Michael J. Behe's Blog, page 214

April 9, 2021

Günter Bechly: Paper says Cambrian Explosion took only 410,000 years

Uranium-lead dating shows that the Cambrian explosion is younger than previously thought

A spectacular representative of the Ediacara biota – an impression of Pteridinium simplex in Southern Namibia. Credit: Senckenberg/Linnemann

If so, it “has just gone nuclear,” he writes. Gone nuclear? Funny how life has a way of imitating comedy. Weren’t some of us wasting our time recently trying to create a panic about radioactive snowflakes in outer space? And while we weren’t looking, the Cambrian Explosion …

Okay, the story is that Bechly has been making the point that Cambrian life form Dickinsonia is “unlikely to be an animal.”* Someone over at Peaceful Science took issue with that.

While mulling the matter, Bechly went back to the publications and stumbled across something quite remarkable:

Recently, I stumbled upon a paper from 2018 that I had previously overlooked, and it proved to be dynamite. It is a study by a research group from the University of Zurich about the transition from the Ediacaran organisms to the Cambrian animal phyla in the Nama Basin of Namibia (Linnemann et al. 2018). What they found is truly mind-blowing. The window of time between the latest appearance date (LAD) of the alien Ediacaran biota and the first appearance date (FAD) of the complex Cambrian biota was only 410,000 years. You read that correctly, just 410 thousand years! This is not an educated guess but based on very precise radiometric U-Pb dating with an error margin of only plus-minus 200 thousand years. This precision is truly a remarkable achievement of modern science considering that we are talking about events 538 million years ago.

The authors of the study fully realized that their finding documents an unexpected “extremely short duration of the faunal transition from Ediacaran to Cambrian biota.” Therefore, they speculated about ecologically driven reasons for this rapid onset of the Cambrian Explosion.

Günter Bechly, “The Cambrian Explosion Has Just Gone Nuclear” at Evolution News and Science Today (April 8, 2021)

Nope. Ecology won’t do that for us. The process isn’t just somehow happening. Something is driving it.

Here’s the original media release from 2018:

Using uranium-lead dating, Senckenberg scientists, in cooperation with an international team, were able to date the onset of the “Cambrian explosion” to precisely 538.8 million years ago. During the “Cambrian explosion,” all currently known “blueprints” in the animal kingdom appeared within a few million years, while at the same time the so-called “Ediacara biota” – a group of unique, specialized life forms – became extinct. The study was recently published in the scientific journal Terra Nova…

Moreover, the scientists’ data series reveal that the development of the fauna took place within a very short period. The transition from the “Ediacara biota” – multi-celled but very simply organisms – to the diverse Cambrian life forms occurred over less than 410,000 years. “From a geological point of view, this represents a veritable sprint,” according to the research team. Based on the current study, this rapid faunal change may be best explained as a kind of “biological arms race”: New fundamental traits accelerated the subsequent evolution and fueled the next “adaptive breakthrough.” “For example, if an organisms became increasingly mobile and fed on prey, previously even less mobile animals had to come up with new ways to protect themselves – which may have led to the rapid development of shells or skeletons. One achievement thus engendered the next – and, by necessity, within a shortened period of time,” says Linnemann in summary.

Senckenberg Research Institute and Natural History Museum, “Uranium-lead dating shows that the Cambrian explosion is younger than previously thought” at Phys.org (December 19, 2018)

This is the usual Darwinian short circuit. The fact that a life form would be better off with, say, eyes does not mean it will just start to develop them any more than the fact that a woman might be better off without a chronic illness means she can just get over it. The solutions to some problems requires focused intelligence.

Bechly adds,

The Cambrian Explosion has gone nuclear and simply evaporates neo-Darwinism as a brilliant and beautiful but failed scientific theory, as it was recently called by Yale University professor David Gelernter (2019).

Günter Bechly, “The Cambrian Explosion Has Just Gone Nuclear” at Evolution News and Science Today (April 8, 2021)

No wonder the paper, which is closed access, was ignored. Bet the next one will be too. Darwinism is slowly being discredited but it is still Too Big to Fail.

As Bechly notes in the article, at least one researcher has proposed that Dickinsonia belongs to a now-extinct Ediacaran kingdom of life. But it might be a fungus.

Hat tip: Philip Cunningham

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Published on April 09, 2021 20:40

Soon there will be computers that think like people?

Not so fast says economics prof Gary Smith: The failure of computer programs to recognize a rudimentary drawing of a wagon reveals the vast differences between artificial and human intelligence.

He reminds us that the label “artificial intelligence” is a misnomer. The ways in which computers process data are not at all the ways in which humans interact with the world.

When we were young, we might have seen a cardboard box with four sides and a bottom and been told that this is a box, so we created a single-member category. Then we learn that a box with a top is still a box. So is a box made out of wood or plastic. Some boxes are large; some are small. Some are empty; some are full. Some are red; some are white. Our mental box category is fluid and flexible.

Then we learn that a box with wheels and a handle is called a wagon, and we create a new mental category that encompasses the wagons we encounter of different sizes and colors, made of different materials, and used for different purposes.

