Canceling Darwin

It will be ironic if Charles Darwin is not ejected from his lofty status as a secular scientific saint by scientific and mathematical criticsm, but by the ignorant baying of the savage mob:

Up until now, Darwin has been considered something of a hero on the political left, due to the religious right’s opposition to the teaching of evolution in schools (or at least, their insistence that one should“teach the controversy” that supposedly surrounds evolution and creationism). However, it is quite possible there will soon be a reckoning. For Darwin’s writings contain ample statements that would put him far beyond the pale of what is now considered acceptable.

First, differences between the sexes. In The Descent of Man, Darwin states that “the average of mental power in man must be above that of woman.” And in an 1882 letter, he states that “women though generally superior to men to moral qualities are inferior intellectually,” and that “there seems to me to be a great difficulty from the laws of inheritance… in their becoming the intellectual equals of man.” He also observes in The Descent of Man that “the male sex is more variable in structure than the female.” This observation has since become known as the greater male variability hypothesis, and has been applied to a variety of human traits including, mostcontroversially, intelligence.

Second, differences between the races. Referring to some natives he encountered in South America during the voyage of the Beagle, Darwin observes, “one can hardly make oneself believe that they are fellow creatures.” He dedicates a whole chapter of The Descent of Man, to his study of “the races of man.” In that chapter he states, “There is, however, no doubt that the various races, when carefully compared and measured, differ much from each other… Their mental characteristics are likewise very distinct; chiefly as it would appear in their emotional, but partly in their intellectual faculties.” And in an earlier chapter of the book, he contrasts the “civilised races of man” with “the savage races,” noting that the former will “almost certainly exterminate, and replace” the latter.

Third, eugenics. In The Descent of Man, Darwin states, “We civilised men, on the other hand, do our utmost to check the process of elimination… Thus the weak members of civilised societies propagate their kind.” He then observes, “It is surprising how soon a want of care, or care wrongly directed, leads to the degeneration of a domestic race; but excepting in the case of man himself, hardly any one is so ignorant as to allow his worst animals to breed.” However, he also notes, “Nor could we check our sympathy, even at the urging of hard reason, without deterioration in the noblest part of our nature… We must therefore bear the undoubtedly bad effects of the weak surviving and propagating their kind.”

If they're going after Churchill, they certainly won't give St. Darwin a pass. These barbarians don't care about history and they care even less about scientific history.

A Darwinian theory "proved"

What was actually proved here is that evolutionary biologists a) don't understand scientody and b) are extraordinarily stupid:

Scientists from Cambridge University, in the U.K., analyzed the relationships between the two, calculating how the number of species per genus and the number of subspecies per species for a number of different animal groups.

Laura van Holstein and Robert Foley used information collected by naturalists to determine the “age” of different species and subspecies to see how they closely they were connected.

They noted a correlation between species variation and subspecies variation. Genera with a higher number of species tended to have species with a higher number of subspecies. This relationship was particularly strong among flying mammals like bats. In comparison, land-based animals showed a positive correlation between species richness and subspecies richness—but this correlation was weaker.

It is often observed, correctly, that correlation is not causation. It is remarkable that Cambridge University scientists don't understand that correlation is also not conclusive proof. If you've paid any attention to the non-science of Neo-Darwinian evolution over the years, you will have noticed that every observation that correlates with the revised theory is a proof of it, while every observation that falsifies it is merely an indication that the revised theory requires further revision.

And while one can't blame the scientists for the way the media portrays their work, the headline is even more embarrassing.

Scientists 'prove Darwin's survival of the fittest theory'

They care about white bears

Why don't they care about white people?

The polar bear’s unique set of genetic adaptations could be lost

Some of the recent pizzly sightings in Canada are now second generation hybrids, dominated by grizzly DNA.

“When I say hybrids I’m referring to half polar bear and half grizzly bear. But I know of four individuals that are three quarters grizzly and one quarter polar bear. So we have a hybrid mating with a grizzly bear and we get a second generation that is three quarters grizzly,” says Derocher.

The dominance of grizzly DNA is a concern to both Derocher and Lorenzen, who suggest that polar bears’ unique genetic traits that allow them to live on sea ice and survive on a high fat diet of seals, might ultimately lose out to the dominant population of grizzlies.

“Ultimately, one species will be integrated into the other, and it’s likely that it will be polar bears that integrate into brown bears,” say Lorenzen.

“As polar bears are forced to go on land and interbreed with brown bears then the selective pressures for being able to metabolise fatty acids--that polar bears need--won’t be important any more. So these will likely be lost. Now if that’s your definition of a polar bear then that will be lost as well,” she says.

This is what happens when you let your rhetoric get too far ahead of your dialectic. Sooner or later, even the most casual observers begin to notice the intrinsic contradictions between your various positions. There is absolutely no rational reason why white people who are being relentlessly indoctrinated into the cause of sacrificing their unique set of genetic adaptations to the gods of diversity, equality, and inclusivity should give even a fraction of a quantum of a damn about white bears losing their unique set of genetic adaptations.

Extinction is just diversity in action.

He's welcome to it

Anonymous Conservative suspects others are taking credit for my observations:

Renowned Yale computer scientist David Gelernter claims that he is abandoning Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution. It is at the point I would assume he is doing this on orders from Cabal, so he can be the voice reciting Vox Day’s arguments, and get credit for overturning it. The alternative is Vox gets credit, and then gets a platform, which would also elevate Castalia House, at which point his threat level would go through the roof.

First of all, I very much doubt I'm the first unauthorized individual to happen to notice that the math of the Neo-Darwinian hypothesis doesn't add up correctly with the growing amount of evidence being produced on an ongoing basis by genetic scientists. Gelernter is a smart guy and I would expect him as well as lot of other smart people to reach much the same conclusions on the basis of the available evidence. Second, I find it hard to imagine that anyone, however evil-minded, cares all that much about an increasingly outdated hypothesis that not only has more epicycles spinning around it than the most die-hard pre-Copernican astronomer ever rationalized, but is inevitably destined to be discarded sooner or later.

