…and this is a 
Jebus, but I despise that fluffy, superficial, Newagey site run by the flibbertigibbet Ariana. I will not be linking to it, but if you must, you can just search for this recent article: "Darwin May Have Been WRONG, New Study Argues". I don't recommend it. It sucks. Read the title, and you've already got the false sensationalism of the whole story down cold.
It's actually an old and familiar story that doesn't upset any applecarts at all. There is a well-known concept in evolutionary theory of an adaptive radiation: a lineage acquires a new trait (birds evolve flight, for instance), or an extinction removes all competition and creates an opportunity for expansion (the dinosaurs are wiped out and mammals expand rapidly into vacant niches), and presto, new species and diversity abounds. For a really obvious example of this phenomenon, look to Darwin's finches: one or a few species are storm-blown to an isolated chain of islands, and they gradually speciate to take on many roles.
See? No shock, no strike against evolution, or even against Darwin's version of evolution. To claim otherwise is simply stupid.
Now the paper in question seeks to quantify the expansion of taxonomic diversity with the appearance of large-scale ecological opportunities, and concludes that competition and refinement by natural selection has not been the major driver of diversification, but that reason we have thousands of species of mammals and even more species of birds is more a consequence of chance and opportunity than strong competition. It's a reasonable result, but not cause for a revolution; lots of us have been advocating for the importance of chance in evolution for many years, and it's unsurprising that non-selective mechanisms of evolution will generate new diversity from a single species in an open, competition free field.
Bugger the awful Huffpo. One of the scientists, Sarda Sahney, has a nice blog with a sensible discussion of the paper. Read that instead.
Life Science
Comments
Posted by: Paul
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August 25, 2010 11:18 AM
I hope that's a consensual buggering. Either way, just in case you should toss some salt over your shoulder -- hopefully it will keep the Colgate Twins from getting on your case for advocating sexual violence.
Posted by: viggen
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August 25, 2010 11:21 AM
Speaking of adaptive radiation, I read this morning that a here-to-for unknown deepwater oil-eating microbe has been found to suddenly be flourishing in the Gulf of Mexico. How's that for a timely example of a real concept;-)
Posted by: truthspeaker
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August 25, 2010 11:25 AM
The BBC covered that paper in much the same way. I already wrote to complain. The editor who responded said the article had "generated a lot of feedback".
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-11063939
Posted by: Glen Davidson
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August 25, 2010 11:29 AM
Cambrian radiation, for Chrissake. Haven't they ever heard of it?
The IDiots like to yammer about the Cambrian, as they shouldknow, No doubt it's unusual, but then it was the most strange environmental change, from cold into a warm oxygenated world.
No point in feeding their IDiocy, HuffPo.
To be fair, several others than HuffPo also responded with their own lower-case idiocy to the story.
Glen Davidson
Posted by: theflyingtrilobite
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August 25, 2010 11:34 AM
Sarda is cool. I'm glad she's returning to blogging, as I learned this week when she dropped my own blog.
Posted by: Tulse
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August 25, 2010 11:40 AM
And most of those who oppose evolutionary theory do so precisely because they oppose the notion of chance in the creation of humans, so a study which argues for a larger role of chance in evolution is hardly support for their views.
Posted by: KG
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August 25, 2010 11:42 AM
Yes, arrant nonsense often does. Unfortunately, this is how the vast majority of "news" editors seem to judge their success. Not by whether they have an important (let alone accurate) story, but purely by the amount of "feedback".
OT: I used to live near a hairdressing salon called "Curl up and dye".
Posted by: https://www.google.com/accounts/o8/id?id=AItOawkqTeNSe-lk7NNw1iq_DKlKvQRg1FB7ySA
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August 25, 2010 11:43 AM
I feel rather sorry for her. Not that my research is ever likely to court any publicity whatsoever but I would hate to have it misrepresented in such a way.
Posted by: Brownian, Most Vicious & Petty of Pharyngulites
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August 25, 2010 11:44 AM
What's really sad is that the headline "Darwin May Have Been WRONG, New Study Argues" should be seen as a victory for the scientific process; a sign that all is well and that we're on the right track.
Unfortunately, in Idiot (North) America where the brain takes a back seat to intuition, the worst thing anyone can be is wrong, so nobody ever calls anybody else out for fear of being rude. Of course, it's apparently not rude if you're one of the cool kids calling out some egghead scientist like Darwin, because you're probably just getting payback for all the times in high school those nerds harassed you and the rest of the football team in the cafeteria.
Posted by: Sal Bro
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August 25, 2010 11:48 AM
I have the same question. They seem to be arguing that the removal of competition is a driving force of evolution. Or, as Sarda Sahney says on her blog, "[o]ur new research supports the idea that animals diversified by expanding into empty ecological roles rather than by direct competition with each other." (emphasis mine)
But did Darwin argue for direct competition only? It seems that the idea of indirect competition has been well established--in ecology, at least--for quite some time.
Posted by: christophe-thill.myopenid.com
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August 25, 2010 11:56 AM
They should have asked Larry Moran for a comment.
Posted by: Brownian, Most Vicious & Petty of Pharyngulites
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August 25, 2010 12:01 PM
What is it with hair salons? You can name any other business whatever you want, but a hair salon's name must include a pun. Hell, there's even a generator for salon names. Why?
And how come I gotta see a picture of a real estate agent? Their smug mugs are plastered all over their cards, commercials, and bus stop advertisements. I suppose there's a security issue in meeting some stranger at an empty house at 8:45 PM on a Wednesday night, but any old freak could show up at my office with a business card saying "Minolta" and I'd probably let him walk off with my copier, so why can't I buy or sell a house unless I've seen the middleman's 8"×10"?
And don't even get me started on NHL coaches...
Posted by: idlemind
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August 25, 2010 12:08 PM
The Huffpo article is by their Technology Editor, Bianca Bosker. I suspect they don't even have a Science Editor.
In any case, the Huffpo seems a worthy successor to the late, lamented Weekly World News.
Posted by: cuco3
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August 25, 2010 12:09 PM
My semi-educated understanding is that Darwin certainly recognised the importance of chance, even when not guided by natural selection. "The Origin of Species..." is a fascinating read, if only to drive home just how deep Darwin's thinking was.
Posted by: Anubis Bloodsin the third
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August 25, 2010 12:19 PM
Methinks an beeb editor had a tad of 'New Scientist' envy going there.
I had also sent then a few sharp comments regarding the attempt at sensationalist fishing.
But not received any grovelling replies as yet!
The original paper was titled...
Not catchy enough apparently.
Either they have not a clue as to the damage they actually do to education or they do not give a flying toss!...I am going with the latter.
Posted by: Fred The Hun
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August 25, 2010 12:21 PM
viggen @ 2,
Forgive my cynicism...
http://newscenter.lbl.gov/news-releases/2010/08/24/deepwater-oil-plume-m...
A most fortuitous sudden discovery indeed... or maybe it was designed, if you look carefully at its genome you might see something like this ATCGBPATCGBPATCGBPATCGBPATCG.
I any case all is well, the hydrocarbon plume is all gone, nothing more to see here, move along now...
Posted by: daveau
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August 25, 2010 12:22 PM
The worst I've seen is "Hair'em Scare'em". Yeah, I wanna go there. I think every town has a "Curl Up & Dye". Or two.
I thought Darwin was definitively proved wrong by New Scientist a couple of years ago. Old news. Have these people even read Origin?
Posted by: MikeyM
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August 25, 2010 12:26 PM
When I was a student at Cal, there was an uproar in the community about the name of a hair salon, "The Rape of the Lock." The owners caved and renamed it, "Alexander Pope Haircutters."
