High Verbal, Low Math

Steven Hsu explains why so many evolutionary biologists, and other would-be scientists, simply don’t understand the topics or implications of the topics they are attempting to discuss:

I sent the message below to a social scientist I know who (like many, perhaps understandably) is confused about Stephen J. Gould’s status as an evolutionary theorist. Many Gould readers are surprised to learn that his main expertise was the paleontology of snails and that he struggled with higher mathematics. When I first encountered Gould’s essays as a kid, I concluded that there was just no there there. He was all literary flourish and little depth.

Which brings me to an observation I’ve been meaning to write about. It is that high verbal ability (which Gould certainly had) is useful for appearing to be smart, or for winning arguments and impressing other people, but it’s really high math ability that is useful for discovering things about the world — that is, discovering truth or reasoning rigorously. The importance of math ability manifests in two distinct ways:

(1) Powerful (deep) models of Nature (e.g., electrodynamics or evolutionary theory) are themselves mathematical. Most of the incredible progress in our understanding of the universe is just not available to people who do not understand math. For example, we can talk until we are blue in the face about the Uncertainty Principle, but there is no precise understanding without actual equations.

(2) The statistical techniques used to analyze data obtained in a messy, complex world require mathematical ability to practice correctly. In almost all realistic circumstances hypothesis testing is intrinsically mathematical. It is quite easy to fool yourself statistically if you don’t have strong math ability, but rather are simply following cookbook recipes.

High verbal ability is useful for more than just impressing others — it typically implies a certain facility with concepts and relationships between ideas — but high V alone is a dangerous thing. The most confused people I meet in the academy tend to be high V, low (modest) M types.

We see this repeatedly in people like Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Jordan Peterson, JF Gariepy, Ben Shapiro, Dennis Prager, Sargon of Akkad, and Curtis Doolittle, as well as most e-celebrities. They talk and talk and talk in circles in a manner that is superficially convincing to the average intelligence, but an analytical critique of their positions reliably reveals fundamental flaws that render them incorrect, if not nonsensical.

This is because most people don’t have what I think of as “a sense of math”. It doesn’t necessarily mean any higher math training, or even much knowledge of mathematics per se, so much as an instinctive grasp of statistics and mathematical relationships. You don’t actually need much math to understand the basics of statistics and percentages, but you do need a sense of math to immediately know that Ashkenazi Jews in the United States cannot possibly have an average IQ of 115 given the fact that their relatives in Israel do not have IQs nearly two standard deviations below them.

You don’t need to know much about math or DNA to immediately know that the number of genes that are fixed in any given species cannot have been fixed in the time allotted for them to have done so given the fact that we cannot observe species literally morphing before our eyes in real time. You don’t need anything beyond a basic sense of math to immediately understand that religion is not, and has never been, a significant cause of war, much less the primary one.

And you certainly don’t need much math, although a little knowledge of military history is useful, to immediately recognize that claims of 1,000 dead Russians per day in an invasion that has conquered territory at a historically rapid pace are absurd.

The High V Low M scientists tend to be popularizers rather than original thinkers, which is why Steven Gould was always going to be a fraud once he decided to try to make a name for himself as “a very original and great evolutionary theorist.”

DISCUSS ON SG


Speed Up Those Mutations

Biologists can’t do the math, but apparently they are beginning to understand that the mathematical critique of their evolutionary mutational model is posing a genuine threat to the Neo-Darwinian Synthesis and the theory of evolution by natural selection.

New study suggests for the first time that genetic mutations are NOT always random and may evolve to respond to environmental pressures. Researchers tracked the appearance of a malaria fighting mutation in genomes. They tracked these mutations throughout populations in Africa and in Europe. The team found the genetic mutation was much more prevalent within Africa. It also evolved much faster than would be expected in individuals and groups.

Darwin’s theory that genetic mutations are always random is wrong, suggests a new study which found evidence that mutations can be a response to environmental pressures.

For more than a century, scientists have held to Charles Darwin’s theory that all genetic mutations are random and accidental, with the most beneficial traits being passed on through the generations of breeding.