And third, I genuinely don't care about this sort of "credit" anymore than I care about collecting academic credentials. Observing the obvious is not doing anything new. It's not accomplishing anything. It's like being the guy who "discovered" the Okapi. He didn't discover anything! The Okapi was always there! The Neo-Darwinian hypothesis has always been false, so literally everyone who ever doubted for any reason, convincing or unconvincing, merits the same "credit".

If - when - I write a truly great novel or produce a genuinely great film, then I'll be happy to accept any plaudits that are due, buy a monastery, and collect books. But noticing what is true or not true is not an accomplishment, it's simply a consequence of paying attention.

I already distrust the trappings of fame, money, and media attention due to observing the negative effects they have had on others I have known. The suggestion that there is a shadowy international cabal of evil sex predators intent on controlling who is authorized to go on television and bask in the adoration of the masses doesn't exactly make the whole program appear any more attractive to me. It's just one of the many reasons I don't talk to the media anymore.

Statistical analysis is not Intelligent Design

Reading the Z-man can be mildly frustrating at times, because he not infrequently starts off on the right path, but then fails to make the vital distinctions that are necessary in order to reach the correct conclusions.

Whenever the subject of Intelligent Design turns up, it is always in the context of believers in ID attacking evolutionary biology. The ID’ers have a list of claims about “Darwinism” that they insist make evolution impossible. A popular one now, for example, is that there is not enough time for natural selection to produce enough gene mutations to explain the fossil record. 

This is incorrect on two levels. First, the popular idea is something that I first articulated some time ago before more recently making my case in detail concerning the time required to account for the fixed genetic mutations that have been observed, and it is not necessarily related to the fossil record. In fact, the fossil record is now almost entirely irrelevant to the TENS debate, in which genetic science is rapidly demolishing the last credible vestiges of Neo-Darwinism.

Second, this specific event-based criticism of Neo-Darwinism is not Intelligent Design and has nothing whatsoever to do with Intelligent Design. I pay no attention to Creationists or Intelligent Design advocates. Their meanderings are of little interest to me. I am but a humble game designer with an educational background in economics, which combination tends to alert me to various statistical anomalies and mathematical improbabilities and impossibilities when I happen to come across them for one reason or another.

Since scientists and political commentators alike seem to struggle with the basic concept, I will attempt to put it into terms simple enough for even a sportsball player to follow.

If we are told that a sportsball team has gained 1,500 yards on the ground and that it averages three yards per rushing play, and we know that the maximum number of offensive plays per game is 84, then we know, beyond any shadow of a doubt, that the yards reported were not gained in a single 60-minute game. They could not have been. It is impossible.

The math is inexorable. The maximum number of yards that could have been gained on the ground in a single game is 252. It does not matter if a desperate proponent of Neo-Schembechlerism proposes the idea that perhaps the team ran a hurry-up wishbone offense, or that the quarterback was a dual-threat as a runner, or that the team played in a league known for its terrible run defenses, or that one of the halfbacks once ripped off a 99-yard gain, or that NCAA teams have been known to play up to seven overtime periods, or that perhaps five different players touched the ball on the same play. The math is inexorable. The assertion that a sportsball team which averages three yards per carry gained 1,500 yards on the ground in a single game is flat-out impossible. We can say with certainty that it never happened.

In like manner, the number of fixed mutations that are presently observed to distinguish two species, whether we contemplate Man and the Chimpanzee–Human last common ancestor (CHLCA) or the dog and one of the therapsids, are considerably - CONSIDERABLY - in excess of the maximum amount of time that could have passed since the speciation process is believed to have begun. There is only one defense against this straightforward mathematical observation, and that is the idea that enough parallel mutations happened very, very quickly to significantly reduce the average time per fixed mutation to permit it to happen in the intervening time period.

The problem here, of course, is that the numerical gap that needs to be filled is so large that if that were the case, then these mutations would be have to be happening so rapidly, and fixing in parallel so quickly, that we could observe evolution by natural selection happening in real time all the time. Except we don't, so the Neo-Darwinian is forced to retreat to the absurd scientific equivalent of claiming that he does too have a girlfriend, it's just that she lives in Canada, and you wouldn't know her anyhow.

This is not a defense of intelligent design. It is a defense of math and logic, both of which have to be abandoned if one is still to take Neo-Darwinism or the theory of evolution by natural selection seriously.

Has Darwinism really failed?

Yes. Next question.... I've demonstrated the mathematical impossibility of evolution by natural selection and others are now hitting it increasingly hard from a variety of other angles:

Has Darwinism really failed? Peter Robinson discusses it with David Berlinski, David Gelernter, and Stephen Meyer, who have raised doubts about Darwin’s theory in their two books and essay, respectively The Deniable Darwin, Darwin’s Doubt, and “Giving Up Darwin” (published in the Claremont Review of Books).

Robinson asks them to convince him that the term “species” has not been defined by the authors to Darwin’s disadvantage. Gelernter replies to this and explains, as he expressed in his essay, that he sees Darwin’s theory as beautiful (which made it difficult for him to give it up): “Beauty is often a telltale sign of truth. Beauty is our guide to the intellectual universe—walking beside us through the uncharted wilderness, pointing us in the right direction, keeping us on track—most of the time.” Gelernter notes that there’s no reason to doubt that Darwin successfully explained the small adjustments by which an organism adapts to local circumstances: changes to fur density or wing style or beak shape. Yet there are many reasons to doubt whether Darwin can answer the hard questions and explain the big picture—not the fine-tuning of existing species but the emergence of new ones. Meyer explains Darwinism as a comprehensive synthesis, which gained popularity for its appeal. Meyer also mentions that one cannot disregard that Darwin’s book was based on the facts present in the 19th century.

