Episode 104: 3rd Way Evolution vs the Critics

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Transcript

[00:00:00]  Blue: Hello out there. How well do the collection of assertions called third -way evolution stand up to criticism? Here in our second of at least three episodes on this, Bruce considers the criticisms of Dennis Noble and James Shapiro by YouTuber and evolutionary biologist Zach Hancock in his epic video on the subject. Perhaps the role of epigenetics is overstated. Lamarcus is not back and Neo Darwinism is not dead after all. We try to be the kind of podcast that explores compelling issues rather than promotes a specific point of view and we’re sure exploring this one. Hope someone out there enjoys listening to Bruce on this as much as I did.

[00:00:57]  Red: Welcome to theorem anything podcast. Hey, Peter. Hello,

[00:01:00]  Blue: Bruce.

[00:01:00]  Red: How you doing? Good. We’ve got another epic length episode today. That’s as we continue our discussion about evolution. And OK, so if it would be OK, I’d like to actually read the description of the summary of the last episode. So part one. So

[00:01:20]  Blue: OK, well, I just love to hear myself quoted to myself. That’s that’s great.

[00:01:25]  Red: So for those who don’t know, Peter usually writes the summaries like I get final say sometimes I’ll tweet them a little or something. Sometimes they’re kind of a mixture of the two of us. But more often than not, Peter does such a great job. I just leave it the way it is. So this is Peter’s summary for part one, which he named Neo Darwinism versus post Darwinism. This week, we discussed Neo Darwinism versus post Darwinism. The Neo Darwin Neo Darwinism, meaning a gene centric view of evolution, which is also called the great synthesis, since it unifies natural selection with genetic and paleo paleontology and perhaps even human psychology. Post Darwinism is a view that emphasizes factors outside random mutation, like epigenetics or the assertion that organisms and cells can alter their own geome in a beneficial way. By the way, that’s actually a really good summary of what we talked about in the last last episode, even though I don’t think most of these terms I even used. So like this is Peter interpreting accurately the vibe I was going for in the episode.

[00:02:27]  Blue: I’m trying my best one step behind you.

[00:02:30]  Red: And then he says, here Bruce specifically concentrates on the work of biologist James Shapiro’s critical look at Richard Dawkins Neo Darwinism. We consider, does it really make sense to see our bodies and minds as tools governed by our master’s DNA? Does post Darwinism, also called third way evolution, offer a meaningful alternative to both Neo Darwinism and the theism of intelligent design? Does this way of looking at biology say something about the very nature of reality and the laws of physics? OK, the reason why I’m reading that is because we’re going to get some challenge to a lot of what we said in the past episode. So today we’re going to cover Zach B. Hancock’s critique of Dennis Noble and James Shapiro. He concentrates mostly on Dennis Noble, but he has a whole section on James Shapiro also. This is from his YouTube video, which is called Dennis Noble is wrong about evolution. And by the way, it’s excellent. And I mentioned it. Did you get a chance to watch it, Peter?

[00:03:35]  Blue: I did not. I don’t think he sent it to me, but it’s really good.

[00:03:39]  Red: I think I just told you the title. OK,

[00:03:41]  Blue: OK. Yeah.

[00:03:42]  Red: So I don’t think I ever sent you a link. I think I sent you a title. Zach B. Hancock. Yeah.

[00:03:47]  Blue: OK, OK.

[00:03:48]  Red: So I’m going to cover it in quite a bit of detail, although I am for sure counter -reading Zach Hancock, OK? So but but I there’s so much he says that is so good and that I totally agree with. So I the way I’ve written this, I worry that people are going to think I’m being critical of Hancock and I am sort of. But like he really does a good job. And he he, in my opinion, is a lot of his critique of Dennis Noble in particular, but the third way in general is quite devastating. OK, so I want to go over his point of view, but we are counter -reading. And the reason why we went over Shapiro’s point of view first was so that we were in a position to counter -read, to really kind of look at, you know, we know that he’s got a very negative view of Dennis Noble in the third way. But what does he say they get right? And that’s what we’re interested in, if that makes any sense. OK. So in the previous episode, we went over James Shapiro’s arguments, that there is something wrong with, quote, neodarwinism or modern synthesis. He treats those two as interchangeable terms. Shapiro argued the following. So in summary, gradualism, he argued, he gets gradualism. He said it’s incorrect. Evolution often takes huge single generational steps. He gives the example of hybridization, new species formed within a single generation due to inner breeding and symbiogenesis formation of the first eukaryotes or cells with the nucleus happened in a single generation. And it was a huge jump in one generation. These are not controversial, by the way. Like

[00:05:22]  Red: it is well known and well accepted that these are exceptions to gradualism that played a huge role in the evolutionary process. So Gene Centric, he also argues that gene centricism is incorrect. Evolution relies on he claims natural genetic engineering or NGE that knows how to read and read and write DNA and uses it to store data, then utilizes sequences to move them around in the genome or even spread them horizontally, so not from like father to son, but instead from from parent to child, but instead from like like a virus. It spreads horizontally. It’s it’s leaps from your nose onto a virus and onto somebody else, right? One question I asked was, even if he’s right, would this really mean that neo Darwinism and modern synthesis was incorrect? For example, would neo Darwinists really see hybridization or, for that matter, symbiogenesis as somehow at odds with the current theory? And I argued most likely not. But I also pointed out that these counter examples did surprise me, like deeply surprised me when I started reading Shapiro, because they break the way evolution is taught in schools, even at like college level biology classes. So at a minimum, I feel Shapiro’s critique could be thought of as a fair critique of a certain simplified schoolroom version of neo Darwinism. This is going to play an important role in today’s discussion. So who is Zachby Hancock? We’re going to take a look at his video called Dennis Noble is wrong about evolution. Hancock is an evolutionary biologist. This is going to turn out to be important. What’s an evolutionary biologist? So it’s a biologist that studies biology from the point of view of evolution. Not all biologists do. OK, most don’t.

[00:07:15]  Red: If I could use maybe an analogy here, think about all physicists versus cosmologists who are trying to study what’s the actual nature of physics and like David Deutsch points out that very few physicists accept many worlds, but that almost all the cosmologists do because it’s their job to try to understand what is actually going on. And they’ve just got nowhere to go. We’re going to see something similar here that you have this group of people, biologists, and then you’ve got a smaller group, evolutionary biologists, who make it their job to understand biology in terms of evolution. OK, so they specifically study evolutionary biology and like most biologists and Hancock is uniquely positioned to critique Nobles and Shapiro’s views. His critique is not only of Dennis Noble, but also of Shapiro’s ideas, particularly of his idea of natural genetic engineering. So I feel his critique is quite devastating to much of the claims of the so -called third way approach to evolution, but it’s also surprising what they end up agreeing on. And in fact, in some ways, I found that more interesting than what they disagreed over. Before I get into that, though, I probably should give my own view of Dennis Noble. So before way back at episode twenty one, I had we had an episode where I went over Michael Levin’s work, who we’re going to cover in detail in the next episode. OK. And in that episode, I also covered an excellent paper that was written by Dennis Noble along with his brother Ray. I back then embarrassingly called him Denise Noble because I didn’t know who the heck he was. And he spells his name very funny. It’s not the normal way you would spell either Dennis or Denise.