Researchers from the University of Haifa in Israel say that isn’t the case, finding that the generation of the human hemoglobin S (HbS) mutation is not random… The findings challenge a core assumption at the heart of Darwin’s theory of evolution, showing that a long-term directional mutation response to environmental pressures is possible, and that mutations are not just random phenomena. 

Translation: the Prometheans who direct what presently passes for “science” are now prepared to throw out Darwin and natural selection in order to preserve whatever will permit them to deny the logic of a Creator God who designed humanity.

He hasn’t claimed their discovery discredits the theory of evolution, and both studies suggest randomness still plays a big role in mutations, however, it isn’t the only mechanism at play in evolution.

This is late-stage epicycle construction, as they’re trying to add additional mechanisms that will permit a faster rate of mutation, and therefore a faster rate of gene fixation, in order to account for the obvious, and undeniable, impossibility of random mutations being naturally selected prior to being fixated in the population. But these attempts to retroactively salvage the Neo-Darwinian model of evolution is an obvious confession of what I’ve been pointing out for years now, which is that the model simply does not work.

DISCUSS ON SG


Biologists REALLY Don’t Get Math

A follower of JFG tries to defend him. It doesn’t go well.

He clarifies his position on jfgtonight regarding the model used by vox is based on bacterial cloning and doesn’t address that a population with sexual reproduction where replacement values are above 2.

This is simply embarrassing, though not particularly surprising given the fact that it required no less than three tries for JFG to understand that a 115 IQ for a substantial portion of the Jewish population of Israel necessarily dictated a sub-90 IQ for the rest of the Jewish population, given the reported average Israeli IQ.

This is the sort of thing that happens when people are incapable of understanding basic math without being walked carefully through all the relevant numbers involved.

What JFG is claiming in his clarification is that because sexual reproduction CAN result in faster gene fixation than bacterial cloning when measured in terms of generations, it is possible for the fixation rate to be high enough to account for genetic divergence between chimps and humans since the LCHCA, as well as every other observed genetic divergence over time.

However, this is not true. What JFG and his followers forgot to take into account is that it is not generations that are relevant here, but time. And although bacterial cloning may – or may not – be slower to fixate a gene across a population than sexual reproduction in generational terms, bacteria also have considerably more generations over a given period of time than humans do.

To use the two specific examples I cited, the bacteria was observed to have 14,016 generations per year. Primates have 0.05 generations per year. And fixation through sexual reproduction is not, and has never been, observed to be more than 280,320 times faster in temporal terms than fixation through bacterial cloning.

I used the bacterial model in order to demonstrate that the case for natural selection was impossible even when applying the fastest possible fixation rates ever observed. So, my argument absolutely did cover the situation of a population with sexual reproduction where replacement values are above 2, because there is absolutely no case where a sexually reproducing mammal will fixate a gene across its population in less time than a bacterial population.

So, you will note that JFG not only failed to refute my argument, he observably failed to even understand it or the relevant math required.

UPDATE: He really, truly, honestly doesn’t get it.

This is a complex question and there will not be a single number. It will be dependent on what is defined as fixation (is a gene similar across 99.99% of humans fixated or not?). It will also depend on what we do with genes that could have been fixated to be different from the common ancestor but then reverted back to their common ancestor form in our evolutionary history. Does that count for 0 or 2 fixation events? The number will also vary depending on how we count similar fixation events that have happened parallelly in the two species. I’m not raising these concerns to avoid answering the question, just pointing to the fact that this number is not unique according to how we approach the problem.

With all that being said, none of my argument relies on this number being a particular value, so sure, let us accept an average of 2.22 fixed mutations per year on average for the purpose of discussion… now what?

The problem of @voxday’s thesis is not that we disagree on this number. It is that @voxday’s calculations fail to take into account the higher rate of fixation in sexual species such as humans compared to non-sexual ones such as bacteria. Meiosis is a bitch.

Now what? Darwin is done. Evolution is done. Natural Selection is done and comprehensively dusted. That’s what.

DISCUSS ON SG


The Gamma Postures

If you want to see a prime example of Gamma posturing, look no further than Curt Doolittle’s amusingly inept response to my reference to the mathematical impossibility of evolution by natural selection accounting for the observed genetic variance of modern species. He was responding to my initial post on Gab, which linked back to my recent post on the discovery that Charles Darwin plagiarized Patrick Matthew’s earlier work. Note the way in which his behavior is textbook gamma.