Robinson then asks the panel whether Darwin’s theory of gradual evolution is contradicted by the explosion of fossil records in the Cambrian period, when there was a sudden occurrence of many species over the span of approximately seventy million years (Meyer’s noted that the date range for the Cambrian period is actually narrowing). Meyer replies that even population genetics, the mathematical branch of Darwinian theory, has not been able to support the explosion of fossil records during the Cambrian period, biologically or geologically.

Robinson than asks about Darwin’s main problem, molecular biology, to which Meyer explains, comparing it to digital world, that building a new biological function is similar to building a new code, which Darwin could not understand in his era. Berlinski does not second this and states that the cell represents very complex machinery, with complexities increasing over time, which is difficult to explain by a theory. Gelernter throws light on this by giving an example of a necklace on which the positioning of different beads can lead to different permutations and combinations; it is really tough to choose the best possible combination, more difficult than finding a needle in a haystack. He seconds Meyer’s statement that it was impossible for Darwin to understand that in his era, since the math is easy but he did not have the facts. Meyer further explains how difficult it is to know what a protein can do to a cell, the vast combinations it can produce, and how rare is the possibility of finding a functional protein. He then talks about the formation of brand-new organisms, for which mutation must affect genes early in the life form’s development in order to control the expression of other genes as the organism grows.

Perhaps the most important thing to keep in mind is that TENS is not even remotely scientific. It's never been more than an unfalsifiable hypothesis. All of the science related to it is circular. Darwinism is not merely outdated and incorrect, it is completely useless for biological engineering and wildly misleading when it is utilized to help interpret the past. (See: evolutionary psychology)

Evolution is out of time

I discussed this a bit on last night's Darkstream, but because my grasp of the technicalities of how genetics work is close to nonexistent, I didn't even try to delve into the details. It's much better to simply read the linked articles; I leave it to those more versed in the subject to determine how valid the reports of the massive gap between the oft-reported 98 percent estimated similarity between the chimp and human genomes and what genetic scientists are actually seeing now as their ability to analyze the various genomes improves.

The first exhibit is an interview with a creationist geneticist, which will no doubt be improperly dismissed by scientistry fetishists with an appeal to the genetic fallacy.

Dr. Tomkins: My motivation started when I arrived here and was given the task of researching the human-chimpanzee similarity issue because people ask about this in churches. They hear the claim that humans and chimps are 98 to 99% similar. People want to know if that’s true. Before working here, I’d not investigated that issue. I ran a genome center for over five years and investigated various plants and animals but never the human-chimpanzee comparison. I went into it with an open mind and began reading all the literature on the subject—this started about eight years ago. I looked at the top six scientific publications that proposed a 98 to 99% DNA similarity between modern humans and modern chimpanzees.

Brian: A 98 to 99% genetic similarity between modern humans and modern chimps—why is that important?

Dr. Tomkins: It’s very important to theoretical evolutionists. The 98 to 99% claim is a theory—it’s speculative. They need a similarity that close to have humans and chimps evolve in the alleged three- to six-million-year timespan from a supposed human-chimpanzee common ancestor. Their statistical models need that 98 to 99% similarity.

Brian: What did you find in the literature?

Dr. Tomkins: The first thing I noticed when I began reading these articles was that researchers were throwing out a lot of data. They were cherry-picking the areas of DNA between humans and chimps that were highly similar and throwing out areas, including areas that would not line up properly. Areas that don’t line up are dissimilar. When I researched the data, I was coming up with DNA similarities between 81 to 86% when I included the dissimilar data. I published a paper on this.1 This is way outside the realm of theoretical evolution.

Brian: What should the evolutionary community say about this?

Dr. Tomkins: They have reacted to a lot of my research since that first paper. There’s a lot of DNA sequence data that is publicly available in databases. I began working with the data myself, and over a number of years I refined my techniques. I used an algorithm developed by evolutionists that turned out to be a bad algorithm—so there’s been a lot of trial and error. But I finally got to the point where I published a paper in 2016.2 It was the most comprehensive study I’ve done yet, and I looked at all 101 data sets that went into originally building the chimpanzee genome.

I sampled 25,000 sequences at random from each of the data sets and then began analyzing and comparing them to human. Over half of the data sets were extremely similar to human, and the other half were extremely dissimilar to human. It appeared the initial chimpanzee genome was contaminated with human DNA, which is a huge problem in genomics.

There’s a number of studies by secular researchers showing that many public DNA databases, from bacteria to fish, have significant levels of human contamination. Human DNA literally gets into the samples. Contamination is a major issue. Human DNA comes from researchers’ fingers, coughing, sneezing, etc., and it gets into the samples. Now researchers are taking greater steps to alleviate that problem. This was especially prevalent back in the earliest phases of genome projects, when the chimpanzee was sequenced.

Brian: Wouldn’t some of the human DNA that made it into the raw data affect the results of any comparison analyses?

Dr. Tomkins: It has a huge effect because the chimpanzee genome is stitched together using the human genome as a scaffold. It’s like a puzzle—researchers used the human DNA “picture on the box” to assemble the chimp genome. The chimp DNA sequences used were all about 750 bases long. Not only was the chimp genome built using the human genome as a guide, it also has human DNA contamination in it, so it showed a lot of similarity from the contamination.

Brian: Even with those factors in place that skewed the data to a more human genome, is it closer to the 98% or the 86% maximum you observed?

Dr. Tomkins: It’s difficult to determine because it is a flawed product. I based my research on human-chimp similarity on the half of the data sets that appear to have much less human DNA. Based on my work, I’m seeing not more than an 85% DNA similarity of chimpanzee to human, and that’s a maximum. It’s probably less than that.

The second exhibit is even more interesting, because an evolutionary biologist who is the Professor of Evolutionary Genomics at the University of London has been seeing much the same thing in his review of the various chimp-human genomic studies:

When assessing the total similarity of the human genome to the chimp genome, we also need to bear in mind that roughly 5% of the human genome has not been fully assembled yet, so the best we can do for that 5% is predict how similar it will be to the chimpanzee genome. We do not yet know for sure. The chimpanzee genome assembly is less well assembled, so in future we may assemble parts of the chimpanzee genome that are similar to the human genome – this is another source of uncertainty to keep in mind.