[00:08:59]  Red: So I wasn’t quite sure if it was male or female. And the paper is called Was the watchmaker blind or was she one eyed? I still highly recommend this paper to anyone. It is a very, very good paper. Now, I’ve quoted this paper quite a bit about the immune system. Whenever I talk about the immune system, I’m taking it from this paper and how it uses a many form of evolution or natural selection to create knowledge about how to create the right recipe for an antibody to defeat a pathogen or bacteria. So having found this paper excellent, I decided to try buying one of Dennis’s books called The Music of Life, Biology Beyond Genes. So I was really excited because I had this positive view of Dennis Noble from this paper and I loved Michael Levin’s work. I thought this is it. I’m going to really be learning a lot about this non gene centric view of biology. I was just overwhelmingly disappointed with the book. So let me read a few parts of this book to show off how badly some of it comes crossed. So from page three, DNA mania is the delusion that the DNA’s code causes life in much the same way as a CD causes my experience in the Schubert Piano Trio. It’s like what does that even mean? We also need to page 16. We also need to recognize that much of what is stated about genes at the reductionist level comes close to circularity. Molecular success for a gene is in is reproducing itself is much as possible so that its frequency in the gene pool increases. So

[00:10:37]  Red: OK, yes, we tend to ignore such integrative, collaborative properties of a higher level network, which would apply to many genes simultaneously. And I’m like, huh, I don’t understand why that would matter. OK, so then he says on page 35, function is also dependent on the properties of water lipids and many other molecules that are not coded for in the genes. And I’m thinking, oh, my gosh, seriously, Dennis? And then he says, there are no genes for the properties of water for the fatty lipids that form cell membranes. And I’m like, OK, paint me red and call me a corpuscle. Like, I don’t even know what to make of a statement like that. It’s just it’s a meaningless statement. Right. And then he says, page 37, it relies time and again on Mother Nature’s ability to know how to make an omelette. I’m like, what does that even mean? I don’t know what that means. So this is starting to border on outright humorous. Of course, when we think of replicators and genes, we aren’t claiming the genes don’t rely on existing laws of physics or even existing knowledge elsewhere in the world to be able to replicate. So like, for example, clearly, alliance genes rely on the existence of the antelopes genes to survive.

[00:11:52]  Unknown: Right.

[00:11:53]  Red: So knowledge begets knowledge. A few more examples. In order to pursue the book, the book analogy, he has this analogy of genes as a book for genes, we have to at least to ask what it could be said to be said. The book is about. So is it about life? I’m like, what the frick? I don’t understand why he’s asking this. Page 38 was what that was. Page 105. Now we sometimes say things like this gene does such and such, but this sort of statement tends to be misleading. A gene will do one thing in one set of circumstances and another if circumstances change. So should I not say cars are used to drive to work because they are also used to drive to school? Like, I don’t understand what the point is here, right? Page 105. Page 105 also, indeed, it might be more helpful to avoid saying that genes do anything at all. It is more that genes are used. I’m thinking, what the heck? Like, I don’t. They seem so silly, right? Like he’s making points and it’s it’s it almost sounds just outright humorous. What are you saying? OK, so sure, that’s not less confusing to say genes are. Why would we want to say genes are it’s more that genes are used? How can that be less confusing or less specific or more helpful? I don’t get it. Like, what’s what’s his point here that he’s trying to make? So I came away from the book feeling more confused than ever about the content or lack thereof of his theory. So I see Shapiro and this is why I did Shapiro instead of Dennis Noble as our first episode as making far more specific and narrow claims than Noble.

[00:13:38]  Red: Shapiro is saying that neo Darwinism, neo Darwinian evolution is a sort of standard story of evolution that really only takes one kind of gene transfer into consideration, although admittedly an important version of it. And that is vertical transfer of genes from parent to child. And then gradual mutation through mutation of a single base pair. But even a hardcore neo Darwinist like Darwin will admit that this isn’t the whole story, sorry, like Dawkins, I mean, it meant. Dawkins, for example, points out that neo Darwinian Darwinism might include something like a cell learning to replicate outside of DNA transfer via sex cells and thus might become a path pathogen. He actually specifically talks about that in the book Selfish Gene. But this exception case just still isn’t the full story. DNA is just clever than this. And and I particularly like the term natural genetic evolution as a way of describing what is missing from the way we normally think about by a biological evolution. Though note that standard neo Darwinists are not deny or some new Darwinists are denying the exist are not denying the existence of things like jumping genes to move around inside the chromosomes. OK, so we talked about that in the last episode. So there is kind of this weird space where it’s a little unclear what’s being disagreed upon. OK, this is not an uncommon thing with passionate disagreements. So Shapiro’s main concern is how neo Darwinian evolution is understood in general, not necessarily a claim that every single evolutionary scientist has it wrong.

[00:15:17]  Red: So, for example, from page X V of his book, despite massive genomic evidence to the contrary, the philosophy of evolution by fully random processes, the neo Darwinian modern synthesis still reigns supreme in the mind in the public mind in the classroom and in the minds of many scientists and clinicians as well. Now, you know, that statement could be true even if there’s nothing particularly wrong with the theory. It could just be that people have imbibed it wrongly. OK. And I can you can read Shapiro as maybe making that claim instead, which would be a softer claim. OK, but is that correct? Or is this just Shapiro imagining something that isn’t there? That’s really the question I want to ask. OK. Now, with this, we’re going to start talking about Hancock’s summary of his critique of the third way. He summarizes them as having four points. The first one is inheritance of acquired characteristics, i.e. Lamarckian inheritance. So he calls this traits acquired during your lifetime. Can we passed on to your offspring and that this process drives adapted evolution? Number two was organisms purposefully shape their own evolution. He explains this as Hancock when I say he organisms are purposeful agents of their own evolution, not the products of random mutation and natural selection. Number three, natural genetic engineering. Organisms purposefully modify their own genome to respond to the world around them. And number four, that’s the third way is opposed to gene centricism. We are not products of our genes and therefore any theory of evolution that is gene centered is faulty. So those are the four points that Hancock is one by one in the video going to go through and he’s going to critique each of those four points.

[00:17:05]  Red: So keep that in mind. OK. So what’s Hancock’s overall position in response to a list of supposed missing mechanisms? So Shapiro has like this diagram saying here’s these missing mechanisms from evolution that biologists are not accepting. Hancock at minute three, three minutes and twenty six seconds says none of the mechanisms listed in the wider diagram are missing from contemporary evolutionary theory. And in fact, most of them were known before or before the discovery of DNA at minute five fifty one. He says, I have mostly ignored Noble and his colleagues as just contrary and cranks. And at minute seven, he says evolutionary theory is an extremely robust and mature science to claim that it is dead or in need of radical revision is an extraordinary claim. I think that summarizes Hancock’s overall view. And we know right off the bat, he has a negative view of Noble and company, Noble and Shapiro. And in his opinion, there’s nothing really wrong with neo Darwinian evolution.

[00:18:12]  Blue: So now, is this an argument about sort of more emphasis about or or are these like, I mean, is are the things or the claims that that Shapiro and Noble are making? I mean, a lot of them are kind of widely accepted. That’s right. Right. About about about epigenetics and and some of the other other kinds of things you mentioned. Is that right? That is correct.

[00:18:42]  Red: So. OK. So like you might it’s a little difficult to point to what the disagreement is, right?

[00:18:47]  Blue: Yeah.

[00:18:48]  Red: And I think it’s safe to say that very few modern science biologists would consider the ability of the genes to modify themselves. They won’t deny genes can modify themselves. The immune system can modify itself for sure, right? But you’re not going to see them thinking that that’s some central missing mechanism that is important to understanding how evolution works. They’re just not going to see it that way, right?

[00:19:18]  Blue: OK.