Posted by: Taemon
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August 25, 2010 12:27 PM
What would it take for PZ to take some rest, one wonders? Also, there's a new hair salon starting here, called "Brain Wash", which I think is kind of funny. Although I can't imagine why someone thinks a third hair saloon in my neck of the woods is a good plan but hey, I'm not the one going broke.
Posted by: Rey Fox, Bird Caller Guy
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August 25, 2010 12:30 PM
This is an interesting topic, and another unfortunate example of BS media sensationalism, but I would like to get Brownian started on NHL coaches.
Posted by: Taemon
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August 25, 2010 12:32 PM
Er, salon. If only it was a hair saloon, I might approve.
Posted by: ckitching
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August 25, 2010 12:33 PM
In other news, "Science Determines Sky not Blue!" Scientists have discovered that the sky is not actually blue, but contains numerous colours at different times of day and under different meteorological conditions. This shocking revelation is certainly going to be a crushing blow to those who maintain the view that the sky is blue. Clearly, Sky is Blueism is on it's deathbed.
Posted by: Blake Stacey
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August 25, 2010 12:40 PM
So, phenotypes which would have died before get to survive after a game-changing event, since there are now niches for them. Isn't that just natural selection in a nonequilibrium ecosystem?
Posted by: recovering catholic
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August 25, 2010 12:48 PM
Well, it didn't take PZ long to get back to his grouchy, godless old self, did it? But do rest, PZ.
Posted by: Blake Stacey
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August 25, 2010 12:53 PM
Um, the researchers are actually saying that the bacteria which are eating up that nasty Gulf crude are also depleting the oxygen in the water. This screws over the other species in the region. Hardly an unalloyed piece of good news.
Posted by: Insightful Ape
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August 25, 2010 12:54 PM
Hate to say this, but it seems Huffington Post doesn't have higher journalistic standards than Al Jazeera.
Posted by: MrFire
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August 25, 2010 12:56 PM
Be careful what you wish for.
*nurses shot of Pantene 2-in-1*
Posted by: Blake Stacey
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August 25, 2010 12:57 PM
(The better the microbes are at eating oil, the worse the oxygen depletion and the more severe the resulting "dead zone", it appears. In this case, other environmental factors may have limited the bacterial consumption rate, which is good for the oxygen level but bad for breaking down the oil — every silver lining comes wrapped in a cloud.)
Posted by: rerun
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August 25, 2010 12:58 PM
HuffPo is dumb but it seems to me that the paper's authors are hyping their work a bit too. A reason why individuals/populations might do well when moving into a empty habitat, is that they will escape interspecific competition and will instead experience more intraspecific competition and divergence to further radiate into new habitats (i.e. lots of ecological opportunity). This fits very well into the established theory of adaptive radiation. So this is nothing new ideas-wise, but neat confirmation.
Posted by: Chgo_Liz
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August 25, 2010 1:01 PM
Just want to say...
He's baaaaaack!
Good to see you're back to your old feisty self so quickly.
Posted by: Guy Incognito
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August 25, 2010 1:02 PM
So, phenotypes which would have died before get to survive after a game-changing event, since there are now niches for them.
In other words, an evolutionary nuke-the-fridge moment?
(Fuckin' Spielberg...)
Posted by: Brownian, Most Vicious & Petty of Pharyngulites
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August 25, 2010 1:03 PM
It's just the blue suit with the gum-chewing and the mullet. Doesn't do a thing for me.
Are you here for a job interview? If so, why didn't you get that shit cut before you came in? Yeah, we all loved Rob Lowe circa St. Elmo's Fire, but that was a quarter century ago. Man, you could walk into any Curl Up and Dye and ask for the "Rachel" and you'd be a decade closer to current. And what's with the gum? I appreciate you shelling out for a nice, tailored, single-breasted—it's the least you could do for the fans who paid up to 7 grand to watch you finish dead last—but could you at least close your mouth when you chew?
Seriously, if you're gonna keep the hair, then what's wrong with the NFL coaching uniform? Golf shirt, khakis, ball cap, done. Throw a light windbreaker over the whole deal if it's too cold in the arena. Light and casual plus business, just like your hair.
I'm tired of getting style whiplash every time the camera cuts to a shot of the coach frothing over an offside call.
Anyways, I'm pretty sure there's some sort of evolutionary relationship in all this. Perhaps the mullet is some sort of spandrel?
Posted by: recovering catholic
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August 25, 2010 1:07 PM
Thanks, Blake Stacey. I've been appalled by all the media stories lately that The Spill "really isn't all that bad" and that we can "stop worrying about it so much". Anyone who believes this has no clue as to the interconnectedness of ecosystems.
Posted by: Blake Stacey
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August 25, 2010 1:07 PM
(There also appear to be all sorts of practical, nitty-gritty details which need to get sorted out in the workaday process of science: do the oxygen sensors work properly with that much gunk in the water? etc. As a theorist, I am eminently unqualified to comment on such matters.)
Posted by: Tom
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August 25, 2010 1:13 PM
So, phenotypes which would have died before get to survive after a game-changing event, since there are now niches for them.
What was the game changing event that allowed HuffPo to survive - nationwide lead poisoning, daytime tv...?
Posted by: raven
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August 25, 2010 1:14 PM
Adaptive radiation shows that what is rate limiting in morphological evolution is selection pressure or natural selection, not mutation rates. E = RM + NS.
There are many examples of adaptive radiation. PZ mentioned the post-Chicxulub radiation of the mammals and Galapagos finches. Add to that radiation of African Cichlib species in the African great lakes, Hawaiian Drosophila, and many more examples.
Posted by: jeffery.g.davis
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August 25, 2010 1:15 PM
ug, I wish newage didn't have it's claws into any blog considered even the slightest bit liberal. It's making me hate my own kind =)
Posted by: Brownian, Most Vicious & Petty of Pharyngulites
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August 25, 2010 1:21 PM
The re-election of Bushxulub.
Posted by: otrame
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August 25, 2010 1:32 PM
@37 Fiscal conservatives with a few brains feel the same way about the nutcase social conservatives. I can actually get along with a fiscal conservative of moderate mien (better than a HuffPo liberal, actually). Though I often think they are dead wrong, I feel, rightly or not, that it is an honest wrongness.
Shit. I am not even sure what I mean by that. It just seems to me that while they are wrong (IMnotsoHO) they came by their wrongness in the right way and their wrongness isn't fundamentally toxic as long as there is a good blend of more liberal views around to balance it.
...
I am not sure I am still writing English here. Did that make any sense at all?
Posted by: ritchie.annand
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August 25, 2010 1:34 PM
I thought a large part of 'survival of the fittest' was intraspecific competition. Species expanding into new/empty ecological niches would have less-appropriate adaptations, and more-appropriate adaptations would out-survive and out-reproduce the less-appropriate ones.
Admittedly, I only read Sarda's post, but if the whole kerfuffle is that interspecific competition is not the main driving force, then colour me underwhelmed by the controversy.
Posted by: No One
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August 25, 2010 1:42 PM
Being opportunistic and competitive.
How is this not natural selection?
How is this not survival of the fittest?
Am I missing something?
Posted by: spaninquis
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August 25, 2010 1:46 PM
@41
Nice poem, but it doesn't rhyme. ;)
Posted by: Richard Smith
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August 25, 2010 1:51 PM
@daveau (#17):
And always on Maple Street...
Posted by: blf
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August 25, 2010 2:03 PM
Unless you're in Atlanta, where by law (or so it seems), every street is has Peachtree in it.
Posted by: matlockbolton
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August 25, 2010 2:06 PM
pft the article sound like another example for adaptive radiation. Empty niches in which species already partially adapted take advantage of the new space.
