Do you believe in the Theory of Evolution?

[Ostroeuropa]

Dogs are bred based on some evolutionary principles: take two with the same genetic trait and their offspring will likely have it too, to horrendously oversimplify the process.

Medicine-wise, I don't know what Unchecked Expansion was going to go for but I'd say that medicines are developed based on natural selections: a lot of ideas are tried, those which kill people are discontinued and those which work well are tweaked, if that kills someone a different tweak is tried, and eventually you end up with a working medicine from all those ideas. (Again, oversimplification.)

Actually, it has more to do with diseases adapting. The flu, for example, is a huge example of us having to deal with evolution. Once we understand how the flu evolves, we will be able to create a vaccine for all flu strains, both present and future.

I don't forsee this occuring to be honest. We can probably determine potential vaccines we may need, but it'd be prohibitively expensive to develop every vaccine ever.
We'll just end up with a database of potential flus, and every time one rears it's head, immediatley rush production.

[Divair]

Actually, it has more to do with diseases adapting. The flu, for example, is a huge example of us having to deal with evolution. Once we understand how the flu evolves, we will be able to create a vaccine for all flu strains, both present and future.

I don't forsee this occuring to be honest. We can probably determine potential vaccines we may need, but it'd be prohibitively expensive to develop every vaccine ever.
We'll just end up with a database of potential flus, and every time one rears it's head, immediatley rush production.

Actually, we're making progress.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/artic ... -life.html
http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/health/2012 ... u-vaccine/
http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/201 ... le-by-2013
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/30/scien ... wanted=all

[Salandriagado]

Because you all have doctoral degrees in the field of science?

Not saying that you couldn't get one, just saying that it seems like you people do.

No. I am, however, studying for a masters degree in mathematics, on a course that allows me to attend lectures from other departments that I find interesting (and get credit for doing so. WIN). One of these was related to evolutionary theory. I'm also sitting in a building surrounded by people who do have PhDs in it, so if anybody comes up with a question I can't answer, I can go and check very easily.

This statement is patently false.

No, it isn't. Kindly produce a counterexample.

Okay.

Basically, I just believe that man evolved from monkey. Or is that too ridiculous for NSG?

Yes. It is demonstrably incorrect.

I knew you people were too difficult to deal with.

I have a 43 in Biology and you expect me to know what Evolution is. Great job.

Considering that you could teach yourself it in ten minutes using google, yes, we do. I'm going to reuse a post I made earlier in this thread (ignore the age bit at the start, that applied to the person the post was originally made to):

You are a person. You may be 13 years old, but that doesn't stop you being a person, and it certainly doesn't stop you having a functioning mind. Use it. Exercise it. At every opportunity, question everything you hear, everything you know. That does not mean questioning things like "go and tidy your room", it means questioning things that are presented as facts. Look over everything you think you know, everything you've been told, and ask yourself why you know this is true. If you can't answer it, try to find a reason that it's true. If you find a reason and you can understand that reason, then you have learned something. If you find a reason but don't understand it, then file it away mentally under "something to look at when I learn more", and you may well learn a lot whilst doing it (as a simple example here, ask yourself how you know that 1+1=2. You'd be surprised just how deep the rabbit hole goes). If you can't find a reason (and I mean an actual reason why it's true, not a reason why you know it's true - "xyz told me" doesn't count), then go back and ask yourself if it is true or not. It may be that it is, in which case, try to think around the problem, see you could potentially check that it is true, devise an experiment (actual or thought) to find out if it's true, or prove that it is true. It may be that it's false, in which case ask yourself why it's false. Repeat all of the above for the statement "this thing that I thought was true is actually false". It may be that you can't manage it either way, in which case, it is possible that somebody has done it but you couldn't find it (in which case, try asking somebody you know to be knowledgeable about that area where you can find more information on it). It may be that nobody has done it, in which case, file it away under "things that are interesting problems" and look back at it after a while, see if you can't see a way around it. It may, alternatively, be that it is actually impossible to know whether it is true or false, in which case, ask yourself why that's true (though don't expect to get very far on this bit too often - proofs of "we can never really know X" tend to be a bit obscure).

Doing all of that, doing it all the time, is how you learn, and how the human race learns. Simply sitting around believing everything that you are told is true by somebody in authority is not enough. You must learn, above all, that most critical of human abilities: the ability to think.

