Vox Popoli

JB suggests a Sim Earth defense of an evolutionary theory:

Sim Earth has inspired an argument that I think that gives evolution a lot more space to dodge falsifiability on natural selection. Let’s say the point of punctuated equilibrium is that a dynamically selective environment is extremely rare. By dynamically selective I mean consistent gentle pressure to develop a trait.

Perhaps there’s an interplay between DNA’s potential development paths and the rarity of dynamically selective environments, so that their overlap is even rarer. And perhaps proto-organisms in early low-competition ecosystems have far more open development trees, while specialized organisms in high competition late ecosystems are locked in. E.g., it’s much easier for proto-weasel to become meerkat and hyena, than for hyena to become meerkat. Let’s say the latter is impossible.

In other words, to restart the race of life you have to clear out a huge chunk of the ecosystem to let vague blobbies float about figuring out what they want to be. Like the big comet did to the dinosaurs, to pave the mammalian way. To me, that makes punctuated equilibrium sound plausible again. The windows are tiny and rarely encountered even on a planetary scale.

So how do you experimentally replicate the type of evolution described above, when all you’ve got to work with are late stage highly competitive organisms and ecosystems? This argument creates a LOT more space for evolution to defer falsifiability than I thought it had.

Well, it’s certainly a creative approch, but it doesn’t serve well to defer falsifiability because it requires an amount of begging the question. First, there is no evidence that EVERY extant ecosystem is capable of creating the pressure required for natural selection, in fact, the idea of living fossils or ancient species suggests that this is not the case. And if, as JB suggests himself, dynamically selective environments are rare anyhow, then there will be no shortage of proto-organisms with open development trees to be found in the majority of environments which are static and unselective. If this cannot be observed to be the case, then the whole structure collapses.

Needless to say, there’s also no science supporting any of this; from the scientific perspective, we might as legitimately be discussing the theoretical limitations pin heads must place on the potential size of angel feet. However, his argument is at least within the right orbit in that it recognizes the significance of environmental differences with regards to potential natural selection pressures necessary to theoretical evolution taking place.

The idea that nationalized health care will lead to divorce restrictions sounds absurd. Of course, less than 20 years ago, the idea that smoking might be banned in public sounded equally absurd. Arguably more so, in fact, since there wasn’t a clear line of precedent for it, while there now appears to be a genuine scientific case for restricting or banning divorce in the interest of reducing health care costs:

The end of a marriage means the end of good health for many people, a new study finds. Researchers discovered that people who lost a spouse, whether through divorce or death, were roughly 20% more likely to suffer chronic health problems even if they later remarried, HealthDay reports. The scientists believe the stress of loss causes lasting physical and emotional damage.

I’m assuming, of course, that the government health czars will be reasonable enough to permit marriages to end in the event of one party’s death. I also find it amusing to read the quoted expert’s non sequitur in which it is declared that these results “certainly don’t mean people should stay in high-conflict or abusive marriages for the sake of their health” even though that’s EXACTLY the conclusion that logic dictates.

Interestingly, that 20 percent figure happens to be exactly the same risk that is reported to be the “statistically significant and consistent association between lung cancer risk in spouses of smokers and exposure to secondhand tobacco smoke from the spouse who smokes” for women. One wonders if that same expert would so confidently declare that this certainly doesn’t mean women should object to their husbands smoking for the sake of their health.

The NRO Editors make a factual error in addition to causing one to wonder why they are joining CNN in an attempt to declare the Obama birth certificate controversy a non-story:

Pres. Barack Obama has a birthday coming up, a week from Tuesday. We hope he takes the day off—or even the whole week, the briefest of respites from his busy schedule of truncating our liberties while exhausting both the public coffers and our patience. The president’s birthday comes to mind because we recently spent some time looking at a photograph of his birth certificate, being held by Joe Miller of Factcheck.org, who took the time to examine it. President Obama was born on August 4, 1961, at 7:24 p.m, in Honolulu County, Hawaii, on the island of Oahu. The serial number on his birth certificate is 010641…. The Hawaiian birth certificate President Obama has produced—the document is formally known as a “certificate of live birth”—bears that information.

The Editors at National Review are flat out wrong. Demonstrably, provably, and verifiably wrong. Like so many other Obama defenders, NRO is confusing the CERTIFICATION of live birth that Obama has produced with the original CERTIFICATE of live birth. One is a green computerized record, the other is the document that records the doctor’s or midwife’s name, his signature, the hospital, and so forth. The salient point is that Obama has refused to produce the latter and the ever-changing stories – WND is now reporting that CNN’s report that Hawaii had destroyed the original documents is false – lend little confidence to the claim that he is not hiding anything.

No wonder conservatives have so little trust in the so-called conservative media these days. Now they appear to be running interference for the Democratic White House in cooperation with CNN.

More or less, anyhow:

So you’re in an elevator by yourself and it jams and you’re stuck. A voice comes over the elevator speaker and says: “We are working to get you out. This should take about an hour, during which we won’t be able to communicate with you. In the meantime, you can listen to music. But unfortunately you’ll only be able to listen to one song. Here are your options: Tiny Tim’s “Tiptoe Through the Tulips” or any song by X (an artist/band/musician). Please choose the song.”

