dmaiski

BURN THE HERETIC!! HE MUST BE PUNISHED FOR THE CRIME OF BLASPHEMY, SEDITION, AND HERESY AGAINS THE CHURCH OF NOD!! (had to be said)(no one expects the spanish inquisition) but really freedom of speech expend only as far as you are willing to say but you must be aware that whatever you say, good or bad, has consequences unfortunately this is the internet, here we have real freedom of speech behind the blanket called anonymity so feel free to spew profanity, utter obscenities, have holy wars against chickens, discuss your love of your cat, moan about the taste of milk, or anything else you can think of. just don't expect the moderators to put up with it if its off topic

akh i don't quite see how you are advancing the discussion... (the previous post was inflammatory and irrelevant) (the two posts before(Ben and Phi) were also more of the same but I took them in good humour since they were short and somewhat amusing...) is there any better analogy to the way evolution has evolved to fill every single niche and environment on the planet? another thing, my original post was in response to Tres Juicy, and was pointing out that the results of evolution are not entirely random then you decided it was wrong, and i have no idea what fitness is (i think you don’t... in biology its a MATHEMATICAL term used to describe the change in allele frequencies, morons(such as yourself) use it in discussions about evolution to derail topics, and have something to whine about, even though any reasonable person would have realized that the fitness the person is talking about is the colloquial definition (by the apparent lack of numbers, and equasions)) eventually with the help of moonman we get the topic back on track now once again you are complaining about my analogies, unfortunately without them what i am explaining seems rather dry (i needed to actually scroll back to find the context for what i said... really why are we arguing about this?)

well there goes any hope of a logical discussion... *at least me and Ben had humour with its complaints **Ben brown has a point though, depending on how you look at it plants, or bacterium are far more evolved then humans

[sigh] this is the silly thing, when biologists try to explain "fitness" to someone they forget one vital point; its a mathematical term used in the statistical analysis of gene frequencies in a population http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fitness_%28biology%29 read that to summarize its comparison of the current allele frequency in the population to what is was before a selection event or a comparison of the number of surviving offspring of 2 individuals of the same species with different alleles its really not that difficult to understand, its just math (basic division really...) natural selection is a summarized as the law of the jungle, survival of whoever survives (not the best, not the strongest, not the biggest, not the best adapted(a lot of people forget that), just the one that survived, ie the survivor) evolution is the gradual change in a species genome over generations (completely blind, directionless, and is dictated by natural selection)

i have to say you are wrong... humans individually are no match against any other apex predator on the planet without society (the large mobs humans travel in) humans are truly weak, at the most they would rank somewhere in the middle of the predator ranking humans have no natural weapons or defences, and are really flimsy compared to most things that is not to say humans are weak in their natural state (in a large city, armed to the teeth with weaponry that can easily kill elephants) but if they ever encountered an intelligent, or even semi intelligent species (like the ones from alien(1979)) they would not stand a chance against another apex predator of significant intelligence *assuming they are not carrying a gun, high explosives, a portable plasma cannon, or other "high tech" toy **apex predators of significant intelligence do not exist on earth, except maybe sperm whales(and they aren't interested in eating us) ***except moby dick (man the harpoons!)

yes well... 1. evolution isn't linear, its more like a bomb explosion 2. it expands in all directions at once taking advantage of anything it can 3. one direction it expanded in was size (because it has features that are advantageous 4. it also expanded into: complexity, efficiency, specialisation, parasitism, symbiosis, photosynthesis, chemotrophics, and any environment you could possibly conceive 5. the question was interpreted to be about size(by me) 6. thus i limited my answer to size, i have no intention on writhing a book on this forum (i see no reason as to why you insist on nitpicking on fine details and deciding my arguments towards a specific point must apply to everything) thus i have amended my assumption that humans are intelligent creatures and will be adding explanations to the limitations of the argument with * as subscripts

i would guess once the trait developed it was impossible to drop, and somehow managed to survive the only way it could be dropped was through complete extinction

