Chupacabra

The bottom line is that one species leaving an ecosystem is less damaging to biodiversity in that system than multiple species leaving the ecosystem. Whether or not the species leave/s the system due to extinction is spurious and irrelevant.

Depending on what you mean by biodiversity. Should we always strive for biodiversity (e.g., species richness) of any particular ecosystem? Not sure.

And, let me ask you, why should we put a bigger value on ecosystems with more complicated trophic networks? If we have some economic, aestetical or other reasons to value particular ecosystem, we should do it. But an ecosystem shouldn't have a big intrinsic value just because it has a large biomass, bioproductivity or has a complicated trophic network.

What should be valued, though, is the biodiversity of the biosphere as a whole, because an extinction of any species means irretreavable loss of genetic information. And if a protection of endangered species requires a reduction in species reachness of some local ecosystems, it should be done without hesitation.

Anyhow, measures to exterminate rats and other introduced species who threaten endemic bird populations in places like New Zealand, actually reduce local "biodiversity"

Conserving energy. Driving less. Turning off your computer. What are you doing to help slow global warming?

Why should I strive to slow it? I personally like warm weather, considering climate here where I live is rather cold. At 300 m a.s.l. no risk of inundation. Hurricanes and tornadoes seen only on TV. The home heating bills will get lower, the vegetation period will increase, meaning more and cheaper food.

Global warming is rather beneficial to my, so why worry about it?

I don't really see how that makes the trophic network any less irreversibly disturbed.

Well, the climate might change, the precipitation might increase (or some technical measures taken), and Aral sea might revive again. Then its ecosystem could be fully revived by introducing organisms provided no endemic Aral species get extinct during present crisis. Only in this case the change in ecosystem could be deemed irreversible

I am making the point that the frogs' plight should not necessarily be considered in the ecological analysis of the pond.

 

Furthermore, it would be entirely fallacious to consider "helping" a threatened species to be the same thing as safeguarding the ecosystem we happened to find it in

So, you just place more value on safeguarding ecosystem functioning then on a fate of species. Cannot agree with you here.

I think we both know that - based on that meagre information, and a modicum of ecological knowledge - if the lake was cleaned and all the frogs died, biodiversity would still increase, not decrease.

Wrong. Imagine this is the only lake on Earth habitated by this species. Then by cleaning it we'll make the frog species extinct. We can reproduce any ecosystem as long as we know its species composition and environmental requrements. Still, we yet cannot resuscitate any extinct species. So, only species extinctions are truly irreversible (at least, presently)

The term "destruction" in this sense does not mean total erradication (although that is where it can lead, and in the case of the Aral Sea it is probably inevitable by now)

Eradication of sea ecosystems - yes. But they will be replaced by marsh or desert ones.

Ecological balance does not deal in morals or desire.

...but to attach human sentiments to a trophic network problem serves no useful purpose.

You are contradicting yourself. "Polluted" pond and "unpolluted" pond, in fact, contain different ecosystems. And by preferring one state to another, you, actually, impose your ethical and estetical views on natural processes and ecosystems.

Had the pond not been polluted in the first place, it would not be a retreat for the bell frogs. Their presence is just as much a symptom of human interference as the pollutants, and the fact that they can avoid a fungus that is lethal to them neither validates a decision to leave the pond in a damaged state, nor does it mean that the pond a "desirable" environment

No, it does. If this frogs are of great value (because they are threatened species), and species living in "clean" lakes are not threatened thus much, then cleaning such a lake would do harm to biodiversity.

And you cant say that a food system never collapses.

What if the earth was rapidly pushed to an orbit closer then even mercury? or something else completely catastrophic. An event of that magnitude could very well kill off all life on the planet. I doubt any species on earth would be able to adapt... even ground dwelling ones and the like. That would completely collapse most if not all food webs and ecological systems on the planet...

 

THAT would definetly be ecological damage Lol...

True, but such apocaliptical events are very rare/unlikely. And, notice, even a catastrophical event (whatever it was) that resulted in dinosaurs extinction opened ways to the evolution of mammals and helped us to come here.

