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Member Posts: 3945 From: Duluth, Minnesota, U.S. (West end of Lake Superior) Joined: Member Rating: 10.0 |
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Author | Topic: Is Syamsu a creationist or an evolutionist? | |||||||||||||||||||
Peter Member (Idle past 1509 days) Posts: 2161 From: Cambridgeshire, UK. Joined: |
Sorry to butt in, but I think the word 'determinism' was
brought in in error. To be deterministic one must, from the same initial conditionsarrive at the same result. Change the initial conditions and you change the resultwithout affecting the 'determinism' of the process. Natural selection operates per-generation, but there are somany possible variables (and time-dependencies) that the outcome is always uncertain. Uncertain, except that one can be sure that any population,over time will tend to be dominated by the individuals best suited to the environment in which they find themselves. Not the BEST organism for the environment, but the best suitedof the available options. ...oh and if you look at a single individual aren't it's peersa part of the environment (so you cannot neglect interactions with them).
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Peter Member (Idle past 1509 days) Posts: 2161 From: Cambridgeshire, UK. Joined: |
quote: Perhaps Syamsu missed the 'adaptive' in your suggestion ...?
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Peter Member (Idle past 1509 days) Posts: 2161 From: Cambridgeshire, UK. Joined: |
Perhaps Syamsu believes in Lamarkian evolution.
That's the only way that I can see an objection to what youhave said. If all members of a population produced the same, mutated phenotypethat was a better fit for the environment. Or of some higher being tweaked the genomes every now and then. Maybe there's a genome configuration tool somewhere ....
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Peter Member (Idle past 1509 days) Posts: 2161 From: Cambridgeshire, UK. Joined: |
quote: You almost had it there!!! Variation does NOT disappear. Variation is present in almost everypopulation of organisms. Question: Are you identicle to your a) Motherb) father c) siblings (if applicable) d) children (if applicable) If the answer to any of the above is 'No', then there ISvariation within your population, even amongst directly related individuals. Variation does not disappear. Whether or not that variation will influence reproductive rates/outputs depends on the environment (and if you are looking at an individual that includes the rest of the population). Simplified examples of the relationship with the environmentinclude for example anything that helps to stop you getting killed without leaving young, or anything that makes you more attractive to a potential mate. Whether the variation arose ten generations ago and just hungaround in a small group of the population, or just arose last breeding season -- if it makes you more likely to leave viable offspring then the effect on the population will be that that trait will increase in frequency given sufficient time under the prevailing enviroment. Evolution is founded in lucky coincidence -- we tendto call that random mutation + selection.
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Peter Member (Idle past 1509 days) Posts: 2161 From: Cambridgeshire, UK. Joined: |
quote: Again you nearly had it ... what you are mainly describing ISnatural selection (I've said this to you before), but you are using a differing view of fittness. What is descent with modfication if it is not a change in allelefrequency in the population .... as soon as you have offpspring you are no longer focussing on an individual but on a population. Individuals do not evolve, populations do. The reason that ToE focusses on populations is that it isa populational effect.
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Peter Member (Idle past 1509 days) Posts: 2161 From: Cambridgeshire, UK. Joined: |
quote: With the somewhat curious heritability thing -- I maybe agree,but variation does not get reduced by selective processes unless ALL traits are subject to selective pressure -- and maybe not even then depending upon the genetic characteristics leading to the trait. The only way to have zero variation in any population is forno variation to ever get introduced. This does not happen, so any hypothesis based upon such apopulation is mis-leading. All you can accomplish is to say that evolution cannot happen without variation -- and we know that already.
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Peter Member (Idle past 1509 days) Posts: 2161 From: Cambridgeshire, UK. Joined: |
quote: Because there are few (if any) living populations that donot exhibit variation -- even if that is marginal in their current environment. How can you say that variation disappears, when we can observealmost any population and see that it doesn't? quote: That's not what they are FOR. IFF there are variations that increase the chances of leavingoffspring then they will appear in hindsight to be adaptive changes. quote: What on earth makes you think this? PS: I'm sure I already posted a response to this, butit's not here ... hmmmm...
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Peter Member (Idle past 1509 days) Posts: 2161 From: Cambridgeshire, UK. Joined: |
Fair enough -- I thought Syamsu was saying that
variation disappears though (like altogether).
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Peter Member (Idle past 1509 days) Posts: 2161 From: Cambridgeshire, UK. Joined: |
No, my answer is A & B.
quote: Precisely why you cannot get useful insight from study inthis area by focussing on an individual.
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Peter Member (Idle past 1509 days) Posts: 2161 From: Cambridgeshire, UK. Joined: |
quote: Focussing on ONE individual tell me why there are morecamouflaged prey-animals than not witin then population.
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Peter Member (Idle past 1509 days) Posts: 2161 From: Cambridgeshire, UK. Joined: |
quote: Why do you define a population by what it eats? Am I (a non-vegetarian) in a different population to myfriends who are Vegans? I suppose if your populational criterion is 'what do they eat?'then it's true, if it's something else it's false. What do YOU mean by population?
quote: Nothing wrong with referring to relative fitness (i.e. fitnessof a trait wrt to some specific environmental factor). You have just compared the reproductive success of the variantswrt to multiple environmental factors -- that's good and that's what most of the people arguing against you are saying. There IS variation and that variation affects reproductive ratesrelative the the environment as a whole (i.e. all factors). It can be measured after the fact by allele frequencies.
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