I don't really get evolution. I mean I read this book, very interesting, but I don't really understand why every animal isn't intelligent. It seems like the most useful trait by far and one that would be easily selected for since smarter creatures would have a better survival rate. Random mutations of things like air-breathing lungs and wings would be way harder to select for.Let's talk wings for a second. Birds come from reptiles, I can buy that. But an animal can only fly if it has a lot going for it, it needs to be light, small, and have full wings. It would take millions of years for a bird capable of flight to emerge from a lizard. Until that happens, what benefit is it for a lizard to have shitty half-formed wings? Why are these genes selected for early in order to make birds possible later?
Evolution does not make every animal intelligent because intelligence is incredibly expensive to maintain, and survival only requires being good enough for a specific environment. An animal with 10% of a wing cannot fly, correct. BUT Those proto-wings were never meant for flying in the first place (Thermoregulation, WAIR, Communication, Mating etc.)
>>25582683>what benefit is it for a lizard to have shitty half-formed wings?Rude.
>>25582683You've demonstrated a total lack of understanding of the mechanism at play. There is no agent thinking "wow, it would be great if we developed intelligence". The only pathway is if one generation has more and less intelligent members and the more intelligent ones have a survival/reproduction edge. And as others have mentioned, most species go through periods of time when food is scarce, and having a complex brain is resource intensive, meaning you starve to death quicker if you have a bigger brain. Thus, in a fairly common situation facing most animals, being slightly dumber but biologically frugal means you are more fit to survive.
>>25582683>Raptors develop powerful arms/pecs to catch and hold prey>Same arms can be used to climb trees >Tree climbing raptors jump from tree to tree instead of coming down first>Same selection pressure that led to flying squirrels led to raptors arm feathers to develop in ways they can catch air and glide a bit>Same arms/pecs muscles used to climb trees can be used to flap these proto-wings to get some lift and jump/glide fartherFrom here it's just more gradual improvements until you get full flight
>>25582683>but I don't really understand why every animal isn't intelligent. It seems like the most useful trait by far and one that would be easily selected for since smarter creatures would have a better survival rate.Intelligence is incredibly energetically expensive, and in most animals the benefits of intelligence don't outweigh the costs of maintaining that intelligence. Also read pic related, sexual selection is literally the other half of evolution that most people never even learn about. At the end of the day what matters most when it comes to evolution is reproduciton, and the most random traits that seemingly have no survival purpose are essential for reproduction because of male/female preference for those traits. If you ever have a question like "why does every member of this species have this trait", chances are half the time the answer 'it serves a survival purpose' and half the time the answer is 'it serves a mating purpose'. And sometimes it's a mix of both, since a mating preference can eventually evolve into a survival purpose, and vice versa.
>>25582683>. It seems like the most useful trait by far Lmao no it's not. Cockroaches will outlive our species.
>>25582906> Intelligence is incredibly energetically expensiveCan it be quantified somehow, how expensive it is? Why is it more expensive than a pair of wings or whatever?
>>25582923>Can it be quantified somehow, how expensive it is?Yeah, we literally quantify it in calories. Nervous tissue is fucking expensive to upkeep, and it's working 24/7, even when you're sleeping. Bigger brains are made up of more nervous tissue, and more complex brains require more calories to feed them. A pair of wings however aren't burning very much energy when you're not using them, because wings are just muscle tissue connected to bone. Studies have been done on selecting for intelligence in flies, and they found that flies selected for higher intelligence have significantly shorter lifespans.
What's so great about being alive?
>>25582981Why did evolution select for this anon to be so bitter? What is the benefit of it to his survival?
>>25582683Our consciousness is probably alien to this planet, idk what makes more sense than that.
high school drop outs should not be allowed to read books more complicated than of mice and men
>>25584223seriously. when i see some tard on here get filtered by evolution i remember the kind of absolute degen rejects that populate this site.
>Did he smile his work to see?>Did he who made the Lamb make thee?
>>25583025So if it didn't start here, where did it start and how?
some people really just do have limited intelligence. if u work a job where everyone has degrees they are mostly filtered out so u forget how fucking dumb the average normie on the street is. people with degrees aren't that smart either but it just validates that they can potentially read college level texts and plan and execute various tasks on quarterly cadence.
