Something about Porn that I'm wondering

no one has your exact traits. If you're a homosexual that just happens to develop a beneficial mutation that it sibling didn't, it WONT get passed on, no matter how well you raise someone else's kids. I don't see what's so hard to understand.

1) Male penguins share duty of hatching eggs and raising young anyway. Your example is nothing special.

2) Penguin - Wikipedia, the free encyclopaedia

"When mothers lose a chick, they sometimes attempt to "steal" another mother's chick, usually unsuccessfully as other females in the vicinity assist the defending mother in keeping her chick."

it's not just "homosexual" penguins that will adopt an orphan. as you can see, penguins are quite willing to take in offspring that arent their own, regardless of sexuality. so your point is moot.

it doesn't have to lead to "new" traits. if a mutation gives an organism a reproductive advantage, even if it's just a slight improvement on an old trait, that's evolution at work.

I never said anything about a "specific" organism. but one organism can make a huge difference in a population. an organism can develop a mutation that gives it a reproductive advantage; that advantage helps it mate with more organisms than those without that advantage. that organism would have the most offspring with it's genetical material, than any organism of it's generation. the offspring, in turn, are born with that gene that gives it an advantage, and have a higher likelyhood of reproducing; so only two generations, the number of organisms that share the initial beneficial trait has greatly multiplied.

in my book, that one organism mattered a lot.

so? the argument you have presented is what's lacking. present me a good argument from those books, and I'll acknowledge it.

now this is a straw.

Declare victory? hardly. I simply stated that your argument is flawed. "declaring victory" is simply your own assertion. I don't think I've won anything. I just don't think your arguments are substantial.

and here we have the reason for why your arguments are weak.

you said:

"On the contrary, the loss of a small number of reproducing individuals is outweighed by the benefit. You'll notice that this is why homosexuality only evolves in social species: they live in such high numbers that there is always an ample supply of potential mates. In solitary animals (spiders, say), homosexuality has no benefit."

now you're back-peddling and saying saying you were merely talking adoption, when you were clearly said that homosexuality "only" evolved in social species because of "high numbers"?

and now you're trying to change the definition of "social" species in a way to include solitary animals, rather than simply conceed your were wrong.

oh, and answer this: if bears and owls are "typically" solitary creatures, how then did homosexuality evolve, when when it "has no benefit" in solitary creatures? hmm?

your own admission that bears (a solitary animal) have been reported to exhibit homosexuality, contradicts your own argument that "only" social species would evolve homosexuality; this just adds to your pile of self-contradictions in this thread.

THIS is why I keep saying your arguments are weak.

And the odds that the novel material of any one individual is beneficial, is slim to none.

On the contrary, my point was that homosexual penguin couples raise orphaned (or otherwise parentless) eggs and chicks. That heterosexual penguins do this is irrelevant. If this is your counter-argument, why not simply point out the existence of heterosexual human foster parents?

Then you need a better book. The organism's beneficial mutation can only be proliferated throughout later generations if there are other organisms with which to breed. In the case of antiviral and antibacterial resistance, so-called 'superbugs' only evolve after generations of accumulated mutation, mutation that accumulates after the bottleneck created by the medication.

A single surviving organism and its germ line is unlikely to survive further medication: it survives not because it has a complete immunity, but rather that it is slightly more immune than its late kin. Through lateral gene transfer, sexual reproduction, and other methods of gene flow, this slight immunity is conferred to the entire (surviving) population.
A small fraction of that small fraction of the initial population will have a slightly better immunity again.

The key point, shinbits, is that a large aggregate must survive to ensure that the next step in the evolutionary immunisation process can occur: too few survivors, and the odds that individual in the surviving population will spawn a better version of this 'partial-immunity' rapidly diminish.

In your example, you mistakenly assume that the mutant's progeny will quickly overwhelm the original population: in a population of billions, two generations is nothing, even to bacteria. Yes, the single organism's genes will eventually proliferate throughout the population, but not for years to come.

Moreover, you're starting from the premise that a single organism has this mutation. This only becomes likely when you have a huge number of organisms in the population.

In other words, you are talking about a specific organism. And I completely agree: the loss of that specific organism would be significant indeed. But that this particular organism would be the one lost is highly unlikely, simply because a) populations are large, and b) the odds than any one generation would throw up this specific organism (i.e., one with a beneficial mutation) is vanishingly small.

