Enough throwbacks in a row, and you end up with a monkey again?

[Gottservant]

Hi there,

So I have finally worked out where Evolutionists stand on their genetic heritage: throwbacks are both a confirmation of survival and a case for lineage through other species - if you have enough throwbacks, in theory you will go back to previous manifestations of survival (including monkeys).

That's not to suggest you can't learn from other species, just that if their derivation is across species, it should be revertible.

I don't know what you make of this.

 

[Ponderous Curmudgeon]

Hi there,

So I have finally worked out where Evolutionists stand on their genetic heritage: throwbacks are both a confirmation of survival and a case for lineage through other species - if you have enough throwbacks, in theory you will go back to previous manifestations of survival (including monkeys).

That's not to suggest you can't learn from other species, just that if their derivation is across species, it should be revertible.

I don't know what you make of this.

Nope.

 

[Occams Barber]

Hi there,

So I have finally worked out where Evolutionists stand on their genetic heritage: throwbacks are both a confirmation of survival and a case for lineage through other species - if you have enough throwbacks, in theory you will go back to previous manifestations of survival (including monkeys).

That's not to suggest you can't learn from other species, just that if their derivation is across species, it should be revertible.

I don't know what you make of this.

Sorry Gotty - no.

You can't unmake a cake or unscramble an egg.

OP

 

[Frank Robert]

Hi there,

So I have finally worked out where Evolutionists stand on their genetic heritage: throwbacks are both a confirmation of survival and a case for lineage through other species - if you have enough throwbacks, in theory you will go back to previous manifestations of survival (including monkeys).

That's not to suggest you can't learn from other species, just that if their derivation is across species, it should be revertible.

I don't know what you make of this.

Define what selective pressures there are that will select the throwback mutations you are imagining.

 

[Gottservant]

Sorry Gotty - no.

You can't unmake a cake or unscramble an egg.

OP

But a cake can make itself an egg? Or enough eggs can change the scramble back to something else (a lumpy omelette)?

What are throwbacks, if not this very thing? Throwbacks being that thing you wager has power to make a species what it was at its peak, regardless of Evolution?

Don't numbers of throwbacks contribute to Evolution, the same way ordinary changes do? If a selection pressure in nullified, the only way to adapt to a peak without it, is to trust a throwback.

I don't think you are being very genuine: you want selection pressure to be a constant, but as soon as something is pointed out that contradicts this notion, you decry it? Why bother, when so much of what you say is ad hoc or in defence of the ad hoc, anyway?

 

[Gottservant]

Define what selective pressures there are that will select the throwback mutations you are imagining.

If it turns out humans are stupid, it would be better that they just lived in the trees, no?

I mean you have to assess Evolution with an eye to skepticism, don't you? Not just siding with the ubiquity of the human endeavour?

Then there is the retort that if Evolution is true, your attachment to monkeys will grow, the more you celebrate the advance beyond them (monkeys), such that you don't see advancement separate to the proclivities believing you came from monkeys gives you (you will want to believe in a monkey way, for the sake of your own ego).

 

[SigurdReginson]

I think what you might be describing are atavisms; when dormant genes are activated and "throw back" traits are seen in animals. This could manifest in hind legs for whales, or even tails for humans.

Atavism - Wikipedia

Atavism isn't devolution, though, which hasn't ever been observed in nature as far as I know due to Dollo's law of irreversibility - Wikipedia .

Devolution (biology) - Wikipedia

 

[Frank Robert]

If it turns out humans are stupid, it would be better that they just lived in the trees, no?

I mean you have to assess Evolution with an eye to skepticism, don't you? Not just siding with the ubiquity of the human endeavour?

Perhaps I am just too dense to imagine what selective pressures exist or could exist to select for mutations that I am too dense to imagine.

Then there is the retort that if Evolution is true, your attachment to monkeys will grow, the more you celebrate the advance beyond them (monkeys), such that you don't see advancement separate to the proclivities believing you came from monkeys gives you (you will want to believe in a monkey way, for the sake of your own ego).

Thanks, that is imaginative.

 

[Gottservant]

I think what you might be describing are atavisms; when dormant genes are activated and "throw back" traits are seen in animals. This could manifest in hind legs for whales, or even tails for humans.

Atavism isn't devolution, though, which hasn't ever been observed in nature as far as I know due to Dollo's law of irreversibility - Wikipedia .

Devolution (biology) - Wikipedia

You don't need to define throwbacks any other way - we know they exist.

 

[Gottservant]

Perhaps I am just too dense to imagine what selective pressures exist or could exist to select for mutations that I am too dense to imagine.

I find this genuine.

Can you see the simplicity of the argument I am making?

The more throwbacks there are in a species, the more that species approaches its own peak - my question is what about Evolution enables that species to grasp that this is the case?

 

[SigurdReginson]

You don't need to define throwbacks any other way - we know they exist.

Well... Definitions help to shed clarity on similar things as to not cause confusion. They are important to get better understanding of what exactly is happening.

There's a difference between a "throwback" being devolution and a "throwback" being the activation of dormant genes, no?

 

[Shemjaza]

Hi there,

So I have finally worked out where Evolutionists stand on their genetic heritage: throwbacks are both a confirmation of survival and a case for lineage through other species - if you have enough throwbacks, in theory you will go back to previous manifestations of survival (including monkeys).

