August 31, 2014

Thoughts Concerning Fred Reed's Eight Questions on Evolution

Then as we linger at luncheon here,
O’er many a dainty dish,
Let us drink anew to the time when you
Were a tadpole and I was a fish.
—Langdon Smith (Evolution)

I was introduced to Fred Reed's writing two years ago when his article on soldiering went viral on the internet. My first reaction was, “ Wow! This guy writes like Tim O'Brien only orders of magnitude more graphic. ” The following week, I built my post around a short quote from Fred's article.

Fred has a way of getting to the heart of a matter with very few words. This is a talent I admire deeply. For example on the Latinization of the United States, he writes,

“The fat lady has sung, Latino-wise. It’s over. Seventeen percent of the United States is now Latino. The percentage is increasing, and will increase. You can like it, or hate it, or not care. It doesn’t much matter. You might as well dislike gravitation.”

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Fred Reed's Eight Questions on Evolution

1. What selective pressures lead to a desire not to reproduce, and how does this fit into a Darwinian framework?

There appear to be (at least) two successful strategies of reproduction:

(a) Have a lot of progeny, and let environmental circumstances dictate that the best adapted (if any) survive.

(b) Have few progeny, nurture them well, so they will be better able to survive.

The gestation period of an elephant is two years. Litters consist of a single calf or sometimes twins. Elephant calves are nurtured by the entire herd. (It takes a herd to raise an elephant.) The interbirth interval is generally four or five years. Let's call (b) the elephant strategy.

On the other hand, (a) could be called the cockroach strategy. While cockroaches are among the most successful of organisms, having remained essentially unchanged for more than a hundred million years, modern elephants are relative newcomers, probably less than five million years old. Cockroaches appear almost impervious to human depredations. Elephants are classified as endangered (Asian) and vulnerable (African). Elephants suffer from loss of habitat and wanton slaughter for their ivory tusks.

In times of environmental change, the cockroach strategy would appear most favorable. Larger numbers of offspring and more generations per unit of time increase the chances of favorable adaptations. In times of environmental stability, the elephant strategy affords the advantage of long periods of nurturing. If nurturing didn't provide an evolutionary advantage, mammals and birds would never have evolved.

Humans are neither elephants nor cockroaches. However, both strategies are evident in human societies. As our environment becomes increasingly unstable and turbulent, I would expect the cockroach strategy to increasingly dominate human societies, as it appears to be doing now.

2. Why should I not indulge my hobby of torturing to death the severely genetically retarded?

I assume that you are looking for a response based on evolutionary rather than legal or moral principles.

If your goal is to produce as many viable offspring as possible, your hobby would seem to be a monumental waste of time. You'd be far better off with a hobby that would attract nubile members of the opposite sex. For example, you might try learning to act and sing like Justin Bieber. Granted, your hobby of torturing the severely handicapped might attract a Hillary Clinton or a Condoleezza Rice; but I suspect it would repulse far more females than it would attract.

Further, you might mistake amyotrophic lateral sclerosis for “severe genetic retardation” and torture Stephen Hawking (whom you refer to in question 6 as possessing genes of “extraordinary superiority”). Others who have tried to decree who should live or die based on their limited understanding of genetics, including the one you have referred to as “that dark squatty effeminate blond Aryan superman of the Beer Hall Putsch,” have made similar mistakes.

3. How many years would have to pass without replication of the [abiogenesis] event, if indeed it be not replicated, before one might begin to suspect that it didn’t happen?

Here are two possible hypotheses:

(a) Perhaps the formation of a growing, self-replicating molecule occurred readily under conditions found on Earth four billion years ago; but rarely if at all under conditions on Earth today.

(b) Perhaps new life is forming all the time; but is gobbled up by already existing organisms as fast as it forms.

I'm sure there are others.

There is an interesting discussion of the subject of how life might have formed in this interview with Andrew Knoll.

Why can't we replicate the process of abiogenesis in a laboratory? You apparently think far more highly of our technological prowess than I do. Consider that it took some of our best minds years to figure out how to get the Ozark hellbender to breed in captivity. Compared to creating life itself from non-life, captive breeding of an extant salamander ought to be a slam-dunk.

Or maybe it has been done — perhaps even in the same military laboratory in which the HIV virus was created.

