Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[ChairmanPoo]

*shrug* Just because something is advantageous doesn't mean that it will pop in.  It would be advantageous to have a keen sense of smell like dogs do, yet we get stuck with our puny one.

Besides, and, assuming that this supposition is right (and it's a wild supposition. Again, I don't know jack about bears), and human muscles are in fact better performing, muscle fibre vs muscle fibre, than bear muscles: so what? bears would be doing alright with their less efficient-yet-much-bigger ones. It's not like they're being horribly handicapped.

[DJ]

What are the odds of it appearing recently when it failed to appear for almost the entire tetrapod history? This is why I'm sceptic about significant differences in muscle strength between mammals.

Sense of smell is different, it's not nearly as useful to monkeys as it is to wolves.

[Virex]

You need to weigh in the energy cost as well. Maintaining superior muscles also costs more energy, so it will only appear if the extra energy gained from them offsets the increased investment cost.

[FuzzyZergling]

Simply being strong does not a successful species make.
A creature of greater proportional muscle mass will use a larger amount of energy, and have to eat more.
For a predator, this means they need to either bring down larger prey, or smaller prey more often.
If a creature born with higher muscle mass does not eat enough to support itself, it dies and cannot pass on its genes.
Natural selection.

[DJ]

I guess denser muscles would also accumulate waste more quickly while they're in use, which means you're sacrificing endurance for power. Again, not something very useful for a specie like humans.

[ChairmanPoo]

"what are the odds" is not a question that leads anywhere meaningful I think (the odds when compared to what?). Personally, if human muscles are actually better performing pound for pound than bear muscles, I bet on the having less fat hypothesis rather than the "more efficient" one. But I don't think it particularily unfeasible (it would spin about having longer myosin and actin filaments, I think).  Because nothing dictates such a thing would appear earlier rather than latter. Or that it would prove a decisive advantage under any circumstances. And how about this?: maybe some selection for this trait does indeed take place (longer and longer filaments capable of locking more strongly), and there is variation in the degree to which it has been selected, which would be affected by a multitude of factors.

I guess denser muscles would also accumulate waste more quickly while they're in use, which means you're sacrificing endurance for power.

not particularily.

[Nikov]

The problem with looking at this human versus bear problem in a purely evolutionary context is that humans don't sleep half the year and bears don't eat three meals a day.

[Muz]

This post runs close to what I think. "Evolution" as a whole is a pretty loose term.

How?

It's hard to communicate it, but let's put it this way. "Algebra" is a loose term. Now we have some solid facts proving that if A*B = C*D, then D = A*B/C. This gets applied everywhere. Now someone else claims that his holy book says that A is always 3, and makes up random numbers for B and C. Whereas science somehow says D to be a constant 3.14, where estimates using it have shown to be correct.

One faction will be blindly arguing his temple's position for A, based on the holy scriptures, and making up random fanfiction of B and C. They would claim that Algebra as a whole is false. The other faction will point out that duh, it works.

Then other people, holding on to "Algebra" as a universal rule, come up with something like this and then claim that it's true because Algebra is true.

Like with Evolution, there's many different applications. At the very basis of it, it works perfectly. But the kind of thing that people describe when using the term is not necessarily true. I mean, I'm opposed to the idea of natural selection as an actual fact, but not be opposed to the idea that something evolves into something else.

Science is not a nice place to be. Any scientist would give anything if told you could show them scientific proof of evolution being wrong, but the fact of the matter is that this doesn't exist. Once you get proven wrong in science, your theory is out the door forever and is replaced by somthing new, likely whatever disproved you. Darwin's Theory of Evolution has been in the scientific meat grinder for almost a hundred and fifty years now, and no strides forward in biology have done anything but make it stronger.

Well, the thing is that you can't always disprove things, especially when it's exceptionally complex. For example, Freudian psychology. The whole human psyche being based around sex, penis envy, id, ego, superego. He is known as the father of modern psychology because he hasn't been disproven.. it makes sense. But then again, it doesn't always make sense. Freud gets as much criticism as Darwin, but isn't entirely wrong. Just because it's not false, doesn't mean that it's true.

I like my scientific theories as clean cut laws. I don't think it's impossible to get there, it's just beyond our level of research. It took humanity thousands of years to come up with a law and formula for physics, and maybe a few thousand more to come up with laws for evolution and genetics. But I'll still have some minor skepticism until it's proven true.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

Like with Evolution, there's many different applications. At the very basis of it, it works perfectly. But the kind of thing that people describe when using the term is not necessarily true. I mean, I'm opposed to the idea of natural selection as an actual fact, but not be opposed to the idea that something evolves into something else.

I'm not certain how you can discard natural selection and still consider evolution to be true. Natural selection of traits is very process through which the evolution of a species comes about.

Well, the thing is that you can't always disprove things, especially when it's exceptionally complex. For example, Freudian psychology. The whole human psyche being based around sex, penis envy, id, ego, superego. He is known as the father of modern psychology because he hasn't been disproven.. it makes sense. But then again, it doesn't always make sense. Freud gets as much criticism as Darwin, but isn't entirely wrong. Just because it's not false, doesn't mean that it's true.

Psychology has always been a very, very unpleasently soft scientific field. There are plenty of psychological outlooks, but none have yet to be fully proven or disproven, including Freudian Psychology. We just don't know enough about the human brain to come up with somthing that is certain.

I like my scientific theories as clean cut laws. I don't think it's impossible to get there, it's just beyond our level of research. It took humanity thousands of years to come up with a law and formula for physics, and maybe a few thousand more to come up with laws for evolution and genetics. But I'll still have some minor skepticism until it's proven true.

As before, scientific law only relates to the fundamental workings of our reality, which phyisics is concerned with. Unless we change what laws are used to describe entirely, there will never be laws for genetic or evolution because they don't have anything to do with reality. The universe can exist without life, and likely did so for a very long period of time.

"Energy can be neither created nor destroyed. It can only change forms."
"An object in motion stays in motion unless acted upon by an outside force."
"Any living organism will eventually mutate, and mutations that increase the chances of survival will be naturally selected against those that do not, eventually resulting in a change in the population."
All of these statements are equally true, but only two of them are laws because biology and genetics have nothing to do with our physical reality.

Evolution is, beyond any shadow of a doubt, true. There has not been a single iota of evidence to disprove it in all this time, only more confirming evidence.

[alway]

What. How can someone not, at the very least, accept natural selection. Organisms more likely to die from something than other organisms in a gene pool will, in the future, make up less of the gene pool because they died more often from it than the others in the gene pool. It's about as close as you can get to tautologically correct. Organisms which die young, die young. And thus without producing any young. That is natural selection; please, share with us your wisdom about how it doesn't work.

[Dasleah]

im christian
if we came from apes
how come were not hairy and have a big mouth
and did we end up looking like we do know
and besides
there isnt any serious proof of apes
they showd a video saying an ape was wondering around in the forest
that thing looked exactly like a costume that i had saw at a store
know one ever cought an ape

[MetalSlimeHunt]

1/10
That would only work well if we weren't such a small community. Everyone knows you're smarter than that, but the concept is good for someplace where people can't identify you, although it does strech it a little.

[fqllve]

What!?

At least 7/10

know one ever cought an ape

That is hilarious no matter which way you slice it.

[Dasleah]

metalslimehunt is no veteran of the internet and should turn in his badge for not recognising the origin

[MetalSlimeHunt]

I try not to read FSTDT. Ruins my faith in humanity when it isn't funny.