This is interesting. Many human social rules carry over into cyberspace.

I just got review copies of Chris Mooney’s book, The Republican War On Science, and James Lovelock’s most recent work, The Revenge Of Gaia. Both titles seem a little overwraught to me, and I’ve already expressed skepticism on Chris Mooney’s thesis. But I’ll report anon, after reading them.

I’m puzzled by this post by Clayton Cramer, who thinks:

I am prepared to believe (at least for sake of argument) that all of these complex mechanisms could have developed as a result of blind, random chance. But what are the chances that all of these complex mechanisms managed to develop in less than 700 million years? More importantly, what are the chances that cells that blindly, randomly developed one of these structures or enzymes were the ancestors of cells that blindly, randomly developed all the rest of these useful mutations?

On my planet, 700 million years is a really long time. Is there some kind of mathematical analysis that he’s done to indicate that it’s for some reason insufficient?

I think that part of the problem is his continued use of variations of the phrase “blind, random chance.” This is a common misperception among evolution skeptics (who have apparently never read “The Blind Watchmaker” or other books that describe how evolution actually works). They seem to think that it stumbles around blindly, as though it were like the million monkeys randomly typing Shakespeare attempts. In fact it is directed–it simply isn’t directed by intelligence. It’s directed by what works. If a mutation occurs that has an advantage in the environment, it is preserved, and the next generation builds on it.

Imagine the monkeys, except when one of them accidentally gets a letter of the sonnet right, they don’t have to type that part any more–it’s preserved in their next attempt, and they just bang on the keys to fill in the spaces around it. Each time they get one right, it becomes more sonnet like. If the sonnet has, say a couple thousand characters, then the monkey might get each one right within a few dozen keystrokes (assuming that he’s really typing randomly, and not skipping some keys entirely–which is an interesting analog to the concept of future development paths limited by existing morphology, described in Gould’s book The Panda’s Thumb). Even with thousands of characters, a rapidly typing simian would pound out the poem in a couple days, while having no knowledge of what he’s doing.

I’m puzzled by this post by Clayton Cramer, who thinks:

I am prepared to believe (at least for sake of argument) that all of these complex mechanisms could have developed as a result of blind, random chance. But what are the chances that all of these complex mechanisms managed to develop in less than 700 million years? More importantly, what are the chances that cells that blindly, randomly developed one of these structures or enzymes were the ancestors of cells that blindly, randomly developed all the rest of these useful mutations?

On my planet, 700 million years is a really long time. Is there some kind of mathematical analysis that he’s done to indicate that it’s for some reason insufficient?

I think that part of the problem is his continued use of variations of the phrase “blind, random chance.” This is a common misperception among evolution skeptics (who have apparently never read “The Blind Watchmaker” or other books that describe how evolution actually works). They seem to think that it stumbles around blindly, as though it were like the million monkeys randomly typing Shakespeare attempts. In fact it is directed–it simply isn’t directed by intelligence. It’s directed by what works. If a mutation occurs that has an advantage in the environment, it is preserved, and the next generation builds on it.

Imagine the monkeys, except when one of them accidentally gets a letter of the sonnet right, they don’t have to type that part any more–it’s preserved in their next attempt, and they just bang on the keys to fill in the spaces around it. Each time they get one right, it becomes more sonnet like. If the sonnet has, say a couple thousand characters, then the monkey might get each one right within a few dozen keystrokes (assuming that he’s really typing randomly, and not skipping some keys entirely–which is an interesting analog to the concept of future development paths limited by existing morphology, described in Gould’s book The Panda’s Thumb). Even with thousands of characters, a rapidly typing simian would pound out the poem in a couple days, while having no knowledge of what he’s doing.

I’m puzzled by this post by Clayton Cramer, who thinks:

I am prepared to believe (at least for sake of argument) that all of these complex mechanisms could have developed as a result of blind, random chance. But what are the chances that all of these complex mechanisms managed to develop in less than 700 million years? More importantly, what are the chances that cells that blindly, randomly developed one of these structures or enzymes were the ancestors of cells that blindly, randomly developed all the rest of these useful mutations?

On my planet, 700 million years is a really long time. Is there some kind of mathematical analysis that he’s done to indicate that it’s for some reason insufficient?

