(Core)Sorry All But, No. Mutation Rate != Evolutionary Rate
(a) some mutations (cortical scale) are profoundly differentiating – just one gene. For example, 20% of neurons in the cortex are regulatory. That number varies by region. The same is true for genes. It certainly appears that the vast majority are either dead (not expressed), suppressing (turning off), or regulatory, and some percentage of the rest are expressive, and some cause profound variations between ourselves and the other apes. We just don’t know what percent are expressed. So all mutation rate tells us is time difference between ancestors – it does not tell us difference in genetic expression over that ancestry.
(b) Some changes are profoundly consequential (delay in maturity : neoteny – just hormonal development is largely what varies between human races)
(c) Genes do not produce linear effects (machine parts) but are causally dense (program code) with anything from zero consequence (noise, or regulatory), some of tiny consequence (rates of expression), and some profound.
(d) One Single Additional Protein (molecular machine) may cause billions of consequences.
So;
(e) Of our evolutionary history, regardless of the RATE of migration, it could be only .001% of those mutations that cause 99.999% of competitive evolutionary variations.
(f) We make a big deal out of 3% difference from chimpanzees but we have no idea the scale of difference provided by each of those variations. intelligence appears to be affected by hundreds if not thousands (a concert problem). Neoteny appears not to be (a small number of hormonal channels). Yet together the effect of these two sets is profound with just small changes.
(g) As far as I know almost all evolutionary change is driven by:
– demand for success in the local environment (ie: black resistance to malaria).
– failure in the local environment (loss of height in southeast islands, loss of fire making, tool making, by austronesians.)
– utility (white consumption of milk adding 40% more calories to the diet)
– social animal sortition (variations in demand for competitive traits)
– age of the carriers (rate of mutation or degradation)
– errors in replication (genes – which happen all the time – cancer etc )
– conflicts in integration (male and female genes)
– random mutations.
– combinations of all of the above.
On statistics:
While history has led us to the error that mathematics is justificationary – it is not. It is falsificationary, like all the logics. This is, in itself, the most significant insight of the 20th century experiment in both philosophy and the sciences – there are no via positiva methods of inquiry other than free association. All other logics, correspondences, operations are falsificationary: falsifying errors, confirming statements of possibility, not not providing truth (perfect parsimony).
There isn’t much evidence that we are capable of using statistics on any causally dense phenomenon with any greater precision than a single regression. Period.
You can’t average an average, and statistics must be operationally explicable or they’re meaningless. (correlation is not causation, and operations produce correlations)
The reason you are (most are) misled by statistics is that they are not accompanied by operational constructions (proofs: demonstrations of operational possibility – which is what ‘proof’ means).
Metaphysics, Psychology, the Social Sciences, and economics in particular are vehicles for that branch of pseudoscience dependent upon innumeracy.Innumeracy is a member of the set of sophisms including:
- sophism(verbal),
- innumeracy(numerical),
- pseudoscience(scientific and technological),
- magic-supernormalism(natural),
- mysticism-supernaturalism(supernatural).
The Four Falsifications Against ID Are:
1. God’s silence,
2. God’s inaction,
3. The lack of evidence, and
4. The universe looks exactly like a godless universe would,
and not at all like a Christian universe would, even down to its very structure.
Of course this is true if you think gods are material beings. If instead you think gods are software distributed in the minds of all of their worshippers, producing synchronicities because of the software, then that’s quite different.
The Falsifiation Against God is:
5. Information can only be stored in some memory or other. And information stored must be abstracted (generalized) in order to consume fewer calories and less volume than the original matter plus its changes in state over time. That information cannot be stored except in the universe itself or across universes themselves.
Yet if Christianity is but a set of parables (wisdom literature) then Scientifically (Logically, Rationally, Empirically, and Operationally ):
6 – The five rules of Christianity are, logically, rationally(incentives), scientifically(empirically), the optimum prisoner’s dilemma (incentives for trust building) strategy, and I cannot falsify either or their relation. There is a reason christian working and lower classes are wealthier than competing cults. Christianity is the reason.
The Five Rules Are:
1) the eradication of hatred from the human heart. (Forgiveness)
2) the extension of familial love to kith and kin. (Investment)
3) the eradication of impulses that burden the commons (Sacredness)
4) the demand for personal acts of charity and personal cost, (Charity)
5) the extension of exhaustive forgiveness before punishment, enserfment, enslavement, death, or war. (Tolerance)
We bear the costs of discipline, investment, forgiveness, tolerance because it is the optimum strategy for producing cooperation at scale.
In Western (European) Civilization, these Christian (Literary) traditions, exist in competition with our Indo European legal (empirical) traditions:
1. Truth before Face: Truth regardless of cost to the competence/dominance hierarchy (“Reporting”, or “Testimony”)
2. Heroism, Excellence and Duty (investment in the commons)
3. Individual Sovereignty, Reciprocity and Accountability
Together which make possible:
4. Universal Adjudication of Differences by tests of demonstrated interests (investments) – what we call ‘Natural Law’.
5. Common Law of Tort, Judge Referee, Jury Decision, and Nullification
And leave possible only one means of social organization:
6. Voluntary Cooperation and Markets in All Aspects of Life:
1. Association
2. Cooperation (production)
3. Production (goods, services, information)
4. Reproduction (mating, marriage, family)
5. Commons
6. Polities
7. War
The consequence of which is the fastest possible means of adaptation, innovation, and evolution, that is possible for man – at the cost of suppression of reproduction of the underclasses that cannot compete in the markets for cooperation – the only empirical (demonstrated) measure of the value of individuals, families, and groups, to others.
Which is the Secret of Western Civilization: Via Positiva Hard Markets and Via Negativa Soft Eugenics.
And Finally;
7 – I cannot falsify evolution and every single dram of evidence from the fundamental structure of the universe to the imagination of man is a product of a very small number of possibilities in very great permutation, just as limited numbers of sounds, characters, and numbers can be arranged in infinitely complex permutations.
Truthful speech can only consist of what I can testify to – “Report on”:
I can only testify to that which is:
1. categorically consistent
2. logically consistent
3. empirically(observably) consistent
4. operationally consistent
5. rationally consistent
6. reciprocally consistent
where;
7. the causality is parsimonious
8. scope is consistent
9. and fully accounted
10. within stated limits
and where;
11. due diligence has been demonstrated, in the above ten dimensions.
and where;
– one’s statements are warrantied by restitution if one errs.
therefore;
I cannot testify to anything other than.
1. Realism,
2. Naturalism,
3. Operationalism,
4. Rational Choice,
5. Reciprocity (Voluntary Exchange),
6. My Due Diligence Performed,
7. My capacity to perform restitution if I have engaged in
ignorance, error, bias, wishful thinking or deceit.Nor can anyone else.
Curt Doolittle
The Propertarian Institute