Thread: What You Ought To Know - The Scientific Method

Originally Posted by Carôusoul

What is it with people thinking something is weaker if it's a theory?

People seem to be like "oh if it's a theory they don't really know it". whut thu fuuuucckkkk

Other than bible belt hillbillies, I don't think anyone thinks this. All science other than math is theory.


And that milk thing is just stupid. You realize that in the scientific method, you only need one counterexample to prove it false? I could create a counterexample in 3 days

Well I was being sarcastic earlier. I know now-a-days no theory could be that wrong. But the thing is that some are wrong and/or don't explain every part of what they're trying to prove. The thing is that we don't know which ones are wrong. In fact, based on the pattern history has made, they may all be wrong. But that's not to say they don't get most or at least some of the information right. I don't know anyone who refuses to believe something on the sole grounds that it's a theory.

Originally Posted by Carôusoul

A theory is simply the organisation of factual empirical observations into the simplest deduction. The theory is just whatwe deduce from looking at what's there, in the world.

So we see all this massive evidence that animals have evolved, like the fossil record, DNA etc etc, and all these things that are certain fit perfectly together into the simplest and most obvious deduction, that is of evolution.

That certainly doesn't sound weak whatsoever. I'm admittedly no expert on this, but from what I figure, it's just the way in which to organise the facts we do know into a coherent model.

That doesn't seem weak, does it?

And your milk example is totally stupid and irrelevant

Yes, but you didn't take into account what the skeptics are asking for. That is: If they had any reason to evolve, why are the originals still here? Unless one day a monkey just gave birth to a human, why are there not tons of links between the monkey-to-man transition? And, continuing on the latter, There would have to be more than one missing link for anything to have become of it, and given the fact that the missing link was an evolution, shouldn't it have been even more prosperous than it's monkey friends as a species?

I'm not using any of these to say evolution is totally wrong, I'm just saying there are some reasons why people don't believe theories like evolution.

And by the way, wasn't this going to get moved?

I'd like to make a point here, and I don't feel like quoting the specific posts that it pertains to so, there you are.

There is no "purpose" to evolution. Evolution isn't 'trying' to become more complex or adapt or anything at all. Evolution is merely change. Things change. Sometimes they become more complex, sometimes less. Complexity is really a subjective quality anyway. Sometimes things become more suited to their environment, sometimes less.

Originally Posted by Xedan

Yes, but you didn't take into account what the skeptics are asking for. That is: If they had any reason to evolve, why are the originals still here? Unless one day a monkey just gave birth to a human, why are there not tons of links between the monkey-to-man transition? And, continuing on the latter, There would have to be more than one missing link for anything to have become of it, and given the fact that the missing link was an evolution, shouldn't it have been even more prosperous than it's monkey friends as a species?

Have you personally looked for the answers to these questions from reputable sources?

You clearly haven't, because I've had a very basic scientific education and I could answer these off the top of my head. These are all very entry-level basic evolution.

Or are you happy to assume they aren't answered and not investigate, because it fits with what you want to be the case?

If you do any real investigation you'll find answers to all of these, in clear public knowledge.

Saying things like "monkey gave birth to a human" clearly shows you fundamentally misunderstand and are ignorant of evolution. So rather than shout about it, I can't understand why you haven't simply gone and investigated and learnt about it from real scientific sources.

Why haven't you done that, you're obviously interested in it?


I doubt you'll look into these links, because you do not want to be educated:

http://evolution.berkeley.edu/evosit...1/IIntro.shtml

http://science.howstuffworks.com/evo.../evolution.htm



It really confuses me how you can get involved in a discussion on a subject, with a clear point you're trying to prove, when you know next to nothing about the subject itself, as evidenced by what you've said.



I want to leave it for you to answer your own questions I really do, because you can, you just have to take the bias away from your mind and open your eyes. However if you STILL fail to find the answers I will clearly answer every problem you have. But i'd love to think you aren't that hopeless.

Originally Posted by Xedan

Yes, but you didn't take into account what the skeptics are asking for. That is: If they had any reason to evolve, why are the originals still here?

"Originals" are not here. They are long dead (extinct).

Originally Posted by Xedan

Unless one day a monkey just gave birth to a human, why are there not tons of links between the monkey-to-man transition?

Monkeys (and apes) are related to humans, not their ancestors.

And I don't see a reason why you or "skeptics", as you call them, expect monkeys to give birth to humans. Nowhere in the theory of evolution does it say that that humans are the end point of evolution. In fact, humans are only one of the branches of that phylogenetic tree (see http://humanorigins.si.edu/ha/a_tree.html)
Starting from any organism there are infinitely many possible evolutionary outcomes, humans are only one of them, as are all the living species today.
Monkeys (and other animals) give birth to babies that are genetically different than they are, and over time the population will be nothing like it is today. That is evolution.

