Teaching Evolution to Evolutionists

[Assyrian]

I think that's what you should do. You made the absolute statement that one never means the other. Here's what you said...

No tautologies are trivial, not meaningless.

Some are trivial, and not meaningless. However some are meaningless. That's why they're synonyms. What we would be therefore arguing on whether this particular tautology is meaningless or not.

You looked up the word trivial in the thesaurus, not the word trivial being used to describe a tautology. All the thesaurus tells you is that sometimes trivial can be used used as a synonym for meaningless (though I cannot imagine how, 'meaningless' is quite different from the basic meaning of 'trivial', unless 'meaningless' itself is being used loosely.) The thesaurus doesn't tell you that 'trivial' used in the context of tautology can sometimes mean 'meaningless'.

I often quote things that don't agree with me. It's the way I used the evidence that you've not looked at.

Then you shouldn't claim the textbook agrees with you.

I stated that they accept its a tautology if you can't ascribe an outside criteria and therefore... hang on, I've stated this already. Go read my posts!

Except he says it is possible to assign independent criteria. That means it is not a tautology. If you could argue that the criteria are invalid, that would simply make survival of the fittest wrong, not a tautology. But of course you can't argue that either as the level of your responses to sfs demonstrates.

Honestly, do you think asking "Did the truck driver have the alle?" was a serious response to sfs's point? That is just wriggling. And what was the point in answering sfs "Where did you quote Darwin saying it's not a tautology"? I must have missed it."? You were discussing 'survival of the luckiest' and sfs tells you he quoted Darwin on the subject, which he did - if you read back through his posts. All you could do is switch topic.

Again you've shown you've not read what I've written.

Don't particularly care if you think I have shown it or not. I happen to know I read your posts because I was there. However if you think I missed your point, it might be a bit more constructive to explain yourself instead.

 

[sfs]

I'll try once more, and then give up on you.

Nature doesn't actually select in the same way you or I do, with a purpose.

Right. So?

Simply events happen and some critters may have the ability to survive

Sometimes. Sometimes events happen and no critter will survive, whatever their characteristics.

Was the truck part of natural selection?

In this case, no. It was a random event. Bad luck, in your terms.

Did the truck driver have the alle?

Huh?

Aren't you the one insisiting luck is part of it? I'm still waiting for the science on that

I've given it to you. You've ignored it. I'm still waiting for you to tell me whether an organism that dies unluckily is necessarily less fit. Why? I thought you were going to teach people about evolution -- why can't you answer simple questions about it?

One book is more than none. However I've cited more than one book.

You're supposed to present evidence supporting your position. The quotation you've given refuted your claim, although you don't seem to
realize it. And what other book have you cited?

Where did you quote Darwin saying it's not a tautology? I must have missed it.

I quoted Darwin saying that the fittest do not always survive. That implies that "survival of the fittest" cannot be a tautology. If it were a tautology, the fittest would always survive. Deal with that fact.

Mallon cited TalkOrigins to show it's not a tautology (post #14), not you, but if you have to take credit for what others do, that's entirely between the two of you.

What the heck are you talking about? I haven't taken credit for anything Mallon wrote. I've referred only to the things I wrote. Stop making up crap and deal with what I actually write.

And I addressed that evidence, they start of by misleading people

No, you haven't dealt with the evidence. The evidence I gave shows that, as "fitness" is used in evolutionary biology, the fittest are not always those that survive. That central and quite basic fact is something you do not understand. Address that evidence.

Is randomness of selection the same as luck? So far nothing from you on this - oh that's right, you claim to be someone else as well

Again, huh? What randomness of selection? There is randomness to survival; I didn't say anything about randomness of selection.

I still respond to you

No, you don't, actually. You write things that have nothing to do with my posts, and do not respond to the points I make.

"This indeed is a tautology" is what they said. The text I quoted recognises that it's a tautology but one can assign an outside criteria, unfortunatley the one they do is by way of analogy of a non-natural selection process.

No, the textbook does not recognize that it's a tautology, as Assyrian has already pointed out.

