We’re not giving up, Mike. We are simply pointing out reality and we are not denying the existence of people like you.
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This is really quite simple: if someone argues that X is impossible, it’s enough to present a plausible way in which X could happen. You don’t have to show that X actually happened, just that it’s possible. A classic example is Nilsson D., Pelger S. A pessimistic estimate of the time required for an eye to evolve. Proceedings of the Royal Society of London, Series B 1994; 256:53-58.
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Thanks, John, for your reply. I’m wondering if you have ever seen the movie “The Believers”… It’s about Fleishmann and Pons and their “discovery” of cold fusion.
Cold fusion is a good analogy for complexities related to symbiosis. Was it enough for these two to argue that cold fusion was plausible? Or was there a need to show that it was possible through repeatable experimentation?
The point being that it is nice to explain how something can happen (or could have happened) but there’s a whole other layer of explanatory power and confidence that comes with being able to show how something works or worked. I understand and agree with you that there is value in being able to show that something is plausible.
I don’t think so. And they didn’t actually present a plausible argument that cold fusion was possible, either.
Yes, but that’s to answer a different question. Once again, this is a response to claims of impossibility.
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The analogy may not be as good as you think. The plausibility of cold fusion is questionable - my reaction when it was announced was “it’s not April 1st”. Some physicists pointed out that if they had achieved cold fusion they would be dead of radiation poisoning.
On our current understanding of physics cold fusion (other than muon-catalysed fusion and similar but even less practical processes) is implausible lacking mechanisms to overcome the coulomb barrier and to suppress the production of neutrons and ionising radiation. Now, a confirmed observation trumps theory, and people have attempted to produce theoretical justifications, e.g. involving collective states, but I am not convinced that they had anything other than anomalous heat production in electrolytic systems.
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Thanks a million, Robert, this was my point:
Why do you single out symbiosis as a class, in which one case counts for other cases, yet do not accept other sorts of evolutionary cases as similarly relevant?
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Because that’s what Jerry Coyne’s article was about.
Evidence? I never said that they were not similarly relevant. I said that the layperson, who misunderstands evolutionary biology to the degree that he is prone to spouting this argument from incredulity is not likely to make the inferential leap from one topic to another:
@John_Harshman Is it possible, John, that you are reading my label (“Old Earth Moderator”) and assuming something about me and my beliefs or even that what I say cannot be correct because of who you suppose me to be? I suspect that this may be the case. In nearly fifty posts in this thread, I’ve tried to say that Coyne’s article was interesting, but it would be even better if there were some data attached to his theory. John Mercer replied with a link, and I thanked him for it. That’s all.
No, Coyne’s article was about one particular case. How do you decide what other cases are relevant and what are not?
So one case of symbiosis would not, to that imaginary layperson, be relevant to another case of symbiosis. Right?
No, that’s not possible.
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I read your label “Old Earth Moderator” and draw the conclusion that you’re an Old Earth Creationist. Is this true, or is your label misleading?
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No, John, you are incorrect. The article was in response to the claims of a creationist who has grouped together examples of symbiosis as a single topic that perceives as being too difficult to achieve naturally through evolution alone. The writer begins with the wasp and spider, continues with the archerfish, and finishes with this:
Indeed, there are hundreds, if not thousands of such stories, each more mysterious than the last: all pointing to a Creator, certainly not One Who would use a “dog-eat-dog” process like evolution . But certainly One Who left His fingerprints on all of His work in the creation as we have come to know it.
No, the creationist clearly sees symbiosis (as a category) as being too difficult for evolution to obtain, hence the argument from incredulity. The writer is incredulous about the spider and wasp, first, as an example, but he clearly sees the category as being problematic.
This is the reason why I said that it would be nice to have data that backed it up. When someone makes a claim that something is impossible, it requires only one event showing that it is possible to invalidate the original statement. It could be impossible… until it is shown to not be impossible. All examples of symbiosis are equally challenging in the eyes of the creationist/critic. While data explaining one single instance does not adequately explain the others, it does invalidate the argument that symbiotic relationships are too difficult to evolve.
This is suspiciously reminiscent of an argument from incredulity I read about recently. 
It is absolutely possible.
As you know, Jonathan, the labels are not created by us. Joshua assigns labels that he thinks will be descriptive to the community and will help all to understand the context from which a person is asking or answering. I arrived very much on the fence about much of this and wanting only to learn more. But I needed a label and graciously accepted this one, which accurately reflected my position at one point in the past. It’s been an interesting sociology experiment to see how some people treat others based upon labels. It’s good for the sake of empathy to be aware of this.
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No, only the wasp is symbiosis. The rest are just complex adaptations of various types; he mentions the vertebrate eye and the archer fish. So it’s not symbiosis that’s his subject, just anything he thinks is too complicated to evolve.
His category isn’t symbiosis; it’s complex adaptations. And in fact, Nilsson’s paper (mentioned already) is a fine counter-argument, as it covers the vertebrate eye.
You may believe that I know my own assumptions, or you may believe I don’t. Your choice.
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You are right. I read them in line and grouped them together. They are, as you say, all complex adaptations, but not all symbiosis. My apologies.
That said, if complex symbiosis is believed to be too difficult to evolve (as a sub-category of complex adaptations) the ability to present data (such as Mercer’s link above), then my comment still stands. Presenting evidence that shows that an example of this kind of symbiotic relationship did evolve and how it did so, still falsifies that claim. And, again, this was my point all along.
I was really joking, alluding the nature of the OP itself. That said, I think that it is healthy for all of us to evaluate how we are judging others, and how our impressions of who they are / what they believe factor into how we communicate with them. I’m sure you know your own thoughts.
No, you mistake the category. It’s not evidence of symbiosis evolving that one would be looking for but evidence of any complex adaptation evolving. That’s the author’s category. And the creationist out would be that we don’t see these things happening in real time, only bits of them, and it can easily be denied that the possibility of a long journey can be inferred from a single step.
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Thanks, I knew I was wrong, I just didn’t know how.
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