Can anyone here who believes in Evolution provide evidence for ONE single fossil that shows a semi-evolved form of an animal, e.g say something between a dinosaur and a bird.

Sure:

As for so called human ape fossils, not a single one which was found showed that it was of a distinct species (i.e not human like you or I)

Bullshit.

Not to mention the massive gap in the fossil record, which suggests that species of animals appeared and disappeared and not merely evolved into a new form- if this was the case, there would be plenty of fossils of hybrid animals- can't think of a better word for it.

Bullshit. There is no such gap. There are plenty of fossils of "hybrid animals". Every single fossil ever discovered, for example.

The science of probability has not been favorable to evolutionary theory, even with the theory's loose time restraints. Dr. James Coppedge, of the Center for Probability Research in Biology in California, made some amazing calculations. Dr. Coppedge

Bullshit.

"applied all the laws of probability studies to the possibility of a single cell coming into existence by chance. He considered in the same way a single protein molecule, and even a single gene. His discoveries are revolutionary. He computed a world in which the entire crust of the earth - all the oceans, all the atoms, and the whole crust were available. He then had these amino acids bind at a rate one and one-half trillion times faster than they do in nature. In computing the possibilities, he found that to provide a single protein molecule by chance combination would take 10, to the 262nd power, years." (That is, the number 1 followed by 262 zeros.) "To get a single cell - the single smallest living cell known to mankind - which is called the mycroplasm hominis H39, would take 10, to the 119,841st power, years. That means that if you took thin pieces of paper and wrote 1 and then wrote zeros after (it), you would fill up the entire known universe with paper before you could ever even write that number. That is how many years it would take to make one living cell, smaller than any human cell!"

This is bullshit. He assumes that molecules interact purely randomly. They do not. In fact, the first stages of the process (protein molecule production, gene production, all the way to RNA production) have been replicated in a lab over much shorter timescales and with much smaller sample sizes. He also missed out the fact that there are absurd numbers of planets around. The bold is also an assumption made deliberately to inflate the numbers. The supposed "Doctor" has also never published anything at all, and doesn't appear to exist at all. In fact, neither does the institution in question.

According to Emile Borel, a French scientist and expert in the area of probability, an event on the cosmic level with a probability of less than 1 out of 10, to the 50th power, will not happen. The probability of producing one human cell by chance is 10, to the 119,000 power.

This is actually true, but irrelevant.

Sir Fred Hoyle, British mathematician and astronomer, was quoted in Nature magazine, November 12, 1981, as saying "The chance that higher life forms might have emerged in this way (evolution) is comparable with the chance that a tornado sweeping through a junk-yard might assemble a Boeing 747 from the materials therein."

That thing is called "Hoyle's Fallacy" for a reason.

The sun's diameter is shrinking at the rate of five feet per hour.

No it fucking isn't.

The Second Law of Thermodynamics also goes DIRECTLY AGAINST Evolution without a shadow of a doubt. The second law of thermodynamics states that although the total amount of energy remains constant, the amount of usable energy is constantly decreasing.

No it fucking doesn't. It states that in a closed system undergoing internal energy exchanges, the total potential energy of the system will always be less than the its initial potential energy. The earth is not a closed system.

This law can be seen in most everything. Where work is done, energy is expelled. That energy can never again be used.

This is also bullshit.

So it opposes evolution because if the natural trend is toward degeneration, then evolution is impossible, for it demands the betterment of organisms through mutation.

Nope.

Meteoritic dust falls on the earth continuously, adding up to thousands, if not millions, of tons of dust per year.

Bullshit.

Realizing this, and knowing that the moon also had meteoritic dust piling up for what they thought was millions of years, N.A.S.A. scientists were worried that the first lunar ship that landed would sink into the many feet of dust which should have accumulated.

However, only about one-eight of an inch of dust was found, indicating a young moon.

Also bullshit.

Meteoritic material contributes nickel to the oceans. Taking the amount of nickel in the oceans and the supply from meteoritic dust yields an age figure for the earth of just several thousand years, not an age of millions or billions. This, and the lack of meteoritic dust piles on the earth, shows that the Earth can't be millions of years old and so the Theory of Evolution, which states the the evolution of species would happen over billions of years simply could not happen.

Bullshit on all accounts.

