Re: Savanna nonsense


Algis Kuliukas wrote:
> JAE wrote:
> > Algis Kuliukas wrote:
>
> > > I don't know what Rich's academic level is. I don't see how doing a PhD
> > > compels me to have higher standards in anything but the very specific
> > > area of study I'm doing and not at all in internet conversation skills.
> > > You've written sentences that are just as ambiguous and poorly written
> > > from time to time. So what?
> >
> > If your standards of reasoning in your academic work are not orders of
> > magnitude better than they are here, you are an abysmal failure unfit
> > to be pursuing your studies.
>
> Compared to my excellent peers at UWA, I am surely unfit to be here on
> their level. But, as no-one else is looking at this thing, I thought
> someone should. Sorry.
>
> But who are you to lecture me on these matters? If you cannot offer
> anything more than ear lobes and facial shape in modern humans to
> justify your claim that the evolution of differences in locomotor
> abilities between two species in a given substrate may have been due to
> drift, I suggest that you are an abysmal failure as an teacher of
> evolutionary theory.

A) You've once again shown that you didn't follow me in the slightest
bit. Since I don't believe you competent or willing to follow any
argument that bears more complexity than the parody of Richard Dawkins
that you substitute for a real understanding of evolutionary theory and
since I've posted it before, I'm not going to bother.

> If you think quadrupedal knuckle-walking is a better precursor to
> terrestrial bipedalism than bipedal wading, I suggest that you are more
> muddled in your thinking about early human evolution that the average
> ten year old.

Since there is evidence, not conclusive by any stretch, but solid
fossil evidence that early bipeds *did* have a terrestrial
knuckle-walking ancestor, it's not clear why you consider my opinion
muddled. Perhaps you have grown so accustomed to substituting your
unlearned opinion in place of evidence for so long than you are unable
to differentiate.

> If your main recourse in debates on these matters is to ignore the
> point in question and, instead, twist misplaced adverbs and use of the
> word "you" into allegations of incompetence, claims of lies and pretend
> personal insults, I suggest you have very little relevant logical
> reasoning inside your head.

Your opinion is your own. It does not seem to be one that is widely
shared.

> > You have on more than a few
> > occasions--usually after your ever so tiring and predictable baby-cry
> > about 45 years and no one kisses Hardy's ass--put forward that you are
> > trying to do real research (and returned to school and won some blah
> > blah at some blah blah) in essence trying to legitimize that there's
> > something to your point because you're proceeding in an academic
> > program. You want that to legitimize you but still want people to
> > excuse the very stupid things you say and you don't see why if you're
> > claiming to be doing serious studies people might hold you to higher
> > standards than many of the cranks who post here. Are you really that
> > dense or are you specifically trying to come across that way?
>
> I'm not trying to legitimise anything. When I say such things, I do so
> only to counter your incessant, outrageously arrogant, charges that my
> efforts are worthless pieces of ***. Not everyone seems to agree with
> you about that. I'm doing the study because I had an opportunity to do
> it and no-one else seems to be interested. Tobias called on his peers
> to look at this thing seven years ago but his peers were too busy
> sneering to lift a finger. You should be ashamed about that. That
> you're not, but are still sneering, even now, makes me think that it's
> you who's the poor scientist who should be questioning his record, not
> me.

And again: you are free to do the study. You do not seem content to do
this. You seem to have a deep need to additionally lay blame for
someone else not having already done the work. You should realize
though that when you do work, your methodology will be examined. It is
my opinion based on my experience both doing research and reviewing the
research of others that your methodologies and reasonings are regularly
flawed.

I'm not the one here pushing my agenda about AAX and whining that
people don't pay creed to my views. You seem not to appreciate that
because you are pushing your agenda and your views, and doing so
forcefully, you are inviting criticism of your views. My record is not
in question here. My publications and research have been reviewed by
peers and critics alike. My research has been discussed in this forum
as well as others, though for many reasons that I care not to
enumerate, I do not enjoy going into my work directly in such forums.
Nonetheless, none of it is hidden from anyone who is not too
incompetent to do a literature search.

> > > What? So because I wrote "nil" instead of "very little" when referring
> > > to evidence about chimp mothers attempting a rescue of their infants
> > > from water, it means my whole work's invalid? Is that it?
> >
> > It means you aren't thinking clearly, and that's a pattern I see with
> > you. Nil or very little, you have not the that it's improbable that
> > chimp mothers would even attempt a rescue. You didn't have data upon
> > which to base the probability, yet you proceeded not as if it was your
> > suspicion, but something that you could establish. You got pissy and
> > confident that you had evidence, but you did not. It's what you do
> > regularly because I do not think you appreciate the difference between
> > your inference (in this case, a moronic inference that doesn't hold up
> > to scrutiny) and observation. Since it was clear that you hadn't even
> > tried to get the observations, you just appeared inept.
>
> "a moronic inference that doesn't hold up to scrutiny" ?
>
> Why, exactly, is it moronic?
> If it doesn't hold up to scrutiny you should be able to find data to
> contradict it, but actually the bit of data you found supported it.