>>25584244The fuck is this directed at me for? Fuck you robot fuck, fuck off
>>25582683Species only develop intelligence when they have to; that is, when their environment presents them with problems to solve.Sharks have barely evolved in a hundred million years, because they don't have to. They're already perfectly adapted to their environment.
>>25582981In your case, nothing.
>>25584313yeah intelligence takes a lot of energy to maintain not really worth it for most species
>>25584239Read the Bibble you godless heathen. Evolution is the science of Satan. I'll pray for you.
>>25582943That's interesting, thank you, I didn't consider that a sophisticated brain requires more energy
>>25582923A human brain consumes 20% of the body's energy. Animals need that energy for chasing prey, or avoiding predators.
>>25584319>t. tranime addict
>>25582683Atheists be like>hey look, my Bible
>>25582834>You've demonstrated a total lack of understanding of the mechanism at play. Natural selection is an imaginary abstraction that is tautological by the nature of its inception, so you tell me.
>>25584223>>25584239>Don't question the science!!! My high-school textbooks can never be wrong!!!!!!!!!!!!!Very science-minded of you.
>>25584319Satan is unironically the hero of the Bible. "God" wanted Man to be a slave with no freedom and no moral reasoning, to purely obey and never question why (not to mention mortality was already a given since in the Garden "God" references how Man cannot be allowed also to reach out and eat of the fruit of life and live forever, meaning "God" made man with the capacity to die from the beginning). Satan, in the form of the serpent, gave Man his freedom, his capacity to think for himself, the most valuable of all possible gifts.
>>25582869And your proof of all this, is...?
>>25584539You can't just throw around words like "abstraction" and "tautological" as if you know what they mean. You just sound foolish, especially since you don't actually engage with the topic in any meaningful way. Natural selection is the observation of how variation in traits lead to either premature death or sufficient life for reproduction. This "selection" process determines which genes make it into the next generation and which fail to do so.
>>25584578Now this time without ChatGPT.
>>25582683Humans could make use of intelligence because of advanced communication like speech, the precision grip, social structures, and so on. Most animals would not gain any obvious benefit from higher intelligence if they have no way to utilise it.
>>25582683>picrelquakery
>>25584581The thief thinks everyone steals.
>>25584636lack of neanderthal admixture
>>25584252Degrees of what?
Evolution is bullshit for the simple fact we're expected to believe sauropods existed.
>>25584882Neanderthels were retarded compared to their African homosapien counter parts
>>25584957Debunked.That was easy
>>25585063You're exactly like Christians who think the Shroud of Turin is irrefutable proof of Jesus Christ's revival, dinosaurfag.
>>25585063Also I think this is AI. Tongue my anus.
>>25582683>but I don't really understand why every animal isn't intelligent.Angst reduces sustainable biomass. See Kierkegaard.
>>25582683Also Carcination. The optimum evolutionary strategy is into crab.
>>25582683It was written by a brainlet nuatheist who is angry at God and suppresses the truth in unrighteousness. John Lennox took him out years ago, but people act like his theories are still relevant.
>>25585114False equivalence. The shroud of Turin is only proof that a shroud existed. The bones of sauropods are proof that sauropods existed
>>25582683There's no universal evolutionary pressure that says more intelligence is good and necessary, just like there's no universal evolutionary pressure selecting for huge body size or thick fur. Intelligence is one of the hundreds and hundreds of parameters that may or may not be useful for a particular species in specific circumstances. If those circumstances aren't there — for example if you're a nautilus and your real survival advantage is being able to dive really deep into the ocean — then your intelligence has no reason to evolve.
>>25585192>The bones of sauropods are proof that sauropods existedCounterargument: The "bones" don't exist since a sauropod wouldn't be able to survive its own anatomy by all of our understanding of biomechanics if such a creature did exist. Hope this helps!
Every animal *is* intelligent.
>>25584323>I didn't consider that a sophisticated brain requires more energyI genuinely want to fucking murder you.
>>25585229Doubt any animal has a phenomenal state that captures even an iota of what human subjective experience is like, though.
>>25585232Not even other primates or dolphins? How about particularly retarded humans?
>>25582943>Studies have been done on selecting for intelligence in flies, and they found that flies selected for higher intelligence have significantly shorter lifespans.Literally who cares. Fly intelligence isn't logarithmic in the way avian or mammalian intelligence is, where even slightest deviations from the mean are immediately pragmatic to survival.