To come up with the most accurate current assessment that I could of the similarity of the human and chimpanzee genome, I downloaded from the UCSC genomics website the latest alignments (made using the LASTZ software) between the human and chimpanzee genome assemblies, hg38 and pantro6. See discussion post #35 for details. This gave the following for the human genome:

4.06% had no alignment to the chimp assembly
5.18% was in CNVs relative to chimp
1.12% differed due to SNPs in the one-to-one best aligned regions
0.28% differed due to indels within the one-to-one best aligned regions

The percentage of nucleotides in the human genome that had one-to-one exact matches in the chimpanzee genome was 84.38%

In order to assess how improvements in genome assemblies can change these figures, I did the same analyses on the alignment of the older PanTro4 assembly against Hg38 (see discussion post #40). The Pantro4 assembly was based on a much smaller amount of sequencing than the Pantro6 assembly (see discussion post #39). In this Pantro4 alignment:

6.29% had no alignment to the chimp assembly
5.01% was in CNVs relative to chimp
1.11% differed due to SNPs in the one-to-one best aligned regions
0.28% differed due to indels within the one-to-one best aligned regions

The percentage of nucleotides in the human genome that had one-to-one exact matches in the chimpanzee genome was 82.34%.

Thus the large improvement in the chimpanzee genome assembly between PanTro4 and PanTro6 has led to an increase in CNVs detected, and a decrease in the non-aligning regions. It has only increased the one-to-one exact matches from 82.34% to 84.38% even though the chimpanzee genome assembly is at least 8% more complete (I think) in PanTro6.

I have already shown that it is highly improbable that the speed of mutational fixation is sufficient to account for the estimated 98 percent similar relationship which needs to account for 30 million fixed mutations since the Last Chimp-Human Common Ancestor, so this massive increase in the observed difference between the two genomes, which is presently calculated to end up somewhere between 84.38 to 93.43 percent, is enough to not only drive the final nail in the Neo-Darwinian coffin, but wrap it in iron bands, encase it in concrete, and drop it into the Marianas Trench.

Because what we're seeing here is inept statistical wizardry that involves everything from contaminated evidence to cherry-picked data and the ridiculous assumption that literally ALL of the remaining unknown areas will, in the future, be found to perfectly align with orthodox Neo-Darwinian theory. And the priests of TENS are still desperately clinging to that improbable assumption even though it was only proved to be correct for 25.5 percent of the area that was filled in over the course of the seven years that passed between the publications of PanTro4 and PanTro6.

Of course, no one here will be even remotely surprised to observe that Prof. Buggs's original 2008 prediction was too low because, in the 2005 paper upon which he relied, the biologists got the math wrong.

In full retreat

The defenders of the Neo-Darwinian hypothesis of evolution through natural selection and a whole host of things that have nothing to do with natural selection are frantically fighting a rhetorical withdrawal as they attempt to deal with the problem of the average rate of mutational fixations over time.

Torin McCabe: Vox first you said you could use math equation using fixation rates to disprove evolution since there is not enough time.  People called BS saying you could not use those rates. Next you say that we should be able to see differences in historic DNA and yes of course scientists are looking into that but again you are jumping gun if you assume that the rate of change is uniform across time.  For example 80% of the change could have occurred in 20% of the time leaving long periods of relative stability.  So regretfully your case cannot just be proved by showing how human DNA was relatively static for 100,000 years of a 12 million year period.  It will look very strange if we find DNA that narrows all the change to a very short period of time; and then perhaps external influence could then be an interesting hypothesis.


Vox: We can and it increasingly looks like we will. The defenders of the Neo-Darwinian hypothesis are losing the scientific battle, losing badly, and you know it because you're attempting to retreat to a position of "well, it could have all happened super fast in the one area that we can't examine yet."  And even that retreat fails to account for the fact that we should be seeing more and faster fixated mutations among the human race further separating us from the CHLCA because a) beneficial mutations fixate faster among growing populations and b) the environmental changes have been greater over the last 450 years than at any time previous, including catastrophes and Ice Ages.

The Neo-Darwinian hypothesis has not been conclusively falsified, not yet, but the probability that it will be is rapidly increasing with advancements in genetic science. And with every retreat to "yeah, but I can imagine that this thing we haven't ever observed is still theoretically possible", more and more people are rhetorically convinced that the Darwinian emperor has no clothes.

It doesn't help when you tell ridiculous lies like: "again you are jumping gun if you assume that the rate of change is uniform across time". I have never, ever assumed any such thing nor can you pretend that I have. You are erroneously conflating an AVERAGE rate over time with a UNIFORM rate over time. And the more you engage in dishonest definitional changes like that, the less credible your criticism is.

But I am glad you finally admit that this is pointing to some very intriguing possibilities. If all the DNA changes occurred in a time too short for the various mechanisms currently proposed, as increasingly appears to be the case, then there must be some other mechanism at work. And isn't that much more interesting to consider than simply trying to find a way to defend an outmoded and erroneous hypothesis?


Smock Man: It is about observed vs theoretical. Torin, Vox already agreed, as do I, that your theoretical case is possible. What Vox is saying is that if every time we observe the rate of change, and it contradicts the theory, we should begin to be skeptical. The observations we see dont make the theoretical case impossible. But you need to revise your arguments if they disagree with observation. And we are seeing that, which is a good thing.


Torin McCabe: Are you one of the "dread ilk" the fabled smart people who follow Vox?  So far I am less than impressed with most of those I have talked with


Smock Man: No, I am not. I didn’t read vox until 2015.


Thomas Saint:  It does not have to be uniform. But the existence of continuous change itself starts to come into question if it is absent in recorded instances. It's a matter of probability. The longer the period extant of no observable genetic changes, either addition or subtraction, the higher the average rate of change must be within the unmeasured time-frame. Evolution is starting to look like a theory that ignores probability, when the whole theory is predicated on probability.

