Disproving Darwin

[rivers82]

yeah well, nobody ever disagreed on similarities on chromosomes. the problem with creationists is just WHY new species evolve into different forms. In the humans case, it is not explained why nor how the human brain evolved so rapidly. you should type in the youtube search field the name (name of video channel removed by moderator) cuz this girl came up with something truly cool about evolution. it's a new video and it took me a while to watch it all- at the end she explains evolution and frankly it's the first time i hear a theory like hers but it makes really good sense. i keep thinkin about that video so i cant wait for more people to watch it cuz i really wanna share views. unfortunately it's like so new there are only about a hundred views and no comments.

 

Oh by the way she totally disproves Darwin's theory!!! she's really cool- you can't miss her ideas. look the video is called "(name removed)". the evolution part is in the second half, but you should watch it from the start so you can get the full concept

Edited August 14, 2014 by CaptainPanic
Violation of rule 2.7

[CaptainPanic]

!

Moderator Note

 

 

rivers82,
This forum is not the place to plug your videos. Please observe our forum rules, specifically section 2.7.

Because your other post also advertises the same video, which is btw 2 hrs long, so nobody will watch all that, all references to it have been removed. A next violation will lead to a spam-ban.

Sorry if your post was a genuine post. There are just too many people on the internet who desperately want attention to their advertisement / video channel / blog / whatever. We must be strict.

 

Feel free to write down the explanation of this "new theory" here in a post. If the "new theory" is a speculation, make sure to put it in speculations, which has its own set of additional forum rules.

 

Do not respond to this moderator note in the thread.

[Strange]

Oh by the way she totally disproves Darwin's theory!

 

You'll forgive me if I find that somewhat implausible.

[rivers82]

hahaa yes Strange, no need to be forgiven as you have nothing to be excused for of course! however, I think she went one step forward Darwin's theory. in short she states that yes there is evolution but she explains that how it happens is different, explaining the reasons WHY evolution happened, which are different from those that Darwin hypothesized. Briefly, but I think you should read the whole thing to understand it fully, she said that species do not merely live to survive and look for food, and therefore select their partners on these basis- the fittest for survival is not only fit for the capacity of adapting (as it doesn't explain the colors, the shapes, the sounds, etc.. which in fact it is pretty reductive!), but that all species, just like us humans do, eat and fight against predators or diseases so that they can enjoy their lives and existences. So basically, she said it is not live to eat, but eat to live. which is true if you think about it- we do not want to survive just to pass on our species- we want to survive to experience our life- and we choose our partners on the basis of what we look for/desire in life... Therefore, our choices are dependent on what we like, want to achieve in life, etc., to better enjoy it, and all this is dependent on a mental evaluation, on a personal perspective or view of what is beautiful. Beautiful to do, beautiful to see, etc. so what brings along evolution is the pursue of beauty or perfection that lies within our own personal minds. and so she says that this explains also why there is no leaf equal to the other in the world... and it goes on explaining it in detail.. talking about perspective where we lie conditioning our views and desires and sense of beauty, and so how the environment conditions every atom in a dfferent way just because it is interacting on a different point in space and time. At last she said that it is our mental thoughts, our drives, instincts and emotions that play that one crucial role in the evolution of species into what we see today as an incredible variety of amazing shapes, colors, and behaviours... so Mr. Strange, implausible, but not so implausible. check it out and let me know if you like, cuz I know I explained it terribly!

hum sorry they banned my "speculative" post as the staff of the science forum wrote to me (sorry for them they're wrong and i made sure to reply to that) so sorry i can't tell you which video to watch to get the theory!! ahahaaaa

[Strange]

in short she states that yes there is evolution but she explains that how it happens is different, explaining the reasons WHY evolution happened, which are different from those that Darwin hypothesized.

 

Then she is almost certainly wrong. (The theory has come on a long way since Darwin and there are mechanisms known now that weren't known to him, etc. But, basically, he was right.)

 

I am not going to waste my time watching a video. Please let me know the scientific journal where this work is published.

[rivers82]

 

Then she is almost certainly wrong. (The theory has come on a long way since Darwin and there are mechanisms known now that weren't known to him, etc. But, basically, he was right.)

