Yes. You were wrong about that. Bechly may have intended to imply such a thing, or he may just have inadvertently created that impression. But in any case Müller said nothing of the sort. Still, I’m glad to see (below) that you have at last gone to the actual source.
Hard to say, since he presents no concrete cases. How big are the non-gradual transitions that Müller supposes? Do they have anything to do with the non-gradual transtions that you and/or Bechly suppose? It’s all too vague to tell. When do you intend to clarify any of your hypotheses?
The “one rocket” hypothesis is easily refuted if we conclude that there are two, say, birds, that have a common ancestor, and two mammals that have a common ancestor, with neither common ancestor being descended from the other. In other words, by any tree that isn’t a “ladder” tree.
I don’t follow. In the revised tree I posted above, A-D could be the main “rocket” lineage, F could be birds, and G could be mammals, both the result of “explosions.” But within F and G there would be individual organisms sharing common ancestors, neither of whom was descended from the other.
But there is probably not much point in devoting this much effort to understanding such an unclear “hypothesis”, unless @Giltil decides to flesh it out with some more specifics.
@Faizal Ali: But if within birds there is a common ancestor of, say, all pigeons, which is later than the “explosion” that produced birds, then that ancestor must mean that there is more than one “rocket” lineage in the tree.
Oh, I see. If I am understanding correctly, you interpreted @Giltil as saying each “explosion” would produce, in a single instance, every single species of bird (for example).
You may well be right. I guess I just have more respect for him than you do, in that I wouldn’t expect him to suggest something quite that foolish.
It seems to me that it’s one thing to believe, say, that the earth is 6,000 years old and that things were poofed into existence through magic means. It is, at least, a kind of a hypothesis (though it is often hedged in with safeguards against testing). As best I can tell, you have no hypothesis but the extremely vaguely-worded suggestion which you gave earlier, given in terms such that nobody (as the ensuing conversation shows) has any idea what you mean. Perhaps, while you’ve had the time to ask me this, you might have answered some of those questions.
It’s generally the case that even those who DO have some sort of creationist or quasi-creationist position to defend tend to defend it only by pointing to things that they imagine negate evolutionary biology. But in your case, it appears you have liberated yourself from the need to defend any position by believing, in effect, nothing at all which can be clearly and distinctly stated. At which point, why even bother trying to negate evolutionary theory? Facts must be in aid of SOME kind of theory in order to be of much use.
…and how, pray tell, does someone become an extreme saltationist WITHOUT looking at the fossil record? The mind boggles. I suppose that since the fossil record doesn’t really support the hypothesis, the answer is, as it so often is, that this is the wrong question. The better question is: “what’s the best way to become an extreme saltationist?” and the answer is: “try to know as little as possible about the fossil record.”
I think Bechly is sort of like a flat Earth astronomers, or young Earth geologists. There’s something else going on besides the science that is driving his beliefs. A version of Morton’s Demon.
The human psyche is a strange thing. The simple fact is some people have locked themselves, though often not intentionally, in some sort of intellectual cage.
As I said, the BEST way to become an extreme saltationist is to try to know as little as possible about the fossil record. There are other, worse ways; which of those accounts for Bechly is something you’d have to ask him.
A better question: Do you think 99.99% of professional paleontologists are ignorant of the fossil record and only Bechly, and maybe one or two others, actually understand the field? If so, how do you justify your belief?
How do you know that Muller didn’t say such a thing during his keynote at the conference New Trends in Evolutionary Biology at the Royal Society in London in November 2016? Were you there? It happens that Bechly was there and in the video below, starting at 5.37 min, he reports that Muller said what you say he didn’t say.
So which forms of “non-gradual transition” are seem in the fossil record? If Müller did make that claim surely it should appear in his paper? Where is it?
Come to that, is there any source for this claim other than Bechly who might be misremembering, projecting his interpretation onto Müller’s talk.
Well thank you for your concerns about whether I could also be suffering from confirmation bias. But I’m not the one of us who doesn’t check or verify claims or sources. You are. You are the one who defends any fringe, radical, or outsider, seemingly no matter what they say, simply because they are “on your team”.
Go look at the thread on RFK Jr’s vaccine claims again. You brought them up, you brought the quotes, and you have obviously never bothered to check any of them. And yet you repeat them here.
You are the one who runs away from threads. You are the one who stops answering questions, and ignores most of them. You are the one quoting material decades if not centuries old. You are the one repeating long-debunked quotemines and then ignores rebuttals.
You.
All your “authorities” are either not experts in the field at all, or are typically way out on the fringe and considered crazy by their peers in their field. It’s all well and good, as you always do when this topic comes up, to suggest that once in a while, someone who is an outsider might be right about something. Or that the person who points this out to you might also be suffering from confirmation bias.
But when pretty much all your “authorities” are outsiders in all of their respective fields—be that evolutionary biology, medicine, paleontology, population genetics, climatology etc.—I think it’s not my confirmation bias you should be concerned about.
I’ll quote Clarice Starling from Silence of the lambs: “You see a lot, Doctor. But are you strong enough to point that high-powered perception at yourself? What about it? Why don’t you - why don’t you look at yourself and write down what you see? Or maybe you’re afraid to.”