Evolution seems a nonsense if it magically doesn't apply to a 450 year period during which populations have exploded and environments have changed to unprecedented scale. Evolution is based on 'change' as well as 'time'. Remove change, and time actually becomes irrelevant. 450 years is still a large number of human generations. There must be evidence of replacement of genetic base-pairs. Vox has established a feasible number.

Evolutionists basically have to now argue that environmental change basically has to be apocalyptic to get a single replacement of a gene pair, or that humans and in fact all species have our final form. Is that what evolutionists are arguing? This theory is really starting to ridiculous isn't it.


Torin McCabe: Yes it is a matter of probability.  Can you do some math for me: what percentage is 450 of 12 million years?  The "magic", "unprecedented", "apocalyptic", and "ridiculous" slurs are not arguments.  450 years is a good start but based on a real understanding of probability much more data is needed to explain 12 million years.  There is no need for argument, get some good coverage and the answer is there.  Stop here dude, you are making a fool of yourself


Vox: No, he's not. But you are not merely making a fool of yourself, you are being obnoxious and are very close to getting banned. First, your appeal to big numbers biologists don't understand is irrelevant. Second, according to the current understanding of the theory, the 450 years should be seeing a higher-than-average rate of fixated mutations, not a lower-than-average rate. Third, the relevant number is 9 million years, not 12 million. And fourth, the sample years being 0.00005 of the total makes them five times more statistically relevant than the 0.00001 samples that are used to correctly predict U.S. presidential elections.

Isn't it informative how rhetorical, nasty, and completely unscientific they get the more you press them on the actual facts and figures that are necessarily involved. At this point, we can't even reasonably call evolution by natural selection a "theory" anymore, as it is more accurately described as a "low-probability hypothesis" that will almost certainly be entirely falsified within our lifetimes.


UPDATE: After Torin McCabe demanded "a retraction and an apology" I banned him from the channel. He apparently believes as long as you say "if", then it's fine to say anything you want when you describe someone else's actions. It is not and that is why he is not welcome to take part in the Darkstream discourse anymore.

Dumbing it down for the biologists

Upon further reflection, I can make the concept even easier to grasp than I did in last night's Darkstream. The theory of evolution by natural selection can be easily and completely falsified if geneticists are unable to find the GENETIC missing links that, by the very definition of the theory, MUST be there within the 450 years that DNA remains sufficiently viable to map the entire genome.

That's enough time to establish an average of 495 base pairs that are a) no longer part of the current human gene pool and b) are shared with the Chimp Human Last Common Ancestor. Moreover, the same holds true of modern chimpanzees, assuming that 450-year old chimpanzee DNA can be located.

Essentially, what I've done is to observe that evolutionists are now facing the very same problem of the various missing links with genetics that they previously faced with the fossil record, only now they can no longer appeal to the difficulty of finding those fossils. While it is theoretically possible that the Darwinian hypothesis will hold, it is very highly improbable. The important thing is that the theory no longer remains practically unfalsifiable.

Whopping the floor

This is highly amusing. A reader sent me a transcript of JF's absurd attempt at performing a victory lap after his inept retreat to rhetoric in what passed for our debate about the theory of evolution by natural selection:

So there was the debate about the theory of evolution with our friend Vox Day. Vox Day has now made a reply, a kind of analysis after the debate. He considered that I have been winning rhetorically which is hilarious because I could basically not speak, I was unable to speak because I had a deep cough and I was unable to say much sentences. To claim that I have been playing it, playing it dishonest with the rhetoric that is the, is so beside reality that I do not know what to say about this. That being said, he seems to not have understood fully my point. So let me just clarify with the paint description. [JF opens up a paint file and takes notes while talking]

So, Vox Day’s argument. Vox Day he set his own threshold, he came here and said: Alright I have all sorts of takes on the theory of evolution, but today I’m going to do a case that I have a few premises about what should happen in evolution, and this includes mutation and fixation of the mutation. So the mutation must occur and then the mutation must spread across the population, and this is what we call fixation. And he says I have calculated the fixation rate. I have obtained this rate from single cell organism. Maybe it was bacteria, maybe it was single cell nucareat, I don’t know where he got his number, but he said based on this premise my conclusion is that the human-chimp division could not have happened in less than 12 million year as is claimed by evolutionary theorists.

Alright, so that is an argument with a structure, and I have not been winning rhetorically against this freaking argument. I said Vox Day I reject your premise here, you got it wrong. [JF is circling the note that says: “Fixation → rate bacteria” under “1. Premise”] And I even specified why you got it wrong. Because fixation rate, fixation rate greatly vary. Fixation rate in single cell organism is not equal to fixation rate in mammal. And there is two reasons for it. One is sexual reproduction. The second is variability of population size.

Why do we not use fixated rates? It’s because fixated rate are highly dependent on the number of population you have, the number of competitors you have to overcome before a gene becomes widespread in the population. It depends a lot on what you are fighting against, and a million bacteria are fighting together for dominance of the whole population. But because bacteria do not reproduce sexually, or if we are talking about since cell nucareat they do, but only optionally unlike mammals. They are stuck in a replicative cycle that keeps all of the mutations in the same genome. In other words there are no short cut for evolution. If you want to evolve two good genes in a bacteria it needs to be the case that the first gene mutates, and the second gene then mutates. That’s what happen in a non sexual life form.

In a sexual life form like mammals, mutations can get fixed much faster because sometimes you have bottleneck effects, sometimes you will not have a million mammal in a population. Sometimes the productively relevant population that will leave decent in the future can be reduced to thirty, sixty, one hundred fifty. Because all of the others may be subject too have facing environmental pressures that will end up either having them die or their decedents. So the rate of fixation for bacteria is totally unrelated to the rate of fixation in mammals. Because on top of it in mammals the mutation is not stuck in a single individual and all of its decedents. It can jump, because you can fuck woman. And if you fuck woman it is an opportunity for your mutated genes to jump and combine with other mutated genes. Not only because the chromosomes will come from, one from your father, one from your mother and they will link together to form your chromosome, but on top of it there is crossover. So there are scissors that come in, they cut DNA and they re-plug DNA at different parts. This generates a lot of mutations on its own, but it also generates an opportunity for mutations to spread into the population at much much much faster rates than bacteria. The only way for a bacteria to fix their a mutation is to out compete all others.