They give you 15 seconds to answer. You can say ‘Tiptoe’, name a song by the group or if you just want a random song by the named group, or say ‘Surprise me.’ You can only answer ‘Surprise me’ to three of them.

So which song would you say if they asked ‘Tiptoe’ or a song from . . .

Chicago: Attempt suicide by gnawing at my wrists. I don’t know any actual songs by Chicago, I just know I hate Pete Cetera with the white-hot radioactive fury of a thousand suns. They are a crime against humanity.

Beatles: Strawberry Fields Forever

Styx: Come Sail Away

Michael W Smith: No clue.

Elvis: A Little Less Conversation. The Junkie XL mix.

AC/DC: Shoot to Thrill

Billy Joel: See Chicago. Oh, I suppose Pianoman is all right.

Beach Boys: Surprise me

Michael Jackson: Dirty Diana

Prince: Alphabet Street

Paul McCartney: I categorically refuse to name the one song I know he did with Michael Jackson.

Bruce Springfield: Santa Claus is Coming to Town. I’m not a Springsteen fan, but he tore that one up. How do you tear up a Christmas song? Kind of impressive.

Electric Light Orchestra: Don’t Bring Me Down is the only song I know. To be honest, I tend to get them a little confused with REO Speedwagon.

But three preferred songs to listen to when trapped in an elevator for fifteen minutes would be: The Orb: Earth (Gaia), David Sylvian: Before the Bullfight, Enigma: Sadeness. Trancy and ambient is ideal in those circumstances, I believe.

Richard Feynman on why evolution by natural selection not only lacks scientific integrity, but in many cases, cannot even reasonably be considered science. First, a quote from his Cargo Cult Science speech at Caltech:

It’s a kind of scientific integrity, a principle of scientific thought that corresponds to a kind of utter honesty–a kind of leaning over backwards. For example, if you’re doing an experiment, you should report everything that you think might make it invalid–not only what you think is right about it: other causes that could possibly explain your results; and things you thought of that you’ve eliminated by some other experiment, and how they worked–to make sure the other fellow can tell they have been eliminated…

One of the things I’ve found to be rather interesting in reading through various biology papers is the way the researchers often show what very much appears to be a lack of scientific integrity by doing precisely the opposite of what Feynman suggested. In much the same way that Calvinists and atheists approach theology, they take one possible solution and insist that it is the ONLY possible one. The phrase “this is consistent with evolution by natural selection”, or some variant thereof, appeared in the majority of papers I read, without any alternative explanations ever being mentioned.

I’m not sure where the other quote comes from, so I’ll simply provide the link to the Slashdot comment where it was posted:

Remember: In science, we don’t prove things true, we show them to be not false. Same thing? Not hardly. For a complete discussion on the topic, read the Logic of Scientific Discovery by Karl Popper. However what it comes down to is you do not do a test, and then prove a theory true. That can’t be done. What you do is come up with a way to falsify your theory, that is to say you come up with a test that says “If things don’t come out this way, we know this theory is wrong.” You run the test, things come out that way. You have failed to falsify the theory, and we are now more certain it is true. The more than is done, the more certain we are a theory is correct. Each time we attempt to falsify the theory and fail, we are more sure it must be the truth.

If we do then falsify it, the theory has to be redone. That doesn’t mean you toss the whole thing out, it may just mean some refinement is needed. For example you have a theory that predicts when X happens Y will results. In 400 tests, this is the case, however 3 new tests show it isn’t. What you discover is that in all those tests, A was also present. You the refine your theory: Y will result from X, except in cases where A is present. Your theory is now a little more narrow in application, and fits with the evidence. Perhaps later you find out what A does, and incorporate that in to a more general theory.

The point of all this is that real science is all about trying to prove your theory wrong. You do everything you can to prove it wrong, then have other people do what they can to prove it wrong. When all of you fail at doing that, when the theory has been refined such that it fits all the evidence and you can’t figure out how else to test it, then it is most likely the truth. THAT is what scientific rigor is about. It isn’t about coming up with a theory, ignoring data you don’t like, showing it to a few people who agree with you, and saying “Ok, we proved this true and nobody else can look at it.”

This, too, is very, very different from what we see in evolution-related “science”. Now, I understand why no one has ever painted a group of polar bears brown in order to test one of the more famous examples of supposed natural selection. That would not only be problematic, but excessively dangerous. But, with the exception of rare individuals such as Jerry Fodor, who argues that the theory of evolution is not a legitimate theory of science because it is either vacuously true or wrong, few on the supposedly scientific side of the Natural Selection/Transnatural Creation divide have ever seriously examined the many substantive problems with natural selection from logical, statistical, and scientific perspectives. And even fewer understand how the theory of evolution by natural selection rests almost entirely on the same sort of logical assumption that so much medieval religious philosophy does. Yes, it certainly does make logical sense that organisms adapted to be more suitable to their environment are more likely to reproduce successfully, but can this in fact be reliably established to be the case? There are certainly no shortage of logically valid alternatives that merit investigation under Feynman’s philosophy of science.