Quantity doesn't prove anything, so quote as much as you like. Could you at least look at what I wrote, like I did for yours? And besides none of what I just posted can be rejected as being 'religious nonsense'.

No, it can be rejected as being complete and utter bullshit. If you prefer quality to quantity, here you go.

I'm glad that you used Archaeopteryx as your example of an animal between a dinosaur and a bird, because it has been shown to be just a species of bird and not some transitional between a dinosaur and a bird:

Bullshit.

1. It had a long bony tail, like a reptile's.

In the embryonic stage, some living birds have more tail vertebrae than Archeopteryx. They later fuse to become an upstanding bone called the pygostyle. The tail bone and feather arrangement on swans are very similar to those of Archeopteryx.

One authority claims that there is no basic difference between the ancient and modern forms: the difference lies only in the fact that the caudal vertebrae are greatly prolonged. But this does not make a reptile.

2. It had claws on its feet and on its feathered forelimbs.

However, many living birds such as the hoatzin in South America, the touraco in Africa and the ostrich also have claws. In 1983, the British Museum of Natural History displayed numerous species within nine families of birds with claws on the wings.

So your evidence that birds did not evolve from dinosaurs is that birds are like dinosaurs?

3. It had teeth.

Modern birds do not have teeth but many ancient birds did, particularly those in the Mesozoic. There is no suggestion that these birds were transitional. The teeth do not show the connection of Archeopteryx with any other animal since every subclass of vertebrates has some with teeth and some without.

So your evidence that birds do not evolve is that birds have evolved?

Darwin's Enigma: Fossils and Other Problems, pp. 74-75 - Luther Sunderland

Sunderland is an astrophysicist, not a biologist.

Recent examination of Archeopteryx's feathers has shown that they are the same as the feathers of modern birds that are excellent fliers. Dr. Ostrom says that there is no question that they are the same as the feathers of modern birds. They are asymmetrical with a center shaft and parallel barbs like those of today's flying birds.

Yup. You missed hte point entirely. What the man did is take a dinosaur and demonstrate that it had bird-like features. That is: he provided evidence that birds evolved from dinosaurs.

This also has been refuted by recent paleontological discoveries. In 1977 a geologist from Brigham Young University, James A. Jensen, discovered in the Dry Mesa quarry of the Morrison formation in western Colorado a fossil of an unequivocal bird in Lower Jurassic rock.

No he didn't. This is simply bullshit. He also wasn't a geologist, he was an artist turned paleontologist.

This deposit is dated as 60-million years older than the Upper Jurassic rock in which Archeopteryx was found. He first found the rear-leg femur and, later, the remainder of the skeleton.

Bullshit.

This was reported in Science News 24 September 1977. Professor John Ostrom commented, "It is obvious we must now look for the ancestors of flying birds in a period of time much older than that in which Archeopteryx lived."

Now you see, the thing is, he never said that, and there is no mention of it in that publication.

And so it goes with the fossil that many textbooks set forth as the best example of a transitional form. No true intermediate fossils have been found.

Every single fossil that has ever been discovered is an intermediate fossil. Obviously, that would be quite a lot for you to rebuke, so I'll let you start on this lot.

"...I fully agree with your comments on the lack of direct illustration of evolutionary transitions in my book. If I knew of any, fossil or living, I would certainly have included them. You suggest that an artist should be used to visualise such transformations, but where would he get the information from? I could not, honestly, provide it, and if I were to leave it to artistic licence, would that not mislead the reader?"

Except that he didn't:

Dear Mr Theunissen,
Sorry to have taken so long to answer your letter of July 9th. I was away for a while, and then infernally busy. I seem fated continually to make a fool of myself with creationists. The specific quote you mention, from a letter to Sunderland dated 10th April 1979, is accurate as far as it goes. The passage quoted continues "... a watertight argument. The reason is that statements about ancestry and descent are not applicable in the fossil record. Is Archaeopteryx the ancestor of all birds? Perhaps yes, perhaps no: there is no way of answering the question. It is easy enough to make up stories of how one form gave rise to another, and to find reasons why the stages should be favoured by natural selection. But such stories are not part of science, for there is no way to put them to the test."

I think the continuation of the passage shows clearly that your interpretation (at the end of your letter) is correct, and the creationists' is false.

