Prof. Christine Janis on Horse Evolution

[Peter Nyikos]

Christine Janis is a paleontologist at Brown University who specializes
in ungulates, but she also does great research on other mammals. Back
around 1997, the respected dinosaur paleontologist Thomas Holtz told me in
sci.bio.paleontology that she was known informally as "Our Lady of the
Ungulates."

Christine is an occasional visitor to talk.origins. A post she
did two days ago is just the fourth post she has done to talk.origins
this year. She only contributed three lines in a reply to a long
post where I was setting Ray Martinez straight on all sorts of
things.

But, while her brief addtion was tangential even to the tidbit she took off from, it is worth going into because it is highly germane to some
fallacious arguments creationists level against the horse
sequence as it is often presented. Here is how it went:

Hypohippus is hardly Hyracotherium writ large (not to mention that
it lived along side members of the Equini for 5 million years or so).
https://groups.google.com/d/msg/talk.origins/QYc-ZPjNx0M/BlYeUbeUCgAJ

WHY THIS MATTERS:

Creationists have claimed in various ways that the horse sequence is a lie.
One theme is that the exhibit in the American Museum of Natural history
has completely changed since the middle of the 20th century.
It looks nothing like the old one, that gave the impression that
the horse family was a straight line deal from Hyracotherium to
Equus, ordained by the laws of evolution, the way Martinez made
it sound in the post to which Christine was replying.

But of course, no paleontologist would claim such a ridiculous thing.
The present exhibit does justice to what paleontologists have known
for well over a century: there were flourishing side braches to the
horse family, including a robust one with Hypohippus and at least
three other genera. They were very "conservative" in their
changes from Hyracotherium, remaining forest dwelling
browsers and having three large digits in all four feet
-- Hyracotherium had four in front.

Peter Nyikos
Professor, Dept. of Mathematics -- standard disclaimer--
University of South Carolina
http://people.math.sc.edu/nyikos/

[Peter Nyikos]

This is a reply to the post by Christine that I linked
in my OP.

https://groups.google.com/d/msg/talk.origins/QYc-ZPjNx0M/BlYeUbeUCgAJ

Two earlier attempts to reply to it directly failed.

On Wednesday, November 15, 2017 at 4:20:03 PM UTC-5, christi...@brown.edu wrote:
> On Wednesday, November 15, 2017 at 2:05:06 PM UTC, Peter Nyikos wrote:
> > On Monday, November 13, 2017 at 3:40:03 PM UTC-5, Ray Martinez wrote:
> > > On Monday, November 13, 2017 at 9:35:03 AM UTC-8, Peter Nyikos wrote:
> > > > On Monday, November 13, 2017 at 11:55:03 AM UTC-5, Ray Martinez wrote:

> > > > > DNA replication machines cannot produce anamolous adaptive genes.
> > > >
> > > > Mutations happen for all that. [snip....]
> > >
> > > That's what I said below; Shazam! As needed, called accidents by Darwinists.
> >
> > They don't need them, except in the case of 20/20 hindsight.
> > The mutations that led from Hyracotherium to the modern horse
> > need never have happened, and instead of Equus we might have
> > Hypohippus, who never left the forests for the grasslands, had
> > three working hooves on each foot, and teeth completely
> > unsuitable for grazing on grass. Bovids and camelids might
> > have been the only successful invaders of the grasslands
> > among the ungulates.


<snip of discussion not related to the above>


> " The mutations that led from Hyracotherium to the modern horse
> need never have happened, and instead of Equus we might have
> Hypohippus"

>
> Hypohippus is hardly Hyracotherium writ large (not to mention that

> it lived alongside members of the Equini for 5 million years or so).

How nice to hear from you again, Christine!


> Just sayin'.

What you say is correct, of course, but my comment about
Hypohippus should make it clear to knowledgeable people here
that it had lost the fourth toes on its front feet that had been]
functional in Hyracotherium and that, therefore,
it was NOT Hyracotherium writ large. But thanks for making that
clear to the less knowledgeable people here.


As you must have noticed, I was assuming just a tad more than the idea
that the specializations to life in grasslands never happened in Equidae.
I was adding the possibility that Hypohippus (perhaps of a different
species than the last living one) survived into the Pleistocene and was
domesticated by humans, not necessarily for riding, of course.

Now that your post has spurred me to check back to my main sources
on the horse sequence (including your excellent article, "The Horse
Series") I see a better choice would have been a later Anchitherine,
*Sinohippus* which lived in Eurasia and survived to the early Pliocene,
which meant only about 5 million years additional survival to the
time of early humans.

After all, the nonexistence of grasslands horses might have tipped
the scales towards forests just enough for Sinohippus to survive
a few million years longer. The butterfly effect, and all that, y'know.

Peter Nyikos
Professor, Dept. of Mathematics -- standard disclaimer--
University of South Carolina
http://people.math.sc.edu/nyikos/

PS Over in sci.bio.paleontology, a newcomer with initials JLL
has been making much of the fact (?) that paired supraorbital
horns only have been found in Artiodactyla and Xenartha among
the mammals. A good place to catch him talking about it is:

https://groups.google.com/d/msg/sci.bio.paleontology/wGsPf9MKy30/8pRNygRyAQAJ
Date: Wed, 15 Nov 2017 19:56:01 -0800 (PST)
Message-ID: <08d42340-750e-4a19...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: Assimilation

It would be great if you could contribute to the discussion,
but I do hope you would be interested enough to lurk there.

[Alan Kleinman MD PhD]

Do you think that because paleontologists don't take into account the mechanisms of genetic transformation that their interpretation of the fossil record should not be questioned?

[John Harshman]

Oh, he's gone way beyond that: xenarthrans are descended from
ankylsaurs, artiodactyls are descended from ceratopsians, and I think he
might be about to claim that whales are descended from mosasaurs.

[christi...@brown.edu]

> Oh, he's gone way beyond that: xenarthrans are descended from
> ankylsaurs, artiodactyls are descended from ceratopsians, and I think he
> might be about to claim that whales are descended from mosasaurs.

Of course, horses are important to these discussions in other ways. For example, given that we are extremely well informed as to what actually *has* happened in evolution, from such diverse sources such as comparative anatomy, evodevo, phylogenomics, and the fossil record, any and all attempts to declare that such things could not have happened because of some model of probability may be viewed as merely an extensive attempt to lock the stable door after the horse has bolted.

[christi...@brown.edu]

Hypohippus (and other large anchitheres such as Sinohippus) are different from Hyracotherium in all kinds of ways, not merely the loss of the 4th manual digit (although, like other anchitheres, they also differ from hyracotheres in having relatively longer metapodials and relatively more reduced side toes, as well as having a molar pattern that is trilophodont rather than bunolophodont).

Derived anchitheres have a skull that is relatively flat, large and procumbant incisors, and molars that are 'megadont' --- that is, large for the size of the head (like rhinos). In many respects their skulls, at least, are as divergent from the skull form of hyracotheres as are the skulls of the Equini (although in a quite different direction).

The main point here being that horse evolution is "bushy" in all sorts of ways, not merely in the lineage leading, ultimately, to Equus.

[Ray Martinez]

Your Naturalism assumptions and epistemology guarantee your conclusions.

Ray

[John Harshman]

I have further discovered that litopterns are descended from ornithopods
and euarchontoglireans are descended from pachycephalosaurs. No
information yet on perissodactyls.

[Ray Martinez]

On Saturday, November 18, 2017 at 2:00:04 PM UTC-8, christi...@brown.edu wrote:

***As phrased*** all the above says is that mere discovery of similarity and key dissimilarities, in the equine sequence, means evolution has occurred. In other words, the conclusion is based solely on assumption: discovery of these effects means evolution has occurred.

Ray

[Jonathan]

On 11/17/2017 4:46 PM, Peter Nyikos wrote:



Still waiting for you to admit your claims
about me are patently false and show a
distinct lack of intellectual honesty.



I wrote...


>
> Dear Peter.
>
> You have repeatedly dismissed or claimed my posts about
> complexity science as nonsense, and without even once
> giving any support for your claims.



The one-and-only justification you gave for issuing
all kinds of insulting claims about my competency
is this...


Peter wrote...


"...and you made ridiculous claims in return about how
complexity theory will hold the key to peace in the
Middle East, etc."


To which I offered clear evidence below that show my claim
was completely true and yours clearly false. But this
also shows you haven't the honesty to admit you were
wrong. Not to mention your statement shows you are
the one ignorant about this field of science.




Big Ideas on Complexity Science & Sustainable Peace

Complexity, Intractability and Social Change

Peter T. Coleman (+ Bio)

Intractable conflicts are those conflicts that persist
over time and space. They draw us in and we seem to
remain trapped in their grip despite efforts of many
to resolve them. Examples are easy to identify – from
national and international conflicts to a longstanding
family feud. In his 10-minute talk, Dr. Peter Coleman
will share a new way of thinking about and engaging in
intractable conflict – through the lens of complexity science
and dynamical systems theory.
http://ac4.ei.columbia.edu/resources/2015-talk-series-big-ideas-on-complexity-science-and-sustainable-peace/



And here's another cite showing you were wrong
about the facts...



Getting Past Conflict Resolution: A Complexity
View of Conflict

"The traditional view of conflict, as a
problematic condition always requiring
reduction or elimination and whose
conditions or outcomes can be predicted, is
incompatible with a complex adaptive systems
view of organizations.

Thus, conventional approaches to reducing conflict
are often futile because the fundamental
properties of complex adaptive systems are
the source of much organizational ‘conflict.’
In this paper we offer an alternative view of
conflict as pattern fluctuations in
complex adaptive systems."
http://digitalcommons.unl.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1064&context=managementfacpub




Do you treat your students the same way? Do you falsely
accuse them of ignorance, and when shown your wrong
with clear evidence maintain your claim anyway?

Perhaps your students should be made aware of your
penchant for making uninformed accusations and
your intellectual dishonesty?



Jonathan


s

[Jonathan]

"A science -- so the Savants say,
"Comparative Anatomy" --
By which a single bone --
Is made a secret to unfold
Of some rare tenant of the mold,
Else perished in the stone --

So to the eye prospective led,
This meekest flower of the mead
Upon a winter's day,
Stands representative in gold
Of Rose and Lily, manifold,
And countless Butterfly!'


By E Dickinson




s

[Jonathan]

Reconstructing the past, as interesting as that may be, doesn't mean
use that knowledge to predict the future of an evolutionary system.

Studying all these 'parts' to the nth degree will never show
how these life forms came into existence, as they are all
emergent properties. As the cite below points out with
strong, or type 4, emergent systems as you listed...


"The microscopic details of the lower system are
completely irrelevant to macroscopic phenomena."




Emergence Taxonomy

(excerpts)


The emergence of order and organization in
systems composed of many autonomous entities or agents
is a very fundamental process. The process of
emergence deals with the fundamental question:
“how does an entity come into existence?”


5.4 Type IV. Strong Emergence and Supervenience

Strong Emergence can be defined as the appearance of
emergent structures on higher levels of organization
or complexity which possess truly new properties that
cannot be reduced, even in principle, to the cumulative
effect of the properties and laws of the basic parts
and elementary components.

Life is a strong emergent property of genes, genetic code
and nucleic/amino acids, and Culture in general is a
strong emergent property of memes, language and
writing systems.

Therefore strong emergence describes systems which are
supervenient on the lower ones, but logically separable
from the underlying phenomena that gave rise to it.

“Multiscale” systems arising through strong emergence
depend on lower systems, because they are implemented
at the lowest level in their language, but at the same
time they are independent from them, since they obey
their own mesoscopic or macroscopic language and are
insensitive to microscopic details.

The microscopic details of the lower system are completely
irrelevant to macroscopic phenomena."

The macroscopic level is independent from the microscopic level,
because there is a mesoscopic or intermediate level that
protects and isolates the one from the other.

Therefore in strong emergence the macroscopic level is irrelevant
to the microscopic level and vice versa. It is like Anderson said:
“the ability to reduce everything to simple fundamental laws
does not imply the ability to start from those laws and
reconstruct the universe.

The macroscopic level remains invariant if the micoscopic level
is replaced by something else, as long as the mesoscopic
or intermediate levels remains the same.

Laughlin calls this the “Barrier of Relevance”

http://old-classes.design4complexity.com/7701-S14/reading/critical-thinking/Types-and-Forms-of-Emergence.pdf



So you see, the new field of emergence shows reducing to part
details, or trying to find what 'came first', such as a
missing link, is entirely irrelevant to answering questions
like, how does evolution work, or how did life come
into existence.



Jonathan





s

[Wolffan]

On 2017 Nov 18, Jonathan wrote
(in article<Op6dnbuCDKt5e43H...@giganews.com>):

> On 11/17/2017 4:46 PM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
>
> Still waiting for you to admit your claims
> about me are patently false and show a
> distinct lack of intellectual honesty.

I really, really, REALLY hate to defend the dismal, disgraced, demoted, duke
of dimness... but when _you_ try to accuse someone else, even Petey der
Gross, of displaying a lack of intellectual honesty, I start to giggle.

[snip absurd rant]

[gets popcorn]

Drive on, Jonny-boy, drive on.

[*Hemidactylus*]

Bear baiting is improper spectacle even if a annoying heel snipping
chihuahua who constantly poops in our yard is pitted against a known bad
grizzly who habitually turns over our garbage and eats the neighborhood
cats.

[Wolffan]

On 2017 Nov 19, Hemidactylus* wrote
(in article<a_KdnUx7IPGp8IzH...@giganews.com>):

oh, come on. Think how much fun it’ll be if Jonny-boy finally gets
Peter’s attention. Petey is one of the smarter posters around here, even if
he is an asshole. Jonny-boy, now... until I saw his stuff I didn’t know
that IQs could be expressed in negative numbers. If and when Peter reacts,
the carnage should be spectacular.

[*Hemidactylus*]

According to Pinker in Better Angels, bloodsport has fallen out of favor,
though perhaps its manifestations have sublimated into subtler forms.

[Jonathan]

On 11/19/2017 7:24 AM, *Hemidactylus* wrote:
> Wolffan <aklwo...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> On 2017 Nov 19, Hemidactylus* wrote
>> (in article<a_KdnUx7IPGp8IzH...@giganews.com>):
>>
>>> Wolffan <aklwo...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>> On 2017 Nov 18, Jonathan wrote
>>>> (in article<Op6dnbuCDKt5e43H...@giganews.com>):
>>>>
>>>>> On 11/17/2017 4:46 PM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>> Still waiting for you to admit your claims
>>>>> about me are patently false and show a
>>>>> distinct lack of intellectual honesty.
>>>>
>>>> I really, really, REALLY hate to defend the dismal, disgraced, demoted, duke
>>>> of dimness... but when _you_ try to accuse someone else, even Petey der
>>>> Gross, of displaying a lack of intellectual honesty, I start to giggle.
>>>>
>>>> [snip absurd rant]
>>>>
>>>> [gets popcorn]
>>>>
>>>> Drive on, Jonny-boy, drive on.
>>> Bear baiting is improper spectacle even if a annoying heel snipping
>>> chihuahua who constantly poops in our yard is pitted against a known bad
>>> grizzly who habitually turns over our garbage and eats the neighborhood
>>> cats.
>>
>> oh, come on. Think how much fun it’ll be if Jonny-boy finally gets
>> Peter’s attention. Petey is one of the smarter posters around here,

Smart? He claims he's an expert enough on Complexity Science
to call me incompetent wrt same. Yet he can't even define
the TITLE of the science after repeated attempts.

And neither can either of you, yet you both ridicule
as if you do. That's embarrassing to witness.

