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Author Topic:   Evolution - recent examples?
JonF
Member (Idle past 199 days)
Posts: 6174
Joined: 06-23-2003


Message 11 of 39 (118627)
06-25-2004 10:27 AM
Reply to: Message 6 by tubi417
06-24-2004 11:36 PM


Someone explained it to me like this. Its sort of a weird way of looking at it, but just follow along. Say a new dictator (the antibiodic) comes to power. He orders everyone's left hand to be chopped off. So as hes chopping off everyone's left hand, he comes across 2 people who were born without a left hand. While everyone else bleeds to death, the 2 people without left hands survive and reproduce having more people without left hands. These people are naturally weaker though because they only have one hand.
The problem is that the anaology breaks down at the "These people are weaker" point.
They're alive. The others are dead. And who's weaker, again?

This message is a reply to:
 Message 6 by tubi417, posted 06-24-2004 11:36 PM tubi417 has not replied

  
JonF
Member (Idle past 199 days)
Posts: 6174
Joined: 06-23-2003


Message 14 of 39 (118872)
06-25-2004 8:50 PM
Reply to: Message 6 by tubi417
06-24-2004 11:36 PM


Someone explained it to me like this. Its sort of a weird way of looking at it, but just follow along. Say a new dictator (the antibiodic) comes to power. He orders everyone's left hand to be chopped off. So as hes chopping off everyone's left hand, he comes across 2 people who were born without a left hand. While everyone else bleeds to death, the 2 people without left hands survive and reproduce having more people without left hands. These people are naturally weaker though because they only have one hand.
Amplifying on my earlier post:
Natural selection is concerned with the here-and-now. It selects the organisms that are best adapted to the environment today. "Weaker in some previous environment" doesn't matter. "Fitter in today's environment, right now" matters. And by that standard the people with no left hand are fitter.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 6 by tubi417, posted 06-24-2004 11:36 PM tubi417 has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 15 by tubi417, posted 06-26-2004 12:31 AM JonF has not replied

  
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