>>25585235>Not even other primates or dolphins? Chimps and gorillas would never able to be conceive of high poetry, and dolphins are hedonists.>How about particularly retarded humans?They're probably sapient.
humans have evolved complex micro tubules in the brain holding together quantum states that allow us to see unidirectionally in the 4th dimension and collapse probability states with more precision than other animals, giving us the advantage that has led to civilization.
>>25585216A simpler and better explaination would be that our understanding of biomechanics is incomplete. Rather than that something that thousands of experts and laymen have witnessed and verified "doesn't exist"
>>25585216Did you just make that up? Does the most literary board of the chan have dinosaur deniers?
>>25585248>A simpler and better explaination would be that our understanding of biomechanics is incomplete.>80 ton megafauna doesn't die to blood pressure while even elephants face constant struggles due to their size because of air sacs o algo>Rather than that something that thousands of experts and laymen have witnessed and verified "doesn't exist"Every single one of them is a crank without exemption.
>>25585114So what are these bomes from?
>>25585260>natural selection is a brutal and insidious killer>unless you're this abomination
>>25585263>what is the plaster made fromGee, you tell me.
>>25585264A great way not to get eaten is to simply be too big to be eaten. Herbs can get bigger than carns because they have infinite access to food. Back then, the co2 ppm was like 2k or something, literally five times what it is today. Plants were growing wildly out of control everywhere, you couldn't eat them fast enough.
>>25585269A great way to get eaten is by becoming worm food since you stand upright in the most energy wasteful position at all times of the day and your blood doesn't travel through your neck fast enough to keep you alive.
>>25585273you think the oxygen dissipates through its skin on the way up there?
>>25585276Look at giraffes.Now scale that up by orders of magnitude. Do you see the issue?
>if we evolved from monkeys why are there still monkeys?
>>25584578>You can't just throw around words like "abstraction" and "tautological"because words can't be thrown around.
>>25582683This book is fundamentally flawed because it’s trying to assign human like traits to evolution. It’s not intelligent, the best don’t magically survive even though humans want to believe these things. The hard truth is nobody is in control, thousands of random factors determine who/what survives. 99.9% of everything has gone extinct because life is an incredibly complex system of millions of species that are constantly changing in a constantly changing environment. There is no simple 5 rules how it works, the best don’t rise to the top, just unimaginable chaos reigns and something makes it through.
>>25585309That's right buddy. When you e.g., breed a dog for a specific trait, it's actually literally impossible. It simply cannot be done.
>>25585309Ie dinosaurs didn’t just evolve back after the meteor made them extinct, tons of animals alive today are just idiotic like koala bears but they exist. Sexual selection is retarded ie female birds just choosing males with colourful tails. If you ran earth again from the start you would get an entirely different selection of life. The list goes on and on. Anyone trying to give you some black and white 5 dot point list of how it works is pants on head retarded.
>>25585311You are proving my point. If you remove all chaos from the system you can get a more predictable outcome, but almost zero life is selectively bred outside pets and farm animals, all else is stuck in the chaos of an incredibly complex system that nobody can predict what is still alive in 10,000 years or how things will “evolve” / what just makes it through the chaos.
>>25585261>even elephants face constant struggles due to their size because of air sacs o algoDifferent physiology. Case closed.>Every single one of them is a crank without exemptionLol.
>>25585309You haven't read the book
>>25582683>why every animal isn't intelligentIntelligence is not particularly conductive to survival even in most humans. What do you suppose a pufferfish or a deer gain from it? Start making tools with their fins and hooves? Build Wile E Coyote traps against predators? They can already learn from things such as predator behavior, and communicate the very limited set of survival relevant signals to other members of their species. Abstract thought and complex language would be just a (massive) waste of metabolic power for nearly any species, it took some particular conditions to make it tappable for survival.>Until that happens, what benefit is it for a lizard to have shitty half-formed wings?They can glide when jumping. Like numerous lizards and mammals can right now. They won't benefit much from adapting to better flight right now since the niche is already taken by birds, but should birds go extinct - they could gain more and more fitness from developing more and more adaptations to that niche, assuming birds don't go extonct specifically from their niche going kaput.It's like being confused by humans having hands. "Why did hominids get hands before they were useful grabbing hands?" They were two extra feet for quadrupedal locomotion duh.
