Life as Evolving Software... (Chaitin) (Humans)

by xeno6696 , Sonoran Desert, Saturday, December 24, 2011, 22:11 (4716 days ago) @ David Turell

Whales... I could buy your story if modern whales didn't have vestigial legs.

We'll have to agree to disagree. Of course a fossiol is a snapshot, but most commentators feel we have enough snapshots to agree that we can see patterns of evolutionary development that there is stasis, and fits and starts with large jumps after the stasis.

Yet even mechanisms such as epigenetics don't appear (to me) to correspond to the kind of "fits and starts" you see in the fossil record. I agree, that the record progresses as you discuss above--with bursts of "innovation" if you will. However where I diverge is that there isn't any evidence-based validity for asserting that these changes happened in a manner inconsistent with current thought. Changes propagated by epigenetics would not appear distinctly different in a fossil record than anything else. It's something to consider, but there isn't a strong case here to displace mainstream thought on this issue. Until someone discovers a genetic mechanism that could warrant (geologically rapid) changes and can demonstrate it ex situ, there simply isn't a case beyond conjecture.

I don't follow that last statement. Of course whales are mammals and the legs prove that.My point is each fossil we have in development of whales is a large jump from the last form and there are no intermediates, after prodigious searching, and we may never find any because there never were any. Darwin predicted there would be. He has been shown to be wrong in his hope. Your skepticism in this area takes on the aura of a faith. Gould didn't bujy your belief.

"Never were any intermediates." You're poking into our ignorance and claiming knowledge where there is none. I wouldn't expect to find intermediates--David, you're asking nature to provide us with a snapshot of every form from A-Z. As if nature was ever so willing to reveal its secrets! We can only make scientific judgments based on what we've found: To me, the mechanics of DNA and heredity is the only known method for transmitting genetic information from organism A to C. To me, coupled with geological evidence, it explains everything we have seen. The explosions are unexplained. The solution will be an extension of current thought... not a replacement, I doubt even a paradigm shift.

Lack of intermediates literally means only that. The case for whales as you discuss here... how can you make that claim when we really don't know what the actual mutation rate even was for those organisms? What environmental pressures did they undergo? Another claim made ex-nihilo. Even among primates, the mapping differences based on Hemoglobin make the strongest case for a "gradualism" that I have ever seen.

I'm not saying that my mind concerning evolution is "made-up," what I'm saying is that the thinking I've heard from you and others has failed to come up with a strong and material case. However, those challenges I posed above would actually resolve the question in my mind, to your favor. (Insomuch as that there is something other than a generation 1 to generation 2 mechanism to evolution.)

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\"Why is it, Master, that ascetics fight with ascetics?\"

\"It is, brahmin, because of attachment to views, adherence to views, fixation on views, addiction to views, obsession with views, holding firmly to views that ascetics fight with ascetics.\"