And how, exactly, would such nonmaterial things change anything? If a soul does something, it either does it for a reason (deterministic) or not (random.) Material vs. immaterial has nothing to do with it.

Indeterminism (not randomness!) creates possibilities for conscious choice. Doing something "for a reason" doesn't preclude the free choice. I can take free conscious decisions that are guided by reason but not predetermined by it (in fact, people often take unreasonable decisions).

Further, there is nothing in the limitation to these two options that precludes free will. A choice is a choice, a will is a will.

We are talking about FREE will. No such thing in a fully materialistic and deterministic Universe.

Chupacabra.

These are good ideas.

Any idea how to quantify them?

The could be different measures of "value" and "uniqueness". The reverse of the overall count of individuals in a species could be one such measure: we value rare species more than common ones. We can assign every species a "weight" and then quantify an ecosystem composition before and after a change. Again, the length of DNA chain and the amount of unique genetical properties and treats in a species could be measures of its "value".

Yet, any such measure would inevitably be more or less subjective. Any ecosystem is rated high if it is beautiful and healthy for humans.

Again' date=' strawman. You act as if determinism vs. non-determinism somehow has an effect upon responsibility. However, you can just as easily try to eschew responsibility if consciousness is non-deterministic by saying:

"It wasn't me, it was randomness!"

vs.

"It wasn't me, my actions have been predestined since the dawn of time!"[/quote']

 

You are right only PROVIDED the Universe is a fully material thing, the consciousness ist just an epiphenomenon of material processes, and there are no things like God and souls that can intervene into these processes. Provided these, there is only "determinism vs. randomness" choice, and neither leave any space for a free will.

 

Still, you're using circular reasoning here, starting with "only matter" presupposition and ending with proclaiming that all freedom is illusion and we are slaves of our bodies because we are nothing more than our bodies.

 

However, if there is something more than just matter (e. g. souls or God), it can freely interfere into material processes, using both relative determinism (to make predictions) and indeterminism (to make choosing possible).

I would suggest using measures of entropy and information content. E. g., microbal species are much simpler than mammals or birds. Then, if the amount of bacteria species increased at the cost of the decline in mammal species, the ecosystem has been degraded. Also it has degraded when the rare or endangered species are replaced by common ones (e. g., rare birds by rats).

We model and predict reality' date=' then choose from possible futures. Prediction is what gives way to choice, not non-determinism.

 

The seemingly deterministic nature of reality (at least on the level at which we experience) is what allows us to model and therefore predict reality. I'd therefore argue that without a deterministic universe, consciousness could not exist.[/quote']

 

Our models of reality don't predetermine our actions, they just inform us about possible consequences of our free decisions.

 

You seem to espouse a Marxist notion of freedom as a "recognized necessity" (we were taught this definition in Soviet school, I hated it even then).

 

By the way, it's very human to hate freedom and prefer slavery. This position is very comfortable psychologically. If you've done something wrong, made some mistake etc., it's not you who is really responsible, but your master (or a "wrong" arrangement of molecules in your brain). No freedom, no responsibility.

Oh my' date=' I missed that one. You have sharp eyes Basc.

 

Iran... Iraq... they're all the same, right? (chuckle)[/quote']

 

Sorry, I really mixed it up. Yet, there could well be such plans.

 

http://www.globalsecurity.org/org/news/2005/050313-iran-aim.htm

 

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2004/09/22/wnuke22.xml&sSheet=/portal/2004/09/22/ixportaltop.html

Iran has publicly called for the destruction of Israel and I can supply you with links quoting its president if you wish.

Yet, it never attacked Israel. Israel did attack Iran

Whom do you feel is more free?

 

Person A) Makes a choice to sacrifice himself so that others can be free.

 

Well, you make a good candidate for suicide bomber

The great irony of this position is that it claims to place human life above all else, but in fact it does exactly the opposite. Human life isn't a priceless heirloom, it's actually a very pricable commodity[/i']. We have (essentially) decided in Western society that its owner has (more or less) the right to spend it however he or she sees fit, so long as that spending doesn't harm anyone else. And can anyone think of anything more valuable to spend it on than the attainment of freedom?

To enjoy your freedom, you should in the first place stay alive, shouldn't you?

