The green man is a fake

Jeff Wilson · 18 Jan 2011, 00:18 · from 2011-January.txt.gz

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From: jwilson at io.com (Jeff Wilson)
Date: Mon, 17 Jan 2011 18:18:40 -0600
Subject: (urth) The green man is a fake
In-Reply-To: <SNT123-W20344D66F1500A75A367F0CFF40 at phx.gbl>
References: <SNT123-W20344D66F1500A75A367F0CFF40 at phx.gbl>
Message-ID: <4D34DC60.70909 at io.com>

On 1/17/2011 7:21 AM, Lee Berman wrote:
>
>
>> Jeff Wilson: They [teeth] function, but they have marginal impact on selection at best.
>> particular features don't have to be advantageous , only that the overall incremental
>> change is positive.
>
> This makes sense using an ideal version of natural selection. In practice, there seems to
> be a maintenance factor involved. Meaning that if an organism's structure is neutral in
> regard to natural selection it will tend to accumulate negative mutations just in the
> course of not being maintained. Thus cave fish lose their eyes to become
> non-functioning bumps of tissue; not because a working eye is selected against by pitch
> dark but because deforming mutations are not selected against and pile up over the generations.
> Perhaps the same for the human appendix, baby toe, etc. The green man's teeth should be
> deformed.

Sexual selection? Crap teeth aren't sexy.

-- 
Jeff Wilson - jwilson at io.com
Computational Intelligence Laboratory - Texas A&M Texarkana
< http://www.tamut.edu/CIL >

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