Originally Posted by Xedan

And, continuing on the latter, There would have to be more than one missing link for anything to have become of it, and given the fact that the missing link was an evolution, shouldn't it have been even more prosperous than it's monkey friends as a species?

I don't quite understand what you are trying to say here. Could you rephrase it?

Originally Posted by Xedan

I'm not using any of these to say evolution is totally wrong, I'm just saying there are some reasons why people don't believe theories like evolution.

I disagree. They don't believe it because they:
a) know nothing about it
b) are presented with the bastardized version of it ("humans evolved from monkeys" or "more evolved = more complex" or something of the sort)
c) are too lazy to read about it and think about all the evidence there is for it
d) all of the above

I'm about to look at those links, actually. And I'm not biased at all. I have no problem thinking on the side of any of the theories. And personally I choose to believe in evolution. I don't see why you keep failing to hear what I'm saying in my posts. I never said "These are the reasons that I don't believe in evolution" I said "These are what skeptics are asking for" and actually those were questions asked to me some time ago, so maybe that guy was just ignorant or they hadn't answered the questions yet. And another thing you took out of context was "one day a monkey just gave birth to a human". If you'd actually read the whole thing and not stopped to pat yourself on the back because I had said something so easy to target, you would've read that I said "Unless one day a monkey just gave birth to a human, there should be evidence of such and such". Never in my life have I though a monkey gave birth to a human. This is probably because of the fact that I was raised by anti-evolution Christians until a time where I was able to understand evolution, but even still. Don't patronize me when you didn't even read the whole sentence.

Originally Posted by SnakeCharmer

"Originals" are not here. They are long dead (extinct).

I think above I more or less answered your other questions, but by originals I didn't mean the first ones, I meant the animal immediately previous to a certain animal's evolution. The one they evolved from directly.

And also, there was at least one thing I didn't know in the first link. That was that what I'm referring to (and have been referring to the whole time) is large-scale evolution.

Originally Posted by Xedan

I'm about to look at those links, actually. And I'm not biased at all. I have no problem thinking on the side of any of the theories. And personally I choose to believe in evolution. I don't see why you keep failing to hear what I'm saying in my posts. I never said "These are the reasons that I don't believe in evolution" I said "These are what skeptics are asking for" and actually those were questions asked to me some time ago, so maybe that guy was just ignorant or they hadn't answered the questions yet. And another thing you took out of context was "one day a monkey just gave birth to a human". If you'd actually read the whole thing and not stopped to pat yourself on the back because I had said something so easy to target, you would've read that I said "Unless one day a monkey just gave birth to a human, there should be evidence of such and such". Never in my life have I though a monkey gave birth to a human. This is probably because of the fact that I was raised by anti-evolution Christians until a time where I was able to understand evolution, but even still. Don't patronize me when you didn't even read the whole sentence.

The form of the monkey sentence makes no difference, it means the same each way, and both ways are relevant to my reply.

If I misunderstood your post as you asking the questions, I apologise. But it does come across as asking the questions.

Originally Posted by Xedan

I think above I more or less answered your other questions, but by originals I didn't mean the first ones, I meant the animal immediately previous to a certain animal's evolution. The one they evolved from directly.

They're extinct also aren't they?

I mean maybe I'm wrong, what's an example you can think of?

Wow, carou, I gotta say that so far that second link is mind-numbingly simple. And I have one question I seriously need to ask: Did humans seriously not evolve from any sort of ape still around? Because even in schools I've never been thought otherwise. I've always been taught that they evolved from some sort of ape, but no one ever really pointed out which one. I think I may have been living with a very dumb assumption all my life. So was the "missing link" just some random ape that we evolved from, or was it the stage in between evolving from that ape to this one?

Originally Posted by Xedan

Wow, carou, I gotta say that so far that second link is mind-numbingly simple. And I have one question I seriously need to ask: Did humans seriously not evolve from any sort of ape still around? Because even in schools I've never been thought otherwise. I've always been taught that they evolved from some sort of ape, but no one ever really pointed out which one. I think I may have been living with a very dumb assumption all my life. So was the "missing link" just some random ape that we evolved from, or was it the stage in between evolving from that ape to this one?

I can now confirm for your records that all species we have evolved from are extinct.

Well then, that's one point for "just ignorant" on the skeptic board.

Originally Posted by Xedan

I think above I more or less answered your other questions, but by originals I didn't mean the first ones, I meant the animal immediately previous to a certain animal's evolution. The one they evolved from directly.

And also, there was at least one thing I didn't know in the first link. That was that what I'm referring to (and have been referring to the whole time) is large-scale evolution.