[00:19:19]  Red: And so I think you’re right. One of the things we want to ask is, is this just the difference in emphasis? Like, are they actually disagreeing? Are they disagreeing over the overall emphasis? Is there a specific disagreement? Is it a different disagreement over definitions? Do they maybe define things differently? OK. And this is what we really want to pay attention to throughout the the critique. OK. So it’s interesting that Shapiro, sorry. Hancock talks about the original meaning of the term neo Darwinism and its history as to what it meant. OK. So at seven fifty, he says, language changes through time. Words don’t have fixed meanings, and there’s really nothing to be gained by wading through the swamp of semantic debate. Then he says, critics of the modern synthesis often call the modern synthesis neo Darwinism, a trend that goes back to Conrad Waddington. And in the 1950s, the paleontologist Stephen J. Gold did the same did the same thing. And ultimately, many of the supporters, the modern synthesis, including yours truly, Hancock says, have adopted the mantle and used the words interchangeably. OK. So it’s interesting. He’s admitting that modernly neo Darwinism is just a synonym for modern synthesis and vice versa. But he’s going to say that’s not how it got started. That happened later. OK. So neo Darwinism isn’t originally the same as modern synthesis and, in fact, predates the modern synthesis. But over time, the two terms merged to mean the same thing. And then Hancock says, but for this discussion, it is helpful to distinguish them at least historically because neo Darwinism preceded the modern synthesis by over 50 years. So just a quick history here. Fleming Fleming Jenkins,

[00:21:11]  Red: he did he did some studies of a population of wolves with one wolf having a favorable trait. And he talked about how it would have to mate with wolves without the trait and it would dilute it over time. And the trait through the mutation would get washed out. OK. So at nine forty four, Hancock says, this observation by Jenkins startled Darwin so much that he removed the example from later editions of origin of the species. Darwin had a big inheritance problem if he couldn’t come up with a theory of inheritance that could overcome the effects of blending. Natural selection might be dead. So historically, this was kind of a big deal. It was a challenge because it went against Darwin’s theory and, in fact, falsified Darwin’s theory. So Darwin came up with a theory of pan genesis that the cells of the body, the soma, produce gemual gemuals that carry information from the soma, the body to the germ cells, allowing information from the body learned from the environment to be inherited. Now, wait, isn’t that inheritance of acquired characteristics and therefore isn’t that lamarquism? According to Hancock, yes, it is. Darwin’s original theory wasn’t natural selection. It was a mixture of natural selection and lamarquism, according to Hancock. OK. Is that is

[00:22:37]  Blue: that controversial, though? Because I’ve heard it’s asserted that Darwin was believed in lamarquism, essentially, right? So he. Yes. He said

[00:22:49]  Red: one of the things I’m going to ask throughout this episode is what is lamarquism? And it turns out it’s not obvious. OK, but Darwin, whether than ask the question, was Darwin a Lamarck was Darwin lamarquist, we might want to say, did Darwin believe that there were gemuals that were in the body that through the environment, the body would adapt and it would carry information into the certain. These gemuals would carry information into the the germ cells, the sex cells, and then allow the acquired characteristics in the lifetime of an animal to be inherited by their offspring. OK, yes, Darwin absolutely believed that that was part of his theory. OK, now, is that lamarquism? That sounds like lamarquism to me, like that sounds exactly with what what I thought lamarquism was. OK, and Hancock seems to be agreeing with that. He seems to be saying, yes, Darwin’s original theory was a mixture of natural selection and lamarquism. So according to Hancock, Darwinism included lamarquism as a partial component. Now, there was a number of experiments that killed Darwin’s theory of pan genesis. So Francis Galton’s experiment of swapping blood in rabbits to see if the inherited traits of the offspring changed. So he theorized that the gemuals carried in the blood. It was the only thing that made sense to him. He would swap blood of rabbits and then he would see if the acquired characteristics would change based on the blood changing. And of course, nothing happens, right? So Weissman of the Weissman barrier. He did he did experiments where only to show that only the germ cells carry information to inheritance.

[00:24:30]  Red: What he did is he cut off the tails of mice and then he would see if that change in the environment would change. What was inherited? And of course, it did nothing, right? Cutting off the tail of a mouse does not change the length of the tail of the offspring of that mouse. So at 1420, Hancock says the term neo -Darwinism was coined by George Ramanus to serve as a distinction between Darwin’s concept of natural selection, which included this Lamarckian concept and that favored by Weissman, which did not include it. Yes, that’s right. According to Hancock, Darwinism, quote unquote, is a theory that blends inheritance due to the environment, Lamarckism and the germline, whereas neo -Darwinism is just inheritance of the germline. This is not what I thought neo -Darwinism referred to. And so that was a big eye opener for me to realize this history of the term neo -Darwinism and to realize that it meant something totally different than what I thought it did. For that matter, I didn’t actually know that Darwin was a Lamarckist, right, or a form of Lamarckist. OK, I mean,

[00:25:38]  Blue: to be fair, he didn’t know anything about genes.

[00:25:41]  Red: That’s correct.

[00:25:42]  Blue: And although interestingly, I just, you know, I read that that Tom Wolf book about Darwin and Chomsky. And he mentions that that Darwin had Mendel’s paper that talks about dominant and recessive traits and all this. But it was he was in his possession, but he it was the letter was unopened. He’d never read it. Oh,

[00:26:13]  Red: wow, wow, wow, wow. That’s amazing.

[00:26:16]  Blue: Yeah.

[00:26:17]  Red: All right. There were later experiments, according to Hancock, that showed environmental pressure played no role in acquiring new characteristics. So Wilhelm Johansson did self -vertilizing beans. He showed that when there is no underlying genetic variation, the phenome would regress to the mean. So he had this way of like allowing the beans to clone themselves so there couldn’t be any genetic variation. And so they would all eventually regress to the mean. OK, so this shows environmental pressure did not change the heritable traits on its own. OK, by the way, the term from machine learning, linear regression, actually comes from this idea of regression to the mean that was done in studies like this, believe it or not. I don’t think they don’t seem related anymore at this point, but that was actually where the idea of linear regression came from was this idea that you could measure the regression to the mean using a line. So so the. And then there was the Luria -Delbruck fluctuation test and later experiments by the Letterbergs, which tested if resistance came due to exposure, or in other words, it was Lamarckian, or due to preexisting genetic variations. So they had a way to make a copy of a group of bacteria so they could take snapshots of colonies and then determined by experiment. If the genetic variation, let’s say, resistance to an antibiotic came first or in response to environmental pressure. So in other words, you could because you can make snapshots, checkpoints, right? You can check to see if a group that becomes resistant to an antibody, whether that resistance already existed prior to the introduction of the antibody or if the antibody was introduced first before the adaption took place.

[00:28:04]  Red: And what they found is that the mutation always happened first before the antibody was ever introduced to it. OK, so they found genetic variation always came first. Now, these experiments showed inheritance is only via genetic variation, not via environmental variation. So what are epigenetics then? So Noble appeals to epigenetics as overturning the Weissman barrier and a return to Lamarckism. OK, Hancock points out that epigenetics has no clear cut meaning and has met different things in different circumstances. I didn’t know that either, by the way. So canalization from Conrad Howe Waddington is the first time we ever hear of epigenetics is he invented the term. I think is the idea that genetic variations tend to not change phenotype too much, that there are compensating factors. So at 24 08 Hancock says, despite many interacting genes and variable environment, environments, development, development, environments, development, funnels, organisms into the same phenotype in effect, developmental pathways are extremely robust to perturbations from both the environment and genetic mutation. OK, let me explain that in plain English, because it’s not the easiest sentence to understand. The idea here is that you tend to learn about a mutation to a base pair. That’s the gene. This is the way they teach it in school and the kind of a stupefied, simplified version that they teach to teach to teach you in school. And then that’s going to change your eyes from brown to blue or something like that. Right.

