Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Posting-Version: version B 2.10.2 9/5/84; site uwmacc.UUCP
Path: utzoo!linus!philabs!cmcl2!seismo!uwvax!uwmacc!dubois
From: dubois@uwmacc.UUCP (Paul DuBois)
Newsgroups: net.origins
Subject: No Cigarettes, Please
Message-ID: <1318@uwmacc.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 23-Jul-85 16:22:54 EDT
Article-I.D.: uwmacc.1318
Posted: Tue Jul 23 16:22:54 1985
Date-Received: Fri, 26-Jul-85 00:42:27 EDT
Distribution: net
Organization: UW-Madison Primate Center
Lines: 286


>>> [Rich Rosen]
>>> What natural selection and evolution "predict" is that, for that set of
>>> circumstances that occurs over a period of time, the organisms that
>>> survive that period will be the ones best suited for those
>>> circumstances, and those of course will be the ones that produce the
>>> offspring that follow into the next period.

>> [Paul DuBois]
>> Rich, this is simply unworthy of you.  They "predict" that fitter
>> organisms will survive?

>> ProFOUND.

> [Mike Huybensz]
> Paul, are you incapable of reading beyond the first clause?

First we need to establish that I can read.  I'm not too hopeful.

> The key part is that the surviving organisms will be the ones to
> reproduce, passing on their characters to the next generation.  Thus,
> the distribution of characters changes over the generations, producing
> a better adapted population.

Yes, yes, grok, grok.

> Of course you can respond "ho hum" to this too; I wouldn't be surprised,
> since it has more than one sentence.

Ok, I won't respond that way, since the problem itself is interesting -
if facile paperings-over of it (like yours) are not.  Your comment
reminds me, though, of a mild lecture I received from you once,
remonstrating with me for (supposedly) engaging in _ad hominem_ attacks.
I guess you don't really mind, since you'll "stoop" to it yourself.  :-)

---

Before going further, let me make two observations about what follows:

(a) I am not trying to bring up a problem just so I can fling it into
the teeth of evolutionists, so don't take it that way.

(b) what follows does not necessarily have anything to do with
evolution (defined as "the production of new organisms from old"), at
least it has nothing to do with it without additional elaboration of
the situation that was described by Rich.  The problem is more general,
and is deserving of more widespread attention from creationists than it
has so far received.

To proceed:
I said "proFOUND" because what Rich said was in a sense obvious.  The
basic idea is quite beguiling, though, and not least because of its
simplicity.  It "does express an idea which seems correct", and it
*does* have a certain charm and beauty, which even I will admit to an
appreciation of, hardcore creationist though I am (and I am).  But I'm
not about to accept it just because it is charming and beautiful.

Ok.  Now, as I said, Rich's statement is obvious; what else would you
(or anyone, even the most ignorant backwoods imbecile) expect?  The
simple statement is:  Fit organisms survive to posterity.  But that,
perhaps, collapses the idea a little too much.  Rich said, somewhat
differently, "What natural selection and evolution 'predict' is that,
for that set of circumstances that occurs over a period of time, the
organisms that survive that period will be the ones best suited for
those circumstances, and those of course will be the ones that produce
the offspring that follow into the next period."  But when we say that,
are we really saying anything?  Not that I can tell.  At least nothing
that means anything.  The statement is more elaborate and subtle than
"survivors survive", but it's no different, really.  We went through
this all several months ago, and while my recalcitrance at accepting
this triviatum seemed to arouse a lot of indignation, no one really
addressed problem.  Neither have you, Mike.  You've dressed it up in
yet another set of words, but they boil down to the same obvious
statement.

In fact, the thing is *so* obvious, I'm inclined to wonder if it is
even right.  After wondering, I don't think it is.  I do not see, for
example, the justification for the functional link made between
reproduction and survival that is used as the criterion of fitness.

What does "survive" in Rich's statement mean?  Presumably not that they
don't die, for all organisms do.  Also presumably not that they
reproduce more, or else the statement reduces immediately to a
tautology that is not interesting.  So it seems to mean "they live
longer than organisms which are not so fit".  (If all this seems
obvious to you, please forgive me.  Console yourself with the thought
that I'm just trying out possibilities to see if I've reached the stage
of formal operations yet.)