4. What are the viable steps needed to evolve from [two stage bugs like the cockroach] to [four stage bugs like butterflies]? Or from anything to four-cycle?

When it comes to entomology, I too am an “intellectual loin-cloth wearer;” however I fail to see the problem here. Butterfly larva (caterpillars) moult several times before forming a pupa (chrysalis). Before pupating, caterpillars have already begun wing development. One might surmise that in a long-ago ancestor, caterpillars continued the moulting process until becoming a butterfly-like creature. At some point the final moult or moults evolved into a pupa stage. I don't know; but it sounds plausible to me. I'm sure there are other plausible hypotheses as well.

When researching unfamiliar subjects like lepidoptera, I often begin with wikipedia, keeping in mind that articles on wikipedia may have been posted by “intellectual loin-cloth wearers” such as myself. There are many other sites available on the web devoted to lepidoptera.

I have a 16-year-old grandson living at home with me, and after some brief research into lepidoptera, I've come to the conclusion that humans would do well to learn to pupate around the age of 15 and remain in chrysalis at least until the age of 18. Every adult human I've discussed this issue with seems to agree.

Incidentally, I spent most of my working life at a highly-thought-of technical university where I rubbed elbows with intellects who had yet to reach the “loin-cloth-wearing” stage. See, for example the following cartoon.

5. Does not genetic determinism (with which I have no disagreement) lead to a paradox: that the thoughts we think we are thinking we only think to be thoughts when they are really utterly predetermined by the inexorable working of physics and chemistry?

I agree. Genetic determinism leads inexorably to the conclusion that we are nothing more than pre-programmed robots. Personally, I think genetic determinism is a heap of rubbish. Identical twins simply do not behave identically. We are far more than our DNA. We include our environment, a lifetime of experiences and something even more — call it a soul.

My favorite passage on free-will (or lack of it) comes from Chapter IV of Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking Glass in which Alice meets Tweedledum and Tweedledee. On hearing the red king snore, the Tweedle brothers inform Alice that the king is dreaming her; ‘and if he left off dreaming about you, ... you'd go out — bang! — just like a candle!’ After a brief unsuccessful attempt to prove she is real, Alice says to herself, ‘I know they're talking nonsense, and it's foolish to cry about it.’

6. Why do seemingly trivial traits (such as the epicanthic fold) proliferate while clearly important ones (the intelligence of Stephen Hawking, the body of Mohammed Ali, 20/5 vision, the astonishing endurance in running of the Tarahumara Indians, and so on) do not?

The words “trivial” and “important” are loaded words. Who is to decide what is trivial and what is important?

A genetic trait may be positive in one environment, negative in another and neutral in a third.

The epicanthic fold may or may not have positive or negative survival value in certain environments. I don't know. It may be linked to other traits that have positive or negative survival value under certain conditions. A cursory surf of the internet, turns up that the epicanthic fold, while normal among East Asians, is linked to Down Syndrome among Europeans.

It would be nice to have the intelligence of a Stephen Hawking; but his intelligence could be genetically linked to his ALS.

It would be nice to be able to run like a Tarahumara Indian; but I don't see how that would help a stodgy old professor. (Besides, I might end up at the finish line of the Boston Marathon blown to bits by some patsy whom the FBI or CIA talked into planting a knapsack bomb.)

It would be nice to have a body like Muhammad Ali; but what I admire most in him is his courage in refusing to be conscripted and his deep understanding of the connection between war and racism, “I ain't got no quarrel with the VietCong... No VietCong ever called me nigger.”

It would be nice to have the visual acuity of a hawk; but I think the ability to read faster with greater comprehension would have served me a lot better than 20/5 vision.

While the above paragraphs draw on my personal experiences, they demonstrate that there are niches in which these seemingly superior traits would be of little or no help at all. Perhaps the reason why the intelligence of a Stephen Hawking is so rare is that the niches where it would impart an evolutionary advantage are so few and so small. Eugene Linden writes:

“The random mutations that increase brain size are probably ubiquitous, meaning that it is reasonable to expect that virtually every animal alive today has ancestors that produced brainier offspring which in turn had the chance to be fruitful and multiply. But the evidence is that with very few exceptions, evolutionary experiments to increase brain power have not taken. ... The likelihood is that nature has had more failures than successes when it comes to increasing brain size (and in evolutionary terms, the jury is still out on whether the human experiment will ultimately be a success or failure...)”