# Change in species **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [August 10, 2026, 9:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/change-in-species/1032282 "2026-08-10T21:16:45Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 10
**Author:** ![cladking](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/4af34b/32.png) [@cladking](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cladking)\ **Post date:** [August 17, 2026, 11:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/change-in-species/1032282/181 "2026-08-17T11:05:57Z")
> [@Darren\_Garrison](#): > > Taking just a small segment of nonsense from his keyboard spew: > > “Species don’t much change unless there’s a large decrease in populations” > > As you might expect, besides his being completely wrong, speciation is a complex process, which he clearly knows jack-shit about. You might be interested in reading a little on, for example > > [Sympatric speciation - Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sympatric_speciation) Thank you. Sympatric speciation is actually useful here. It helps clarify why localized behavioral or ecological divergence doesn’t automatically produce stable new species. When populations remain large enough, or when the divergent group doesn’t stay reproductively isolated, the new lineage tends to get reabsorbed as the two groups wax and wane. That fits my point: without a strong, persistent barrier or a severe population crash that forces unusual behavior or traits to dominate the survivors, most incipient “new species” don’t persist. They collapse back into the parent population because the selective pressures aren’t extreme enough to maintain separation. Some of the examples of sympatric speciation even involve behavior driven assortment, which is exactly the kind of mechanism I’m talking about. Behavior can create temporary divergence, but unless the bottleneck is strong or the isolation is durable, the divergence doesn’t last. ---
**Author:** ![cladking](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/4af34b/32.png) [@cladking](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cladking)\ **Post date:** [August 17, 2026, 11:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/change-in-species/1032282/182 "2026-08-17T11:15:46Z")
> [@Der\_Trihs](#): > > It’s pretty standard pseudoscientific behavior, including the urge to foist “the Truth” on an unappreciative audience. 50 years ago they’d probably be badgering some well known biologist to help popularize their groundbreaking insights instead of trying a forum. I don’t claim to be an “expert” in anything. It’s not a matter of everyone else being “wrong” because being wrong is the natural state of life. We all see patterns and try to use these patterns to live longer more productive lives. The problem here isn’t that science is “wrong”. It’s that the formatting of science is obscuring reality because it forces a perspective from which reality can be nearly invisible. Biologists aren’t wrong, they are merely missing the forest for some fungus that grows on the back legs of bark beetles. I’m telling you how to zoom out and what the forest looks like. ---
**Author:** ![Mighty\_Mouse](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mighty_mouse/32/7776_2.png) [@Mighty\_Mouse](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mighty_Mouse)\ **Post date:** [August 17, 2026, 11:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/change-in-species/1032282/183 "2026-08-17T11:58:45Z")
The lack of self awareness is amazing. You can’t say I’m wrong, because everyone is wrong about everything, and always will be! I’m just as right as anyone, which is to say, completely wrong! ---
**Author:** ![Great\_Antibob](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/e47c2d/32.png) [@Great\_Antibob](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Great_Antibob)\ **Post date:** [August 17, 2026, 12:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/change-in-species/1032282/184 "2026-08-17T12:01:07Z")
Well, sure, but by their own (internally inconsistent) definition, they also have to be wrong about everybody being wrong. And then, it’s turtles all the way down ---
**Author:** ![cladking](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/4af34b/32.png) [@cladking](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cladking)\ **Post date:** [August 17, 2026, 12:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/change-in-species/1032282/185 "2026-08-17T12:21:22Z")
> [@Mighty\_Mouse](#): > > The lack of self awareness is amazing. You can’t say I’m wrong, because everyone is wrong about everything, and always will be! I’m just as right as anyone, which is to say, completely wrong! No… I’m saying life is a lesson in becoming less wrong. Science attempts to become less wrong through using experiment to recurse categories but hit a stumbling block in 1925 by confusing constraints for forces just as they had confused behavior for nature in living things. Rabbits act like rabbits because their DNA defines them. It defines how they develop from long before they are zygotes for all eternity because their behavior reverberates through time. The butterfly that flaps its wings in China might no longer exist when the hurricane spawns. Ancient science failed because it became too complex and modern science is stalled because our categorical understanding is becoming more complex and more removed from reality. We are wrong because we will never be able to predict. We will never be able to clap our hands to remove the deleterious effects of the butterfly or create a wondrous structure. Reality is too complex. It occurs everywhere at once regardless of your time zone or the era one chooses to live. ---