You probably know that evolution is a mathematically impossible fraud. But what you may not know is that Darwin was a plagiarist and a fraudulent anti-Christian psyop from the very beginning.

This was Mr. Doolittle’s response:

@voxday VOX: You aren’t intellectually capable of making that statement, and for those of us who are, it’s one of the dumbest possible statements one could make.

So quite the contrary, evolution is mathematically deterministic because the first principle of the universe is equivalent to the term ‘evolve’.

In fact, the interesting thing about life on earth is that it occurred so quickly in the history of the universe, since it takes so much time to evolve the elements necessary, by generations of stars’ life cycles. And extinction events caused rapid evolution by creating punctuated equilibriums. One of which is ‘humans’ over the past three million years.

No more of your lies.

You’re flat-out wrong, Curt. And I’m a lot smarter than you are, so you really should think twice before trying to “correct” your intellectual superiors.

You haven’t done the math. You clearly haven’t even UNDERSTOOD the math, or the problems it presents to those who believe that evolution by natural selection is capable of accounting for the observed genetic variance in modern species, including homo sapiens sapiens.

Your proposed excuse of “extinction events” is not only obvious, it’s also not viable due to the known near-extinction events and their effects on the genetic variance of affected species such as the cheetah.

You simply don’t possess the knowledge required to even begin discussing the matter, you haven’t done the required work, and it is obvious to anyone who has. Posturing and making snarky comments – your usual modus operandi – isn’t going to suffice here.

By all means, feel free to show us the math that works. Hypothesize as many extinction events and punctuated equilibriums as you like and show us precisely how many are required. You won’t be the first to try and fail, and you won’t be the last.

@voxday There is zero chance you’re smarter than I am. Zero chance you’ve done the math. And an absolute certainty you’re quoting a Yale professor of theology who also claimed he’d done the math. And both of you proving that the function of Abrahamism is to teach adherence to lie so that they can engage in social construction of falsehoods, in order to collectively obtain false confidence is by false pretense of sexual, social, political, economic, military, status, explaining their evasion (or failure) of evolutionary adaptation, precisely because they lack that status by demonstrable means other than social construction of falsehoods.

The female means of lying by undermining truth and social construction of falsehoods: Judaism > Christianity > Islam … Marxism > Neo-Marxism > Postmodernism > PC-Woke.

Same tactics (female undermining of truth) same strategy (social construction of a falsehood that attempts to deny evolutionary superiority) and same result (Dark Age of Ignorance and Superstition).

That’s the truth of why you lie, the history of why you lie, and the technique by which you lie, and the evolutionary origin of how and why you lie, in the female means of anti-social behavior, economic, political, cultural, civilizational warfare, because the female is weaker, and must seduce with false promises (lie) and undermine with disinformation (lie) by fomenting insurrection (war) because of her (your) weakness.

Period. End of Story. So, Accusation Submitted. Argument Presented. Judgment Presented. Conviction Issued. The only question is the sentencing and the punishment for your crimes against humanity.

And yet, I am observably smarter than you are. I have done the math. I am not quoting anyone, let alone “a Yale professor of theology”. Your “absolute certainty” is not only 100 percent false, it is easily proven to be false since the evidence has been public for years.

I’ve publicly debated JF Gariepy about this. The original work has been posted on my blog since 2019. The only one lying here is you, as everyone can easily confirm.

But congratulations on proving my statement that you don’t do the work, you don’t possess the relevant information, and that your modus operandi is nothing more than snark and posturing.

Transcript of 2019 debate

Math behind the mathematical impossibility argument

DISCUSS ON SG


Darwin was an Anti-Christian Psyop

Not only is the Darwinian – and the Neo-Darwinian – theory of evolution by natural selection completely impossible due to the number of genetic transformations required in limited amounts of time, but it is becoming increasingly obvious that Charles Darwin was nothing more than a fraud, a plagiarist, and the front man for a previously published theory that was popularized in order to cast doubt on Christianity and the Christian worldview:

Dr Mike Sutton, whose book Science Fraud: Darwin’s Plagiarism Of Patrick Matthew’s Theory is published by Curtis next Saturday, said: ‘This is the biggest science fraud in history.’