That's not to suggest you can't learn from other species, just that if their derivation is across species, it should be revertible.

I don't know what you make of this.

There are remnants of the lineage in the genetics, but that's all they are remnants, not complete genetic traits to recreate the ancestral genetic structure.

The probability of the exact set of mutations needed to recreate the ancestral form and for the intermediate forms to be not just viable but advantageous strikes me as so ludicrous that it is basically impossible.

 

[Frank Robert]

I find this genuine.

Can you see the simplicity of the argument I am making?

The more throwbacks there are in a species, the more that species approaches its own peak - my question is what about Evolution enables that species to grasp that this is the case?

I am no expert on this still I don't understand how the throwbacks could be selected if they are not beneficial or nearly neutral. Along the same lines, I recall a discussion from another forum on the overwhelming effect of nearly neutral deleterious mutations and consensus of the population geneticists was that as they become common many beneficial mutations would accumulate before fixation.

I was not able to locate the discussion that I referred to but I did find this:
The evolutionary origin of the universal distribution of mutation fitness effect

(From the abstract)
We demonstrate analytically and by simulation that, regardless of the inherent distribution of mutation fitness effect across genomic sites, an exponential distribution of fitness effects emerges in the long term.
​

Edit: Here is the discussion I referred to above.
Stern Cardinale: Response to Price, Carter, and Sanford on Genetic Entropy

 

[Warden_of_the_Storm]

Hi there,

So I have finally worked out where Evolutionists stand on their genetic heritage: throwbacks are both a confirmation of survival and a case for lineage through other species - if you have enough throwbacks, in theory you will go back to previous manifestations of survival (including monkeys).

That's not to suggest you can't learn from other species, just that if their derivation is across species, it should be revertible.

I don't know what you make of this.

I make of it that you still clearly know nothing about evolution or basic science, let alone biology, and you seem to revel in your lack of knowldge.

 

[tas8831]

Enough threads like this and Yahweh sends to a text message???

 

[tas8831]

Can you see the simplicity of the argument I am making?

Yes - so simplistic as to be absurd.

 

[tas8831]

You don't need to define throwbacks any other way - we know they exist.

So you cannot define a term that YOU used in a way that makes no sense to people that understand evolutionary biology.... Interesting.

 

[Bradskii]

Hi there,

So I have finally worked out where Evolutionists stand on their genetic heritage: throwbacks are both a confirmation of survival and a case for lineage through other species - if you have enough throwbacks, in theory you will go back to previous manifestations of survival (including monkeys).

That's not to suggest you can't learn from other species, just that if their derivation is across species, it should be revertible.

I don't know what you make of this.

I think I know what you mean. By 'throwbacks' you mean an earlier version of a particular organism and how it appeared if we reversed evolution and went back in time. So we could see tbe.lineage as we worked back.

Dawkkns wrote an excellent book on this called The Ancestors Tale. He takes humans as his start point and then goes back step by step into evolutionary history to see where we came from and what form we took at each stage.

https://www.amazon.com/Ancestors-Tale-Pilgrimage-Dawn-Evolution/dp/0544859936

I would strongly recommend it to you. It will give you an excellent view of where we came from and how the process worked to get us here.

As to reversing the process, I guess if some of us for whatever reason reverted to the trees and required a hairy body and lost our intelligence and walked on all fours and all that was an evolutionary advantage in some way, then it could happen that we'd end up ape-like. But in reality? No.

But your guess as to what we will look like (should we survive) in a few million years as we inhabit different environments is as good as mine. Quite possibly a lot different to how we look today.

 

[SelfSim]

.. As to reversing the process, I guess if some of us for whatever reason reverted to the trees and required a hairy body and lost our intelligence and walked on all fours and all that was an evolutionary advantage in some way, then it could happen that we'd end up ape-like. But in reality? No.

But your guess as to what we will look like (should we survive) in a few million years as we inhabit different environments is as good as mine. Quite possibly a lot different to how we look today.

I agree. I mean, who is to say that 'trees' will be there in the future, in order for us to revert to (living?) in them? Same goes for 'losing intelligence' or 'walking on all fours' or 'ape-like'. They are all likely to not bear any resemblance to what we currently mean by those terms anyway.
We have no idea, because there is no law which predicts what will exist as evolution explores its new possibilities into the future.
The constraining aspects of the niches in natural selection, evolve synchronously with the species attuned to them.
We cannot predict what will come from what existed plus what currently exists, in a phase space which the universe has barely scratched the surface of.

 

[Ponderous Curmudgeon]

I agree. I mean, who is to say that 'trees' will be there in the future, in order for us to revert to (living?) in them? Same goes for 'losing intelligence' or 'walking on all fours' or 'ape-like'. They are all likely to not bear any resemblance to what we currently mean by those terms anyway.
We have no idea, because there is no law which predicts what will exist as evolution explores its new possibilities into the future.
The constraining aspects of the niches in natural selection, evolve synchronously with the species attuned to them.
We cannot predict what will come from what existed plus what currently exists, in a phase space which the universe has barely scratched the surface of.

Evolution is effectively a random walk, deal with that first and then you can consider any of the other things you are contemplating.