Re: Tobias 1995

On Dec 21, 1:54 pm, rmacfarl <rmacf...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Dec 21, 2:24 pm, Algis Kuliukas <al...@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

On Dec 20, 5:41 pm, rmacfarl <rmacf...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

... And you call this approach to
science "bad". If that kind of view had prevailed in the past we'd
still be living in the dark ages.

No, I don't call what you're trying to do bad. I call the way you are
going about it bad.

Understand the difference? I didn't think so...

Well my supervisors didn't think so but I expect Ross Macfarlane knows
better than they do.

Yes. Arrogant and ignorant. Worse, they're close minded to new ideas,
something that is absolutely anethema to science. It is the worst
possible "approach to science" and yet you slavishly defend it at all
costs.

No, I'm not defending what others do. I'm attacking what you do,
because your methodology is screwed.

Understand the difference? I didn't think so...

I don't think you know what you're talking about.

Do what you like. Put up the shutters. Ignore the substance of the
arguments. Miss the point entirely. That's what you're doing. It's
your funeral.

My problem isn't with your hypothesis. It's with the way you go about
trying to validate it.

Understand the difference? I didn't think so...

Yes, Ross... very clever line this.

Yes, but the trouble with that analogy is that implies that orthodoxy
is any kind of step. It's not. It's a shambles.

No, you're missing the point again. You're not out of step because you
embrace an unorthodox hypothesis. You're out of step because everyone
here is trying to tell you, over and over again, the same message: not
that your premise is (necessarily) flawed, but that your approach to
analysing evidence for and against it is faulty. If everyone here
thinks you're leading the evidence with your conclusion, and is
describing to you, point by point, line by line, where and when you're
doing so, and you keep denying the substance of those oft-repeated
critiques, then maybe it isn't all of us who's wrong. Maybe it *is*
you, after all.

Patronising crap, Ross. The point is you guys haven't showed the
slightest cappacity to think outside the tiny little box you feel safe
to huddle together in. You show no cappacity for free and critical
thinking. of orthodox paradigm, in other words, you are not
scientists, you're just plodders following in the footsteps of others,
looking down at your feet.

It's not your hypothesis. It's your inability to construct a coherent
case for it, based on valid evidence.

Understand the difference? I didn't think so...

Oooh... the same line again. Clever.

Stop blustering and answer the question.

What question. I always answer your questions. You always evade them.

Does it say anything in those articles (Hunt, Kano, Myers Thompson,
etc) about difference in wading behaviour based on depth?

Hunt didn't study any sites with wading. Kano said it was very
shallow. Myers Thompson didn't say what depth.

... [snip irrelevancies]

[snip the usual time wasting waffle]

Bollocks. I predict that 100% of quadrupedal apes will be able to see
further if they stand up on 2 legs.

But do they do so? Can you cite the paper where that evidence is
reported? No? Hunt reported no incident of that kind of bipedalism.
Not one. Suddenly that doesn't matter. They might get up, like a
merecat, to peer ahead for a second or two but then it's back down
onto all four to move.

Absence of evidence never stopped you from making wild speculations
about - well, so many things that it's not productive to rehash them.
I'll just remind you about your own tendency to high dudgeon at
perceived double standards in others.

I am not mounting the case for meerkat-style predator spotting as the
solution to the origins of bipedalism. Nor am I for food-carrying,
solar radiation or any other of the 35 hypotheses you claim to exist
out there. I was merely pointing out that your claim to some special
status for your wading hypothesis is fallacious (that means it's
"bull***"). It is no more likely to be true than any of the others,
except in your own mind.

But that's where your wrong again. What is the likelihood of an ape
trying to see on all fours (rather than bipedally) dying as a result
of it? What is the likelihood of an ape dying doing ANY of the 35 odd
proposed scenarios for bipedalism quadrupedally?

I can tell that in waist deep water the likelihood is very high. Much
higher than the others. Whenit comes to selection, it stands literally
head and shoulders above the rest.

Wrong. I'm looking at the evidence. I'm looking at the methods used by
scientists that have been behind all the various published ideas and
I'm saying why not look at the same kind of thing but applying the
heretical idea of moving through water to it?

For example, Hunt's study was a good approach and it promoted
posturaal feeding. If he'd have studied bonobos in the Congo he'd have
got a very different (pro-wading) conclusion.

Algis, you are seeking out evidence for what extant apes do in
different places at different times, and you are then extrapolating
from aspects of that data to apply it to a putative human ancestor
that lived, we can say with certainty, we know not where and we know
not when, looked like we know not what, and behaved *we know not how*.

What are you rambling on about now? We have a good idea about
australopithecines. They're the ones I'm claiming did some wading.

And the end result of your extrapolation is 100% predictable - "they
were in the water". *That* is what I mean by leading the evidence with
your conclusion.

Think about that.

It's no more fawlty than three generations of assumption about
savannah or savannah-mosaic models for human evolution.

You still haven't answered that point by the way: You pulled me up for
inferring that human ancestors had lived in waterside habitats more
than chimps on the basis of "absence of evidence..." but danced around
the counter-point that it hasn't stopped 60 years of
paleoanthropologists making the same assumption about the savannah.

Think about that and then give me an answer as to why that is any
different.

- We don't know for certain when the LCA lived. There are credible
estimates varying at least between 4 and 8 MYA.

- Despite finding fossil hominids in the context of what you call the
gallery forest, we don't know that these were the fossils of the LCA
or the nearest thing to it.

- We also don't know how those hominids lived in those forests - in
fact, taphonomy tells us we may not even be certain *if* they lived in
those forests where their dead remains were found.

- And we certainly don't know that they or their close relatives
didn't, at the same time, earlier or later, live somewhere else that
wasn't an open, seasonally flooded gallery forest.

- Lastly, we can't reconstruct their lifestyles from a few fossils,
anything you want to say they did (like wading) or didn't do (like
migrating) is pure and simple *speculation*.

So how can you claim, with such certainty, that they must have gone
wading? The only possible explanation is that you have led the data
with the conclusion. You reached this conclusion because it was the
one you wanted.

By no objective assessment of the data can you get yourself to this
point with anything more than - what? <1% certainty?

More crap. Firstly, all of those "unknowns" have not stopped the
mainstream world theorising about savannah, woodland and combinatorial
scenarios for human evolution - but not waterside ones, of course.

Secondly, I am not espousing exclusivity or certainty. It's you guys
who seem to have no problem with any old *** as long as it's not
waterside. It's you who are scrapping the barrel of any argument and
any evidence to protect the status quo against what you seem to
perceive as a heresy.

Of course. When have I ever claimed anything was proved by anything in
paleoanthropology?

In regards to AAH, often, and without sound foundation.

Sod off. I've never used the word "proved" in that context.Quote me if
you think I did.

All it would prove is that an entire field, and an odd bunch of their
lay defenders, have been wrong

All it would prove is that an entire field, and an odd bunch of their
lay defenders, have been wrong to dismiss and sneer at the ideas of
Hardy and Morgan for 50 years.

Can you even admit that much? I didn't think so.

Can I admit that the majority in the field are wrong to dismiss and
sneer at the ideas of Hardy & Morgan for 50 years? No, you're right, I
can't admit that.

No, you didn't answer my question. Just like a slimey politician, you
answered the question you wanted to answer.

The question I was asking was: If Hunt's study had been of the bonobos
and it had shown wading to be the main context of bipedalism, and if
it had been submitted and if it had been published - would this not
have proved that all that sneering was misplaced?

Look, don't bother answering. I've wasted enough time with you, Ross.

Algis Kuliukas
.

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