Ask me about evolution

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Ask me about evolution

Postby cmsellers » Mon Oct 03, 2016 6:08 am

I was talking on chat about how the frustrating thing to me about creationism is that I think a lot of it is the result of just bad science education. Of course in some states that's deliberate, but even in states and schools where legislatures and educators want to teach science, they do a really bad job of it. Every creationist argument I've seen except one* stems from a misconstrual of evolution by natural selection, whether deliberate or not.

However online, the majority of the time I've run across "creation vs evolution" arguments, I see the people defending "evolution" conceding at least some of these mistakes, likely because their own science education is very good.

There are a couple people on TCS whom I think might be creationists, but we're all friends here, right? And I'd wager that the majority of TCS has a rather incomplete understanding of evolutionary biology. I didn't understand evolution by natural selection enough to refute all creationist arguments accurately until I took a college-level evolutionary biology course. And there's still a fair bit I'm certain I don't know; there's a lot that the best scientists don't know.

If anybody has any questions about evolutionary biology, evolution by natural selection, or even discredited alternatives such as Lamarckian evolution, feel free to ask them here; I won't judge you for asking a question that's "stupid." And if someone who isn't me wants to answer them, feel free, just be nice about it. If I think your answer is incomplete or inaccurate I'll correct it, also nicely.


*"The Bible says it's true and I believe every word the Bible says" is not something which can be argued with on scientific grounds. It can be argued with on theological grounds, but that is not my wheelhouse and is beyond the scope of this thread.
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Re: Ask me about evolution

Postby Matthew Notch » Mon Oct 03, 2016 5:20 pm

Did kittens evolve to be cute or did humans evolve to think kittens are cute? Follow up question in either case: why?
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Re: Ask me about evolution

Postby Marcuse » Mon Oct 03, 2016 5:24 pm

Matthew Notch wrote:Did kittens evolve to be cute or did humans evolve to think kittens are cute? Follow up question in either case: why?


I remember watching a TV programme about a Russian breeding program for small dogs (IIRC). They bred some of them for aggression and "wildness" and they largely remained the uniform colour that they were naturally. The others were bred for tameness and docility, and over the course of only a few generations, began to display smaller and more "cute" features, as well as developing a clear variance in colouration that suggested some link between domestication and the kind of appearance we associate with domesticated animals that're used as pets and bred to be tame and controllable. Presumably the benefit to them is that they have protection, shelter, and food on tap. We think they're cute ;)

Also Sellers can prolly give a better answer but when shit springs to mind I gots to say it or it curdles in my mind like old cheese.
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Re: Ask me about evolution

Postby cmsellers » Mon Oct 03, 2016 7:47 pm

@Notch:

Nobel Laureate Konrad Lorenz famously noted that animals tend to have bigger heads, bigger eyes, smaller ears, and flatter faces compared to the adults of the same species, This is pretty universal among mammals and birds, is true of crocodilians, and also true of human babies. Thus we find kittens cute because they look like baby humans.

cuteness.png
cuteness.png (85.97 KiB) Viewed 9275 times


But why do they look like baby humans? Note that most mammals, birds, and crocodilians care for their young for some time after birth/hatching, which is known as the "K-strategy," and this is where juvenile "cute" features are most pronounced.

So the answer to your question is likely that in some distant common ancestor of humans, parrots, and alligators (or possibly this happened multiple times), some parent found those features cute and it induced a desire to care for their young. In the environment they were in, the young of animals that cared for cute members of their own species survived to reproduce more than those that didn't, and most higher land animals continued to have this instinct to nurture cute animals. (Those that don't likely lost it in circumstances where a "have lots of young and leave them to fend for themselves" or "r-strategy" is advantageous.)

What I don't know, and don't know if anybody knows, is why these features in particular are associated with juveniles in the first place. At a guess: the young turtles and lizards (which tend not to care for their young) have similar but much less-exaggerated features. They became more exaggerated in K-strategists because parents would rather care for a cuter infant than a less cute one.