For example, it is known that the presence of heritable genetic variation that results in fitness differences is required for natural selection. It is also known that individual sexual selection is an alternative to natural selection. But most consideration of natural selection stops here, at the tautological level; an organism is fit because it has successfully reproduced and it successfully reproduces because it is fit. QED…. What is often forgotten is that for fitness to have any significance from a natural selection perspective, it requires a dynamic environment that is capable of creating a meaningful distinction between the fit and the unfit. And that’s just for starters….

Now, it is obvious that if no organism in a species successfully reproduces, no natural selection takes place. It is slightly less obvious that if every organism in a species successfully reproduces, no natural selection takes place. So, from a scientific perspective, it is important to determine what percentage of organisms in a given population are capable of successfully reproducing in a specific environment, and then to determine if there is any environmental pressure capable of creating a distinction between the fit and unfit portions of the population. Only then is it meaningful to discuss whatever adaptations have taken place and to explore the possible alternatives.

This natural selection study by a National Science Foundation-supported research team is the sort of study I think there needs to be more of if the theory of evolution by natural selection is ever going to actually merit being taken seriously as a genuinely scientific theory. And I agree with the lead author of the study when he says: “Such studies are important because people tend to think of evolution as a historical process that is not subject to experiments. It is the scarcity of experiments that is the source of some of the criticism of the theory.” It is certainly one of the sources of my criticism of it; I’m pleased to see that the suspicions of a dearth of such studies I’d previously expressed could be so easily confirmed.

Of course, those with a Discordian frame of mind may find it somewhat amusing to apply the reported 10,0000-10,000,000x increase in the observed rate of adaptation to the present estimate of a 4.54 billion year old earth… would there happen to be such a thing as a Young Earth Evolutionist?

I am in need of a quick summary of every major economist, CNBC talking head or organization’s position on the current prospects for recovery for the second half of 2009 and beyond. If you are aware of these, please throw them in here.

I’ve already got Krugman, Roubini, Schiff, Bernanke, Kudlow, Cramer, Shedlock, the Fed, the IMF, and the Blue Chip Consensus, but if you think anyone else is worth mentioning, please throw them in here with a link to the relevant statement. I’m dividing forecasts into four categories:

1. It’s all good now in the second half. (Bernanke, Kudlow, Cramer, Blue Chip)

2. U-shaped jobless recovery/W-shaped double dip (Krugman, Roubini, Calculated Risk)

3. Deflationists (Prechter, Shedlock)

4. Inflationists (Schiff)

Thanks!

This English study of people with Asperger’s syndrome practically describes Sam Harris’s Reason Project:

The suggestion is that people with Asperger’s syndrome do have difficulties with theory of mind: unlike those of us with neurotypical brains, they lack the ability to jump straight to the right decision, almost as a matter of instinct. What they seem to do instead is to work out other people’s beliefs and intentions by means of logical reasoning. As Professor Frith told me, this could easily explain some of the social awkwardness of people with Asperger’s.

Now, there’s nothing wrong with either logic or people with Asperger’s syndrome. But this study does help explain the exasperating inability of atheists, particularly militant atheists such as the New Atheists, to understand the beliefs and intentions of the neurotypical religious majority of the people on the planet.

The fact that a scientific non-entity such as Harris would think to publicly question the ability of a scientist, whose scientific credentials are impeccable, to direct the National Institutes of Health on the sole basis of his unexceptional religious beliefs suggests the real possibility of a link between his atheism and a material brain handicap. Ironically, the theory of atheism as the manifestation of a physical phenomenon fits very well with Harris’s own neuroscientific perspective.

It also helps explain the observable gap between the average atheist’s reliance on logic and his ability to make competent use of it.

A few American Israelis appear to have gone off the deep end ever since Obama chose Cairo over Tel Aviv:

The Pope and the cardinals of the Vatican help organize tours of Auschwitz for Hezbollah members to teach them how to wipe out Jews, according to a booklet being distributed to Israel Defense Forces soldiers. Officials encouraging the booklet’s distribution include senior officers, such as Lt. Col. Tamir Shalom, the commander of the Nahshon Battalion of the Kfir Brigade.

I realize there is a German Pope these days, but I find it highly unlikely that he, and the College of Cardinals based in Rome, occupy themselves with providing guided tours to Lebanese terrorists in Poland. As Justin Raimondo wryly notes: “The irony that one of Israel’s most ardent defenders is now using arguments based on theories of genetic superiority may be lost on that country’s knee-jerk defenders at this point….”

It seems to have escaped the attention of nearly everyone, Christian, Jew, and atheist alike, that an America that is not a White European Christian nation is not an America that will lift a finger in order to preserve the only Jewish state. I tend to doubt those Muslim Somalis in Minnesota lose much sleep over the prospective fate of Israel.

The Israelis have the same right to exist and defend themselves that any other nation does. Their right of conquest is no less legitimate than that of dozens of other nations. But I fail to see how actively attempting to create more enemies than they already have, or fostering even greater reliance on the USA, serves any rational Israeli interest.