I think that part of the problem is his continued use of variations of the phrase “blind, random chance.” This is a common misperception among evolution skeptics (who have apparently never read “The Blind Watchmaker” or other books that describe how evolution actually works). They seem to think that it stumbles around blindly, as though it were like the million monkeys randomly typing Shakespeare attempts. In fact it is directed–it simply isn’t directed by intelligence. It’s directed by what works. If a mutation occurs that has an advantage in the environment, it is preserved, and the next generation builds on it.

Imagine the monkeys, except when one of them accidentally gets a letter of the sonnet right, they don’t have to type that part any more–it’s preserved in their next attempt, and they just bang on the keys to fill in the spaces around it. Each time they get one right, it becomes more sonnet like. If the sonnet has, say a couple thousand characters, then the monkey might get each one right within a few dozen keystrokes (assuming that he’s really typing randomly, and not skipping some keys entirely–which is an interesting analog to the concept of future development paths limited by existing morphology, described in Gould’s book The Panda’s Thumb). Even with thousands of characters, a rapidly typing simian would pound out the poem in a couple days, while having no knowledge of what he’s doing.

It turned out, like Alberto, to be dramatically overhyped (but I guess it’s better to be safe than sorry, and it may still do a lot of damage in the Carolinas and Mid Atlantic). The real hurricane season has begun:

The computer models are very bullish in developing waves coming off the coast of Africa in the next two weeks, and I expect we’ll have at least two new named storms by the time the peak of hurricane season arrives, September 10.

Chris Mooney emails me to tell me that his book, about the so-called “Republican War On Science,” has been released in paperback today, with a new introduction and call to arms against ID.

As I told Chris, while I disagree with a lot of the things that Republicans do with respect to science, I think that the war is more than bi-partisan. Democrats and so-called “progressives” peddle a lot of junk science toward their own agendas, and arguably (and historically) do it even more than Republicans (e.g., think the eugenics movement). Lysenko wasn’t a “right winger,” after all…

In fact, it might be interesting to have a blog debate on this topic. I don’t think we’d resolve quantitatively who is worse, but I suspect that we could convince a lot of people that there’s plenty of guilt to go around.

Anyway, go get the book, if you haven’t, and judge for yourself.

[Update in the evening]

Chris has kindly offered to consider a debate. But if I do that (not definite yet) I’d have to read his book first. A review copy is on the way.

National Hurricane Center director Max Mayfield is calling it quits at the end of the season. Certainly the last two years have to have been pretty rough on him. Here’s hoping that he’ll get a lighter season as a send off.

Economist reports that my idea about doing non-destructive stem cell research has been successfully tested.

Once a fertilised egg has divided into eight cells, one of those cells can be removed in a biopsy without reducing the chance of a successful pregnancy….such biopsied cells might, instead, be encouraged to reproduce

Environmentalists (most notably, recently, Jared Diamond) are fond of using Easter Island as a cautionary tale of what happens when resources are depleted in a non-renewable manner. Well, it’s looking a lot like this example is a fairy tale:

By the time the second round of radiocarbon results arrived in the fall of 2005, a complete picture of Rapa Nui’s prehistory was falling into place. The first settlers arrived from other Polynesian islands around 1200 A.D. Their numbers grew quickly, perhaps at about three percent annually, which would be similar to the rapid growth shown to have taken place elsewhere in the Pacific. On Pitcairn Island, for example, the population increased by about 3.4 percent per year following the appearance of the Bounty mutineers in 1790. For Rapa Nui, three percent annual growth would mean that a colonizing population of 50 would have grown to more than a thousand in about a century. The rat population would have exploded even more quickly, and the combination of humans cutting down trees and rats eating the seeds would have led to rapid deforestation. Thus, in my view, there was no extended period during which the human population lived in some sort of idyllic balance with the fragile environment.

It also appears that the islanders began building moai and ahu soon after reaching the island. The human population probably reached a maximum of about 3,000, perhaps a bit higher, around 1350 A.D. and remained fairly stable until the arrival of Europeans. The environmental limitations of Rapa Nui would have kept the population from growing much larger. By the time Roggeveen arrived in 1722, most of the island’s trees were gone, but deforestation did not trigger societal collapse, as Diamond and others have argued.

I’m sure that the argument now will be that they were about to collapse any year now, but the evil white men killed them before they had a chance to.