>>25585154Dawkins is a midwit with garbage opinions, but selfish gene is legitimately a decent framework for explaining many (not all it's just one perspective) phenomena in macroevoliton to laymen. Most people legitimately can't comprehend genes being separate entities from organisms unless it is portrayed just that bluntly.Meme is a cool term also. So most we get is regretting that these things were not popularized by someone not as mindbroken by American creationists.
>>25585313>Sexual selection is retarded ie female birds just choosing males with colourful tails.That at least makes sense because a colorful tail means the male lives in an affluent, predator-free environment.Sexual selection in humans is far more baffling.
>>25585372>What do you suppose a pufferfish or a deer gain from it? Start making tools with their fins and hooves? Build Wile E Coyote traps against predators?Kino
>>25582683My problem with evolution as a philosophy, is that it takes the revolution out of humanity.
>>25585264Are giraffes fake?What other prehistoric megafauna are you going to deny existed? How recently in time are you willing to go? Did direwolves exist?
>>25585279> Do you see the issue?No
>>25585313>Sexual selection is retarded ie female birds just choosing males with colourful tails.or female women choosing taller men... Seriously guys, nobody needs to be taller than 5'6! It's more trouble than it's worth!
>>25585114The shroud is demonstrably rubbed from a flat piece of art.How many thousands of dinosaur fossils are we aware of? Are you going to imply they're space aliens corpses and not really that old? >>25585133Jesus was AI. Tongue your own anus, fag.
>>25582683It's mostly random bullshit, don't worry about it.
>>25585443>>25585341
>>25582683Think of these as niches. Being intelligent is one of them - we inhabit it. Being small, like a bacteria is another. Now, bacteria live in places we could never get to, or survive in. But on the other hand - if we, or other intelligent species develop spacefaring, then we could get to places bacteria couldn't get to. Of course, in that process, we'll bring our bacteria with us and therefore we can conclude bacteria is strictly better than us at survival and therefore intelligence is not the ultimate evolutionary advantage.
>>25582683>>25582698>Evolution does not make every animal intelligent because intelligence is incredibly expensive to maintainThis. Everything comes at a cost. The benefits of any mutation have to exceed the cost of it, and intelligence does not always increase sexual success.>>25584539>Natural selection is tautologicalThat's because it's one of the most true theories in science. If you accept the premise that organisms pass on certain traits to their offspring (which is obvious from any observation of any species), then it follows that certain traits will be successfully passed on and others won't, since some organisms will have more successful offspring than others. The only way to refute natural selection is to refute the idea that traits are passed on through the generations, which is again just obviously true.The fact that it is "tautological" should prove to you that it's so true, it's built into the very fabric of reality, the same way that 2+2=4 is both tautological and undeniably true.
>>25585309You do not understand the thesis of the book
>>25586204>The only way to refute natural selection is to refute the idea that traits are passed on through the generations, which is again just obviously true.The problem is that there is no sexual selection mechanism that can actually account for deleterious mutations that lie dormant throughout entire generations, until it suddenly becomes a huge problem later on down the road. Knowing species can adapt and thrive in their environments in the short term does not explain how this process is seamlessly iterated upon for potentially hundreds of millions of years (or longer) without there being more negative mutations than positive ones.
>>25585337>Different physiology. Case closed.You heard it here, Dinofags think physics magically doesn't apply to dinosaurs because they are made of magic dino cells that allow them to ignore fundamental biomechanics, like 'not dying to gravity actively working against them.">Lol.The modern paleontology industry is literally fueled by China almost entirely.>>25585451>Are giraffes fake?Giraffes are proof sauropods can't exist. Have you seen how much stress their bodies put them through?>>25585452Giraffes have to pump over TWICE the amount of blood throughout their long, spindly necks than humans do. Their hearts weigh about 11 kg.A sauropod's heart is projected to weigh at least 1000+ kg, which means their blood pressure must have been around 700mm Hg, which is about 7 times our own.How does an animal like this not collapse under its own weight?>>25585729(You), retard.
>>25582683>What benefit is it for a lizard to have shitty half formed wings?Picrel
>>25582683evolution is a very simple concept. Things that survive survive, things that dont dont. Couple that with parents ability to make children similar to them, and you get evolution. Everything else your saying, whose whose grandaddy & blah blah, those are more complicated results. But the foundation is simple.