[00:29:43]  Red: So what he’s actually trying to explain here is that it just isn’t like that, that when you get a mutated gene that the overall effect of the genes against each other is that the phenotype usually doesn’t change at all, even though the genetics have changed and that it actually takes multiple perturbations before the phenotype will actually change in most cases. OK, this idea. So this led Waddington to Waddington to suggest selection acts as a gene regulatory network rather than direct genes held in DNA. Note that this is one of the objections I quoted Shapiro as raising in the past episode. He tried to explain it in terms of the body’s ability to checkpoint and error correct genetic damage or other issues. This is one kind of epigenetics where environment shifts phenotype with ships genes without changing the phenotype. OK, and then once that happens or it could ship phenotype without changing the genotype, similar to phenotypic plasticity, the environments different. It’s the same genes, but because the environment’s different, you get a different phenotype. OK, now when that happens, that means that mutations to the genes will then shift the underlying genes that create that phenotype to match so that becomes the new phenotype genetically in the normal environment. OK, this is what Waddington meant by epigenetics. It has nothing to do with with inheritance of acquired traits. OK. Now, however, Waddington’s understanding of epigenetics just isn’t normally how we think of the term today. We would normally understand epigenetics more like the next two definitions. So Robin Holiday defined epigenetics as nuclear inheritance, not based on differences in DNA sequence.

[00:31:31]  Red: And later, Wu and Morris called it the study of changes in gene function that are might occur, might talk, talk, Cley and me, I could Cley heritable and that do not entail a change in DNA sequence. OK, so that’s what really epigenetics has come to me. It’s some sort of inheritance that’s got nothing to do with the genes in the sex cells, the DNA in the sex cells. So at thirty two forty two, Hancock says this leads us to a key question about the basic role of epigenetics has played in the development of evolutionary theory. To understand this, we need to remember that evolution, while intimately connected with heredity, is a theory about the forces of change of population over generations. This can technically occur in both Mendelian and non -Mendelian systems of heredity, and there exists a breadth of mathematical tools at our disposal for evaluating each. So Hancock’s key argument is going to be that epigenetics that is to say inheritance, not via genes, does not violate neo -Darwinian evolution. Now, this statement may or may not surprise you. It definitely surprised me because I had in my mind that neo -Darwinian evolution was specifically a gene -centric view of evolution, selfish gene, right? And here we have Hancock saying, actually, the correct understanding of neo -Darwinian evolution does not care if we’re talking about genetic or non -genetic inheritance. Now, let’s talk now about the question of what does it mean to be a Lamarckian? Because you kind of asked about that, was Darwin a Lamarckian? So what does it mean to be a Lamarckian evolution?

[00:33:22]  Red: Now, we all know the story of an imaginary giraffe that stretches its neck to eat leaves in a tree and then passes a slightly longer neck onto its offspring, effectively allowing the giraffe to breed traits purposefully. This is the prototypical example of Lamarckian evolution and most of us get our understanding of a Lamarckian evolution from this prototypical example. Now, here’s the thing. It can be conceptualized in several different ways. For example, Peter may be trying to answer this question. It’s okay if you don’t know the answer. Just think about it a little bit. Is dog breeding Lamarckian evolution? After all, it is directed and purposeful evolution, right?

[00:34:05]  Blue: Fair enough. I’m not hung up on a word. Would you think of Lamarckian evolution?

[00:34:16]  Red: Is dog breeding as a Lamarckian evolution?

[00:34:20]  Blue: I don’t think most people would make that claim.

[00:34:25]  Red: Okay, well, why not? Didn’t we just talk about this purposeful evolution of this giraffe that stretches its neck and then it directs its offspring? Isn’t that exactly what we’re doing? With dog breeding?

[00:34:39]  Blue: Yeah, but then the purpose comes from the human intervention, right?

[00:34:45]  Red: Okay, so you have some questions about whether it should be considered Lamarckian evolution if the purpose comes from the human. Is that correct? So what if I gave you an example of where the animal does it on their own? Does the breeding selection on their own, just like dog breeding? Would you then change your mind and decided that that would be Lamarckian evolution? Maybe, but I’m curious.

[00:35:12]  Blue: I’m curious what you would say.

[00:35:13]  Red: So Popper argued that the peacocks, beautifully attractive but impractical tail, makes little sense from a strict Darwinian natural selection standpoint.

[00:35:22]  Unknown: I don’t have a citation there, but there’s like a specific paper where he talks about this. I have a copy of it, but I don’t know if there’s a link available on the web, so I don’t even know if I can link to it.

[00:35:35]  Red: So instead, he felt that this was an example of sexual selection, i.e. the female peacocks found the tail attractive and selected their mates based on that despite the disadvantages. Now, Richard Dawkins in The Selfish Gene tried to explain this away in the form of showing off health and even he admitted it sounded a bit far -fetched. Okay, so this is, so is this a case of Lamarckian evolution because it is a purposeful evolution similar to the dog breeding, but in this case the breeding is done by the females of the species. The purpose is not coming from a human, it’s coming from the species, from the females of the species based on what they find attractive.

[00:36:17]  Blue: That’s a question?

[00:36:18]  Red: Yeah, that’s a question. Is this now a Lamarckian evolution?

[00:36:23]  Blue: Well, you know, I’m not, like Popper said, I’m not hung up on words. I guess I don’t have a specific kind of, I haven’t reflected enough on what is and what is not Lamarckian evolution. But you know that Popper had a very unique take on Darwinism that I’ve been meaning to look into more. You know, after reading that book I mentioned earlier about Tom Wolf where he was critical of Darwinism in a really interesting way, basically he said that, I can cut this out if you want, but he said that it doesn’t really make any sense to say that humans evolved from apes because we’re distinct in nature, we’re so different in nature due to our language and rational thought that it’s essentially an irrelevant point that we came from apes. And then once I read that book other books started coming up in my recommended books list and one of them was all these people critiquing Darwin and there was a whole chapter on Popper, I guess, Popper’s critique of Darwin. I’m kind of curious how it’s what it said now.

[00:37:49]  Red: So that paper that I’m quoting paraphrasing, it’s the one where Popper famously says that he does now accept that natural selection is a scientifically testable theory. I’m going to cover that in a future podcast because everybody points to that paper and says Popper changed his mind and said that natural selection was a scientifically testable theory. I’m going to argue that even though he vibe -wise says that, content -wise he says something like the opposite of that in that paper.

[00:38:20]  Blue: At one point he said it was a metaphysical research program. Yes, and he

[00:38:25]  Red: continues to make that claim even in this paper where he supposedly changes his mind, he actually doesn’t change his mind. So we’re going to cover that in a future podcast.

[00:38:36]  Blue: But the whole idea of just this idea, so I tried to get you to buy off on if the purpose came from the animal, would you accept it as Lamarckian?

[00:38:45]  Red: And then I gave you an example of where the purpose did come from the animal, right?

[00:38:51]  Blue: And

[00:38:51]  Red: you’re still not sure you buy it as Lamarckian. And you said, I’m not quite sure where the cut -off is. Let me suggest nobody’s really sure where the cut -off

[00:39:00]  Blue: is, right? Fair enough.

[00:39:02]  Red: Lamarckianism is a very squishy idea that has no clear cut -off.

[00:39:07]  Blue: It

[00:39:08]  Red: may be peacocks are Lamarckian, maybe they’re not. Probably most people would not consider them Lamarckian, but I don’t think most people could explain why they don’t consider it Lamarckian. So scientists aren’t stupid. We’re going to see that Hancock is able to define Lamarckian in an interesting way that has a clear cut cut -off. But it probably isn’t what you thought Lamarckianism was. And this is why I’m making a big deal out of this. So if the main thing you take away from Lamarckian evolution is that it’s purposeful rather than random. These are examples of Lamarckian evolution.