The books and studies are there for you to read. I find it amusing that you lambast me for not supporting my argument, when you quite clearly are refusing to read my citations.
As they say, you can lead a horse to water...

But this is semantics, and gets us nowhere. I just wanted to point out the arrogance in those little appendices you tack on.

On the contrary, it is you who is equivocating: you are conflating your, my, and their definitions of 'social', 'solitary', and 'typically solitary'. My definitions, however, have not changed, nor have I contradicted earlier statements. If you need more help with this, don't hesitate to ask me to clarify my terms.

No. I said that homosexuality evolves in social species. Bears, while typically solitary, are social enough for homosexuality to be a benefit. Specifically, the existence of male-male parental units.

be that as it may, kin selection doesn't work for passing on homosexuality, since the kin the homosexuals in your model are helping, obviously aren't homosexual. there's still no logical reason why homosexuality would be passed on and evolve.

penguins will raise young that's not thier own regardless of sexuality. so using orphaned penguins as a reason for the evolution of homosexuality is is completely ineffective.

it doesn't matter if it's "complete" immunity or not. it just needs to be enough to survive. this is passed on to the next generation which also has this immunity. and since one virus or bacterium can rapidly multiply, those indivudual organisms make a HUGE difference, especially in viruses, which can replicate hundreds or thousands of itself after invading just one cell.

with viruses, a single organism often makes a huge difference.

one virus can rapidly reproduce. so whatever beneficial mutation it has will be aquired by many viruses. so there's your "large aggregate" which has survived.

then why do we need flu shots each year, rather than every couple of years?

it's because it doesn't take "years" for flu-viruses to develop resistance.

most social species have "huge" numbers of organisms in it's population. so by that logic, I'm still correct.

ANY organism can be that "one" organism that develops the beneficial mutation. that's why you can't just assume that the loss of any one organism is "insignificant".

so if someone's argument is weak, it's arrogance to point that out---even though I thoroughly point out why? hmm.

the problem is that you're inventing definitions, because you don't want to admit your error. this is like me saying that penguins are solitary creatures; then after my error's pointed out, I respond by saying "oh, they're typically social...but often alone when they hunt for food"....then arguing that you're "equivocating" because of my "typically" social vs social definition.

in short, your "typically social" bit is ad-hoc.

how would homosexuality evolve in "typically" solitary animals in the first place? the only time bears and other "typically" solitary animals are with others of it's own species, is when mating, with siblings, or with young. how would homosexuality evolve under those circumstances?

Not expressing a trait doesn't mean you don't have the relevant genetics.

I never said it was the reason homosexuality evolved in penguins. My point is that homosexual couples will be childless, thus increasing the number of penguins that are willing to adopt. Their homosexuality doesn't cause them to adopt, but it makes them able to adopt (a penguin will prefer to raise its own biological chicks).

True, but like you said, viruses breed rapidly. My point stands: a single generation is irrelevant; rather, resistance builds up as mutations aggregate.

Any one virus is irrelevant. The important ones are those that just so happen to be resistant, but only a tiny fraction of the population will be better at resisting.

You're still arguing from the point of view that any one individual is significant: they're not. I don't deny that, in a large population, a handful of individuals will be better adapted at doing this, that, or the other. But the point is that only a handful will be better, and the rest of the population will be neither better nor worse than their immediate predecessors. That's why a single individual is irrelevant: the odds that they're better are tiny.

Of course I can: any one organism can be have the mutation, but if you pick an organism at random and kill it, you almost certainly didn't kill the one with the mutation. Likewise, individuals who are homosexual are 'killed': their unique genetic material is forever lost. But the odds that these 'sacrificed' individuals have a beneficial mutation are tiny.

It's arrogance to assume one is always right, that one's counter-arguments are rock-solid, to accuse the opponent of having weak arguments, etc. But more than that, it is nothing but a hindrance to debate, and leads to anything but civil dialogue.


It is only ad hoc if I retroactively redefined my terms to fix my argument. Since I didn't (my definitions are the same now as they have always been), your point is moot.

Oh, I don't expect you to believe me. You can accuse me of lying, back-pedalling, goalpost-shifting, blah, blah, blah. I know I'm telling truth, and I'm not really bothered whether you believe me or not.

As a by-product of other traits: the female kin of homosexuals are more likely to breed than those with relatively few homosexuals in their lineage. That is, females evolved to have a higher fecundity, and this had a by-product: homosexuality. Once homosexuality exists, selection pressures mould it to optimise its use.