 

[sfs]

Trying to explain fitness to Montalban is getting nowhere, but I'll make a couple of comments about the subject in case anyone else is interested. The Wikipedia article on fitness has a good quotation from Maynard Smith that's relevant to what I've been saying (says it better than I have, in fact): "Fitness is a property, not of an individual, but of a class of individuals – for example homozygous for allele A at a particular locus. Thus the phrase ’expected number of offspring’ means the average number, not the number produced by some one individual. If the first human infant with a gene for levitation were struck by lightning in its pram, this would not prove the new genotype to have low fitness, but only that the particular child was unlucky."

Fitness is thus always a probabilistic property. Darwin's point was that heritable traits that lead to a greater probability of survival and reproduction will tend, on average, to increase in frequency in the population. This does not mean that they always increase in frequency; in fact, the great majority of new mutations that confer greater fitness are lost because they aren't successfully passed on to later generations. So simply seeing which traits survive will not actually tell you which traits were more fit. (Note that this is a different reason why "survival of the fittest" is not a tautology than the one offered in the quoted textbook, which is about being able to independently predict in some cases what traits will be more fit.)

Darwin's theory of natural selection, of course, includes more than just the logical deduction that traits that are more likely to be passed on are likely to become more common. It also included the claims that there are such traits in living organisms (heritable traits that affect reproductive success) and that repeated operation of natural selection explains the diversity and adaptedness of living things. Both of these are contingent claims about the physical world, claims that could be either true or false (and therefore not tautologies).

One interesting fact that has been realized since Darwin is that, even when treated statistically his deduction is sometimes wrong. That is, there are traits that increase reproductive success (on average), but still tend to decrease in frequency (again, on average) in the population, for mechanistic reasons. Such examples are pretty unusual, but their existence demonstrates "survival of the fittest" really cannot be a tautology.

 

[Montalban]

And that's exactly why it's not a tautology - because outside criteria can be applied that predict whether or not the trait will be beneficial. This has been shown in actual research too. You've answered your own point.

The outside criteria is, if it surives it was fit to survive.

Their own example is to use an analogy of a breeder picking criteria and only breeding those that show it. In that case the 'outside criteria', perhaps of having a big comb is determined in a way totally unlike nature 'determines' selection.

Maybe you think it's more than an analogy and that nature has a mind and actually chooses those animals it prefers?

I can't believe any creationist is still bringing up Gish's tautology line. It's a PRATT, as we all already know.

Is that an appeal to incredulity?

 

[Montalban]

Trying to explain fitness to Montalban is getting nowhere,

Appealing to others for help/sympathy is always the next stage in non-discussion

 

[Mallon]

Thanks for the excellent summary, sfs. Just to give another example where chance factors into a species' survival:

Sometimes it's just a matter of being in the wrong place at the wrong time, and even the fittest are wiped out.

 

[Montalban]

I'll try once more, and then give up on you.

If only

You had summerised Darwin with
a trait gives greater fitness if those having it are more likely to survive.

I already addressed this in my analogy regarding having a condition that might make me suitable to survive a virus, and you not having that, and then if that virus never turns up then you not having that ability allows you to survive because circumstances didn't mean that you needed to survive. BUT in those circumstances you had what was fit to survive.

Which deals exactly with what Darwin says in his fourth chapter that you quote (but not make proper reference to - for those wanting to independently research your quote they'd have to search the entire book).
Here's a link
IV. Natural Selection; or the Survival of the Fittest. Natural Selection: Its Power Compared with Man’s Selection. Darwin, Charles Robert. 1909-14. Origin of Species. The Harvard Classics

Sometimes. Sometimes events happen and no critter will survive, whatever their characteristics.

Absolutely.

I've given it to you. You've ignored it.

That's simply false. You mentioned a truck driver and I asked you for more information. And you ignored that.

No, the textbook does not recognize that it's a tautology, as Assyrian has already pointed out.

And I've dealt with that several times.

For anyone else wishing to look at this I'll go over it again.

I might have a genetic condition that helps fight a particular virus. SFS might not.

