The Law of Evolution

I’m frequently confronted by people who say something like: “Evolution is just a theory – it’s not fact.” This just proves that the person doesn’t actually understand what a “theory” is – I have already blogged on the issue.

Basically:

  • “In science the word theory means an explanation of how the world works that has stood up to repeated, rigorous testing. It’s hardly a term of disparagement.”

Wired has an article on the subject which calls for a change in phrasing:

  • For truly solid-gold, well-established science, let’s stop using the word theory entirely. Instead, let’s revive much more venerable language and refer to such knowledge as “law.”
  • It performs a neat bit of linguistic jujitsu. If someone says, “I don’t believe in the theory of evolution,” they may sound fairly reasonable. But if someone announces, “I don’t believe in the law of evolution,” they sound insane. It’s tantamount to saying, “I don’t believe in the law of gravity.”

I’ve always felt that the best thing to do is improve people’s understanding. The problem is that getting the message across is really tricky (I blogged about the problem here). This guy reckons that:

  • It’s time to realize that we’re simply never going to school enough of the public in the precise scientific meaning of particular words. We’re never going to fully communicate what’s beautiful and noble about scientific caution and rigor. Public discourse is inevitably political, so we need to talk about science in a way that wins the political battle — in no uncertain terms.

Over fishing sucks

When I’m sitting at Ocean Basket in Sea Point munching on some fresh hake I find it strange to think that until very recently that individual fish was swimming in the sea. A lot of the fish we eat was born in the wild, grew up in the wild, avoided predators in the wild, but was eventually hauled out of the wild by a fisherman.

The problem is that unsustainable numbers of fish are being pulled out of the wild. Long ago unsustainable hunting on land caused wild reserves of land animals to collapse. Now we must farm animals like cows for food in dedicated industries, but the wild populations of many species have been decimated.

If you agree that this is a great pity, then you should realise that the same thing is busy happening in the world’s oceans. Across the globe fish populations are being mercilessly hunted towards extinction. National Geographic has this article about overfishing and specifically the damage being done to Mediterranean Tuna populations.

From the article:

  • “The world’s oceans are a shadow of what they once were. With a few notable exceptions, such as well-managed fisheries in Alaska, Iceland, and New Zealand, the number of fish swimming the seas is a fraction of what it was a century ago.”
  • “In the Mediterranean, 12 species of shark are commercially extinct, and swordfish there, which should grow as thick as a telephone pole, are now caught as juveniles and eaten when no bigger than a baseball bat.”
  • “Would it be different if, as one conservationist fantasized, the fish wailed as we lifted them out of the water in nets?”

The problem is that because nobody owns the ocean’s fish reserves so it pays everyone to go nuts. There is no incentive for any one person to fish carefully if he knows that nobody else will. This kind of problem is known as a tragedy of the commons and can be quite tricky to solve.

So overfishing continues unabated and fish reserves are getting hammered. The article contrasts two catches at a particular tuna fishing spot in the Mediterranean:

  • “In 1864, Favignana’s fishermen took a record 14,020 bluefin, averaging 425 pounds (190 kilograms). Last year, very few fish were caught—about 100, averaging 65 pounds (30 kilograms)”

Another thing about overfishing that really gets to me is the waste. In the photo below the fisherman is holding everything that he will keep – the rest goes overboard!

I grew up in Knysna where we have a beautiful estuary (we call it the lagoon). I am told that 50 years ago there were many large fish living in the lagoon. Now people hardly ever catch fish in the lagoon, and when they do they are small. What a pity…

Monkeys have sense of fairness

National Geographic has this article about an experiment showing that monkeys know when they are being ripped-off and get upset about it.

In the experiment the monkeys were paired up and given simple tasks to do for a reward. When monkeys saw their peers getting better rewards for the same task, they “went on strike” and refused to participate. In some cases a monkey would get plain old cucumber while its partner would receive a delicious grape for the same task. In those cases the monkey who got ripped off “often refused to conduct future exchanges, would not eat the cucumbers they received, and in some cases, threw their rewards at the researchers.”

Very interesting – we humans love it when animals exhibit human-like behavior. It’s also very interesting to me because it shows that some monkeys have evolved a view of what is “fair”. This is evolutionarily useful for a species whose survival depends a lot on complex social interactions.

Cheating in debates – don’t do it

This is an awesome page listing ways of “cheating” when debating. I have encountered many of these when discussing religion and evolution with friends, family and colleagues – to be fair I think they are just making logical mistakes and not actively cheating.

Here are some examples of the logical errors that have infuriated me in the past:

Argument from Personal Incredulity – arguing that because you personally cannot explain or understand something, it must therefore not be true. E.g. “I don’t believe we’re related to apes, therefore evolution can’t be true” or “quantum mechanics doesn’t make any sense to me, therefore it must be made up by scientists and can’t possibly reflect reality”

Shifting the Goalposts – moving the criteria for acceptance of an argument continually out of range of evidence, in order to ensure that regardless of the quality of evidence, the criteria for acceptance is never met. E.g. “Okay, I know i said that if you showed me proof of speciation i’d accept evolution, but what i really want is proof of…”

Currently unexplained does not imply unexplainable – Just because we don’t have an explanation for something now, does not imply that it is inherently unexplainable. E.g. “Scientists don’t currently know what caused the first instance of self-replicating life on earth, therefore no scientific explanation will ever be found, leaving only god as an explanation”

Argument from Popularity – arguing that because most people believe something to be true, it must be true. E.g. “every newspaper has a horoscope section, therefore astrology must work or it wouldn’t be so popular”

Straw Man – creating a charicature of an argument, because the charicature is more easy to destroy than the actual argument. E.g. “Evolution is a completely random process, and the likelihood of something as complex as humans arising from a completely random process is so small as to be impossible” – straw man, because evolution is not at all a totally random process, but is in fact dependent on non-random selection.