He makes empty accusations without having the first clue
and the fact you can't see that speaks volumes to your
ignorance.

even if
>> he is an asshole. Jonny-boy, now... until I saw his stuff I didn’t know
>> that IQs could be expressed in negative numbers. If and when Peter reacts,
>> the carnage should be spectacular.
>>
> According to Pinker in Better Angels, bloodsport has fallen out of favor,
> though perhaps its manifestations have sublimated into subtler forms.
>

I've heard more factual and coherent statements come of out
Trump's mouth than either of you. And I'm sure you'll
both think that's a compliment as it's become clear
facts meaning nothing to either of you.

And until he retracts his baseless claims I'm going dog him.
He's so stupid, he even makes such ignorant attacks under
his real name and posts where he works.

I'm gonna make sure his coworkers and students know all about
his penchant for making false claims and maintaining those
claims even in the face of clear evidence he's wrong
if he doesn't retract.

They deserve to know they're associated with someone that
will do such things without any rational reason, and that
he can't be trusted with the truth.

And for a math professor, that's shameful.

[Wolffan]

On 2017 Nov 19, Jonathan wrote
(in article<gaidnTeP3qF0GYzH...@giganews.com>):

drive on, Jonny-boy, drive on

[gets more popcorn]

[jillery]

On Sun, 19 Nov 2017 05:57:39 -0500, Wolffan <aklwo...@gmail.com>
wrote:

It's definitely a case of pot v kettle. If they ever went
head-to-head, they both would suffer from broken glass.

--
I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.

Evelyn Beatrice Hall
Attributed to Voltaire

[Jonathan]

On 11/19/2017 9:16 AM, jillery wrote:
> On Sun, 19 Nov 2017 05:57:39 -0500, Wolffan <aklwo...@gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>> On 2017 Nov 18, Jonathan wrote
>> (in article<Op6dnbuCDKt5e43H...@giganews.com>):
>>
>>> On 11/17/2017 4:46 PM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
>>>
>>> Still waiting for you to admit your claims
>>> about me are patently false and show a
>>> distinct lack of intellectual honesty.
>>
>> I really, really, REALLY hate to defend the dismal, disgraced, demoted, duke
>> of dimness... but when _you_ try to accuse someone else, even Petey der
>> Gross, of displaying a lack of intellectual honesty, I start to giggle.
>>
>> [snip absurd rant]
>>
>> [gets popcorn]
>>
>> Drive on, Jonny-boy, drive on.
>
>
> It's definitely a case of pot v kettle. If they ever went
> head-to-head, they both would suffer from broken glass.
>

Really? What's my real name and where do I work?
Even Dear Emily knew the power of being anon.



"I'm Nobody! Who are you?
Are you - Nobody - Too?
Then there's a pair of us!
Don't tell!
They'd banish us - you know!"



s

[Wolffan]

On 2017 Nov 19, Jonathan wrote

(in article<Nb2dnfoJfdmbMYzH...@giganews.com>):

> On 11/19/2017 9:16 AM, jillery wrote:
> > On Sun, 19 Nov 2017 05:57:39 -0500, Wolffan<aklwo...@gmail.com>
> > wrote:
> >
> > > On 2017 Nov 18, Jonathan wrote
> > > (in article<Op6dnbuCDKt5e43H...@giganews.com>):
> > >
> > > > On 11/17/2017 4:46 PM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
> > > >
> > > > Still waiting for you to admit your claims
> > > > about me are patently false and show a
> > > > distinct lack of intellectual honesty.
> > >
> > > I really, really, REALLY hate to defend the dismal, disgraced, demoted,
> > > duke
> > > of dimness... but when _you_ try to accuse someone else, even Petey der
> > > Gross, of displaying a lack of intellectual honesty, I start to giggle.
> > >
> > > [snip absurd rant]
> > >
> > > [gets popcorn]
> > >
> > > Drive on, Jonny-boy, drive on.
> >
> >
> > It's definitely a case of pot v kettle. If they ever went
> > head-to-head, they both would suffer from broken glass.
>
> Really? What's my real name

Peter Nyikos

> and where do I work?

The University of South Carolina

>
> Even Dear Emily knew the power of being anon.
>
> "I'm Nobody!

oh, you’re nobody, no doubt at all.

[*Hemidactylus*]

This has all the intellectual appeal of a drive-by shooting. I thought you
would be capable of debating Nyikos on maths of complexity and not
resorting to threats. You’ve lost while still in the starting gate.

[jonathan]

> ---




OMG I've dared and demanded a debate with him over the math
a dozen times, he's afraid to because it's obvious
he doesn't even know where to begin with this field
of mathematics, I'd embarrass him.

Sorry, but for someone associated with higher learning
to make unfounded public accusations of incompetence
without any justification or willingness to debate
is not only embarrassing to witness but unacceptable.

And for Peter to do such things against someone
that's anon while advertising his real name
and place of work is a profound act of stupidity.

I'm giving him a choice, be an honest adult and
debate the math rigorously, or suffer the
consequences of slander.




> This email has been checked for viruses by AVG.
> http://www.avg.com
>

[Wolffan]

On 2017 Nov 19, jonathan wrote
(in article<5oGdnUKIaulPKYzH...@giganews.com>):

he can’t be bothered ‘cause you’re obviously brain-damaged.

[*Hemidactylus*]

Maybe he doesn’t see anything to be gained in entering a discussion with
you, given your reputation of not actually engaging anybody in actual
constructive debate. OTOH if he were to meet someone with scholarly
reputation and stature- eg- along lines of Stu Kaufman , Iyla Prigogine, or
Benoit Mandelbrot-he would probably be very deferential, polite, and
engaging. Besides his field is topology. Are you familiar?

[Bob Casanova]

On Sun, 19 Nov 2017 11:07:49 -0500, the following appeared
in talk.origins, posted by Jonathan
<WriteI...@gmail.com>:

>On 11/19/2017 9:16 AM, jillery wrote:
>> On Sun, 19 Nov 2017 05:57:39 -0500, Wolffan <aklwo...@gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>>
>>> On 2017 Nov 18, Jonathan wrote
>>> (in article<Op6dnbuCDKt5e43H...@giganews.com>):
>>>
>>>> On 11/17/2017 4:46 PM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
>>>>
>>>> Still waiting for you to admit your claims
>>>> about me are patently false and show a
>>>> distinct lack of intellectual honesty.
>>>
>>> I really, really, REALLY hate to defend the dismal, disgraced, demoted, duke
>>> of dimness... but when _you_ try to accuse someone else, even Petey der
>>> Gross, of displaying a lack of intellectual honesty, I start to giggle.
>>>
>>> [snip absurd rant]
>>>
>>> [gets popcorn]
>>>
>>> Drive on, Jonny-boy, drive on.

>> It's definitely a case of pot v kettle. If they ever went
>> head-to-head, they both would suffer from broken glass.

>Really? What's my real name and where do I work?
>Even Dear Emily knew the power of being anon.

Yeah, and how 'bout them Mets?

(Translated for the impaired: Your post is a complete non
sequitur; nothing jillery wrote had anything whatsoever to
do with your real identity or place of employment.)
--

Bob C.

"The most exciting phrase to hear in science,
the one that heralds new discoveries, is not
'Eureka!' but 'That's funny...'"

- Isaac Asimov

[Bob Casanova]

On Sat, 18 Nov 2017 21:43:34 -0500, the following appeared

in talk.origins, posted by Jonathan
<WriteI...@gmail.com>:

>On 11/18/2017 4:59 PM, christi...@brown.edu wrote:
>>
>>> Oh, he's gone way beyond that: xenarthrans are descended from
>>> ankylsaurs, artiodactyls are descended from ceratopsians, and I think he
>>> might be about to claim that whales are descended from mosasaurs.
>>
>> Of course, horses are important to these discussions in other ways. For example, given that we are extremely well informed as to what actually *has* happened in evolution, from such diverse sources such as comparative anatomy, evodevo, phylogenomics, and the fossil record, any and all attempts to declare that such things could not have happened because of some model of probability may be viewed as merely an extensive attempt to lock the stable door after the horse has bolted.

>Reconstructing the past, as interesting as that may be, doesn't mean
>use that knowledge to predict the future of an evolutionary system.

In detail? Of course not; who claimed it did? Of course,
neither can complexity science, or any other field of study.

[Bob Casanova]

On Sat, 18 Nov 2017 16:00:43 -0800 (PST), the following
appeared in talk.origins, posted by Ray Martinez
<r3p...@gmail.com>:

See that about "diverse sources", and the identities of
those sources? What do you suppose that might mean?

[jillery]

If in fact rockhead reserves deferential, polite, and engaging
behavior for those with scholarly reputations, that would imply a
willful elitism as an excuse for his usual style of personal attacks,
lies, and irrelevant noise.

But my impression is he exhibits artful flattery and sycophancy with
anybody who share his compulsion for mudslinging and shit-stirring,
regardless of their bona fides and intellectual substance.

>Besides his field is topology. Are you familiar?

[jillery]

On Sun, 19 Nov 2017 12:19:29 -0700, Bob Casanova <nos...@buzz.off>

I just assumed it was another one of jonathan's <WHOOSH> moments, and
let it pass.

[jonathan]

On 11/19/2017 2:23 PM, Bob Casanova wrote:
> On Sat, 18 Nov 2017 21:43:34 -0500, the following appeared
> in talk.origins, posted by Jonathan
> <WriteI...@gmail.com>:
>
>> On 11/18/2017 4:59 PM, christi...@brown.edu wrote:
>>>
>>>> Oh, he's gone way beyond that: xenarthrans are descended from
>>>> ankylsaurs, artiodactyls are descended from ceratopsians, and I think he
>>>> might be about to claim that whales are descended from mosasaurs.
>>>
>>> Of course, horses are important to these discussions in other ways. For example, given that we are extremely well informed as to what actually *has* happened in evolution, from such diverse sources such as comparative anatomy, evodevo, phylogenomics, and the fossil record, any and all attempts to declare that such things could not have happened because of some model of probability may be viewed as merely an extensive attempt to lock the stable door after the horse has bolted.
>
>> Reconstructing the past, as interesting as that may be, doesn't mean
>> use that knowledge to predict the future of an evolutionary system.
>

Of all I wrote in that post this is all you
have to say?

> In detail? Of course not; who claimed it did? Of course,
> neither can complexity science, or any other field of study.
>

Really?

Using complexity science I publicly and accurately
predicted the great stock market crash of Oct 08.
As far as I know no one else did. Proof at
the link at the bottom.

A few things about that prediction.

1) It was a once in a century event which
normally is not predictable...in principle.

2) It was panic induced behavior which normally
(again) is not predictable...in principle.

3) I accurately predicted to within 1% the
short term magnitude of the panic, which
normally is not even thinkable.

4) I predicted the single greatest panic
in modern history as that event set off
the largest world-wide economic collapse
of all time.


A global panic involving millions of
intelligent humans, not microbes
but flocks and flocks of people
from all over the globe.

Do you see a TREND in the above?

Every aspect of that event was pegged
at the /maximum level/ of complexity
humanly possible.

Every aspect of that event from an
objective perspective was at the
very /minimum level/ in predictability.

Don't you see? The point at which reductionist
methods become utterly futile is the point
at which a complexity perspective renders
shit-simple.

It took me all of 2 minutes to recognize
the impending panic, a quick look at
the pattern that was forming, and
the extent of the required math to
get that 1% accuracy was in calculating
a 40% fall, which doesn't even require
a calculator, not even a pencil.

The one point at which objective
mindsets will never be able to 'see', is
the one point that is glaringly obvious
from a complexity perspective.

Now, the one point at which objective
metods can never hope to 'see' is
things like...

FLIPPIN' CREATION?
HOW DID IT ALL BEGIN?
WHERE IS GOD?

From a complexity perspective those
questions are rendered obvious
....shit-simple.

And no one here wants to know how.

My obsession with these ideas
have a religious like fervor
for a perfectly sound reason.

I only wish for one other person
to grasp this mathematical path
to the bliss of being 'born again'.

Put reductionist and complexity
perspectives together, and the
world will never look the same
gain, suddenly there are no more
questions.

To experience this...



"One Blessing had I than the rest
So larger to my Eyes
That I stopped gauging -- satisfied --
For this enchanted size --

It was the limit of my Dream --
The focus of my Prayer --
A perfect -- paralyzing Bliss --
Contented as Despair --

I knew no more of Want -- or Cold --
Phantasms both become
For this new Value in the Soul --
Supremest Earthly Sum --

The Heaven below the Heaven above --
Obscured with ruddier Blue --
Life's Latitudes leant over -- full --
The Judgment perished -- too --

Why Bliss so scantily disburse --
Why Paradise defer --
Why Floods be served to Us -- in Bowls --
I speculate no more"




THE PROOF
................

The Stock Market Crash l is Far From Over!!!
10 posts by 6 authors
jonathan
10/3/08

This is a typical panic-sell situation due to the massive
system wide uncertainty concerning mortgage debt.
The cliché "buy on the rumor, sell on the news"
most certainly applies I believe.

The 'news' in this particular panic is the rescue bill.

Which was just signed, making the next few weeks a sure
sell-off, and big time imho. People will look around the next
week or so asking ..."is it over, are we saved?"

"No, not really, nothing much has changed!"

Might be the reply.

And like a shotgun blast to a flock of birds, the panic-sell
will resume, ....and with a fervor not yet seen.
This kind of panic sells always have a false bottom
around half way down. For the Dow it was just above
11,000, and the Nasdaq at around 2200.

The bottom will be around 8500 for the Dow, and
around 1700 for the Nasdaq ...imho.

I aint getting back in till then.


Good luck!


Jonathan

s


https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/misc.invest.stocks/K0cwljzB8J4


The following Monday the Dow closed down almost 400.
Tuesday saw the single largest drop in the Dow since 1937
dropping over 500 points for the day. And it dropped an
astonishing 950 points more by Friday to close the week
at 8577.

The Nasdaq ended the week at 1690.


My prediction

Dow
77 / 8500 = .009% (error)

Nasdaq
10 / 1700 = .005% (error)


~ one week later....


The Stock Market Crash of 2008
October 10, 2008 10:03 AM

"ABC News' Betsy Stark reports: In 1987, it happened in a day.
In 1929 it happened in two days. Now it has happened
in seven days, but the result is same.
The stock market has crashed.



s







---

[*Hemidactylus*]

https://dealbook.nytimes.com/2008/04/11/george-soros-the-face-of-a-prophet/

“Mr. Soros has been worrying about the fragile state of the markets for
years. But last summer, at a luncheon at his home in Southampton with 20
prominent financiers, he struck an unusually bearish note.

“The mood of the group was generally gloomy, but George said we were going
into a serious recession,” said Byron Wien, the chief investment strategist
of Pequot Capital, a hedge fund.

Mr. Soros was one of only two people there who predicted the American
economy was headed for a recession, he said.”

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/2008/05/15/the-financial-crisis-an-interview-with-george-soro/

“Soros: The authorities, the regulators—the Federal Reserve and the
Treasury—really failed to see what was happening. One Fed governor, Edward
Gramlich, warned of a coming crisis in subprime mortgages in a speech
published in 2004 and a book published in 2007, among other statements. So
a number of people could see it coming. And somehow, the authorities didn’t
want to see it coming. So it came as a surprise.”


https://www.cnbc.com/2014/07/01/best-and-worst-predictions-of-the-past-25-years.html

“Robert Shiller's triple bubble burst. All seemed well with the world in
the mid- to late-1990s as this new thing called the World Wide Web was
making millionaires and billionaires faster than you could say "dot-com."
Yale economist Shiller was having none of it, though, correctly surmising
in his 2000 book "Irrational Exuberance" that Pets.com and the rest of the
digital Wild West was poised for a fall. Five years later, he released the
book's second edition, predicting that housing values had gotten out of
whack and were about to blow. And he wasn't finished yet: In 2007 Shiller
forecast a collapse of the U.S. real estate market and an ensuing financial
panic. At long last—finally!—in 2013 the Nobel Committee got around to
giving Shiller (along with two others) its coveted prize for economics.”