In my opinion, the problem is, the human life presently has different value depending on where the human live. Israel has a history of killing dozens of civilians in Gaza while hunting for single terrorists. Now, Israelis were well aware that their actions will inevitably lead to the death of hundreds

civilians in Lebanon. This has no difference at all with deliberate murder. The lifes of two captured Israeli solgers is regarded more valuable then lifes of thousand innocent Lebanese civilians. Likewise, US invasion in Iraq has led to death of more than 100 000 Iraquis, all to the purpose of defending Americans from the illusory threat of Iraq WMD.

I would consider it a kind of modern racism: discriminating people by the place they were born is no better than discriminatating by the skin color.

Yes, good point. In fact, I've always suspected that the probablistic nature of quantum mechanics - as opposed to a completely random nature - is a sign that its non-deterministic appearance is the result of too many unknown variables interacting, making it too complex to understand. Usually, high complexity with too many unknowns results in probablistic outcomes, not complete randomness (think of the social science).

I thing hypotheses like "hidden variables" are just the results of the inability of people with a deterministic mindset to incorporate the notion of the freedom inherent in the world and the scientific discoveries refuting the concept of the "clockwork Universe" and the view that everything is just the "small flying balls running into each other".

Probabilism and randomness are not contradictory at all. You could know the definite probability that something would happen and still be unable to predict the result of the any single trial.

Only if you believe that free will can only exist in defiance of the laws of physics. Otherwise there is no conflict.

Surely, the Indeterminacy principle is a well-established law of physics, and it agrees perfectly with the existence of free will. Yet it irritates people who champion the "Universe is a mechanical clockwork, the free will is a mere illusion" worldview.

People such as Darwkins may espouse a atheisitic viewpoint that some object to, but that does not mean, and even Darwkins does not state, that those views are implicit in Darwinism.

Who's Darwkins??? Do you mean "Darwin" or "Dawkins" or some crossbread of two?? He-he

Well, intelligence and consciousness are different things, but they are linked. It would be difficult to conceive of consciousness developing without intelligence.

Yes, but it`s not so difficult to conceive of intelligence without consciousness (artifical intelligence systems is an example)

i don't see any conflict between consciousness and free will

Surely, but there's a certaint conflict between the free will and the fully deterministic materialist worldview.

Darwinism doesn't claim that life and consciousness are the result of 'pure chance'. Also Darwinism does not deny God, spirit, free will or an afterlife. Darwinism simply makes no comment at all on those matters.

You are very correct here. The problem is with people (like Dawkins, f. i.) who derive from Darwinism far reaching metaphysical inferences.

Bollocks. One can't predict the weather with the level of accuracy you are requesting; the complexity of the modeling is too great. But by your argument, weather prediction is unscientific.

I don`t request any large level of accuracy, just the legitimate general description of the cause and effect chain leading from apes to humans. Scientists are not even sure about the sequence of apperance of features like bipedalism, toolmaking, language etc. let alone the real causes of transformations. The only thing they have is a set of dubious guesses.

Not to mention that the very idea of evolution renders prediction useless. Can we make models outlining forms that might be effective? Sure. But that's not how it always works. Lucky-shot mutations accumulate, and this random process guiudes it, and more likely than not, the adapted form will have a few surprises. Human ancestors could easily have taken a myriad of unrecognizable forms beside our own.

Very true. Arboreal "chimps" could well evolve into baboon-like apes adapted to savannah and not into us humans. Still we are here. Should we then avoid thinking of some other "laws' that could explain our origin, apart from NS?

Look, Iran is a peaceful democratic nation. It has a peculiar culture which differs considerably with that people in Western countries are used to. In 1979 Iranian people rejected the "westernisation" of their country in favor of their own cultural values.

However Iran is at knifes with Israel, and the Israel is backed by a powerful jewish lobby inside US. Iran doesn't declare the will to acquire nuclear power, still, Israel already possess NP for a long time, and nobody is talking of inspections or sanctions. That's unjust.

If the sanctions are imposed on Iran, the oil price will surely rise to heaven. Is it in the interest of ordinary people in US and Europe?

