Re: Most Important Unsolved Problems?



feedbackdroids@xxxxxxxxx wrote:-

JE:-
What constitutes a heritable maximand within biology? (A maximand is
something that without exception, is always maximized within the
limits
available to it).

Is it also fair to say that another similar unanswered question is: why
are
there so many "unmaximized" traits? Why aren't most animals omnivores,
for
example?

JE:-
Specialist verses generalist. Carnivores and vegetarians are specialist
eaters requiring different digestive and prey seeking apparatus. OTOH
omnivores are generalists. If you specialize more and more you obtain the
benefit of greater and greater efficiency but risk becoming extinct as
things change. OTOH, if you do not specialize your risk of extinction may be
reduced but this may be costing you efficiency. Selection has to balance
both because nature cannot evolve a living system that does both equally
well.


This is kind of a naiive question from an engineer, and not an
evolutionist, but does anyone SERIOUSLY think that evolved biological
systems are actually "optimized" or maximized" in many ways? Even to
the casual observer, they appear to be cobbled together out of reused
parts, more than evolved to any semblance of optimality. Take almost
any part of any organimsm and analyze it for "optimal design".
Evolution is a tinkerer, not a designer. No?

JE:-
Just a thought experiment can prove that Darwinian natural selection can be
100% stopped, if and only if, the total number of fertile forms reproduced
into one population by each parent (termed Total Darwinian Fitness shortened
to TDF) remains the same total for every parent within that population. Of
course within nature this hardly, if ever, happens. However TDF can be held
constant for every selectee within one natural population in a lab. TDF
represents a refutable empirically based maximand of Darwinism which
represents the only testable theory of evolution that we have. The reason
why only a constant TDF can halt selection entirely is because the science
of biology remains 100% based on a refutable organism assumption. One
organism cycle begins exactly at one fertilized egg and finishes exactly at
one fertile adult developed from that egg within sexual forms. Selection
only "notices" one entire cycle and not just parts of it. The question
remains how much of TDF is heritable and how is this information coded?

Gene centric Neo Darwinists refuse to recognize TDF as a valid Darwinian
maximand. They appear to employ Fisher's argument which suggests that TDF
cannot be heritable so therefore it cannot be selectable, i.e. they delete
almost all epistatic traits like TDF as non heritable within however, just a
simplified/oversimplified model. They also argue that inclusive fitness can
represent a Hamiltonian maximand where what exactly constitutes fitness
within W.D. Hamilton's rationale (based on Hamilton's Rule) remains
ambiguous to this day. Apart from that, inclusive fitness as a maximand can
only represent a relative fitness. This being the case any inclusive fitness
maximand may be just a minimand depending on what it is supposed to be
relative to (which of course nobody is saying). It should be evident that a
maximand can only validly constitute an absolute assumption of nature such
as is TDF within Darwinian biology or c within Einstein's physics, i.e. an
assumption that is not relative to anything. Please note that an absolute
assumption is not just an absolute dictate. This is because an absolute
assumption of science must be able to be empirically refuted, i.e. be able
to be fully tested against nature. This excludes testing just using
fictitious data run on a computer simulation, i.e. what has become known as
"insilico".

Regards,

John Edser
Independent Researcher

edser@xxxxxxxxxx













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