That brush with Sunderland (I had never heard of him before) was my first experience of creationists. The famous "keynote address" at the American Museum of Natural History in 1981 was nothing of the sort. It was a talk to the "Systematics Discussion Group" in the Museum, an (extremely) informal group. I had been asked to talk to them on "Evolutionism and creationism"; fired up by a paper by Ernst Mayr published in Science just the week before. I gave a fairly rumbustious talk, arguing that the theory of evolution had done more harm than good to biological systematics (classification). Unknown to me, there was a creationist in the audience with a hidden tape recorder. So much the worse for me. But my talk was addressed to professional systematists, and concerned systematics, nothing else.

I hope that by now I have learned to be more circumspect in dealing with creationists, cryptic or overt. But I still maintain that scepticism is the scientist's duty, however much the stance may expose us to ridicule.

Yours Sincerely,

[signed]

Colin Patterson

The Earth isn't a closed system.

Bingo. Therefore, the second law of thermodynamics does not apply to it.

Dr. Duane Gish, an American biochemist has put forth four conditions that must be met in order for complexity to be generated in an environment.

1. The system must be an open system.

Check.

2. An adequate external energy force must be available.

Check.

3. The system must possess energy conversion mechanisms.

Check.
4

. A control mechanism must exist within the system for directing, maintaining and replicating these energy conversion mechanisms.

Check.

So yes, the earth has all of these things.

Can someone explain why they accept Evolution? Apart from the non-existent scientific evidence? Are people that desperate to deny God exists? Because Evolution is not merely a bogus theory, it is a religion in its own right and it fails to live up to any of the conditions that exist for a coherent scientific theory.

The fact that it is one of the best-supported scientific theories in existence (within biology, at least). The fact that it has been directly observed. Hell, the fact that I, personally, have directly observed it.


I have a challenge for you: kindly post the conditions for something to be a scientific theory, and demonstrate exactly which one evolution does not fit.

Have a look at this: http://www.discovery.org/scripts/viewDB ... oad&id=660

Kindly provide a peer reviewed source discrediting it. If you can't do that, or run your own experiments, you have no capacity to effectively debate science.

So I'm stupid because I reject some rehashed fairy-tale that's promoted by the elite as an alternative to religion? Really? I'm stupid for questioning what the merits of this theory and finding it has none?

No, it is stupid to reject something that is an observable fact. Do you reject gravity? Because we have one hell of a lot less evidence for that, and a whole hell of a lot less of an understanding for how it works.

"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." (The Origin of Species, Chapter 6).

And since then, somebody found out how it evolved. Here's a nice diagram of it.

Who doesn't. And just because I'm Muslim doesn't mean I don't like dogs. Just that they have to be outside my house. Every family in rural Somalia has a dog of some kind and its the same in other Muslim countries.

Without evolution, you cannot have safe food. You cannot have modern methods of food production. You cannot have modern medicine. You cannot have dogs. You cannot have nylon eating bacteria. You have to declare that MRSA does not exist.

[Ostroeuropa]

I don't forsee this occuring to be honest. We can probably determine potential vaccines we may need, but it'd be prohibitively expensive to develop every vaccine ever.
We'll just end up with a database of potential flus, and every time one rears it's head, immediatley rush production.

Actually, we're making progress.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/artic ... -life.html
http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/health/2012 ... u-vaccine/
http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/201 ... le-by-2013
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/30/scien ... wanted=all

Well i'll be damned.
I'll alter my statement then.
in order for the universal vaccine to remain effective, we need to vaccinate everyone and wipe out the flu, because it evolves so fast I honestly can't see a universal vaccine, if only applied in part of the world every generation, would remain effective after practically every identifiable tag of the flu has altered.
I no longer doubt we can make a very BROAD flu vaccine that may remain effective over hundreds, potentially thousands or millions of generations, but I still doubt it's truly universal.

[Divair]

Actually, we're making progress.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/artic ... -life.html
http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/health/2012 ... u-vaccine/
http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/201 ... le-by-2013
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/30/scien ... wanted=all

Well i'll be damned.
I'll alter my statement then.
in order for the universal vaccine to remain effective, we need to vaccinate everyone and wipe out the flu, because it evolves so fast I honestly can't see a universal vaccine, if only applied in part of the world every generation, would remain effective after practically every identifiable tag of the flu has altered.
I no longer doubt we can make a very BROAD flu vaccine that may remain effective over hundreds, potentially thousands or millions of generations, but I still doubt it's truly universal.