 

I am not going to waste my time watching a video. Please let me know the scientific journal where this work is published.

yes I know that too, as evolution is one of the topics that intrigues me the most- I'm truly passionate about it, and as a matter of fact I would like to reply to every single post I read in this forum, cuz I'm reading outrageous stuff. The fact is that this one time this girl opened my vision connecting a few extra dots to the picture: she doesn't at all go against all the scientific evidence come about so far, she just adds to it an "extra ingredient".. which I believe it has been in fact overlooked... she's got deep insight. So yes, guess my previous post was wrongly- she doesn't "disprove" it, but she adds to it.

sorry I don't know where she published the work. I read an email on her channel. I will see if she replies to that and I'll get back, cuz I'm also quite curious about it.

I'll go through that bit of the video again in the meanwhile, as I know I'm forgetting a few passages. I might quote her, as in the video she displays the whole text of her essay on one side, and then she added video on the other side so that would be easy

[rivers82]

 

Then she is almost certainly wrong. (The theory has come on a long way since Darwin and there are mechanisms known now that weren't known to him, etc. But, basically, he was right.)

 

I am not going to waste my time watching a video. Please let me know the scientific journal where this work is published.

I received her reply to my mail but she hasn't been able to publish it in a journal yet, though I understand she's trying to. However she was really nice and she sent me the text relative to her "Darwin's theory revisited" as it's titled

I really wouldn't know what to quote here for you, especially as this is but a chapter 13 as I read, of very elaborated essay- out of which the revisitation, or as she puts it the completion of, Darwin's theory was consequential. as far as I am concerned she quite convinced me, but quoting a sentence or two would be totally futile unless the totality of the concept isn't first understood.

 

the user in this forum called "Delta1212" posted on aug 6th on the thread "How accurate is the theory of evolution by natural selection of darwin?": (I just copy/pasted)

"I think if you're going to talk about a "primary driver" you need to specify what is being driven. Mutation seems to be the primary driver of variation and natural selection the primary driver of adaptation. I'm not sure it is fair to call one or the other (or genetic drift, which is probably one of the larger drivers of speciation) the primary driver of "evolution."

As an explanation for the variety of life we see around us, why it is the way it is and how it got that way, mutation, natural selection and genetic drift are all necessary but not sufficient elements."

I marked in bold letters the exact problem with Darwin's theory, as he perfectly put it to my own opinion- and this girl pinpointed this discrepancy too. She explains WHAT and HOW the enviornment affects IN the species and IN the individuals within one species, which in turn will affect the DIRECTION and process of the evolution for each species/individual. because we must not forget that yes evolution's got to do with all the above mentioned and rementioned by all researchers, but that however nobody can explain WHY species evolve/split into the incredibly different organisms that we see, in the colors/shapes/forms/behaviours, etc. What is the initial trigger for this.

This is why this girl's essay impressed me, because she does not discern the reality of living organisms' perception of beauty from the math of probability and perspective. She very nicely exposes how the beauty that species and individuals perceive, lies within the perfection of science, giving way to evolution. however, one must read the 12 chapters before this to understand what is and where from this "perception of beauty" or drive to perfection/survival comes from..

truly inspiring and well thought

[Delta1212]

Actually, mutation, natural selection and genetic drift do fairly well explain where all of the variety comes from.

 

As one of my very first programming projects, I built a simple little Darwinian evolution simulation. I started with a circle that I gave a set of attributes and some little green dots that would slowly multiply over time (representing plant life as food).

 

As the circle moved around the screen, it would lose energy. If it ran into food, it would gain energy. If it reached zero, it would "die" and be removed. If it reached a sufficient threshold, it would reproduce.

 

The traits were: it's size and speed (the faster it moved and larger I was, the more energy it used up), color, ability to detect up to four colors, the distance at which it could perceive those colors, how to react to the colors (either move toward, move away or ignore) and change speed while reacting, and whether it "ate" plants or other circles.

 

The initial dot was black (0 red, 0 blue, 0 green), could see anything (0 detection distance), had no ability to distinguish color even if it could see (upper bound set to 255 and lower to zero for R, G and B in all four color detectors so literally any color would trigger a detection if it could detect anything) and all four reactions set to ignore while moving at the starting speed.

