[MD] Apes

[Steven Peterson]

Hi Mark,

Please note that in your post below lambasting Horse for not citing
his sources where you make a bunch of dubious claims, you yourself did
not cite any of _your_ sources. Note also that I did cite _my_ source,
and on that basis you chose not to read the quotes provided from Louis
Menard and Charles Darwin (who I am pretty sure is older than you as
you seem to be concerned with age).

Best,
Steve

On Sun, Aug 28, 2011 at 4:01 PM, 118 <ununoctiums at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi Steve,
>
> Thanks for asking, I will discuss some "errors" (of course the notion
> of errors implies there is Truth, and we all know that such a thing
> does not sit well with MoQ):
>
> Horse is right in qualifying the whole thing with "dependent on who
> you read".  I prefer peer reviewed articles rather than Wiki in which
> anybody can provide some information.  Therefore, I did not read what
> you copied and pasted below.  Please remember that the average age of
> Wiki contributors is 26, so for somebody to offset any contribution of
> mine, they cannot have been born yet.  Most of what I read concerning
> science, on Wiki, seems to be from a high school paper of some sort.
> With that said:
>
> There is no evidence that humans and apes have a common ancestry,
> anymore than humans and a snail.  The homology of DNA (if we want to
> use that metaphysical analogy), is pretty well conserved over most
> mammals and is indeed very similar amongst most living animals.
> Therefore that both apes and man have a common ancestor would be true
> for squirrels and man.  As such, a statement of that kind is
> meaningless, and does not add any information to the content of this
> forum, which is about MoQ.  If one seeks to create static images and
> represent them as real, then one has fallen into a major trap that MoQ
> cautions against.  Besides, it is difficult to point to any dramatic
> evolution occurring right in species.  Sure we can coax such a thing
> in a test-tube, but what does that show.  And please do not bring up
> the evolution of rodents, that has been disproved.
>
> Now, any species is distinct from another species by definitions.  So,
> if we are talking about such a thing we need to keep in mind the
> definition of species as promoted by Scientism.  If we want to
> converse using such mutually agreed on concepts, we need to keep
> definitions in mind for-most.  Again Horse refers (a second time) to
> "depending on who one reads".  What exactly does this mean?  to
> support his statement, he should at least tell us who he reads.
> Otherwise it is just drivel of a drunk musician.  If I am to explain
> to Horse the correct way to play a slide guitar, I am sure he would
> want to know where I get my information from.  The same is true with
> other kinds of science.  When Horse states 20-some, I assume that he
> means many, just as Lao Tsu talks about the 10,000 things (or maniacs
> as it were).  By stating 20-some, however, he is implying that there
> are approximately 20 such naming of bones found in the ground.  Such
> naming is purely subjective, and change every day.  At one point man
> is said to have evolved from tree-dwelling monkeys.  Now it is a
> different type of ape.  Just from this, we can see that nothing can be
> claimed as fact, no matter who one reads.
>
> There is just as much evidence from DNA sequencing that man was
> created through genetic engineering as through some kind of a random
> process.  Also, as I stated in a previous post, there is more evidence
> that man evolved from dolphins than from apes, in terms of
> similarities.  What kind of evolutionary pressures are there for our
> brains to grow?  Evolution is morphology through phenotype display.
> It is the effect of the outside changing the inside.  There is no
> pressure for creating a self-destructive species, and such
> self-destruction is not just a by-product of increased intelligence;
> just the opposite: intelligence is a by-product of self-destruction.
> No other species displays such annihilatory tendencies, not even the
> apes.  So, where did that come from?  Certainly not through any
> evolutionary leap, for such a thing would have died out close to
> inception.  So, just to be clear, man evolving from apes is a red
> herring, or straw man (as it is used in this forum).  It should not be
> used for MoQ metaphysical discussions, since it brings in something
> total irrelevant.  The shape of an ice-cream cone is more relevant.
>
> Horse does provide the crux of the issue in that we need to agree on a
> classification in order to converse about anything in the forum.  This
> is one of the weak points of what I read on MoQ.  Both Dan and dmb
> provide good support in terms of their classifications.  Others not so
> much.  We can talk about free-will all we want, but it is meaningless
> unless we provide an example of what we mean.  If I say that free will
> is the same as Will, is the same as Intent, and is precisely all of
> our actions from the moment of birth.  At least we have something to
> agree or disagree about though rhetoric.
>
> Indeed, rhetoric is what we provide here.  In order to remain
> coherent, we need to provide the appropriate background for such
> rhetoric in order for it to be  understandable.  A dictionary of terms
> in MoQ would be useful, but I am sure that everyone would disagree on
> such definitions, so we are stuck with analogies.  Free-will is
> analogous to the wind.  It expresses itself by blowing with some
> intensity and with direction.  It can have different temperatures and
> different durations.  It returns to being still once it is done.  It
> is unexpected even though some try to explain it and track hurricanes
> with it.  At every moment of a wind-blow, it is statistically
> unpredictable.  If the wind does not display free-will, then nothing
> does.  And, we know we are free, we cannot just make something like
> that up.  There, that is something to discuss.  If you disagree, I can
> provide convincing rhetoric to show you how the analogy is apt.
>
> Cheers,
> Mark
>
> On Sat, Aug 27, 2011 at 7:57 PM, Steven Peterson
> <peterson.steve at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Hi Mark,
>>
>> Perhaps you can point out any errors in the post by Horse to which you objected:
>>
>> Horse:
>>> According to current theory/evidence (dependent on who you read):
>>> Humans didn't evolve from apes - apes and humans had a common ancestor.
>>> Apes and hominids are thought to have diverged about 7 million years ago.
>>>
>>> And when you say human, do you mean homo sapiens or earlier instances of
>>> humans (Neanderthal, Cro-magnon etc.) because there have been 20-some
>>> different 'species' of 'humans' in the last 7 million years or so - again
>>> dependent on who you read). These species are, apparently, distinct from
>>> apes.
>>>
>>> So not only is it quite reasonable that 'Ape' is a concept, but it is just
>>> as reasonable that 'Human' is a concept too.
>>> It all depends on what you need to achieve through classification.
>>
>> From wikipedia:
>> "The modern theory of evolution depends on a fundamental redefinition
>> of "species". Prior to Darwin, naturalists viewed species as ideal or
>> general types, which could be exemplified by an ideal specimen bearing
>> all the traits general to the species. Darwin's theories shifted
>> attention from uniformity to variation and from the general to the
>> particular. According to intellectual historian Louis Menand,
>>
>> 'Once our attention is redirected to the individual, we need another
>> way of making generalizations. We are no longer interested in the
>> conformity of an individual to an ideal type; we are now interested in
>> the relation of an individual to the other individuals with which it
>> interacts. To generalize about groups of interacting individuals, we
>> need to drop the language of types and essences, which is prescriptive
>> (telling us what finches should be), and adopt the language of
>> statistics and probability, which is predictive (telling us what the
>> average finch, under specified conditions, is likely to do). Relations
>> will be more important than categories; functions, which are variable,
>> will be more important than purposes; transitions will be more
>> important than boundaries; sequences will be more important than
>> hierarchies.'
>>
>> This shift results in a new approach to "species";
>>
>> Darwin concluded that species are what they appear to be: ideas, which
>> are provisionally useful for naming groups of interacting individuals.
>> "I look at the term species", he wrote, "as one arbitrarily given for
>> the sake of convenience to a set of individuals closely resembling
>> each other ... It does not essentially differ from the word variety,
>> which is given to less distinct and more fluctuating forms. The term
>> variety, again, in comparison with mere individual differences, is
>> also applied arbitrarily, and for convenience sake."