**Author:** ![cladking](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/4af34b/32.png) [@cladking](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cladking)\ **Post date:** [August 17, 2026, 12:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/change-in-species/1032282/186 "2026-08-17T12:25:43Z")
My point isn’t that prediction is impossible or that science is stalled. It’s that certain kinds of complexity, the kind that emerges from interacting constraints across time, don’t show up cleanly when you slice reality into discrete forces or discrete traits. You can miss the large patterns because the framework highlights the small ones. ---
**Author:** ![RitterSport](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rittersport/32/6326_2.png) [@RitterSport](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RitterSport)\ **Post date:** [August 17, 2026, 12:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/change-in-species/1032282/187 "2026-08-17T12:29:17Z")
Subject verb predicate. Subject verb predicate. It’s all syntactically correct, it’s just that the actual content is nonsense, like “Colorless green ideas sleep furiously” (hat tip to Steven Pinker). ETA: Pinker actually got it from Noam Chomsky. Learn something new every day, just not from the OP. ---
**Author:** ![Irishman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/b487fb/32.png) [@Irishman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Irishman)\ **Post date:** [August 17, 2026, 1:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/change-in-species/1032282/188 "2026-08-17T13:46:52Z")
> [@Pleonast](#): > > Everything above is correct, and I’d like to make explicit a useful concept: grade. A “grade” is a fuzzy collection of features that describe what a species does and how. The stereotypical grade is “fish”, that is basically that any animal that moves about in the sea. Or, “tree”, which is any tall self-supporting plant. > > A grade is useful for communicating with other people. “I caught a fish while sitting under a tree” is a useful statement in some contexts even if “fish” could mean _Glyphis siamensis_ or _Henicorhynchus siamensis_ and “tree” could mean _Pinus palustris_ or _Quercus palustris_. We don’t often need scientific precision when describing our afternoon’s pasttime. Thank you for this contribution! I’ve made this observation and comment, but I was unaware someone coined a term for it. “Fish” is a term from deep past, so naturally it has little connection to the underlying structure of biology. It’s a broad generic concept. And it has multitude uses, from “fish-shaped” fish to fishlike things such as rays and eels to any animals from the water. Trying to use a term like that in scientific classification is just asking for confusion. Mapping generic vague categories to clades is an exercise in creating terms for the distinctions, e.g. shellfish. It’s human nature to think about the categories and lump and separate to try to understand. The challenge is to separate one type of category from a different type of category. _Grade_ is a useful term for doing that. ---
**Author:** ![Pleonast](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pleonast/32/1183_2.png) [@Pleonast](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pleonast)\ **Post date:** [August 17, 2026, 2:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/change-in-species/1032282/189 "2026-08-17T14:33:03Z")
> [@Pleonast](#): > > A grade is useful for communicating with other people. “I caught a fish while sitting under a tree” is a useful statement in some contexts I’m very disappointed that no one replied to my straight line with: “why it was sitting under the tree, I’ll never know”. ---
**Author:** ![RitterSport](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rittersport/32/6326_2.png) [@RitterSport](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RitterSport)\ **Post date:** [August 17, 2026, 2:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/change-in-species/1032282/190 "2026-08-17T14:33:43Z")
Sorry, I was too busy dealing with the elephant. ---
**Author:** ![cladking](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/4af34b/32.png) [@cladking](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cladking)\ **Post date:** [August 17, 2026, 2:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/change-in-species/1032282/191 "2026-08-17T14:48:31Z")
> [@RitterSport](#): > > Subject verb predicate. Subject verb predicate. > > It’s all syntactically correct, it’s just that the actual content is nonsense, like “Colorless green ideas sleep furiously” (hat tip to Steven Pinker). > > ETA: Pinker actually got it from Noam Chomsky. Learn something new every day, just not from the OP. I often use my AI to translate my posts into something symbolic thinkers can understand but I get the idea that’s frowned upon here. My AI says the exact same thing in terms most understand. _Homo sapiens_ used to think just like every other species and merely used a complex language that was manipulated by higher brain functions by means of the arcuate fasciculus but fewer and fewer people could speak it as it became ever more complex with increasing human knowledge so language changed and changed cognition with it. We categorize reality and use induction as made possible by the _homo circularis rationatio_ brocas area. My thinking is much more procedural than symbolic and it doesn’t translate well. This is where most people are missing a bet: AI is remarkable at translation and elaboration because it operates strictly procedurally and can then translate into almost anybody’s language. It can answer questions only if the question is properly formatted and it shares the same frame. I wager you could put this post into your own AI and get a good translation but people don’t want to bother and don’t want to question their premises and definitions. ---
