Autism Spectrum and Human Evolution

This blog entry is all about personal experience and speculation. Just some idle cogitating and wondering about the prevalence of what most see as an ailment. So, are the varieties of autism "disorders" a sort of next step in human brain development?

First of all, you have to understand a couple things. In particular, how evolution works; as well as the varieties of the autism spectrum. I will not try to explain the entirety of evolution, it's been done before, ad nauseum. I just want to highlight that evolution isn't always a full step forward. Sometimes there are drawbacks in the next step that needs to be refined. The evolutionary process can even have lots of dead ends and false starts. That's how we get some strange things that apparently don't make sense. However, over the course of millions of generations, you can get a vastly improved model to deal with what the current environment needs to solve further challenges.

Also, describing the full spectrum of autism is beyond the scope of this post as well. My intent is to just focus on a couple things that got me to thinking along this line of thought. Basically though, autism can allow the brain to focus very deeply on a particular problem, or develop a skill to phenomenal levels (the so called "Rain Man" phenomenon).

Okay, if you know anything about the autism spectrum, there are numerous "disorders" that really don't carry a huge impact, while imparting the incredible mental focus of some autism characteristics. However, there are those who suffer a great deal under other autism spectrum disorders. Now, you take those individuals throughout the spectrum, and you contemplate the possibility of them passing on their genes. Those with the greatest disabilities obviously are at a disadvantage, while those who do not display these disabilities are at least not hindered by their condition. Cases like "Brainman" could even, through their notoriety and special skills, have their chances improved (although in his particular case we have another obstacle, but that's neither here nor there).

Take the left end of the spectrum as the "undesirable" end, and the right end of the spectrum as the "Brainman" end, and keep favouring the right with chances to contribute to the gene pool, and where does that take you in numerous generations? Possibly people that have a vast mental array at their disposal to be able to handle the incredibly complex world we have built for ourselves. Of course, that begs the question of exactly what environmental pressure is this particular mutation trying to fill? Considering that for millions of years, we've been a species that generally only handl;es things at walking speed, at a hieght of at most trees we climb, and in an area that we can cover during a long walk in a day... Let's just say that we're quite far removed from that. Even many thousands of generations back we started expanding out of that comfortable environment we had evolved into with our technology and already prodigeous brainpower.

In today's world, there are so many fields that require an all consuming dedication to study them just to understand the basics, let alone make contributions to the field. Evolution itself requires not only understanding genetics, biology, chemistry, geology, astro-physics, etc. but surely many more fields. Then get into essoteric fields like quantum physics, and even the most brainy amongst us is seriously challenged to explain it. The type of dedication to delve into these matters though is displayed by certian autism spectrum behaviours. So perhaps at this point it's not the environment so much drving the next step of evolution, but our own understanding of the universe, and the need to delve deeper.

Anyway, just a random musing for today. Do you have any thoughts on the subject? And no, vaccines don't "cause" autism...

How blind salamanders make nonsense of creationists' claims

I found this article on Slate.com, and I just had to reprint it. While I highly doubt that most theists posses the intellectual integrity to give this article it's full measure of merit, it does paint yet another damning signpost against ID.

Losing Sight of Progress

It is extremely seldom that one has the opportunity to think a new thought about a familiar subject, let alone an original thought on a contested subject, so when I had a moment of eureka a few nights ago, my very first instinct was to distrust my very first instinct. To phrase it briefly, I was watching the astonishing TV series Planet Earth (which, by the way, contains photography of the natural world of a sort that redefines the art) and had come to the segment that deals with life underground. The subterranean caverns and rivers of our world are one of the last unexplored frontiers, and the sheer extent of the discoveries, in Mexico and Indonesia particularly, is quite enough to stagger the mind. Various creatures were found doing their thing far away from the light, and as they were caught by the camera, I noticed—in particular of the salamanders—that they had typical faces. In other words, they had mouths and muzzles and eyes arranged in the same way as most animals. Except that the eyes were denoted only by little concavities or indentations. Even as I was grasping the implications of this, the fine voice of Sir David Attenborough was telling me how many millions of years it had taken for these denizens of the underworld to lose the eyes they had once possessed.