Posted by: Dude... Real Men Watch Ponies!
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August 25, 2010 2:12 PM
Always thought HuffPo is a political web page.
At least, I always viewed it as one.
Posted by: karlpk56
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August 25, 2010 2:13 PM
Saw the awful headline -- went over to read and of course just misleading crap as you've noted. Thought a lot of right-wing xtians probably just read the headline and thought to themselves, "More incontravertible proof!"
Yikes!
Love this blog!
Posted by: darthwader
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August 25, 2010 2:14 PM
Don't you think you should rest up a bit before becoming indignant?
We'll all go be irritated for a while, build your strength up. We are going to send you a copy of "Chicken Soup for the Soulless".
I'm glad to hear that the procedure was uneventful apart from the Star Wars characters.
Posted by: KennyG
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August 25, 2010 2:28 PM
From New Agey woo to anti-vaxxer nonsense to (almost) creationism over a course of, what, three years? That's got to be some kind of record.
Posted by: Dhorvath, OM
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August 25, 2010 2:29 PM
Now now, the WWW was the only truly reliable newssource. They actually had a warning in the publishing information about the fact that none of their stories are based on true events.
Maybe HP needs to take some more cues from my dearly missed tabloid.
Posted by: abb3w
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August 25, 2010 2:39 PM
Given that my background is more in physics and mathematics than in biology, the concept of niches being created/destroyed makes my neck itch. Thinking about it from that perspective, factors for what constitutes a niche would appear to include location and exergy storage, being limited by available means of accessibility of such exergy and competition for access. I'm not sure what the formal description by biologists and ecologists would be, or if they've bothered getting it to that level of formality.
So, it sounds like diversity tends to result more from brief lulls in the Red Queen's race (either by finding somewhere the other runners haven't gotten to yet, or finding somewhere that a transient phenomenon killed most of the other runners), rather than by finding some commanding advantage in the race.
Oh, and for the curious, the paper itself is (doi:10.1098/rsbl.2009.1024).
Posted by: legistech
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August 25, 2010 2:51 PM
Good to see they put in the extra-vicious and incisive stents, so they'll be compatible with PZ's heart. :)
Posted by: hc
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August 25, 2010 2:57 PM
You see? PUPPIES WORK ! They're like SCIENCE.
Posted by: Sven DiMilo
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August 25, 2010 3:11 PM
Look, the author's linked blog post isn't a lot better IMO.
The strawman of 'survival of the fittest' = 'interspecific competition' is explicit.
Again, I haven't read the article itself, but the whole thing of fundamental and realized niches, Grinnellian niches, etc. is pretty basic community ecology, seemingly ignored here. As is Lewontin's (inter alia) criticisms of niche theory in general.
And why do populations that "take the opportunity" to "move into a new niche" thrive if not because of release from prior competition?
I am either missing something important, or this whole spin is stupid. (I'm sure the data are hard won and interesting.)
Posted by: bcoppola
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August 25, 2010 3:17 PM
@darthwader:
Word.
And besides: next time PZ says he's going light on the blogging for whatever reason, we should probably take it with a very large grain of salt. Guy just can't help himself. Hell, he'll probably post from The Beyond ("Didn't expect an afterlife, but worms are way cool!") or at least have a few megs of posts ready for auto uploading after he finally meets the reaper.
Oh, and PZ, if you take up bicycling as I and others have suggested maybe you'll become a genuine MAMIL. Well, except for the mountain climbing bit.
Posted by: snurp
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August 25, 2010 3:18 PM
blf @ 44
Based off of the (admittedly small) sample size of Athens and Atlanta, I've come to the conclusion that most city planners in Georgia just decide on one name they like and use it over and over, since that won't confuse anybody or nothin'.
In Athens it's Epps Bridge Parkway, Epps Bridge Road, Old Epps Bridge Road, Epps Bridge Road II: This Time It's Personal, and, of course, Am I Seriously Still On Epps Bridge? Because I Just Made a 90 Degree Turn.
Posted by: Brownian, Most Vicious & Petty of Pharyngulites
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August 25, 2010 3:24 PM
And "Mary's Metaphysical Metazoan" is born.
Posted by: Flex
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August 25, 2010 3:37 PM
I've only ever seen "Curl Up and Dye" as the name of the hair salon where Carrie Fisher worked in The Blues Brothers.
Do any of these places you know of pre-date 1980, when The Blues Brothers came out?
And is that movie really 30 years old?
Posted by: Dude... Real Men Watch Ponies!
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August 25, 2010 3:40 PM
I find it surprising that PZ is against HuffPo that much. It's mostly political commentary and opinion pieces. No much creationism drivels (there are a few).Granted, the science side is... underwhelming at best.
Posted by: David Marjanović
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August 25, 2010 3:48 PM
You say this as if Aljazeera had low standards.
...Oh. Are you perhaps thinking of aljazeera.com, a domain-grabbing conspiracy-mongering enterprise that leeches off the good name of aljazeera.net? Similarly, pravda.ru is not the newspaper Pravda.
Yes. :-)
The other way around: you added the "and competitive" part where it shouldn't be.
For instance, for a bird it's an advantage to be flightless, because the flight apparatus requires lots and lots of energy to build and maintain (never mind to use). This is outweighed by the disadvantage of being in danger from predators. When the predators suddenly die out, ground-dwelling, running birds are free to become flightless, and that seems to have happened to most paleognaths (ostriches, rheas, emus & cassowaries, elephantbirds, moas, and later kiwis) in the Paleocene.
It is, and that's not the problem.
An ecological niche is what a... species or whatever does for a living. How it gets its food. Its energy. (...What does "exergy" mean?) The naive view is that an ecological niche is "a job" that can be filled by different species in different places, but because they never do exactly the same thing, the more terminologically inclined ecologists insist that organisms don't have ecological niches but form them. Thus, specialization can split niches in two, and extinction can destroy them.
Posted by: KillJoy
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August 25, 2010 3:50 PM
I was ranting about this yesterday on FaceBook of all places. My poor friends.
KJ
Posted by: David Marjanović
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August 25, 2010 3:50 PM
HuffPo advocates pseudoscience, including quackery (applied pseudoscience that keeps people from using medicine).
Posted by: Dude... Real Men Watch Ponies!
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August 25, 2010 3:52 PM
So other then it contains a few creationists as contributor, what is/was the problem?On the topic of research...
Is this similar to the e-coli long term experiment? Where e-coli evolved into the niche of a citric rich/glucose poor environment?
Posted by: daniel.lavine83
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August 25, 2010 3:55 PM
I'm a little confused. If you have an ecological niche, i.e. an untapped source of food calories, aren't essentially all local species in a race (i.e. a competition) to capitalize on it? Aren't we selecting for whatever organisms are most capable of assimilating that energy source into its ecology?
I don't see how adaptive radiation fails to be selection or competition except by playing Fodor style semantic games.
Posted by: Dude... Real Men Watch Ponies!
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August 25, 2010 4:00 PM
Really? Didn't notice that.On the niche side, doesn't competition itself also create niches?
For example, rough-skinned newt creates a new niche for garter snakes that can tolerate the large dose of poison said newt produces.
Also an interesting biological arm race. The newt gets mroe poisonous, and the snake gets more resistant.
Posted by: Olav
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August 25, 2010 4:19 PM
Delurking specifically to ask: Dear Dr. Myers, are you sure you should be reading such exasperatingly stupid rags as the Huffington Post in your present condition? Get some sleep, man. Or watch some more syngnathid videos. There will be plenty of time later, thankfully, to get yourself in a state about things that cannot be helped any way.
Be well.
