4.07: Watergate

[jsc]

What I am saying is that your basic premise for your argument was false. You were using a social arguement instead of a biologic one. You just inserted biological for reasons of authority. You have done no measuring you are making assumptions and not MEASURING anything but your own assumptions and if you use a false biological argument it gives an authority to the argument that is not there.

It is like saying that Black people are inferior, as has been done for years use convenient samples of whoever, Bell shaped curve was the last big splash, and giving also sorts of evidence, test results etc. All the while not realizing that being Black is a social ascription, some of my friends pass because they are more "white featured" than Black featured. That is what happened to my son. He has what is considered small features and so he can't be Black. (His father was Xosha and Zulu...you tell me!) According to the out of Africa Theory we are all Black anyway and of us went to Europe, some of us went to AsiA and Australia and America and some of us stayed home. We are all one species and while people use the term race to group types of peoples usually by color there is only one race Human. I do equate race and sub-species. So even before the people start their arguement on Black's as superior or inferior they have ignored two basic facts. 1. We are all one species 2. Cultural ascription does not equal color!

You are attempting the same type of arguement. When I say document you can't you can only give me opinion. Sorry but that is biology! For fun read S.J. Gould's, "The Mismeasure of Man"

 

[padders]

ok i am lost. What assumption of my argument do you not like? Also not sure what the measuring bit is about, i can't of course measure the change in what happens to those little aliens as a result of the environmental shock of the wormhole because, well for 1 they don't exist. It is a hypothesis not a fact i am attempting to or trying to prove.

I do not really see how my argument is anything like saying that "black people are inferior". That is a moral/social judgement and has nothing to do with evolution. I agree completly with you that using evolution as a value judgement is completly wrong - it confers no value on anything but is a simply a mechanism. It is like saying "volcanoes are evil".

I also completly agree that humans are humans what ever colour their skin may be. This does not however require that there are no differences in different colours of people at all. Sports scientists have frequently argued that black people are better sprinters/runners and white people better swimmers - all because of slight physical differences. This again is not a value judgement but a physcial difference. In this area what is important also is not taking results at face value.

But i am going so far away from what i was originally trying to say i thnk i have lost what i was actually trying to say. are he we go:

Natural Selection is not operating when the gate is opened. The gate is not a force of nature. It was created by individuals and its operation is not a random event. The

this is all i was diagreeing with, that natural selection has to be causes by a force of nature. Humans are destroying rainforests. The animals/species that live in these rainforests are evolving because of this, lack of space, new climate once rainforest has gone. It is still natural selection just because it is humans that have done it makes no difference. Are humans not natural or part of nature? what makes them not natural? So that is all i was disagreeing with.

 

[jsc]

Let us start one arguement at a time. The premise one first. You are using words from a SCIENTIFIC DOMAIN that have specific meanings and obligations and using them in a SOCIAL DOMAIN context with out the obligaions and as an authoritative backup with out proof.

Yes, you caught on that they were not testable assumptions because there was no way to measure them (and also because we are argueing about a fictitious story). It is this misuse of scientific terminology that I object to and is causing much of the fuss because you applied it socially and not scientifically. (I know you agree with me about Black people that is why I used that arguement about applying SCIENTIFIC CONCEPTS to a SOCIAL arguement. I thought you could see that false premise more easily than if I used a controversal subject!)

1. Premise arguement one - Domain Clash.

2. Evolution. One we can not go into because you are a Neo-Darwinist and I am a Punctuated Equilibriumist and follow Gould and Stanley. Rate of evoultionary change and causations differences. We believe that Natural Selection works on a stable or in stasis population (for example).

Problem with the rainforest. I am a person that believes as you do that humans are a part of nature. The difference is I believe that we are causing mass extinction there ... NOT the evolution of any species. NATURAL SELECTION ONLY WORKS ON THE GENETIC VARIATION WITHIN A SPECIES. EXTINCTION DOES NOT CARE ABOUT GENETICS it does not work on a genetic level of the population (This is a biologic fact! not a hypothesis and it is no assumption!) A species can not evolve when it is dead.(Neo-Darwinists and PE people agree)
IS A SIDE LIGHT ~ My cousin's son was documenting evidence in Costa Rica (as a photographer with an expidetion from UC Santa Barbara)on this subject. Often in a rainforest one species of insect or frog or other will evolve in one species of tree. When the tree is cut down well... you get the picture. A rain forest does not usually have trees clustered by type unless it is regrowth not climax vegetation. The soil being high in aluminum and calcite turnes into caliche and what moves in gradually is a different type of biota.
What we are seeing here is humans 'controlling' nature for their own uses.


[Edited by jsc on 11-08-2000 at 07:22 AM]

 

[padders]

Right...

1) rainforest..