He highlights similarities between key phrases and explanations and cites letters apparently showing Darwin knew Matthew’s work and covered up his debt to his rival.

In one, Darwin’s wife admitted to Matthew that evolution was his ‘original child’, but her husband had nurtured it ‘like his own’.

Dr Sutton said: ‘In 1859 Darwin replicated the theory of evolution by natural selection in Patrick Matthew’s 1831 prior publication. ‘Matthew was the first to coin that phrase to explain the theory, which he called the Natural Process of Selection. Darwin realised he had no choice but to use the same words so he called it the Process of Natural Selection. He shuffled the words and hoped nobody would notice.’

A grain merchant and landowner from Perthshire, Matthew had travelled widely in Europe studying agriculture and forestry.

While claims that Darwin borrowed from Matthew have been aired before, the book contains new evidence, including that when Matthew confronted him, Darwin claimed no one had heard of Matthew or his theory. In fact, according to Dr Sutton, Matthew’s book had been cited and reviewed by Darwin’s friends, colleagues and even his mentors in 30 leading publications. In his own journals, Darwin admits to having read at least five publications in which Matthew’s work featured.

Perhaps most damning is a letter from Darwin’s wife, Emma, written on behalf of her husband.

Dr Sutton said: ‘She wrote claiming Darwin was too ill to write, with a telling line to Matthew. She says, “Darwin is more loyal to your own original child than you were yourself.” If you want an admission, there it is – “Your own original child”.’

Dr Sutton, a winner of the British Journal of Criminality prize as well as chief editor of the Internet Journal Of Criminology, added: ‘All the top Darwinists admit Matthew got there first, but claim nobody read it. Actually, they did.

‘We’ve got Darwin’s lies, replications of text and ideas, independent verifiable facts which, I think, come down in favour of deliberate, knowing fraud.’

Although I knew about the other scientist whose work arguably preceded Darwin’s, Alfred Russell Wallace, the idea that the concept of natural selection had been articulated more than 30 years prior to Darwin’s first publication on the subject struck me as incredible. However, after reviewing a copy of Matthew’s book, On Naval Timber and Arboriculture, it’s clear that Charles Darwin was the harbinger of the subsequent scientific fraud that was Albert Einstein.

The consequences are now being developed of our deplorable ignorance of, or inattention to, one of the most evident traits of natural history, that vegetables as well as animals are generally liable to an almost unlimited diversification, regulated by climate, soil, nourishment, and new commixture of already formed varieties. In those with which man is most intimate, and where his agency in throwing them from their natural locality and dispositions has brought out this power of diversification in stronger shades, it has been forced upon his notice, as in man himself, in the dog, horse, cow, sheep, poultry,—in the apple, pear, plum, gooseberry, potato, pea, which sport in infinite varieties, differing considerably in size, colour, taste, firmness of texture, period of growth, almost in every recognisable quality. In all these kinds man is influencial in preventing deterioration, by careful selection of the largest or most valuable as breeders; but in timber trees the opposite course has been pursued….

The use of the infinite seedling varieties in the families of plants, even in those in a state of nature, differing in luxuriance of growth and local adaptation, seems to be to give one individual (the strongest best circumstance-suited) superiority over others of its kind around, that it may, by overtopping and smothering them, procure room for full extension, and thus affording, at the same time, a continual selection of the strongest, best circumstance-suited, for reproduction. Man’s interference, by preventing this natural process of selection among plants, independent of the wider range of circumstances to which he introduces them, has increased the difference in varieties, particularly in the more domesticated kinds; and even in man himself, the greater uniformity, and more general vigour among savage tribes, is referrible to nearly similar selecting law—the weaker individual sinking under the ill treatment of the stronger, or under the common hardship.

Patrick Matthew, On Naval Timber and Arboriculture, 1831

At this point, it’s observably far more reasonable to say “science is fraud” than to seriously propose it as a potential arbiter of truth.