Computers do nothing of the sort. They are shown millions of pictures of boxes, wagons, horses, stop signs, and more, and create mathematical representations of the pixels. Then, when shown a new image, they create a mathematical representation of these pixels and look for matches in their database. The process is brittle—sometimes yielding impressive matches, other times giving hilarious mismatches.

News, “Artificial Unintelligence” at Mind Matters News

Sometimes the mismatches are not hilarious. Here are some attempted identifications of a schoolbus:

It’s not as though bigger computers can simply solve this problem. We can refine the machine vision systems using more and more pix but we can’t teach the machine what humans know naturally.

See also: Six limitations of artificial intelligence as we know it. You’d better hope it doesn’t run your life, as Robert J. Marks explains to Larry Linenschmidt.

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Published on April 09, 2021 19:07

Eric Holloway asks, What is the essential feature of creative intelligence?

Creative intelligence is easier to describe by what it is not than by what it is. But there is a clue in that very fact…

The precise nature of our creative intelligence remains beyond our grasp because it is like the fundamental principles of mathematics:

From all this we can see the hallmark of creative intelligence is to somehow pull principles into existence. But, the trick is, we cannot say how the fundamental flash of insight occurs. This is the fundamental dilemma, and we must pay attention here:

For if we could in fact define how to get flashes of insight, then we would have a method to generate principles. And as Gödel proved, if we can generate the principle, it is not fundamental, and therefore, not a principle. To discover the principle of all principles would cut off the very limb we are sitting upon. That is why the very nature of creative intelligence, though we can catch glimpses of it, will remain forever outside our grasp.

Eric Holloway, “What is the essential feature of creative intelligence? ” at Mind Matters News

You may also wish to read:

Fermat’s Last Tango: Lively Musical For Nerds The ghost of Fermat and other giants from the Aftermath Club help (frustrate?) a mathematician’s effort to prove Fermat’s famous Last Theorem. Gregory Chaitin tells us, “It’s wonderful. Go and see this musical comedy. It’s great fun, and all the math is right!”

and

What your news feed will look like if Big Tech runs it Reading Elkus’s essay, one wants to ask, “Who is the collective ‘we’ who are supposed to be out of control?” The pundits demanding crackdowns on social media seldom accuse themselves of bad social behavior; those who dispute their views are always the guilty ones.

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Published on April 09, 2021 18:35

More Pseudogene Function

This is an old paper, but it is surprisingly little-known: Pseudogenes: Are They “Junk” or Functional DNA?. It’s a review paper of pseudogene function.

My favorite example in the paper is the antigenic variation. Essentially, the pseudogenes store alternative configurations of parts of genes. The organism can quickly reconfigure itself by swapping various parts in and out of pseudogenes. Many species have been found with this ability.

Pseudogenes used to be thought of as the ultimate example of “junk DNA” – something that we *KNOW* that was functionless. But, it turns out, pseudogenes continue to provide more and more evidence of function, much of it being part of directed mutation – something else that the Darwin lobby said couldn’t happen.

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Published on April 09, 2021 18:29

Stephen Hawking was Sometimes Embarrassingly Stupid

Yes, yes, I grant that he was brilliant in his field of expertise, theoretical physics. But as was recently noted in these pages, when he ventured outside of his bailiwick, he said some really boned-headed things. Consider just one example from his book The Grand Design:

“Because there is a law such as gravity, the universe can and will create itself from nothing.”

In one sentence Hawking committed two egregious logical blunders. First, he committed the error of reification (ascribing concrete properties to abstract concepts). The law of gravity does not do anything. Like all laws of science, it is a mathematical model of observed regularities. Why the regularities scientists observe should be such as they are and how those regularities came to be in the first place is beyond the realm of science – and thus not with Hawking’s area of expertise.

Second, he committed the error of non sequitur. “Nothing,” in the sense that is under examination, means “absolute non-being.” Such a state has no properties. When it obtains, it means there is absolutely nothing. Now look at Hawking’s statement. He said, essentially, “because we have something (the law of gravity), the universe can create itself from nothing.” Well sure, if by “nothing” one means “something” then that is true. But that is not what “nothing” means, as any reasonably bright second grader knows.

This is why we should be very careful when we employ the argument from authority. “X said thus and so” can be a powerful argument if X is the world’s foremost authority on the subject. Certainly it is never absolutely persuasive because in the past the majority of scientists (even the smartest among them) have been wrong about basic things. Until well into the twentieth century most cosmologists subscribed to the theory of the luminiferous aether. That theory turned out to be bunk. Still, when an expert speaks within the area of his expertise, his views are worth considering. But when an expert speaks outside his area of expertise, he is just another layman, and his pronouncements do not deserve greater weight than another layman.

Another example: Albert Einstein was in favor of socialism. The man who was widely considered one of the smartest scientists in history was utterly clueless in the realm of economics.

When it comes to the argument from authority, our best bet is to follow Sergeant Esterhaus’s advice. “Let’s be careful out there.” ·

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Published on April 09, 2021 06:42

April 8, 2021

Italian ID group interviews Wolf-Ekkehard Lönnig (in English)

“Secretary and professional journalist Marco Respinti interviews well known Dr. Wolf-Ekkehard Lönnig, retired head researcher at Max Planck Institute for Plant Breeding Research on a fascinating journey through genetics of plants, cybernetics, “sacred cows” and Intelligent Design.”