- exstinction i agree is not evolution really. Although it may be possible to argue that the species that do survive burning of the rainforests are given a selective advantage thus evolving. I remember watching a video about a plant that reproduced by being burnt in the bush fires that happen every now and again. It would keeps it seeds inside for up to 5 years and only when burnt would the seeds be freed to survive. So, the burning of the rainforest may provide an path for one species evolution over another. Of course species that are destroyed can't any longer evolve but something will fill their place - thus given an advantage.
- I am being accused of mixing social with scienctific which i will come onto but i think you are also passing a value judgement onto evolution. Ie evolution has to be ethically neutral, ie by an act of nature. I agree that destroying the rain forest is wrong, and that species biodiversity is extremley important. Despite this, it does not stop it being evolution. Global warming is bad, without getting on to an argument about whether it is humans burning carbon fuels that cause it (pretty likely in my opinion) then this can still cause evolution in animals/plants. Those that can tolerate higher temperatures (or my UV light in the case of the depletion of the ozone layer) will survive, those that can't wont.
- The idea that "evolution only occurs on the genetic level within a species." I disagree with. The death of another species opens the way for evolution of another. Imageine 3 species A, B and C.

Now A is a predator of B and C so the numbers of B and C are directly related to the numbers of A. The more A there are to eat B and C the more they get eaten. Now, lets say that B and C are actually quite similiar, same evolutionary branch it is just that B has adapted over time to run faster. A can no longer catch B and A is thus no longer a predator of B. Now, C is the only prey of A and is thus in a bit more trouble as A now goes specially looking for C. It appears that the numbers of C are decreasing more and more as A eat them. (of course once they are all dead that is the end of A as well.) The system has not reached equilibrium becaus there were so many As originally eating of the Bs that the number of As swamped C.

Now que a "disaster". A volcanoe etc or whatever happens to cause dust to go in the air that kills of all the A. C no longer have a predator and can thus live. Had the volcaneo not had happened wiping out their predator they would have become extinct.

So the affect on one species directly affects another. You can not look at one species in isolation it is interaction with other. Thus extinction, again, can and does cause changes. (in this case preventing all C being wiped out replaced only by B. - b no longer has a selection advantage, being a bit quicker is not useful so if there are extra resources need to be quick, it is also likely that the number of b will now drop to be replaced by c again).

--

Now my Premise Argument one - domain clash?

huh? which premise

1) The aliens are killed by the opening wormhole

this assumption had nothing to do with evolution but physics. I was just saying that when the wormhole opens they die as opposed to perhaps being able to know it is happening, suck some air down from the surface to fill the space and thus not die.

--

now why can i not use scientic words in a social domain. Is not sociology a science? Why can there not be social evolution? why are humans conscience, is it not through evolution? is intelligence really just random, no is an evolved trait - i assume these are what you mean by part of the social domain and i don't see any reason why i can't apply scientific reasoning to them.

So no i have no problems using scientific reasoning to social things (although i am not 100% sure what you mean by social domain, probably because i see the destinction as blurred anyway).

 

[jsc]

1. Science is a domain with a way of viewing the world. One of the things about science is that tests have to be REPEATABLE and PROVABLE to be science. Scientists have made a jargon or language that means specific things and includes specific responsibilities. Among these responsibilities is careful use of the jargon (language) and the concepts they embody. A hypothesis is something that is testable and measurable. For example, we don't test GOD. That is not a concept in the domain of science but one in the domain of religion! We do test hypotheses about extintion, evolution, the color of paint. These things can be observed and tested!

So when you drag this jargon into another domain and begin stating opinions and labeling them with scientific jargon, I tend to think someone is confused. If you use the terminology use it and the concepts they embody correctly.
To be called scientific all criteria must be met.

That is the reason the people who wrote the Bell Curve were so easy to refute. They used the wrong premise. Several of them! Then covered them in scientific jargon to obfuscate and/or because they didn't know any better. (Social ascription and definition of races to name two of their wrong premises).

2. You have not separated NATURAL SELECTION and EVOLUTION. Natural selection is a mechanism of evolution that works on the genetic diversity in an individual!(CHECK YOUR DEFINITION use a Biology Book or OED or better yet Ernst Mayr) With out genetic diversity there is no change. Natural Selection has nothing to work on! So I can see where you get confused. (Do you see natural selection and evolution as the same thing?) There are many mechanisms that propel Evolution and natural selection is only one. Most people who have not sudied evolution fall hard on this one! To me, and to many in my domain, these words are very specific and mean certain things and result in or are the result(s) of certain actions.

3. Most Modern scientists see evolution and its mechanisms as having no ethics. WHY? Evolution has NO ETHICS as it is NOT SENTIENT. Humans have ethics, chimps have ethics probably even George Bush has ethics. Do cars have ethics, NO! Cars are not sentient. Gravity is not sentient either.
No ethics there!

Where I should have clarified was that I did not like the mass extinction going on in the rainforest. The mass extinction was and is still being caused by humans, the ones with ethics. When the BIOTA of the rainforest was wiped out it is replaced by other BIOTA that is adaptable to the change of nutrients in the soil which is highly degraded usually becoming caliche or another soil high in aluminium. Most of the climax growth that is wiped out does not regrow for SEVERAL hundred years if at all as the specific biome in which they flourished is gone.

