Re: talk.origins faq Hitler claim part 3

nando_ronteltap@xxxxxxxxx wrote:
> http://www.philosophy.ubc.ca/faculty/matthen/Two%20Ways%20of%20Thinking%20About%20Natural%20Selection%20.htm
>
> "The idea is that if natural selection were to act on its own, it would
> achieve optima. Evolution does not always produce optima, however,
> because natural selection is opposed by constraints.

Which, of course, is what I have said. Evolution *by natural
selection* is only aimed at producing *local* optimi within the
constraints imposed by *local* conditions, including constraints of the
rest of the organism's genome. Environment is a very inclusive term.
It even, in some cases, involves the frequency of other alleles.

> But this is an illegitimately teleological way of conceptualizing the
> action of natural selection, that is, by specifying a result, and a
> value-laden one at that."

And yet you object because I did NOT specify a teleologic result and
claim that that result was 'fittest'. All I did is say that the local
conditions and the phenotypes used in the comparison either produce a
result indicative of natural selection or it doesn't. If it does, the
'better' phenotype is, by definition, the one with significantly
greater reproductive success.


> Reproduction is the force in natural selection, which pushes the
> populationsize towards carryingcapacity, pushes the less fit variants
> into extinction, makes variants spread into environments where their
> variation contributes to reproduction. But mostly what reproduction
> does, is to have the same thing all over again.

Of course reproduction produces the same thing. Mutation produces
variation, or new things. Differential success of variants leads to
change in phenotypes.

> You speak of many losses, but then at the end you have some
> "succesfull" organisms that reproduce. How dramatic. But they all die,
> all the organisms die, and the fact that they do, reveals the meaning
> of reproduction in the context of natural selection.

Which is why the important measure in natural selection is
*differential reproductive success* and not lifespan or even relative
lifespan (except as it contributes to reproductive success). In my
example, I specifically pointed out the the 99% (plus or minus) that
died did so before being able to reproduce.

> Through
> reproduction the forms of organisms are preserved, over certain death.

And, for there to be natural selection, that preservation must be
differentially affected by phenotype.

> So we can say that natural selection shapes the population by the event
> of reproduction, resulting, in stable environments over time,

Reproduction has no effect on the stability of much of the
*environment* over time. Reproduction can result in stability of
organismal phenotype in a stable environment, but that is not the same
thing.

> in
> adapted organisms which each part contributes to reproduction in some
> way. But to argue as basic to natural selection that the shape of
> organisms is determined by reproducing more then another type of
> organism, obliterates the meaning of natural selection.

That is certainly not what Matthen and Ariew think.

> Because then
> you have as basic meaning a relativistic valueladen concept to describe
> the traits.

In what way are relativistic and value-laden not opposites? Something
can either have relativistic value or it can be value-laden. The
former means that its value is dependent upon outside conditions and
are not absolute values.

> Black wingcolor is a trait that reproduces more then white wingcolor,
> becomes the explanation for black wingcolor of moths, with of course
> spurious notions commonly expressed, of being better and superior to
> white.

Superior only in the specified local conditions. And only if moths
with black wings reproduce *significantly* more in that specified local
condition (i.e., that the black wings are a *causal* phenotypic feature
that increases reproductive success in that environment.

> Such explanations for traits become all the more ridiculous when the
> variant compared to is actually extinct already.

Natural selection does not *create* variants. It chooses among
*existing* variants. And since natural selection is *always*
comparative, it is the height of fantasy to talk about natural
selection against non-existant variants.

> See this black
> wingcolor, oh how superior it is to invisible pink, orange, and white
> ones, which might have existed, but would theoretically have reproduced
> much less. The blackwingcolor facillitated reproduction, the form is
> preserved through reproduction over certain death, that is the
> explanation for blackwingcolor of moths.

And its relatively (and significantly) greater reproductive success
compared to white wings in a particular local environment is the
explanation for why black wings are *more* successful than white.

> And wait there are some white still left in the population. Now the
> explanation for these white traits requires an extra explanatory
> mechanism called stabilizing selection.

Actually, in the real case, the reason for retention of white alleles
was that white was recessive to the melanic variant, not stabilizing
selection. Recessive alleles can 'hide out' in the heterozygous state.
As the frequency of white alleles in the population decreases, more of
these alleles are hidden in the heterozygous state. Selection works on
phenotype, so it can only work selectively against the rare progeny
with white wings, not against the progeny with black wings that are
heterozygous. That is not what biologists mean by stabilizing
selection.

An example of stabilizing selection would be if the heterozygote were
favored over either homozygote (like sickle cell in malarial areas).
In that case, selection would favor retention of both alleles. More
commonly stabilizing selection is about a quantitative trait, like
height. There is an optimum height in the population, but there is
more variation at birth than there is at reproduction. The extremes of
the bell-curve are selected against, favoring the reproductive success
of the 'average' individual.

> Such is required because we all
> know that the basic operation of an organism is to make other organisms
> go extinct by reproducing more then the other, so says natural
> selection. Or was the basic operation simple reproduction?

Neither. The basic operation of an organism is to optimize the
reproduction of its genes into *the next* generation. That doing so
*sometimes* leads to extinction of other variants over longer
time-frames is irrelevant to this short-term goal. And, need I add, the
organism only has this short-term goal; it has no teleologic or
long-term goals. So the organism certainly does not have extinction of
other variants of the same species in mind. Nor does it have the
extinction of other organisms in mind either. Even humans, the
organism with the greatest penchant for causing the extinction of other
species has only done so *intentionally* once (smallpox) and hopefully
a second time (polio) in the near future.

> Gee if it wasn't for diverging of organisms into separate environments,
> we would have according to natural selection, malthusian competitive
> encroachment, one singe form of organism.