Posted by: Jay
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August 25, 2010 4:36 PM
I lamented the same thing in my blog post The BBC Puts Its Foot In Its Mouth. What Next; Bat Boy?. I'm beginning to wonder if there is such a thing as real science journalism anymore.
Posted by: darthwader
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August 25, 2010 4:50 PM
I'm with you Jay, even SciAm is dumbing down and selling out. Anyone want to contribute to the Buy Darth Wader a Subscription to Nature Fund?
Its like the Human Fund, but instead of money for people its magazines for me.
Posted by: BilBy
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August 25, 2010 4:52 PM
While 'curl up and dye' may not be considered imaginative for hair dressers any longer, I would like to honour the van that brought burgers and fish and chips etc to carparks on Dartmoor - 'Hound of the Basketmeals', and the pizza delivery shop in Yorkshire (James Herriot Country) - 'All Pizzas Great and Small'. Thank you; as you were.
Posted by: Carlie of the lacy, gently wafting adjectives
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August 25, 2010 4:55 PM
I just don't even understand the basis of the argument in the first place. Evolution happens in a lot of ways. It happens by natural selection, by sexual selection, by adaptive radiation, by predator-prey selection, by drift, etc., etc., etc. How is any one mechanism of evolution a slam against Darwin? Just because not every instance of evolution is natural selection doesn't mean that natural selection doesn't happen.
Posted by: InfraredEyes
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August 25, 2010 5:08 PM
Ariana's ex's millions, mostly.
Posted by: Ichthyic
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August 25, 2010 5:32 PM
I have the same question. They seem to be arguing that the removal of competition is a driving force of evolution. Or, as Sarda Sahney says on her blog, "[o]ur new research supports the idea that animals diversified by expanding into empty ecological roles rather than by direct competition with each other." (emphasis mine)
seems to me, that Sarda has a problem just of definition.
I think, rather than view this in terms of "direct competition", it should be viewed in terms of sympatric/parapatric/allopatric speciation.
Indeed, there DOES appear to be far less evidence to support the idea that sympatric speciation is what has most commonly occured, as opposed to the alternatives.
If we look at extant fauna, for example, and examine their population genetics, we find very few clear cases which support sympatric speciation (indeed, oceanic birds come readily to mind as examples where we have not found evidence for any sympatric speciation from genetics), and, excluding specific examples of immediate speciation like that of polyploidy in plants, there seem very few demonstrated examples in the lit of sympatric speciation.
Me being a fish guy, I tend to support that there is a strong case for sympatric speciation in rift and crater lake cichlids in Africa, and likely also in arctic char, and other radiations in isolated lake systems.
Still, the actual case studies suggest allopatric speciation to be much more common.
so, I think those that maintain competition may have driven populations to seek new AREAS to exploit are correct, it's not contradictory for Sarda to maintain that there seems little evidence to support that competition between populations in the SAME area as driving speciation.
I linked to a great talk on this very issue by Jerry Coyne last week, that was given at the Darwin Conference in Chicago last year.
https://mindonline.uchicago.edu/media/history/fishbein/darwin_2009/coyne_512k.mov
For people interested in the latest, I think he gives a good summary, and makes an excellent argument for how we should be looking at population genetic information relevant to answering questions of speciation.
Posted by: Ichthyic
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August 25, 2010 5:35 PM
Still, the actual case studies suggest allopatric speciation to be much more common.
...when looking at ALL species, just to clarify.
Posted by: Fred The Hun
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August 25, 2010 5:44 PM
David Marjanović @ 60,
The regulars over at theoildrum.com spend quite a bit of time in discussions about the "exergy" of various systems. It is used quite a bit in biophysical economics and ecological economics as well. Here's the Wikipedia definition. I'm sure that abb3w could add more flesh to this description.
Posted by: Fred The Hun
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August 25, 2010 5:51 PM
BTW there is a math geek friend of mine who is doing analysis of the "enthrophy" of systems. He accidentally coined the word by combining enthropy and eutrophication... he is studying the stages of decay or simplification of complex dynamic systems. He talks a lot about exergy.
Posted by: Carlie of the lacy, gently wafting adjectives
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August 25, 2010 5:53 PM
True, but it's important not to overgeneralize, too. Sympatric speciation via hybridization is quite common in plants (slutty little things that they are).
Posted by: goonters mom
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August 25, 2010 5:53 PM
My husband actually reads HuffPo, which I refer to as the National Enquirer of blogs. It is a treasure trove of tripe, a cornucopia of crap. Hubby told me about this latest quasi-scientific excretion, so I ventured over to the dark side to read it. What a waste of time! Even a scientific neophyte such as myself could tell that this did nothing at all to discredit Darwin or evolution in any way, but I'm sure it brought all the creationists on the run, boosting HuffPo's readership by a few thousand at least.
Posted by: David Marjanović
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August 25, 2010 5:57 PM
There's a fascinating case of sympatric speciation* in the fossil record. (I used to throw it at creationists in the good old times when we still got some here on Pharyngula.) It involves diatoms and the entire equatorial Pacific. The size and shape distribution of those diatoms took a couple hundred thousand years to split in two, but it did.
Google for "speciation in the fossil record" to find a review article by Michael Benton and someone else.
* Or cladogenesis in any case.
I agree, however, that allopatric speciation is much more common under any species concept.
Thanks, that helps.
Except now I feel stupid for not looking it up myself. :-þ
Posted by: Kel, The Privileged View From Nowhere
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August 25, 2010 5:59 PM
I recently read an Ernst Mayr* book where he talked about this kind of thing. I'm surprised that someone is taking it as something new.
*the significance is that he's dead
Posted by: Ichthyic
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August 25, 2010 6:02 PM
Sympatric speciation via hybridization is quite common in plants (slutty little things that they are).
I made mention of that as being a special case:
"and, excluding specific examples of immediate speciation like that of polyploidy in plants,"
again, I think Coyne makes an excellent argument for why.
Posted by: Ichthyic
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August 25, 2010 6:06 PM
I'm surprised that someone is taking it as something new.
in Coyne's case, the "new" part is actually looking at evidence in the field via population genetics.
in Sarda's case, again, I believe they are examining the lit for what current actual evidence there is:
Sarda:
"there is little evidence of competition guiding large-scale shifts in biodiversity,"
Posted by: dnebdal.myopenid.com
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August 25, 2010 6:10 PM
@otrame, 37:
Could it be summarized accepting their methods, but having come to a different conclusion?
Posted by: dickens
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August 25, 2010 7:39 PM
PZ,
Get some rest. Sleep. Watch a movie about tentacles or whatever. Get well. Come back when you're ready.
Posted by: Nebula99
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August 25, 2010 8:26 PM
I am totally stealing this.But tentacles get him as excited as creationists!
Posted by: Carlie of the lacy, gently wafting adjectives
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August 25, 2010 8:31 PM
I know, but sounded kind of minor. And I wouldn't take the reproduction of the majority biomass of the planet as a special case! (Plants rule! Animals drool!) It's not just freak immediate polyploidy, but also weirdo introgressive hybrid swarm stuff that can take awhile to develop, three species intercrossing all with each other, all kinds of things. Even if you just limit it to polyploidy, the majority of plant species on the planet have gone through it at one time or another or ten or twenty.
[/soapbox about animal-centricity]
Posted by: Carlie of the lacy, gently wafting adjectives
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August 25, 2010 8:41 PM
Bacteria also do sympatric speciation, as do fungi and some algae. Animals are just weird. ;)
Posted by: Nerd of Redhead, OM
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August 25, 2010 8:46 PM
When people ask several ways that evolution might occur, I always just say "yes". Some species out there is using that "novel" idea, whether they (or I) know it or not...
Posted by: dux anglicus
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August 25, 2010 9:10 PM
Hi there.
