awareness and had to be learned and that was why "instinct" is wrong altogether.

In other words we should examine the physiology of a creature to see what behaviors are induced by a stimuli in the environment as a reflex, or look to see what the learning process is (parents teaching, self-taught?)

The last item regarding that post is that there is no reason why different aspects of behavior can't come from different parts of the brain - in other words, a baby might retain its suckling reflex long enough to overlap with some beginnings of low-level learning (in non-sucking activities) and even later with some level of volitional, higher level of learning (in non-sucking activities).  I would agree that in a given context, one form of behavior will either continue to arise from the same source, or move 'up' and I see no likelyhood of it moving down.  Kind of like where we started seeing/hearing/feeling raw sensations - but then learned to integrate them into perceptions.  You can't go back to the previous state.  A baby sucks automatically - reflexively, but then learns to coordinate the muscles better in response to Mother's movements, to milk flow, etc.  Eventually it becomes volitional and conceptual - "I'm not hungry." or  "This isn't Mom."

Regi says,
"But these two kinds of nature cannot exist in the same beings, a being is either volitional or instinctive. An animal must be able to consciously choose on the basis of knowledge, or its choices must all be provided automatically, instinctively." 
Apart from the issue of Instinct versus Learned and the two kinds of learned (volitional conceptual versus perceptual), there is truth in this but not the way it is stated.  For each kind of organism, there is an appropriate level of awareness and that organism will not rise above that level.  Plants act reflexively to orient to the sun.  The ameboa sense the presence of a nearby particle and engulfs it.  Dogs learn to do tricks and make a kind of choice (going to the right or the left of a an obstacle.  Eating another bite or deciding they are full.) 

Humans have volition of a higher level - we project in our minds concepts resembling an aspect of reality that does NOT exist, we analyse it, and we chose to make it real - like being stuck in traffic on the way to work one day, a fellow pictures a different route, one he has never tried before, he wonders if it would be faster and how it would be driven, then he chooses to try it or not.)

All organisms make the their personal transition from the lowest to the highest forms of awareness (the highest their species permits) as they transition from new-born/hatched/whatever to adult maturity.  Just as ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny so too does an individual organism's development of its awareness to maturity mirror the evolution of awareness that proceeded its species genetically.

(Edited by Steve Wolfer on 7/24, 10:06pm)


Post 144

Friday, July 25, 2008 - 4:47pmSanction this postReply
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Steve, I "bump"-ed the article in order to keep it on my unread post list, and in the hope of interesting comments such as yours.

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Post 145

Tuesday, October 7, 2008 - 6:12amSanction this postReply
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Rand and Evolution: A, B, C

 

Related


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Post 146

Saturday, October 18, 2008 - 12:22amSanction this postReply
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Update to A and B

 

“Rapid population growth toward the end of the Stone Age,

followed by the rise of agriculture and village life around 10,000 years ago,

triggered cultural changes that prompted genetic accommodations.”

 

“Evolution's Ear

Science News 8/30/08

 

“The rapid cultural evolution during the Late Pleistocene

created vastly more opportunities for further genetic change, not fewer,

as new avenues emerged for communication, social interactions, and creativity.”

 

“Recent Acceleration in Human Adaptive Evolution

John Hawks et al.

(Edited by Stephen Boydstun on 10/18, 12:33am)


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Post 147

Monday, October 20, 2008 - 1:46pmSanction this postReply
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I have one question about the first quote, Mr. Boydstun.  It says, "Rapid population growth toward the end of the Stone Age, followed by the rise of agriculture and village life..." (emphasis mine)
 
In reading the article, it does not appear to give evidence to support the claim that agriculture and village life formed as a result of population growth.  Doesn't it seem more likely that the rise in agriculture and village life, and therefore new and much more abundant sources of food and means to cooperate in harvesting and sharing that food, would lead to a population increase? 
 
I can see the argument that village life would possibly follow a population increase, but, I fail to see how it is more probable that agriculture formed as a result of increased population.  Why wasn't the advent of agriculture the mechanism for that increase?
 
Perhaps that's a side argument to the main one in this thread.  Just something that stuck out to me.


