Replies

In your description of the 50% bias you are assuming that it will be a problem, because only half of the descendants would have the trait. However, if 50% of the offspring have the feature and 50% don't, then the 50% with it will reproduce more successfully than the other 50%. The animals with the trait will produce more offspring than their competitors, and the animals with the feature will become more numerous. There is no 50% bias, because the 50% with the feature will have the advantage and will be more successful. Therefore the population will have evolved, because that trait would become the norm after many generations.

In your description of the 50% bias you are assuming that it will be a problem, because only half of the descendants would have the trait. However, if 50% of the offspring have the feature and 50% don't, then the 50% with it will reproduce more successfully than the other 50%.

Jeez, did you not at least have the courtesy of reading the whole post before responding? I dealt with that Darwinian hopeful math in it also:

Now you can say, but wait if the new trait is extremely useful, then the individual will reproduce much more than the rest and be able to overcome this problem and pass it on to the rest of the species. Problem with that is the theory of evolution itself, that all changes are slow and gradual. Such gradual changes cannot overcome the 50% bias against its being passed on to future generations.

However, you might say, but wait, what if evolution does not work that way, maybe it works the way Gould said and we have sudden changes? We have problems then too. Let's say that a lizard suddenly sprouted wings and learned to fly. Now this is an incredibly favorable change which would surely be spread through the species. Or would it? Would a female lizard want to mate with such a monstrosity? I doubt it. Even more important, due to the extreme genetic changes required in such a transformation, would it even be possible for the female to mate and produce winged lizards? Definitely not. So no, anyway you slice it, these new traits will not be passed on.

In your description of the 50% bias you are assuming that it will be a problem, because only half of the descendants would have the trait. However, if 50% of the offspring have the feature and 50% don't, then the 50% with it will reproduce more successfully than the other 50%. The animals with the trait will produce more offspring than their competitors, and the animals with the feature will become more numerous. There is no 50% bias, because the 50% with the feature will have the advantage and will be more successful. Therefore the population will have evolved, because that trait would become the norm after many generations.

No, Gore's point is that because there's a 50% of an individual mutation getting passed on in the first place, there's a 50% chance of the mutation dying out before it even gets started. Gore doesn't understand (and I've tried to explain this to him several times, using several different analogies) that each child has a 50% chance of getting their parent's mutation. If there are 2 children then 1 child will get the mutation (on average). If there are 10 children then 5 will get the mutation. If the parents are fish, who produce 100 offspring, then 50 children will get the mutation.

Gore insists that no matter how many children a set of parents have, the mutation will still only be passed on to 1/2 of one child.