Thursday, January 17, 2008 | Reason : In the News | print version

How Evolution REALLY Works

cdk007

Thanks to Kevin Pluck for the link.

Reposted from:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SeTssvexa9s

Click here to see an interactive game version of this:
http://www.kevinpluck.net/evolution-versus-intelligence/

The world is full of misinformation.

Interesting how most of the Young Earth Creationists and people pushing Intelligent Design, clearly don't have an education in the biological sciences. Evolution is the product of Natural Selection AND Mutation. Either alone does nothing.

Evolution is the logical outcome of the world around us. Organisms that store their genetic information in DNA are guaranteed to have mutations. Mutation produce NEW variation. Reproducing organisms are guaranteed to compete for resources. Competition between variable organisms leads to natural selection, i.e. those organisms that possess variation that gives then an advantage will out compete those who don't. Organisms with deleterious variation will lose to all other organisms. In this way the ENVIRONMENT SELECTS the best organisms, which has the effect of passing beneficial mutations on to the next generation and removing deleterious ones. Over time natural selection will lead to a net shift in the genome of the population, i.e. evolution.

Yes, this really is evolution. Changes in allele frequency, changes in gene expression, changes in transcription factor binding efficiency, they are all evolution.

Logic predicts evolution, and observation confirms it. Evolution has been observed in the lab and in nature. Speciation (macroevolution) has been observed in the lab and in nature. Large changes in appearance has been observed in the lab and in nature. Beneficial mutations have been observed in the lab and in nature.

To deny evolution is to deny direct observation. It is as silly as denying that the sky is blue.

To download this video go to:
http://www.mediafire.com/?9lg2il2mqgw

To download the code for the simulation go to:
http://www.mediafire.com/?2lbzod2myiw

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1. Comment #112512 by VivaCriticalThinking on January 17, 2008 at 12:14 pm

Excellent! Thanks for putting this together.

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2. Comment #112514 by prettygoodformonkeys on January 17, 2008 at 12:15 pm

Nice try, Satan.

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3. Comment #112519 by jimbob on January 17, 2008 at 12:21 pm

As I watched this I couldn't help thinking about how creationism has "evolved" to survive the environmental pressures (education) on it!

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4. Comment #112533 by nickthelight on January 17, 2008 at 12:35 pm

Good presentation but who are you going to show it to? No child or, for that matter, anybody who doesn't understand binary or even the principal of digital will make any sense of it.

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5. Comment #112539 by gtcc on January 17, 2008 at 12:38 pm

I would have thought this news item would appear on RD website:
"Pope cancels trip to Rome university after protests"
SEE HERE:
http://www.usatoday.com/news/religion/2008-01-16-pope-visit_N.htm

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6. Comment #112545 by pdiff on January 17, 2008 at 12:44 pm

nickthelight: true, but there are other more obvious simulations out there. This is a favorite of mine by Karl Sims (and it's 14 years old to boot!).

http://web.genarts.com/karl/evolved-virtual-creatures.html

Pdiff

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7. Comment #112547 by rod-the-farmer on January 17, 2008 at 12:49 pm

There are a couple of typos in the lead paragraph. Who is responsible for correcting them ?

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8. Comment #112563 by Machinus on January 17, 2008 at 1:20 pm

That was a neat simulation but some of the rhetoric here is just wrong.

Mathematical truths are higher than scientific theories. We shouldn't be giving away free objections to those who spend all of their time looking for ways to obfuscate genuine scientific advancement for political purposes.

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9. Comment #112568 by Larry Moran on January 17, 2008 at 1:33 pm

The video says "Evolution is the product of Natural Selection AND Mutation. Either alone does nothing."

The emphasis here is in defining evolution in a way that excludes random genetic drift or any other mechanism of evolution. That's wrong, in my opinion, although Richard Dawkins would probably disagree and think that the video is just fine.

The irony is that the video begins with "The world is full of misinformation."

I discussed this unfortunate video a couple of months ago in "What Is Evolution?
[http://sandwalk.blogspot.com/2007/11/what-is-evolution.html]

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10. Comment #112578 by John Done on January 17, 2008 at 1:43 pm

I knew cdk007 would end up here one day. He has a whole collection of videos explaining these matters quite thouroughly.

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11. Comment #112597 by Gmork on January 17, 2008 at 2:15 pm

rod-the-farmer: "There are a couple of typos in the lead paragraph. Who is responsible for correcting them ?"

Those are mutations. :-)

You don't have to know binary to understand these examples (not that there's much to know about binary either). The point is to show the stability in the change of the patterns over time according to the change in environment, and any abstract pattern recognition unit (human being) would get that.

PS: One nation under Vlad!

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12. Comment #112606 by Steve Zara on January 17, 2008 at 2:28 pm

That was a neat simulation but some of the rhetoric here is just wrong.

Yeah, I agree. I can see things that Creationists would pick up, like the statement that "The Earth is finite", which could lead them to say that the video is wrong, as the Earth is literally not "full up" with any given species... sounds nuts, but given the Creationist tendency to wilfully misunderstand things.. words have to be used with great care.

I really like the idea of such a simulation, but this one didn't quite work for me. I would have preferred a system that was not cyclic, and perhaps where an organism was in an evolutionary "arms race" with its predator.

If I can't find a good web presentation along those lines, I may be tempted to write one myself.