We shall see as research continues.

[Phocidaea]

I believe that proven science is more verifiable than bad translations of ancient books. Read that as you will.

[Strykla]

Survival of the fittest is complete BS. The fact that I exist proves it.

But other than that, evolution's fine.

[Divair]

Survival of the fittest is complete BS. The fact that I exist proves it.

But other than that, evolution's fine.

If you haven't noticed yet, we've reached a society in which survival of the fittest doesn't apply to us any more.

Even a few hundred years ago it did, though.

[Strykla]

Survival of the fittest is complete BS. The fact that I exist proves it.

But other than that, evolution's fine.

If you haven't noticed yet, we've reached a society in which survival of the fittest doesn't apply to us any more.

Even a few hundred years ago it did, though.

No. Survival of the fittest is big effing fallacy.

Example: You're with twenty other people. A polar bear sees you and says, "HUMAN SANDVICH YUUUM!" You don't have to outrun the polar bear. You only have to outrun the slowest of 21 people.

Survival of the fit enough makes much more sense.

[Ostroeuropa]

Survival of the fittest is complete BS. The fact that I exist proves it.

But other than that, evolution's fine.

No it isn't.
It's survival of those fittest to reproduce and adapt.
Which still applies.

[Ostroeuropa]

If you haven't noticed yet, we've reached a society in which survival of the fittest doesn't apply to us any more.

Even a few hundred years ago it did, though.

No. Survival of the fittest is big effing fallacy.

Example: You're with twenty other people. A polar bear sees you and says, "HUMAN SANDVICH YUUUM!" You don't have to outrun the polar bear. You only have to outrun the slowest of 21 people.

Survival of the fit enough makes much more sense.

You realize the only living thing more deadly on this entire planet than a group of humans is a larger group of humans? We are the only superpredator known to have ever exist. Any animal 1 VS 1 can be severely wounded or outright killed by a human.
Nearly no animal or pack of animals can stand up to a pack of humans.


That bear VS those twenty humans? bear loses. EVERY time.

[Divair]

If you haven't noticed yet, we've reached a society in which survival of the fittest doesn't apply to us any more.

Even a few hundred years ago it did, though.

No. Survival of the fittest is big effing fallacy.

Example: You're with twenty other people. A polar bear sees you and says, "HUMAN SANDVICH YUUUM!" You don't have to outrun the polar bear. You only have to outrun the slowest of 21 people.

Survival of the fit enough makes much more sense.

You don't know what survival of the fittest is, do you?

[Ostroeuropa]

to put this humans are weak thing to rest, we are one of the only animals that can throw things.

We sacrifice body strength for agility and dexterity. No other animal can twist and bend like a human can.
Can you imagine a bear trying to dodge a human's attack? Can you imagine a human dodging a bears?
There is a very good reason that nearly every animal on the planet regards us with fear and awe. The ones that didn't inherit that gene are dead, and so are their descendents.
We are so awesome PRECISELY because we are so adaptable.
Take a look at the tiger and the bear. It's got some good weaponry and defensive capabilities.
Take a look at the human.

It can have one massive singular melee fang by day, one long-range projectile by night, metallic skin, skin that repels almost all attacks, can fly if it decides it wants to, etc. We can evolve and adapt to a situation WITHIN A SINGLE GENERATION. thats the source of our power.
We have reached post-biological adaptability, it's our tool use that makes us fit to survive. The average human is capable of utilizing way, WAY more weaponry and defensive capabilities than any animal.
If I dump you naked in a forest, you are STILL the most deadly thing in that forest. You won't survive, but that's because you are so vastly outnumbered.
You already match most animals with your built in weaponry, and a human bite is extremely toxic. Hell, even animals that kill and eat humans will suffer something akin to food poisoning because of the shit we pump our bodies with.


Human hunting and weaponry is the only time it's appropriate to be creationist, and we are the creators of our own post-biological evolution.
"I feel like I need one huge melee fang." And so we make one, as opposed to evolutions passive "The things with fangs survive and breed."