Your October 2008 “prediction” came after Soros and Schiller.

[*Hemidactylus*]

Uh oh more prognosticators:

http://time.com/money/4818790/stock-market-predictions-investors/

[*Hemidactylus*]

OMG!!!!!

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2009/jan/26/road-ruin-recession-individuals-economy

“George Soros, speculator
The billionaire financier, philanthropist and backer of the Democrats told
an audience in Singapore in January 2006 that stockmarkets were at their
peak, and that the US and global economies should brace themselves for a
recession and a possible "hard landing". He also warned of "a gigantic real
estate bubble" inflated by reckless lenders, encouraging homeowners to
remortgage and offering interest-only deals. Earlier this year Soros
described a 25-year "super bubble" that is bursting, blaming unfathomable
financial instruments, deregulation and globalisation. He has since
characterised the financial crisis as the worst since the Great
Depression.”

But up-article is absolutely priceless...adorable really:

“For many years, Greenspan also defended the booming derivatives business,
which barely existed when he took over the Fed, but which mushroomed from
$100tn in 2002 to more than $500tn five years later.

Billionaires George Soros and Warren Buffett might have been extremely
worried about these complex products - Soros avoided them because he didn't
"really understand how they work" and Buffett famously described them as
"financial weapons of mass destruction" - but Greenspan did all he could to
protect the market from what he believed was unnecessary regulation. In
2003 he told the Senate banking committee: "Derivatives have been an
extraordinarily useful vehicle to transfer risk from those who shouldn't be
taking it to those who are willing to and are capable of doing so".”

Soros... so frickin’ evil. And far more ignorant and short-sighted than the
investment genius jonathan.

[Alan Kleinman MD PhD]

On Saturday, November 18, 2017 at 2:00:04 PM UTC-8, christi...@brown.edu wrote:
> > Oh, he's gone way beyond that: xenarthrans are descended from
> > ankylsaurs, artiodactyls are descended from ceratopsians, and I think he
> > might be about to claim that whales are descended from mosasaurs.
>
> Of course, horses are important to these discussions in other ways. For example, given that we are extremely well informed as to what actually *has* happened in evolution, from such diverse sources such as comparative anatomy, evodevo, phylogenomics, and the fossil record, any and all attempts to declare that such things could not have happened because of some model of probability may be viewed as merely an extensive attempt to lock the stable door after the horse has bolted.

I really don't expect someone not trained in the hard mathematical sciences to understand this argument. But welcome to the discussion anyway.
.
But don't get me wrong, I don't have any problem with horses evolving into horses. But if you do think that horses evolved from reptiles, I do question that claim. How do you get an animal which produces hair from an animal that doesn't produce hair? And perhaps you would be willing to answer this question I posed to Peter: Do you think that because paleontologists don't take into account the mechanisms of genetic transformation that their interpretation of the fossil record should not be questioned?
.
And if you think that probability theory doesn't apply to evolution, perhaps you would answer this question. If you double the population size, do you double the probability that a beneficial mutation will occur? And John, no comment from the peanut gallery.

[*Hemidactylus*]

Nobody here understands this but you strike a far more emphatic pose than
Ray or Nyikos or Negan or the Governor.

[*Hemidactylus*]

Damn spellcheck! I meant empathetic and apologize for unintended
misconstrual.

[jillery]

On Sun, 19 Nov 2017 17:05:31 -0800 (PST), Alan Kleinman MD PhD
<klei...@sti.net> wrote:

>On Saturday, November 18, 2017 at 2:00:04 PM UTC-8, christi...@brown.edu wrote:
>> > Oh, he's gone way beyond that: xenarthrans are descended from
>> > ankylsaurs, artiodactyls are descended from ceratopsians, and I think he
>> > might be about to claim that whales are descended from mosasaurs.
>>
>> Of course, horses are important to these discussions in other ways. For example, given that we are extremely well informed as to what actually *has* happened in evolution, from such diverse sources such as comparative anatomy, evodevo, phylogenomics, and the fossil record, any and all attempts to declare that such things could not have happened because of some model of probability may be viewed as merely an extensive attempt to lock the stable door after the horse has bolted.
>I really don't expect someone not trained in the hard mathematical sciences to understand this argument.

Even if someone was trained in the hard mathematical sciences, you
don't think they understand "this argument" if they don't agree with
you. Based on your posts, nobody but you understands "this argument".

>But welcome to the discussion anyway.
>.
>But don't get me wrong, I don't have any problem with horses evolving into horses.

There's the problem. What was stated was not "horses evolved into
horses", but that non-horse species evolved into horses.

>But if you do think that horses evolved from reptiles, I do question that claim. How do you get an animal which produces hair from an animal that doesn't produce hair? And perhaps you would be willing to answer this question I posed to Peter: Do you think that because paleontologists don't take into account the mechanisms of genetic transformation that their interpretation of the fossil record should not be questioned?

What is with your obsesssion over reptiles? You argue as if you think
they were the first living organisms. The fossil record shows there
was a time on Earth when there were no reptiles. So where do you
think reptiles came from?

>.
>And if you think that probability theory doesn't apply to evolution, perhaps you would answer this question. If you double the population size, do you double the probability that a beneficial mutation will occur? And John, no comment from the peanut gallery.

[Alan Kleinman MD PhD]

On Sunday, November 19, 2017 at 9:50:02 PM UTC-8, jillery wrote:
> On Sun, 19 Nov 2017 17:05:31 -0800 (PST), Alan Kleinman MD PhD

> wrote:
>
> >On Saturday, November 18, 2017 at 2:00:04 PM UTC-8, christi...@brown.edu wrote:
> >> > Oh, he's gone way beyond that: xenarthrans are descended from
> >> > ankylsaurs, artiodactyls are descended from ceratopsians, and I think he
> >> > might be about to claim that whales are descended from mosasaurs.
> >>
> >> Of course, horses are important to these discussions in other ways. For example, given that we are extremely well informed as to what actually *has* happened in evolution, from such diverse sources such as comparative anatomy, evodevo, phylogenomics, and the fossil record, any and all attempts to declare that such things could not have happened because of some model of probability may be viewed as merely an extensive attempt to lock the stable door after the horse has bolted.
> >I really don't expect someone not trained in the hard mathematical sciences to understand this argument.
>
>
> Even if someone was trained in the hard mathematical sciences, you
> don't think they understand "this argument" if they don't agree with
> you. Based on your posts, nobody but you understands "this argument".

The thing about mathematical logic applied to physical problems is that it gives a powerful predictive tool for the behavior of that physical system. If someone who understands this logic disagrees, that individual should either point out the error in the mathematics or in the way the mathematics is being applied.

>
>
> >But welcome to the discussion anyway.
> >.
> >But don't get me wrong, I don't have any problem with horses evolving into horses.
>
>
> There's the problem. What was stated was not "horses evolved into
> horses", but that non-horse species evolved into horses.

And how do these non-horse species evolve into horses? What is the mechanism of genetic transformation? I don't think that comparative anatomy is sufficient to make this logical leap.

>
>
> >But if you do think that horses evolved from reptiles, I do question that claim. How do you get an animal which produces hair from an animal that doesn't produce hair? And perhaps you would be willing to answer this question I posed to Peter: Do you think that because paleontologists don't take into account the mechanisms of genetic transformation that their interpretation of the fossil record should not be questioned?
>
>
> What is with your obsesssion over reptiles? You argue as if you think
> they were the first living organisms. The fossil record shows there
> was a time on Earth when there were no reptiles. So where do you
> think reptiles came from?

Choose your progenitor. Choose your de novo evolution of any gene. You are attributing a power to rmns that do not exist. What is the selection pressure that would create the DNA replicase system?

[Peter Nyikos]

On Friday, November 17, 2017 at 7:30:02 PM UTC-5, John Harshman wrote:
> On 11/17/17 2:18 PM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
> > This is a reply to the post by Christine that I linked
> > in my OP.
> >
> > https://groups.google.com/d/msg/talk.origins/QYc-ZPjNx0M/BlYeUbeUCgAJ
> >
> > Two earlier attempts to reply to it directly failed.
> >
> > On Wednesday, November 15, 2017 at 4:20:03 PM UTC-5, christi...@brown.edu wrote:
> >> On Wednesday, November 15, 2017 at 2:05:06 PM UTC, Peter Nyikos wrote:
> >>> On Monday, November 13, 2017 at 3:40:03 PM UTC-5, Ray Martinez wrote:
> >>>> On Monday, November 13, 2017 at 9:35:03 AM UTC-8, Peter Nyikos wrote:
> >>>>> On Monday, November 13, 2017 at 11:55:03 AM UTC-5, Ray Martinez wrote:
> >
> >>>>>> DNA replication machines cannot produce anamolous adaptive genes.
> >>>>>
> >>>>> Mutations happen for all that. [snip....]
> >>>>
> >>>> That's what I said below; Shazam! As needed, called accidents by Darwinists.
> >>>
> >>> They don't need them, except in the case of 20/20 hindsight.
> >>> The mutations that led from Hyracotherium to the modern horse
> >>> need never have happened, and instead of Equus we might have
> >>> Hypohippus, who never left the forests for the grasslands, had
> >>> three working hooves on each foot, and teeth completely
> >>> unsuitable for grazing on grass. Bovids and camelids might
> >>> have been the only successful invaders of the grasslands
> >>> among the ungulates.
> >
> >
> > <snip of discussion not related to the above>
> >
> >
> >> " The mutations that led from Hyracotherium to the modern horse
> >> need never have happened, and instead of Equus we might have
> >> Hypohippus"
> >>
> >> Hypohippus is hardly Hyracotherium writ large (not to mention that
> >> it lived alongside members of the Equini for 5 million years or so).
> >
> > How nice to hear from you again, Christine!
> >
> >
> >> Just sayin'.
> >
> > What you say is correct, of course, but my comment about
> > Hypohippus should make it clear to knowledgeable people here
> > that it had lost the fourth toes on its front feet that had been]
> > functional in Hyracotherium and that, therefore,
> > it was NOT Hyracotherium writ large. But thanks for making that
> > clear to the less knowledgeable people here.
> >
> >
> > As you must have noticed, I was assuming just a tad more than the idea
> > that the specializations to life in grasslands never happened in Equidae.
> > I was adding the possibility that Hypohippus (perhaps of a different
> > species than the last living one) survived into the Pleistocene and was
> > domesticated by humans, not necessarily for riding, of course.
> >
> > Now that your post has spurred me to check back to my main sources
> > on the horse sequence (including your excellent article, "The Horse
> > Series") I see a better choice would have been a later Anchitherine,
> > *Sinohippus* which lived in Eurasia and survived to the early Pliocene,
> > which meant only about 5 million years additional survival to the
> > time of early humans.
> >
> > After all, the nonexistence of grasslands horses might have tipped
> > the scales towards forests just enough for Sinohippus to survive
> > a few million years longer. The butterfly effect, and all that, y'know.
> >
> >
> > Peter Nyikos
> > Professor, Dept. of Mathematics -- standard disclaimer--
> > University of South Carolina
> > http://people.math.sc.edu/nyikos/
> >
> > PS Over in sci.bio.paleontology, a newcomer with initials JLL
> > has been making much of the fact (?) that paired supraorbital
> > horns only have been found in Artiodactyla and Xenartha among
> > the mammals. A good place to catch him talking about it is:
> >
> > https://groups.google.com/d/msg/sci.bio.paleontology/wGsPf9MKy30/8pRNygRyAQAJ
> > Date: Wed, 15 Nov 2017 19:56:01 -0800 (PST)
> > Message-ID: <08d42340-750e-4a19...@googlegroups.com>
> > Subject: Re: Assimilation
> >
> > It would be great if you could contribute to the discussion,
> > but I do hope you would be interested enough to lurk there.

> >
> Oh, he's gone way beyond that:

Stop bringing irrelevancies into the discussion just for the purpose
of making personal attacks on someone who isn't even participating
on this thread.

The post to which I linked Christine has nothing flaky in it. In fact, if
anything, the stuff I did not mention up there is, if anything, MORE sober
than the part I did allude to.


You didn't click on the link, did you?


NOTE TO OTHERS: JLL is a fiction writer, and he brainstorms all the time
in s.b.p., sometimes conjuring up all kinds of off-the-wall ideas, sometimes
being quite sensible and down to earth.

> xenarthrans are descended from
> ankylsaurs, artiodactyls are descended from ceratopsians, and I think he
> might be about to claim that whales are descended from mosasaurs.

These are really wacky ideas, but by now you know
that JLL is collecting them for various works of science
fiction, and he's running them by us to see whether he can make
them sound more plausible.

Peter Nyikos
Professor, Dept. of Mathematics -- standard disclaimer--
University of South Carolina
http://people.math.sc.edu/nyikos/

PS I've already made suggestions to JLL in e-mail
to him on how to modify the mosasaurs-to-whales fiction to
make a plausible scenario about DATING whales back to the time
of the mosasaurs.

But maybe that's too tame for his intended audience.

[Peter Nyikos]

On Saturday, November 18, 2017 at 5:00:04 PM UTC-5, christi...@brown.edu wrote:

John Harshman wrote the gratuitous personal attack below; I've replied
directly to the post where he made it.
> > Oh, he's gone way beyond that: xenarthrans are descended from

> > ankylsaurs, artiodactyls are descended from ceratopsians, and I think he
> > might be about to claim that whales are descended from mosasaurs.

Christine, I do hope John's screed did not discourage you from
reading the linked post, which is about the interesting fact (?) that
the only mammals with supraorbital paired horns were artiodactyls
and xenarthans [1].

For example, Epigaulus, a.k.a. Ceratogaulus, had preorbital
[or is "infraorbital" the right word?]
paired horns, while the rhinoceros Elasmotherium had a single huge
supraorbital horn.


[1] Artiodactyla isn't basal to the sister group of Xenartha, is it?

JLL seems to trace the exclusivity to osteoderms being confined
to these groups, something he may have concluded from the way
Wikipedia talks about osteoderms.

> Of course, horses are important to these discussions in other ways.
> For example, given that we are extremely well informed as to what
> actually *has* happened in evolution, from such diverse sources such as
> comparative anatomy, evodevo, phylogenomics, and the fossil record,
> any and all attempts to declare that such things could not have
> happened because of some model of probability may be viewed as merely
> an extensive attempt to lock the stable door after the horse has bolted.

A very apt choice of words where the fossil record of horses is
concerned. However, the creationism/evolution debate cannot be
conclusively settled as long as many -- perhaps the majority --
of theistic scienists believe God had some way of overcoming
the odds people like Kleinman allege. Creationists are a minority
among theists, in their "creation de novo" way of cutting the Gordian
knot of the odds they allege.

Peter Nyikos
Professor, Dept. of Mathematics -- standard disclaimer--
University of South Carolina
http://people.math.sc.edu/nyikos/

PS Michael Behe is a classic case of one who believes in common
descent, yet he obviously believes God took a hand in evolution.
In addition, Stephen Meyer has never actually claimed that
God created any species de novo. This is what frustrates people
like Prothero, who wish Meyer would just stick his neck out
so his head could be cut off, figuratively speaking.