i know i was just prodding you but yes attraction is non random in some animals, these animals use chemicals to attract a mate (usually called pheromones) if you apply the right pheromones to something you can convince an animal to hump a bag of needles happily i can say humans have shed this trait during their evolution, thus it is not a common office prank to make the coffee machine sexually attractive to your co-workers of the opposite sex in the name of office humour that is why i say it is a mental trait it could also be: 1. memetic (it means cultural, in a very specific way) 2. psychological 3. a miss-wiring of the brain 4. the fact that tab A dose in fact fit into slot B (structural) 5. viruses 6. chemicals in the water 7. telepathy 8. magic 9. bunny wabbits 10. aliens 11. "gayness waves" (i really have heard this explanation once, it made me laugh, till i cried (out of shame that i belonged to the same species as the author)) *in order of plausibility **these are only the ones i have personally heard about (I have big ears) ***1, 2, 3, 5, 6, and maybe 7, could have genetic components ****the top 4 culprits are all mental *****i asked myself the question of "how can it be done", i already acknowledge the statement "gayness has a genetic component" the next question i will ask is "how dose your "gay gene" work" be ready...

how did this happen... the real answerer is "f**k if I know" (to quote popular language) evolution is blind, and dose things for unfathomable reasons my best guess is this: 1. lone bacteria began to form aggregates (the aggregates helped the colonies survive) 2. the aggregates individual bacterium in the aggregates began to form codependency on each other 3. the aggregates reproduced asexually (ive already explained why this isn’t that good an idea) 4. the aggregates began to specialize the bacteria in the aggregate into subsections 5. a specialized cell line was derived specifically for reproduction (to allow some control over the process) 6. the aggregates was still asexual 7. the aggregates mutated to develop sexuality 8. the advent of the "SRY precursor" and, everyone gets screwed 9. tada sexual species!!! *3-7 could have happened in any order **this may look short but probably took at least half a billion years to happen ***this is probably not an accurate representation, contact architect for exact dimensions ****this is a very general representation of one possibility of what could happen, its the one i like, there’s another 100 where this one came from

you can say its all water weight (which is true) also even if you don’t drink, water is produced in respiration, so if you weigh yourself before you have "dumped the waste products" so to speak you wont get an accurate measure another thing, there’s an off chance your scale is broken, or miscalibrated

so you are saying there is no choice? nature v nurture? the environment has no influence on mental development? (i know im being mean, but this is what you usually do; only interpret what you want to see, and insert an "always" or "only" where you want) what i am fairly certain of is that physical attraction dose not work on a chemical level also that is works on a mental level, at the level of visual association (it means you react to observed stimulus through a learned response) so learning must play a part in this process (that opinion is not likely to change unless you can show me proof that it dose work on a chemical level) i think you put too much faith into how powerful genes are (also why would i try to prove how any part of humanity think, most humans have their mental state diverge from the baseline by significant degrees)

WELL GENERALLY SEX... yoU know meiotic division tab a goes into slot b, and so on (sorry, but you really set yourself up for that one) as for species with high generation times... that’s simple ill explain my logic step by step: 1. im assuming you are referring to multicellular species 2. most of the cells in a multicellular creature reproduce asexually 3. asexual reproduction involves splitting the organism(you know like planaria) 4. sawing something like a human in half is not productive (they generally die) 5. thus you must use a system that allows the organism to reproduce without being sawed in half (i was just setting the background a bit) now once you acknowledge that: 1. you can acknowledge that asexual reproduction is not conducive to multicellular life 2. sexual reproduction is conducive to multicellular life 3. the long generation times are a side effect of being so big (you do realize that humans are amazingly, colossally, ginomusly, humongous creatures) now why did the two gender system in mammals evolve? 1. lets say you have a organism that is reproducing sexually without gender 2. and a mutation happens that makes it male (there is no SRY region for female...) 3. this male can then reproduce with everyone in its colony in a single generation 4. and then the whole colony has male, and female genders 5. and the traits proceed to spread, and persist (also since the SRY came from a common ancestor, and it is extremely beneficial towards the "male" i would guess this development happened very early on in the development of sexual reproduction) i think i have explained how i think it could have come about in sufficient detail, but feel free to question.