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Post 148

Tuesday, October 21, 2008 - 6:31amSanction this postReply
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Molecular Biology and Evolution 17:2-22 (2000)

"Population Bottlenecks and Pleistocene Human Evolution"

John Hawks, Keith Hunley, Sang-Hee Lee, and Milford Wolpoff

 

Excerpt:

Significant range expansion out of Africa occurred a half million years or more later than the first H. sapiens. Population size before then may have remained small, and this is not an insubstantial time span, being one quarter of the time H. sapiens has existed. An important date in behavioral evolution is 1.5 MYA because it is marked by the earliest appearance of the Acheulean (Asfaw et al. 1992), the ubiquitous hand-axe industry of the

Early and Middle Pleistocene. The appearance of the Acheulean involves dramatic behavioral changes. The earliest-dated Acheulean site is also the earliest site with significant butcher marks on the limb bones of megafauna and occurs just before the time of significant human colonization of the Old World tropics and semitropics. Before this time, humanity was limited to Africa and immediately adjacent sections of Asia such as the Levant. These are major changes in human paleoecology and paleodemography, and it is possible that in the half million or more years between the origin of H. sapiens and these changes, the human population was quite small and restricted to only a narrow ecological and geographic range.

 

Following these first significant range expansions, population size estimates are increasingly accurate for more recent times (cf. Birdsell 1972; Weiss 1984). Today, the human species numbers approximately 6 billion individuals, although as recently as the Early Holocene there may have been as few as 6 million (Coale 1974; Weiss 1984; Eldredge 1998). The pattern of population size change across the Pleistocene has come to be of critical interest, linking paleodemography with population genetics, paleoecology, and paleoanthropology.

 

Exponential expansion of the human species has certainly been ongoing since the inventions of agriculture and domestication early in the Holocene (Pennington 1996). It seems likely that this expansion began even earlier, as reflected by increasing site densities and complexity of material culture during the Late Pleistocene (Birdsell 1972; Gamble 1987; Klein 1989). Humans became a colonizing species early in the Pleistocene; humanity was first restricted to some parts of Africa, but by 1 MYA, populations had spread widely and occupied the tropics and some temperate regions of the Old World. The archaeological record shows that these range expansions have continued since (Butzer 1971; Ward and Weiss 1976; Soffer 1987; Gamble 1994; Lahr and Foley 1994). In spite of oscillating population sizes across the temperate zones everywhere, perhaps corresponding to the glaciations and their effects (Gamble 1987; Jochim 1987; Roebroeks, Conrad, and van Kolfschoten 1992; Mussi and Roebroeks 1996), the archaeological record reflects increased habitat specialization and continually larger population numbers worldwide. However, the oscillations were significant. For instance, both central/western Europe and southern Africa were largely depopulated in the Late Pleistocene, Europe several times, according to Klein (1989, 1994). [Emphasis added.]

 

Because of the pattern of population increase suggested by the distribution of dated archaeological sites, traditional estimates of past population size have been based on assumptions of long-term exponential growth (Keyfitz 1966; Coale 1974; Biraben 1979). Weiss (1984), in his modeling of past population parameters, postulates that the often-observed hunter-gatherer population density of 0.28 per km2 (Tindale 1940; Birdsell 1958; Hassan 1981) can be applied to estimating population size from the areas of habitation in the Pleistocene. From this, and the distribution of archaeological sites, his interpretation of Pleistocene paleodemography implies that peoples who inhabited the Paleolithic world lived in small groups with low population densities and a slow average rate of growth, an interpretation that has been continually confirmed (e.g., Stiner et al. 1999). Weiss (1984) estimates a population of about 0.5 million between a half million and a million years ago, and about 1.3 million in the Middle Paleolithic. However, all of these estimates have high probable errors (Petersen 1975), not only because of the difficulties in applying archaeological information to demographic questions, but also because of the evidence of significant population size fluctuations.

 

PENNINGTON, R. L. 1996. Causes of early human population growth. Am. J. Phys. Anthropol. 99:259–274.