If there was an animal out there that changed it's weaponry, appearance, etc so rapidly we'd rightly regard it as a monster.
(Also, we walk around in the skin of dead things. And remember, most animals can probably tell this from the smell. doesn't that seem terrifying? )

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/F ... AreCthulhu

Here is a list of reasons why we are fit to survive.

[Strykla]

No. Survival of the fittest is big effing fallacy.

Example: You're with twenty other people. A polar bear sees you and says, "HUMAN SANDVICH YUUUM!" You don't have to outrun the polar bear. You only have to outrun the slowest of 21 people.

Survival of the fit enough makes much more sense.

You realize the only living thing more deadly on this entire planet than a group of humans is a larger group of humans? We are the only superpredator known to have ever exist. Any animal 1 VS 1 can be severely wounded or outright killed by a human.
Nearly no animal or pack of animals can stand up to a pack of humans.


That bear VS those twenty humans? bear loses. EVERY time.

I dunno. Remember the sloth?

Those claws will fuck you up.

The only reason humans are apex predators is because of this. Humans are less capable than sloths without it. Now, would you, if there were twenty other people around you, yell "charge" and go at the bear? I wouldn't. Maybe everybody would have a vote on whether to attack the bear or not. Or they'd run for their lives, because holy fuck this thing the size of my VW is attacking me.
The brain doesn't always give you advantages.

You don't know what survival of the fittest is, do you?

Oh, now why'd you have to go and insult my intelligence? I never doubted yours.

[Ostroeuropa]

You realize the only living thing more deadly on this entire planet than a group of humans is a larger group of humans? We are the only superpredator known to have ever exist. Any animal 1 VS 1 can be severely wounded or outright killed by a human.
Nearly no animal or pack of animals can stand up to a pack of humans.


That bear VS those twenty humans? bear loses. EVERY time.

I dunno. Remember the sloth?

Those claws will fuck you up.

The only reason humans are apex predators is because of this. Humans are less capable than sloths without it. Now, would you, if there were twenty other people around you, yell "charge" and go at the bear? I wouldn't. Maybe everybody would have a vote on whether to attack the bear or not. Or they'd run for their lives, because holy fuck this thing the size of my VW is attacking me.
The brain doesn't always give you advantages.

You don't know what survival of the fittest is, do you?

Oh, now why'd you have to go and insult my intelligence? I never doubted yours.

This is like arguing that the wolf is a shit predator unfit to survive because only it's brain allows it to coordinate pack strategy.

[Divair]

Oh, now why'd you have to go and insult my intelligence? I never doubted yours.

Because your 'example' is completely wrong. Survival of the fittest has nothing to do with surviving encounters, it has to do with reproduction appeal.

[Ostroeuropa]

Imagine you're a deer in the forest. You come across something that blends in with its surroundings, can imitate your voice, and fires from the trees an immensely powerful weapon you can't fathom. If you come across one of your species that has encountered it, you'll find they have been horribly mutilated and parts are missing, taken as trophies. That's right, humans are The Predator.

(My favourite from that page)

t gets ever better: It's semi-well-known that humans are the best endurance runners in the animal kingdom. How did we get that way? It's how we hunt. Yeah, that gazelle is faster than you at the moment, but lets see how it's doing three or four hours later. For (even more) added NightmareFuel, consider that the point of this is to run a specific animal to exhaustion. Most other predators will just take whatever member of the herd gets in the way of their fangs, but the human? Coming for you, personally.


You know those old stories about people taking food from The Fair Folk and being trapped in their realms forever?
Humans Are The Fair Folk. Elves are just us imagining "What would happen if something domesticated us?"
Same as alien abduction is just us thinking "Hey, what'd happen if someone did what wildlife scientists do?"


We are so badass that we have to MAKE SHIT UP (aliens, zombies, vampires etc.) for it to be a viable threat.
And even then, most of the time, we still win.

[Strykla]

I dunno. Remember the sloth?

Those claws will fuck you up.

The only reason humans are apex predators is because of this. Humans are less capable than sloths without it. Now, would you, if there were twenty other people around you, yell "charge" and go at the bear? I wouldn't. Maybe everybody would have a vote on whether to attack the bear or not. Or they'd run for their lives, because holy fuck this thing the size of my VW is attacking me.
The brain doesn't always give you advantages.

Oh, now why'd you have to go and insult my intelligence? I never doubted yours.