So the ones that survive "circumstances" will be the ones to pass genes
to the next generation.  But at this point I start to wonder:  what are
the others doing in the meantime, *before* they die?  Consider
population x, with two subpopulations of organisms x1 and x2.  Organism
type x1 lives until age a1, at which time it drops over dead.  But
during that time it breeds like a rabbit, at rate r1.  Organism type
x2, on the other hand, breeds more slowly, at rate r2, but lives
longer, to age a2.  Let's say the difference is due to a genetic
linkage which results in reproductive acceleration at cost of
lifespan.

That is,
         r1 > r2
         a1 < a2

So x1 leaves a lot of offspring, but does not survive very well
itself.  It breeds a lot and then kicks off.  x2 does not leave many
offspring, but survives much longer.

Which is fitter?

I personally would say x2 because it lives longer, i.e., it survives.
But since x1 leaves more offspring it passes more genetic material to
posterity.  So by definition it is fitter:  it enjoys reproductive
success.  But in fact, all we know for sure is that x1 is more
numerous.  We do not really know if it is fitter.  Its numerosity may
have nothing to do with fitness, except in the trivial sense that
fitness is measured by reproductive success.

We say that the ones that are fit will be the ones that reproduce.  It
would be more accurate to say that the ones that reproduce will be the
ones to reproduce.  They may not be the ones surviving the longest.
Maybe they're good at reproducing and nothing else.

Of course, my own personal choice of x2 is questionable; it depends
what level you look at.  At the level of the group, x1 is fitter; it
propagates more.  At the level of the individual, x2 is fitter; it
survives longer.

Natural selection (now) refers to populations; presumably x1 is fitter
according to that view.  Somewhere in here lurks a problem, which is
(from my point of view) a paradox, and which seems (to me) wrong.  The
paradox (to me) is that x1, the crappy organism (by my standards), is
judged fitter because it satisfies the criterion of reproductive
success better.  A poorer organism produces a fitter population because
of the way fitness is defined.  This leaves me feeling, to say the
leaast, somewhat ambivalent.  Now of course we need definitions, but
not definitions that "solve" problems which should be investigated
empirically.  Here I throw up my hands and "resolve" the paradox by
deciding that the criterion of fitness is worthless.  (I put "resolve"
in quotes because obviously this decision does not advance us very
far.)

The error (as it seems to me) is that the link between survival and
reproduction in assessing fitness is unnecessary, or at least
poorly-defined or wrong.  It *seems* to me (I may be wrong, so no
flames - just point out my error) that the two are tied together in a
way that cannot logically be required:  there is no necessary
relationship between survival of the "fit" individual (measured by
lifespan) and generation of the next "fit" population (measured by
reproductive success).

By saying that the ones that survive reproduce more (that is what Rich
said, and what Mike I think defended), one makes this link.  But on
what basis?  I assume on this basis:  the ones that survive longer,
leave more offspring *all other things being equal*.  I suppose they
will - but why make this assumption?  Things are not obviously equal.
To make the theory work?  Not a chance.  It has to be *shown*, not
assumed.  In my example, it's false.  Its not a thing to be considered
true or false a priori, but something to be *found out*.  Otherwise,
someone can just come along and cook up one of these ad hoc stories
like, "the ones that live for a shorter time will be selected for
maximum reproductive rate, and thus will be at no disadvantage."  Well,
sure.  But so will the ones that live longer.  If we take that route,
the criterion, reproduction, is what gets selected for, not something
else.  We end up with a view of organisms that are adapted *to
reproduce*.  But that was the way they *expressed* their fitness, I
thought, not the thing they were supposed to be fit at doing.

Let us go back a little.

Those which are fitter will leave more offspring
	but only true if fit *to leave offspring*
	or, if fitness *is defined as* leaving more offspring

and then "fitness" is meaningless, because it says nothing.  Try it -
make the substitution of variables:

	fitness = fit to leave offspring, yields
    Those which are fit to leave more offspring will leave more offspring

	fitness = leaving more offspring, yields
    Those which leave more offspring will leave more offspring

Not very illuminating.  Hence my frequent comments in the past about
vacuity.

