Re: Born To Run: What Humans Really Evolved To Do

Claudius Denk wrote:
Nonsense. Put a population of chimps in such a place, and
you'd see it happen. Without predators, they'd roam around
on the ground, and stop using sleeping trees when those trees
were remote from food. They'd fight as chimps do, but not
being in trees, they'd be able to keep weapons -- and that
use would grow.

Why would they bother fighting with each other. There's absolutely no
reason to assume they wouldn't just avoid each other.

Individuals and groups in many species fight with
each other -- for food, for territory, for access to
breeding females, etc.

Yeah so?

Read your 'objection' above. That's the "Yeah so".
You are plainly and stupidly wrong, but can neither
see it, nor admit it.

How is it not obvious that if you are going to indicate how hominids
evolved from chimps (or animals similar to chimps) that you--in the
least--have to indicate some kind of behavior and/or selective factor
that is, in some particular way, distinctive from that of chimps?

I have stated them explicitly -- the absence of
predators enabled huge changes in behaviour,
including sleeping on the ground and the ability
to retain tools and weapons almost indefinitely.
Those brought about the need for larger groups,
and that, and the weapon and tool use, enabled
the species to steadily become more organised
and sophisticated.

Go ahead, flesh out the
details. Do you have a precedent of chimps that pick up weapons, form
large communal groups, etc? No. You do not.

Chimps certainly pick up and use weapons.

Do you have a precedent of chimps that pick up weapons, form large
communal groups, etc? No. You do not.

Agreed, and I don't have evidence that chimps have
sat down to present a solution to Fermat's last theorem.
The taxon would only form large communal groups
after living on the ground for a few generations. They'd
have had to modify their social structure and mating
systems. It would have taken a few hundred years.

[..]
*******
Richard
Feynman said:

"..But this long history of learning how to not fool ourselves -- of
having utter scientific integrity -- is, I'm sorry to say, something
that we haven't specifically included in any particular course that I
know of. We just hope you've caught on by osmosis

The first principle is that you must not fool yourself -- and you are
the easiest person to fool. So you have to be very careful about
that.
After you've not fooled yourself, it's easy not to fool other
scientists. You just have to be honest in a conventional way after
that.
... I'm talking about a specific, extra type of integrity that is not
lying, but bending over backwards to show how you're maybe wrong,
that
you ought to have when acting as a scientist. And this is our
responsibility as scientists, certainly to other scientists, and I
think to laymen.
...One example of the principle is this: If you've made up your mind
to
test a theory, or you want to explain some idea, you should always
decide to publish it whichever way it comes out. If we only publish
results of a certain kind, we can make the argument look good. We
must
publish BOTH kinds of results."

*******

Richard Feynman is a hero of mine. And you do
not know what he is saying. He is concerned,
above all, with intellectual honesty. At the most
basic level that is about facing up to questions,
not dodging them. Note how you, in this post
and those before, DON'T answer questions. You
dodge. Your 'answers' are invariably attempts
to change the subject. See above and see below.


Those which do well
at fighting have more offspring, so the instincts
and abilities are selected for that purpose.

This is true for all species.

(In fact, it is not.) But why did you ask the Mikey-type
(i.e. real stupid) question above: "Why would they bother
fighting with each other. There's absolutely no reason to
assume they wouldn't just avoid each other."

You provided no selective basis for the assumptions that they would
begin forming larger and larger groups. I don't make this mistake in
my hypothesis.




And it highlights the fact that there
is nothing about your scenario that selects for hominid/human
characteristics. In fact it appears that you've temporarily forgotten
what hominid/human characteristics are.

Nope. They did not develop hominid/human
characteristics overnight .

Your scenario describes chimp evolution, not hominid evolution.


Paul.

.

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