i showed beyond reasonable doubt that the first quote is not from Ruse, it is Ruse quoting R.Raff. A fact which appears to have escaped supersport(SS) when writing the OP.
At this point the extraordinary asymmetry of the "debate" strikes me as more of a concern then the content of SS's posting. It took me more than an hour just to track down where the quotes were cut and pasted from.
Now if someone cuts and pastes, without understanding enough of what they did to leave a footnote marker [4] demonstrating that the quote was actually a quote within a quote. Furthermore if someone does not even have the common courtesy to link to where they originally found these treasures, what evidence do i have that they actually understand the material they cut and pasted? The evidence is that they are merely moving pieces from one debate board to another discussion group without the information actually having passed through their conscious mind, certainly not enough to have made any difference there.
There is a parlour game of playing dozens of people at chess similtaneously. The trick is to actually play the games against each other, making one player's moves against you the same way against another player.
but it is a parlour trick, knowing how it is done makes me desire to actually sit across from the player i am playing and not be deceived into thinking that the opponent in front of me is actually playing the game, he is not, he is just cut and pasting from another game to fool me.
at this point, i do not believe that SS knows enough about TofE to actually discuss the topic intelligently and with value to all the discussion participants. His (presumably) MO is to merely echo another's words, without referencing them and apparently without really understanding them.
i prefer to discuss the topic with someone who does their own homework. I'm not here to waste my time scoring imaginary debate points or counting coup in some way, i'm here to learn. The topic of phenotypic plasticity is an interesting and by all appearances a difficult one, but i think i will investigate it with someone who cites their sources and thinks about the material somewhere between the time they read it and the time they put it into their computer's clipboards buffer.
i was more than willing to engage in a useful discussion, but this is my second day on topics begun by SS and i see no value in talking to what appears to be primarily a clipboard buffer, it is to my advantage to talk to the minds that actually wrote the material in the buffer.
I hope that other participants here agree and more cut and paste without reference to their sources is greeted by a chorus of "show your work" or "cite your sources", then we can talk.