Dr. Lönnig is an expert in carnivorous plants. Regular readers may remember him from the time when that carnivorous plant tried to eat a Darwinian, Nick Matzke.

Carnivorous Plants: Darwinist Nick Matzke Is Latest To Put Darwin’s Theory “Outside Science”

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Published on April 08, 2021 20:40

Evidence of recent Neanderthal ancestry at surprisingly late dates

We are now informed that the ancient human lineages “commonly interbred”:

Like all present-day people whose ancestry isn’t solely African, these early Eurasians carried Neanderthal DNA. Researchers thought that probably originated from mixing between the groups in the Middle East 50,000–60,000 years ago. But a 2015 study3 of the genome of the 40,000-year-old Romanian individual, from a site called Pe tera cu Oase, held a surprise: a Neanderthal ancestor in the past four to six generations, suggesting that humans interbred with Neanderthals in Europe, too.

It was not clear from the Oase man’s genome whether interbreeding was common in Europe. He lived around the time when Neanderthal populations, already sparse, were beginning to vanish from the region …

By measuring these segments, the researchers estimated that the Bacho Kiro individuals had Neanderthal ancestors as recently as the past six or seven generations — and probably in Europe, not the Middle East. “We saw these huge chunks. It was completely amazing,” says Hajdinjak, who is now at the Francis Crick Institute in London and was part of the team that identified the same patterns in the Oase man’s genome. “What are the chances of finding them again?”

Ewen Callaway, “Oldest DNA from a Homo sapiens reveals surprisingly recent Neanderthal ancestry” at Nature

It’s not really that amazing if we don’t start with certain assumptions about Neanderthals. But it’s a lot of fun.

This is the Oase cave where the remains were found:

But turn off the awful music.

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Published on April 08, 2021 20:22

Peter Boghossian on the Woke and cultural suicide

Readers may remember Peter Boghossian as the power behind some of the best and funniest Sokal hoaxes (exposing academic journals that publish utter nonsense). One of his associates recently shone a light on the current war on math.

Anyway, Boghossian gets serious here:

“We can’t just keep funding people who are playing in make-believe-land, cranking out information to inform public policy that’s completely divorced from reality. It’s a recipe for cultural suicide,” says Peter Boghossian, assistant professor of philosophy at Portland State University and co-author of “How to Have Impossible Conversations.”

A lifelong liberal and critic of former President Donald Trump, Boghossian believes describing people as left or right is losing utility. It’s those who demand you think a certain way who are on one side, while those who do not are on the other.

JAN JEKIELEK, “Exclusive: ‘A Recipe for Cultural Suicide’—Peter Boghossian on Woke Ideology and the Case for Defunding Universities” at Epoch Times

He’s kinder to the Woke than some of us are. Some of us think that they’re mostly just wretched mediocrities whose only joy in life is to tear down anyone, anywhere, anytime who has ever achieved anything. They dread intellectual freedom because they could make no use of it.

Face it, if they could do something better than that with their lives, they surely would.

We cut our teeth here dealing with Darwin’s empowered mediocrities, an early version of the Woke. We could charge for lessons in dealing with the Woke but we prefer to guide and mentor people who value ideas for free. It’s more fun for everyone.

Yes, there is an intellectual life worth fighting for.

See also: In Big Tech World: the journalist as censor, hit man, and snitch. Glenn Greenwald looks at a disturbing trend in media toward misrepresentation as well as censorship.

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Published on April 08, 2021 19:35

Mammalian DNA can be airborne too…

We heard just recently about horizontal gene transfer between herring and smelt. Will we be hearing next about horizontal gene transfer involving mammals via airborne DNA? Don’t rule it out:

Researchers in the UK have successfully isolated airborne mammalian DNA, showing that in air, just as in water, animals leave behind invisible but useful traces of themselves that scientists can monitor. The results, published March 31 in PeerJ, represent a new direction for environmental DNA (eDNA) research that could one day lead to advances in forensic science and public health, in addition to ecological surveillance.

“This is really the first time airborne samples have been used to look at mammals, and it’s very exciting,” says Mark Johnson, an ecologist at Texas Tech University who has used airborne DNA to study plants and was not involved in the current work. Through his own research, Johnson adds, “we’ve learned that airborne DNA is a lot broader than what we originally gave it credit for, and I think this paper opens the door for expanding into new areas.”

Amanda Heidt, “Environmental DNA Can Be Pulled from the Air” at The Scientist

What becomes of all these carefully constructed theses based on sexual selection and such if DNA flies first class?

The paper is open access.

See also: Horizontal gene transfer between vertebrates: herring and smelt We don’t know that HGT is “extremely rare” in vertebrates. We know that it was unexpected so no one was looking for it. We also know that it is extremely inconvenient for a discipline that invested so heavily in natural selection acting on random mutations (Darwinism).

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Published on April 08, 2021 18:27