After a mass extinction event and after many geologic years something called adaptive radiation CAN happen. But something has to survive for this to occur. Is this what you were thinking of when you were talking about your species and the events involved? Adaptive radiation is not another species or species group coming to take over a degraded biome. Adaptive radiation has nothing to do with Natural Selection. Natural selection does not operate during adaptive radiation events as it is a different mechanism than adaptive radiation is and requires a different set of parameters.


4. Fire has always been a way for certain plants to release seeds. That development is called commensalism.

 

[padders]

ok i have to go to bed now but still not happy with the seperation of science. The idea of God is something that can be anyalysed scientifically, we may not be able to reach a conclusion but all of the work written on theology is written in a scientific manner. Ask Descartes if he was doing science when we wrote the meditations which concerned proving the existence of God and I am sure he would say yes.

The rest i need to read with a fresh head before i answer.. tomorrow

 

[jsc]

Don't worry,padders, the seperation of science is fairly modern becasue of thinkers such as Popper, Darwin, Russell, Wallice and the problems they have run into. Science, as everything thing else, is changing and has changed over the years. The insistence on provability and testability has come about to help separate 'fact' from 'opinion' athough they are often believed to be the same. Science is just a way of looking at the world. It is a domain with its own jargon, belief systems and the like. And still a very young one.

Yes, I agree that Descartes would say that his proof of God was scientific or done in a scientific manner but science and how it is defined and used has changed since then. It would be silly and useless, as well as ahistorical, to say that Descartes is not scientific because we would be imposing our belief system on him. Remember Sir Isaac Newton? Did you know he was also an astrologer and alchemist? as well as an astronomer and physicist and mathematician. The separation was not as absolute as it is today. And proofs were not as rigorous as they are today.

One of my favorite scientists fell into a cultural trap. A.R. Wallace was the co-discoverer of Natural Selection. He was a very well known Biologist and Natural Historian. He was a field man most of his life and as such had intimate contact with many of the natives of the lands he visited. This kindly soul looked at a person and saw a person. He realized that the inhabitants of the lands he visited were not savage primatives but peoples with inquiring minds, just as he. Then people (as was all life) were ranked on a hierarchial scale evolutionarily. Black peoples were at the bottom (Just above chimps and gorillas who were ranked above orangs who were ranked above monkeys you get the picture?) While European (Nordic) English were at the top. He veheminantly disagreed. But he was an ardent Darwinist who believed strongly in evolution by means of Natural Selection. And,as such, believed that humans as a part of nature evolved.

What he did out raged many scientists. He said that God created the Human mind equally in everybody no matter how advance or primative.

That was his solution to the advanced human/primative human debate. He was trapped between his beliefs in an emerging science with its beginings of rigorous proofs and testabilities and rankings and his culture (English European) and his understandings of the peoples of the world. We can only do what we can with the knowledge of our own time! Let us hope we don't miss use that!

 

[padders]

so are we just arguing over the meaning of the word science then. I am still not sure how this refers back to any of what about the watergate aliens!

The guy you were talking about, and using God to say human minds are all equal, i am unsure of the point here. I don't believe in God, if you do and this is your argument then I can't argue with it, we reach a point where discussion achieves nothing and we have to agree to disagree, but if you don't belive in God where does it leave you. People are different, there are genetic differences between black people, white people, chinese people, asian people etc. These differences are caused by evolution to different environments/climates that the people live in. Why is that a problem? If someone wishes to say that "x race is not as clever as y race because" then they can try. Firstly, i don't think it is racist to say so if you think you have some reason for thinking that as it is not speciesist to say "dogs are cleverer than cats because...". The thing is that the chances of there being any actual evidence for this is well, zero partly because intelliegience is not determined by genetics (maybe not even a major contributing factor) and because there is reason to suspect any change like that at all.

I do think it is important to seperate the difference between the misuse of evolutionary theory (which it has) and what it can tell us.

 

[jsc]

What we were arguing about was not science but the definitions in that domain and your use of them in the Watergate thread. That was the start of this. Science is a domain that now states there is a certain way of doing things within this domain (Science). There is a way we use termonology and respect the obligations of its use. Testability and provablitiy are the two main thrusts in this domain.

You brought out of the domain the words but not the obligations and responsibilities for their correct usage.

You were setting up to trap yourself as much as the people who wrote the Bell Curve and A. R. Wallace. The problem is you bring others into the trap. I was trying to point out your problems with the basis of your premise.

A. R. Wallace was a strict Darwinist who went against all his beliefs in science of evolution by using a deus ex machina solition to a problem he couldn't see to solve because he was embeded in his specific culture.

Think red flags,padders, dear.

I never stated that I believed in God or not. But there is this little pin I keep handy, "God is coming, and SHE is Pissed." If you would like to erase the thread from my start of the argument...feel free, I won't be p1$$ed.

 

[padders]

no no i won't erase it but i still don't understand what exactly i said that was "mixing up the domains", lets have a quote here you just hint at it and don't tell me what i said that is what you disagree with.

I might move the thread to chit chat and make an alternative watergate thread though.

 

[sarahksg1]

lol i liked this ep...but i think sinse the russians now have a gate it gives the americans to much chance to mock the poor old russians!

 

[Chilly]

hey

weird epi...ll