DISCUSS ON SG


Evil Always Eats Its Own

Those who have taken the ticket or are celebrated for their utility in building the false case against God had better enjoy their public adulation while it lasts. Even the most famous and well-respected scientists, who were lauded for their brilliance and whose work was absolutely integral in constructing the false scientific edifice of evolution by natural selection, are discovering that they and their work will be discredited and dishonored once the satanic narrative moves beyond them, as demonstrated by this article in Scientific American denigrating the legacy of evolutionary biologist E.O. Wilson:

With the death of biologist E. O. Wilson on Sunday, I find myself again reflecting on the complicated legacies of scientists whose works are built on racist ideas and how these ideas came to define our understanding of the world.

After a long clinical career as a registered nurse, I became a laboratory-trained scientist as researchers mapped the first draft of the human genome. It was during this time that I intimately familiarized myself with Wilson’s work and his dangerous ideas on what factors influence human behavior.

His influential text Sociobiology: The New Synthesis contributed to the false dichotomy of nature versus nurture and spawned an entire field of behavioral psychology grounded in the notion that differences among humans could be explained by genetics, inheritance and other biological mechanisms. Finding out that Wilson thought this way was a huge disappointment, because I had enjoyed his novel Anthill, which was published much later and written for the public.

Wilson was hardly alone in his problematic beliefs. His predecessors—mathematician Karl Pearson, anthropologist Francis Galton, Charles Darwin, Gregor Mendel and others—also published works and spoke of theories fraught with racist ideas about distributions of health and illness in populations without any attention to the context in which these distributions occur.

Even modern geneticists and genome scientists struggle with inherent racism in the way they gather and analyze data. In his memoir A Life Decoded: My Genome: My Life, geneticist J. Craig Venter writes, “The complex provenance of ideas means their origin is often open to interpretation.”

To put the legacy of their work in the proper perspective, a more nuanced understanding of problematic scientists is necessary. It is true that work can be both important and problematic—they can coexist. Therefore it is necessary to evaluate and critique these scientists, considering, specifically the value of their work and, at the same time, their contributions to scientific racism.

Those who reject Truth will eventually find their work deemed worthless, especially by those who reject the truth even more vehemently. Don’t ever curry the world’s favor. It simply isn’t worth it.

Jesus Christ stands by his followers even when they fail. Satan abandons his servants even when they succeed.

DISCUSS ON SG


Why I Insist on Written Debates

If you ever wondered why I no longer do video debates, this is precisely why.

Viewer 1: JD won the debate. I remember watching it. Vox had a formidable opponent and made sure his arguments were well delineated. JD breezed by all of it, and Vox knew it. So what?

Viewer 2: No, he never understood it. If he had, he would have addressed it. Instead, he assiduously avoided it.

Viewer 3: Having read the transcript, I do not see anything which would be described as a technical rebuttal to Vox’s technical points. Just blanket dismissal and repeated references to large numbers.

Viewer 1: Did you watch the debate, live, as I did? The transcript does not show the context between two human beings in debate.

No, what the transcript lacks is not the “context”, but rather, the irrelevant rhetorical posturing. And this isn’t the first time this sort of thing has happened. It’s not just morons interested in evolution who respond to rhetoric and posturing in lieu of facts and reason; we saw exactly the same reaction in morons who favor free trade in the Murphy-Day debate as well as by the alt-retards in the Anglin-Day debate.

In all three cases, neither Gariepy nor Murphy nor Anglin ever even BEGAN to address the primary issue of substance that had been raised. It wasn’t merely three cases of unsuccessful refutations as none of them even tried to refute the core argument that had been presented to them. It was quite clear to me that of the three, only Anglin actually understood what I was saying; he simply elected to punt rather than to engage on an issue he knew he was going to lose. That being said, by virtue of their rhetorical posturing, they managed to convince at least some of the viewers who understood even less of the issues at hand than they did that their erroneous positions were correct.

JFG, for example, never even grasped that he had accomplished nothing more than falling directly into the dilemma which I explicitly laid out for him at the start. He merely chose, on the basis of literally nothing but handwaving and an ontological argument, to disqualify the hammer, and completely failed to realize that in doing so, he had fallen victim to the anvil.