If you follow the continuing argument between the advocates of Darwin's natural selection theory and the partisans of creationism or "intelligent design," you will instantly see what I am driving at. The creationists (to give them their proper name and to deny them their annoying annexation of the word intelligent) invariably speak of the eye in hushed tones. How, they demand to know, can such a sophisticated organ have gone through clumsy evolutionary stages in order to reach its current magnificence and versatility? The problem was best phrased by Darwin himself, in his essay "Organs of Extreme Perfection and Complication":

To suppose that the eye, with all its inimitable contrivances for adjusting the focus to different distances, for admitting different amounts of light, and for the correction of spherical and chromatic aberration, could have been formed by natural selection, seems, I freely confess, absurd in the highest possible degree.

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His defenders, such as Michael Shermer in his excellent book Why Darwin Matters, draw upon post-Darwinian scientific advances. They do not rely on what might be loosely called "blind chance":

Evolution also posits that modern organisms should show a variety of structures from simple to complex, reflecting an evolutionary history rather than an instantaneous creation. The human eye, for example, is the result of a long and complex pathway that goes back hundreds of millions of years. Initially a simple eyespot with a handful of light-sensitive cells that provided information to the organism about an important source of the light …

Hold it right there, says Ann Coulter in her ridiculous book Godless: The Church of Liberalism. "The interesting question is not: How did a primitive eye become a complex eye? The interesting question is: How did the 'light-sensitive cells' come to exist in the first place?"

The salamanders of Planet Earth appear to this layman to furnish a possibly devastating answer to that question. Humans are almost programmed to think in terms of progress and of gradual yet upward curves, even when confronted with evidence that the past includes as many great dyings out of species as it does examples of the burgeoning of them. Thus even Shermer subconsciously talks of a "pathway" that implicitly stretches ahead. But what of the creatures who turned around and headed back in the opposite direction, from complex to primitive in point of eyesight, and ended up losing even the eyes they did have?

Whoever benefits from this inquiry, it cannot possibly be Coulter or her patrons at the creationist Discovery Institute. The most they can do is to intone that "the Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away." Whereas the likelihood that the post-ocular blindness of underground salamanders is another aspect of evolution by natural selection seems, when you think about it at all, so overwhelmingly probable as to constitute a near certainty. I wrote to professor Richard Dawkins to ask if I had stumbled on the outlines of a point, and he replied as follows:

Vestigial eyes, for example, are clear evidence that these cave salamanders must have had ancestors who were different from them—had eyes, in this case. That is evolution. Why on earth would God create a salamander with vestiges of eyes? If he wanted to create blind salamanders, why not just create blind salamanders? Why give them dummy eyes that don't work and that look as though they were inherited from sighted ancestors? Maybe your point is a little different from this, in which case I don't think I have seen it written down before.

I recommend for further reading the chapter on eyes and the many different ways in which they are formed that is contained in Dawkins' Climbing Mount Improbable; also "The Blind Cave Fish's Tale" in his Chaucerian collection The Ancestor's Tale. I am not myself able to add anything about the formation of light cells, eyespots, and lenses, but I do think that there is a dialectical usefulness to considering the conventional arguments in reverse, as it were. For example, to the old theistic question, "Why is there something rather than nothing?" we can now counterpose the findings of professor Lawrence Krauss and others, about the foreseeable heat death of the universe, the Hubble "red shift" that shows the universe's rate of explosive expansion actually increasing, and the not-so-far-off collision of our own galaxy with Andromeda, already loomingly visible in the night sky. So, the question can and must be rephrased: "Why will our brief 'something' so soon be replaced with nothing?" It's only once we shake our own innate belief in linear progression and consider the many recessions we have undergone and will undergo that we can grasp the gross stupidity of those who repose their faith in divine providence and godly design.

Teaching Evolution in Public Schools

Due to the vast amount of fucktardery in Florida, I am going to be copy/pasting a lot of forum posts that onto my blog. This is one of them. I normally have a lot of these posts on the local newspaper's forum, but they have the worst software out there, so this will afford me a way to retrieve these posts.

There are a lot of Christians out there who object to the teaching of evolution in public schools. They want the subject removed from school science texts because they believe that the subject undermines True Christianity. Other believers argue that there is no conflict between religion and evolution, so it should be taught. Few if any secularists think that the presence or absence of conflict with religion is relevant — so long as it's science, it belongs in science classes.