[jillery]

On Mon, 20 Nov 2017 05:53:14 -0800 (PST), Alan Kleinman MD PhD
<klei...@sti.net> wrote:

>On Sunday, November 19, 2017 at 9:50:02 PM UTC-8, jillery wrote:
>> On Sun, 19 Nov 2017 17:05:31 -0800 (PST), Alan Kleinman MD PhD
>> wrote:
>>
>> >On Saturday, November 18, 2017 at 2:00:04 PM UTC-8, christi...@brown.edu wrote:
>> >> > Oh, he's gone way beyond that: xenarthrans are descended from
>> >> > ankylsaurs, artiodactyls are descended from ceratopsians, and I think he
>> >> > might be about to claim that whales are descended from mosasaurs.
>> >>
>> >> Of course, horses are important to these discussions in other ways. For example, given that we are extremely well informed as to what actually *has* happened in evolution, from such diverse sources such as comparative anatomy, evodevo, phylogenomics, and the fossil record, any and all attempts to declare that such things could not have happened because of some model of probability may be viewed as merely an extensive attempt to lock the stable door after the horse has bolted.
>> >I really don't expect someone not trained in the hard mathematical sciences to understand this argument.
>>
>>
>> Even if someone was trained in the hard mathematical sciences, you
>> don't think they understand "this argument" if they don't agree with
>> you. Based on your posts, nobody but you understands "this argument".
>The thing about mathematical logic applied to physical problems is that it gives a powerful predictive tool for the behavior of that physical system. If someone who understands this logic disagrees, that individual should either point out the error in the mathematics or in the way the mathematics is being applied.
>>
>>
>> >But welcome to the discussion anyway.
>> >.
>> >But don't get me wrong, I don't have any problem with horses evolving into horses.
>>
>>
>> There's the problem. What was stated was not "horses evolved into
>> horses", but that non-horse species evolved into horses.
>And how do these non-horse species evolve into horses?

Ask Prof. Janis; you're less likely to make jokes about her.

>What is the mechanism of genetic transformation? I don't think that comparative anatomy is sufficient to make this logical leap.

So what's *your* answer? What's the evidence for it?

>> >But if you do think that horses evolved from reptiles, I do question that claim. How do you get an animal which produces hair from an animal that doesn't produce hair? And perhaps you would be willing to answer this question I posed to Peter: Do you think that because paleontologists don't take into account the mechanisms of genetic transformation that their interpretation of the fossil record should not be questioned?
>>
>>
>> What is with your obsesssion over reptiles? You argue as if you think
>> they were the first living organisms. The fossil record shows there
>> was a time on Earth when there were no reptiles. So where do you
>> think reptiles came from?
>Choose your progenitor.

I already chose what you chose. Now answer the question.

>Choose your de novo evolution of any gene. You are attributing a power to rmns that do not exist.

So what's your explanation for species diversity? What's your
evidence for it?

[Peter Nyikos]

On Friday, November 17, 2017 at 6:00:04 PM UTC-5, Alan Kleinman MD PhD wrote:

> > Peter Nyikos
> > Professor, Dept. of Mathematics -- standard disclaimer--
> > University of South Carolina
> > http://people.math.sc.edu/nyikos/
> >

> > PS Over in sci.bio.paleontology, a newcomer with initials JLL
> > has been making much of the fact (?) that paired supraorbital
> > horns only have been found in Artiodactyla and Xenartha among
> > the mammals. A good place to catch him talking about it is:
> >
> > https://groups.google.com/d/msg/sci.bio.paleontology/wGsPf9MKy30/8pRNygRyAQAJ
> > Date: Wed, 15 Nov 2017 19:56:01 -0800 (PST)
> > Message-ID: <08d42340-750e-4a19...@googlegroups.com>
> > Subject: Re: Assimilation
> >
> > It would be great if you could contribute to the discussion,
> > but I do hope you would be interested enough to lurk there.
>

> Do you think that because paleontologists don't take into account the mechanisms of genetic transformation that their interpretation of the fossil record should not be questioned?

Paleontologists question each other about the interpretation
of the fossil record all the time. You saw a bit of that on the
"parent" thread about *Sinosauripteryx* where some overenthusiastic
paleontologists call its hairlike fibers "feathers". Even Harshman
is reluctant to go that far, but on the other hand he is afraid
to directly contradict the label "feathers" for it. However,
there are plenty of paleontologists who know better than to
call them "feathers".

This is just a sideshow in the ongoing debate on whether
birds are [descended from] dinosaurs. As you saw, Ron Okimoto
foolishly attached the claim of feathers to his poorly
chosen dinosaur in furtherance of this highly popular
theory.

Howeverr, there are ornithologists with much more distinguished
research records than John Harshman who dispute the claim
that birds are descended from dinosaurs, as opposed to various
possible basal forms -- some of which gave rise to crocodiles,
others to pterosaurs -- from which Dinosauria branched off.

Harshman does not have any "silver bullet" argument to refute these
people, so instead he and his net.sidekick Erik Simpson
subject them to intense ridicule, and even fallacious
claims that they "resemble creationists in some respects."

The one he used most recently is in response to Bill, on
the thread, "To Be Ignored," which Bill set up on Friday.


FTR, John resembles creationists in many respects: he eats,
breathes, sleeps, walks, ...

He also is a spouse and a parent, like many creationists.

Just thought you might like to know... :-)

Peter Nyikos
Professor, Department of Math. -- standard disclaimer --
U. of South Carolina at Columbia
http://www.math.sc.edu/~nyikos/

[Alan Kleinman MD PhD]

On Monday, November 20, 2017 at 9:40:04 AM UTC-8, jillery wrote:

> On Mon, 20 Nov 2017 05:53:14 -0800 (PST), Alan Kleinman MD PhD
> wrote:
>
> >On Sunday, November 19, 2017 at 9:50:02 PM UTC-8, jillery wrote:

> >> On Sun, 19 Nov 2017 17:05:31 -0800 (PST), Alan Kleinman MD PhD
> >> wrote:
> >>
> >> >On Saturday, November 18, 2017 at 2:00:04 PM UTC-8, christi...@brown.edu wrote:
> >> >> > Oh, he's gone way beyond that: xenarthrans are descended from
> >> >> > ankylsaurs, artiodactyls are descended from ceratopsians, and I think he
> >> >> > might be about to claim that whales are descended from mosasaurs.
> >> >>
> >> >> Of course, horses are important to these discussions in other ways. For example, given that we are extremely well informed as to what actually *has* happened in evolution, from such diverse sources such as comparative anatomy, evodevo, phylogenomics, and the fossil record, any and all attempts to declare that such things could not have happened because of some model of probability may be viewed as merely an extensive attempt to lock the stable door after the horse has bolted.
> >> >I really don't expect someone not trained in the hard mathematical sciences to understand this argument.
> >>
> >>
> >> Even if someone was trained in the hard mathematical sciences, you
> >> don't think they understand "this argument" if they don't agree with
> >> you. Based on your posts, nobody but you understands "this argument".
> >The thing about mathematical logic applied to physical problems is that it gives a powerful predictive tool for the behavior of that physical system. If someone who understands this logic disagrees, that individual should either point out the error in the mathematics or in the way the mathematics is being applied.
> >>
> >>
> >> >But welcome to the discussion anyway.
> >> >.
> >> >But don't get me wrong, I don't have any problem with horses evolving into horses.
> >>
> >>
> >> There's the problem. What was stated was not "horses evolved into
> >> horses", but that non-horse species evolved into horses.
> >And how do these non-horse species evolve into horses?
>
>
> Ask Prof. Janis; you're less likely to make jokes about her.

Horsefeathers, this is an equal opportunity forum. I don't think that Prof. Janis can correctly answer the question whether doubling population size doubles the probability that a beneficial mutation will occur.

>
>
> >What is the mechanism of genetic transformation? I don't think that comparative anatomy is sufficient to make this logical leap.
>
>
> So what's *your* answer? What's the evidence for it?

There is only speculative evidence, no repeatable, measurable and repeatable examples. This is science based on confirmation bias which is not science at all. rmns works in a way which does not allow these transformations to occur. You should now understand the reason why.

>
>
> >> >But if you do think that horses evolved from reptiles, I do question that claim. How do you get an animal which produces hair from an animal that doesn't produce hair? And perhaps you would be willing to answer this question I posed to Peter: Do you think that because paleontologists don't take into account the mechanisms of genetic transformation that their interpretation of the fossil record should not be questioned?
> >>
> >>
> >> What is with your obsesssion over reptiles? You argue as if you think
> >> they were the first living organisms. The fossil record shows there
> >> was a time on Earth when there were no reptiles. So where do you
> >> think reptiles came from?
> >Choose your progenitor.
>
>
> I already chose what you chose. Now answer the question.

OK, the reason why reptiles do not grow hair (or feathers) is the multiplication rule of probabilities. It is the same reason that Lenski's experiment takes e10 replications for every beneficial mutation and that's for an evolutionary process with only a single selection pressure acting at a time.

>
>
> >Choose your de novo evolution of any gene. You are attributing a power to rmns that do not exist.
>
>
> So what's your explanation for species diversity? What's your
> evidence for it?

Certainly, recombination and mutations can cause striking diversity within a species but these are not genetic mechanisms which can cause transformations of reptiles to birds or horses, even if natural selection is added.

[Bob Casanova]

On Sun, 19 Nov 2017 16:03:51 -0500, the following appeared
in talk.origins, posted by jillery <69jp...@gmail.com>:

Point, although the *complete* non sequitur nature of his
reply caught my attention; doubletakes are rare, but that
caused one.

[Bob Casanova]

On Sun, 19 Nov 2017 17:00:11 -0500, the following appeared
in talk.origins, posted by jonathan
<WriteI...@gmail.com>:

>On 11/19/2017 2:23 PM, Bob Casanova wrote:
>> On Sat, 18 Nov 2017 21:43:34 -0500, the following appeared
>> in talk.origins, posted by Jonathan
>> <WriteI...@gmail.com>:
>>
>>> On 11/18/2017 4:59 PM, christi...@brown.edu wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> Oh, he's gone way beyond that: xenarthrans are descended from
>>>>> ankylsaurs, artiodactyls are descended from ceratopsians, and I think he
>>>>> might be about to claim that whales are descended from mosasaurs.
>>>>
>>>> Of course, horses are important to these discussions in other ways. For example, given that we are extremely well informed as to what actually *has* happened in evolution, from such diverse sources such as comparative anatomy, evodevo, phylogenomics, and the fossil record, any and all attempts to declare that such things could not have happened because of some model of probability may be viewed as merely an extensive attempt to lock the stable door after the horse has bolted.
>>
>>> Reconstructing the past, as interesting as that may be, doesn't mean
>>> use that knowledge to predict the future of an evolutionary system.
>>
>
>
>Of all I wrote in that post this is all you
>have to say?
>
>
>> In detail? Of course not; who claimed it did? Of course,
>> neither can complexity science, or any other field of study.

Yes. Why do you imagine it would be worth my time to address
*all* your frequently-vacuous points only to have you ignore
them as you did this one, aside from claims regarding what
you "predicted" about the stock market at the beginning of a
major event in 2008 (which, BTW, I *also* predicted to the
extent of turning a potential 40% loss into a 3% one by
getting out early)?

My point, which you essentially ignored, was that prediction
of future complex events in detail is simply not possible;
if it were you'd be a multibillionaire.

[Alan Kleinman MD PhD]

> > Do you think that because paleontologists don't take into account the mechanisms of genetic transformation that their interpretation of the fossil record should not be questioned?
>

> Paleontologists question each other about the interpretation
> of the fossil record all the time. You saw a bit of that on the
> "parent" thread about *Sinosauripteryx* where some overenthusiastic
> paleontologists call its hairlike fibers "feathers". Even Harshman
> is reluctant to go that far, but on the other hand he is afraid
> to directly contradict the label "feathers" for it. However,
> there are plenty of paleontologists who know better than to
> call them "feathers".
>
> This is just a sideshow in the ongoing debate on whether
> birds are [descended from] dinosaurs. As you saw, Ron Okimoto
> foolishly attached the claim of feathers to his poorly
> chosen dinosaur in furtherance of this highly popular
> theory.
>
> Howeverr, there are ornithologists with much more distinguished
> research records than John Harshman who dispute the claim
> that birds are descended from dinosaurs, as opposed to various
> possible basal forms -- some of which gave rise to crocodiles,
> others to pterosaurs -- from which Dinosauria branched off.
>
> Harshman does not have any "silver bullet" argument to refute these
> people, so instead he and his net.sidekick Erik Simpson
> subject them to intense ridicule, and even fallacious
> claims that they "resemble creationists in some respects."

My argument comes from a completely different direction. It has nothing to do with comparative anatomy and interpretation of the fossil record. It has to do with the mechanisms of genetic transformation. It also has to do with the way natural selection works. And biologists have done somewhere between a terrible to a non-existent job of describing how rmns works.

>
> The one he used most recently is in response to Bill, on
> the thread, "To Be Ignored," which Bill set up on Friday.
>
>
> FTR, John resembles creationists in many respects: he eats,
> breathes, sleeps, walks, ...

He certainly doesn't resemble a hard mathematical scientist. And the field of biology is in dire need of a big dose of hard mathematical science.

>
> He also is a spouse and a parent, like many creationists.
>
> Just thought you might like to know... :-)

He should show more concern for his children and leave the Grimm's Fairytales for bed-time stories and not bring them into the biology classroom.

[Bob Casanova]

On Mon, 20 Nov 2017 05:53:14 -0800 (PST), the following
appeared in talk.origins, posted by Alan Kleinman MD PhD
<klei...@sti.net>:

>On Sunday, November 19, 2017 at 9:50:02 PM UTC-8, jillery wrote:

>> On Sun, 19 Nov 2017 17:05:31 -0800 (PST), Alan Kleinman MD PhD
>> wrote:

>> >On Saturday, November 18, 2017 at 2:00:04 PM UTC-8, christi...@brown.edu wrote:

>> >> > Oh, he's gone way beyond that: xenarthrans are descended from
>> >> > ankylsaurs, artiodactyls are descended from ceratopsians, and I think he
>> >> > might be about to claim that whales are descended from mosasaurs.

>> >> Of course, horses are important to these discussions in other ways. For example, given that we are extremely well informed as to what actually *has* happened in evolution, from such diverse sources such as comparative anatomy, evodevo, phylogenomics, and the fossil record, any and all attempts to declare that such things could not have happened because of some model of probability may be viewed as merely an extensive attempt to lock the stable door after the horse has bolted.

>> >I really don't expect someone not trained in the hard mathematical sciences to understand this argument.

>> Even if someone was trained in the hard mathematical sciences, you
>> don't think they understand "this argument" if they don't agree with
>> you. Based on your posts, nobody but you understands "this argument".

>The thing about mathematical logic applied to physical problems is that it gives a powerful predictive tool for the behavior of that physical system. If someone who understands this logic disagrees, that individual should either point out the error in the mathematics or in the way the mathematics is being applied.

And the fact that reality disagrees with the math and/or the
resultant model means that reality is flawed, right?

>> >But welcome to the discussion anyway.

You're a condescending twit.

>> >But don't get me wrong, I don't have any problem with horses evolving into horses.

Excellent start!

>> There's the problem. What was stated was not "horses evolved into
>> horses", but that non-horse species evolved into horses.

>And how do these non-horse species evolve into horses? What is the mechanism of genetic transformation? I don't think that comparative anatomy is sufficient to make this logical leap.

It is (there's that pesky reality again...), but since by
decree (your decree) it can't, I guess it can't.

>> >But if you do think that horses evolved from reptiles, I do question that claim. How do you get an animal which produces hair from an animal that doesn't produce hair? And perhaps you would be willing to answer this question I posed to Peter: Do you think that because paleontologists don't take into account the mechanisms of genetic transformation that their interpretation of the fossil record should not be questioned?
>>
>>
>> What is with your obsesssion over reptiles? You argue as if you think
>> they were the first living organisms. The fossil record shows there
>> was a time on Earth when there were no reptiles. So where do you
>> think reptiles came from?