I was wondering if you good give your best arguments for non belief. Assume you are talking to a person who was raised in some common garden variety of religion, and so has believed from an early age, but has found those beliefs supported by various arguments for the existence of god/higher power, such as the cosmological argument. I'm not talking about a fundamentalist believer, but someone who might be considered liberal.
Note that I'm not saying the arguments prove the existence of God, but that for someone who already believes in God, then these arguments provide support to the idea that belief in God is not irrational. I also assume that you would agree that while to an outsider, certain religious claims might seem crazy, that doesn't make them logically impossible. If you disagree, do you have an argument that shows that God or certain general claims that most religions share are logically impossible. That would be a knock down argument.
If arguments for and against belief in God are only compelling given your existing beliefs, then
isn't it reasonable for a believer to hold his/her belief as rational given his/her existing beliefs as equally it is for a non-believer to hold that arguments for the existence of God are not compelling given lack of faith and other arguments like the argument from Evil? Anyway, over to you, what are your best arguments?
Thanks in advance.
Posted by: Ichthyic
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August 25, 2010 9:17 PM
I was wondering if you good give your best arguments for non belief.
best argument?
don't need one.
and yes, that IS the best argument.
frankly, we're tired of believers attempting to shift the burden of proof.
Posted by: Nerd of Redhead, OM
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August 25, 2010 9:22 PM
It is irrational. Absolutely no good and conclusive solid physical evidence for an imaginary deity. Now, what is your problem delusional fool? This is the typical atheist attitude at this blog. Either show your conclusive physical evidence for your imaginary deity, or acknowledge it is reasonable to consider you a delusional fool. Choose wisely cricket...Posted by: John Morales
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August 25, 2010 9:22 PM
dux:
Sure.
Belief should not be squandered on supernatural and irrational wishful thinking, but should be indulged in on a justified basis for it to be meaningful.
I don't get this need you have for some magic man in the sky. You're not a child.
You're welcome.
Posted by: 'Tis Himself, OM
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August 25, 2010 9:37 PM
The most used argument we have against belief in god(s) is the lack of evidence for god(s).
Posted by: IslandBrewer
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August 25, 2010 9:42 PM
@dux
Let me try to phrase it to you in a nice way.
Please consider the following:
Now, could you kindly respond to that?
Posted by: Sven DiMilo
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August 25, 2010 9:42 PM
derail alert
Posted by: 'Tis Himself, OM
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August 25, 2010 9:42 PM
Sorry, hit submit when I didn't mean to.
As far as I'm concerned, this lack of evidence is a rational argument but pretending there is evidence is irrational. There are no rational arguments in favor of god(s), certainly not any for the Christian gods. So it isn't reasonable for the goddist, particularly the Christian goddist, to believe in any one or more of the thousands of gods invented by human imagination.
Posted by: raven
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August 25, 2010 9:44 PM
Xians, Moslems, and threadjacking internet trolls.
BTW, instead of threadjacking a biology thread, there is a place for OT posts, the Endless thread, now Episode XCV Hospital.
Posted by: Carlie of the lacy, gently wafting adjectives
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August 25, 2010 9:44 PM
What Ichthyic said. You think there's something invisible there, prove it.
I think I see what you're getting at. It's understandable, but no, it's not reasonable. It's understandable for a child to force himself into believing there is a Santa for one more year to be extra sure to get his gifts, but it's not reasonable. Self-delusion can be understandable, but it is never reasonable.
There isn't a single argument for the existence of God that survives the "prove it" test, no matter how flowery the language or convoluted the argumentation. Most of those arguments also subtly shift from the "God" that everyone typically thinks of (and the religious believe in) to some nebulous "higher sense" of something unseeable and unknowable and unfathomable and, bluntly, indistinguishable from pure imagination.
I think Tim Minchin said it quite succinctly:
"Throughout history
Every mystery
EVER solved has turned out to be...
Not Magic."
Posted by: Rutee, Shrieking Harpy of Dooooom
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August 25, 2010 9:46 PM
No, it isn't reasonable. Let's assume a complete lack of belief. The person making a religious claim has to offer evidence for their position. They then fail to (Or offer discredited evidence, or..). I don't have to offer evidence against god. There's nothing to disprove, because I've been offered no evidence for God.
Look at it this way: If I wanted to disprove the existence of gravity, I'd have to go against the well established evidence. And don't talk proofs for god; Those are just logic games. I mean actual evidence; A well verified, modern day report of a burning, talking bush would actually go a long way to helping the case for a god existing. So would an Elephant-headed man, a dancing scimitar wielding talking man-sized monkey with super-strength, paper animated by the spirit within the paper, an actual thunderbird, etc. Without that kind of positive evidence, there's not a whole lot of reason to believe in a god; that makes it irrational.
Posted by: Carlie of the lacy, gently wafting adjectives
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August 25, 2010 9:48 PM
And to try and haul it back,
Throughout all nations
Every speciation
Ever done has turned out to be...
Some kind of evolution.
Posted by: Menyambal: Making sambal (it isn't dragon magic).
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August 25, 2010 9:49 PM
The HuffPo piece mostly refers to the BBC story, _Space is the final frontier for evolution, study claims_ not so much to the original paper that the Beeb referenced. Oddly, when I first linked from an endless thread to the BBC piece, the title was _‘Survival of fittest’is disputed_. And I scoffed at that article. The HuffPo is worse.
"Survival of the Fittest" was never meant to imply direct competition, where physical fitness (in the sports-conditioning sense) helps win battles. It was, at the time it was written, implying "those who fit the environment best, or those most suited for the life".
And, yes, luck is a factor in any one life.
Posted by: Usagichan
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August 25, 2010 10:08 PM
#88
Ducky,
To reiterate the points made above, non-belief requires no argument - Atheism isn't arguing for something, but is saying that therre must be an adequate reason for accepting something (and that the various fantasies and hallucinations of literary figures through the ages is not adequate reason.
Perhaps it would help to make it clearer to ask a believer why they believe in God and not a pantheon of gods, or the Flying Spaghetti Monster, or the Voodoo Spirits. To an Atheist, (as Nerd of Redhead tirelessly points out - he has more patience than me, just for composing his acerbic replies) there is an equal lack of evidence for all of them. In which case why choose one in particular and call it 'real'?
Of course, the main problem with believers is getting a definite definition of God - As soon as there are characteristics defined then argument can take place but my experience is that believers freely change definitions as each one becomes unsupportable. I have yet to see a definition that was supportable.
On a break from pin-head dancing duty?
Posted by: GayHedBri
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August 25, 2010 10:23 PM
Gee whiz, PZ:
Please don't have a heart-attack.
And for God's sake, whatever you do DOn't bust a nut in recovery!
Posted by: Frank b
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August 25, 2010 10:45 PM
I don't get this idea that natural selection equals competition. It can be competition when a niche is filled, but the same mutation and selection goes on in any other situation too. Adaptive radiation is just a whole lot of natural selection going on.
Posted by: Kel, The Privileged View From Nowhere
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August 25, 2010 10:49 PM
This is easy, the best argument for non-belief is that there are so many beliefs out there that whatever your belief happens to be is an accident of historical contingency. To take any particular belief as being serious, it's a gamble on your time and place of birth and nothing more. It's statistically improbable that you happen to believe in the one that's right.But the real lesson in all of this is not whether there are good arguments for non-belief, but whether there are good arguments for belief itself. Otherwise you're basing your starting point on an accident of history. Ask yourself what reasons are there to believe, otherwise you're consigning yourself to accidents of history without any merit.
Posted by: Ichthyic
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August 25, 2010 11:25 PM
I don't get this idea that natural selection equals competition.
that's because it doesn't.
