Well, folks, I guess I'm going to hafta admit I can't always stay out of
these discussions and make my posts more succinct where possible to save
time. :-\

Bob Avery writes:

>Wealthy people have fewer children than poor people, and people on
>welfare, >who multiply like rabbits.  In fact, this effect operates in the
>>macro-economic sense too.  Developed industrial contries are barely
>>maintaining their populations, while undeveloped countries are exploding.
>>Even so, the diets of rich and poor alike are terrible in different ways,
>so >it's hard to argue for selective pressure one way or the other based
>on these >facts alone.Bob, good point about the rich people reproducing
>fewer >descendants. That's why I said I didn't know--I hadn't thought
>everything >through.

Good point about the rich people reproducing fewer descendants. That's why
I said I didn't know--I hadn't thought everything through. It is often
difficult to sort out the impact of all the factors except in hindsight or
with debate and dialogue like we have here.

Bob, about the spore theory: even if it could account for the initial
origin of microbial life on earth, that's not what I'm talking about. I'm
talking about how all the subsequent transitions from one fossil form to
another occurred after life initially arose on earth. These are completely
different questions. Unless, of course, one wants to posit that there were
successive waves of spore invasion to account for every single transition
in the fossil record (meaning that all but the first of the evolutionary
transitions would actually have had to arrive in complete adapted form--and
so, other than the first arrival, could not be spores, but finished
products of evolution).

>>Even if only a very few individuals die off before reproduction due
>>to, say, eating cheeseburgers and fries, it still means those few
>>individuals' genes are weeded out of the population's gene pool in the
>subsequent generation.

>Not if other inidividuals who have those same genes are breeding like
>rabbits.  I already pointed out that those few cases are more than made
>up for the cheeseburger-and-fries eaters'  *much* higher overall repro
>rate vs raw vegans --- though you wouldn't know it from looking at
>Tansen-Muni's large family in the M2M!

...in which case, as ludicrous as it may sound, if the behavior occurred
over a long enough period of evolutionary time--say 20,000, 50,000, 100,000
years (whatever)--we would eventually adapt to eating cheeseburgers and
fries. Evolutionary processes don't judge "better" or "worse" like we do,
they just adapt to the behavior engaged in. The earliest insect-eating
mammal (precursors to the primates) who lived on the ground eating insects
would probably have laughed in our faces--if they could have done so--at
the thought that some of them would one day have been swinging from the
treetops.

>>The differences in survival rate can be
>>extremely small and still result in successful adaptation, it's just a
>>matter of time.

>But is it even a good idea to try to adapt to a crummy environment over a
>period of eons?  Wouldn't it be better to try to regenerate the optimal
>environment for our current genetic make-up?

I definitely agree with you from the standpoint of the individual who is
caught in the middle of the transition and reaping the fallout before the
evolutionary transition is complete. That's what most of us into "natural
diet" are trying to do--regenerate the optimal "dietary" environment. From
the overall standpoint of the species, though, adaptation is adaptation--to
whatever the circumstances happen to be. Again, evolution is based on
responding to the contingencies, whatever they may be, and doesn't judge
"better" or "worse." It just adapts.

>We're talking apples & oranges here (yum!).  I'm talking about Truth;
>you're talking about scientific theories.  Science has limited tools with
>which to divine Truth; it can therefore never be totally successful.

How else would you propose we get at truth, then? I agree science is
limited, but then so is all human knowledge.My own suspicion is that
science will never understand everything completely, because one of my
assumptions is that the universe is infinitely complex. (Recent article in
perhaps Scientific American or Discover also goes into this--wish I could
remember where so I could post the issue; the question is fascinating.)
That doesn't mean we can't arrive at more and more useful scientific models
that more and more closely fit the observed evidence.

As I see it, unless one claims to have some inside track to absolute Truth
via mystical union with the universe and expects others to have absolute
faith in their pronouncements, *everything* must be considered a theory in
the attempt to get at truth, for which we must provide evidence. (On the
other hand, I am not discounting the possibility of direct unmediated
mystical perception--I am only saying we should recognize that that is what
we are doing if we are not doing science.)

This is what science is all about. This is what *perception* itself is all
about--internal modeling within our brains of an outside world we never
directly touch except through intermediary perceptual linkages. We can know
our own internal world directly--and if one posits the idea of mystical
communion with the universe outside through some sort of directly
unmediated link with its source ("implicate order," "God," etc.), we could
have some sort of link to Truth that way. But if you are going to convince
other people of your perceptions--if we are to have "shared agreement" and
peer-review, etc., you are either going to have to go the route of the
scientist (in the first case), or the route of the mystic with shared
mystical perceptions in the second.

But perhaps you have another alternative I've missed(?).

>>There is an equation which quantifies all this: >t = log[Qo/(1-Qo)]/s

>Oh, uh, yeah, yer right, Ward; how clumsy of me.  I neglected to take
>this equation into account in my earlier calculations.  (:-Q)

I provided this equation to show it has been very rigorously calculated
that it is only a matter of time that evolutionary adaptation will take
place given differences in evolutionary fitness of only a very small
degree, and is not merely loose speculation.

>>Your train of thought is akin to: 500,000 years from now, aliens
>>land on the planet and find cheeseburger microwear on the teeth of a
>>human fossil and their conclusion is that every human is biologically
>>designed to eat cheeseburgers.

>Fascinating; I used this identical argument with Ward in a private
>snail-mail letter discussion (I didn't have e-mail then) many months ago,
>but it made no impact.

The reason why it makes no impact is that the microwear studies of ancient
fossil teeth show a consistent pattern of having eaten some percentage of
meat in the diet across successive species in the hominid line over a
period of roughly 3 million years, from australopithecus to the present. If
aliens were to land on the planet and find microwear evidence for
cheeseburgers, the time span of the behavior would--at this point--have
only lasted since, what, 1800 or 1900 or 1950(?), or whenever the heck it
was the recipe for cheeseburgers might have been invented. If on this basis
they projected cheeseburger adaptation it seems to me they would be rather
unintelligent aliens not worthy of interstellar travel in the first place.

(Geez, you know, completely aside from the points being made here, I am
really cracking up at having made that last statement just from the
weirdness of some of these things we get into discussing. Gawd, imagine if
our aunt Gertrude or uncle Harry asked us what was so important about the
internet, and we told them aliens and cheeseburgers, hehehe. :-) )

--Ward Nicholson <[log in to unmask]> Wichita, KS