[

So if you have an ancestral line that started to develop more advanced intelligence' date=' they could survive with less strength; lower nutrition equirements would then be an advantage that could be selected.

If you no longer need to regularly climb trees to escape predators (because e.g. you have weapons and fire), the strength and agility to do so become less of a requirement.[/quote]

 

Evolution looked for a way to go, and a move to bipedalism and improved tool use, coupled with improved intelligence, was the best thing it could find to do with the chimpanzee-like design in order to survive in the new environment.

 

That' s only your guesses. It might be correct, it might be not. Had the scientists really shown (preferably by a quantitative model) that ape-like creatures who get into a certain environment would inevitably evolve into the ones resembling modern humans, than, yes, natural selection theory of human origin should be reckoned credible. Now, imagine humans weighted half a ton, or had grown horns or extra head, NS proponents could as well conjure up some "explanation" according to natural selection theory. It means just that NS theory of human origin is not falsifiable, being really not a theory but a scientific "guess", not in fact much better than ID "theory". (Here i'm not challenging the facts that NS actually works in many cases among animals, of that human bodies evolved from animal ancestors by whatever means).

Rats are smaller than us and have much "smaller" mental abilities.

Rats have an excellent sense of smell, can hide into small holes, can digest various foods etc. etc., in addition to it, they are pretty smart. Are there many environments on Earth you could survive in for a long time (even together with a dozen of companions) having no tools and clothes?

I expect I could kick a chimpanzee for quite some distance... but then I am 6'3"

You shouldn't try.

Okay, well, you have to start somewhere, especially if you're a savannah ape that has just been thrust into a new environment. The savannah apes from which we descended probably had a really hard time.

There are many large monkeys like baboons that are well adapted and thrive in savannah and even semi-desert environments.

Mutualism. If you're the more agile and sensitive hunter, and you've just downed a large beast, what do you do? You can eat your fill, then leave the rest of the carcass to rot, or you can bring it back to your commrades. Not only will they feel indebted to you because you're feeding them, and may therefore help you if you ever need it in the future, but hey, it may just impress the ladies enough to get you laid. Altruism became genetically fixed in humans, because if we all help each other out, it betters the survival chances for everyone. But in the process the weaker individuals are still getting along, leeching off of the strong. So their genes are not selected out in the same manner as they would be if they were entirely self-dependent. You have to realize that one of the consequences of mutualistic societies is that weak/undesirable people can still get together and f*ck with each other, so their genes don't get selected out...

NS works by the law of chances. Even in our society the more successful and physically strong individual has a better chance to find a mate. What you've described could at best decelerate NS, but not reverse it direction.

That's not how evolution works. Just because some trait might be an advantage under some circumstances does not mean that it will appear in a population. Cart before the horse, indeed. Evolution is constrained by what genetic material is present right now, and with what you are competing for survival.

Imagine the animal ancestor of humans. If it were as week physically as we are, but with much smaller mental abilities, it most certainly just couldn't survive the competition and would't exist at all. Then, if it were more strong and agile, like modern apes, then why it evolved into "weaker" creature? It's better to be smart AND physically strong then either one of the two, anyway.

*sigh*

You're kind of all over the place in terms of timeframes. Humans took millions of years to evolve. From now on' date=' if you want to make arguments about selection pressures on human ancestors, please define the timeframe and why you think the selection pressures on our ancestors during that timeframe are inadequate to explain the emergence of man.[/quote']

 

Well, Homo sapiens before the neolitic revolution. The animal bones processed with primitive tools of palaeolitic humans almost always also bear the marks of the large predator`s fangs, implying humans were scavengers (human bones with such marks are also abundant). This corresponds to the technical impossibility of challenging large animals with primitive tools found on archaeological sites.

 

Approximately 10,000 years ago, there were most certainly mammoth hunters.

 

Not sure. Besides, Homo sapiens were anatomically formed 200-500,000 years ago, so 10,000 years is inappropriate anyway.

 

Yes, but he's not going to get it from natural selection unless the need is so dire that he dies without it.

 

Why not, if the more agile and sensitive hunter will get the most food and will not suffer from hunger?