 

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (Dec. 27, 2007)

“Recent Acceleration of Human Adaptive Evolution”

J. Hawks, E. T. Wang, G. M. Cochran, H. C. Harpending, and R. K. Moyzis

 

Excerpt:

Population growth in the Upper Paleolithic and Late Middle Stone Age began by 50,000 years ago. Several archaeological indicators show long-term increases in population density, including more small-game exploitation, greater pressure on easily collected prey species like tortoises and shellfish, more intense hunting of dangerous prey species, and occupation of previously uninhabited islands and circumarctic regions (40). Demographic growth intensified during the Holocene, as domestication centers in the Near East, Egypt, and China underwent expansions commencing by 10,000 to 8,000 years ago (41, 42). From these centers, population growth spread into Europe, North Africa, South Asia, Southeast Asia, and Australasia during the succeeding 6,000 years (42, 43). Sub-Saharan Africa bears special consideration, because of its initial large population size and influence on earlier human dispersals (44). Despite the possible early appearance of annual cereal collection and cattle husbandry in North Africa, sub-Saharan Africa has no archaeological evidence for agriculture before 4,000 years ago (42). West Asian agricultural plants like wheat did poorly in tropical sun and rainfall regimes, while animals faced a series of diseases that posed barriers to entry (45). As a consequence, some 2,500 years ago the population of sub-Saharan Africa was likely 7 million people, compared with European, West Asian, East Asian, and South Asian populations approaching or in excess of 30 million each (1). At that time, the sub-Saharan population grew at a high rate, with the dispersal of Bantu populations from West Africa and the spread of pastoralism and agriculture southward through East Africa (46, 47).


 

Bauer,

On your question of whether agriculture might form as a result of population increase, I did not pick up on these articles advancing that conjecture expressly, although there does seem to be at least one sensible possible path for such a causal relationship. Increasing population in the tool-making, hunting cultures could lead to further advances in linguistic communication and conceptual sophistication, and these advances could lead to more agriculture (and less hunting). But I expect economics and advances in warfare should be weighed in such an account as well.

Stephen


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Post 149

Tuesday, October 21, 2008 - 8:39amSanction this postReply
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I can see the argument that village life would possibly follow a population increase, but, I fail to see how it is more probable that agriculture formed as a result of increased population.  Why wasn't the advent of agriculture the mechanism for that increase?

Perhaps it might be as Jane Jacobs advocated in The Economy of Cities, that it formed as a consequence of trading and settlements as trading centers...


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Post 150

Monday, October 27, 2008 - 2:57pmSanction this postReply
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Bruce Lahn

Researcher on the genetic basis of human brain evolution, in particular:

 

  1. The accelerated evolution of brain genes in the descent of Homo Sapiens
  2. Identification of candidate “humanness” genes
  3. Is the human brain still evolving?


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Post 151

Thursday, October 30, 2008 - 5:49amSanction this postReply
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“Cooking Up Bigger Brains

  Conjecture of Richard Wrangham

  Scientific American (Jan 08)


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Post 152

Thursday, December 18, 2008 - 5:55amSanction this postReply
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“What Will Become of Homo Sapiens?”

  by Peter Ward

  Scientific American (Jan 09)

 

Stasis?

Speciation?

Symbiosis with Machines?

 

“Over the past 10,000 years, humans have evolved as much as 100 times faster than at any other time.”

 


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Post 153

Thursday, December 18, 2008 - 6:12amSanction this postReply
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On "Cooking up bigger brains" - sorry, but agree with others that he is off the mark - for one, our ancestors did not eat like the chimps of today do [foods were different then], and for another, our ancestors were aquatic apes, where the easier digested raw seafood would have provided the nutrients without the cooking... this is not to say cooking had no effect - it certainly did, in that it accelerated the process - but not at the time he indicated.......

Post 154

Thursday, December 18, 2008 - 6:31amSanction this postReply
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Re - the Future of Man - very little here is new, and for the most part is hearsay, speculations without sound evidence to back it... further, there is a salient point missed - namely there is a continuity of evolvment with regards to conditions of the environment such that a stasis of stability, as supposed with the melding of machines that would overtake humanity, is an impossibility - the universe keeps moving along in its way, continually throwing out conundrums that would require evolution to take different paths if survivability is to be maintained... even moreso is that these attainments in the present time of defects being allowed to persist into future generations only holds off for the moment the time in which they will prove negative to the species' survivability, and vast areas will eventually be wiped as consequence - in other words, despite so wanting otherwise, you cannot have your cake and eat it too...

there is an old saying - when it's steam training time, it'll steam trains... worth considering in the light of speculating diversity in the future of huumankind...
(Edited by robert malcom on 12/18, 6:32am)


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Post 155

Thursday, December 18, 2008 - 9:40amSanction this postReply
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Rev',

I agree with your post 153. Cooking likely began a quarter to a half of a million years ago. Homo erectus had a big brain 3-6 times farther back than this. Alternative explanations of big brains abound. You mentioned aquatic apes. That's a great explanation. It fits the facts well.

