Human freedom is constrained by the mind's content and physical ability

[Juma]

Check what Dennett thinks of Gould.

Yes, Dawkins isnt a great thinker but that doesnt make Gould right.

 

[Juma]

The only thing that can possibly experience evolutionary success or failure is the entire organism.

It either reproduces or it doesn't.

Genes of course come along for the ride and their expression in total, not individual genes themselves, are determining factors.

Au contaire, mon frere. Many crucial functions depend on a few or even singular genes. That is why our version of life has been so successful: a great diversity of expressions enabled by features that are parametricised by a few controlling genes creating a somewhat "high level language". A few changes in DNA and we have four legs, or four arms, etc.

 

[untermensche]

The only thing that can possibly experience evolutionary success or failure is the entire organism.

It either reproduces or it doesn't.

Genes of course come along for the ride and their expression in total, not individual genes themselves, are determining factors.

Au contaire, mon frere. Many crucial functions depend on a few or even singular genes. That is why our version of life has been so successful: a great diversity of expressions enabled by features that are parametricised by a few controlling genes creating a somewhat "high level language". A few changes in DNA and we have four legs, or four arms, etc.

No. Many crucial functions depend on the expression of genes.

It is the expression, in concert with the entire genome, that may effect evolutionary success.

Not the gene.

 

[untermensche]

Check what Dennett thinks of Gould.

Yes, Dawkins isnt a great thinker but that doesnt make Gould right.

You have to be specific.

Dennet is wrong about so many things.

 

[untermensche]

This is a long but great video for anybody who hasn't seen it.

[YOUTUBE]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T5dR4gqCyq4[/YOUTUBE]

 

[Juma]

Au contaire, mon frere. Many crucial functions depend on a few or even singular genes. That is why our version of life has been so successful: a great diversity of expressions enabled by features that are parametricised by a few controlling genes creating a somewhat "high level language". A few changes in DNA and we have four legs, or four arms, etc.

No. Many crucial functions depend on the expression of genes.

It is the expression, in concert with the entire genome, that may effect evolutionary success.

Not the gene.

Its like saying that words doesnt mean anything, only books do....

 

[untermensche]

No. Many crucial functions depend on the expression of genes.

It is the expression, in concert with the entire genome, that may effect evolutionary success.

Not the gene.

Its like saying that words doesnt mean anything, only books do....

The book is the words.

The gene and the expression of that gene in concert with all other genes are two completely different things.

 

[Juma]

Check what Dennett thinks of Gould.

Yes, Dawkins isnt a great thinker but that doesnt make Gould right.

You have to be specific.

Dennet is wrong about so many things.

Of course. So is any person that tries to actually say something about reality. Unlike Gould Dennett is open with his arguments and easy to follow. He wants the reader to understand how he came to the conclusion. That makes his argument an easy target and so it should be.

 

[Juma]

Its like saying that words doesnt mean anything, only books do....

The book is the words.

The gene and the expression of that gene in concert with all other genes are two completely different things.

You repeat that as a parrot. If that was true there wouldnt be any GMO.

 

[untermensche]

The book is the words.

The gene and the expression of that gene in concert with all other genes are two completely different things.

You repeat that as a parrot. If that was true there wouldnt be any GMO.

The gene and the protein are two completely different things.

I repeat it because it is true.

 

[untermensche]

You have to be specific.

Dennet is wrong about so many things.

Of course. So is any person that tries to actually say something about reality. Unlike Gould Dennett is open with his arguments and easy to follow. He wants the reader to understand how he came to the conclusion. That makes his argument an easy target and so it should be.

I don't think you have any idea who Gould was.

He was surly and did not suffer fools very well, but he was open to argument.

If you have a few hours watch that video I posted and tell me Gould is not open to arguments.

 

[fromderinside]

The only thing that can possibly experience evolutionary success or failure is the entire organism.

It either reproduces or it doesn't.

Genes of course come along for the ride and their expression in total, not individual genes themselves, are determining factors.

When Dawkins produces anything close to Gould's 'Structures in ET" you can hold him up as somebody who can challenge Gould.

Gould was an a different level than Dawkins. A higher plane.

I said my views crystallized as a result of Travis, whoops  George C Williams whose 1957 paper on  [B]Antagonistic pleiotropy hypothesis[/B]set the stage for gene centered evolutionary theory. I came upon this view in a round about process as reaction to V C Wynne Edwards theory of group selection. I had already resolved that since one gene could cause the failure of an individual that the individual could not be the source of evolutionary change. The fact that Dawkins popularized Williams and others gene centered theory is of no consequence so your blast is entirely wasted.

As for Gould, I'm a liberal, I like liberals, I don't subscribe to putting my political preferences before facts as theory. You can read part of these exchanges as they took place in the New York Review of books in 1997 and 1998 by reading Darwinian Fundemenatalism http://www.nybooks.com/articles/1997/06/12/darwinian-fundamentalism/ and Evolutionary Psychology: An Exchange http://www.nybooks.com/articles/1997/10/09/evolutionary-psychology-an-exchange/ If you lfind any other explanation for Gould's views than his brand of liberalism my hat's off.

Finally, Both Pinker's book  The Blank Slate and Burt and Trivers book Genes in Conflict: The biology of selfish gene elements https://sunsetridgemsbiology.wikispaces.com/file/view/Genes+in+Conflict.pdf demonstrate how far genetic theory has come since the good old Gould years.

 

[fromderinside]

The only thing that can possibly experience evolutionary success or failure is the entire organism.

It either reproduces or it doesn't.

Genes of course come along for the ride and their expression in total, not individual genes themselves, are determining factors.

When Dawkins produces anything close to Gould's 'Structures in ET" you can hold him up as somebody who can challenge Gould.

