Ron Johnson wrote:
On 03/14/07 18:53, Kent West wrote:
Ron Johnson wrote:
On 03/14/07 11:39, Kent West wrote:
Not to rain on Darwin's parade, but, um, the death of the unfit does not
mean that the survivors have automagically improved. They're still the
same ol' critters they were before the unfit died off.
But the normal ducks will get killed off, ...
Thus, all of the super-ducks will be mating, and any recessive
super-duper genes will come to the forefront.
So you're arguing that the "improvement came to the fit population
_before_ the unfit died off"
I didn't notice that, but yes, that's what I'm arguing.
If they aren't needed and thus don't get used, are "recessive
super-duper genes" an "improvement" or just a rare mutation?
It doesn't matter; the extinction of the non-super-duper-gened ducks do
not cause the origin of the super-duper genes in the survivors, which is
all I'm saying: an extinction event does not automagically improve the
survivors.
It's like a population of crayons consisting of red and green crayons,
and all the green crayons one day get eaten by Homer Simpson, leaving
only the red crayons. The extinction of the green does not explain the
origin of the red. It only means the red survived.
Bad analogy, since crayons can't mutate and aren't affected by hormones.
Good analogy, because I'm not talking about whether change can happen or
not; I'm merely saying that an extinction event in one sub-group of a
population does not cause improvement in another sub-group. Even if
crayons could mutate, this would not mean that the red ones would
automatically "improve" because the green ones went extinct.
I'm not saying that the surviving ducks would not improve (or degrade,
or stay the same); I am saying that the extinction of the
windmill-killed ducks does not automatically cause the survivors to
improve (or degrade, or stay the same). That's all I am saying.
Arnt (I believe) and Atis implied that the extinction of an unfit group
leads to improvement in the survivors. I'm just saying that's not true;
the extinction of an unfit group only means that the unfit group went
extinct. The survivors were indeed "more fit" (for this purpose, and
however they got that way), but the extinction of the less-fit does not
automatically mean that the more-fit will get even more fit.
--
Kent
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