Also explanatory is the scavenger theory, where humans followed other predators, getting "sloppy seconds" after these other predators gnawed from the bone most of the muscle meat of their kill. The organ meat, brain, and bone marrow are often left behind after a kill. Relative to muscle meat -- organ meat, brains, and bone marrow are high in energy density and fatty acids; precisely those things required for the noted growth of the hominid brain.

According to the scavenger theory, our comparative physical weakness -- not being able to get the "lion's share" of easily eaten muscle meat (but having to eat organ meats, brains, and bone marrow instead) -- led to our comparative mental advantage by allowing for the growth of our big brains.

The broader truism is that if you deprive -- or if nature deprives, or the luck-of-the-draw deprives -- a being of having sheer power or force in order to meet its own ends, then it will develop alternative means to meet those ends, such as intelligence. It's an instance of dominating others by first being weaker than them in a way that doesn't matter as much (because your new type of strength is better than their traditional strength ever could be).

Ed

(Edited by Ed Thompson on 12/18, 9:57am)


Post 156

Thursday, December 18, 2008 - 10:11amSanction this postReply
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It's an instance of dominating others by first being weaker than them in a way that doesn't matter as much (because your new type of strength is better than their traditional strength ever could be).
..............

very true - a matter of greater diversity in application allows for more chances of success..

Post 157

Friday, March 11, 2016 - 2:01amSanction this postReply
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In April 2014, The Numismatist published my biography of John Leonard Riddell.  On March 5 of this year I delivered a presentation to the ANA convention in Dallas, "From Texas to the Moon with John Leonard Riddell."  Riddell was chief melter at the New Orleans Mint from 1836 to 1849. He was a polymath, holding several degrees, including a medical doctorate, working as an acoomplished botanist, and professor of chemistry, and inventing the binocular microscope. He was apparently the first working scientist to publish a science fiction story.

 

Through the special collections here at the Univesity of Texas libraries, I have had access to some of his original works. Among those is a lecture that he gave to the medical class at the University of Louisiana, On Our Knowledge of Nature, the Natural Sciences, and certain Truths revealed by the Microscope (J. L. Riddell, M.D., Professor of Chemistry, Introductory Lecture, Delivered on November 18th, 1851, Before the Medical Class, University of Louisiana, New Orleans). Note the date. Darwin's  The Origin of Species by Natural Selection, or: the Preservation of Favored Races in the Struggle for Life was published in 1859. 

 

J. L. Riddell said:

"That as we, in the brief day of our actual observation, have seen organic individuals begin and end their respective lives; organic varieties, as of fruit, &c., appear, flourish, and decay; and even organic species to become extinct, as the Dodo and the Irish Elk; so may we infer, from the inspection of the remains of successive extinct races of beings, that all species or kinds, as such, have begun their career, will flourish for, we know not how long, and will ultimately decay and disappear; their places to be supplied by modified species and kinds."

Darwin acknowledged George Leclerc Comte de Buffon, George Cuvier, Jean-Baptiste Lamarck, Geoffrey Saint-Hillaire, and ten others, before concluding with Herbert Spencer, Alfred Russell Wallace, and (“Darwin’s bulldog”) Thomas Henry Huxley.  All of them asserted with various evidences and arguments that the species we know today did not always exist.  That roster began with Aristotle who pointed out that the forms of our teeth—incisors in front, molars in back—developed by adaptation.

 

Ghost in Your Genes: PBS Nova (BBC 2006; WGBH 2007, 2008) delivers graphic evidence that genetics is not heredity. Identical twins raised in the same home diverge, one developing autism. Twin sisters discover that one has cancer, but the other does not. The town of Överkalix in northern Sweden provided a paradigmatic story of the effects of environment on heredity as grandparents who had suffered starvation passed the consequences not to their children, but to their grandchildren – depending on the sex of the ancestor and the sex of the descendant.

 

Epigenetics is often presented as a new frontier in biology. In fact, the word originated in the 1940s; and the first book came out a decade later.