**Author:** ![RitterSport](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rittersport/32/6326_2.png) [@RitterSport](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RitterSport)\ **Post date:** [August 17, 2026, 2:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/change-in-species/1032282/192 "2026-08-17T14:51:47Z")
Your AI is puking up what you tell it to puke up. Your content is meaningly garbage. ---
**Author:** ![Bosda\_Di\_Chi\_of\_Tricor](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bosda_di_chi_of_tricor/32/16845_2.png) [@Bosda\_Di\_Chi\_of\_Tricor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bosda_Di_Chi_of_Tricor)\ **Post date:** [August 17, 2026, 3:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/change-in-species/1032282/193 "2026-08-17T15:42:35Z")
This Thread is not about TG Furries? I’m surprised. /s ---
**Author:** ![crowmanyclouds](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/crowmanyclouds/32/19884_2.png) [@crowmanyclouds](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/crowmanyclouds)\ **Post date:** [August 17, 2026, 5:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/change-in-species/1032282/194 "2026-08-17T17:07:11Z")
> [@cladking](#): > > _Homo sapiens_ used to think just like every other species and merely used a complex language that was manipulated by higher brain functions by means of the arcuate fasciculus but fewer and fewer people could speak it as it became ever more complex with increasing human knowledge so language changed and changed cognition with it. And your evidence for this “first” human language is??? ---
**Author:** ![Great\_Antibob](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/e47c2d/32.png) [@Great\_Antibob](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Great_Antibob)\ **Post date:** [August 17, 2026, 5:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/change-in-species/1032282/195 "2026-08-17T17:15:29Z")
I didn’t think a strong version of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis would show up in this particular thread, but there you go. ---
**Author:** ![ricepad](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/b38774/32.png) [@ricepad](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ricepad)\ **Post date:** [August 17, 2026, 5:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/change-in-species/1032282/196 "2026-08-17T17:17:40Z")
I predict you’re going to win this argument (by your measure of winning). Eventually, Dopers will realize they’re figuratively banging their heads against a wall and give up. ---
**Author:** ![wolfpup](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wolfpup/32/10618_2.png) [@wolfpup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wolfpup)\ **Post date:** [August 17, 2026, 5:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/change-in-species/1032282/197 "2026-08-17T17:38:17Z")
> [@cladking](#): > > You can miss the large > patterns because the framework highlights the small ones. So, to summarize all your posts in this thread – and it’s amazing how so much insight can be summarized in so few words – reality is comprised of patterns that only you can see. ---
**Author:** ![octopus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/octopus/32/3716_2.png) [@octopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/octopus)\ **Post date:** [August 17, 2026, 5:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/change-in-species/1032282/198 "2026-08-17T17:40:38Z")
Are you saying that categorization inhibits full understanding by flattening the dimensionality of a concept and when attempting to communicate an idea that language itself distorts mutual understanding? ---
**Author:** ![RitterSport](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rittersport/32/6326_2.png) [@RitterSport](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RitterSport)\ **Post date:** [August 17, 2026, 5:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/change-in-species/1032282/199 "2026-08-17T17:44:18Z")
Needs more gibberish. ---
**Author:** ![Mighty\_Mouse](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mighty_mouse/32/7776_2.png) [@Mighty\_Mouse](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mighty_Mouse)\ **Post date:** [August 17, 2026, 5:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/change-in-species/1032282/200 "2026-08-17T17:51:11Z")
They are either trolling you all, are they are seriously mentally ill. I’ve put them on ignore. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/change-in-species/1032282.md?page=9) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/change-in-species/1032282.md?page=11)