N.Wells
Posts: 1836
Joined: Oct. 2005
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| Quote (GaryGaulin @ May 06 2018,03:27) | | Quote (N.Wells @ May 05 2018,17:05) | | Quote | | You are again naming things with generalizations instead of using neuroscience to explain how things like (what you would name) "mate selection" works. |
Natural selection is not a generalization: it is a thoroughly documented and well-understood process. |
I'll look it up for you:
From: www.learnersdictionary.com/definition/natural%20selection
| Quote | the process by which plants and animals that can adapt to changes in their environment are able to survive and reproduce while those that cannot adapt do not survive.
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And I'll get all excited as though "animals that can adapt to changes in their environment are able to survive and reproduce while those that cannot adapt do not survive" is not common sense that an average intelligent person could never figure out on their own, and was discovered by Charles Darwin, whose books as you know then went viral by claiming that his discovery would be the end of religion!
The only way I know to beat that kind of hoopla is to claim that such a thing is a scientific conspiracy, when the "process" is more simply like draining a swamp to get rid of mosquitoes, while fossil evidence clearly enough recorded their origin in a way that makes what Charles Darwin said kinda redundant anyhow. If he had said nothing then the emerging sciences of that era would have later had a better chance of explaining the evidence without wherever it leads becoming a giant religious issue.
My problem concerns the lack of explanatory power regarding cognitive related phenomena. For example use Darwinian theory to explain the cognitive origin of this brilliant illusion now being discussed in another forum:
optical illusion dance
www.youtube.com/watch?v=44mw37d8LQw
| Quote (N.Wells @ May 05 2018,17:05) | | There is a huge literature on mate selection, although a lot of it relates to identifying which signals potential mates are responding to rather than the neurological details of how they respond to the signals (although chemical signals are mostly quite well understood). However,..................................... |
Everything that follows this kind of "However" was expected to be a bad excuse for why you are only able to help prove that I am correct.
| Quote (N.Wells @ May 05 2018,17:05) | | To Henry: Yes. |
It also seems like you have little or no knowledge of the "Everly Brothers". |
That's not a great definition of natural selection.
Natural selection is part of the process by which species become better adapted to their environment. Given inheritable phenotypic variation, natural selection leads to evolutionary change when individuals in a population with certain inheritable and variable characteristics have greater reproductive success than other individuals who have less advantageous versions of those phenotypes, due to better survival rates, greater fecundity, more success at attracting a mate, better success at raising offspring, etc. In short, natural selection is a consistent difference in survival and reproduction ultimately due to different genotypes.
Also, evolutionary theory does not end with Charles Darwin (as one major point, Darwin did not know about genes). Nonetheless, yes, it is fundamentally a very simple concept, and yet Darwin was the first person to put it all together with good definitions and evidence to support his argument.
Natural selection is not expected to explain everything. You happen to think that it cannot explain stuff in cognitive neuroscience. You might be right or you might be wrong - make your case by supplying supporting evidence, but what you cannot do is dismiss evolutionary biology in general and natural selection in particular simply by dissing it on the basis of your ignorance about biology. In addition, you cannot simply make unsupported assertions and call it a theory.
And good lord, optical illusions work precisely because our brains are not designed perfectly but have evolved. One of the tasks of the brain is to process visual information - to take in visual input, to interpret it, and to decide what to do about it, as quickly as possible. Evolution inherently results in briccolaged, "whatever works, mostly" shortcuts in order to respond to danger as quickly as possible. However, those shortcuts inevitably make us vulnerable to errors of inference, most of which are readily predictable. For example, one of the things that we do that gets us in trouble with one category of optical illusions is that we extend lines to infer outlines.
Olsen Zander's works: http://blog.thibaultjanbeyer.com/wp-cont....5_o.jpg
It is also important for us to infer predators from insufficient information. The first person who sees the predator wins and gets to have children and the last one to see it loses:
http://www.illusionspoint.com/wp-cont....ion.jpg
So our brains are really good at inferring predator shapes, even when none exist:
http://i2.esmas.com/editori....lia.jpg
https://feelthebrain.files.wordpress.com/2015....ia4.jpg
We respond to motion and to things not quite perceived: organisms have evolved to be suspicious and "jumpy".
Another thing that we do: faces are very important to us, and reading intentions in faces is really important, so we readily infer faces that do not exist (pareidolia), and see emotion where none exists:
https://1funny.com/faucet-....et-face
http://static.t13.cl/images....lia.jpg
https://www.stihi.ru/pics....276.jpg
https://bemethis.com/10-ever....look-at
https://www.pinterest.com/pin....3280472
https://rolloid.net/wp-cont....528.jpg
Not surprisingly, we infer sex and potential mating opportunities left, right, and center:
http://photos1.blogger.com/x....g
http://photos1.blogger.com/x....ree.jpg
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_Ey2xVv....ion.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/bjcKfR9....fR9.jpg
(minimum lines and maximum inference by the brain, courtesy of Picasso)
and of course (.Y.)
Google Jenkins and Wiseman, Perception, 2009
Donald Hoffman, Construction of Visual Reality
https://qunki.com/23451....plained
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