Ringer

I specified that I didn't fall into the group selection camp, I was merely pointing out that your argument against it is much weaker than the argument itself. Who ever said evolution needs a big boost in survival? If only a small percentage of increase that small percent will grow as a whole were the other side wouldn't. A large boost is unnecessary. Why would you think teenage rebellion is programmed to prevent inbreeding when there are already psychological aversions to inbreeding to begin with? Where is the evidence that teenagers leave home for extended periods that would have an effect on this idea? Why would you assume something has to be a good idea for our thought process for evolution to use it? So does sickle cell anemia. But wait, a single recessive gene for that trait is beneficial in areas with high rates of malaria due to increased resistance. If the individual genes that, together, are involved with homosexuality have a negligible or positive effect on an organism it could easily come about. So when did you decide the opposite sex sexually aroused you?

Although I don't like group selection ideas like this, for various reasons, your argument against it is extremely weak. Most of our history we have stayed in very small groups for the majority of our lives. A large amount of people still do and still do help take care of extended family. It's more likely that since it is a multitude of genes working together produce the given effect individually they probably had a positive effect or little to no effect.

I'm not quite sure what your examples have to do with changing genes. It is possible to do this, and actually fairly easy though expensive, but it needs to be done very early in the developmental stage.

I think what both Arete and I are getting at is that, like most of science, if you only look at evolutionary theory as a history it may not seem to have direct applications other than furthering our knowledge. The problem is that evolution is the backbone of modern biology, there is virtually no aspect of biology or medicine that has not been, directly or otherwise, largely influence and furthered from the discoveries of evolutionary theory.

I've seen a few of the episodes and they can be summarized as: "These things are incredible and I can't think of a way ancient people could have done it without advanced technology. It must have been aliens!" The notes taken on this show would go something like: BS, BS, BS, LOL, BS, BS, and credits.

I don't know if it's been mentioned yet but some of us, myself included, usually try to negate negative rep that seems to be given out undeservedly. If I see a post that gets a negative rep that I don't believe should have I will positive it even if I don't think it was particularly a good post, but just because I don't think it was so bad as to deserve negative rep. If well used the rep system can be self correcting.

From what I read, keeping in mind I know next to nothing about particle physics, it's strongly Higgs-like, but the GeV isn't in the area one would expect from the standard model Higgs. Is that something like what they are meaning?

Instead of mower blades you would have to attach multiple light sabers, because if you have a spinning fan of light saber death who cares how many zombies you attract?

It could be applied to many different scenarios. If we want to understand changes ecosystems have gone through and how they tend to develop, if ecosystems develop similarly under similar conditions and to what extent, how viruses and parasites can travel and survive, rate at which currently declining populations can be reformed after going through bottlenecks, which species are closely enough related to allow for inbreeding with severely depopulated species, etc. It's using the underlying fact of evolutionary similarities to infer results. If not for evolution we would not be able to comfortably assume that the genetic make-up of a mouse is similar enough to a humans to be able to do those sort of tests. Evolution is largely about what is a part of us, but it goes further than physiology, or something similar, and doesn't just say this is what this part of the body is it also shows why it is there and possible reasons things are going wrong with it. To dissociate just about anything in biology from evolution is doing a discredit to the vast understanding evolution has given the field. More examples are the prevalence of sickle cell anemia in areas with a lot of instances of malaria, lactose intolerance, polydactyly in areas, etc.

It would have added strength to his argument. He said himself that the major pitfall of his theory is that it doesn't fit with the then theorized methods of inheritance. You can see in his later versions of origin he backed off on a lot of what he believed, and was mostly correct, due to some of the failing he thought were there that could have been easily explained with an understanding of Mendelian genetics.

Well, it helps our understanding of how nature works (which, IMO, is the basis of scientific research). To only think of science as a way to get something instead of learn things it can distort the purpose of scientific investigation. Finding evolutionary history can tell us what kinds of things can happen under different selective pressures as well as what different areas of the world were like in the past. Asking what good is it for is like asking why we would want to look into ancient kingdoms. Evolution's utility can be discussed in many ways. As a doctor it can help one understand why common maladies are so common. This understanding helps one learn what might help these maladies. It can also help in that we now know we can infer reactions to medicines, genetic engineering, etc. using other animals that have those types of genes or need of those medicines. Without the underlying knowledge of what we have in common with other animals through evolution those things may not be used at all correctly.

No, it's just not true. And what science experiments are those?

Many geniuses are still considered crackpots in some aspects. Newton was into alchemy, Linus Pauling believed that vitamin C could cure anything, etc.

I would have to ask, have you talked to a psychologist or psychiatric doctor? You sound like you are having panic attacks and delusions. Also, IIRC, aether doesn't exist.

By that logic we should ask Neil Armstrong about the physics behind the moon's orbit, origins, etc. instead of scientists studying it because he's been there and they haven't.