There are plenty more examples of fallacies on the page (which is incidentally an excellent South African blog).

Gang-raped woman sentenced to 200 lashes

News24 has this crazy story about a woman in Saudi Arabia who was sentenced to 200 lashes after being gang-raped. She is a 19-year-old who was with an unrelated man when they were abducted by 7 men and she was gang-raped.

Turns out that she copped some of the blame for being alone with an unrelated man in the first place. So the courts sentenced her to 90 lashes and the rapists got jail terms of between 10 months and 5 years. Now the Supreme Judicial Council changed all that: 200 lashes and 6 months in jail for the woman! The men also had their terms extended to 2 to 9 years in jail.

This stuff is sick. I respect that other cultures have different views on things. But I can never and will never respect people who think such a sentence is just. Disgusting.

Carte Blanche – watch only sceptically if at all


In South Africa we have a widely watched show called Carte Blanche. There are often interesting stories on the show and they are sometimes genuinely worth watching. However, in general I regard Carte Blanche as highly dubious. On several evenings I have been horrified to see the rubbish they portray as fact. And many (if not most) South Africans swallow the BS as true.

Please people, take anything you see on Carte Blanche with a huge pinch of salt.

For instance they have twice aired stories about this complete fraud, Danie Krugel. He has a machine that uses “the quantum” to locate people using only a fragment of DNA (e.g. he claims that a hair cutting is enough). They reckon this guy is capable of reliably finding people using this technology. In fact he can apparently locate anything (they mention diamonds and oil) using a signature sample of that “thing”.

This is the guy behind the “amazing” technology (I’m not joking – that’s really him):


Absolute and utter rubbish. Crazy stuff that a lot of people swallow hook, line and sinker. Unbelievably Carte Blanche also seem to take this guy seriously. I’m not kidding – they even had a follow up on the story – all very serious. And people believe it…

There are numerous articles (here, here, here, here) offering detailed arguments and evidence that this is real rubbish. Mr Kugel has even been offered $1 million cash for passing a simple test (here) – not interested!

It should be obvious… The whole thing is absolute rubbish.

Anyway, I got to thinking about the motivations behind this story. This guy obviously knows that his technology is rubbish so he is either: (a) nuts or (b) a total crook. I would guess (b), but you never know.

What gets to me more, is the Carte Blanche team. Unfortunately they still have credibility in this country and many people automatically believe what they say. I reckon either:

  • They are ignorant of basic science (and critical thought!) and irresponsible enough not to check their stories;
  • Or, they knowingly mislead people because it makes for interesting viewing and therefore more money for them. Kind of like tabloid magazines.

I think it’s the second one, but either way Carte Blanche should have the very little credibility. It’s a real pity because it seems like Carte Blanche is capable of real reporting too – you just don’t know what to believe.

You cannot, you MUST not automatically believe things you see on Carte Blanche – a lot of it is hogwash!

Whale swims 1,600km up the Amazon


National Geographic has this short story of a minke whale that got confused and swam 1,600km 1,300km up the Amazon. The 12 ton whale eventually got stuck on a sandbar and now scientists are trying to get it to swim back out. Amazing.

Update: The whale was eventually found dead in the river at least 15 days after entering fresh water.

How rich mothers have more sons

It has been known for years that couples in powerful or rich positions have more sons that daughters. The opposite is also true, poor parents have slightly more daughters than sons. This all makes excellent evolutionary sense because a poor daughter is very likely to have children anyway, and in human society can marry upwards.

Poor sons however, are far less likely to have children due to competition from other males. A rich son could have many children, possibly with many women. His rich sister however, can only have a few children and will not really be benefit from being rich. So if you are rich have more sons, if you are poor have more daughters. It makes good sense and the strategy can be seen in the data.

I always liked the results and the evolutionary logic of this little story. But I wondered what mechanism was used to impart knowledge of one’s social position on the choice of sex in a child. The Economist has this article showing a beautifully simple mechanism of doing this – stress! For instance data shows that of the babies conceived in New York the week after 9/11, significantly more were boys girls.

It’s so simple. If you are highly stressed during pregnancy have more daughters because they will probably have more children. If you are unstressed then have more sons – they can probably better take advantage of your situation.

Blood alcohol level calculator

Here is quite a cool blood alcohol level calculator. You enter a few simple parameters (gender, type of drink, etc) and it will calculate an estimated blood alcohol level for you. According to this little tool I can drink two glasses of wine in an hour and still be under the limit! Awesome.

Dutch beach invaded by Cuban bananas

National Geographic has this photo and article about a beach on the Dutch island of Terschelling which was recently inundated with bananas which were washed off a cargo ship during a recent storm. Apparently, due to it’s position the island is regularly bombarded with cargo washed off of cargo ships. In recent times the beach has been covered in sneakers, aluminium briefcases and sweaters.

The whole thing reminds me about a blog I wrote a while ago about some rubber ducks which were washed around the world. There is a huge amount of junk floating around the world’s oceans. I read a book about a guy who was adrift for 76 days on his own and he came across a huge river of junk floating in the ocean.