 

Every time a circle reproduced, the new circle would copy the values for each variable of its parent, but there was a small chance (ranging from, I believe, 1 in 20 to 1 in 100 depending on the trait) that a trait would "mutate" to another number.

 

So I programmed in some simplistic genetics, the ability to mutate and a selection pressure in the form of food availability (and, potentially, predation), and that's it. No goal to strive toward, no perception of beauty or ideal forms for the circles. Just a bunch of trait-defining variables that mutated completely at random.

 

That randomness meant no two runs were exactly identical, but there were some common patterns that cropped up.

 

In about half of my runs, I'd get circles that would see the plants and move toward them. Those would be very successful for a time but very frequently burn out after a while because they'd eat the food faster than it replenished itself leading to population booms and crashes. Eventually one of the crashes would kill them all off and that would be that.

 

When those cropped up, a predator that would just sit on a plant until other circles ran into it would almost always take hold, both because it was a fairly easy mutation from one to the other and because it tended to be most successful when it's food would run rat at the plant it was sitting on (though it did ok otherwise since the plants tended to clump and circles tended to reproduce in a little swarm when they hit a clump of food, so any predators hanging out in those clumps would snag a few good meals).

 

Of course, the presence of predators occasionally lead to circles that would move toward plants and run from most other circles. Those were less common because of the complexity involved, but I always liked them.

 

I was hoping to get some predators chasing prey out of that but never did. Eventually I figured out that predators that chased other circles did occasionally appear but we're very, very short lived. They weren't distinguishing between prey and other predators and would literally wind up cannibalizing themselves into extinction.

 

What I did get, though, were predators whose coloring would mimic plant life and lead to other circles making a beeline for them. The trait to run towards plant life died out very quickly whenever that particular predator appeared on the scene. (Once I learned that the circles in a particular run that were attracted to plants were actually attracted to the R value of the plants' coloring when a predator appeared that they all ran towards despite it being a bright magenta).

 

One of the most stable configurations that would set in (it wasn't particularly common, but when it did take over I never saw them die off or develop any real competition even if I left things running for hours) was a small circle that would move very slowly and then dart rapidly at the nearest plant as soon as it entered its radius of detection. Without a predator around, they could quickly take over the screen and starve out all their competition for food, leaving things with the screen filled with very small, regularly spaced, barely moving circles that would periodically go through a brief scurrying as plant life recovered a bit, eat it all and then go back to their slow dormant state waiting for it to recover again.

 

That doesn't touch on any of the many variations in speed and size that all of the above could come out in, and even that is a small sampling of some of the more interesting behaviors and strategies and doesn't touch on dozens of others that would all be swarming over the screen at the same time.

 

All exclusively from random mutations and selection pressures, which I'm fairly confident in because I didn't personally program in any of those behaviors nor a desire to achieve those behaviors into the simulation. And that variety was with a very, very small number of potential traits. Biological life as unimaginably more potential for complexity.

 

It's really not necessary for there to be any direct response to the environment. I certainly didn't program it to have traits become more likely to appear when they were most beneficial. It's all an emergent behavior of the system. Anything that reproduces with variation undergoes natural selection. It's both a necessary and sufficient condition for evolution to occur.

[rivers82]

Impressing work! my compliments!

 

significant are the following statements that you wrote:

A) "That randomness meant no two runs were exactly identical, but there were some common patterns that cropped up"

B) "What I did get, though, were predators whose coloring would mimic plant life and lead to other circles making a beeline for them. The trait to run towards plant life died out very quickly whenever that particular predator appeared on the scene."

C) "Biological life as unimaginably more potential for complexity."

D) "It's really not necessary for there to be any direct response to the environment."

E) It's both a necessary and sufficient condition for evolution to occur.

My reply:

A) exactly- it is the individual perspecive and individual differences and interactions with the environment that affect internally and externally the bodies and emotions of the living organisms (lets not forget that living organisms have emotions or respond to stimuli such as pain, fear, love, etc too, and that are not just dots interacting with the environment driven by the search of food. As I gather that we all look for food to have a life and don't have a life to look for food. This guarantees uniqueness. (BTW- I found EXTREMELY interesting your observation that "Every time a circle reproduced, the new circle would copy the values for each variable of its parent, but there was a small chance (ranging from, I believe, 1 in 20 to 1 in 100 depending on the trait) that a trait would "mutate" to another number." would like to know exactly upon which variables, and why, there is that specific proportion in the mutation.