>Choose your progenitor. Choose your de novo evolution of any gene. You are attributing a power to rmns that do not exist. What is the selection pressure that would create the DNA replicase system?

No answer? No surprise.

>> >And if you think that probability theory doesn't apply to evolution, perhaps you would answer this question. If you double the population size, do you double the probability that a beneficial mutation will occur? And John, no comment from the peanut gallery.
>>
>> --
>> I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.
>>
>> Evelyn Beatrice Hall
>> Attributed to Voltaire
>

[Alan Kleinman MD PhD]

On Monday, November 20, 2017 at 10:50:03 AM UTC-8, Bob Casanova wrote:
> On Mon, 20 Nov 2017 05:53:14 -0800 (PST), the following
> appeared in talk.origins, posted by Alan Kleinman MD PhD

>:
>
> >On Sunday, November 19, 2017 at 9:50:02 PM UTC-8, jillery wrote:
>
> >> On Sun, 19 Nov 2017 17:05:31 -0800 (PST), Alan Kleinman MD PhD
> >> wrote:
>
> >> >On Saturday, November 18, 2017 at 2:00:04 PM UTC-8, christi...@brown.edu wrote:
>
> >> >> > Oh, he's gone way beyond that: xenarthrans are descended from
> >> >> > ankylsaurs, artiodactyls are descended from ceratopsians, and I think he
> >> >> > might be about to claim that whales are descended from mosasaurs.
>
> >> >> Of course, horses are important to these discussions in other ways. For example, given that we are extremely well informed as to what actually *has* happened in evolution, from such diverse sources such as comparative anatomy, evodevo, phylogenomics, and the fossil record, any and all attempts to declare that such things could not have happened because of some model of probability may be viewed as merely an extensive attempt to lock the stable door after the horse has bolted.
>
> >> >I really don't expect someone not trained in the hard mathematical sciences to understand this argument.
>
> >> Even if someone was trained in the hard mathematical sciences, you
> >> don't think they understand "this argument" if they don't agree with
> >> you. Based on your posts, nobody but you understands "this argument".
>
> >The thing about mathematical logic applied to physical problems is that it gives a powerful predictive tool for the behavior of that physical system. If someone who understands this logic disagrees, that individual should either point out the error in the mathematics or in the way the mathematics is being applied.
>
> And the fact that reality disagrees with the math and/or the
> resultant model means that reality is flawed, right?

Hey Bobby, you figure out the binomial probability problem yet? And you really should go to a better source than Bugs Bunny for your insults, you maroon.
<snip the rest of the less than enlightening, boring and not funny blather from a dim bulb>

[jillery]

So you have no alternative explanation at all. Do you really think
all of the differences among species just magically happened without
any cause? AIUI even the most primitive cultures have origin myths.

>rmns works in a way which does not allow these transformations to occur. You should now understand the reason why.

I understand why *you* think rmns doesn't allow these transformations.
However, your expressed "reasoning" remains unconvincing, to say the
least.

>> >> >But if you do think that horses evolved from reptiles, I do question that claim. How do you get an animal which produces hair from an animal that doesn't produce hair? And perhaps you would be willing to answer this question I posed to Peter: Do you think that because paleontologists don't take into account the mechanisms of genetic transformation that their interpretation of the fossil record should not be questioned?
>> >>
>> >>
>> >> What is with your obsesssion over reptiles? You argue as if you think
>> >> they were the first living organisms. The fossil record shows there
>> >> was a time on Earth when there were no reptiles. So where do you
>> >> think reptiles came from?
>> >Choose your progenitor.
>>
>>
>> I already chose what you chose. Now answer the question.
>OK, the reason why reptiles do not grow hair (or feathers) is the multiplication rule of probabilities.

That's not a reason. That's an excuse to evade the question.

> It is the same reason that Lenski's experiment takes e10 replications for every beneficial mutation and that's for an evolutionary process with only a single selection pressure acting at a time.

Of course, as I pointed out previously, "beneficial" is defined by the
environment, and so is not a relevant measure.

>> >Choose your de novo evolution of any gene. You are attributing a power to rmns that do not exist.
>>
>>
>> So what's your explanation for species diversity? What's your
>> evidence for it?
>Certainly, recombination and mutations can cause striking diversity within a species but these are not genetic mechanisms which can cause transformations of reptiles to birds or horses, even if natural selection is added.

I didn't ask about diversity within species. There exist right now
literally millions of species, yet they represent only a tiny fraction
of all the species that ever existed on Earth. So what do you think
caused all that diversity? Do you again offer no alternative answer?

And since you say recombination and mutations can cause striking
diversity, what do you think stops that diversity from causing new
species? Do you again have no alternative explanation?

[jillery]

On Mon, 20 Nov 2017 11:30:49 -0700, Bob Casanova <nos...@buzz.off>

Too bad Chez Watts died.

[Alan Kleinman MD PhD]

On Monday, November 20, 2017 at 12:15:03 PM UTC-8, jillery wrote:
> On Mon, 20 Nov 2017 10:17:06 -0800 (PST), Alan Kleinman MD PhD

Not one that fits your mythology. Even our "advanced" culture has its own mythology.

>
>
> >rmns works in a way which does not allow these transformations to occur. You should now understand the reason why.
>
>
> I understand why *you* think rmns doesn't allow these transformations.
> However, your expressed "reasoning" remains unconvincing, to say the
> least.

So if you think rmns works some other way, the ball is in your court.

>
>
> >> >> >But if you do think that horses evolved from reptiles, I do question that claim. How do you get an animal which produces hair from an animal that doesn't produce hair? And perhaps you would be willing to answer this question I posed to Peter: Do you think that because paleontologists don't take into account the mechanisms of genetic transformation that their interpretation of the fossil record should not be questioned?
> >> >>
> >> >>
> >> >> What is with your obsesssion over reptiles? You argue as if you think
> >> >> they were the first living organisms. The fossil record shows there
> >> >> was a time on Earth when there were no reptiles. So where do you
> >> >> think reptiles came from?
> >> >Choose your progenitor.
> >>
> >>
> >> I already chose what you chose. Now answer the question.
> >OK, the reason why reptiles do not grow hair (or feathers) is the multiplication rule of probabilities.
>
>
> That's not a reason. That's an excuse to evade the question.

If you think that the multiplication rule does not apply to random independent events, you need to explain why and give empirical examples. Of course, you won't do that because these examples don't exist.

>
>
> > It is the same reason that Lenski's experiment takes e10 replications for every beneficial mutation and that's for an evolutionary process with only a single selection pressure acting at a time.
>
>
> Of course, as I pointed out previously, "beneficial" is defined by the
> environment, and so is not a relevant measure.

So what is that relevant measure? You know jillery, you are so cute when you squirm.

>
>
> >> >Choose your de novo evolution of any gene. You are attributing a power to rmns that do not exist.
> >>
> >>
> >> So what's your explanation for species diversity? What's your
> >> evidence for it?
> >Certainly, recombination and mutations can cause striking diversity within a species but these are not genetic mechanisms which can cause transformations of reptiles to birds or horses, even if natural selection is added.
>
>
> I didn't ask about diversity within species. There exist right now
> literally millions of species, yet they represent only a tiny fraction
> of all the species that ever existed on Earth. So what do you think
> caused all that diversity? Do you again offer no alternative answer?

The answer that reptiles turn into birds is not a rational alternative.

>
> And since you say recombination and mutations can cause striking
> diversity, what do you think stops that diversity from causing new
> species? Do you again have no alternative explanation?

It's the multiplication rule sweety.

[John Harshman]

On 11/20/17 9:37 AM, Peter Nyikos wrote:

> Howeverr, there are ornithologists with much more distinguished
> research records than John Harshman who dispute the claim
> that birds are descended from dinosaurs, as opposed to various
> possible basal forms -- some of which gave rise to crocodiles,
> others to pterosaurs -- from which Dinosauria branched off.

OK, that one caught my attention. Who are these ornithologists? I would
put my research record up against any of the BANDits. You are certainly
not in a position to judge, not having a handle on the literature.

[John Harshman]

No, but I've read all his posts, which you apparently have not.

> NOTE TO OTHERS: JLL is a fiction writer, and he brainstorms all the time
> in s.b.p., sometimes conjuring up all kinds of off-the-wall ideas, sometimes
> being quite sensible and down to earth.

No, he doesn't brainstorm all the time. He just started a couple of
weeks ago, and he's serious. You appear not to have read much of his output.

>> xenarthrans are descended from
>> ankylsaurs, artiodactyls are descended from ceratopsians, and I think he
>> might be about to claim that whales are descended from mosasaurs.
>
> These are really wacky ideas, but by now you know
> that JLL is collecting them for various works of science
> fiction, and he's running them by us to see whether he can make
> them sound more plausible.

No, that isn't at all what he's doing. He is absolutely serious about
this. You have an amazing ability to misjudge much of what you read.

[John Harshman]

On 11/20/17 8:36 AM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
> On Saturday, November 18, 2017 at 5:00:04 PM UTC-5, christi...@brown.edu wrote:
>
> John Harshman wrote the gratuitous personal attack below; I've replied
> directly to the post where he made it.
>>> Oh, he's gone way beyond that: xenarthrans are descended from
>>> ankylsaurs, artiodactyls are descended from ceratopsians, and I think he
>>> might be about to claim that whales are descended from mosasaurs.
>
> Christine, I do hope John's screed did not discourage you from
> reading the linked post, which is about the interesting fact (?) that
> the only mammals with supraorbital paired horns were artiodactyls
> and xenarthans [1].

If that's what you think it's about, you haven't read very closely.

> For example, Epigaulus, a.k.a. Ceratogaulus, had preorbital
> [or is "infraorbital" the right word?]
> paired horns, while the rhinoceros Elasmotherium had a single huge
> supraorbital horn.
>
>
> [1] Artiodactyla isn't basal to the sister group of Xenartha, is it?

What does "basal to the sister group" mean?

[jillery]

Your mythology is what's relevant here, nobody else's.

>> >rmns works in a way which does not allow these transformations to occur. You should now understand the reason why.
>>
>>
>> I understand why *you* think rmns doesn't allow these transformations.
>> However, your expressed "reasoning" remains unconvincing, to say the
>> least.
>So if you think rmns works some other way, the ball is in your court.

Nope, the ball isn't in my court, because you haven't served yet. What
I think isn't relevant to what you think. Or do you blame me for what
you think as well as how you behave?

>> >> >> >But if you do think that horses evolved from reptiles, I do question that claim. How do you get an animal which produces hair from an animal that doesn't produce hair? And perhaps you would be willing to answer this question I posed to Peter: Do you think that because paleontologists don't take into account the mechanisms of genetic transformation that their interpretation of the fossil record should not be questioned?
>> >> >>
>> >> >>
>> >> >> What is with your obsesssion over reptiles? You argue as if you think
>> >> >> they were the first living organisms. The fossil record shows there
>> >> >> was a time on Earth when there were no reptiles. So where do you
>> >> >> think reptiles came from?
>> >> >Choose your progenitor.
>> >>
>> >>
>> >> I already chose what you chose. Now answer the question.
>> >OK, the reason why reptiles do not grow hair (or feathers) is the multiplication rule of probabilities.
>>
>>
>> That's not a reason. That's an excuse to evade the question.
>If you think that the multiplication rule does not apply to random independent events, you need to explain why and give empirical examples. Of course, you won't do that because these examples don't exist.

That wasn't the question. You're still hiding behind your spam. Or
do you not understand the question? Would it help if I type it slowly
for you?

>> > It is the same reason that Lenski's experiment takes e10 replications for every beneficial mutation and that's for an evolutionary process with only a single selection pressure acting at a time.
>>
>>
>> Of course, as I pointed out previously, "beneficial" is defined by the
>> environment, and so is not a relevant measure.
>So what is that relevant measure?

To refresh your convenient amnesia, the relevant measure is all
mutations.

>You know jillery, you are so cute when you squirm.

And you're so stupid when you accuse me of doing what you do.

>> >> >Choose your de novo evolution of any gene. You are attributing a power to rmns that do not exist.
>> >>
>> >>
>> >> So what's your explanation for species diversity? What's your
>> >> evidence for it?
>> >Certainly, recombination and mutations can cause striking diversity within a species but these are not genetic mechanisms which can cause transformations of reptiles to birds or horses, even if natural selection is added.
>>
>>
>> I didn't ask about diversity within species. There exist right now
>> literally millions of species, yet they represent only a tiny fraction
>> of all the species that ever existed on Earth. So what do you think
>> caused all that diversity? Do you again offer no alternative answer?
>The answer that reptiles turn into birds is not a rational alternative.

I'm not interested in what the answer isn't. One more time, for the
willful idiot, what *is* your rational alternative?

>> And since you say recombination and mutations can cause striking
>> diversity, what do you think stops that diversity from causing new
>> species? Do you again have no alternative explanation?
>It's the multiplication rule sweety.

And how do you think the multiplication rule sweety allows for
diversity within species yet magically prevents diversity from causing
new species?

[*Hemidactylus*]

Did I pop your narcissistic bubble there jonathan? That would explain your
silence.

[Alan Kleinman MD PhD]

On Monday, November 20, 2017 at 9:25:02 PM UTC-8, jillery wrote:
> On Mon, 20 Nov 2017 12:30:57 -0800 (PST), Alan Kleinman MD PhD

> wrote:
>
> >On Monday, November 20, 2017 at 12:15:03 PM UTC-8, jillery wrote:
> >> On Mon, 20 Nov 2017 10:17:06 -0800 (PST), Alan Kleinman MD PhD
> >> wrote:
> >>
> >> >On Monday, November 20, 2017 at 9:40:04 AM UTC-8, jillery wrote:
> >> >> On Mon, 20 Nov 2017 05:53:14 -0800 (PST), Alan Kleinman MD PhD
> >> >> wrote:
> >> >>
> >> >> >On Sunday, November 19, 2017 at 9:50:02 PM UTC-8, jillery wrote:
> >> >> >> On Sun, 19 Nov 2017 17:05:31 -0800 (PST), Alan Kleinman MD PhD
> >> >> >> wrote:
> >> >> >>

> >> >> >> >On Saturday, November 18, 2017 at 2:00:04 PM UTC-8, christi...@brown.edu wrote:
> >> >> >> >> > Oh, he's gone way beyond that: xenarthrans are descended from
> >> >> >> >> > ankylsaurs, artiodactyls are descended from ceratopsians, and I think he
> >> >> >> >> > might be about to claim that whales are descended from mosasaurs.
> >> >> >> >>
> >> >> >> >> Of course, horses are important to these discussions in other ways. For example, given that we are extremely well informed as to what actually *has* happened in evolution, from such diverse sources such as comparative anatomy, evodevo, phylogenomics, and the fossil record, any and all attempts to declare that such things could not have happened because of some model of probability may be viewed as merely an extensive attempt to lock the stable door after the horse has bolted.

Of course, the ball is in your court. I served up the correct mathematics which governs rmns. Just because you don't understand it, don't cry foul. If you can, explain why it is wrong, but you won't because you can't.