I pointed this out, of course, but JFG was “too tired” to follow my explanation, and there is reason to believe that he could not have managed it even if he’d tried. After all, it took me three attempts to explain the concept of a “mathematical average” to him before he was able to grasp it.

This is why I now insist on written debates, because the written format eliminates the ability of the charlatan to posture his way through a debate in which he is over his head, and permits the audience to review and re-review the material until they fully understand what both sides are saying. And this is probably why I engage in considerably fewer debates these days, because the charlatans are terrified of risking the methodical exposure of their ignorance.

DISCUSS ON SG


The JFG-VD Debate

A complete transcript of my debate with JF Gariepy on the mathematical legitimacy of evolution by natural selection.

JF: “Hello everyone and welcome to the evolution debate with Vox Day. I was explaining to the crowd that, with my voice extinction, I almost want to abandon and just recognize that God did it all.”

VD: “Well, I don’t think that divine intervention is responsible for that, I doubt that, He is excessively concerned with whatever result we release tonight. But, you know my suggestion is we’re all familiar, or at least most of us are familiar, especially those of us who have read your very interesting book The Revolutionary Phenotype, we’re familiar with the orthodox argument. So what might be interesting is if I simply present to you the stuff that I’ve been putting together, and with your help explaining some of the concepts that, quite honestly are not terribly familiar to me. Perhaps we can reach some interesting conclusions.”

JF: “Absolutely, and the more you can speak the better, it helps my voice and my throat, so you can feel free to take a lot of space in the discussion. I would say that as far as I’m concerned, the Theory of Natural Selection is a mathematical truth. It is a truth that applies to anything that makes imperfect copies of itself, and one just has to realize that the life forms on earth right now, they are replicators, they are respecting the conditions for Natural Selection to apply to them.”

VD: “Well I think that it’s a fascinating choice of words there, because it’s specifically the mathematical aspect of the theory that I’m addressing. I’ll read to you my little intro in a minute here, and I would encourage anyone who’s listening to not leap to any assumptions, because some of the stuff you’re going to hear at first is going to make you conclude that I’m going to go in a certain direction, but I can promise and assure you that I’m not going in any of the places these arguments usually go.”

JF: “Alright, let’s hear it.”

VD: “Okay, well first of all, one thing that I’d like to point out is that when we address these topics that have been addressed many times before over the course of hundreds of years it’s quite normal to believe that nobody’s going to come up with anything terribly interesting new to say about that. What I’d like everybody to keep in mind is that both JF and I have in fact come up with new ways of looking at very old, very accepted theories. JF has done so with his Revolutionary Phenotype. For those of you who are not familiar with me, my background is economics, and I came up with a very effective, some would say conclusive, demolition of David Ricardo’s theory of Free Trade which is some fifty-seven years older than Evolution by Natural Selection in the Darwinian sense. So all I’m saying is that, as ridiculous as it might sound, that some of the stuff we’re going to be discussing here might not necessarily have been discussed before. Both JF and I have in the past demonstrated an ability to do this.

JF: “Absolutely.”

VD: “So, the tautological nature of the Theory of Evolution by Natural Selection means that it is unfalsifiable, unscientific, and entirely unable to serve as the basis of a reliable predictive model. That said, it’s not my objective to convince JF or anyone else of that, or to rehash any arguments that we’ve all encountered many times before. The case that I’m presenting tonight doesn’t have anything to do with the fossil record, it doesn’t have anything to do with Fyodor, or Chomsky, or logic in that context. What I’m addressing is the idea, what I’m proposing is the idea that Natural Selection is not just statistically improbable, but that it is statistically IMPOSSIBLE due to the way it’s directly contradicted by the relevant genetic evidence.

Now, I have to point out that I am an economist by training, not a biologist, and so I’m going to have to ask JF some questions about some of these things, and I’m not doing so in a Socratic manner. It’s not any sort of Euthyphro, trying to play it fast and loose and get him to agree to something. These are going to be honest questions about a subject that he knows much better than I do. If that’s okay with you.”

JF: “Absolutely, I’m all for it. Yeah we can see tonight’s discussion as trying to build your case against the Theory of Natural Selection.”