The originals are still there. Your parents are a slightly different breed of human than you are. The problem is that the process is so slow that there is only a noticeable change over hundreds of thousands of years, and so the noticeably different 'originals' are long dead.

But unless there was a specific reason, like with the dinosaurs, I don't see why the non-mutated wouldn't have continued to survive. Maybe there was a reason though. I have no idea. Care to shed some light, Carou?

well...he did show a bit of ignorance on the science debate...but I like his one about racism....

I think I've seen that one. It's a pretty good show when he knows exactly what he talking about.

Originally Posted by Xedan

Yes, but you didn't take into account what the skeptics are asking for. That is: If they had any reason to evolve, why are the originals still here?

Originally Posted by Xedan

"These are what skeptics are asking for"

Oh...that's funny. You do, of course, realize that science is a field of study CENTRALIZED around skepticism, do you not? Have you any idea how many scientists, biased and not, comb through the works of others, searching for flaws? If evolution were a hoax, it would have been picked apart by now; instead, though, more and more evidence keeps coming to light that only backs up the original notion. The "skeptics" you refer to are not skeptical, they are close-minded. If they are skeptical at all, it is directed toward science; that is, they are skeptical of skepticism.

You're wondering why the "original" ancestor is not here anymore, correct? Why is the monkey-man common ancestor extinct? One, because it split into two races long ago. Two, because evolution did not choose to maintain the status quo in regards to this particular species. Google "hardy-weinberg principle" and see what turns up. As it turns out, quite a lot of variables have to be present for a population to be considered "non-evolving."

Originally Posted by SnakeCharmer

I disagree. They don't believe it because they:
a) know nothing about it
b) are presented with the bastardized version of it ("humans evolved from monkeys" or "more evolved = more complex" or something of the sort)
c) are too lazy to read about it and think about all the evidence there is for it
d) all of the above

You forgot "It's just a theory"

That was a weird way to basically just end up quoting your open mindedness video. And being skeptical of science isn't the same as being skeptical of a theory. Just as flaws in a theory do not equal it being a hoax. It seems like you took a lot of leaps and bounds in your assumptions. And plus I never really researched what the guy was saying. Probably because I had dial-up back then and also because he was really convincing. I think we can all agree that there are a lot of people who can smooth talk their way out of not knowing what they're talking about. And if anyone was wondering who the guy I keep referring to was, it was a friend's dad. And this was probably all the was back in like 2004, so I would've been like ten or eleven. Needless to say I will try to not be tempted to the side of smooth talking skeptics now that I'm older and hopefully wiser.

And the second paragraph was helpful, thanks for that.

Originally Posted by Xedan

I think above I more or less answered your other questions, but by originals I didn't mean the first ones, I meant the animal immediately previous to a certain animal's evolution. The one they evolved from directly.

It looks like your mental model of evolution is wrong. Understandably, it looks like the following image:

Probably everyone in this thread has seen this image. Unfortunately, the process that it implies is simply wrong. It perpetuates two fundamental, widespread misconceptions about human evolution.

First, it implies that humans evolved from modern chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes). This is wrong. Rather, humans and chimpanzees have a recent common ancestor. This means that about 5-6 million years ago, there was some sort of apish creature that was neither human nor chimp whose population became divided at one point. The two isolated populations underwent different selection pressures and consequently evolved in different ways, leading to two distinct species: one of them evolved (eventually) into modern chimpanzees, and one of them evolved (eventually) into modern humans. Evolution is a widely branching bush, not a straight line.

Note that there were a lot of intermediate forms in the above process which became extinct, as the link Snakecharmer posted should make clear. The vast majority of all species over time go extinct (as the very rich fossil record attests), so it shouldn't be surprising that for any one particular modern species, there are not many extant intermediate forms. And the ones that are still around, we tend to think of them as their own separate species rather than "intermediate forms" from an ancient, extinct species to modern species. For example, there are still semi-aquatic fish with bony fins, which are clearly the evolutionary precursors to amphibians. In some sense, these species are intermediate forms between fish and amphibians, but we tend not to think of them in this way. More often though, the "intermediate forms" have themselves evolved into separate varieties of modern species, so it doesn't really make a lot of sense to think of them as intermediate at all (although it wouldn't be completely incoherent). One of the greatest lessons from evolution is that our distinctions between species, whether over time or within time, are all pretty arbitrary and artificial. In a deep sense, all living things are the same.