And on top of it Vox Day is working with a fallacy witch is a fallacy of species as a natural category. It is one thing to say that today chimpanzees cannot reproduce with humans, homo sapiens. It is another thing to know exactly when that lack of reproduction possibility has started for real. Could homo erectus reproduce with a chimpanzee? Who knows, we don’t have homo erectus sperm, we’ll never know. Are there some transitional life form between the two species that could reproduce? Possibly, we don’t know. So that is why we do not talk about fixated, because fixated is a mathematical illusion, created by your understanding of the population size. We do not have population sizes back in Africa in seven million years ago. So we follow mutations and lines of descent like a fucking boss. This is what Vox Day has not understood and he thinks that I have misunderstood him. Motherfucker, I am a PhD in biology. I whopped the floor with you, I have cleaned the floor with you and I had a big cough. I was suffering and I could only use a few words per sentence and I was suffering.

He's going to be suffering a lot more once people start explaining the difference between rhetoric and dialectic to him, to say nothing of the fact that he completely failed to understand that I specifically addressed the possibility - which is not at all the certainty that he assumes it to be - that fixation rates are considerably faster in mammals than in bacteria for a variety of proposed reasons that include the Fisher–Muller effect and the Ruby in the Rubbish effect, among others. And I did so in the debate, he simply did not understand that I had done so, and not only that, that I had done so in a manner extremely favorable to the orthodox perspective.

Remember, in my initial bacterial model, I utilized the observed average fixation rate of 1,600 generations. First notice that JF completely omits to mention that he incorrectly assumed that this was a successional-mutations regime and tried to claim that I was wrong because I was unaware of parallel mutations. However, it was a concurrent-mutations regime, which is why I pointed out in my post-debate analysis that JF was wrong and that particular objection was irrelevant.

Second, I directly addressed the possibility of faster fixation rates in mammals. In fact, I came up with a completely different fixation model which was built around the idea of a minimum viable population mutating into a recurring series of minimum viable populations. It should be conceptually impossible for fixation to occur any faster than this barring genetic engineering, even if we take asteroids, volcanoes, Biblical floods, and other possible catastrophes into account. This rate reduced the average fixed mutation propagation time from 1,600 to 15.7 generations, more than two orders of magnitude faster than the observed parallel fixation rate. And despite this average rate being considerably faster than any fixation event that has ever been observed or even seriously proposed, the recurring minimum viable population scenario still renders even the maximal evolutionary timelines highly improbable to the point of being considered a mathematical impossibility given the observed genetic differences.

So, it is clear that despite his PhD in biology, JF completely failed to grasp that I had already foreseen and accounted for his objections, and not only that, he still doesn't understand the significance of the numbers that I cited any better than he understood the math of Askhkenazi intelligence before having it explained to him three times. And he still doesn't understand that the number of seeds scattered about the forest floor has very, very little to do with calculating the average annual growth rate of the tallest trees in the forest. And finally, his claim that fixation is a mathematical illusion is belied by the continued attempts of more serious and competent biologists to address that very issue.

The retreat begins

Torin was trying to cover JF's intellectual surrender and his retreat from math, science, and logic in our debate earlier this week:

You seem quick to dismiss JF but what he said made perfect sense to me. If you want to create your own model OK. But if he is not comfortable with your assumptions also fine. I am confused a bit by the attacks but I guess this is just play. Yet the attribution of "fleeing" and "don't call it science" are things I would not say unless I was damn sure. And since I have expertise in some fields I know how hard it is to be damn sure

Sir Hamster was having none of it:

"seem" - I watched the debate, and I saw JF making objections to the model that were already accounted for in the model. I knew it the moment he said it in the debate, and Vox confirmed it in tonight's Darkstream. 

"comfortable" - JF's feelings as a biologist are not very interesting or relevant when we can demonstrate his objections are irrelevant.  Having watched the debate, JF fled the moment he retreated to rhetorical plays, like when he claimed he was crushing Vox's dreams. 

Vox was stepping through the construction of a model using generous assumptions favorable to TENS. That's not a dream, nor was it crushed. TENS advocates should have built their own model. They haven't, nor do they want to. At this point, the reasonable conclusion is that they don't want to deal with the questions such a model would bring. 

If you want to call what I said, "attacks", you should recognize that JF resorted to rhetorical attacks in the debate. It was intellectual surrender. 

Torin tried to maintain a fighting withdrawal:

I saw two different models because of a disagreement on assumptions. Sure there was some rhetoric. But a lot of rhetoric is going on here. This is why I stopped playing team sports. Have a good one.

But Owen Benjamin had the last word in his analogical description of the debate:

Vox: We can measure how tall the trees are. And we know how old they are. So, what is the annual rate of growth?

JFG: No, no, it is time for me to crush your dreams. Can you not see all zee seeds zat are scattered around zee forest? Zere are so many of zem! Meellions and beellions! Now look at zis picture, do you not see how zee acorns, zey have zee different sizes? Zoot alors! Croissant!

The amusing thing is some of JF's fans are demanding that I debate him again, not 12 hours after insisting that he crushed me.

The reason you don't want a second debate is clearly because you are a terrible loser and dishonest intellectual. You really think that biologists haven't gone over these theories of yours before? If you are so certain that all of this is satanic gamma talk perpetuated by 110 IQ mid wits then why not destroy JF and the rest of us in a second debate. Because you are afraid of losing even more face, nobody is fooled by your stammering retort in this video. Man up and put your ideas to the test or admit defeat!