Quite a few people fall for the "teach both sides" argument because it has the superficial sound of fairness about it. If there is disagreement, why not tell kids about both positions and let them make their own minds up. This might make sense if the disagreement in question were a matter of legitimate scientific debate, but there are no scientific grounds for disputing evolution — there are only scientific disagreements about some of the details.

It is also questionable how many kids would really be in a position to seriously weigh both sides and come to a sober, objective conclusion. It's far more likely that creationist parents would use the situation to further impress upon their children an anti-science and anti-rationalist perspective which fits with traditional superstition, but which is incompatible with modernity. Even worse, encouraging such ignorance and anti-intellectualism is touted as a "family value" in some circles.

We're Still Stupid About Evolution

I just wanted to link to the article posted at Ars Technica about how misperceptions meet state of the art in evolution research. I know that I am still totally flabbergasted at how ignorant some people choose to be, but I am FRIGHTENED when those same ignorant people somehow end up in charge of education. All the recent flurry of activity on the dimly thought out ID farce in Florida just confirms that fear. While I admit that I may not totally understand every nuance of Evolution, I will say that this theory has the hallmarks of a good and sound theory. I just hope that people that try to intentionally delude themselves about it will also intentionally step away from their positions of power until their mental deficiencies can be addressed! That is all.

MORE Mouthbreathers in Education

And YET AGAIN they are up to their mouthbreathing fucktardery. This time it's at the county level.

http://www.nwfdailynews.com/article/12051

I sent the schoolboard a letter in hopes that they can grasp the meaning of a theory versus philosophy... Of course, I don't expect much out of fucktards...

Dear Bay County School Board,

I read with great dismay in the North West Florida Daily News about your first resolution for the year. While I appreciate that there are many philosophical viewpoints on the merits of evolution and reconciling that with religious beliefs, you have fallen trap to the basic misunderstanding of what a theory is, and how it applies to evolution. I have no objection to teaching ID in philosophy, literature, theology class, but it does not belong science class. Your resolution as stated is noting more than a thinly veiled attempt to do just that.

I offer this essay up for you to hopefully understand the differences between a Theory and a Hypothesis. I also he you are familiar with the "Black Swan" theory, and it's historical significance. I would hope that educated people, in charge of education, would practice the intellectual integrity to abide by science where science belongs, and philosophy, where philosophy belongs.

Lay people often misinterpret the language used by scientists. And for that reason, they sometimes draw the wrong conclusions as to what the scientific terms mean.

Three such terms that are often used interchangeably are "scientific law," "hypothesis," and "theory."

In layman’s terms, if something is said to be “just a theory,” it usually means that it is a mere guess, or is unproved. It might even lack credibility. But in scientific terms, a theory implies that something has been proven and is generally accepted as being true.

Here is what each of these terms means to a scientist:

Scientific Law: This is a statement of fact meant to explain, in concise terms, an action or set of actions. It is generally accepted to be true and univseral, and can sometimes be expressed in terms of a single mathematical equation. Scientific laws are similar to mathematical postulates. They don’t really need any complex external proofs; they are accepted at face value based upon the fact that they have always been observed to be true.

Specifically, scientific laws must be simple, true, universal, and absolute. They represent the cornerstone of scientific discovery, because if a law ever did not apply, then all science based upon that law would collapse.

Some scientific laws, or laws of nature, include the law of gravity, Newton's laws of motion, the laws of thermodynamics, Boyle's law of gases, the law of conservation of mass and energy, and Hook’s law of elasticity.

Hypothesis: This is an educated guess based upon observation. It is a rational explanation of a single event or phenomenon based upon what is observed, but which has not been proved. Most hypotheses can be supported or refuted by experimentation or continued observation.

Theory: A theory is more like a scientific law than a hypothesis. A theory is an explanation of a set of related observations or events based upon proven hypotheses and verified multiple times by detached groups of researchers. One scientist cannot create a theory; he can only create a hypothesis.

In general, both a scientific theory and a scientific law are accepted to be true by the scientific community as a whole. Both are used to make predictions of events. Both are used to advance technology.