B) This is indicative that it is the reaction of the living organism to the environment to trigger the need to evolve (whether successfully or not); the environment plus other surrounding factors being a motive but not the CAUSE.

C) definitely YES- infinite probability is actually determinant.

D) also very true and I am so glad that you have proved it with this amazingly well done project.

E) I do not understand why at the end you conclude with this statement, when it is your same work that indicates that it is not: again- it is surely sufficient and necessary MOTIVATION for evolution to occur, but it is not the CAUSE. and the essay I have been recently reading opened my eyes to this little but not irrelevant detail, that differs motivations to causes, giving an answer to "why" rather than "how".

However thank you very much for the extended explanation of the project you lead- it is very interesting and I have now material for extra research for a few days!!!

[Phi for All]

I received her reply to my mail but she hasn't been able to publish it in a journal yet, though I understand she's trying to. However she was really nice and she sent me the text relative to her "Darwin's theory revisited" as it's titled

I really wouldn't know what to quote here for you, especially as this is but a chapter 13 as I read, of very elaborated essay- out of which the revisitation, or as she puts it the completion of, Darwin's theory was consequential. as far as I am concerned she quite convinced me, but quoting a sentence or two would be totally futile unless the totality of the concept isn't first understood.

 

It's hard to take someone's ideas about evolution seriously when they talk about it as "Darwin's Theory". This is a well-used tactic by creationists to point to early work as flawed, and therefore suspect. As others mentioned, evolutionary theory has progressed incredibly since Darwin's time. It's one of the most heavily supported theories ever.

 

If this person really wants to disprove evolution, have them tackle the current theory instead of going all the way back to Darwin. Judge the theory as it stands today, not a version that's 150 years out of date.

[Delta1212]

Impressing work! my compliments!

 

significant are the following statements that you wrote:

A) "That randomness meant no two runs were exactly identical, but there were some common patterns that cropped up"

B) "What I did get, though, were predators whose coloring would mimic plant life and lead to other circles making a beeline for them. The trait to run towards plant life died out very quickly whenever that particular predator appeared on the scene."

C) "Biological life as unimaginably more potential for complexity."

D) "It's really not necessary for there to be any direct response to the environment."

E) It's both a necessary and sufficient condition for evolution to occur.

My reply:

A) exactly- it is the individual perspecive and individual differences and interactions with the environment that affect internally and externally the bodies and emotions of the living organisms (lets not forget that living organisms have emotions or respond to stimuli such as pain, fear, love, etc too, and that are not just dots interacting with the environment driven by the search of food. As I gather that we all look for food to have a life and don't have a life to look for food. This guarantees uniqueness. (BTW- I found EXTREMELY interesting your observation that "Every time a circle reproduced, the new circle would copy the values for each variable of its parent, but there was a small chance (ranging from, I believe, 1 in 20 to 1 in 100 depending on the trait) that a trait would "mutate" to another number." would like to know exactly upon which variables, and why, there is that specific proportion in the mutation.

B) This is indicative that it is the reaction of the living organism to the environment to trigger the need to evolve (whether successfully or not); the environment plus other surrounding factors being a motive but not the CAUSE.

C) definitely YES- infinite probability is actually determinant.

D) also very true and I am so glad that you have proved it with this amazingly well done project.

E) I do not understand why at the end you conclude with this statement, when it is your same work that indicates that it is not: again- it is surely sufficient and necessary MOTIVATION for evolution to occur, but it is not the CAUSE. and the essay I have been recently reading opened my eyes to this little but not irrelevant detail, that differs motivations to causes, giving an answer to "why" rather than "how".

However thank you very much for the extended explanation of the project you lead- it is very interesting and I have now material for extra research for a few days!!!

A- It wasn't really an observation. I coded those miutation rates into the program. The difference in rates largely came down what I thought were bigger vs smaller mutations. So there'd be a 1 in 20 chance of the new circle mutating to have a bit more red in its coloring and a 1 in 100 (or 200 or whatever, I don't remember the exact number) chance of the circle switching its diet from plants to other circles (or back again).