What Marcuse is talking about doesn't directly answer why kittens are cute, but it is a very interesting case study. It is well-known that the young of K-strategists tend to be more playful and less aggressive than older animals or the young of r-strategists. This allows them to learn about their environment under the guidance of their parents. There is some argument that dogs and humans are neotenous wolves and chimps respectively--that humans and dogs retained both pedomorphic physical features and behaviors into adulthood. At least with dogs, this argument has been strongly reinforced by the tame silver fox experiment.
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Re: Ask me about evolution

Postby Tesseracts » Mon Oct 03, 2016 9:04 pm

What's the point of biological death?
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Re: Ask me about evolution

Postby cmsellers » Mon Oct 03, 2016 9:41 pm

Tesseracts wrote:What's the point of biological death?

It's not that death has a point so much as biological immortality very often doesn't. In some cases it does of course. A lot of trees are biologically immortal because in old-growth forests sitting around and making new plants generation after generation until lightening finally strikes them down provides a clear reproductive advantage.

The same is not true in many cases, and particularly not of warm-blooded animals, where evolutionary change happens relatively rapidly. New generation have the chance to improve on the old (in terms of how well they adapt to their niche), and older generations are going to succumb to other causes of mortality anyways. What advantage does biological immortality confer on a mouse if a new and improved hawk is going to kill it and its children? What advantage is biological immortality to a hawk if it won't be able to catch the new and improved mouse.
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Re: Ask me about evolution

Postby Kivutar » Mon Oct 03, 2016 9:48 pm

When am I going to evolve into a Kivutaurus?
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Re: Ask me about evolution

Postby cmsellers » Mon Oct 03, 2016 10:13 pm

Kivutar wrote:When am I going to evolve into a Kivutaurus?

Never. Well, not in this universe.

However if you were to find a universe where Lamarck was right and turn yourself into a Kivutaurus via surgery, your kids would also be Kivutaurs, so there's that.
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Re: Ask me about evolution

Postby RatElemental » Sat Nov 12, 2016 11:11 pm

If Americans evolved from Europeans, why are there still Europeans?

I'm sorry. I had to ask it.
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Re: Ask me about evolution

Postby cmsellers » Sat Nov 12, 2016 11:15 pm

random_nerd wrote:If Americans evolved from Europeans, why are there still Europeans?

Technically, "European" is a grade rather than a clade, as it's paraphyletic relative to Americans and Australians.
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Re: Ask me about evolution

Postby RatElemental » Sat Nov 12, 2016 11:48 pm

Alright, just thought of an actual question.

Sleep. Is anyone any closer to figuring out why damn near every multicelluar organism needs to become a sitting duck for at least a few hours every so often?
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Re: Ask me about evolution

Postby cmsellers » Sat Nov 12, 2016 11:51 pm

random_nerd wrote:Sleep. Is anyone any closer to figuring out why damn near every multicelluar organism needs to become a sitting duck for at least a few hours every so often?

Not as far as I know. One argument I've heard is that you can be adapted for the night or day but not really both so hiding during the wrong time period makes sense. But that doesn't explain why sharks need to sleep.
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Re: Ask me about evolution

Postby Anglerphobe » Sat Nov 12, 2016 11:59 pm

Who would win in a fight between a Homo erectus and Jesus? No shirts, no shoes, no stone axes.
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Re: Ask me about evolution

Postby cmsellers » Sun Nov 13, 2016 12:09 am

Anglerphobe wrote:Who would win in a fight between a Homo erectus and Jesus? No shirts, no shoes, no stone axes.

Homo erectus initially. Jesus will just keep turning the other cheek.

However when H. erectus drinks Jesus's blood it will transmute into wine. The only alcohol H. erectus ever had was in rotten fruit, and he will find the blood of Christ too rich for his blood. H. erectus becomes an alcoholic, the he gets into heroine. He starts selling his body for more booze and heroine until he eventually catches AIDS. Fortunately we've made great progress in treating AIDS, and he later converts to Christianity and is cured of his smack addiction. Unfortunately his conversion to Christ means he still has to take Communion, and he's joined one of those churches that refuses to let you use grape juice. He steals the communion wine, gets drunk, passes out on his vomit and dies alone in the gutter. After which Jesus returns to have the last laugh, since Homo erectus don't have souls and his conversion means nothing.
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Re: Ask me about evolution

Postby Anglerphobe » Sun Nov 13, 2016 12:30 am

Okay, a serious one now. Why does South America have an abundance of monkeys while North America is almost entirely monkey-free? I really can't wrap my head around it. The continents of Africa and South America separated far too long ago for them to simply be the two divergent halves of an existing population, and I can conceive of no feasible way that a monkey could reach the new world from the old.
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