Continue reading “The JFG-VD Debate”

Neo-Darwinism is dead

Some of you will recall that I thoroughly, and in some detail, demonstrated the way in which, according to the present scientific understanding of astrophysics, genetic biology, and mathematics, the modern Neo-Darwinian synthesis of the theory of evolution by (mostly) natural selection is impossible, caught as it is between the Scylla of a fixed amount of time and the Charybdis of the number of fixed mutations required to take place in the evolution between one historical species and a present species.

To put it in the most simple terms that even a biologist should be able to follow, if we are told that a football team has gained 1,500 yards on the ground while averaging three yards per rushing play, and we know that the maximum number of offensive plays per team per game is 84, then we know, beyond any shadow of a doubt, that the yards reported were not gained in a single 60-minute game. They could not have been. It is impossible.

The math is inexorable. The maximum number of yards that could have been gained on the ground in a single game, given a three yards-per-carry average, is 252. It does not matter if a desperate proponent of Neo-Schembechlerism proposes the idea that perhaps the team ran a hurry-up wishbone offense, or that the quarterback was a dual-threat as a runner, or that the team played in a league known for its terrible run defenses, or that one of the halfbacks is known to have one ripped off a 99-yard gain, or that NCAA teams have been known to play up to seven overtime periods, or that up to five different players touched the ball on the same play. The math is inexorable. The assertion that a football team which averages three yards per carry gained 1,500 yards on the ground in a single game is flat-out impossible. We can say with absolute certainty that it never happened without knowing any details whatsoever about the team or the game.

In like manner, the number of fixed mutations that are presently observed to distinguish two species, whether we contemplate modern Man and the Chimpanzee–Human last common ancestor (CHLCA) or the dog and one of the therapsids, are considerably – CONSIDERABLY – in excess of the maximum amount of time that could have passed since the speciation process is believed to have begun. There is only one defense against this straightforward mathematical observation, and that is the idea that enough parallel mutations happened very, very quickly to significantly reduce the average time per fixed mutation to permit it to happen in the intervening time period.

The problem here, of course, is that the numerical gap that needs to be filled is so large that if that were the case, then these mutations would be have to be happening so rapidly, and fixing in parallel so quickly, that we could observe evolution by natural selection happening in real time all the time.

But we don’t.

And, as predicted, the new advances in genetic science combined with new archeobiological discoveries are methodically reducing the already insufficient time in which evolution had to go from point A to point Z.

  • Peştera Muierii woman is related to Europeans, but she is not a direct ancestor
  • Reduced diversity in Europe caused by Last Glaciation, not out-of-Africa bottleneck
  • Genetic load appears indifferent across 40,000 years of European history
  • New DNA extraction approach recovers up to 33 times more DNA from ancient remains

Summary

Few complete human genomes from the European Early Upper Palaeolithic (EUP) have been sequenced. Using novel sampling and DNA extraction approaches, we sequenced the genome of a woman from “Peştera Muierii,” Romania who lived ∼34,000 years ago to 13.5× coverage. The genome shows similarities to modern-day Europeans, but she is not a direct ancestor. Although her cranium exhibits both modern human and Neanderthal features, the genome shows similar levels of Neanderthal admixture (∼3.1{cc08d85cfa54367952ab9c6bd910a003a6c2c0c101231e44cdffb103f39b73a6}) to most EUP humans but only half compared to the ∼40,000-year-old Peştera Oase 1. All EUP European hunter-gatherers display high genetic diversity, demonstrating that the severe loss of diversity occurred during and after the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM) rather than just during the out-of-Africa migration. The prevalence of genetic diseases is expected to increase with low diversity; however, pathogenic variant load was relatively constant from EUP to modern times, despite post-LGM hunter-gatherers having the lowest diversity ever observed among Europeans.

Translation: there was even more genetic diversity among early humans than previously believed, which further increases the required rate of time per fixed mutation. 

Or to put the point in even more simple terms, it is mathematically more credible to claim that you drove from New York to Los Angeles in a 1976 Cadillac Eldorado in one hour on a single tank of gas than to claim that any modern mammal evolved from the first crown group mammal in the amounts of time currently estimated.