Second, it implies more generally that evolution is a linear process, taking "simple" organisms and eventually churning out "more complex" organisms. This is also wrong. Species tend to evolve to better fit the particular niches that they happen to be filling at that time. This may or may not involve becoming "more complex" (however we would arbitrarily define that). A good example is whales. Whales are descended from land mammals that were similar to modern pachyderms (hippos, etc.). Since all land mammals are themselves distant descendants of aquatic species, this means that at some point during whale evolution, they changed such that they "moved backward" to a form that was more similar in certain respects to something that they had been earlier (i.e., they went back to being aquatic; although obviously they retained many of the important mammalian features). This simply doesn't make sense within the misguided, linear caricature of evolution. It is also helpful to remind ourselves that the vast majority of the biomass on Earth is comprised of insects (technically, arthropods), which we think of as simple. However, in terms of sheer population, insects are wildly successful. They haven't evolved into forms that we would think of as "more complex" because they are doing perfectly fine as it is, doing the same thing they've been doing for millions of years. They are the masters of their niches.

Evolution is worth knowing a thing or two about. It is ironic that some people seem to think it is on some sort of shaky scientific ground, since the law of evolution, as I prefer to call it, is one of the most soundly established facts in all of science. There are lots of good books for an introduction to the sheer mass of evidence that we have, but surely one of the best is one that was just recently published, Jerry Coyne's Why Evolution Is True. (The title represents a literary response to another recent book, Why Evolution Is A Fraud.) They probably have it at your local Barnes & Noble. Buy it. Read it. A very similar book is one recently written by Richard Dawkins, The Greatest Show On Earth. I greatly admire Dawkins's writing when he's not being dogmatically anti-religious, so I expect that this book will be a good one, although I haven't read it.

Yeah, you pretty much had me pinpointed on that one. I'd never been taught otherwise, so that picture is more or less how I viewed human evolution. Very intricate post. Lost of valuable knowledge. And I believe what you talked about with the fish-to-amphibian was a ceolacanth. And that itself sort of proves how a lot of the "intermediate species" die out eventually, considering it was, for a very long time, considered extinct. But you've pretty much summed up this whole thread. Or answered all of my questions anyways.

As they say on forums:
/thread

I'm too lazy to watch the videos, I only wanted to say something about theories

While theories are great, all too often, people cling to them as absolute truth. The problem with clinging to theories as absolute truth, is other theories are stacked on top of the first theory. And another and another, until you have an entire collection of theories that all first require for the first theory to be true.

Can you imagine the reverberations if it turns out the first theory isn't true?

Because so many theories are dependent on the first theory being true - science becomes dogma - that is it does become a system of beliefs - and many scientists actually suppress/disinform or entirely ignore any and all evidence that the first theory could be less than perfect, until their deck of cards falls down

Im talking about evolution. While evolution is most definitely real, the process of evolution required for genetic determinism to be true. Now genetic determinism was always a THEORY. There was never, never, absolute or objective proof of it.

Well, it turns out genetic determinism isn't as true as we were taught it was, because the DNA is incapable of activating itself. Not only is DNA incapable of activating itself, it simply sits there until the cell does something with the DNA. And the single cell only messes with DNA when it receives certain signals in the environment. Making the perception of the environment that which drives DNA to evolve/mutate!

Not only is now genetic determinism out the door, but so is our understanding of random mutations, which aren't actually so random. A simple test was done. Knowing that bacteria mutate quickly, several batches of the same bacteria were placed into different containers. In each container was the same 'hostile' environment for the bacteria. The test was simple, will the bacteria mutate? And will each batch show a different mutation? It was expected that they would show a different mutation in each batch, because....mutations were believed to be 'random'

Yes, the batches did mutate, but they showed the SAME mutations even though each bacteria colony was separate from the other.

This means that mutations aren't as random as we think. And the environment, and the perception of the environment, plays a huge role in 'deciding' what those mutations will be.

However, random mutations have been witnessed by our cell biologists. But the story gets even stranger. It appears random mutation is still self-initiated. After all, because DNA does nothing. It just sits there until the cell messes with it. Why does the single cell initiate random mutation of its own DNA? It's like throwing the dice, maybe it'll get lucky and 'win' and survive in it's environment better.

The point is.......while theories are founded on sound science, or the scientific method, history shows us once again that our theories for the most part remain a work in progress. We shouldn't hold onto any theory so strongly, instead remain the humble but curious human beings

You forgot an important part juroara.

Just because something is incomplete, doesn't make it wrong either. Evolution is very incomplete, there are pieces missing from the theory. The Primordial Ooze -> Organic Matrices hasn't been figured out yet. It's right, but no one has yet figured out how it worked. Obviously, there was no "god" to do it, but something had to trigger it. There was also 100 million years of primordial ooze before any life showed up. The singular -> multicellular life is also a big question, lots of theories are viable, none of them contain "god." Best bet: more than one is correct.

Gravity doesn't work all the time either you know. So if you don't believe in evolution, maybe go jump off a cliff, because gravity is just a theory too, and it doesn't work 100% of the time either