[00:39:44]  Blue: But

[00:39:45]  Red: it’s just as easy to argue that dog breeding is not Lamarckian in that dogs do not pass along acquired characteristics within their lifetime to their kin. The dog’s variations, this would be true for the peacocks too, due to mutation still happens irrespective of the selection environment, in this case humans or the female peacocks. So then what about epigenetics? Aren’t epigenetics an inheritance of acquired characteristics in the lifetime of an animal? And are epigenetics Lamarckian? Okay, so notice how we can conceptualize Lamarckian in multiple ways. And depending on which way you conceptualize it determines how you’re going to answer. And that there are, even than this, more ways to conceptualize it. Note that epigenetics are not in doubt. We know epigenetics exist, that there are inherited traits that are non -genetic. And that we still, in general, biologists would never consider them Lamarckian, even though that is how most people would understand Lamarckian evolution, okay?

[00:40:46]  Blue: It’s kind of a dirty word in a way, they just want it.

[00:40:48]  Red: Yes, they just don’t like the word, right? Okay, so if acquired characteristics in the lifetime of an animal is what defines Lamarckianism. Lamarckianism, Lamarckism, I don’t know which word it is. And how about human memes? Deutsch is quick to point out that unlike biological evolution, human memes evolve for specific conscious goals and purposes. And they are much faster evolutionarily speaking, precisely because we can develop them and pass them along within our own lifetime, and even horizontally, not merely parent -to -child, but like I can pass it over to you. Does that mean that memetic evolution is Lamarckian? Think about that for a second.

[00:41:31]  Blue: Well, you know, I’ve heard it alleged, I don’t know if it was by Deutsch or someone else, that the meme has sort of supplanted evolution. And that’s really where humans are evolving. Is it the level of the meme and not the gene? Which I mean, I think that makes a lot of sense in a way. Does that mean

[00:42:00]  Red: that we’re Lamarckian?

[00:42:01]  Blue: Yeah, well, I don’t know. Again, it’s a word. It wouldn’t be how you would normally think of what Lamarckian evolution is, but I mean, I don’t have a problem with it.

[00:42:16]  Red: All right, so let’s say we answer, because most people, I agree, most people would say memes are not Lamarckian.

[00:42:22]  Blue: Probably

[00:42:23]  Red: have given little thought as to why it is or isn’t Lamarckian. But if not, that apparently even inheriting acquired characteristics within the lifetime of an animal is an insufficient criterion for counting as Lamarckian. So now the book The Mocking Memes by Evan Louis Sheehan, clearly a pen name meant to sound like evolution, offers a different way to understand Lamarckianism. So he says concerning genes, there is a unidirectional arrow of causation pointing from gene to individuals, from the seed to its phenotype. Note that this is a form of the central dogma of molecular biology, where information passes from the gene to the protein but never in reverse. So on page 72, he says, Sheehan says, a system is said to be Lamarckian only if it allows reverse engineering from the phenotype back to the seed. This sounds sort of reasonable to me, okay? But Sheehan quickly points out that we can and do reverse engineer memes just like this. You see an idea, in fact that’s kind of the whole point of a meme is that you see somebody doing something and then you’re able to get them, somebody else to do it as well because they’re able to reverse engineer it. He says the page 73, the meme equivalent to phenotypes can often be easily reverse engineer to reveal the pattern of how they were produced. So based on this, Sheehan pronounces memes to be Lamarckian evolution and uses that as explanation for why they evolve so much faster than genetic evolution. Because that was one of the ideas, was that Lamarckian evolution because you can acquire characteristics in your lifetime, you can pass it to your offspring, that it would speed evolution up, it would make it more purpose driven, okay? So

[00:44:12]  Red: according to Sheehan, memes are Lamarckian and he’s actually got a criteria based on whether you can reverse engineer or not, which is equivalent to the central dogma of molecular biology. So it’s got roots in deep theory, okay? And based on that, he’s defined Lamarckian in such a way that genes aren’t and memes are, all right? Now let’s compare this with how Deutsch conceptualizes Lamarckism in terms of the spontaneous generation of knowledge, which by definition is impossible so can’t exist. So this is from beginning of infinity, page 88. He argues that, quote, the fundamental error being made by Lamarck has the same logic as inductivism. Both assume that new knowledge, adaptions and scientific theories respectively is somehow already present in experience or can be derived mechanically from experience. But the truth is always that knowledge must be first conjectured and then tested. That is what Darwin’s theory says. First, random mutations happen. They do not take account of what problem is being solved. Then natural selection discards the variant genes that are less good at causing themselves to be present again in future generations. This is on page 89. But suppose Darwin’s pangenesis had been correct. What if a man that worked out did pass acquired characteristics onto his children via his blood cells containing gemmules? This supposedly Lamarckian evolution that Hancock does not mind calling Lamarckian, would it really be knowledge being spontaneously generated? Couldn’t we, like memes, claim that the body contained a learning algorithm that via a variation selection of its own created the knowledge and then passed it along? In fact, isn’t that exactly what acquired characteristics are? If I go work out, my body has the knowledge and it knows, okay, we need to try increasing the amount of muscle mass.

[00:46:15]  Red: It has its own little learning algorithm that it does and it acquires this new characteristic. Now, at this point you’d say, yes, but it knows how to do that because of the genes, but now you’re taking the gene -centric view and you don’t have to. What if it had been one extra step and the genes had created a way that that acquired characteristic could then be passed on? There wouldn’t be a spontaneous generation of knowledge in this case. Sure, we could credit the genes with creating the knowledge when what we really mean is that it created the learning algorithm that created a lot of knowledge. Okay, but there would be no claim of spontaneous generation of knowledge in Darwin’s admittedly now defunct theory. So it wasn’t obvious back in Darwin’s day or even today that Lamarckism can be ruled out as spontaneous creation of knowledge in part because the theory is quite squishy. It means different things in different circumstances. So key point here. So it turns out it’s actually pretty difficult to even agree upon what Lamarckian evolution even is. It’s a vague concept that has several important ideas to it that include purposefulness, inheriting acquired characteristics, the central dogma of molecular biology, the arrow, the direction arrow of information, and spontaneous generation of knowledge. You can easily claim something is or is not Lamarckian by just choosing a different defining criterion. Herein lies my biggest issue with Dennis Noble. He throws around sayings like Lamarckism is back, but it’s often unclear what he means. That is to say his theories and his definitions are squishy, which might be another term for easy to vary or ad hoc.

[00:47:59]  Red: Dennis might be saying something as innocuous as animals sometimes pass traits along via epigenetics instead of genetics, a claim that is truly accepted as true by everyone. And in fact, I’ll give you a quote here a little later on, but that is what he’s actually saying. Or he might be claiming spontaneous generation of knowledge, a claim presumably no one, not even Noble would make because it’s obviously impossible. Or he might be saying something else, but what? So Hancock goes to the literature to try to define what Lamarckism is. He wants to explain how an evolutionary biologist like himself would understand Lamarckism in a more technical fashion. So he wants a definitional Lamarckism that is distinct from just regular plasticity and distinct from natural selection. Now plasticity is the idea that a gene will manifest differently depending on the environment, that it has the knowledge to manifest one way in one environment in a different way in a different environment. No one doubts the reality of plasticity. This makes sense because genes could merely contain the knowledge of how to manifest differently depending on the environment because that would help the survival of the organism. Moreover, Hancock accepts that things like epigenetics do exist, but he sees them merely as a new form of mutation. So, quote, this is around minute 34. Natural selection can shape gene regulatory networks such that they can themselves be responsive. Quote, if this is the case, then we’re dealing with plasticity, not Lamarckian evolution, i.e. evolution can wire into gene regulatory networks the knowledge of how to respond to different environments.

