Why Evolution Is True

Google News, with some custom sections to emphasize news about science and technology and about education, and the many friends I have on Facebook, who post interesting links regularly. I follow several blogs and other websites with regular news updates, especially about science. When I really want to research a subject in depth, I go straight to the academic libraries of my alma mater university across town (now often via its extensive subscriptions to databases that I can access from home with user authentication I gain through an affiliation with that university). For articles to look at for submission to Hacker News, I 1) make sure to have a science section in my Google News set-up, and additionally use Google News and Google Scholar keyword searches to check submissions by other users to HN, 2) follow the recommendations of certain key Facebook friends of mine who are either professional scientists, science writers, or science educators, 3) daily read Science-Based Medicine http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/ (I don't submit to HN from Science-Based Medicine every day, but I have found some GREAT articles there over the years) 4) daily read Why Evolution Is True http://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/ (which sometimes has personal posts by the site owner but also has EXCELLENT posts by him and by guest posters on cutting-edge science issues, some of which I post directly and some of which lead to professional journal articles I post directly) 5) daily read…

This is the part that is so frustrating to me, and not just with regards to tariffs. It's that I see the extremes being so laughably bad (though not necessarily equally - I'm not "both sides"-ing this), and more ludicrously bad is that I've seen positions that don't follow these extremes as being derided now as "centrism". E.g. before the administration's attack on higher education, I do believe a lot of elite universities had completely jumped the shark with their ideological purity tests like required DEI statements. And importantly, there were thoughtful, measured criticisms of these things, e.g. https://whyevolutionistrue.com/2024/02/10/jon-haidt-goes-after-dei/. But the administration attack is so ridiculously egregious and demands an even worse, government-imposed ideological alignment, that making logical arguments in this environment feels almost pointless.

It's worth noting that this Pinker-Epstein connection is about as meaningful as the anti-Scott NYT article's own guilt-by-assocation attempts. Here's Pinker's statement on the matter: https://whyevolutionistrue.com/2019/07/12/tarring-steve-pinker-and-oth…

There is nowadays a great deal of censorship from the left in America. For example, shutting down of talks like https://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2017/07/21/richard-dawkins-de…

How do you know the parents don't psss on information chemically or genetically? There's studies in humans suggesting trauma can alter the genome (see https://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2015/08/24/holocaust-trauma-i… for a skpetically-minded overview of the paper), and it's not like we know genetics backwards and forwards. I'm wary of assuming other species should have to follow a recognizable parallel to human development. After all, fish that live in schools are essentially tribal but it doesn't seem to have led to an increase in sophistication.

It's fair to say scientists have cast doubt on the theory but I don't think it has been completely discredited[1]? I could be wrong, so any elucidation would be great. At least it's an interesting thought. Or maybe it's just wistful thinking. [1]https://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2011/09/18/how-big-was-the-hu…

Great article. I agree with a lot of what John Gray says. There is a sort-of rebuttal here : http://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2014/10/05/john-grays-scurrilo…

Some mussels have evolved a similar feature : they are able to make part of them look like a fish even if they are blind : http://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2011/03/02/amazing-mimics-the-… Probably those spiders are the result of a similar evolutionary process.

First, for those unaware: https://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2011/05/28/the-longest-cell-i… That is the kind of thing we mean when we say evolution doesn't find the best solutions all the time. The horrible job evolution did with the human eye is another example. Now: > There is no evidence for a superior magical learning algorithm that would have done better I think the point is that it's difficult to imagine anything doing worse.

> You are trying to force the definition of evolution to be "speciation-by-random-mutation" How did you infer that? I specifically said in another comment that I'm not negating evolution, just the part about speciation-by-random-mutation. > Why does the lack of gene flow from end to end disqualify them This has to do with the technicalities of ring species. I recommend this article by an evolutionist himself, which explains it extremely well: https://whyevolutionistrue.com/2014/07/16/there-are-no-ring-species/ In short, the hypothesized ring species don't solve the issue I raised because, let me quote that article: > The authors [...] found, contrary to previous information, that there are indeed some hybrids (fertile ones, since they backcross) produced where the ring closes at the top, so they aren’t really acting like full biological species. So we cannot be certain that where the ring closes, inter-breeding is impossible, because it has been shown to occur. Further: > In the end, the authors conclude [...]: there are no good examples of ring species in nature It was an interesting point about ring species that you raised however, and I learned something myself. So thanks.

