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

by xeno6696 , Sonoran Desert, Tuesday, December 27, 2011, 02:07 (4714 days ago) @ David Turell

Adding to the confusion is the charge by David where he claims that for example, in the case of whales, that "Gradualism cannot be the cause." What I am sure of however is that David appears to be claiming that these whales don't have a common ancestor... that the normal transfer of genetic information over time cannot be creative enough.

Of course genetic material passes from generation to generation. My observation, like Gould's, looks at the gaps in the fossil record. When you look at one whale ancestor to the next there are large changes in phenotype. Darwin's itty-bitty changes that He anticipated do not exist! This is why Gould and Eldridge came up with PE, and PE has not disappeared in the 30 or so years since their paper.

What I'm trying to drill at with you here however... is not that PE is a false idea, but its that I don't understand how PE refutes the idea that evolution "speeds up and slows down on demand." I don't see how "gaps in the fossil record" dictate some phenomenal re-valuation of how we know genetic mechanisms work... I still don't understand the problem you (or Gould) is trying to solve... what is the basis for asserting that there is any real difference between evolution that "speeds up" and PE?

Further, if we agree that evolution is a demand-[driven] enterprise, than I am even more confused by the idea that epigenetics solves a problem that current thought [doesn't]...?

[EDITED]

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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.\"