might i ask? where did you pull the always out from? to explain to everyone what i mean in my original post, since it has obviously hijacked and misinterpreted it was an answer to the question "how did evolution get it right" ie "how did these big ugly things called humans manage to evolve" it was stating that there is a trend where larger, more complex creatures, evolve if given the chance to it was also an explanation of why this is so nowhere did i say that size is the only driving force behind evolution nor did i say that it cant work backwards, sideways, and rimwards, if it particularly deigns to do so all i did say was: "evolution likes to build bigger things, until they eventually collapse due to structural failure(like leg bones being too thin to support 100tone bodies) so development of larger organisms is inevitable" (note the distinct lack of always, never, and only)

evolution is a random process, it evolves creatures in all directions at once most of these possible creatures die out, simply because they are not feasible, have disadvantageous traits for the environment, or are out competed what is observable: 3600 million years ago earlies known bacteria 1200 million years eukaryotes 600 million years ago multicellular animals 500 million invertebrates, early vertebrates 360 million winged insects 300 million lizards 200-100 million dinosaurs(you know? frigging big things) 100-present mammals dominate ---> humans(again humans are realy smart frigging big things) i would say that if there was no pressure, or advantage, to being bigger, and more complex then we would have never evolved from bacteria i lay no claim as to knowing what the advantage is, how it got there, or where its leading too (if i did you a. wouldn't understand it b. deny it even exists c. it would be a guess at best) but it dose exist, as shown by the last 4 billion years of history there you go, a firmly supported argument(unless you plan to say the fossil record is all wrong and everything started 5000 ears ago when some extremely powerful, theistic deity farted) if you don’t call a 1*10^17 times size increase in under 3 billion years statistical significant, im not sure what would count and would be in favour of hitting you with the evolution brick (take a brick, write evolution on its side with a sharpie)

1. hetrozygote advantage, one possibility for homosexual behaviour 2. its just a mental trait (you know psychology?) 3. a mix of the two

the simplest answer to that question is that there is no distinction between basic chemistry and life its all a mater of scale, that’s what definition 5 is saying when your resolution is 1 meter the things you see alive and evolving are humans, civilisations, ecologies when your resolution is 1 cm you see individual creatures evolving and developing when your resolution is 1 um you see bacteria evolving, and gigantic moving cell colonies(humans) when your resolution is 1 nm you see DNA changing, proteins being made, broken down, doing work, viri, prions, and the minute interactions in cells, ect when your resolution is 10 angstroms you see a vast and complex array of chemistry, constantly changing, growing, and variable when your resolution is 1 picometer you see atomic interaction, which is quite interesting in its own right where you want to set your resolution to define "living" is up to you but the definition that you is the classical definition of life that most people use Murphy law, that is really the definition of life in many ways, no mater the level you are at, unexpected things happen in patterns

unfortunately, life doesn’t scale hammers... dose it? when was the last time the proverbial "falling brick" magically scaled down in size to make it survivable? thus you have to scale up to survive the falling bricks (tada! the magic of evolution) that’s exactly why it is a fair test, because nature doesn’t care if you are big or small, and drops rocks on people redundancy is useful size allows redundancy simply put if you have 1 of something and it fails, you die if you have 2 of something and it fails, you survive that’s why being bigger is an advantage over being smaller

why are you trying to prove that sexual is better then asexual? they are both good for their own things asexual is good for maintaining a genetically stable colony of cells(did you know?: a human is a fine example of a genetically stable colony of cells) sexual is good for spreading a trait that is useful to your friends(like email, and with just as much spam mail in the mix) ive thought of a great technology analogy to this: think of sexual reproduction as a certain board commonly referred to as "the asshole of the Internets" think of asexual reproduction as a blog page managed by one person with sexual reproduction, you sometimes get a real gem, that will be spread everywhere(example: caturday(its today btw)) but you also sometimes get real shit that is spread everywhere (a fine example is this http://www.youtube.c...h?v=qmPmIJyi0sc) with asexual reproduction, you have 1 person managing the blog it varies with their moods, sometimes changes with outside influence but it is allays "their" blog, no one else has creative rights to it the rate of change is slow and steady, and usually retains the original ideology also you can make this an analogue of peer-peer sharing against direct downloads it shows the advantages and inefficiencies of both systems go google it, I am not going to try to explain P-P sharing to the unknowing (its just a recipe for pain)