[00:49:37]  Red: If epigenetics creates a new trait acquired in the lifetime of the animal and passes it along to the offspring and then the new trait survives via regular selection, then to Hancock, this should be understood to still be regular neo -Darwinian theory. Okay, thus Hancock sees Lamarckism as requiring something more than merely acquiring new traits, but as inductions of traits that are themselves adaptive. So Hancock explains his point more technically using the price equations. This is going to become a big deal from this point forward. I had never heard of the price equations prior to watching this video, by the way. So they are representations of any kind of biological system. The price equations makes no assumptions about the specific mode of inheritance. It could be, say, cultural, according to Hancock. Similar to substrate independence, we might say. Hancock points out that originally evolution was about any sort of heritable material and only later was narrowed specifically to DNA. At 4657, he says, thus non -genetic inheritance is not a forgotten mechanism of evolution. And Hancock argues it is already incorporated into the theory. At 4831, he says, nothing we’ve discussed thus far is outside the modern synthesis or at least outside of contemporary evolutionary theory. So Hancock’s point is that the price equations define what we technically mean by natural selection. At 4838, he says, indeed, in the version of the price equations we just derived, adaption occurs solely through natural selection and hence it still rejects a Lamarckian mode of evolution. All the various proposals for Lamarckian evolution, whether we’re talking about dogs, peacocks, or epigenetics, all follow the price equations because they involve mutations or new variants, in other words, and then a survival of the fittest of best variants.

[00:51:47]  Red: Thus Hancock considers them natural selection, not Lamarckian evolution. So he rejects all those examples as being Lamarckian because of the way he’s choosing to define Lamarckian evolution. So in the sources of adaptive variation by Charles Worth at all, he defines how we tell if something was Lamarckian. So this is the definition that Hancock’s going with. A claim of Lamarckian evolution, according to Charles Worth, needs to establish three things. One, a given environmental treatment tends systematically to induce heritable adaptive epilelic variants, that is epigenetic variants. Two, natural selection is not involved in the spread of such variants through populations. Three, the variants in question must be stably transmitted for many generations in the absence of the treatment of the environment. Okay, so once the new variant exists, if you take that environment away, it continues to spread as its own variant. So put in plain English, it only counts as Lamarckian. If the environment produces epigenetic variations, not merely as a source of variation that is then selected via normal means, and then must be transmitted for generations afterwards, even without the environment that produced it. So at 5046, Hancock says, in the sources of adaptive variation, if the environment induces a genetic change that is adaptive, but it’s regular selection that causes it to spread, then all we’ve done is recreate the scenario modeled by the price equations. The marking evolution supposes that environmental induction is itself a cause of adaption, not merely an extra source of variation for Darwinian selection to act upon. At 5518, he says studies found very weak selective effects on epigenetic mutations. Johannes et al. found epigenetic transmission across eight generations. By the way, that’s a lot more than I would have guessed. Okay, like by far.

[00:53:58]  Red: And then he says for mammals are more like three generations. Even that’s more than I would have guessed. Okay, so 5908, he says thus the present evidence for transgenerational epigenetic inheritance, i.e. non -genetic inheritance is mixed, he says. It appears that plants, it might be an important source of variation since the Weisman barrier is weak or non -existent in plants. Given that their germ cells emerge directly from their somatic or body cells. Let me just say, first of all, let me say that that was a really surprising conclusion that he found. For me, probably not for any evolutionary biologist, but he’s basically admitting that at least in plants, epigenetics plays a really big role. And in animals, not so much, but more than I would have expected. And then he says, so let me also say that I doubt that this is how Dennis Noble defines Lamarckism. I doubt even Lamarck would have understood his own theory this way. So I think Noble has a squishier version of Lamarckism in mind. In the music of life, Noble says Lamarckism, this is a quote from page 92. Lamarckism, the inheritance of acquired characteristics is widely and wrongly thought to be the antithesis of Darwinism. So right there, he’s defining Lamarckism as the inheritance of acquired characteristics, which Hancock is admitting exists. Okay? So note that Noble merely equates Lamarckism to inheritance of acquired characteristics through epigenetics. And Hancock’s agreeing that that actually does happen. It’s not a huge influence for animals, but it takes place. This is surely what I thought Lamarckism meant prior to watching Hancock’s video. Also note that Noble is specifically claiming that Lamarckism is compatible with Darwin’s original theory. And recall that Hancock has already admitted that this is correct.

[00:56:01]  Red: Recall Neo -Darwinism, according to Hancock, was a new version of Darwinism that dropped the Lamarckian elements like Pangenesis. Still, I like this more rigorous definition of Lamarckism that Hancock is offering, even though it isn’t what I think Noble has in mind. I don’t think it’s what Lamarck had in mind. And the reason why I like it is because it forces Lamarckism out of the squishy zone so that it can finally be criticized. And this is something that I’ve made a big deal on this podcast out of, that the choice to make you theories not squishy so that they can be criticized is a choice. You can always make your theory immune to criticism by making it just kind of vague and squishy. Okay, I called that vague manning your theories. So Noble would probably say, oh, I’m being straw manned here. But if Lamarckism merely means any form of acquired characteristics, then the existence of any epigenetics, even if they wash out after three generations, would count as Lamarckism. And under that specific definition, Noble would be correct that Lamarckism is back. But epigenetics has been accepted by neo Darwinists for a very long time, 80 years, according to Hancock. So this isn’t a very radical claim on its own. And indeed, human memes are even more obviously Lamarckian by this definition. So this takes Noble’s seemingly radical claim that Lamarckism is back. And it makes you realize that you either have to accept, it just means what Noble says it means, acquired characteristics. Inheritance of acquired characteristics. In which case, yeah, sure, Lamarckism is back. Who cares? It’s an almost inanely uninteresting claim.

[00:57:51]  Red: Or you have to see him as claiming that Lamarckism is back in the more rigorous form that Hancock and other evolutionary biologists understand Lamarckism, which would be a radical claim if that were what Noble was claiming. Okay? Because it’s so much harder for, it’s very hard to even imagine that ever coming back. Okay? Thus Hancock’s conclusion at one hour and 14 seconds, epigenetics is still a new and exciting field of inquiry. Future work will clarify the undoubtedly important roles of epigenetics in shaping trait variations and the ability of organisms to respond plastically to their environment. But no discovery thus far from anything in developmental or molecular biology has challenged the basic tenets of the modern synthesis or undermine natural selection as the sole force of adaption. Here I note two things. First, it’s pretty clear Hancock and Noble are using different usages of the word Lamarckism. Second, they are even using different usages in the term natural selection, which to Hancock means anything at all that matches the price equations, even if non -genetic inheritance is acquired in the life of the organism and inherited via epigenetics. I can appreciate Hancock’s point that epigenetics wash out quickly, so they can’t possibly be the driving force as far as empirical tests have shown so far behind evolution. That being the case, we can think of Noble as being nominally correct that Lamarckism is back, but it turns out to be a moutain out of a molehill. Now let’s talk about natural genetic engineering. Hancock at one hour, 18 minutes, 20 seconds, he says the biochemist James Shapiro argues that organisms direct their own evolution. This they do by directly modifying their own DNA.

[00:59:51]  Red: Shapiro calls this natural genetic engineering, a term that as you might have guessed, has also been seized by creationists. All throughout this, Hancock is trying to kind of, you know, guilt by association by showing that Noble and Shapiro are connected to creationists in some way. But if it’s true, Hancock continues, it would certainly be a non -trivial action of purpose. Indeed, if an organism were capable of modifying its own DNA in service of adaption, it would be a remarkable departure from the modern synthetic paradigm. So it is interesting that Hancock is admitting that if natural genetic engineering, as Shapiro is suggesting, is true, if it actually is as true as Shapiro seems to think, he agrees it is a departure from the modern synthetic paradigm. So…

[01:00:46]  Blue: There was your central claim that Noble or Shapiro and Hancock are kind of hocking past each other or arguing about words.

[01:00:57]  Red: That’s a really good question.

[01:00:59]  Blue: Would you say that’s… Is that kind of where you’re going with this?

[01:01:03]  Red: You know, I think I’m considering that possibility, but let’s keep going.

[01:01:09]  Blue: Okay.