Speciation may be favored by natural selection (look up hybrid
dysgenesis for one condition that favors variants that exhibit
reproductive isolation from another variant). Or speciation may be a
consequence of chance alone (due to reproduction in separate areas
combined with drift over long time-frames, or due to chance changes
affecting reproductive isolation in small fringe populations).

> So I grant you may rightly
> attribute one single species of your choice to natural selection. The
> theory of divergence may explain all the rest.

What do mean when you use the phrase "theory of divergence"? Do you
mean "speciation"? If so, why not use the correct term?

> Let's see what this
> theory says: the variation contributed to it's reproduction in the
> environment. The fact that there are millions upon millions of species
> seems to imply that simple reproduction determines the shape of
> organisms, and not reproducing more then another driving another
> variant to extinction.

You are battling a strawman if you think that natural selection is the
only mechanism of speciation. But, merely having an organism that is
successful because it has acquired a new or variant property useful in
exploiting a new niche involves natural selection (differential
reproductive success of variants) *in that new environmental niche*.
Selection, to repeat, is very much a feature of local conditions.

> Or let's have some species-level natural selection.

It is not natural selection beyond the species level.

> As you probably
> also have seen the nature documentary, the crocodiles tended to
> monopolize the waterresource, over all the other species that gathered
> at the last pond of water. The environmental factor of water favouring
> crocodiles over other species in competition for this resource. Well
> just like the lack of white wingcolor explains black moths, the lack of
> being an ape or zebra sure explains a lot about crocodiles, not.

The above is not what anyone, much less Matthen and Ariew, mean by
natural selection. That is interspecies competition at best. It is
fuzzy-brained nonsense at worst.

> Obviously your referring to lossrate is nonsense. Obviously you want to
> make natural selection sensible, by having both injurous and beneficial
> doing the same thing, losing in this case.

I am describing *reality*. You are describing *fantasy*. In
*reality*, the environment causes losses all the way down each
generation from the starting point (in the reproductive cycle) of
conception. As in insects, most of these losses are independent of any
one particular variant, i.e., are due to chance.

> You should not define
> natural selection as differential reproductive success,

I do define natural selection as differential reproductive success.
Consistently. I have no idea how you define natural selection. You
seem not to be able to define it at all, except in mushy vague
hand-wavings.

> when you don't
> want to have injurous variants being preserved as part of natural
> selection. You should just differentiate the number of beneficial
> variants that reproduced, with the number of less fit that didn't
> reproduce.

That makes no sense. What I "want" is irrelevant. Nature does not
often produce absolutes like no 'deleterious variants being preserved'
(exceptions in the case of bacteria and antibiotic resistance) in a
particular environment. In the case I described (which you again
neither commented on, by pointing out where I was wrong, nor included
so that others can verify your inability to make intelligent comments),
the comparison you would suggest would have me saying that 500
individuals with the recessive phenotype reproduced compared to 99,750
(or so) individuals with the dominant phenotype that did not. That
would tell me exactly nothing about the relative reproductive success
of the two types of individuals. It would be worthless knowledge.

> Then you have natural selection which solely consists of
> observations of beneficial being preserved, and injurous being
> eliminated, which is what you, and Darwin, want apparently.

That is a flat out strawman. It is not what either of us would
describe as *differential reproductive success*. Merely observing the
beneficial being preserved and injurious being eliminated is
insufficient knowledge. First and foremost, because the 'beneficial'
are typically being lost, too, just not as frequently. I have
explicitly stated in mathematical terms what I mean by *differential
reproductive success*. It is the statement that *at conception in
Gen2* there were 100000 a alleles and 100000 A alleles (distributed in
a H-W ratio). If only chance losses had been involved, we would have
expected 1000 a and 1000 A alleles at *reproduction* in Gen2, assuming
99% loss of alleles present at conception. At *reproduction* in Gen2,
we *actually* have 1333 a and 667 A alleles; moreover they are no
longer distributed in a H-W ratio because selection has specifically
favored the recessive a phenotype and made no distinction between the
heterozygote Aa and homozygous AA. We would have expected no change in
the ratio of a to A nor in the H-W equilibrium distribution if all the
losses were due to chance. It is a very simple test to demonstrate
that there has been a significant *differential* effect of the
environment affecting the frequency of a to A alleles in Gen2 among the
reproductively successful.

> And then
> you have to clean up these numbers a little further so that they only
> refer to observations where the "selective" environmental factor
> actually matters.

Natural selection is *differential* reproductive success. That means
that there has to be result that is significantly different from the
expectations of chance alone. It is not a matter of "cleaning up the
numbers"; it is a matter of determining if there has, in fact, been
natural selection or if the observed results are merely chance
deviation from the expected values.

> Please calculate the *actual* natural selection for me in your example,
> that is the number of beneficial that reproduced divided by the number
> of injurous that did not reproduce, and further cleaned up...

As pointed out above, the number you want would be GIGO and
meaningless. The relative fitness of allele a, W, in the example I
gave is 1.333. That is, for every 1 a allele at conception there is
1.333 a alleles contributing to the next generation (relative to allele
A in the specified environment). Conversely (and reciprocally), the
selective disadvantge, s, which is defined as W = 1-s, for the A allele
(relative to a in the specified environment) is 0.333. These numbers
tell me what to expect in the next generation if the environment is the
same. [One interesting aspect that probes the rule is when there is
frequency-dependent selection, where the 'environment' is affected by
the frequency of the other allele.]

0.333 is a quite strong selective advantage. Most selection is weaker,
but some can be stronger. I will leave it to you to calculate the
selective disadvantage, s, of ampicillin-senstive bacteria grown in

.

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