I'm curious as to whether that was what you picked up from reading the article in HuffPo, the original article, or some comment here?
Posted by: natural cynic
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August 25, 2010 11:39 PM
The discovery of a whole niche: has start-up capital; media savvy hostess; lack of competitive liberal news aggregators and crocoducks; connections to entertainment; swamps of woo to wallow in. A perfect environment to take advantage of.
Posted by: shaxanth27
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August 26, 2010 12:20 AM
I might be daft, but maybe there's a silver lining in this one? I doubt a creationist could point to a HuffPo article as some kind of "authority", the way so many have with the New Scientist without even reading past the title. I know the article's way too short, and fundies aren't likely to follow the link even if some did read these few paragraphs, but I can see the odd one getting suckered into actually reading this one. And getting a fundie to read anything that isn't stuck between the pages (sorry, stone tablets) of his own ass seems like no mean feat to me.
Posted by: Ichthyic
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August 26, 2010 12:28 AM
And getting a fundie to read anything that isn't stuck between the pages (sorry, stone tablets) of his own ass seems like no mean feat to me.
it only works if they have even the slightest background to understand the actual work.
they don't.
all their tiny brains will focus on are the words:
Darwin.
Wrong.
again, we saw the same thing with the nat geo article back in 2004, and the new scientist article last year.
the only "silver lining" is getting to add this to the ever growing dataset countering the idea that it's the scientists who are to blame for people misunderstanding science, instead of media idiocy like this.
Oh, and being able to point out, yet again, that creationists are so focused on maintaining self delusion, they are mentally incapable of absorbing information that might even remotely counter their carefully constructed house of cards. But then, we already have more examples of this than are readily countable.
not much of a silver lining, really.
Posted by: ckitching
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August 26, 2010 12:34 AM
No, I'm sure it's PZ's or Jerry Coyne's or Richard Dawkin's fault somehow. I'm sure Chris Mooney will set us all straight. He did write a book on it, after all.Posted by: shaxanth27
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August 26, 2010 12:39 AM
@Ichthyic:
A curious and not-too-far-gone Child of Fundie, then?
Okay, I'll stop reaching.
Posted by: Ichthyic
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August 26, 2010 12:44 AM
He did write a book on it, after all.
or maybe we'll get to see another fake statement from a sock-puppet propped up as "evidence"!
that was good drama, at least.
A curious and not-too-far-gone Child of Fundie, then?
I get your point. It's just that there are much better sources for such a person to start their long walk to rationality with.
this crap the media are currently marketing as "science journalism", just needs to be mashed into the ground with a sledge hammer is all.
Posted by: Midnight Rambler
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August 26, 2010 1:05 AM
shaxanth27 @107:
I can easily see them saying "even far-left Marxist liberals think Darwinism is at death's door!!!"
Posted by: prosfilaes
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August 26, 2010 2:25 AM
#39: Yes. There are beliefs whose believers seem to be able to make a reasonable argument for their case, and seem to take into account new information, even if I disagree. And then there are people from Planet X, who seem to be making arguments based on delusions immune to fact.
Posted by: Rorschach
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August 26, 2010 2:48 AM
As a sidenote, HuffPo is the number one blog on technorati.How is this mudpit in any way shape of form a "blog" in the first place ? Online news and opinion hub of some sort maybe, but blog ?
Posted by: RobertL
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August 26, 2010 2:51 AM
But back to the REAL topic at hand...hair salons.
There's one near me known as: "Lunatic Fringe".
Posted by: https://me.yahoo.com/a/Jzb0jIUp1MYpd4VSKVg42wjlyw0DYg--#80293
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August 26, 2010 3:26 AM
Replying to @56:
To go to work in the morning, I drive to the corner and turn right onto South Langston Road. Then I drive to the corner and turn right onto South Langston Road. Then I drive to the corner and turn right onto ... South 129th street. To stay on South Langston Road, you'd have to turn left. If you did and followed to the very end, the southwest end, you would be on South Langston Road Northwest!
Buford
Posted by: Usagichan
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August 26, 2010 3:42 AM
@116 & 56
Road-names... Luxury.
It seems the Japanese don't believe in naming roads (apart from the really big main roads). Mostly addresses are a mixture of area and block number, further confused because buildings are usually numbered in order of construction date rather than any geographical consideration. It seems a system designed to weed out anyone born more than a couple of miles away from finding any addresses.
I navigate mostly by the temples/ Shinto shrines I go past, landmarks (statues, parks etc) and big stores. I have no idea how any foreigner got anywhere in Tokyo before the advent of Google maps!
Posted by: Rorschach
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August 26, 2010 3:44 AM
*giggles*
From HuffPo today(I won't link to it, but you can easily find it on their religion page) :
"Mother Teresa, one of the greatest saints ever"
Posted by: KG
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August 26, 2010 4:03 AM
Non-belief in what?
With regard to gods in general, I'm an atheist in exactly the same sense as I'm an aleprechaunist - no good reason to believe in them, so I don't.
With regard to an omnipotent and benevolent god, the evidence from the existence of suffering and evil is overwhelming, and all the attempted counter-arguments utterly feeble. Even (relatively honest) theists end up shrugging their shoulders and saying "It's beyond our comprehension". No, it isn't. Our comprehension says quite clearly that a good and omnipotent being would not have created this universe.
With regard to doctrinally orthodox Christianity, that has the unique distinction among religions (AFAIK) of indeed being logically impossible. The doctrine of the hypostatic union claims that Jesus was "wholly God and wholly man", or "true God and true man". But "God" as the term is used by Christians, and "man", have incompatible attributes, so nothing can possibly be both. Therefore doctrinally orthodox Christianity is necessarily false.
Posted by: John Morales
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August 26, 2010 4:21 AM
Dux exposed in teh Thread.
Posted by: SQB (fuck death)
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August 26, 2010 5:31 AM
Buford & snurp:
Over here, in Middelburg (NL), we have: Seisbolwerk ('Seis Bastion'), Seisdam, Seislaan ('Seis Lane'), Seispark, Seisplein ('Seis Square'), Seissingel ('Seis Canal'), Seisstraat ('Seis Street') and Seisweg ('Seis Way').
Mental note to self: do not move to any of this street. There's no knowing where your mail will end up.
Posted by: SQB (fuck death)
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August 26, 2010 6:41 AM
*sigh* '...any of these streets'.
Posted by: ConcernedJoe
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August 26, 2010 7:02 AM
Let's say I and a bunch of my crazy friends really like the cold, the snow, and ice fishing. We like the challenges that wicked weather brings.
We also like like desolation and hate the humdrum of "ordinary" people - and competing with them in their ordinary climes doing their warm/hot weather living. We aren't suited for it. Something just seems wrong to us. They think we are weird. We've all been chastised for "being different" since as far back as we can remember.
We decided to strike out on our own - and low and behold we found us a perfect place - all to ourselves! We started lives there contently - challenged as we like by the elements - but peaceful among ourselves.
Across time we multiplied and generations came and went (happy, we bred like rabbits). If we look back across time we find we seem as a population more light skinned than before, among other things that seem different about us.
We like ourselves now - our accents - our, well, "niceness" - other populations think we are nuts and rather weird looking too - but to us we have the perfect population traits for where we are - to us: all the women are strong, all the men are good-looking, and all the children are above average.
We just evolved to better people it seems in our own little slice of ice heaven.
Posted by: Anubis Bloodsin the third
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August 26, 2010 7:41 AM
Tis but a fortunate twist of happen-stance that Anubis did not trip over 'Duckies' IQ until today!