The Epigenetics of Birds by C. H. Waddington (Cambridge University Press, 1952), reviewed by: J. T. Marshall in Bios, Vol. 24, No. 1 (Mar., 1953), p. 59.
Epigenetics. A Treatise on Theoretical Biology by Soren Lovtrup (Wiley, 1974), reviewed by Clifford Grobstein in The Quarterly Review of Biology, Vol. 50, No. 4 (Dec., 1975), p. 439.

 

Yet. Darwin remains a lightening rod, both for Christians and, apparently, Objectivists. I cannot find the comment now, but I recall that it was on the Galt's Gulch  Online site that one of the writers suggested an intersection. Christians are all about the authority of one book. They therefore latch on to Darwin as the "one book" they oppose. As I remember it, the writer there did not go further. I suggest the obvious parallel, that the same frame of mind exists among the scientifically literate and technologically accomplished. They defend Darwin as at least "a book" of unquestioned authority.



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Friday, January 20, 2017 - 6:24amSanction this postReply
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My opinion: Ayn Rand and the Development of Evolution  (An analysis of Ayn Rand's discordancy between evolution and the faculty of reason).

 

The repetitive treatment of the apparent discordancy or incompatibility between evolution and rationality as posed by Ayn Rand herself through her rather confused statement that she was neither a supporter nor an opponent of evolution, poses a riddle of amazement on my part. Her statement evidently confused also as many of her adherents as it emboldened her opponents to the point of moving them  to believe that this was predisposing her toward a creationist view of existence. Prior to pronouncing it she should have held a long and deep conversation with an expert in biology or, at least, have thrown a look into the dictionary for a better understanding of the definition of evolution: Gradual directional change, especially one leading to a more advanced or complex form; growth and development, but, then, in view of her character, this would probably have meant to herself a lessening of her stature as a philosopher (Oh, human pride!).

 

To start with, mind you that I’m not in agreement with a few things she said, the above being one of them, for while practically all of what she wrote on reality, ideas and the resulting philosophy are absolutely correct, there’s an almost ridiculous minimum of her statements or her silencing her opinion, with which one just may not be in agreement, as I am. Sometimes she evidently refused to take am open stand or just had it wrong. I myself, once a heavy smoker, don’t agree at all with her having selected a cigarette, due to her being a smoker, which finally meant her becoming seriously ill and speeding her demise from the human population, as a symbol for “Atlas Shrugged,” and I also disagree with her opposition to a female becoming a country’s president (In spite of her arguments) as well as, being a heterosexual, I can’t agree with her considering homosexuality to be immoral and disgusting, for .sexual preferences and traits of any kind are a matter of personal preference, some of which we even inherited from our pre-human antecedents. Science and science-fiction writer Isaac Asimov, in one of his many thoughtful writings, clearly stated that humans should, once and for all, accept mankind’s manifold sexual likings, even those followed by S/Ms and their strict rules of behavior at their peculiar entertainment.

 

Further on, on the issue involving the death penalty – a matter I analyzed at length in my book (published per chapter on the Webpage of “Rebirth of Reason”) “Ayn Rand, I and the Universe,” -  I reached an up to now unknown law justifying its use in the case of willful murder, not for the purpose of vengeance against the act committed but as a measure of social health, Rand and Branden evaded the issue by stating that its treatment  corresponded to the philosophy of law, though its solution is quite simple indeed, starting from Ayn Rand’s own statement that “Pity for the guilty is treason to the innocent”.

 

Turning now to the matter of evolution, by the time she issued her statement more than sufficient evidence and proof had accumulated that life evolved from inanimate matter, simply because matter acts in accordance to physical and chemical laws that rule it and there’s nothing else available for atoms – to avoid, for the length of this article, to involve quarks and subatomic particles – to group or coalesce into molecules, molecules to form structures and the reunion of these composing more and more complex constructions, to finally reach the state of automatic replication, repetition, etc.. Once this level has been reached  – and sufficient scientific experiments exist to confirm it even for the most stubborn doubter – the road is open to proceed to the evolution of most primitive life. Basically, we can reduce a very long and detailed explanation to the statement that life is one of the possible states that matter can attain, as Hartmut von Bastian, a German science historian, summarized. The process – evolution IS a process – involves the evolution from inanimate matter towards ever higher levels, in an automatic development.