>
>
> >> >> >> >But if you do think that horses evolved from reptiles, I do question that claim. How do you get an animal which produces hair from an animal that doesn't produce hair? And perhaps you would be willing to answer this question I posed to Peter: Do you think that because paleontologists don't take into account the mechanisms of genetic transformation that their interpretation of the fossil record should not be questioned?
> >> >> >>
> >> >> >>
> >> >> >> What is with your obsesssion over reptiles? You argue as if you think
> >> >> >> they were the first living organisms. The fossil record shows there
> >> >> >> was a time on Earth when there were no reptiles. So where do you
> >> >> >> think reptiles came from?
> >> >> >Choose your progenitor.
> >> >>
> >> >>
> >> >> I already chose what you chose. Now answer the question.
> >> >OK, the reason why reptiles do not grow hair (or feathers) is the multiplication rule of probabilities.
> >>
> >>
> >> That's not a reason. That's an excuse to evade the question.
> >If you think that the multiplication rule does not apply to random independent events, you need to explain why and give empirical examples. Of course, you won't do that because these examples don't exist.
>
>
> That wasn't the question. You're still hiding behind your spam. Or
> do you not understand the question? Would it help if I type it slowly
> for you?

Of course, I hide behind my Special Purpose Applied Mathematics because it is correct. It doesn't matter how slow or fast you type when you don't understand the mathematics.

>
>
> >> > It is the same reason that Lenski's experiment takes e10 replications for every beneficial mutation and that's for an evolutionary process with only a single selection pressure acting at a time.
> >>
> >>
> >> Of course, as I pointed out previously, "beneficial" is defined by the
> >> environment, and so is not a relevant measure.
> >So what is that relevant measure?
>
>
> To refresh your convenient amnesia, the relevant measure is all
> mutations.

So it is all mutations which make reptiles grow feathers. You have made your argument so clear that even John could understand it.

>
>
> >You know jillery, you are so cute when you squirm.
>
>
> And you're so stupid when you accuse me of doing what you do.

I'm shake, rattling and rolling sweety.

>
>
> >> >> >Choose your de novo evolution of any gene. You are attributing a power to rmns that do not exist.
> >> >>
> >> >>
> >> >> So what's your explanation for species diversity? What's your
> >> >> evidence for it?
> >> >Certainly, recombination and mutations can cause striking diversity within a species but these are not genetic mechanisms which can cause transformations of reptiles to birds or horses, even if natural selection is added.
> >>
> >>
> >> I didn't ask about diversity within species. There exist right now
> >> literally millions of species, yet they represent only a tiny fraction
> >> of all the species that ever existed on Earth. So what do you think
> >> caused all that diversity? Do you again offer no alternative answer?
> >The answer that reptiles turn into birds is not a rational alternative.
>
>
> I'm not interested in what the answer isn't. One more time, for the
> willful idiot, what *is* your rational alternative?

You are so cute when you squirm and are mad. How about reptiles growing hair as an alternative? It may not be rational but it is amusing. I found a picture of a reptile growing hair:
https://www.pinterest.com/pin/565272190701702602/

>
>
> >> And since you say recombination and mutations can cause striking
> >> diversity, what do you think stops that diversity from causing new
> >> species? Do you again have no alternative explanation?
> >It's the multiplication rule sweety.
>
>
> And how do you think the multiplication rule sweety allows for
> diversity within species yet magically prevents diversity from causing
> new species?

The multiplication rule doesn't prevent diversity, it prevents most evolutionary trajectories from having a reasonable probability of occurring, like reptiles growing feathers.

[Peter Nyikos]

Sorry to burst your bubble, but there is a precedent for my
view of the situation.

Way back in October or November of 2010, a fiction writer
posted to sci.bio.paleontology what he first claimed to be a report
of a number of extant dinosaurs deep in the South American
rain forest.

It only came out after one or two exchanges that this
author, whose (pen?) name I've forgotten, revealed that
he'd been promoting a work of science fiction, aimed
at young people, which he was going to publish.

This didn't sit well with you nor with the other
regulars (Norman? Simpson?). Y'all reprimanded him for his
unprofessional, or whatever, attitude towards s.b.p.

I only re-joined s.b.p. a month later, by which time
he was gone and took no notice of my own reply to one
of his posts.


I was appalled by the obvious signs that sci.bio.paleontology
was in its last throes. This had been the first halfway
on-topic thread in quite a while, the others before and since
having been spam, including promotions of solutions manuals on topics
far removed from paleontology.

Fortunately, you agreed with me that the newsgroup was worth
salvaging, and the two of us, with contributions
from Norman, Simpson, and Inyo from time to time, moved
it off the analogue of the CIES "critically endangered"
list in the next two or three years.

Then along came others, and I'd rate s.b.p. as "threatened"
rather than "endangered" at the present time. Still, it
is a far cry from the robust newsgroup it had been in the
1990's, when it even had professional paleontologists Thomas
Holz and T. Mike Keesey contributing regularly to it.

And Christine Janis also contributed from time to time.

[Peter Nyikos]

On Monday, November 20, 2017 at 6:15:04 PM UTC-5, John Harshman wrote:
> On 11/20/17 9:37 AM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
>
> > Howeverr, there are ornithologists with much more distinguished
> > research records than John Harshman who dispute the claim
> > that birds are descended from dinosaurs, as opposed to various
> > possible basal forms -- some of which gave rise to crocodiles,
> > others to pterosaurs -- from which Dinosauria branched off.
>
> OK, that one caught my attention. Who are these ornithologists? I would
> put my research record up against any of the BANDits.

Feaduccia's list of peer-reviewed research publications and honors
dwarfs yours, so you must be going on quality rather than quantity.

And on what is your self-serving assessment based? The fact that
you are firmly on the side of "birds are dinosaurs" and everything
else is subordiante to that one thing?

That is like saying that Prothero's error-riddled hatchet job
of Meyer's _Darwin's Doubt_ is better than Meyer's whole book,
simply because Prothero knows that common descent of metazoa
is a fact, while Meyer does not acknowledge this truth.

> You are certainly
> not in a position to judge, not having a handle on the literature.

I can certainly look at online CV's. Last I looked at your
publcation record, the number was in the twenties. Feduccia
has something like ten times that number.

Have you let your one PNAS research announcement go to your head?


Peter Nyikos

[Peter Nyikos]

On Saturday, November 18, 2017 at 5:00:04 PM UTC-5, christi...@brown.edu wrote:

> Of course, horses are important to these discussions in other ways.
> For example, given that we are extremely well informed as to what
> actually *has* happened in evolution, from such diverse sources such as
> comparative anatomy, evodevo, phylogenomics, and the fossil record,
> any and all attempts to declare that such things could not have
> happened because of some model of probability may be viewed as merely
> an extensive attempt to lock the stable door after the horse has bolted.

After I did my first reply to this post of yours, Christine, I got
to thinking about the special place Equidae holds in the minds
of people like Alan Kleinman. Although a creationist, he
is taking advantage of "dogma" laid down by the famous
creationist, Henry M. Morris:

Whatever precisely is meant by the term "kind" (Hebrew *min*),
it does indicate the limitations of variation. Each organism
was to reproduce after its own kind, not after some other kind.
Exactly what this corresponds to in terms of the modern Linnaean
classification system is a matter to be decided by future research.
It will probably be found eventually that the *min* often is
identical with the species, sometimes with the genus, and possibly
once in a while with the "family". Practically never is variation
possible outside the biologic family.
-- _The Genesis Record_, Baker Book House, Grand Rapids, Michigan,
1976, p. 64

Bsnking on that "possibly once in a while," Kleinman has opined that
since Equidae is a family, Equus might have come from Hyracotherium
via big recombinations of alleles.

But I think even he will be hard pressed to think of rhinos and
tapirs as being derivable along with horses from mere
recombination. So I'm looking for fossil evidence of a common
ancestry in the form of a fossil as well situated in the
vicinity of an LCA of Perissodactyla as Hyracotherium is
situated in Equioidea.

I was hoping the Asiatic genus Radinskya would fill the bill,
but alas, nothing is known of its toes; the same is true of
the other candidates I could find.

Could you help me out here?

Peter Nyikos
Professor, Dept. of Mathematics -- standard disclaimer--
University of South Carolina

http://www.math.sc.edu/~nyikos/

[Alan Kleinman MD PhD]

I've put the mathematical explanation behind Henry Morris's thesis.

>
> Bsnking on that "possibly once in a while," Kleinman has opined that
> since Equidae is a family, Equus might have come from Hyracotherium
> via big recombinations of alleles.
>
> But I think even he will be hard pressed to think of rhinos and
> tapirs as being derivable along with horses from mere
> recombination. So I'm looking for fossil evidence of a common
> ancestry in the form of a fossil as well situated in the
> vicinity of an LCA of Perissodactyla as Hyracotherium is
> situated in Equioidea.

Study the genomes, consider the mechanisms of genetic transformation and do the math.

[Peter Nyikos]

On Monday, November 20, 2017 at 6:20:02 PM UTC-5, John Harshman wrote:
> On 11/20/17 8:36 AM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
> > On Saturday, November 18, 2017 at 5:00:04 PM UTC-5, christi...@brown.edu wrote:
> >
> > John Harshman wrote the gratuitous personal attack below; I've replied
> > directly to the post where he made it.
> >>> Oh, he's gone way beyond that: xenarthrans are descended from
> >>> ankylsaurs, artiodactyls are descended from ceratopsians, and I think he
> >>> might be about to claim that whales are descended from mosasaurs.
> >
> > Christine, I do hope John's screed did not discourage you from
> > reading the linked post, which is about the interesting fact (?) that
> > the only mammals with supraorbital paired horns were artiodactyls
> > and xenarthans [1].
>
> If that's what you think it's about, you haven't read very closely.

You admitted that you didn't look up the very post you are
ostensibly talking about here. This is the url for that post:

https://groups.google.com/d/msg/sci.bio.paleontology/wGsPf9MKy30/8pRNygRyAQAJ

> > For example, Epigaulus, a.k.a. Ceratogaulus, had preorbital
> > [or is "infraorbital" the right word?]
> > paired horns, while the rhinoceros Elasmotherium had a single huge
> > supraorbital horn.
> >
> >
> > [1] Artiodactyla isn't basal to the sister group of Xenartha, is it?
>
> What does "basal to the sister group" mean?

It means exactly what Erik Simpson revealed it meant in
sci.bio.paleontology, after you had posted incomplete
descriptions which confused me, and which you were too
lazy to resolve. [However, maybe I should have written
"in the sister group" rather than "to the sister group."]

If you are confused as to what Erik meant, see my reply to
Erik, expressing relief over how your cryptic half-descriptions
finally made sense.


HOWEVER, I can go much further than what I wrote, asking just how
deeply Artiodactyla is situated within the sister group
of Xenartha. My guess is that it is at least five known
clades deep inside that sister group.

What's your guess?

Peter Nyikos
Professor, Department of Math. -- standard disclaimer --

U. of South Carolina in Columbia
http://www.math.sc.edu/~nyikos/

[erik simpson]

Now I'm confused. I don't know what "basal in/to the sister group" means either.

[Bob Casanova]

On Mon, 20 Nov 2017 15:11:31 -0500, the following appeared

Not dead; just sleeping. Your comment woke them up; follow
the thread. ;-)

[Bob Casanova]

In the "How 'bout them Mets?" category:

>>>>> It's definitely a case of pot v kettle. If they ever went
>>>>> head-to-head, they both would suffer from broken glass.

>>>>Really? What's my real name and where do I work?
>>>>Even Dear Emily knew the power of being anon.

[jillery]

On Tue, 21 Nov 2017 07:26:12 -0800 (PST), Alan Kleinman MD PhD
<klei...@sti.net> wrote:


<snip all but final evasion>

>> And how do you think the multiplication rule sweety allows for
>> diversity within species yet magically prevents diversity from causing
>> new species?
>The multiplication rule doesn't prevent diversity, it prevents most evolutionary trajectories from having a reasonable probability of occurring, like reptiles growing feathers.

Of course, the semantics aren't relevant here, but to accommodate your
fetish: How does the multiplication rule sweety allow for diversity
within species yet magically prevent most evolutionary trajectories
from having a reasonable probability of occurring?

[Bob Casanova]

On Mon, 20 Nov 2017 11:03:41 -0800 (PST), the following

appeared in talk.origins, posted by Alan Kleinman MD PhD

<klei...@sti.net>:

You certainly use a lot of irrelevant words to say "I'm
running away without answering".

[Bob Casanova]

On Mon, 20 Nov 2017 11:38:54 -0700, the following appeared
in talk.origins, posted by Bob Casanova <nos...@buzz.off>:

>On Sun, 19 Nov 2017 17:00:11 -0500, the following appeared
>in talk.origins, posted by jonathan
><WriteI...@gmail.com>:
>
>>On 11/19/2017 2:23 PM, Bob Casanova wrote:
>>> On Sat, 18 Nov 2017 21:43:34 -0500, the following appeared
>>> in talk.origins, posted by Jonathan
>>> <WriteI...@gmail.com>:
>>>
>>>> On 11/18/2017 4:59 PM, christi...@brown.edu wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>> Oh, he's gone way beyond that: xenarthrans are descended from
>>>>>> ankylsaurs, artiodactyls are descended from ceratopsians, and I think he
>>>>>> might be about to claim that whales are descended from mosasaurs.
>>>>>
>>>>> Of course, horses are important to these discussions in other ways. For example, given that we are extremely well informed as to what actually *has* happened in evolution, from such diverse sources such as comparative anatomy, evodevo, phylogenomics, and the fossil record, any and all attempts to declare that such things could not have happened because of some model of probability may be viewed as merely an extensive attempt to lock the stable door after the horse has bolted.
>>>
>>>> Reconstructing the past, as interesting as that may be, doesn't mean
>>>> use that knowledge to predict the future of an evolutionary system.

[Reformatted to put the posts in time order]

>>> In detail? Of course not; who claimed it did? Of course,
>>> neither can complexity science, or any other field of study.

>>Of all I wrote in that post this is all you
>>have to say?

>Yes. Why do you imagine it would be worth my time to address
>*all* your frequently-vacuous points only to have you ignore
>them as you did this one, aside from claims regarding what
>you "predicted" about the stock market at the beginning of a
>major event in 2008 (which, BTW, I *also* predicted to the
>extent of turning a potential 40% loss into a 3% one by
>getting out early)?
>
>My point, which you essentially ignored, was that prediction
>of future complex events in detail is simply not possible;
>if it were you'd be a multibillionaire.

[Crickets...]

Again.

[Alan Kleinman MD PhD]

On Tuesday, November 21, 2017 at 10:10:02 AM UTC-8, jillery wrote:
> On Tue, 21 Nov 2017 07:26:12 -0800 (PST), Alan Kleinman MD PhD

> wrote:
>
>
> <snip all but final evasion>
>
>
> >> And how do you think the multiplication rule sweety allows for
> >> diversity within species yet magically prevents diversity from causing
> >> new species?
> >The multiplication rule doesn't prevent diversity, it prevents most evolutionary trajectories from having a reasonable probability of occurring, like reptiles growing feathers.
>
>
> Of course, the semantics aren't relevant here, but to accommodate your
> fetish: How does the multiplication rule sweety allow for diversity
> within species yet magically prevent most evolutionary trajectories
> from having a reasonable probability of occurring?

The multiplication rule doesn't apply all mutations, only to particular mutations.

[jillery]

On Tue, 21 Nov 2017 11:01:27 -0700, Bob Casanova <nos...@buzz.off>

Correction: not awoke; resurrected. After all, according to rockhead,
I have so much power in T.O.

Now where did Lazarus go?

[jillery]

Sounds like innuendos about bestiality. One never knows what trips
the trigger of impotent bluenoses.

[Burkhard]

I thought it was incest. "Base" is German for cousin (whom you can
lawfully marry), so getting Base to a sister is clearly a no-no, let
alone to an entire group of sisters.