His 'experiment' in trying to taunt the 'nasty' atheists to respond to his disingenuous plea for argumentation against the premise of sky fairy drooling, methinks it would have resulted in a rather more metagrobolized quackotard for a good while longer then it will take PZ to chase the nurses around the hospital not just the bed!
Civil discourse with delusional fuckotards 'Anubis does not see a point in!
His own worse enemy on that account, but so much fun...just lurve' the smell of the xian dumbfucked being discombobulated in the morning !
But attendance to the partaay seems not required anyway, clinical demolition was committed with ease by the usual troll patrol.
Posted by: defides
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August 26, 2010 9:04 AM
In the article I read about oil-eating bacteria in the Gulf of Mexico, the researcher explained that the reason the bacteria are already there is that an amount of oil equivalent to the Exxon Valdez spill seeps into the bottom of the Gulf every year and has been doing so for millions of years.
Makes you wonder about the hot, panting panic promulgated by media and politicians since the Deepwater spill began, methinks.
Posted by: raven
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August 26, 2010 9:23 AM
Sure, right.
Those white sand beaches that turned black never happened.
Those dead, oil covered birds, dolphins, and fish were all media creations.
The dead and dying oil soaked wetlands are an illusion.
All the fishermen stuck in the ports were just taking a vacation.
You are brilliant, not an internet troll, and War is Peace.
Posted by: monado
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August 26, 2010 10:04 AM
Brownian,
And the best name for a theft company is "Fred's Rent-a-<Thing>" because they can then stroll off with other people's <things>.
P.S. I used to get my hair cut at a place called "Hairacy."
Posted by: monado
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August 26, 2010 10:22 AM
It sounds to me like the Inuit strategy--move to an environment where there are fewer conspecifics and predators but also fewer resources because the environment is harsher and you're not as ready, initially, to exploit the resources that are there, rather than learning to fight like a buzzsaw.
Think mountain goats.
Posted by: Steven Dunlap
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August 26, 2010 10:24 AM
@ ritchie.annand #40 and No BS #41
I long ago came to realize that the social-darwinist's focus of the word "fittest" is narrow and incorrect. A given pair of pants can "fit" better than another, it does not mean that pairs of jeans are ripping each other to pieces in the store before the customers' eyes. Does there not also exist the concept of "fittest" for the particular environment? Taking a very narrow view of what Darwin meant by "fittest" to see it exclusively in terms of species to species competition leads to semantically produced "controversies" like this one. The removal of large numbers of species by mass extinctions provided surviving species new environments to which they then had to adapt in order for increased diversification to take place. Fitness to an environment is not synonymous with competition, but is a wider term which includes competition.
Does this sound crazy?
Posted by: monado
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August 26, 2010 10:26 AM
So the fact that bacteria in the Gulf of Mexico are adapted to eat seeping oil means that spilling massive quantities of oil there is like dumping an animal carcase into a pond... Right.
Posted by: Anubis Bloodsin the third
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August 26, 2010 10:34 AM
No idea of the actual statistics but could be on the conservative side there.
Point is that such an amount over a year is easily handled by the checks and balances in the environment.
The Earth has a wonderful immune response to such a world wide pollution.
And natural processes like the action of the waves and the bacteria that take advantage of such a niche all help to dissipate the crud eventually.
The downside being it has not an endless capacity to absorb toxins and rebalance the environment when so much is present in such a short space of human time in such a small area.
It will compensate in time but the folks living along the coastline do not have such a luxury of geological time...what a hundred years...a thousand maybe?
They will suffer the financial and lifestyle consequences through the altered and devastated flora and fauna that cannot adapt to such an overdose of toxin in a year, or ten years, or even a thousand.
To expect the Earth to smile benignly on the fools that abuse its hospitality is rather arrogant if not naive and will end in tears.
It is the same story with global warming, there is a natural temp cycle that kicks in, but the activities of industry on such a major scale on every continent means that that little extra added to the environmental balance sheet means more momentum to the pendulum swing.
And just a degree or two change can hold severe repercussions.
That temp change is a cycle is fine, but the problem is the time it usually occupies to complete a change is fore shortened and the affect will be that more intense.
Do not give a flying fuck if it is believed or not, like the sky fairy debacle it is for the believers to produce the evidence for their premise.
And for the environmentally challenged to demonstrate the 'nobody in 'ere 'cept uz turkeys!'
mantra.
The straw man argument that AGW is a false premise is all very well,but makes not a damned bit of difference to the result.
There is a mountain of evidence against such nonsense as magical fairies and a static biosphere containing weather as normal, including a sanguine attitude to environmental vandalism, about time the balance was corrected to demonstrate conclusively that there is no pea under that cup, and such views are based on reality but like most retarded dogmatic wailing it seems some clowns are blind deaf and for the most part dumb!
They seen to think repeating the mantra 'nobody in 'ere 'cept uz turkeys!' is more then adequate...and it might even be true, if they hope, or pray, very very hard.
Posted by: Sal Bro
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August 26, 2010 10:57 AM
GRRRR, you mean to tell me that an interesting conversation about THE TOPIC OF THE OP was interrupted by some assclown who wanted to pose as a religidiot on Pharyngula for the lulz? What a jerk. That's what the Endless Thread is for, Brian Fucking English.
Posted by: Dude... Real Men Watch Ponies!
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August 26, 2010 11:00 AM
Add-on to #131.
Nature will always adapt. But nature won't care if said adaptation will kill us.
Posted by: Menyambal: Making sambal (it isn't dragon magic).
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August 26, 2010 11:45 AM
I used to see a hair salon that called itself _The_Cutting_Point_. Every time I saw the sign, I'd wonder how a point could cut--an edge can cut, but a point can only pierce, right? The sign had a picture of a scissors blade with the very tip circled, so maybe somebody else was confused, too. The point of a scissors blade seldom cuts, and just one scissors blade cuts even less.
Posted by: KG
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August 26, 2010 12:42 PM
Evidently not.
Posted by: abb3w
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August 26, 2010 1:02 PM
Fred The Hun I'm sure that abb3w could add more flesh to this description.
Not much, but perhaps a slightly better skeleton. In dick-and-jane terms, Exergy is energy that can be put to use. 3K background radiation is still energy in your basic E=mc2 sense, but generally can't be made to do anything useful, because there's no "downhill" to roll your metaphorical rock to.
David Marjanović: Except now I feel stupid for not looking it up myself. :-þ
A thinking human is like a waltzing bear; the wonder is not in how well the trick is done, but that it can be done at all. =)
David Marjanović: An ecological niche is what a... species or whatever does for a living. How it gets its food. Its energy. (...What does "exergy" mean?) The naive view is that an ecological niche is "a job" that can be filled by different species in different places, but because they never do exactly the same thing, the more terminologically inclined ecologists insist that organisms don't have ecological niches but form them. Thus, specialization can split niches in two, and extinction can destroy them.
So, the niche refers to the method of access? Is there a separate term for the environmental exergy repository itself?
dux anglicus: I was wondering if you good give your best arguments for non belief.
"Best" is an imprecise term, with OUGHT connotations that render it suspicious.
The most compelling involves deriving a relative of Occam's Razor from the Robbins and Zermelo-Fraenkel axioms (or other assorted equivalents). However, this involves more math than most people are familiar with, and thus it is difficult to understand the argument and time-consuming to obtain such understanding. Presuming one can get that far, though, the same theorem provides a semi-algorithm (with two "I don't care how you do that" oracles) that bears a strong kindred for science. At that point, the existence of alternate "simpler" explanations that do not involve God but do describe all current evidence suffice to justify concluding the non-existence of God is more probable than the existence.