 

At the level of human life, the process, a long, long line of steps, started from lower animal life to what we now call a Bonobo, a simian having a rudimentary form of consciousness which could be called instinct, a word Rand disliked but used several times herself, and from there on to what nowadays is called homo sapiens-sapiens, The initial sequence of Arthur C. Clarke & Kubrick’s “2001: A Space Odyssey” depicts mankind’s origin very well in a very condensed form. The faculty of reason followed from that point as a product of evolution. It’s an automatic development as everything else in Nature which, once a certain pattern has developed, cannot easily be reversed. Biology presents several good examples of remnants that remained with human beings, even if they’ve lost every practical use. Wisdom teeth are an example of these remnants. On the other hand, with an organism’s increasing complexity, some features become predominant. Have you noticed that while in the animal non-human kingdom, males display arrogant beauty to impress their humble females, while at the human level this trait is completely reversed? It could even be claimed that inventiveness originated with females, for while males were busy killing the needed meat, females grew vegetables at their humble living quarters. Original wheat isn’t the proud, high raising grain we know nowadays, but a small, almost crippled type of cereal. Females grew, collected and tasted the flour-kind content of the grains and – well, it could have happened thus – one of them got the idea of joining two higher growing stems or larger sprouts to see if something yielding larger amounts of the grain’s content could be obtained. Perhaps I’m wrong, but this or a similar procedure started what are now the enormous wheat fields worldwide.

 

Evolution itself occasioned the accumulation of enormous amounts of neurons, up to the point when thinking started to function and, by the time homo sapiens-sapiens had evolved, evolution, in the usually accepted sense, began to cease, for, basically, Nature’s automatic development of reason resulted in its relinquishing its operations to mankind, at a time when the first specimens of the new species must have been some “missing links,” still devoid of what would finally define mankind as the home sapiens-sapiens species. Most of the lower human specimens remained in a dead alley, a typical procedure of evolution that testifies for its automatism, but some of their mutant descendants continued to evolve toward higher levels of rationality. Evolution is a process from low to high, with many intermediate steps, a fact that has moved many to confusion and, evidently, Ayn Rand so too. Still, she had a well set notion of evolution’s activities herself for, in a comment mentioned in “Journals of Ayn Rand” and corresponding to July 18, 1945, she stated: “ Perhaps we are really in the process of evolving (my emphasis) from apes to Supermen – and the rational faculty is the dominant characteristic of the better species, the Superman.”

 

Does Nature’s giving up its activity in evolution to mankind mean that evolution in Nature has stopped? By no means, but it does mean that, having reached its highest automatic development by producing human beings, thinking organisms, it is now heavily influenced and limited by mankind itself. Our work in genetics and epigenetic testifies to the fact that we can and do direct its direction and its goals.

 

From the foregoing I can now return to the issue of the discordancy theme mentioned at the beginning of this article. No such discordancy exists, there are no contradictions involved between evolution and rationality, for the subject merely points out the development of the stepladder of evolution itself, from no consciousness to basic consciousness (what can be called instincts, however much Rand herself hated this term), and, from there on, to ever higher levels until full rationality was reached. We are far from getting to the end of the road, and perhaps it’s a road that will never end, and research on the development of evolution provides some not yet fully investigated hints that the brain of our species continues to grow. Still, evolution having delivered itself into our power, imposes a duty that should be quite clear now: the development of a peaceful and productive species with its main purpose of the pursuit of individual happiness; unless the lower placed Missing Links predominate and their Stalitlers reach their aim of destroying the whole species through the use of mysticism and brute force.

 

The issue remains on mankind’s decision.

 

Beyond the main theme of this writing there’s a piquant point issued by the slips of mind in the magnificence of Ayn Rand’s intellectual achievement, slips that were mainly related to her personal tastes, preferences and dislikes and which her adversaries bring to the fore with scorn and sarcasm, since they lack any valid arguments against the philosophy of Objectivism itself.

 

It could well be that her slips were a by-product of the enormous task she took up when she started the whole project of deducing from reality the fully rational philosophy she finally presented to the world, opposing all the fumblings that earlier wrongly as philosophers denominated writers had brought up. Perhaps she should have taken the time to avoid mentioning her personal likings and dislikes and perhaps her readers should better concentrate their attention to her main oeuvre, but then, again, her gaffes contain the spice of gossiping and the slightly scandalous that, a human trait, are preferentially exploited by the news and prominence media that may lead us humans to know more about the originator of such nattering and her work. Perhaps, finally, this will even help to spread the good news of Objectivism.



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