Let me raise an objection against what I have just written.  As
indicated above, fitness is measured by differential reproductive
success.  Now, at this point, millions of critics have risen up and
cried "tautology!"  One asks, "which are the fittest?"  "Those that
survive."  "Which survive?"  "The fittest."  "Oh..."

But that view *equates* fitness with differential success, and that
is ... (remembernowIamacreationistsoholdyourbreath) ... incorrect!
(Although this mistake is often made, e.g., by evolutionists accepting
too easily the words of their evolutionary mentors.)

As an alternative, it is possible to construct the following view.  I
will try to make my thinking explicit.  First, we must observe that
"fitness is measured by differential reproductive success" and "fitness
is differential reproductive success" are two *different* statements.
If this is kept in mind, the tautology may disappear (I'm not convinced
that it does, but I suspect that it might).

Organisms are or are not fit.  Fitness is the thing we want to measure,
but how do we do it?  We can say that fitness is some abstract
quantity, but which is a covert variable, not directly observable.  So
we need an overt variable that we can hang a number on.  The overt
variable needs to be in some sort of relationship to fitness, and
reproductive success is thought to have that characteristic.  If the
relationship is strong, then we have in differential success a good
indicator of the fitness of the population.  My question is:  how do we
know that differential reproductive success is a valid indicator?  My
answer is that we don't.  It is thought to be so, but I'm skeptical.
Is an increased number of offspring a necessary consequence of
fitness?  I don't think so.

At the very least, our covert variable, fitness, is confounded with
something else, i.e., reproductive *ability*.  Differential
reproductive success is in part or whole a function of reproductive
ability.  I do not think this can be disputed.  It may also be, and
probably is, a function of other factors, among which fitness may well
number.  That is,

	drs = f (reproductive ability, fitness?, ... )

But we certainly do NOT have

	drs = f (fitness only)

If anyone thinks that the latter is true, then I invite you to
demonstrate how we may decouple fitness from reproductive ability, for
that must be done to use differential reproductive success as a valid
indicator.

I think that much of the problem arises from the fact that we don't
really know what fitness *is*.  Everybody has some intuitive idea about
it.  The reproductive stuff is one of them.  Obviously I believe that's
an incorrect intuition, and disintegrates under scrutiny.

But if fitness is defined some other way, e.g., ability to live longer,
then there is no necessary link with reproductive capacity.  And then,
I think, the whole thing falls apart.

We need a new view ("one that won't make my eyes turn red...").  I
wish I had it.  I know I'm better at criticizing than constructing,
and though I think this is constructive criticism of a sort, I haven't
gotten further than the above, so far.

---

Final jab:

It is interesting (to me at least), that creationists are said not to
know what evolution is, and so are consequently said not to know what
they are criticizing.  This is often true, unfortunately.  But I
suspect, more strongly as time goes by, that many evolutionists don't
know what they are *defending*!  Witness the recent posting in which
someone spouted the Darwinian orthodoxy, right down the line, as though
it were considered credible today.  Right out of his high-school
textbook, I suppose.

Witness also the great importance attached to natural selection by many
on this net.  But how important is it in recent evolutionary theory?
Not very, in a number of instances.  Michael Lonetto has shown evidence
that he knows this.  How many others?  Rich is (apparently) still in
the dark ages, carrying this (apparently) *unexamined conviction*
around.  Mike H might be, but I doubt it; I suspect that he was trying
to clarify what Rich said, rather than defend it as his own position.

In any case, what natural selection *is*, how one detects its absence
or presence, how one measures its intensity of effect, are questions
that have all gone largely unanswered and are solved, as far as I can
see, largely by definition.  What we see in the postings are vague
generalizations, or "there's a lot of research on it today".  I am not
satisfied with this, and it would be a shame if anyone else was either,
particularly evolutionists.  I suspect that such comments are
smokescreens, serving as substitutes for thought.  I certainly do *not*
accept the pontifications about it, as if I should just shut up and
believe the (current) revealed wisdom.

-- 
                                                                    |
Paul DuBois     {allegra,ihnp4,seismo}!uwvax!uwmacc!dubois        --+--
                                                                    |
"More agonizing, less organizing."                                  |