Gould was an a different level than Dawkins. A higher plane.

I said my views crystallized as a result of Travis, whoops  George C Williams whose 1957 paper on  [B]Antagonistic pleiotropy hypothesis[/B]set the stage for gene centered evolutionary theory. I came upon this view in a round about process as reaction to V C Wynne Edwards theory of group selection. I had already resolved that since one gene could cause the failure of an individual that the individual could not be the source of evolutionary change. The fact that Dawkins popularized Williams and others gene centered theory is of no consequence so your blast is entirely wasted.

As for Gould, I'm a liberal, I like liberals, I don't subscribe to putting my political preferences before facts as theory. You can read part of these exchanges as they took place in the New York Review of books in 1997 and 1998 by reading Darwinian Fundemenatalism http://www.nybooks.com/articles/1997/06/12/darwinian-fundamentalism/ and Evolutionary Psychology: An Exchange http://www.nybooks.com/articles/1997/10/09/evolutionary-psychology-an-exchange/ If you lfind any other explanation for Gould's views than his brand of liberalism my hat's off.

Finally, Both Pinker's book  The Blank Slate and Burt and Trivers book Genes in Conflict: The biology of selfish gene elements https://sunsetridgemsbiology.wikispaces.com/file/view/Genes+in+Conflict.pdf demonstrate how far genetic theory has come since the good old Gould years.

I doubt you can conjur up a reply as dense as the one I just provided you. Just have the courtesy of reading the references or at least scanning overview of them before you come with another off point half cocked insulting response. This topic is serious business to me. Politics has no place in science. Cocktail party repartee won't cut it.

 

[untermensche]

I doubt you can conjur up a reply as dense as the one I just provided you. Just have the courtesy of reading the references or at least scanning overview of them before you come with another off point half cocked insulting response. This topic is serious business to me. Politics has no place in science. Cocktail party repartee won't cut it.

Your comments about Gould are nothing but ignorant cocktail party repartee.

Have you read chapter eight in Gould's "The Structure of Evolutionary Theory"?

Because anybody that was serious would have.

 

[fromderinside]

I doubt you can conjur up a reply as dense as the one I just provided you. Just have the courtesy of reading the references or at least scanning overview of them before you come with another off point half cocked insulting response. This topic is serious business to me. Politics has no place in science. Cocktail party repartee won't cut it.

Your comments about Gould are nothing but ignorant cocktail party repartee.

Have you read chapter eight in Gould's "The Structure of Evolutionary Theory"?

Because anybody that was serious would have.

Oh you mean the one where the first paragraph ends with "The Romantics exalted individual effort as the motive force of social change through the actions and occasional heroes of higher sensibility." yeah nothing political being brewed there .... /sneer

You really need to try harder to come up with something that doesn't put more mud on your face.

Obviously actual research, logical discourse, and discussion of theory, are beyond you given you being mummied up in Gould.

Just counter Pinker's disposal of noble beast, or blank slate, just try to find some way to break free of extreme socialist sentimentalism. Show us you actually think.

 

[untermensche]

Your comments about Gould are nothing but ignorant cocktail party repartee.

Have you read chapter eight in Gould's "The Structure of Evolutionary Theory"?

Because anybody that was serious would have.

Oh you mean the one where the first paragraph ends with "The Romantics exalted individual effort as the motive force of social change through the actions and occasional heroes of higher sensibility." yeah nothing political being brewed there .... /sneer

You really need to try harder to come up with something that doesn't put more mud on your face.

Obviously actual research, logical discourse, and discussion of theory, are beyond you given you being mummied up in Gould.

Just counter Pinker's disposal of noble beast, or blank slate, just try to find some way to break free of extreme socialist sentimentalism. Show us you actually think.

This is not an answer to my question.

It is a dodge.

I see you at least have access to the first paragraph of a 149 page very dense chapter.

Gould always begins his stuff with something light.

 

[Juma]

Oh you mean the one where the first paragraph ends with "The Romantics exalted individual effort as the motive force of social change through the actions and occasional heroes of higher sensibility." yeah nothing political being brewed there .... /sneer

You really need to try harder to come up with something that doesn't put more mud on your face.

Obviously actual research, logical discourse, and discussion of theory, are beyond you given you being mummied up in Gould.

Just counter Pinker's disposal of noble beast, or blank slate, just try to find some way to break free of extreme socialist sentimentalism. Show us you actually think.

This is not an answer to my question.

It is a dodge.

I see you at least have access to the first paragraph of a 149 page very dense chapter.

Gould always begins his stuff with something light.

"Dense" is the right word here....

 

[untermensche]

This is not an answer to my question.

It is a dodge.

I see you at least have access to the first paragraph of a 149 page very dense chapter.

Gould always begins his stuff with something light.

"Dense" is the right word here....

Puns just don't have the power of persuasion they used to.

Again it is a 149 page chapter.

And Gould basically decimates the idea of the gene as the Selective Agency in Evolution.

But Gould has been dead long enough the bad ideas he decimated have been resurrected.

 

[Juma]

"Dense" is the right word here....

Puns just don't have the power of persuasion they used to.

Again it is a 149 page chapter.

And Gould basically decimates the idea of the gene as the Selective Agency in Evolution.

But Gould has been dead long enough the bad ideas he decimated have been resurrected.

When ideas doesnt survive their creator it is a sure sign that they wasnt so important after all.

 

[untermensche]

Puns just don't have the power of persuasion they used to.

Again it is a 149 page chapter.

And Gould basically decimates the idea of the gene as the Selective Agency in Evolution.

But Gould has been dead long enough the bad ideas he decimated have been resurrected.

When ideas doesnt survive their creator it is a sure sign that they wasnt so important after all.

They have survived and I am just trying to bring some up to speed.