>>25584539>imaginary abstraction that is tautological by the nature of its inception,what a tool
>>25586900sooo u think god made a lizard with shitty half formed wings instead?
>>25586925Not an argument. No one called it "natural selection" until that freemason faggot Charles Darwin convinced you nature is a competition for survival.
>>25585769Just another 'muh genes' tard. Denis Noble is superior.
>>25586995Idk. How gazelles have evolved to run away from cheetas and how cheetas have evolved to chase them tells me otherwise
>>25586808>Animals that existed thousands of years ago have different bodily mechanisms to animals that exist today.Wow. Such a mystery
>>25587043Dragons once flew across the earth and breathed fire over the inhabitants, I agree.
>>25587039>evolved toStopped reading there.
>>25587114Do you agree the earth’s atmosphere had a different composition 200 million years ago? Yes or no.
>>25582683because it takes a long time, geniusalso it's expensive
>>25587039Why do you think evolution matters? Better “evolved” (as you call it) organisms still die.
>>25586737>Knowing species can adapt and thrive in their environments in the short term does not explain how this process is seamlessly iterated upon for potentially hundreds of millions of years (or longer) without there being more negative mutations than positive ones.You know that meme about the airplanes that returned with bullet holes in certain locations? Survival selection bias. That's exactly how natural selection works. Your cousin has a deleterious mutation and it negatively affects his sexual success. Even if that mutation is not cripplingly negative, the effect after enough iterations will be that his shitty gene is outbred by your normal ones. The only surviving genes are the ones that were adaptive for millions of years, because the maladaptive ones were selected out by survival (and procreation) of the fittest.>The problem is that there is no sexual selection mechanism that can actually account for deleterious mutations that lie dormant throughout entire generations, until it suddenly becomes a huge problem later on down the road.I'm not convinced that such a thing exists. What would be the mechanism for sneaky, maladaptive genes? Seems to me that in the rare instance that such a thing occurs, it would eventually be bred out as well, just on a longer timescale than more obvious deleterious mutations.But ultimately, natural selection can and would exist even if mutations didn't occur at all. It is simply the force by which nature chooses which creatures are adapted to the environment and which ones aren't, no different from any other fundamental force like gravity or magnetism. And again, the ONLY premise required to accept natural selection is that organisms pass on phenotypes to their offspring, which is proven by any dad who looks like his son or brothers who have the same facial structure, or moms and daughters who have the same hair/eye color, etc.
>>25582683>muh intelligenceIf you're a retard that eats grass and fucks, what do you need a brain for?
>>25586808>their long, spindly necksGiraffes use their necks as bludgeons when fighting, they're hardly fragile or at the extreme of what is possible when it comes to animal necks.
>>25587219IT CAN BE DONE IN ONE HOUR TOPSIF YOU NEED MILLIONS OF YEARS TO DO YOUR HOMEWORK, I'LL BE MOVING ON IN THE MEANTIME
>>25582683ANSWERS TO YOUR QUESTION:1. WILL YOU JUST FEED THE BIRDS SEEDS AND WATER AND FEED THE LIZARDS WHATEVER THEY GRUB (INSTEAD OF PLAYING PHILOSOPHER-AD-NAUSEAM AT LITERALLY EVERY BASIC TASK YOU WERE ASSIGNED TO DO?)2. THE EARLY BIRDS CATCH THE WORMS
>>25582683>>25582698It's also not a stateless system. Should be obvious but some people have trouble with the implications of a trait being selected for at one point in time and then from then on, there was never a chance for any alternatives to appear, even if they might have been superior. 4 limbs, for example. The lobefin fish that became terrestrial vertebrates had 4 limbs, so everything else from then on is some variation of 4 limbs. There was never a chance for some other kind of sea creature with a different number of legs to dominate the land, because the 4-limbed animals were already there.
>>25587222>Better “evolved” (as you call it) organisms still die.Death literally doesn't matter unless it happens before reproduction. If ""Better evolved""(better adapted) organisms reproduce at higher rates than lesser adapted organisms, then in the next generation there will be more individuals that are better adapted than there are lesser adapted. This compounds every generation, until most of the population is composed of better adapted individuals. This is evolution.