Of course I'm not going to debate him again. As I observed in the Darkstream last night, there is no point, since he's either too dumb to understand the issue or too dishonest to address it directly. I gave him the chance to refute my case, he whiffed more completely than his followers are even able to understand, and I was able to learn what I needed to learn. Let's not forget, this was the second time I've spoken to him about something that wasn't his book, and the second time he has completely failed to understand a perfectly straightforward argument.

I'm beginning to wonder if Downe's Syndrome might be sexually transmitted.

Darkstream: thoughts on the evolution debate

Possibly the most interesting thing about this debate was how it demonstrated the power of rhetoric to persuade those incapable of understanding dialectic. More than a few of JF's fans sincerely believe that he blew both me and my case away despite the obvious fact that he didn't even begin to address the latter. For example:

1. He claimed that mutation rates rather than fixation rates were more relevant to my case, even though "the fixation probability is one of the cornerstones of population genetics."
2. He failed to grasp that the 2009 Nature study specifically involved parallel gene fixation, thereby accounting for the entirety of his objection to my case. He thought my case assumed a successive-mutations regime even though the study obviously concerned a concurrent-mutations regime.
3. He retreated to rhetoric and misdirection by bringing up that list of genome sizes and population mutation rates, neither of which said anything about actual fixation probabilities or time frames.
4. The fact that there are "millions and billions of mutations" says absolutely nothing about how fast a single mutation propagates through an entire population, let alone provides part or all of the basis for a speciation event. The fact that each human child is born with an average of 70 mutations doesn't say anything about how long it took to fix the genetic structure of the human eye throughout the entire human population.

Now, if you don't understand the significance of a scientist resorting to rhetoric rather than directly addressing the subject at hand, I don't think you're tall enough for this ride. These things should become considerably more clear once I have the transcript of the debate and can analyze it at my leisure.

Maximal mutations

As I promised last night, here are the numbers I utilized in last night's debate on the theory of evolution by natural selection with biologist JF Gariepy:

BACTERIA
Years: 3,800,000,000
Years per generation: 0.000071347 (37.5 mins per generation)
Generations per fixed mutation: 1600
Years per fixed mutation: 0.114
Maximum fixed mutations: 33,288,000,916

Source: Sequencing of 19 whole genomes detected 25 mutations that were fixed in the 40,000 generations of the experiment.
NATURE, 2009

NOTE: These 25 mutations were fixed in parallel. The 1600 generations per fixed mutation represent an average. So, JF's appeal to massive parallel propagation is already accounted for, at least with regards to observed fixation in bacteria.


MAMMALS
Years: 200,000,000
Years per generation: 4.3
Generations per fixed mutation: 1600
Years per fixed mutation: 6880
Maximum fixed mutations: 29,070

NOTE: the bottom number represents the maximum number of fixed mutations from Morganucodontid to Homo sapiens sapiens.


CHLCA
Years: 9,000,000
Years per generation: 20
Generations per fixed mutation: 1600
Years per fixed mutation: 32000
Maximum fixed mutations: 125

NOTE: the 9 million represents the latest average estimate for the Chimpanzee-Human Last Common Ancestor, which estimate has ranged from as little as 4 million years on the basis of the molecular clock to 25 million years.

Now, the primary problem with JF's appeal to parallel gene propagation is that it requires a minimum of 15,000,000 mutations to become fixed in the human population, and another 15,000,000 mutations to become fixed in the chimpanzee population, and to do so in an amount of time that permits 125 fixed mutations in series.

In other words, there must be 120,000 genes simultaneously fixing throughout the entire population in parallel at all times, and the same process has to happen TWICE. This does not strike me as credible, even if we don't bother questioning JF's claim that the observed genetic differences between human and chimpanzee lie on a spectrum and that not all humans will possess the 15 million mutations that separate Homo sapiens sapiens from Pan troglodytes and that not all chimpanzees possess the additional 15 million mutations that separate Pan troglodytes from Homo sapiens sapiens.

Or, to put it more simply, there have been 450,000 chimp and human generations since the CHLCA. Based on the number of mutations observed fixing in parallel in the Nature study, that would permit 562 total fixed mutations in that time frame. Which is only 29,999,438 short of the approximate number observed.

I understand that some people are disappointed that I did not drive these points home during the debate, or that I did not answer JF's rhetoric with any rhetorical killshots of my own. But JF is not, and has never been, my target. I'm hunting much bigger game. That being said, I will analyze his program and make use of it at some point in the not-too-distant future.

Evolution debate tonight

Just a reminder that I'll be debating biologist JF Gariepy tonight at 7 PM EST on The Public Space. Place your bets; JFG's fans appear to be of the opinion that I will be, and I quote, "rekt".

I am, to the contrary, entirely confident that I will be presenting a critique of TENS that is, at the very least, an uncommon one, and possibly even a unique one, seeing as how it comes from an economics perspective. The only question, as far as I can tell, is if I am somehow failing to account for a critical component, otherwise, I see as little likelihood that orthodox biologists will be able respond to my critique any more successfully than free trade economists responded to my labor mobility argument.

UPDATE: buckle up. Here is the link to the debate.

VERDICT: It was a very interesting and useful conversation, in my opinion, more of a mutual exploration than a debate per se. JF quickly understood where I was going and correctly focused on the point that the simple statistical model does not address, which is the rate of parallel propagation of the mutations that become sufficiently fixed to become an ongoing part of the population. What I felt that he failed to grasp was that we were talking about maximum possible propagations, so even the addition of the parallel propagating is unlikely to provide enough padding to allow the theory to fit within the time limits.

And, as I noted, if the parallel propagating is happening as quickly as it is required in order to account for the necessary changes, we should be able to observe it more readily in the laboratory as well as in the wild.

I'll post the summary of the crude fixed mutation model tomorrow.

Darkstream: The Revolutionary Phenotype

Tonight I interviewed JF Gariepy about his ideas concerning the deeper mechanisms of evolution by natural selection. We had some technical difficulties getting started due in part to my unfamiliarity with Hangouts and its settings, but you can watch it here.

The Vox delusion?