[jillery]

On Tue, 21 Nov 2017 10:32:33 -0800 (PST), Alan Kleinman MD PhD
<klei...@sti.net> wrote:

>On Tuesday, November 21, 2017 at 10:10:02 AM UTC-8, jillery wrote:
>> On Tue, 21 Nov 2017 07:26:12 -0800 (PST), Alan Kleinman MD PhD
>> wrote:
>>
>>
>> <snip all but final evasion>
>>
>>
>> >> And how do you think the multiplication rule sweety allows for
>> >> diversity within species yet magically prevents diversity from causing
>> >> new species?
>> >The multiplication rule doesn't prevent diversity, it prevents most evolutionary trajectories from having a reasonable probability of occurring, like reptiles growing feathers.
>>
>>
>> Of course, the semantics aren't relevant here, but to accommodate your
>> fetish: How does the multiplication rule sweety allow for diversity
>> within species yet magically prevent most evolutionary trajectories
>> from having a reasonable probability of occurring?
>The multiplication rule doesn't apply all mutations, only to particular mutations.

To continue to accommodate your fetish: How does the multiplication
rule sweety identify which mutations allow for diversity within

species yet magically prevent most evolutionary trajectories from
having a reasonable probability of occurring?

Keep on squirming, wormboy.

[Alan Kleinman MD PhD]

On Tuesday, November 21, 2017 at 12:15:02 PM UTC-8, jillery wrote:
> On Tue, 21 Nov 2017 10:32:33 -0800 (PST), Alan Kleinman MD PhD

> wrote:
>
> >On Tuesday, November 21, 2017 at 10:10:02 AM UTC-8, jillery wrote:
> >> On Tue, 21 Nov 2017 07:26:12 -0800 (PST), Alan Kleinman MD PhD
> >> wrote:
> >>
> >>
> >> <snip all but final evasion>
> >>
> >>
> >> >> And how do you think the multiplication rule sweety allows for
> >> >> diversity within species yet magically prevents diversity from causing
> >> >> new species?
> >> >The multiplication rule doesn't prevent diversity, it prevents most evolutionary trajectories from having a reasonable probability of occurring, like reptiles growing feathers.
> >>
> >>
> >> Of course, the semantics aren't relevant here, but to accommodate your
> >> fetish: How does the multiplication rule sweety allow for diversity
> >> within species yet magically prevent most evolutionary trajectories
> >> from having a reasonable probability of occurring?
> >The multiplication rule doesn't apply all mutations, only to particular mutations.
>
>
> To continue to accommodate your fetish: How does the multiplication
> rule sweety identify which mutations allow for diversity within
> species yet magically prevent most evolutionary trajectories from
> having a reasonable probability of occurring?

You must be one of those reptiles grow feathers crowd that has never studied law. Unless that variant with the mutation can amplify, the probability of the next beneficial mutation is near zip, nada, ain't going to happen, in your dreams, insignificant, naught,...
>
> Keep on squirming, wormboy.
I'm twisting and shouting kiddo. Now you should stay in bed to avoid those early birds (you know, those animals with feathers, not reptiles).

[jillery]

On Tue, 21 Nov 2017 19:29:14 +0000, Burkhard <b.sc...@ed.ac.uk>
wrote:

OTOH some sisters are real dogs...

[jillery]

On Tue, 21 Nov 2017 12:24:10 -0800 (PST), Alan Kleinman MD PhD
<klei...@sti.net> wrote:

>On Tuesday, November 21, 2017 at 12:15:02 PM UTC-8, jillery wrote:
>> On Tue, 21 Nov 2017 10:32:33 -0800 (PST), Alan Kleinman MD PhD
>> wrote:
>>
>> >On Tuesday, November 21, 2017 at 10:10:02 AM UTC-8, jillery wrote:
>> >> On Tue, 21 Nov 2017 07:26:12 -0800 (PST), Alan Kleinman MD PhD
>> >> wrote:
>> >>
>> >>
>> >> <snip all but final evasion>
>> >>
>> >>
>> >> >> And how do you think the multiplication rule sweety allows for
>> >> >> diversity within species yet magically prevents diversity from causing
>> >> >> new species?
>> >> >The multiplication rule doesn't prevent diversity, it prevents most evolutionary trajectories from having a reasonable probability of occurring, like reptiles growing feathers.
>> >>
>> >>
>> >> Of course, the semantics aren't relevant here, but to accommodate your
>> >> fetish: How does the multiplication rule sweety allow for diversity
>> >> within species yet magically prevent most evolutionary trajectories
>> >> from having a reasonable probability of occurring?
>> >The multiplication rule doesn't apply all mutations, only to particular mutations.
>>
>>
>> To continue to accommodate your fetish: How does the multiplication
>> rule sweety identify which mutations allow for diversity within
>> species yet magically prevent most evolutionary trajectories from
>> having a reasonable probability of occurring?
>You must be one of those reptiles grow feathers crowd that has never studied law. Unless that variant with the mutation can amplify, the probability of the next beneficial mutation is near zip, nada, ain't going to happen, in your dreams, insignificant, naught,...

I accept the above as your tacit admission you have no answer, which
suggests you know you have no idea what you're talking about, and are
just posting noise because you have nothing intelligent to say.

Thanks for again proving my point for me.

>> Keep on squirming, wormboy.
>I'm twisting and shouting kiddo. Now you should stay in bed to avoid those early birds (you know, those animals with feathers, not reptiles).

Your mama called, time to change your knappies.

[John Harshman]

On 11/21/17 7:47 AM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
> On Monday, November 20, 2017 at 6:15:04 PM UTC-5, John Harshman wrote:
>> On 11/20/17 9:37 AM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
>>
>>> Howeverr, there are ornithologists with much more distinguished
>>> research records than John Harshman who dispute the claim
>>> that birds are descended from dinosaurs, as opposed to various
>>> possible basal forms -- some of which gave rise to crocodiles,
>>> others to pterosaurs -- from which Dinosauria branched off.
>>
>> OK, that one caught my attention. Who are these ornithologists? I would
>> put my research record up against any of the BANDits.
>
> Feaduccia's list of peer-reviewed research publications and honors
> dwarfs yours, so you must be going on quality rather than quantity.

Yes. Almost all his ornithilogical systematics has been shown to be
wrong, and the reason for that would be his antiquated methodology and
philosophy. My publications are much better.

> And on what is your self-serving assessment based? The fact that
> you are firmly on the side of "birds are dinosaurs" and everything
> else is subordiante to that one thing?

No, none of my publications have anything to do with "birds are dinosaurs".

> That is like saying that Prothero's error-riddled hatchet job
> of Meyer's _Darwin's Doubt_ is better than Meyer's whole book,
> simply because Prothero knows that common descent of metazoa
> is a fact, while Meyer does not acknowledge this truth.

It would be like saying that, if anybody said that, or either of those
things.

>> You are certainly
>> not in a position to judge, not having a handle on the literature.
>
> I can certainly look at online CV's. Last I looked at your
> publcation record, the number was in the twenties. Feduccia
> has something like ten times that number.

Your surmise of quality over quantity was correct. Also influence on the
current state of the field.

> Have you let your one PNAS research announcement go to your head?

Hey, don't forget Science.

[John Harshman]

On 11/21/17 8:43 AM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
> On Monday, November 20, 2017 at 6:20:02 PM UTC-5, John Harshman wrote:
>> On 11/20/17 8:36 AM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
>>> On Saturday, November 18, 2017 at 5:00:04 PM UTC-5, christi...@brown.edu wrote:
>>>
>>> John Harshman wrote the gratuitous personal attack below; I've replied
>>> directly to the post where he made it.
>>>>> Oh, he's gone way beyond that: xenarthrans are descended from
>>>>> ankylsaurs, artiodactyls are descended from ceratopsians, and I think he
>>>>> might be about to claim that whales are descended from mosasaurs.
>>>
>>> Christine, I do hope John's screed did not discourage you from
>>> reading the linked post, which is about the interesting fact (?) that
>>> the only mammals with supraorbital paired horns were artiodactyls
>>> and xenarthans [1].
>>
>> If that's what you think it's about, you haven't read very closely.
>
> You admitted that you didn't look up the very post you are
> ostensibly talking about here. This is the url for that post:
>
> https://groups.google.com/d/msg/sci.bio.paleontology/wGsPf9MKy30/8pRNygRyAQAJ

That post is a tiny scrap of a much larger record. Have you read
anything else? He's trying to show that artiodactyls evolved from
ceratopsians by homologizing their horns.

>>> For example, Epigaulus, a.k.a. Ceratogaulus, had preorbital
>>> [or is "infraorbital" the right word?]
>>> paired horns, while the rhinoceros Elasmotherium had a single huge
>>> supraorbital horn.
>>>
>>>
>>> [1] Artiodactyla isn't basal to the sister group of Xenartha, is it?
>>
>> What does "basal to the sister group" mean?
>
> It means exactly what Erik Simpson revealed it meant in
> sci.bio.paleontology, after you had posted incomplete
> descriptions which confused me, and which you were too
> lazy to resolve. [However, maybe I should have written
> "in the sister group" rather than "to the sister group."]
>
> If you are confused as to what Erik meant, see my reply to
> Erik, expressing relief over how your cryptic half-descriptions
> finally made sense.
>
> HOWEVER, I can go much further than what I wrote, asking just how
> deeply Artiodactyla is situated within the sister group
> of Xenartha. My guess is that it is at least five known
> clades deep inside that sister group.
>
> What's your guess?

Again, what does "basal to the sister group" mean?

Now, whether Artiodactyla is within the sister group of Xenarthra is a
matter of some contention. According to some trees, Afrotheria is the
sister group of Xenarthra, while according to others Xenarthra is the
sister group of all other placentals. However, regardless of which
thory, yes, there are many nodes separating Artiodactyla from Xenarthra.
You might also note that it's just Ruminantia that have horns, so there
are a few more nodes.

[John Harshman]

Have you read any significant number of JLL's posts? have you read his
"article" on placental evolution, available on his web site and also
posted to SBP? The so-called precedent bears no resemblance.

[Jonathan]

On 11/21/2017 10:32 AM, Peter Nyikos wrote:


>
> Sorry to burst your bubble, but there is a precedent for my
> view of the situation.
>
> Way back in October or November of 2010, a fiction writer
> posted to sci.bio.paleontology what he first claimed to be a report
> of a number of extant dinosaurs deep in the South American
> rain forest.
>
> It only came out after one or two exchanges that this
> author, whose (pen?) name I've forgotten, revealed that
> he'd been promoting a work of science fiction, aimed
> at young people, which he was going to publish.
>
> This didn't sit well with you nor with the other
> regulars (Norman? Simpson?). Y'all reprimanded him for his
> unprofessional, or whatever, attitude towards s.b.p.
>
> I only re-joined s.b.p. a month later, by which time
> he was gone and took no notice of my own reply to one
> of his posts.
>
>

And many others told me what you did for rebuilding
alt.binaries.pictures. erotica.pornstar-trading, and
how much that was greatly appreciated.

Was that your wife or daughter?

I would provide the pictures, but then
you don't feel the need to back up
your accusations, so...

[Ray Martinez]

So you are a Young Earth Creationist?

Ray

[Alan Kleinman MD PhD]

Like I've said many times before, I have not done any scientific study on the age of the earth. I had never seen any of Henry Morris's writing before Peter posted the above paragraph. This sentence "Practically never is variation possible outside the biologic family.", is what the mathematics of rmns shows. Microevolutionary changes are not additive, they are linked by the multiplication rule of probabilities.

[Peter Nyikos]

On Tuesday, November 21, 2017 at 7:20:03 PM UTC-5, John Harshman wrote:
> On 11/21/17 7:47 AM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
> > On Monday, November 20, 2017 at 6:15:04 PM UTC-5, John Harshman wrote:
> >> On 11/20/17 9:37 AM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
> >>
> >>> Howeverr, there are ornithologists with much more distinguished
> >>> research records than John Harshman who dispute the claim
> >>> that birds are descended from dinosaurs, as opposed to various
> >>> possible basal forms -- some of which gave rise to crocodiles,
> >>> others to pterosaurs -- from which Dinosauria branched off.
> >>
> >> OK, that one caught my attention. Who are these ornithologists? I would
> >> put my research record up against any of the BANDits.
> >
> > Feaduccia's list of peer-reviewed research publications and honors
> > dwarfs yours, so you must be going on quality rather than quantity.
>
> Yes. Almost all his ornithilogical systematics has been shown to be
> wrong,

WHAT ornithological systematics?

You found Feduccia's _Riddle of the Feathered Dragons_
useless because Feduccia did NOT stick his neck out and endorse
ONE hypothesis as to the sister group of Avialae.

All the amazing details about the actual fossils were of no
interest to you because of this huge disappointment.

That is also what infuriated Prum in a 2002 article in AUK, to
the point where he couldn't think straight: Prum
actually contradicted himself by claiming that Longisquama
was Feduccia's choice for the closest relative of birds.

You were powerless to cope with this self-contradiction, so
you went into an extensive and aggressive interrogation as
to what Feduccia really thought about Longisquama. And
your net.sidekick Erik Simpson helped you in this massive
attempt at misdirection.

Don't try to dispute what I've said here. The actual events
were full of details that would embarrass anyone who isn't
as impervious to shame as you and Erik are.


Remainder deleted, to be replied to after Thanksgiving. I may
do some posting tomorrow, even though the university is on
holiday, but not in reply to you; your cowardice on the thread
"Feathered dino for Kleinman" would already be enough reason
to turn my attention to other participants.


Anyway, starting with Thanksgiving Day, I spend the rest of the break
giving quality and quantity time to my family, which takes priority
over Usenet.

How about your family?

Peter Nyikos

[John Harshman]

On 11/21/17 7:15 PM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
> On Tuesday, November 21, 2017 at 7:20:03 PM UTC-5, John Harshman wrote:
>> On 11/21/17 7:47 AM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
>>> On Monday, November 20, 2017 at 6:15:04 PM UTC-5, John Harshman wrote:
>>>> On 11/20/17 9:37 AM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> Howeverr, there are ornithologists with much more distinguished
>>>>> research records than John Harshman who dispute the claim
>>>>> that birds are descended from dinosaurs, as opposed to various
>>>>> possible basal forms -- some of which gave rise to crocodiles,
>>>>> others to pterosaurs -- from which Dinosauria branched off.
>>>>
>>>> OK, that one caught my attention. Who are these ornithologists? I would
>>>> put my research record up against any of the BANDits.
>>>
>>> Feaduccia's list of peer-reviewed research publications and honors
>>> dwarfs yours, so you must be going on quality rather than quantity.
>>
>> Yes. Almost all his ornithilogical systematics has been shown to be
>> wrong,
>
> WHAT ornithological systematics?

You claim to have seen his CV. Most of it is ornithological systematics.
What publications were you talking about?

> You found Feduccia's _Riddle of the Feathered Dragons_
> useless because Feduccia did NOT stick his neck out and endorse
> ONE hypothesis as to the sister group of Avialae.
>
> All the amazing details about the actual fossils were of no
> interest to you because of this huge disappointment.
>
> That is also what infuriated Prum in a 2002 article in AUK, to
> the point where he couldn't think straight: Prum
> actually contradicted himself by claiming that Longisquama
> was Feduccia's choice for the closest relative of birds.
>
> You were powerless to cope with this self-contradiction, so
> you went into an extensive and aggressive interrogation as
> to what Feduccia really thought about Longisquama. And
> your net.sidekick Erik Simpson helped you in this massive
> attempt at misdirection.
>
> Don't try to dispute what I've said here. The actual events
> were full of details that would embarrass anyone who isn't
> as impervious to shame as you and Erik are.

I would have to look all that up. I don't at the moment have access
either to Feduccia's book or Prum's article. Still, I don't know what
point you're trying to make in bringing all that up.