This is like arguing that the wolf is a shit predator unfit to survive because only it's brain allows it to coordinate pack strategy.

But then again, wolves don't vote on whether or not to go on hunts. The human brain's computation power is too much for it's own good.

Instead of arguing over hypothetical encounters, I pose practical ones. Here's my question again: Would you, if there were twenty other random people next to you, attack a polar bear?

Oh, now why'd you have to go and insult my intelligence? I never doubted yours.

Because your 'example' is completely wrong. Survival of the fittest has nothing to do with surviving encounters, it has to do with reproduction appeal.

Obviously, survival of the fit enough has no basis in reality and should be discarded as an idiotic idea.

What I was trying to say was that 'survival of the fittest' is misleading, because no species is fittest to survive. That's why we have competition in the first place.

[Mavorpen]

Imagine you're a deer in the forest. You come across something that blends in with its surroundings, can imitate your voice, and fires from the trees an immensely powerful weapon you can't fathom. If you come across one of your species that has encountered it, you'll find they have been horribly mutilated and parts are missing, taken as trophies. That's right, humans are The Predator.

(My favourite from that page)

t gets ever better: It's semi-well-known that humans are the best endurance runners in the animal kingdom. How did we get that way? It's how we hunt. Yeah, that gazelle is faster than you at the moment, but lets see how it's doing three or four hours later. For (even more) added NightmareFuel, consider that the point of this is to run a specific animal to exhaustion. Most other predators will just take whatever member of the herd gets in the way of their fangs, but the human? Coming for you, personally.


You know those old stories about people taking food from The Fair Folk and being trapped in their realms forever?
Humans Are The Fair Folk. Elves are just us imagining "What would happen if something domesticated us?"
Same as alien abduction is just us thinking "Hey, what'd happen if someone did what wildlife scientists do?"


We are so badass that we have to MAKE SHIT UP (aliens, zombies, vampires etc.) for it to be a viable threat.
And even then, most of the time, we still win.

I can't wait for the imminent alien threat. We'd be fucked.

[Ostroeuropa]

This is like arguing that the wolf is a shit predator unfit to survive because only it's brain allows it to coordinate pack strategy.

But then again, wolves don't vote on whether or not to go on hunts. The human brain's computation power is too much for it's own good.

Instead of arguing over hypothetical encounters, I pose practical ones. Here's my question again: Would you, if there were twenty other random people next to you, attack a polar bear?

Because your 'example' is completely wrong. Survival of the fittest has nothing to do with surviving encounters, it has to do with reproduction appeal.

Obviously, survival of the fit enough has no basis in reality and should be discarded as an idiotic idea.

What I was trying to say was that 'survival of the fittest' is misleading, because no species is fittest to survive. That's why we have competition in the first place.

if the bear is trying to kill us, attacking it is the logical option.
Survey the area for weaponry and attack.
If there is no weaponry, go for the eyes.
Ofcourse we don't have to.
Only a rabid or insane bear would attack a group of 20 humans. Maybe a bear protecting it's cubs.

[Strykla]

But then again, wolves don't vote on whether or not to go on hunts. The human brain's computation power is too much for it's own good.

Instead of arguing over hypothetical encounters, I pose practical ones. Here's my question again: Would you, if there were twenty other random people next to you, attack a polar bear?


Obviously, survival of the fit enough has no basis in reality and should be discarded as an idiotic idea.

What I was trying to say was that 'survival of the fittest' is misleading, because no species is fittest to survive. That's why we have competition in the first place.

if the bear is trying to kill us, attacking it is the logical option.
Survey the area for weaponry and attack.
If there is no weaponry, go for the eyes.

Definitely, go for parts of the face.

I don't think you're seeing the point: Do you have the guts to go up against the polar bear? The largest land-based predator alive? And even if you did - And I don't think even the spirit of Bruce Lee would attack a polar bear - Would everybody else also have the guts?

[Roarsome]

It isnt theory but scientific fact!!!

[Maudlnya]

Nowadays it is more like survival of the most smartest. The smarter you are, the better chance you will survive

[Mavorpen]

Nowadays it is more like survival of the most smartest. The smarter you are, the better chance you will survive

No it isn't.

[Maudlnya]

Nowadays it is more like survival of the most smartest. The smarter you are, the better chance you will survive

No it isn't.

Why do you say that?