Jerry Coyne's blog: https://whyevolutionistrue.com/

https://whyevolutionistrue.com/2023/07/27/sex-2-dawkins-vs-rose-on-whe… Richard Dawkins: “New Statesman commissioned my piece out of the blue (rather to my surprise) on 29th March. I sent it in on 4th April, having been told it would be published the following week. In the event it wasn’t published for more than three months. I was eventually told the reason for the long delay. Perhaps under pressure from junior members of staff (that’s a pure guess, but it’s a common pattern in publishing today) they had decided they needed to publish an opposing view. They were having trouble finding one, and I think it shows. I should make it clear that I’m not complaining about the delay. I was treated with the utmost consideration and courtesy throughout. And I think it may be the only piece of journalism I have ever written where my prose was not messed about by the editors but printed exactly as I wrote it. For that I am extremely grateful. Moreover, I don’t think Jacqueline Rose can be blamed for not replying to my article, because I doubt that she was shown it. Whether she should be blamed for something else – such as writing an article that doesn’t make any coherent sense – is another matter. Perhaps “doesn’t make any coherent sense” is a badge of honour among postmodernists. I wouldn’t know, as I’ve never met anyone who could even begin to tell me what postmodernism is.”

Except for the fact that the Washington Posts' reporting in the vast majority of cases, including Watergate and the Iraq War and Ukrainegate, is historically dead-on accurate and excellent and award-winning, and when they DO make mistakes, they actually admit it and correct it, as they already did in the case you're complaining about: https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2019/03/01/editors-note-related-… Your attempt to dismiss everything they write out of hand because of one mistake they already admitted and corrected, and instead mindlessly parroting the propaganda of a pathological liar who never admits any of his many mistakes, and has peddled at least 13,435 documented lies during his term, is the very definition of dragging politics into this discussion, and it's intellectually dishonest of you to project like that. You're the one who first dragged a demented political hack-job into this discussion, who was angling for a job in the Trump administration sabotaging science, denying climate change, and promoting Intelligent Design. https://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2019/05/17/computer-scientist… >Computer scientist David Gelernter drinks the academic Kool-Aid, buys into intelligent design: I’ve pondered at great length how a man can be apparently as intelligent as Gelernter, yet so susceptible to the blandishments of Intelligent Design—and so ignorant of the…

There's far more romanticizing the past than there is of romanticizing the present. So naturally it presents a better focus for critical examination. If you ask the average person, the majority (in my experience) are far more likely to think that the world has more poor people than ever or that people have fewer rights, that opportunities are less, that corporations have more power, that kids were safer, etc. Pinker and the rest do a valuable service to point out that these lazy assumptions are questionable to say the least and they do so using quantifiable indicators and statistics. This is important in my opinion because this narrative of a world getting worse and worse seems to be promoted by the extremists at both left and the right. I had to force myself to read past the words "neoliberal globalists" in Hickel's rebuttal. Like the phrase "neomarxist progressives", you know already that the content will be about politics instead of any sort of historiography, statistics, facts, etc. Generally articles containing phrases like this are about appealing to an existing political base - and not about honest debate. Some other comment got downvoted for claiming this article is "pure politics" but I agree with this assessment. The article's link to Pinker's rebuttal of Hickel (strictly speaking the rebuttal isn't Pinker's although the meat of it includes lengthy quotes from Pinker) is actually worth a read -…

The main sentence is: > Sorry, but I’m not sympathatic to the problems of journalists who decide to tell a distorted story because they are either too lazy or don’t have enough space to tell the right story. It's popular in other fields. There are a lot of articles that try to explain quantum mechanics using wrong unintelligible metaphors, but for me it's not clear what part of the unintelligibility is due to the bad metaphors and what part is due to the real unintelligibility of QM. (For some lucky coincidence, other topics I know like Harmonic Analysis are not popular topics for wrong metaphor writers.) Anyway, if you want to read a version of the article with more technical details and less discussion about the journalism, I recommend the second article linked there: https://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2016/05/06/researchers-critic…

https://archive.today/kPXB7 https://whyevolutionistrue.com/2026/03/15/bob-trivers-died/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Trivers https://roberttrivers.com/

