You seem to have misunderstood my point. I was saying that crossbreeding is an alternate mechanism of evolution that has more dramatic impacts than cumulative, random, tiny mutations that are passed on via natural selection. Evolution via convergence, rather than divergence…
Technically, true. Alas, that’s the problem with analogies, they are never as good as the thing that they’re supposed to be analogous to… However, if we just freeze this moment in time and say that for humans, our current state of evolution is “the solution” the analogy still holds up pretty well. The analogy was about the complexity of state transitions, not about the final end point. In other words, to go back to our Rubik’s cube example, let’s say that you were only guaging when our machines solved the cubes to the point where only the center cubits were wrong on two faces. The complexity of this “solution” is not significantly reduced.
Don’t worry, I’m not going to defend my analogy to the death. I can punch a lot more effective holes in it than that, myself.
I’ve never heard this quoted as one of the key elements of the theory of Natural Selection.
As to the rest of your post, I think I can sum up my response very concisely… You seem to have a very generous (loose) definition of evolution. If I catch your drift, the fact that I may have inherited my dark hair from my dad and hazel eyes from my mom is an evolutionary step, by your definition.
Sheer luck having something to do with it? Of course it does! That’s the whole thing about probability. You would hope for many many individuals in a population. Then sheer, random chance will set a trend. Certain animals will have X probability to survive under these random conditions, these other animals will have Y probability (two separate probabilities, but the two groups affect each other somewhat, and that’s factored in). That sheer luck is the basis of probability, of, macroscopically, which gene is selected for and which is not. That is how luck comes into it.
The whole classification system (genus, species, etc.) was not discovered by man, it was invented by man. Genus, species, etc., are arbitrary division. This may be why the definition of speciation is so difficult. If you don’t want to see speciation, you can just define it away.
What I want to know is:
What makes you think a process that you acknowledge occurs outside of mammals is affected by an arbitrary man-made distinction (mammal/non-mammal)?
I know this has been asked before. I read the entire thread and I could not find an answer. I could almost understand those who say that animals evolved, but not man. I think this position is vanity and is untenable. But at least it I can attribute vanity as the cause of such a position.
Surgoshan - Thanks! Your explanation is what I was shooting for but couldn’t quite find.
JoeyBlades -
Rubix Cube: Effective in demonstrating the complexity of the issue but I don’t think that it adequately takes into consideration the forces involved in the process (as previously mentioned)
Evolution via Convergence: Ok - I fail to see how this is counter to what evolution is theorizing. I would basically say that crossbreeding (or inbreeding for that matter) results in the same (or more dramatic?) change in allelic frequency. The change is what is important not necessarily the mechanism of that change. The more mechanisms that we find in operation, the more likely the Rubix cube “solution” becomes (if get 2 moves instead of 1 I double the rate for finding the solution).
You say
As to the rest of your post, I think I can sum up my response very concisely… You seem to have a very generous (loose) definition of evolution. If I catch your drift, the fact that I may have inherited my dark hair from my dad and hazel eyes from my mom is an evolutionary step, by your definition.
Close. What I am saying is the fact that the frequency of your dark hair and your hazel eyes is changing IN THE HUMAN POPULATION AS A WHOLE every generation is evidence that evolution is working. Now as to whether or not those traits are survival traits or not (and so would be kept in the species increasing in frequency over the long term) I would have to ask what your success with the opposite sex has been like (NOTE: I don’t really need that answer
I am also interested in hearing any reponces to other issues I have brought up in my last 2 major posts.
Ah… but it differs greatly. The currently accepted theories have it that organisms evolve due to small (almost imperceptible) genetic changes that occur randomly. These changes are passed on only when they provide some competitive advantage. Eventually, enough of these genetic variations accumulate such that a new species is said to have emerged. The whole process takes hundreds of thousands of years for higher order animals. The “convergence” argument suggests that new species with radically new traits can occur within just a few generations.
Yes, this is my point, except the rate has not doubled. The effects of this are hundreds of thousands to one over the traditional model.
I think you are mistaken. Let’s say that we know that blonde haired blue eyed people are more highly evolved than their darker haired, brown eyed bretheren. If a couple, both with blonde hair and blue eyes have a child with dark hair and brown eyes, do we believe that this child is a step backward on the evolutionary tree? If this child tends to have dark haired, brown eyed children, and their children, and their children’s children tend to have dark hair and brown eyes, is this further evidence of de-evolution? Answer: No. It merely reflects that the genetic traits for dark hair and brown eyes are dominant and therefore, more likely to occur. I think you are confusing two kinds of genetic variation.
I will concede that if there were some competitive environmental advantage for blonde hair and blue eyes, then maybe they could be a factor in evolution, but there seems to be no evidence of this. In fact, evolution seems to favor no hair at all, for some reason…
(NOTE: I don’t really need that answer 