For the cosmological argument, Douglas Adams's "Parable of the Puddle" and an overview of just how much of the universe is vastly inhospitable can help. The TalkOrigins.org website has adequate write-ups on most of the major counter-arguments of the "design" variety.
dux anglicus: Note that I'm not saying the arguments prove the existence of God, but that for someone who already believes in God, then these arguments provide support to the idea that belief in God is not irrational
That it is not absolutely irrational, in that it does not necessitate belief in a logical impossiblity, is not the same as saying that it is rational to believe that the balance of probability favors it.
Or in other words, there's a difference between being "rationalizable" and "rational".
dux anglicus: I also assume that you would agree that while to an outsider, certain religious claims might seem crazy, that doesn't make them logically impossible.
However, there is a difference between not being logically impossible and having the balance of probability favor the claim. (For that matter, there's a difference between being logically impossible and having a zero probability; not all zero-probability events are logically impossible.)
dux anglicus: If you disagree, do you have an argument that shows that God or certain general claims that most religions share are logically impossible.
Well, the naive concept of omnipotence is logically inconsistent; the "catalog listing all catalogs that do not list themselves" is merely the modern set-theoretic version of "create a rock that God cannot lift". Of course, that form of omnipotence isn't essential to most people's religious outlook.
dux anglicus: If arguments for and against belief in God are only compelling given your existing beliefs, then isn't it reasonable for a believer to hold his/her belief as rational given his/her existing beliefs as equally it is for a non-believer to hold that arguments for the existence of God are not compelling
It may be rational to hold the belief in God as a reasonable inference from their premises, but this does not mean that the particular premises they use are "rational" or even self-consistent (you can prove ANYTHING in an inconsistent system), nor does it mean that the arguments they use are valid even within their own premises.
Furthermore, most people hold beliefs that require implicit acceptance of the aforementioned theorem's requisite premises. They may have additional premises, but those additions can be tested - or at least, can be tested in a philosophical sense; many people get very upset at the testing of their most fundamental beliefs, and so may not accept the results of such testing.
Kel, OM: This is easy, the best argument for non-belief is that there are so many beliefs out there that whatever your belief happens to be is an accident of historical contingency.
That the religious beliefs of your childhood upbringing is statistically the single most determining factor of what religion you will adhere to as an adult, serves as evidence for this.
Posted by: melissa.b.elliott
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August 26, 2010 1:09 PM
There's a hair place in my town called the Jagged Edge, in a jagged font. I am terrified of ever going there. Really, who thinks of these business names?
Posted by: Foggg
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August 26, 2010 1:28 PM
Posted by: RN
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August 26, 2010 4:10 PM
Rather than emphasizing the importance of chance, doesn't this demonstrate a more direct causal connection between the organism's experience and its evolution than chance would otherwise have had it?
Posted by: Victor
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August 26, 2010 4:26 PM
I thought we lefts were supposed to be beyond the crazy science denial-ism. The HuffPro is the inane stomping ground of the kooks that are so far left they wind up taking the side of the right.
Posted by: Ichthyic
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August 26, 2010 4:55 PM
Makes you wonder about the hot, panting panic promulgated by media and politicians since the Deepwater spill began, methinks.
hmm, since we are still finding significant negative impacts from the Exxon Valdez spill, going on 3 decades afterwards, and the media hasn't even bothered mentioning it...
my conclusion about the media is that it doesn't give a shit about accurate information, but likewise, isn't part of some conspiracy to hype environmental damage, that's for sure.
I can also readily conclude you're an ignorant moron.
Posted by: Ichthyic
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August 26, 2010 4:57 PM
That the religious beliefs of your childhood upbringing is statistically the single most determining factor of what religion you will adhere to as an adult, serves as evidence for this.
http://www.rci.rutgers.edu/~deenasw/Assets/bloom&weisberg%20science.pdf
Posted by: ckitching
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August 26, 2010 6:17 PM
The average American eats around 3.2 pounds of salt every year. So, if I sat you down in front of a 1 pound box of salt, and forced you to eat it in one or two sittings, you'd be fine with that, right? Of course, it'd very likely kill you.Want to know why the Deepwater spill is a disaster? The reason is exactly the same -- too much, too fast and all of it is concentrated all in one place.
Posted by: aggelosbiou
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August 26, 2010 9:34 PM
NCSE saves the day :D
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/steven-newton/darwin-was-not-wrong--new_b_696132.html
Posted by: Frank b
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August 26, 2010 9:48 PM
Ichthyic #105
This can be found at the top of the thread.
Perhaps you were complaining about the way I phrased it. How about this, "I don't get this idea that natural selection is only driven by competition." Is that better?
Posted by: Shiloh
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August 27, 2010 12:21 AM
http://www.aolnews.com/weird-news/article/was-darwin-wrong-study-says-living-space-is-key-to-evolution/19606711?icid=main%7Caim%7Cdl5%7Csec1_lnk1%7C166313
this is not a creationists alternative theory, but a scientific one of a new study by researchers at the University of Bristol in England.
Posted by: Ing: PhD Trollologist
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August 27, 2010 12:26 AM
Over the course of your life you will easily consume enough lead to be equivalent to the mass of a bullet...Therefore by your logic you can easily survive a shot through the head. Do they just reward stupid where you're from?
Posted by: Ing: PhD Trollologist
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August 27, 2010 12:31 AM
@146
THE SKY IS BLUE.
Have anything of value to add, or are you just going to repeat the topic at set time intervals?
Posted by: Ichthyic
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August 27, 2010 12:57 AM
this is not a creationists alternative theory, but a scientific one of a new study by researchers at the University of Bristol in England.
Let's play a game, Shiloh.
You tell us exactly what the paper (NOT the media article) says, by reading it, and we'll listen.
sound good?
Posted by: Ichthyic
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August 27, 2010 1:09 AM
"I don't get this idea that natural selection is only driven by competition." Is that better?
yes, but what I was curious about was where you got the idea that someone was saying that.
...because it doesn't come from the statement you quoted, and not from the original paper.
look at what PZ said again, and focus on the highlighted section:
again, the paper (and PZ) says nothing about selection being equal to the entirety of selection. The paper was looking at competition as a driving mechanism for sympatric speciation, as a subset of all possible selective pressures.
the reason it is of interest, and the reason of course Darwin's name pops up, is actually because sympatric competition was one of the primary things Darwin himself proposed as the driving mechanism of evolution.
I don't think the authors themselves have a clear view on this issue myself, as I stated earlier, but I also think the media has spun this as being somehow a dig against evolutionary theory in general, and selection in particular, and it simply isn't.
Posted by: Ichthyic
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August 27, 2010 1:17 AM
...I rather liked Coyne's take on the paper today:
http://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2010/08/26/darwin-wrong%E2%80%94again/
Posted by: echidna
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August 27, 2010 1:18 AM
Foggg@138:
great quote. Thanks.
Posted by: Caine, ghetto féministe
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August 27, 2010 1:23 AM
Ing:
+5
Posted by: KG
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August 27, 2010 9:07 AM
This "so-far-left-they're-right" stuff is just intellectually lazy garbage. Like the stuff you find on HuffPo, which is not "far left" in any recognisable way whatever.
Posted by: Frank b
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August 27, 2010 11:30 AM
Ichthyic #105 I agree with you. I didn't say there was a major debate about the role of competition in natural selection. A few people, for various reasons, did say it. That is all I am saying.
Posted by: crookedshoes
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August 27, 2010 2:00 PM
Hey All,
I have news for you all:
DARWIN MAY HAVE BEEN WRONG! He WAS NOT but, he may have been. That's called science and putting forth a hypothesis that is then tested and PROVEN. I have studied evolution for 20 years. With confidence: DARWIN WAS NOT WRONG. Now, as for the shitheads at HUFFPO...All it does is underscore their dearth of knowledge and intellect.