MetaFilter posts tagged with naturalselection

What Good Is Half A Machine?

DU — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 05:24:37 -0800

One of the classic arguments against evolution by natural selection is "what good is half an X?" where X is an eye, a wing or some other complex body part or system. Directly responding to the implicit challenge some researchers have been not just figuring out how X could have evolved, but actually evolving new complex machines (previously). The basic ideas are so simple that web versions (explanation and discussion) have been popping up.

Darwin, extended

digaman — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 18:50:28 -0800

The "blind watchmaker" may not be as blind as we thought. A team of scientists at Princeton University discovers that organisms are not only evolving, they're evolving to evolve better, using a set of proteins to "steer the process of evolution toward improved fitness" by making tiny course corrections.

Down

chuckdarwin — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 18:08:33 -0800

The Genius of Charles Darwin Warning: Dawkins haters, click away now. And, yes: eponysterical.

Natural selection observed in a lab

Tehanu — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 16:36:58 -0800

In the 1980s, Richard Lenski hypothesized that his research team should be able to watch random mutations and natural selection taking place in a lab by observing a bacteria population over many generations. In 1988, beginning with a single bacterium, he started several replicate colonies. Recently, after 33,127 generations, his team has observed natural selection.

Jerry Fodor, on Why Pigs Don't Have Wings

decoherence — Tue, 06 May 2008 07:08:55 -0800

Rutgers professor of philosophy Jerry Fodor created a bit of a stir last October when he wrote an article for the London Review of Books arguing that natural selection may not be such a great theory after all, and that a "major revision of evolutionary theory... is in the offing." Not many fellow philosophers and academics agree, it seems. Fodor responds to his critics here and here. Six months later, it's still not entirely clear whether his argument is, as Justin E.H. Smith put it, "irresponsible and stupid or so subtle that none of his adversaries, defending a status quo interpretation of the theory of natural selection, have been able to get it yet."

Clock Evolution Model

Stunt — Wed, 26 Dec 2007 00:01:03 -0800

Natural selection and evolution in clocks(youtube) - Video of the details and results of a program written to model the evolution of clocks (if they were alive). It seems that it was done to disprove a strawman argument used to argue in favor of creationism by some (an argument I hadn't personally heard used before). Found here, and explained in more detail than I can offer.

Malthusian pressures influences natural selection creates modern nations

stbalbach — Tue, 07 Aug 2007 06:40:38 -0800

Theory of history by Dr. Gregory Clark in his new book A Farewell to Alms ¹. The English Industrial Revolution was caused by changes in the make-up and behavior of the population, which was caused by natural selection, influenced by cycles of Malthusian booms and busts between 1200 and 1800. The implications for modernizing other nations through institutions such as the World Bank are like " pre-scientific physicians who prescribed bloodletting for ailments they did not understand".

The consequences of Charles Darwin's "one long argument"

Postroad — Sat, 12 Nov 2005 10:05:58 -0800

Intelligent Evolution ...Today we live in a less barbaric age,[than the age of Copernicus and Bruno] but an otherwise comparable disjunction between science and religion, the one born of Darwinism, still roils the public mind. Why does such intense and pervasive resistance to evolution continue 150 years after the publication of The Origin of Species, and in the teeth of the overwhelming accumulated evidence favoring it? The answer is simply that the Darwinian revolution, even more than the Copernican revolution, challenges the prehistoric and still-regnant self-image of humanity. Evolution by natural selection, to be as concise as possible, has changed everything...

Don't fear the (bird) reaper

docgonzo — Fri, 04 Nov 2005 06:28:18 -0800

Evolutionary biologist Paul Ewald, author of The evolution of infectious disease and an expert on the development of pathogen virulence (see this, this and this for a good intro), responds to this editorial in Scientific American and pours cold water on fears of pandemic influenza.

Quantum Darwinism

homunculus — Mon, 27 Dec 2004 16:42:20 -0800

Natural selection acts on the quantum world. "Objective reality may owe its existence to a 'darwinian' process that advertises certain quantum states."

Natural Selection

Orange Goblin — Thu, 31 Jul 2003 15:50:56 -0800

Half Life 2 may be postponed , but there's something here to keep you going - Natural Selection. The site is currently sporting a spartan look because they just released a new version of this essential Half Life mod, which combines games such as Command and Conquer with that of action shooters. Visit The Ready Room for more info.

Natural Selection Half-Life Mod Released

ao4047 — Mon, 18 Nov 2002 07:36:51 -0800

Fans of first-person shooter games are flocking to Natural Selection (review 1, review 2), the Marines vs Aliens modification that uses the engine of Half-Life. It is a stunning game and focuses greatly on cooperation with your team (it currently is only playable through network). The designers are still working out balancing the strengths and abilities between human and xenomorph but the anxiety of trying to defend the marine base while the mammoth-sized aliens are battering the door down is a delight to all of us who always wanted to be like Drake, Vasquez and Hicks (and Hudson). Download it here (reg req'd) and find games to join over at Gamespy (their Arcade download makes it super-easy). Note: you do need to have a retail version of Half-Life to play the game.

MintSauce — Fri, 27 Sep 2002 09:50:05 -0800

Blondes 'to die out in 200 years' . The last natural blondes will die out within 200 years, scientists believe. A study by experts in Germany suggests people with blonde hair are an endangered species and will become extinct by 2202.

[Insert blonde joke here]

skallas — Tue, 21 May 2002 11:08:46 -0800

New book claims the Peppered Moth, natural selection's poster boy, may be a fraud. In the 1970s, the American lepidopterist Ted Sargent highlighted serious problems with Kettlewell's experiment. But no one wanted to know: his research was ignored by the scientific community and his career stymied. The peppered moth experiment was "sacred"; critics were "demonised", their views dismissed as "heresy". But the evidence grew and in 1998 a prominent biologist, reviewing it in Nature , said his shock at the extent of the doubts was like discovering as a child "that it was my father and not Santa who brought the presents on Christmas eve".

Perigee — Sat, 01 Dec 2001 00:44:12 -0800

Capitalism as a basis for natural selection? Third world countries are getting pasted because major pharmacutical companies won't cut their profit lines on HIV/AIDS fighting drugs. With infection rates verging on genocidal levels in Africa (with 62% of the world's infections), at what point does bottom line economics cross bottom line humanity? And does anyone else find it strange that a plague has teamed with profit margins to create a new paradigm for unnatural selection?