Theme: Measurement

SORRY ALL BUT, NO. RATE OF MUTATION TELLS US LITTLE OTHER THAN TIME.

(a) mutation rate != yardage (or any other linear measure)

(b) some mutations (cortical scale) are profoundly differentiating – just one gene. (20% of neurons in the cortex are regulatory That number increases by region. The same is true for genes. It certainly appears that the vast majority are either dead (not expressed) or regulatory. We don’t know what percent are expressed. So all mutation rate tells us is time difference it does not tell us difference in genetic expression.

(c) some are profoundly consequential (delay in maturity : neoteny – just hormonal development is largely what varies between human races)

(d) 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.

(e) One Single Additional Protein (molecular machine) may cause billions of consequences.

So;

(f) 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.

(g) 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.

(h) 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:

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)

You have to explain both to make a truth claim.