If indeed your inference was that chimp mothers would not be likely to
try to rescue their offspring, your inference that chimp mothers would
be unwilling to jump in doesn't hold up to scrutiny. How you consider
an observation of one making an attempt to support that position is
beyond me. Of course, what you actually meant recently isn't clear and
I'm working on the assumption that you have not changed your opinion
since you first said that chimps would be unlikely to attempt a rescue.
If this is not your position any longer, you should own up to that and
say that you no longer support the position that the behavior of rescue
*attempts* is unlikely or own up that you have no evidence at all to
support your assertion about the probability of rescue *attempts*
beyond that it can and has occurred.


> ...
>
> > > So, you characterise taking note and allocating a tiny percentage of
> > > research time and money to investigating an idea "crawling up X's
> > > ***"? Gosh, that's a very mature and professional attitude, Jason.
> >
> > I characterize your whiney crybaby rant about forty-five years as a
> > whole lot of irrelevant horse*** that you bring up as a political
> > charge that you use to mark yourself as an underdog. I characterize
> > it as something that indicates to me that you haven't much of a clue
> > how or why people do research, something that you make clear in both
> > your research design and your rather moronic position about how the
> > research should be 'assigned' by professors.
>
> That's what you would have called "a lie" if I'd have written anything
> like it. I made it clear on several ocassions that it's not so much
> that such work would be "assigned" just that by teaching the subject
> fairly and openly *some* students would have been interested enough to
> follow it. You said yourself that it simply was not covered. I put it
> to you that those that did cover it, sneered at it and/or used it as an
> example of bad science. That's why it was not persued not becuase the
> research was not assigned to them.

You have said that the reason AAX hadn't been studied was tht advisors
hadn't encouraged their students to look into it and have said that
you think that advisors should have had their students look into it.
These seemed significantly more than merely expecting it to be taught.
It is also not clear what you want to be taught, since it is rare that
people teach about research that has not been done but exists only as a
magazine article and popular books with glaring errors in them. You
have strange expectations of what is and is not taught. Prior to
research and publication into the subject, other ideas were not taught
either. Teaching about the possibility of bipedalism for
thermoregulation or as a result of postural feeding did not preceed
research and publication there. Why you expect special treatment for
AAX where it is put forward as a viable hypothesis before any actual
research has been done is curious, save that you appear to want special
treatment for AAX.


> > I characterize it as
> > indicating that you're clueless on so many levels, yet make a rather
> > nasty charge at a field nonetheless. You seem not to be able to accept
> > that the ideas you find so compelling aren't seen as so compelling by
> > others. You are not the arbiter of what is interesting research for
> > anyone other than you to attempt and your claim that it's a shocking
> > indictment that other people aren't interested in what Sir Hardy or
> > Morgan or whomever you're propping up today and AAX-guru du jour is a
> > load of doo-doo.
>
> If I'm clueless on these two levels: what does it make you?...

Far, far less clueless than you.

> 1) I think differences in locomotion in two species in a given
> substrate are, almost always and almost entirely, due to selection.
> You, I assume, do not.

I do not make the assumption that all differences in locomotive
abilities are a result of direct selection for locomotive abilities in
that particular substrate. I think that evolution is far more complex
than you see it and that poor swimming abilities in humans does not
need to be explained by some selection for this rather unpronounced
ability in light of many factors including that swimming is not rare in
mammals even among those creatures who only very rarely if ever swim.
I appreciate that many of our characteristics and abilities are curious
byproducts of other things (e.g. our ability to throw overhanded is
made possible by our past history of brachiation) and in light of
dreadfully little evidence that the characteristics you site developed
in cretures making use of resources that required swimming or occured
temporarly when such creatures were even in enviroments where it was
possible, I see no reason to assume direct selection for swimming was
responsible for our not terribly impressive swimming abilities.

> 2) I think the bipedal wading is a better precursor for terrestrial
> bipedalism than knuckle-walking quadrupedalism. You do not.

There is evidence that the ancestors of the earliest bipeds had
previously been knucklewalkers. There is no similar evidence presently
for wading. The adaptations we have that allow for our bipedal
locomotion in terrestrial enviroments show up in the early bipeds,
allowing them to engage in similar (not identical but similar)
locomotion. These shared adaptations have clear benefit in a
terrestrial creature. There is no similar evidence that these
adaptations are necessary in a wader or that they similarly enhance
wading beyond that ability already present in apes. What you think is
based on two assumptions for which you presently have no evidence.

> How many of your peers would agree with me that you are the clueless
> one here, I wonder?

Very few.

[snip the inevitable diatribe about what Algis believes should have
happened. Since Algis possesses no ability to time travel, his
childish whining is pointless beyond his clear agenda to make AAX a
political movement of the persecuted.]

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