Debunked by Steven Pinker: https://whyevolutionistrue.com/2019/01/31/is-the-world-really-getting-…

The keyword to look up is "panpsychism" - it was discussed a few times in the past year: >Is Consciousness Part of the Fabric of the Universe? https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/is-consciousness-part-of-th… >Scientific American on a philosophical grift: panpsychism https://whyevolutionistrue.com/2023/10/01/scientific-american-on-panps… >Is the Universe conscious? A panpsychism Q&A with philosopher Philip Goff https://bigthink.com/13-8/panpsychism-universe-purpose-philosopher-phi…

I think that’s an oversimplification (and an equally over-politicization) of that issue. Here is a good write up: https://whyevolutionistrue.com/2023/10/24/scientific-american-is-back-…

Nature very much has a political axe to grind these days: https://whyevolutionistrue.com/2022/08/26/nature-manuscripts-that-are-…

The problem is that this isn't the only news about a wacky new science curriculum. There's also the attempt to shoehorn "Matauranga Maori" - Maori (the indigenous people of NZ) "ways of knowing" in there. https://whyevolutionistrue.com/2021/12/19/what-are-maori-ways-of-knowi… I get the feeling the people dreaming this stuff up don't know what science is or why anyone might care about it. If it's going to be severely watered down, why bother teaching it at all? (throwaway account, this is a hot button topic in NZ)

Argh! The fact that false memories can be induced does not mean that all memories are false. Commentary: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/04/05/how-elizabeth-loftus-cha… Rebuttal: https://whyevolutionistrue.com/2021/04/25/the-new-yorkers-hit-job-on-e…

There is a recent post by Jerry Coyne on this New Zealand issue: https://whyevolutionistrue.com/2022/11/01/richard-dawkins-is-interview…

Not claiming that ACLU does nothing useful -- I certainly don't know enough to say -- but what do you think about this (which suggests to me a damaged commitment to civil liberties): https://whyevolutionistrue.com/2022/01/30/the-aclu-reverses-course-onc… What other organisations do you donate to along the same lines?

> Authoritarian is forcing a mother to have a child she doesn’t want! It’s her body! And many pro-life folks say that you're killing a child. It's his/her body. We don't allow parents to to kill 'inconvenient' child post-birth† so according to their argument neither should we pre-birth. † Well: * https://www.government.nl/topics/euthanasia/euthanasia-and-newborn-inf… * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/After-birth_abortion * https://whyevolutionistrue.com/2017/07/13/should-one-be-allowed-to-eut…

The Rolling Stone article is inaccurate. NYT article is better. Clean your mind of Rolling Stone. Shaw quit because of a hostile work environment prompted specifically by her protest, which your linked article elides. Regarding the rap, she was told specifically she could not do it because she is white, and not because of any other reason. Here's a compare-and-contrast between the 2 articles (NYT vs RS) https://whyevolutionistrue.com/2021/02/25/smith-meltdown-nyt-reports-h…

Universities in California are going in precisely the other direction by mandating ideological purity tests aka "diversity statements" for staff. https://whyevolutionistrue.com/2019/11/24/uc-davis-math-professor-demo…

Reminds me of when the IDF was criticized for not raping Palestinians: https://whyevolutionistrue.com/2017/02/17/israeli-army-veteran-critici…

Agreed. This seems to be a better reasoned critique: https://whyevolutionistrue.com/2021/12/30/scientific-american-does-an-…

The post linked to other critiques of the article in question (https://whyevolutionistrue.com/2021/12/30/scientific-american-does-an-… but seemed to be focused more on larger concerns about SA and a refusal to contribute to it any longer. Might well be ranty and emotionally charged, but seems relevant enough to be of concern for this site.