In fact, some laws, such as the law of gravity, can also be theories when taken more generally. The law of gravity is expressed as a single mathematical expression and is presumed to be true all over the universe and all through time. Without such an assumption, we can do no science based on gravity's effects. But from the law, we derived Einstein's General Theory of Relativity in which gravity plays a crucial role. The basic law is intact, but the theory expands it to include various and complex situations involving space and time.

The biggest difference between a law and a theory is that a theory is much more complex and dynamic. A law governs a single action, whereas a theory explains an entire group of related phenomena.

An analogy can be made using a slingshot and an automobile.

A scientific law is like a slingshot. A slingshot has but one moving part--the rubber band. If you put a rock in it and draw it back, the rock will fly out at a predictable speed, depending upon the distance the band is drawn back.

An automobile has many moving parts, all working in unison to perform the chore of transporting someone from one point to another point. An automobile is a complex piece of machinery. Sometimes, improvements are made to one or more component parts. A new set of spark plugs that are composed of a better alloy that can withstand heat better, for example, might replace the existing set. But the function of the automobile as a whole remains unchanged.

A theory is like the automobile. Components of it can be changed or improved upon, without changing the overall truth of the theory as a whole.

Some scientific theories include the theory of evolution, the theory of relativity, the atomic theory, and the quantum theory. All of these theories are well documented and proved beyond reasonable doubt. Yet scientists continue to tinker with the component hypotheses of each theory in an attempt to make them more elegant and concise, or to make them more all-encompassing. Theories can be tweaked, but they are seldom, if ever, entirely replaced.

A theory is developed only through the scientific method, meaning it is the final result of a series of rigorous processes. Note that a theory never becomes a law unless it was very narrow to begin with. Scientific laws must exist prior to the start of using the scientific method because, as stated earlier, laws are the foundation for all science. Here is an oversimplified example of the development of a scientific theory (which is intentionally false since we know there are black swans):

Development of a Simple Theory by the Scientific Method:

* Observation: Every swan I've ever seen is white.
* Hypothesis: All swans must be white.
* Test: A random sampling of swans from each continent where swans are indigenous produces only white swans.
* Publication: "My global research has indicated that swans are always white, wherever they are observed."
* Verification: Every swan any other scientist has ever observed in any country has always been white.
* Theory: All swans are white.

Prediction: The next swan I see will be white.

Note, however, that although the prediction is useful, the theory does not absolutely prove that the next swan I see will be white. Thus it is said to be falsifiable. If anyone ever saw a black swan, the theory would have to be tweaked or thrown out. Real scientific theories must be falsifiable. So-called "theories" based on religion, such as creationism or intelligent design are, therefore, not scientific theories. They are not falsifiable and they do not follow the scientific method.

Thank you for your time, and please keep the original intent of science as a beacon that is meant to improve mankind's understanding of the universe instead of trying to introduce your own personal philosophies as branches of science.

Florida Fucktardery

Well folks, I'm sure you'll be glad to hear that the state that brought you hanging chads and a whole host of other rampant stupidity is at it again! Today I go to my local paper's wesite and find this dismaying article there. Of course, that made me think of the logic diagram I have on my page (Feel free to click this link to see the full size image).

Basically some brainless legislator is at it again with the whole "Evolution is a theory, so you need to call it out in 40 foot flaming letters so I can still try to sneak in my superstitions and religions" nonsense. Sometimes I wonder if the US is doomed to have one of the poorest educational systems in the civilized world for all time (and another article here).

Something else that really bothers me are the shockingly ignorant and stupid posts from the religious wingnuts out there. Is it really possible that such stupid people are allowed to own computers and even breed?

Some thoughts for you:

- Evolution does not try to explain the origin of life. That is another theory called Abiogenesis. Currently our answer there is, "We don't know." Amazing isn't it? We can say that without having to invent some sort of jewish sky zombie to explain our wn ignorance.

- If states like Florida, kansas, etc. keep insisting on being a scientific backwater, please expect people to not bother investing any high tech industry in your state. Companies that rely on actual scientific education will know your state is incapable of producing the required mental capacity to understand the sort of stuff that moves us forward as a civilization.

- Don't you think there are better things for the legislature to worry about?

I know this topic has probably been beaten to death, so I'll just stop now before I get totally depressed at the state of humanity. For the sake of our children, please teach critical thinking instead of blind obedience. That's all I ask!