Because the body develops symmetrically.

Yeah, they still had the whole blending hypothesis of inheritance which was one of the main problems with his theory at the time. IIRC he talked about the lack of transitional fossils being due to the difficulty of soft organic material breaking down or being eaten before fossilization, the methods of collecting fossils weren't that great at the time, the fossils being looked for, etc. It is indeed incredible in so many aspects. I think it's difficult for people to understand what was not known then and all the assumptions and evidence his idea was using at the time made most everything about it an uphill battle. It's really mind blowing to me all the things he predicted that hadn't been seen, or at times even thought possible, and has been proven correct on almost all account. That's amazing for a couple page article and he had an almost 500 page manuscript. It's truly humbling in my mind. [edit] Another after thought, he also did a great job of trying to point out all the things wrong with Selection. A trait that is woefully missing in so many scientists and laymen anymore [/edit]

Well Origin, especially later versions, did have versions of Lamarckism as something that happened alongside Selection instead of not happening. Also some things on the methods of inheritance were wrong, but I don't remember if he goes into detail about that or if it's just something he talks about elsewhere.

Really rods are used for the majority of our vision, the brain just does its whole lying to you thing. A fun trick to show how color blind we are until something centers in our vision is to have a friend have different color cards, or anything with different solid color, and look straight ahead. Have the friend slowly bring the cards into your field of vision from behind you and see how long the different is between when you see the card and when you can tell what color it is. [edit] More stuff for mind trickery look at the books mind hacks and slights of mind. http://mindhacks.com/ http://www.sleightsofmind.com/ [/edit]

Awwww, the poo treatment again?

I am terrible at explaining color theory so I'll just give you a link on what I meant: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opponent_process

Oh, that hurt my brain.

To elaborate, when something is burned it uses heat to overcome an energy barrier between bonds. Overcoming this barrier allows bonds to be broken and new bonds to be formed. The excess heat when something is burned is what is left over from the energy input and the energy of the bonds formed. In the same way a steam engine would use the coal's excess heat from burning we use the excess energy from breaking the bonds in our food to do the things our body needs to do.

No, off the top of my head means an example I can give without having to think in depth about it. I know what an ad hominem is, as I said the remark had nothing to do with your argument, your characteristics, or your beliefs. It was an off hand remark about your action. Except culture is not a characteristic of one's genetic make-up, but the environment in which one grows up. Culture in any geographic region is going to be different than culture in another geographic region, all other things being equal, due to the different ways one would survive in those areas. Again, technological advancement isn't an indicator of intelligence. A place would never be able to sustain a rapidly growing technological civilization if it didn't have the resources to exploit, good environment for agriculture, trading, etc. Not to mention one of the most advanced civilizations of it's time was in Africa (Egypt). The distribution of sickle cell anemia, plants and animals that are not from those particular geographic regions, historical trading documents, wars, etc. No archaeology? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/African_archaeology No records? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_Carthage http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timbuktu http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egypt http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nubia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horn_of_Africa It has been considered and refuted by multiple people. No, biology is plenty to demonstrate this is false. By and large, from a biological standpoint, since Africa is more genetically diverse it is superior. Here's some more stuff on how race is meaningless: http://www.sciencemag.org/content/298/5602/2381.short http://ir.lib.uwo.ca/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1050&context=pscpapers&sei-redir=1&referer=http%3A%2F%2Fscholar.google.com%2Fscholar%3Fstart%3D20%26q%3Dgenetic%2Btransmission%2Bafrica%2Beurope%2Bhistoric%26hl%3Den%26as_sdt%3D0%2C5%26as_vis%3D1#search=%22genetic%20transmission%20africa%20europe%20historic%22 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1288178/ In what way? The middle east developed the system of numerals that allows us to do math quickly and easily which allowed them to do much more than the Roman's and Greeks from a mathematical standpoint. Again, using an arbitrary measurement such as civilization, which in itself means nothing, does nothing to show intelligence. We also get back into the point that by that measure most of Asia is more intelligent, which is odd because the poorer Asian countries score worse on intelligence tests. Why would this happen if it was mostly genetic variation and not environment. Look at the wiki links posted earlier. See what was said above. Your claim needs to be backed. I haven't made a claim except that you don't have enough evidence to show variation in IQ is directly related to race. Every claim made so far is either blatantly false or is based on some misconception (which is the problem with most of your sources). I have to leave right now, maybe when I have time I'll get to the rest of the post.

IIRC it has to do with your neurons not firing as strongly as they were before. Since you had an overabundance of the negative colors, by focusing on the center, those neurons wont fire as readily as the rest. Since color perception has to do with the colors that aren't being seen when you look at the white the colors opposite of the ones you were looking at should be seen. Either that or you see the after image and the brain does it's normal thing of saying, "Hey, it's a face. Let's put face colors on it."