My future debate opponent on the topic of evolution, JF Gariepy, addressed one of my recent Darkstreams on evolution last night:

I haven't watched it, nor will I prior to our debate, because I am presently reading his book, The Revolutionary Phenotype, and I'm much more interested in getting to the core of his assumptions than I am in learning whatever rhetoric is being utilized to analyze what was a very limited and superficial explication of my criticism of TENS.

The book is definitely interesting, but it has given me enough insight into his style of argument that I'm confident I will at least be able to present a case that he will find non-trivial even though we are engaging on intellectual ground that is considerably favorable to him given his academic background and interests.

There will be debate

JF Gariepy of The Public Space and author of The Revolutionary Phenotype mentioned in a recent stream that he would like to debate me on the topic of the theory of evolution by natural selection. I have told him that I am willing to do so after I read his book, and he graciously sent me a copy.

I understand that his interest was piqued by two of my recent Darkstreams:

• The descent of the theory of evolution by natural selection
• The education of the evolutionist

This isn't going to happen immediately, since I have to read the book first and I'm not exactly lacking for occupation at the moment. But it will happen, sooner or later, and it should be an interesting opportunity for people on both sides of the question to be exposed to some new ideas and perspectives. Perhaps, as with the free trade debate, we'll even get a new book out of it.

Predicting the past

This is a useful exchange about linguistics that many TENS defenders really need to read and take to heart:

Q: When the weatherman makes a prediction, we call it a forecast. If a scientist makes an estimate about something in the past (ex. the cost of a candy bar in 1850), what do we call it?

A: A forecast is an extrapolation; it uses past and present observations to predict the future. To take a simple example, if I give you the series of data from successive years as 2,4,6,8 ... you may reasonably extrapolate forwards to forecast that the next year's number is 10. A hindcast (this is the term you are looking for) is also an extrapolation from a set of past observations to a time previous to those observations. For example, if I give you 15, 12, 9 for three years, you may reasonably extrapolate backwards to hindcast that in the previous two years the numbers were 21 and 18.

I would prefer the term "postdiction" to refer to what evolutionists commonly do when they are backtesting claims based on their TENS-flavored theories. This is, of course, in response to a gentleman who was insisting that the past can be predicted:

Vox, you can make predictions about history and past events that are not yet known but your theory predicts and such predictions have been made and found in the field of evolution. Ah I understand your confusion.  You are linking evolution to financial modeling.  The problem with that is that once you have a financial model and use it; the market adapts to that model such that it is no longer predictive because other people will copy the model so you cannot beat them. Genetecists not agreeing and being wrong about the gene mutation rate is not

To which I replied:

A prediction of a past event is not a prediction. Predictions do not concern the predictor's present knowledge, they concern actual events taking place in the future. If I "predict" that the New York Yankees won a World Series game prior to 1950 - and I honestly don't know since I don't follow baseball - that does not make my statement a correct prediction if it turns out to be correct. Your core conception of "prediction" is false. Prediction is not based on knowledge of events, it is based on the timing of events. Look at the etymology of the word. "to say BEFORE". That means before it HAPPENS, not before you happen to learn about it. What you are describing would be better described as postdiction.

Of course, TENS has proven to be a near-complete failure even as a postdictive model. The interesting thing is that outside the topic of evolution, atheists and other skeptics tend to abhor postdiction and regard it as being indicative of intellectual sleight-of-hand.

DARKSTREAM: The Descent of TENS

This stream is little more than an hour-long distillation of things I've previously written to explain my skepticism regarding the theory of evolution by natural selection, or, more properly, the Theorum of Evolution by (probably) Natural Selection, Sexual Selection, Biased Mutation, Genetic Drift, and Gene Flow, but a number of the viewers apparently found it to be of interest.

My seven core reasons:

1. The evidence doesn't exist.
2. The historical timelines that purportedly support it are constantly mutating.
3. The theory is a complete failure as a predictive model.
4. The theory is scientifically and technologically irrelevant. There are no evolutionary engineers.
5. Theoretical epicycles are increasingly required to maintain its viability.
6. The theory is a repeated failure as an explanatory model.
7. There is a very long track record of scientific fraud surrounding it.

My favorite quote about the scientists working in the field of evolutionary is definitely this one:

Scientists usually do not use experimental data because such experiments can be difficult to conduct and because they are very time-consuming.

TENS continues to degrade

Notice that the evolutionary skeptic's position has consistently proven to be more reliably scientifically post-predictive than the mainstream evolutionist position:

The observation that Galapagos finch species possessed different beak shapes to obtain different foods was central to the theory of evolution by natural selection, and it has been assumed that this form-function relationship holds true across all species of bird.

However, a new study published in the journal Evolution suggests the beaks of birds are not as adapted to the food types they feed on as it is generally believed.

An international team of scientists from the United Kingdom, Spain and the US used computational and mathematical techniques to better understand the connection between beak shapes and functions in living birds.

By measuring beak shape in a wide range of modern bird species from museum collections and looking at information about how the beak is used by different species to eat different foods, the team were able to assess the link between beak shape and feeding behaviour.

Professor Emily Rayfield, from the University of Bristol's School of Earth Sciences, and senior author of the study, said: "This is, to our knowledge, the first approach to test a long-standing principle in biology: that the beak shape and function of birds is tightly linked to their feeding ecologies."

Guillermo Navalón, lead author of the study and a final year Ph.D. student at Bristol's School of Earth Sciences, added: "The connection between beak shapes and feeding ecology in birds was much weaker and more complex than we expected and that while there is definitely a relationship there, many species with similarly shaped beaks forage in entirely different ways and on entirely different kinds of food.

"This is something that has been shown in other animal groups, but in birds this relationship was always assumed to be stronger."

I'm not even remotely surprised by this, although I am certainly amused given the central importance of bird beaks to the history of TENS. The more that biological science advances, particularly on the genetic front, the weaker, the less necessary, and the more obviously false the theory of evolution by natural selection is consistently proving to be.