If that virus never breaks out into a epidemic we both would survive and therefore in those conditions we were both 'fit' to survive.

However in other circumstances that virus might break out killing SFS and I survive therefore in those circumstances I had what made me 'fit' to survive.

Totally random acts like a meteor hitting a continent and wiping all the species out does not negate 'fitness' as SFS seems to think. He's totally distorted evolution if he thinks a hunter shooting a deer undermines fitness, or a truck hitting me undermines fitness.

If the truck hit me and killed me and the virus broke out he would still not survive because he was not 'fit' to survive.

As Darwin says of these random acts "this is no valid objection to its efficiency at other times and in other ways; for we are far from having any reason to suppose that many species ever undergo modification and improvement at the same time in the same area."
(Ibid.)

Darwin accepts that some random events happen, but that it doesn't undermine 'natural selection' or 'surivival of the fittest' which is about that which is fit to survive survives.

At best you have a situation where 'natural selection' co-exists with these random acts and therefore what is not 'fit' survives because natural selection didn't take any action which in no way negates that natural selection is about that which survives survives.

 

[Montalban]

Thanks for the excellent summary, sfs. Just to give another example where chance factors into a species' survival:

Sometimes it's just a matter of being in the wrong place at the wrong time, and even the fittest are wiped out.

What made them 'the fittest'?

 

[Assyrian]

Maybe you think it's more than an analogy and that nature has a mind and actually chooses those animals it prefers?

Darwin, Charles, The origin of species. 6th edition
It has been said that I speak of natural selection as an active power or Deity; but who objects to an author speaking of the attraction of gravity as ruling the movements of the planets? Every one knows what is meant and is implied by such metaphorical expressions; and they are almost necessary for brevity. So again it is difficult to avoid personifying the word Nature; but I mean by Nature, only the aggregate action and product of many natural laws, and by laws the sequence of events as ascertained by us. With a little familiarity such superficial objections will be forgotten.​

 

[Montalban]

What made them fit was that they surived.

 

[Montalban]

Darwin, Charles, The origin of species. 6th edition
It has been said that I speak of natural selection as an active power or Deity; but who objects to an author speaking of the attraction of gravity as ruling the movements of the planets? Every one knows what is meant and is implied by such metaphorical expressions; and they are almost necessary for brevity. So again it is difficult to avoid personifying the word Nature; but I mean by Nature, only the aggregate action and product of many natural laws, and by laws the sequence of events as ascertained by us. With a little familiarity such superficial objections will be forgotten.​

You don't think that nature literally acts like God and chooses based on plans and decisions

I think you've been confused by the personification of nature

 

[Mallon]

What made them 'the fittest'?

Their genes.

 

[Montalban]

Their genes.

What made them fit is that they survived

 

[Assyrian]

You don't think that nature literally acts like God and chooses based on plans and decisions

No.

I think you've been confused by the personification of nature

How?

 

[Mallon]

What made them fit is that they survived

In the example I just gave of a meteor impact, the fittest don't survive; they die, again because they were in the wrong place at the wrong time.

 

[Montalban]

In the example I just gave of a meteor impact, the fittest don't survive; they die, again because they were in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Yes, I've already addressed random events, twice now, but thanks for that.

If genes made them 'fit' then you're still left with the problem of the meteor, too!

 

[Montalban]

No.

Then how it relates to what I wrote is a mystery.

But then that's most of your posts

 

[sfs]

As I said, I give up. Montalban can go on telling us silly scientists what we mean by fitness, and we'll go on ignoring him.

 

[Mallon]

As I said, I give up. Montalban can go on telling us silly scientists what we mean by fitness, and we'll go on ignoring him.

I don't know why I bother going to school when I can just stay on these forums and learn biology from YECs who have no formal training on the subject!

 

[Montalban]

As I said, I give up. Montalban can go on telling us silly scientists what we mean by fitness, and we'll go on ignoring him.

Again entering a thread to say you don't have any interest in it.

Again looking for support with persuasive terms such as 'we'. Which is looking for emotional response rather than facts