[01:01:09]  Red: Let’s consider the fact that maybe that’s what’s going on and maybe not.

[01:01:14]  Blue: Okay.

[01:01:15]  Red: But I’m certainly trying to make it obvious that that is a possibility we need to consider. And at least in some cases, I think they are talking past each other. It’s less clear if that is the central disagreement, though. Okay.

[01:01:28]  Blue: Fair enough.

[01:01:29]  Red: Okay, so… Now, it’s interesting that Hancock says that if natural genetic engineering were true, that would be a departure from modern synthetic paradigm. But isn’t that what the immune system does? So Hancock never addresses this directly. So I’m going to call it out, and then I’m going to also ignore it. But I would guess that Hancock is unimpressed with the idea that the immune system is a form of natural genetic engineering and would simply clarify that he met modifications of DNA and sex cells. So Hancock’s key point is this. One hour, 21 minutes, 40 seconds. It has been long established that transponson mobilization is overwhelmingly harmful to the host genome, as would be expected if they originate as selfish genomic parasites. So what are genomic parasites? They are genes that have learned to replicate themselves directly without the need for an organism and sexual selection. This is like where a lot of pathogens come from, is that there’s some sort of mutation that allows the DNA to start replicating itself, and it doesn’t need sexual transmission anymore. Thus in most organisms, this is quoting Hancock again, thus in most organisms, a large portion of transponson elements like ourselves are silenced. And if these silencers are removed, mobile elements wreak havoc on the genome. Thus for natural genetic engineering to rely so heavily on transponson mobilization, as Shapiro claims, certainly cast doubt on how good of an engineer a given cell is. So now at one hour, 23 minutes, 38 seconds, he says, Shapiro might hear cry foul. He’d point out that there is an ample study documenting transponsons contributing their regulatory apparatus to the host genome, and sometimes these can be helpful in stress response.

[01:03:27]  Red: Remember we made a big deal about this idea of natural genetic engineering and a lot of the things that Shapiro’s talking about, happening in response to stress as a way of survival mechanism. But I contend Hancock continues, this is a misinterpretation of the causal direction. Hancock then gives us a hypothetical example using little bunny icons. He never calls them bunnies, but I’m going to. So around one hour and 23 minutes, so we have a group of bunnies, their DNA contains genomic parasites, that is selfish transposable elements. So genes that will try to hop around if not silenced and rearrange the genome. They are currently silenced by methylation caused by another gene. Then suddenly a heat wave causes a stress event to the population of bunnies. This quote allows the transposable elements to start to proliferate and transpose into other parts of the genome. That was quoting Hancock. But they are selfishly trying to replicate themselves even at the expense of the bunnies. They aren’t doing this for the benefit of the bunnies, of course. All they know is that quote, their silencer has been removed and so they are starting, they start doing their thing. That was quoting Hancock again. It just so happens that some of the bunnies have transponsing variants that are helpful in a heat wave. So this normally parasitic, parasitic element actually boosts the bunnies ability to survive through the heat wave. It out competes other bunnies in the population when those without the variants die off. Eventually the heat wave passes and the methylation starts back up again silencing the transponsons. So Hancock, one hour, 27 minutes and 22 seconds.

[01:05:08]  Red: Now none of this is to deny that transponsons can and do get co -opted by the host genome to perform all sorts of tasks. Notice that he’s admitting to at least a part of what Shapiro’s claiming. But this co -option is done by the standard population genetic processes. If a transponson gets inserted into a region upstream of, say, a protein in need of a promoter, the protein can now make use of that transponson promoter and be favored by selection. That is, in effect, a mutation. So it still fits the price equations according to Hancock. The transponson insertion followed by selection yet again a classic neo -Darwinian tale he says. Here is where I take some issue with Hancock, though maybe not too much. It is not hard to see that Hancock’s example is a pretty good explanation of exactly how the genome might have come to learn how to engineer itself. This bunny now carries in it both the gene that silences the transponson when there isn’t a heat wave, plus a gene that unsilenced it right when it’s needed most to create the promoter for the protein. Yes, of course, this wasn’t purposeful, it was a random variant. But the variant now moves through the population precisely because it allows offspring of the surviving bunny an adaptive advantage. Now imagine that over time this continues to happen. It happens multiple times over multiple generations. Until it isn’t that strange that this population of bunnies has a fairly sophisticated set of software that implements genomic change right when it needs it and turns it off when it doesn’t. Indeed, the bunny may have evolved a learning algorithm that updates its own genes by this point.

[01:06:51]  Red: Now Hancock, whether he realizes it or not, just explained how natural genetic engineering really could come just by come -to -be using just regular evolutionary theory via the price equations. Where he seems to be to take issue with Shapiro is over an assumption that Shapiro sees this as somehow purposeful. Surely, how it got initially created was not purposeful. But the end result really is now purposeful. Every bit as much as saying that the purpose of a heart is to pump blood. It would make perfect sense to now say this gene’s purpose is to change the genome in case of a heat wave to increase survival value. So I’m not clear how this example is really at odds with Shapiro’s claims. It seems to me that Hancock interprets Shapiro as believing that the natural genetic engineering came to be was itself not via regular natural selection. But I do not read Shapiro that way, at least not in his blog post. And he does not come across to me as ever having said that. There seems to be a disagreement over how we can use the word purposeful. To Shapiro, this gene variant now has a purpose, which is surely true if we use the word how we use the word purpose is its regular layman sense. Hancock has an issue with using the word purpose this way because there was just regular natural variation in selection that created this variant. So no overall purpose of some designer. Hancock goes on to point out that most mutations of this sort, like all mutations, are deleterious and reduce fitness of the organism. Hancock claims this goes against the predictions of Shapiro’s theory that it should make mutations on average beneficial.

[01:08:48]  Red: Now I’m unclear if this is a valid criticism or not. I’ve only read Shapiro’s blog posts and he doesn’t make any such claim in his blog posts. It may be in the wider group of things that Shapiro said he has made a claim to the effect that mutations on average should be beneficial. If so, then I actually agree with Hancock that Shapiro’s wrong. Okay. But let me be honest here. Now having only read Shapiro’s blog posts, he surely does give examples of mutations spreading too fast that standard evolutionary theory does not seem to allow for it. And that was what we did in the last episode. And that is exactly correct for the immune system. It hyper mutates but only part of the genome gets hyper mutated where it won’t cause damage. Thus its mutations are not likely to be deleterious to the organism. So at least we have one example, the immune system, where the average mutation is not deleterious. I’m sure this just isn’t what Hancock had in mind. I’m trying to point out that Hancock isn’t covering every possible case, right? That there are counter examples. As a rule of thumb, he’s probably right, but there’s easy counter examples to it. And I just don’t perceive Shapiro as making a general claim that the genome is so smart that most mutations are positive. If Shapiro’s making that claim, then yes, I agree with Hancock for sure. And that is an empirical question and from what I understand, it’s incorrect just empirically speaking. Overall, there seems to be a substantial agreement between Hancock and Shapiro. And I think that’s what matters to me. Let’s quickly cover what they agree upon.

[01:10:24]  Red: They agree the genome includes transposable elements that rewire the genes when under stress conditions and that the process gets co -opted by evolution as positive mutations that increase overall fitness. The result is a gene variant that has a purpose to change the genome under stress. Neither seems to disagree over anything I just said. It is less clear what they disagree over. The main disagreement that I have discussed is whether or not we should call this process neo -Darwinian or not. Since Hancock considers any form of evolution that fits the price equations, regardless of the source of information, DNA or not, and the source of mutation. So based on that, then yes, Shapiro’s examples do fit Hancock’s definition of neo -Darwinian evolution because they fit the price equations. But for most people, it seems likely that you did not equate neo -Darwinian evolution with the price equations. In which case, whether you realize it or not, you sort of agree with Shapiro that we’re starting to push beyond neo -Darwinian evolution here. Regardless, it seems to me seems to me to now be more an argument over definition than a true disagreement. Note, there is one thing that they do seem, Hancock and Shapiro do seem to strongly disagree over that strikes me as more legitimate. And that’s whether or not there is junk DNA. And I’m with Hancock on this. Shapiro claims there is not junk DNA. I just don’t even believe that. Okay, so Hancock says that’s not true. I believe Hancock. That won’t play a big role in what we’re going to be discussing today, but I didn’t want to kind of put that out there because that I think is a legitimate disagreement between them.