[Ray Martinez]

With your level of education and knowledge about Talk.Origins topic yet you can't say definitively that earth greatly exceeds ten-thousand years in age? When Darwin published his theory of natural selection in 1859 science was comprised of naturalists who accepted special creation and an earth at least 100 million years in age. If science had not accepted an old earth Darwin's theory would have been dead-on-arrival----you know the theory that you claim as well. Victorian naturalists did not interpret the Bible as advocating a young earth. They could not find any verse, statement, phrase, or word in the Scriptures that said anything about a young earth. My Bible confirms.

Ray

[Alan Kleinman MD PhD]

The age of the earth is not a factor in the mathematics of rmns.

[Ray Martinez]

Alan: IF earth is young, defined as under 10,000 years, then not enough time exists for any selection process to have produced post-original biodiversity seen today. Remember, selection tethered to random mutation, which renders the entire dual causation proposal to not have had anywhere near the amount of time needed to produce living things, past and present, including of course the Cambrian explosion. If ANY RMNS process exists then no Cambrian explosion phenomenon should exist or could exist, not possible. The concept of explosion and the concept of any notion of gradualism contradict diametrically. Read "Darwin's Doubt" by Stephen Meyer.

Ray

[Peter Nyikos]

Neither did Jillery or Burkhard, or, more importantly, John Harshman.
So I'll explain.


If a clade (in this case, the sister group) has any branching at all,
then one goes to the very first fork in the clade and looks to see
which of the groups into which the clade splits at that fork
has the fewest extant species. That sub-clade is the basal group.

This puts both what you wrote and what John wrote into a coherent
whole. One ambiguity remains: if one of the sub-clades has no extant
members at all, does it count as the basal one, or is this strange
use of the word "basal" completely confined to extant animals?

It can make a huge difference. For example, if extinct animals are
treated as though they never existed, then the basal group of
Monotremata is the one of which the sole living member is
the platypus. But if extinct groups are allowed, then the basal
group is the Cretaceous genus *Kollikodon* since the platypus family has
several other members after the fork, including *Obdurodon* and
our platypus, *Ornithorhyncus*. [And besides, the spiny anteaters
are probably also included in the sister group of *Kollikodon*.]


Now, back to the original question. In the wildly unlikely event
that Artiodactyla separated from everything else in the sister
group of Xenartha, the answer could have very well have been,
"Oh, but Artiodactyla IS basal in that sister group." That's because
it's very likely that the clade that includes both Xenartha
and Artiodactyla also includes all rodents, along with most
other extant placentals.


But of course, as John and I agree, it IS wildly unlikely that
Artiodactyla separated from everything else in the sister
group of Xenartha right at the first fork, so I am not sure
why John did not pick up on that from the get-go.

Peter Nyikos
Professor, Department of Math. -- standard disclaimer --
U. of South Carolina

http://www.math.sc.edu/~nyikos/

[jillery]

On Wed, 22 Nov 2017 09:53:05 -0800 (PST), Peter Nyikos
<nyi...@bellsouth.net> wrote:

>> Now I'm confused. I don't know what "basal in/to the sister group" means either.
>
>Neither did Jillery or Burkhard, or, more importantly, John Harshman.
>So I'll explain.

It's no surprise that rockhead thinks Jillery and Burkhard posted
serious replies. What a maroon.

[jillery]

Of course, RMNS was almost certainly involved in causing the Cambrian
Explosion.

And of course, the concepts of "explosion" and "gradualism" don't
contradict, but are merely relative measures on a continuum. Darwin
explicitly pointed out that evolution works at different rates at
different times and on different species.

You might improve your status in T.O. if you stopped making bald
assertions about things you admit you don't understand. Just sayin'.

[Peter Nyikos]

On Saturday, November 18, 2017 at 5:00:04 PM UTC-5, christi...@brown.edu wrote:

> > Peter Nyikos
> > Professor, Dept. of Mathematics -- standard disclaimer--
> > University of South Carolina

> > http://people.math.sc.edu/nyikos/
> >
> > PS Over in sci.bio.paleontology, a newcomer with initials JLL
> > has been making much of the fact (?) that paired supraorbital
> > horns only have been found in Artiodactyla and Xenartha among
> > the mammals. A good place to catch him talking about it is:
> >
> > https://groups.google.com/d/msg/sci.bio.paleontology/wGsPf9MKy30/8pRNygRyAQAJ
> > Date: Wed, 15 Nov 2017 19:56:01 -0800 (PST)
> > Message-ID: <08d42340-750e-4a19...@googlegroups.com>
> > Subject: Re: Assimilation
> >
> > It would be great if you could contribute to the discussion,
> > but I do hope you would be interested enough to lurk there.

Unfortunately, John Harshman is continuing to discourage you
from looking at the post I linked. That is partly my fault:
I should have simply said that in the ONE post I linked,
JLL made some interesting points that are worth discussing.
[And they are, as subsequent discussion between John and myself
on the content of THAT post is beginning to show.]

> Hypohippus (and other large anchitheres such as Sinohippus) are different
> from Hyracotherium in all kinds of ways, not merely the loss of the 4th
> manual digit (although, like other anchitheres, they also differ from
> hyracotheres in having relatively longer metapodials and relatively more
> reduced side toes, as well as having a molar pattern that is trilophodont
> rather than bunolophodont).
>
> Derived anchitheres have a skull that is relatively flat, large and
> procumbant incisors, and molars that are 'megadont' --- that is, large
> for the size of the head (like rhinos). In many respects their skulls, at
> least, are as divergent from the skull form of hyracotheres as are the
> skulls of the Equini (although in a quite different direction).

Thank you for these details. They add a good bit to the only other
place where I have found detailed information about Hypohippus or
any Anchithere. That is your fine survey in _Icons of Evolution_,
"The Horse Series." It's too bad that Wikipedia instead takes people
to a joint paper of yours [1] with very little information on Hypohippus [2]
and the other reference [3] does have some nice information on it, but
little of what you have written.

[1] "The origins and evolution of the North American grassland biome:
the story from the hoofed mammals." Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology,
Palaeoecology. 177: 183. doi:10.1016/S0031-0182(01)00359-5.

[2] This in no way detracts from this excellent paper; the theme did
not call for such detailed description of individual genera.

[3] https://www.floridamuseum.ufl.edu/fhc/hypohippus.htm

> The main point here being that horse evolution is "bushy" in all sorts
> of ways, not merely in the lineage leading, ultimately, to Equus.

Yes, and the branch that made its home in the grasslands is very
bushy too, including the hippariones, as can be seen from the
tree on page 259 of [1]. It omits *Sinohippus* [see above, in my
earlier post]; if you know of some notable differences between that
genus and *Hypohippus*, they would contribute to our appreciation
of the "bushiness".

But I am more interested in the question I posed for you,
that of whether there is a reasonably complete fossil that
is close to the LCA of Perissodactyla.

Peter Nyikos
Professor, Dept. of Mathematics -- standard disclaimer--
University of South Carolina

http://people.math.sc.edu/nyikos/

PS I meant the crown group since if we start including Chalicotheres,
let alone Phenacodonts, then we are getting away from telling debating
points against the creationists.

[Bob Casanova]

On Tue, 21 Nov 2017 14:19:45 -0500, the following appeared

....and minions; let's not forget the minions.

Or was it "henchpersons"?

>Now where did Lazarus go?

Home?

Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Lazarus Bethany wagn'nagl fhtagn.

[Bob Casanova]

On Tue, 21 Nov 2017 10:32:33 -0800 (PST), the following
appeared in talk.origins, posted by Alan Kleinman MD PhD
<klei...@sti.net>:

>On Tuesday, November 21, 2017 at 10:10:02 AM UTC-8, jillery wrote:
>> On Tue, 21 Nov 2017 07:26:12 -0800 (PST), Alan Kleinman MD PhD
>> wrote:
>>
>>
>> <snip all but final evasion>
>>
>>
>> >> And how do you think the multiplication rule sweety allows for
>> >> diversity within species yet magically prevents diversity from causing
>> >> new species?
>> >The multiplication rule doesn't prevent diversity, it prevents most evolutionary trajectories from having a reasonable probability of occurring, like reptiles growing feathers.
>>
>>
>> Of course, the semantics aren't relevant here, but to accommodate your
>> fetish: How does the multiplication rule sweety allow for diversity
>> within species yet magically prevent most evolutionary trajectories
>> from having a reasonable probability of occurring?

>The multiplication rule doesn't apply all mutations, only to particular mutations.

To paraphrase an old joke...

"But how do it *know*?!?"

[Bob Casanova]

On Tue, 21 Nov 2017 11:13:10 -0700, the following appeared
in talk.origins, posted by Bob Casanova <nos...@buzz.off>:

>On Mon, 20 Nov 2017 11:38:54 -0700, the following appeared
>in talk.origins, posted by Bob Casanova <nos...@buzz.off>:
>
>>On Sun, 19 Nov 2017 17:00:11 -0500, the following appeared
>>in talk.origins, posted by jonathan
>><WriteI...@gmail.com>:
>>
>>>On 11/19/2017 2:23 PM, Bob Casanova wrote:
>>>> On Sat, 18 Nov 2017 21:43:34 -0500, the following appeared
>>>> in talk.origins, posted by Jonathan
>>>> <WriteI...@gmail.com>:

>>>>
>>>>> On 11/18/2017 4:59 PM, christi...@brown.edu wrote:
>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Oh, he's gone way beyond that: xenarthrans are descended from
>>>>>>> ankylsaurs, artiodactyls are descended from ceratopsians, and I think he
>>>>>>> might be about to claim that whales are descended from mosasaurs.
>>>>>>

>>>>>> Of course, horses are important to these discussions in other ways. For example, given that we are extremely well informed as to what actually *has* happened in evolution, from such diverse sources such as comparative anatomy, evodevo, phylogenomics, and the fossil record, any and all attempts to declare that such things could not have happened because of some model of probability may be viewed as merely an extensive attempt to lock the stable door after the horse has bolted.
>>>>

>>>>> Reconstructing the past, as interesting as that may be, doesn't mean
>>>>> use that knowledge to predict the future of an evolutionary system.
>
>[Reformatted to put the posts in time order]
>
>>>> In detail? Of course not; who claimed it did? Of course,
>>>> neither can complexity science, or any other field of study.
>
>>>Of all I wrote in that post this is all you
>>>have to say?
>
>>Yes. Why do you imagine it would be worth my time to address
>>*all* your frequently-vacuous points only to have you ignore
>>them as you did this one, aside from claims regarding what
>>you "predicted" about the stock market at the beginning of a
>>major event in 2008 (which, BTW, I *also* predicted to the
>>extent of turning a potential 40% loss into a 3% one by
>>getting out early)?
>>
>>My point, which you essentially ignored, was that prediction
>>of future complex events in detail is simply not possible;
>>if it were you'd be a multibillionaire.
>
>[Crickets...]
>
>Again.

I'd bet you have no idea *why* it would be impossible, do
you?

[Bob Casanova]

On Wed, 22 Nov 2017 05:31:35 -0800 (PST), the following

appeared in talk.origins, posted by Alan Kleinman MD PhD
<klei...@sti.net>:

<snip>

>The age of the earth is not a factor in the mathematics of rmns.

No? It would have worked the same, and produced the same
results, if the Earth had appeared Last Thursday? How's that
work again?

But how about for RMNS (the real sort, not your bowdlerized
version)?

[Ray Martinez]

On Wednesday, November 22, 2017 at 10:50:05 AM UTC-8, jillery wrote:
> On Wed, 22 Nov 2017 09:33:08 -0800 (PST), Ray Martinez
> <r3p...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> >Alan: IF earth is young, defined as under 10,000 years, then not enough time exists for any selection process to have produced post-original biodiversity seen today. Remember, selection tethered to random mutation, which renders the entire dual causation proposal to not have had anywhere near the amount of time needed to produce living things, past and present, including of course the Cambrian explosion. If ANY RMNS process exists then no Cambrian explosion phenomenon should exist or could exist, not possible. The concept of explosion and the concept of any notion of gradualism contradict diametrically. Read "Darwin's Doubt" by Stephen Meyer.
> >
> >Ray
>
>
> Of course, RMNS was almost certainly involved in causing the Cambrian
> Explosion.

The facts say impossible. An explosion of species should not exist if any notion of gradualism pervades causation.

>
> And of course, the concepts of "explosion" and "gradualism" don't
> contradict, but are merely relative measures on a continuum.

Great example supporting my claim that Evolutionists think illogically with no awareness of the fact. These concepts contradict diametrically. There must be some mutation rate that falsifies gradual in the sense of time and gradual in the sense of increment; neither can be open ended. That concept is explosion. Your thinking simply asserts these concepts to be relative or related when in reality they are clearly and demonstrably antonymic.

> Darwin
> explicitly pointed out that evolution works at different rates at
> different times and on different species.

Again, there must be a speed and increment that falsifies gradual evolution. Both falsifying criteria are seen in the Cambrian explosion. If the concept of explosion does not then identify a concept or concepts that falsifies both senses of gradualism?

>
> You might improve your status in T.O. if you stopped making bald
> assertions about things you admit you don't understand. Just sayin'.
>
> --
> I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.
>
> Evelyn Beatrice Hall
> Attributed to Voltaire

Your thinking sees nothing amiss between explosion and gradualism. If ANY notion of gradualism pervades causation then explosion effects should not exist. There is nothing even remotely complicated here. The fact that you don't understand explosion and gradual to contradict once again proves that a delusion is at work and it's working on believers in evolution, not believers in God.

Ray

[Alan Kleinman MD PhD]

On Wednesday, November 22, 2017 at 9:35:04 AM UTC-8, Ray Martinez wrote:
> Alan: IF earth is young, defined as under 10,000 years, then not enough time exists for any selection process to have produced post-original biodiversity seen today. Remember, selection tethered to random mutation, which renders the entire dual causation proposal to not have had anywhere near the amount of time needed to produce living things, past and present, including of course the Cambrian explosion. If ANY RMNS process exists then no Cambrian explosion phenomenon should exist or could exist, not possible. The concept of explosion and the concept of any notion of gradualism contradict diametrically. Read "Darwin's Doubt" by Stephen Meyer.
>
> Ray

The reptiles grow feathers crowd does not agree with you.

[Alan Kleinman MD PhD]

On Wednesday, November 22, 2017 at 10:50:05 AM UTC-8, jillery wrote:

> On Wed, 22 Nov 2017 09:53:05 -0800 (PST), Peter Nyikos
> <nyi...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
>
> >> Now I'm confused. I don't know what "basal in/to the sister group" means either.
> >
> >Neither did Jillery or Burkhard, or, more importantly, John Harshman.
> >So I'll explain.
>
>
> It's no surprise that rockhead thinks Jillery and Burkhard posted
> serious replies. What a maroon.

How can anyone take your insults seriously when you borrow them from Bobby and Bobby borrows them from Bugs Bunny?

[Alan Kleinman MD PhD]

On Wednesday, November 22, 2017 at 10:50:05 AM UTC-8, jillery wrote:

> On Wed, 22 Nov 2017 09:33:08 -0800 (PST), Ray Martinez
> <r3p...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> >Alan: IF earth is young, defined as under 10,000 years, then not enough time exists for any selection process to have produced post-original biodiversity seen today. Remember, selection tethered to random mutation, which renders the entire dual causation proposal to not have had anywhere near the amount of time needed to produce living things, past and present, including of course the Cambrian explosion. If ANY RMNS process exists then no Cambrian explosion phenomenon should exist or could exist, not possible. The concept of explosion and the concept of any notion of gradualism contradict diametrically. Read "Darwin's Doubt" by Stephen Meyer.
> >
> >Ray
>
>
> Of course, RMNS was almost certainly involved in causing the Cambrian
> Explosion.

So tell us, my dear, how exactly does rmns work?