[FRIAM] Friday Fodder

Tue Mar 23 13:08:48 EDT 2021

Bit of a tangent, but...

> Consider Arnold in the role of Terminator. He managed to convey a lot of
> menace and dominance simply from size and overall shape; never once
> brandishing his penis to intimidate anyone.

Having recently watched the theatrical release of Terminator, I was
surprised to find that in addition to the numerous ass shots I knew were
there, there *is* full frontal of Arnold early in the film. The dangly bits
are enshadowed, but not really hidden. Happens as he's walking through a
park towards 3 "punks", leading up to the iconic "Your clothes, give them
to me." line.

<echarles at american.edu>

On Tue, Mar 23, 2021 at 11:12 AM Prof David West <profwest at fastmail.fm>
wrote:

> Because I left before it ended, I have no idea how the spandrel discussion
> ended. Nick requested an explanation/elaboration/justification for my
> continued skepticism/resistance (other than being willfully obstinate for
> no reason) to the notion of spandrel. Hence the following — elaborated
> beyond the specific question of spandrel  as fodder for continuing
> discussion next Friday.
>
> 1- I am convinced that evolutionary biologists are secretly required to
> read Rudyard Kipling as prerequisite to the granting of a Ph.D.. Because,
> every story about the evolution of a specific feature — Friday it was the
> pseudo-penis of female hyenas — sounds like, and is as convincing as, one
> of Kipling's *Just So *stories. *[Yes, trolling.]*
>
> 2- Pseudo-penis as spandrel:
>    a- Testosterone flooded female hyenas are selected because aggressive
> females have survival value in matriarchal hyena society. This really
> seems, to me, to pose a chicken-egg problem: matriarchy or female bullies
> first?
>    b- Testosterone flooding creates a space — a spandrel — a space that is
> then "decorated." One example of 'decoration' is the pseudo-penis.
>    c- by what mechanism does the decoration come about? Nick said it was a
> direct result of testosterone flooding, that "all" such results would
> appear, that none of them was independently 'selected for." This is a
> specific area where I fail to understand what Nick is saying and need
> correction. If I heard correctly that all effects of testosterone flooding
> would appear — Nick emphatically said "all" and "will" in his explanation —
> then:
>     -- we should not only see a clitoris run amok, but also beards, rock
> hard pecs instead of pillow-breasts,  20-inch biceps, denser bones, and
> overall greater muscle mass.
>     -- the "purpose" of the pseudo-penis is aggression display and
> reproductive-act dominance. But, of all the results of testosterone
> flooding that "will" result, a big penis seems the least useful for that
> purpose. Muscles and size would seem more than sufficient. Consider Arnold
> in the role of Terminator. He managed to convey a lot of menace and
> dominance simply from size and overall shape; never once brandishing his
> penis to intimidate anyone. (And if we assume he was as liberal a user of
> steroids in his body-building career as many of his colleagues, his penis
> would not have scared a squirrel.)
>     -- Why so baroque a decoration?
>     -- Why did testosterone cause the clitoris to merge with the urethra
> and the vagina? Did these not exist as separate organs in predecessor
> species to the hyena? How is that even possible? is the pseudo-penis not a
> clitoris-urethra-vagina at all but some kind of evolution of an avian
> cloaca?
>     -- This specific decoration seems to have anti-survival consequences
> (most firstborn hyenas are also stillborn) and yet this decoration seems
> immune to selection. Or maybe not, we have yet to see what might succeed
> hyenas a few million years from now.
>
> 3- More general issue: whole-part evolution. Jon seemed to understand what
> I was trying to say last Friday on this matter.
>    a- Consider the peregrine falcon. Some of the traits/features that make
> it a formidable predator: very lightweight bones coupled with overdeveloped
> muscles which contribute to its ability to withstand G forces and make 200
> mile per hour dives (and withstand the shock of kinetic energy when it hits
> its prey); razor sharp talons; notched beak to sever spinal columns;
> full-color binocular vision with resolution that allows seeing a pigeon at
> distances greater than a mile; nictating membrane to protect from wind
> force during dives; and ability to see into the ultra-violet spectrum.
>    b- If I understand Darwin *(a huge if):* each of these features is the
> result of a sequence of selected/preserved minute changes in single
> molecules: e.g. keratin, opsins, crystallins. Each of these molecules are
> expressed as a sequence of amino acid 'letters', 20 in number. If the
> string of letters were 100 characters in length (crystallins and opsins are
> much longer) then the odds of any given string are 20 to the 100 power. By
> comparison, the number of hydrogen atoms in the universe is estimated to be
> 10 to the 90th power.
>    c- If evolution proceeded with one amino acid letter pairing with a
> second, getting selected, then pairing with a third, etc., each addition
> being one of 20 equally probable options; then, coming up with the string
> that expresses, precisely, as the falcon's beak is fantastically improbable
> (winning the lottery every year since the Big Bang).
>    d- This brings in the question of time. Has there been sufficient time
> for a process of random change / selection to allow the formation of such a
> string. This was a huge issue for Darwin because the prevailing scientific
> estimate of the age of the Earth was twenty-million years. [Lord Kelvin
> using the equations of thermodynamics.] This was not nearly enough time for
> Darwin's evolution and he was *"greatly troubled by it."* Rutherford,
> using radioactive decay equations, *"saved"* Darwin by extending the age
> of the Earth to 4.5 billion years.
>    e- *Kind-of*. If evolution literally proceeds one amino acid letter at
> a time to assemble a specific string that has a probability of existing of
> 1 / 20 to the hundredth power (or more) — there is insufficient time since
> the Big Bang for that string to emerge via chance.
>    f- it seems as if some kind of short-cut is essential. Suppose you have
> parallel/simultaneous evolution of 'sub-strings' and then 'main-line'
> evolution proceeds upon combinations (wholes) of these strings, Then, it is
> quite likely that 4.5 billion years provides sufficient time. This, it
> seems to me, suggests that evolution deals with an aggregate, a whole; not
> individual amino acids one-by-one, or even sub-strings one-by-one.
>    g- Which circles back to the falcon. If each of the mentioned
> traits/features evolved independently and sequentially then we run out of
> time again. If each of the traits/features evolved independently then there
> seems to be a macro-problem of how they 'just happened' to occur
> simultaneously and apparently 'in concert'.
>
> So my conclusion, *apparently wrong because it disagrees with the experts
> in the group*, is that evolution must proceed whole-organism to
> whole-organism and not, feature-trait by feature-trait the way that it is
> presented.
>
> This also means, that individual feature-traits — as marvelous as the the
> falcon's eye or as silly as the pseudo-penis — cannot, and should not be
> "explained" independently. To do so is to focus on the 'noise' and not the
> 'signal'. Such efforts are the product of 19th century thinking and
> unworthy of complexity scientists like yourselves.
>
> davew
>
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