TDF Journals Vs the internet
- From: John Edser <edser@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Thu, 19 Mar 2009 16:41:00 -0500 (EST)
"J.A. Legris" <jalegris@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:-
Before you get too heavily invested in TDF, I suggest you read Sam
Centipedro's post in the thread titled
"Total Darwinian Fitness as a FALSIFIABLE FITNESS MAXIMAND"
Here are the points dealt with by Centipedro's post:
C:-
Science is NOT done through Usenet groups. It is done by published
research and open debate.
JE:-
Science was historically done via ANY REASONABLE FREE MINDED PERSON
using whatever new mechanism for communication that comes to hand.
Yesterday it was the printed on paper word. Today it is the internet.
Evolutionary Theory was and remains an INDUCTIVE science so the internet
and Usenet groups such as sbe are IMO better placed than printed
journals to advance Evolutionary Theory. A while ago I put forward a
plan to expand sbe so that it included an electronic sbe journal type
publication which would be vetted by an elected group of sbe members. I
still support this idea as the next evolution of these groups. Also,
most public funded journals are not available online free of charge. The
public have already paid for these using taxation; why should we be
charged twice?
Science is more and more dominated by public funded research and the
strangle hold on scientific publication this has created. History has
demonstrated that public funding increases political interference via
ever increasing "political correctness" allowing a dominant group
centric bias. This was brought to public attention during the human
genome research project. Watson, heading a conservative and incredibly
expensive publicly funded approach became increasingly heavy handed and
autocratic. Craig Ventor left Watson to start his own private research
company which provided a more innovative, cheaper and quicker solution.
In the end it required no less than the then president Clinton to settle
the increasingly heated dispute that emerged between them.
You seem to be applying a pseudo-scientist's or denialist's approach:
here's my handwaving theory; now I expect real scientists to untangle
it, then to do experiments to test my predictions.
JE:-
No, it is actually the reverse: the mono-centric TDF approach which I
have publicly developed and outlined mostly here but partly elsewhere
_as to what Darwinian Evolutionary Theory actually is_ alone remains
falsifiable. IOW, the Neo Darwinian approach is just mathematically
based "handwaving", not my approach. I speculate that if Galileo were
alive today he would be horrified as to what passes for "science".
Mathematics is not a science simply because it has no defined frame of
reference. Neo Darwinism has no fitness constant to act as an absolutely
required falsifiable frame of reference for any proposed fitness.
Therefore, any mathematical oversimplification of Darwinism, "goes" as a
substitute for Darwinism (the very theory the model was oversimplified
from).
What theorists are supposed to do is supply fully testable theories for
empirical consideration. This is what I have done. TDF which is actually
Darwin's by implication, i.e. not my own, remains 100% testable only
because TDF has been proposed as a falsifiable fitness maximand acting
as a frame of reference for Evolutionary Theory. What (if anything) do
you/they propose as a falsifiable fitness maximand?
snip<and do it constructively.
C
If you can't get your work through peer review and published, you can
put it on a website, and say "here is the definitive description and
supporting data, please comment". And people would probably do that,
JE:-
I will do so after I have completed a full understanding of falsifiable,
Darwinian evolutionary theory. Please note that Neo Darwinists have
thrown out any requirement for themselves to provide a falsifiable Neo
Darwinistic theory. IOW, they have no hope of actually understanding
what they are talking/writing about. At the moment I use the internet in
general and sbe in particular as my way to inductively develop a
COMPLETED. i.e. fully falsifiable interpretation of Darwinian Theory.
I suspect that your core message is probably
little more than saying "only (reproductive) females count", which is
how a lot of population biology was done in the 1970s as I remember,..
JE:-
TDF applies a falsifiable Darwinian Fitness Maximand to any adult
(fertile) organism as a mono-centric (single) unit of selection (not to
one gene or to one group of organisms, fertile or infertile) _no matter
what the gender_. The only possible way that Darwinian evolution can be
proposed to remain 100% halted experimentally (for just a time) is to
maintain an equal TDF per parent per population. No other way has been
proposed. Can anybody else provide one?
This allows the following valid deductions from my TDF induction:
1) Any _falsifiable_ Darwinian fitness was and remains strictly
mono-centric and epistatically non additive, i.e. is nothing like the
non falsifiable, poly-centric fitnesses which oversimplified, non
corrected models of Darwinism, i.e. "Neo Darwinism" misuse as bona fide
evolutionary theory. Mathematics is not a science and a model is not a
theory.
2) Only TDF mutualised INCREASES remain sustainable in nature. IOW,
fertile organism fitness altruism cannot possibly be selected FOR in
nature using any falsifiable theory. Because Hamilton's non falsifiable,
poly-centric models have no constant fitness to act as a falsifiable
frame of reference, only comparing the fitness variables rb and c to
each other, i.e. _not to a proposed constant fitness frame_, his rule
does not allow you to know which remains the smaller/larger. To be able
to validly claim that, you must compare rb and c to a proposed constant
which is employed as a critical fitness frame of reference, e.g. TDF.
The long and short of it is that what was thought to only be selfishness
using inclusive fitness may indeed have been altruism. In reality what
Hamilton et al consider to be a donation using Hamilton's _incomplete
rationale_ I predict must turn out to be an investment if selected for
within nature. Without a proposed fitness constant such as TDF it
remains impossible to even differentiate a donation from an investment.
Paying your insurance premium is not an altruistic donation but an
investment, i.e. the gains remain unequal but mutual. Hamilton cannot
even separate an investment from a donation.
snip<
You say you have been writing about your theory for ten years. In
those ten years, many people have gone all the way from nervous
secondary school students to confident post-doctoral researchers, yet
you have not progressed your ideas.
JE:-
IMHO my ideas have evolved considerably thanks to sbe dialog. I contend
that Evolutionary Theory remains about the same compared to what it was
10 years ago, i.e. it remains based on uncorrected, over-simplifications
of Darwinism which cannot be refuted simply because no fitness constant
frame of reference has been defined for any of them. If you quiz Neo
Darwinists about this omission they mostly contend that none is
required. Try telling that to Galileo....
C:-
In those ten years, you could have done a mountain of computer
simulation - even if you weren't an expert on that field ten years
ago, you could have acquired and perfected those skills by now.
JE:-
Over this time I have been building and empirically testing computer
THEORY applications i.e. not just simulations using oversimplified
models. A model is not a theory.
snip<
Kind regards,
John Edser
Independent researcher
edser@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
.
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