Arete i want to give you a hug, that was so logical but that is what i have been arguing for the last 6 pages (it doesn't seem to be getting through to these people)

i have to say moonman got it right it took over 1.2 billion years for life to evolve from bacteria to humans that’s roughly 2*10^13 generations it was basically a very long process of trial and error no guiding force, no decisions to be made just who lived to make children and who died 10^13 times over i amused one generation takes 30 minutes (yes it is arbitrary, no it is not important)

stream to drop equations: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stream_function then you just have the basic equations for motion of an body http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classical_mechanics#Velocity_and_speed plug what you have in there and you have a rough estimate if you want to be more difficult you can factor in drag, for the drops http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drag_%28physics%29 just input the information you have into the appropriate equations and you have your answer

true, but that is a one off scenario in most cases the larger creature will survive more damage to its body then a smaller creature there is more body to damage, but less can cause any significant damage to the body ok and to simplify the analogy (this makes the analogy realistically infeasible, and imposible) one creature is a tine microscopic amoeba the other horrendously mutated amoeba the size of a bus there these 2 creatures can be compared in fitness because they are the same species unfortunately AMOEBA DO NOT SCALE PROPERLY TO THAT SIZE, they suffer metabolic failure from being too big thus we must use another species(say an elephant, an intern, and an amoeba), and use a test that allows a comparison of damage resistance of the organisms without accounting for their natural environments (a savannah, a basement, and a petridish (note the lack of cliffs)) this is exactly what i meant by being petty... also take your wonderfully resistant amoeba, put it on a DRY counter, under a uv lamp for a minute im sure an elephant and a lab tech would survive that

i understand it... im just saying 90% of everyone else doesn’t and it really dose make sense, and actually quite simple once you get it you just need to get over the hurdle of length expansion(its a fiddly way to say time-space bends)

i can back this up with simple logic we have 2 creatures one is an amoeba small single celled tiny the other is a elephant we take a hammer and hit both with said hammer repeatedly the amoeba survives the first 25 hits, but eventually goes "splat" the elephant survives the first 38 hits then gores and tramples out intrepid research intern (the elephant is relevantly unharmed, the inters was weak, it has a small bruise in its side) the intern also survives after 22 surgeries, and an extended hospital stay yes it is an extreme example but dose this get the point across big things are harder to kill, because they are big, as in bigger then you are, as in if you attach them you go "splat" also you know what i meant, dont be petty, we can compare the fitness of two species, not mathematically, but conceptually

13G(sustained)... that's fatal, not immediately, but after a few minutes almost anything would be dead 9G(sustained) would kill a human by draining all their blood, not to mention other liquids, into the legs the most you can sustain safely is 10G if you are in a flat bed and totaly immobile if your species has adapted to a low oxygen environment its a fairly believable story but unless they are mouse people, they would not survive in a world with greater then 5 earth gravities and that's asuminging they are heavily adapted to such environments the only creatures that i could imagine living in a 13G environment are robots or other machines, large biological life tends to die really fast in a high G environment also nothing large would evolve in a 13G environment, simply the muscle power or structural strength needed to lift yourself or move would be phenomenal(imagine bones stronger then steel and muscles that could lift buses with a single arm biological life could exist on such a world, but it would be bacterial, fungal, and either single celled or large colonies(like yeast's) and before someone says this and makes a fool out of themselves an exoskeleton is heavy, for this reason the largest animal with an exoskeleton is the coconut crab measuring about half a meter in length on a 13G world, that exoskeleton would limit yous size to 1/13th of half a meter, ie 1/26, or 3.8cm in length, or it would need to be made of light adamantium alloys.