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13. Comment #112613 by somersetsimon on January 17, 2008 at 2:34 pm

nickthelight: true, but there are other more obvious simulations out there. This is a favorite of mine by Karl Sims (and it's 14 years old to boot!).

http://web.genarts.com/karl/evolved-virtual-creatures.html

Pdiff

There's also the work of Jeffrey Ventrella. I met him at an Artificial Life conference in LA a few years back and he gave me a copy of his Darwin's Pond program. You can now download that from his website. It's great fun to watch. :-)

http://www.ventrella.com/Alife/alife.html

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14. Comment #112623 by pdiff on January 17, 2008 at 3:19 pm

somersetsimon: Very cool. Thanks for the link!

Pdiff

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15. Comment #112625 by BicycleRepairMan on January 17, 2008 at 3:26 pm

"The emphasis here is in defining evolution in a way that excludes random genetic drift or any other mechanism of evolution. "

Well, It seems to me this video, entirely on purpose excludes a whole lot of evolutionary biology because its trying to show how little it actually takes for natural selection to work, despite the fact that every factor is random. If you added in every factor in the equation, evolution would probably work even better, but it would take a lot more time and brains to explain it.

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16. Comment #112642 by JamieR on January 17, 2008 at 4:20 pm

*WETS PANTS* gosh that made little sense to me :S i understand how evolution works just this makes it confusing and this video don't work too good for explain to someone who knows very little

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17. Comment #112772 by rabbitpirate on January 18, 2008 at 4:21 am

I love CDKs videos. He has a number of great ones dealing with many aspects of evolution on youtube. The best thing about them is how they attract so many creationist who simply don't understand any of the concepts of evolution and will argue against any evidence presented to them.

It is also worth checking out Potholer54's excellent "Made Easy" series and the ExantDodo teams great "Critical Analysis" series.

http://www.youtube.com/profile?user=potholer54

http://www.youtube.com/profile?user=ExtantDodo

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18. Comment #112791 by bitbutter on January 18, 2008 at 5:06 am

This is an excellent vid. If you like it too, please star it up on youtube to make it more visible.

I'm going to plug my own online artificial selection experiment (firefox only) here since it seems relevant ;)

http://facemaker.redshiftmedia.com

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19. Comment #112953 by rustylix on January 18, 2008 at 10:27 am

Awesome video, I just increased my evolutionary knowledge exponentially today! Thank you.

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20. Comment #112965 by BaronOchs on January 18, 2008 at 10:43 am

Playing ride of the valkyries over and over isn't doing much for me . . .perhaps there's an ironic social darwinism reference in it??!

Ok suggestions for the perfect evolution soundtrack?

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21. Comment #113132 by HarryHUK on January 18, 2008 at 4:16 pm

Great progress for a bunch of apes

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22. Comment #113137 by HarryHUK on January 18, 2008 at 4:27 pm

rustylix,your avitar,what is the point you are trying to make!!

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23. Comment #113140 by tangerine_tree on January 18, 2008 at 4:34 pm

on a sort of related subject...

Sir David Attenborough was interviewed on Jonathan Ross tonight (BBC), basically promoting is latest series "In Cold Blood" (reptiles, obviously) and commented that his new project will be titled "Evolution".

Can't wait.

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24. Comment #113177 by Mitchell Gilks on January 18, 2008 at 7:02 pm

Prettygoodformonkeys, you just about make me choke to death on my sandwich. Thanks.

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25. Comment #113268 by GBile on January 19, 2008 at 7:00 am

First these scientists tell us we are just molecules and chemical processes and now they tell us we are only ones and zeros ?? How silly can they get ? Don't they know that Goddidit ?

Sorry, a little irony here. This video, 10 minutes for explaining the essence of evolution, is in my opinion only suitable for relative experts. So it will not work for almost all of the 'faithies'.

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26. Comment #113373 by the_ultimate_samurai on January 19, 2008 at 12:54 pm

i thought it was a great video myself, and no surprise someone made a reply to it where they totaly miss the point, they give that usual retarded (hmm...i shouldnt compare them to the mentaly challenged...thats an insult to the genuinely retarded) argument "that isnt evolution, evolution would be..." and there is always something dumb after that, in this case it was something like "those 8 bits turning into tomb raider" you just...you just wanna slap them...you know...like "wake the fuck up!" honestly...
i think the video was nice, esspecialy when he showed the environment changing and the average colour of the population changing to match.

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27. Comment #113388 by bluebird on January 19, 2008 at 1:26 pm

tangerine_tree, thanks for the reminder about Sir D.A.'s new show! Alas, us U.S. folk will probably have to wait for it to air later, or rent the DVD. Our family has enjoyed a lot of BBC productions lately.

http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_in_Cold_Blood

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28. Comment #113554 by Serdan on January 20, 2008 at 2:30 am

Cool. I've made something similar to this, except one of my objectives was to make it aesthetically pleasing.

http://www.serdan.eu/ncs.aspx

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29. Comment #113959 by PJG on January 21, 2008 at 4:50 am

While this is a great video, I have a feeling it will only "preach to the converted". It demands a basic level of scientific and mathematical understanding, to say nothing of reading ability/vocabulary, that may be beyond many.

Personally, I think the Potholer54 videos are more useful if you want really basic stuff, particularly these......

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R_RXX7pntr8
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7w57_P9DZJ4&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MCayG4IIOEQ

as they are simple enough to explain natural selection to a child (or even to a Creationist)..... OK, probably not to a creationist.... the videos aren't THAT simple!

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