One of the books on my shelves is Facing the Lion, a story of the African lion hunt, which is performed with "traditional" weapons which any primitive human could've fashioned. If you have a culture of lion hunting with primitive weapons, it doesn't pose an issue. No humans were killed in the process of hunting the lions. When these African tribes decide to hunt the lions, the lions are screwed. A group of humans with the technology and cultural knowledge of how to defeat an animal foe are a force no animal can reckon with. If they do manage to take down a human, it's through that individual's ineptitude, or sheer luck.

The technology posessed by modern African tribes can by no ways be compared to that of palaeolitic men, it by far surpasses it in every aspect. E. g. people you are talking about should've got iron pikes, knifes and spearheades, and ironmelting is a comparatively recent invention.

Your knowledge on early humans seems to be out-of-dated. They were mostly scavengers, only occasionally hunting small animals and birds, being unable to kill a single mammoth. They perished from predators en masse, but actually benefited from them, picking the remains of their meals. Also they picked from the corpses of already dead mammothes.

You don't have to be fast if you can use long range weapons like spears, bows and arrows, atlatls, build traps, etc.

Would the early hunter benefit from the better eyesight or hearing, however intelligent he is? Would people leaving near the edge of glacier benefit from a dense fur, however good are their clothes-making skills? Would early humans living in dangerous and challenging environment benefit from speed and muscular power? So why all these abilities evolved the other way round?

The problem with your views: you are putting the cart before the horse. Looks like humans were given the large brains and week bodies to stimulate their mental activity.

Natural selection hasn`t led to the apperarance of humans, it simply was unable to wipe them out thanks to the combination of favourable conditions, at the same time being a stimulus for the technological advance (memetic evolution you are talking about).

Yes, but who would win in a battle of a dozen armed humans (for the sake of argument, armed with only primitive weapons like spears) vs. a dozen wolves or lions? [/i'].

Not sure about this, esp. about lions. What about the stories of a few raging elefants devastating whole villages in India? Or single cannibal lions killing scores of people before being hunted? Or even not-so-intelligent creatures like locust or malaria plasmodium?

This is simply ridiculous. Technology and advanced communciation/cooperation most certainly offer a survival advantage. You need to stop thinking of early humans as if they didn't have an advanced toolmaking culture (compared to any other animal at the time) which was as much the result of natural selection as their biological evolution was.

Humans are not so fast, they have very poor hearing and scent comparing to most animals, without fur they are susceptible to cold, their muscular power is many times smaller than that of most apes, their stomack cannot digest hard food etc., etc. Looks like humans evolved not because of natural selection but CONTRARY to it. Yes, primal humans could make fire and knives, but animals just don't need fire, having got a fur, likewise they don't need knives, having got claws and fangs. Imagine you provided gorillas with fire. Would they benefit from it in their environment? Not sure.

There are a number of different theories that could explain the development of consciousness in humans. Having greater intelligence allows more communication and cooperation which would have obvious advantages in such matters as hunting, maintaining larger social groups, passing on information about threats, dangers and useful facts such as the location of water or shelter.

Consciousness and intelligence are quite different things and shouldn`t be equated. In fact, most decisions we make in our life are unconscious (for those rejecting free will, in fact, all the decisions). Coordinated and purposeful group behavior requires neither consciousness nor high intelligence (look at insects like bees and ants, who also have complicated systems of communication). Likewise many mammals elaborated advanced hunting skills often involving highly-coordinated group behavior (look at wolves, lions etc.) The only thing exclusive for humans is the abstract thinking, but this didn`t influence significantly survival chances of primal humans and thus couldn`t have evolved by natural selection.

Alternatively sexual selection is a possibility. Just as the Peacocks feathers have little utilitarian purpose so the human brain could be the same, developed as an ornament.

I really like this hypothesis:-). Personally prefer smart girls

Darwinian theory is nothing to do with the appearance of life on Earth. It does not pretend to explain it. Darwinian theory does not explain how jet engines work or what fuels the sun. That doesn't invalidate Darwinianism in any way.

Yes, it doesn`t. But it certainly questions the overconfident claims that life and consciousness apperared by a pure chance owing to purely matherial processes, leaving no room for God, spirit, free will and afterlife. At best it`s only a hypothesis, not an evident fact.