>>25582683that guy and that writeup somehow appear in meme stuff
>>25584353not necessarily. is my mom an anime addict?
>>25588532so there's a chance.
>>25582981thats a serious question (both in science and philosophy) and it filtered the evolution dorks ITT
>>25586737What a load of nonsense. Mutations appear all the time, if they are benign or deleterious, they usually die out quickly-- just blips. Benign mutations that wind up propagating accidentally, do. If mutations that were fine at one point become maladaptive due to a changed environment, they will face selection pressure against it.Vast number of species have gone extinct, meaning they were at one time well-adapted and then became maladapted or out-competed by something else.
>>25585769The world is an incredibly random and meaningless place so it would be quite the shock if the systems within it werent equally andom and chaotic
>>25587222>still dieDoesn't matter as long as they manage to multiply
>>25582683Most of life outsources its 'intelligence' or adaptive know-how to evolution: you quickly generate many offspring, the best survive, and you quickly adapt to your environment. This approach has the advantage of making every individual in the subsequent populations fitter, rather than the intelligence of a single animal, where all the things that animal learned only make that one animal fitter. Initially, individual intelligence is therefore mostly a strategy to adapt more quickly than natural selection allows for, but at the cost of heritability: organisms learn things faster than evolution can encode it, but after they die, those lessons are lost. our immune system is another example of this strategy: to match the fast evolution of viruses, we needed a faster mechanism than genetically encoded defenses, which is why we have the adaptive immune system. However, this comes at the cost of that learned immunity not being heritable: whatever immunity to diseases you have, your child will not, and it will have to go through that same (often painful) learning process again itself. For most of life, intelligence is therefore kind of a trade-off (also often an energetically expensive one, see >>25582943 ) that helps individuals adapt much quicker, but at the cost of heritability, and so intelligence is only viable in scenarios where speed of learning is essential. It is only once Humans developed language that intelligence also becomes 'heritable', and only once that breakthrough happens, you get this incredibly overpowered setup of super fast learning + heritability of that knowledge that make humans the most dominant species on planet earth. Intelligence is essentially an extremely high risk, extremely high reward strategy, where its true power only becomes apparent once youre really really deep down the 'tech tree' so to speakThis also ties somewhat into the wings question. Evolution does not work towards a goal it has not reached yet. evolution does not say "hm i am going to try to evolve intelligence/language now", it has to kind of stumble into some precursor of it and then optimize the shit out of that precursor. The first proto-wings were not selected for their ability to fly, because they could not fly yet. They evolved for something else, and once it turned out they enabled a useful sort of semi-flight or gliding, this got selected for until they got gradually repurposed for flight.
>>25587016Genetic dogmatism is definitely cringe and it has great evidence against it, like Michael Levin's research. I think that what people like Noble and other skeptics should do is focus less on the metaphysics of evolution and just divulgate the solid scientific evidence there is against the dogma. Most people interested in refuting evolution are religious fruitcakes, hence why they are sometimes labeled as pseuds and why they are mostly known for their philosophical takes and discussion and evolution to the general public. Also I do find it really funny how Lamarck is being (somewhat) vindicated recently.
>>25589681>>25589747In general; I think that there is no contradiction between faith in God and science in general or evolution specifically.Evolution partially explains how the "continuous creation" of complex organic molecules (biological life) proceeds and it is preceded by abiogensis, while organic molecules can be found in the cosmic dust made inside the stars, and it is thought that at early earth some organic molecules came from space (you can read about cosmochemistry)This is divinely for sure, it is an intelligence in every detail whether in microscopic, macroscopic, astrnomical or cosmic scale. You have to appreciate "the whole" conception.
>>25587259>I'm not convinced that such a thing exists.Yeah, it does, but that guy is way off about the implications. This effect is sometimes measured as something called "genetic load" which is the difference between the most fit specimen and the average in a population.Humans are difficult to measure because we are so complex-- not just in adaptability but also in mating behavior which is very relevant for a lot of evo psych.Many species' sexual mating practices can be put into a single category fairly cleanly, with maybe an exception or two: male competition, female mate choice, post-copulatory selection (promiscuous female), random / broadcast spawning. But in human populations, multiple strategies operate simultaneously, including the somewhat rare "male choosiness."