 

E- I say that because I didn't program in a motive to evolve. All I programmed was the ability to reproduce, mutate (randomly) and die.

 

There is literally nothing else in the program to cause evolution, which means those must be sufficient conditions to see the observed variety evolve.

Edited August 18, 2014 by Delta1212

[Ophiolite]

@rivers82 Can you explain how plants were able to evolve such diversity? They lack the ability to be aware of whether or not they are having a happy life and ,according to this alternative hypothesis, it would be that awareness that allowed them to diversify. They lack it - so they should not have evolved.

[Sensei]

@rivers82 Can you explain how plants were able to evolve such diversity? They lack the ability to be aware of whether or not they are having a happy life

 

Not to mention bacterias and viruses...

Edited August 18, 2014 by Sensei

[Ophiolite]

 

Not to mention bacterias and viruses...

I was saving that for later. I find nails go in more accurately with a series of light taps, rather than the application of a sledge hammer.

[Strange]

As an explanation for the variety of life we see around us, why it is the way it is and how it got that way, mutation, natural selection and genetic drift are all necessary but not sufficient elements."

 

I think you have misunderstood (or misrepresented) the point being made here. Each of these things are necessary but, by themselves, are not sufficient. However, in combination they are sufficient.

 

In fact, the presence of diversity in a population (of which mutation and genetic drift are two possible causes) and natural selection guarantee that evolution will take place. Of course, there are other mechanisms for creating diversity, other methods of selection and various other factors (epigenetics and horizontal gene transfer) which complicate the basic idea.

 

I marked in bold letters the exact problem with Darwin's theory, as he perfectly put it to my own opinion- and this girl pinpointed this discrepancy too.

As I say, there is no discrepancy.

but that however nobody can explain WHY species evolve/split into the incredibly different organisms that we see, in the colors/shapes/forms/behaviours, etc.

Excpet, of course, they can. Basing a new theory on a lie, is not a great start.

This is why this girl's essay impressed me

Or maybe it is because you don't know anything about the theory of evolution? You might be even more impressed by the real science.

She very nicely exposes how the beauty that species and individuals perceive, lies within the perfection of science, giving way to evolution.

 

Apart from, arguably, sexual selection this seems totally irrelevant.

What testable predictions does her theory make?

How well does her theory measure up against the evidence?

 

truly inspiring and well thought

 

But is it supported by evidence.

[andrewcellini]

i don't understand what the obsession with disproving darwin is. it's as if you think scientists are still using his original formulation of the theory by natural selection to explain biodiversity, but what you forget is that there are more mechanisms known (genetic drift, the bottleneck effect, migration) which affect allele frequency (something darwin didn't know about at the time he formulated his theory). the genetic evidence (again something darwin didn't know about) alone concludes descent with modification. as stated above this addition of awareness to evolution makes no sense with observation.

Edited August 20, 2014 by andrewcellini

[Strange]

lets not forget that living organisms have emotions or respond to stimuli such as pain, fear, love, etc too

The overwhelming majority of organisms do not have any such thing. And for the overwhelming majority of the time during which evolution happened, NO organisms had such responses.

 

B) This is indicative that it is the reaction of the living organism to the environment to trigger the need to evolve

No it isn't

 

C) definitely YES- infinite probability is actually determinant.

 

What is "infinite probability? That makes no sense.

 

D) also very true and I am so glad that you have proved it with this amazingly well done project.

 

This directly contradicts your claim B above.

 

it is surely sufficient and necessary MOTIVATION for evolution to occur, but it is not the CAUSE.

Wrong.

 

the essay I have been recently reading opened my eyes to this little but not irrelevant detail, that differs motivations to causes, giving an answer to "why" rather than "how".

 

The more you write about this essay, the clearer it becomes that it is ignorant hogwash. I hope that one day you will be open minded enough to learn something about how evolution really works. You may be even more surprised and amazed by reality, rather than fairy tales.

[Ophiolite]

You may be even more surprised and amazed by reality, rather than fairy tales.

I just wanted to point out that fairy tales are typically:

 

a) Entertaining

b) Contain an important social and moral message

c) Are internally self consistent

 

On that basis I think it is wrong to call the ramblings we are discussing a fairy tale. It does Hans Christian Andersen a great disservice.