[01:11:56]  Red: Whereas whether we should call this purposeful, whether we should call this neo -Darwinian evolution or not, that seems to be more a matter of definitions. Interestingly, we talked a little bit about the central dogma of molecular biology and Hancock goes over the fact that Shapiro and Noble get the central dogma of molecular biology wrong. Now Hancock admits that nearly everybody gets this wrong. And that likely you were even taught it wrong in schools. And I’m not going to go into what it is, but let’s just say that there was two versions of it. Crick’s version is the correct version and Watson’s version is the incorrect version from Crick and Watson, the discoverers of DNA. And Watson’s version, the incorrect version is the one that caught on and got taught in schools and shows up in textbooks and is what you get taught in schools. And it’s incorrect. So Hancock tries to position this argument something like this. Noble and Shapiro don’t really have the necessary familiarity with evolutionary biology to even realize that they are criticizing a currently known to be incorrect version of the central dogma of molecular biology. However, if the phrase central dogma of molecular biology has come to be used in general to mean Watson’s incorrect version of it, as Hancock is admitting is the case, that it seems to me that Noble is right to criticize it. This isn’t any different than when I criticize, say, the pseudo -Deutsch theory of knowledge or the loophole. I’m sure a Hancock like figure could easily point to me that I’m not criticizing the best version of these theories as originally created by, say, Popper or Deutsch. Of course this might well be true, but so what?

[01:13:40]  Red: I’m criticizing a commonly held theory that is wrong and needs criticism. I just don’t see how that’s a problem and yes, part of my criticism will probably be your misinterpreting Popper here. Okay. I should note that when I do claim that these theories are misunderstandings of Deutsch and Popper, that I get vehement pushback that these are Deutsch and Popper’s theories that I’m criticizing. Further both Deutsch and Popper are just vague enough that it’s difficult to prove that I’m right that these people are misreading Deutsch and Popper. Perhaps it is me that is misreading them and actually Popper and Deutsch do hold false theories. That’s not impossible, right? So I often just have to say okay, suppose you’re correct that these theories come from Deutsch and Popper. So what? They are still refuted theories and we need a new theory. I don’t see a problem with Noble doing exactly the same thing here. Okay. So I see Hancock’s point that maybe they should instead tell Noble should instead be telling people what you think of as the central dogma is incorrect. Here is the correct version, which is what I do with the pseudo -Deutsch theory of knowledge and the Rhett loophole. But the end result tends to be exactly the same. The person I’m talking to vehemently holds to the original bad theory and insists it comes from Deutsch and Popper respectively. I think a criticism of a bad theory is a criticism of a bad theory. What string of characters by which we label it shouldn’t matter. The bottom line is that Hancock is here saying that Noble is correct in his criticism of what is widely understood to be the central dogma of molecular biology.

[01:15:22]  Red: And to me that seems like Hancock is admitting Noble is correct here. What about Shapiro’s claim that innovation is the most important part of evolution because selection only sifts through innovations that are provided. Note that Kenneth Stanley made the same claim back in episodes 88 and 96. He literally claimed in episode 88, this is the one where I’m going over his work, that selection plays no role in creativity and in fact reduces creativity. So Stanley imagined a version of the earth where nothing gets selected. He argues that the creativity of evolution would be enhanced because the search algorithm would search further and wider in such an environment. Now I suspect this claim will be very off -putting from Kenneth Stanley to many crit -rats, particularly the Deutsche ones. I’ve had the Deutsche crit -rats argue this point with me quite forcefully insisting that selection is a requirement for creativity. So is Stanley and Shapiro wrong about this? Okay, this claim that the innovations actually it’s the mutations of the innovations that are the source of creativity and that selection plays no role in it. So I would have thought Hancock would have argued this is wrong because this seems like a kind of out there you’ve never heard this before kind of viewpoint that I know when I bring up to people they just shut it down immediately like there is really strong dogma against this. Hancock interestingly agrees with Shapiro on this at 1 hour, 34 minutes and 5 seconds he says there are some who claim that selection is itself a sort of creative force of evolution but I tend to disagree mutations are the creative force of evolution. So that’s another interesting overlap between Hancock’s and Shapiro’s viewpoints here.

[01:17:14]  Red: At 1 hour, 35 minutes and 42 seconds Hancock says this finally brings us to the last of Dennis Noble and the third ways critique of neo Darwinism an abhorrence of Richard Dawkins and his notion of selfish James. Now we’ve seen up to this point that Hancock has some pretty good arguments but that there’s also some surprising agreements sometimes the agreements are hidden due to disagreements over wording but surely Hancock is going to disagree with Noble and company over Dawkins interpretation of Darwinism right? Right? because we all know that Dawkins interpretation of Darwinism is the premier understanding of neo Darwinian evolution, right? Nope! Noble sorry Hancock does not see it that way. He quote says in this final section this is the fourth point he’s disagreed with the first three points he’s going to the fourth point in this final section we’re going to finally find some common ground with Dennis Noble and some of his critiques here I quite agree with says Hancock. Now if you are like me you pretty much thought that Dawkins version of Darwinian evolution was neo Darwinian evolution that is why I read Peter’s summary from the previous episode and I don’t think most people would have ever thought that there was anything wrong with that summary because in their minds probably widely in most people’s minds neo Darwinian evolution equals Dawkins selfless gene theory. Okay.

[01:18:46]  Blue: Yeah.

[01:18:48]  Red: So recall in the previous episodes also I guess that was why when Peter said that at the very beginning of the last episode I kind of called it out and said remember that market and honestly that’s what I thought neo Darwinism meant too like I’m no different than Peter on this so I was in shock when I realized that Hancock absolutely does not see it that way so it turns out that evolutionary biologists like Hancock they or at least so Hancock claims I mean I guess we don’t know for sure if Hancock’s correct or not but this is what he’s saying is that they just do not see Dawkins theory as equivalent to neo Darwinian modern evolutionary theory on the contrary they understand the gene -centric view of evolution to be questionable and to be and to not be a correct understanding of neo Darwinism now this really surprised me when I watched his video okay so at one hour 36 minutes and 47 seconds he says anyone who has read any of the nobles papers or listen to these podcasts he’s been on knows he’s really really obsessed with Richard Dawkins like he’s going to site if he’s going to site a single evolutionary biologist it’s going to be Dawkins and it’s almost always his 1976 book the selfish gene Hancock points out that to noble neo Darwinism is a term for Dawkins selfish gene interpretation of Darwinism one hour 38 minutes 30 seconds this is Hancock this is a noble speaking here like he’s playing nobles words I debated the whole question with the main exponent of neo Darwinism Richard Dawkins noble says when asked of neo Darwinism was a term that was that referred to the selfish gene theory noble responded

[01:20:36]  Red: this is at one hour 39 minutes 14 seconds and again this is noble talking not Hancock neo Darwinism Darwinism that became the selfish gene aka the modern synthesis or gene centered theory of evolution is all the same thing that’s it’s that’s it that’s the best definition Hancock claims this is all incorrect one hour 37 minutes 18 seconds noble credits this view almost exclusively to to Dawkins as if Dawkins not only came up with the idea of the selfish genes but that he has somehow risen to the level of an architect of the modern synthesis that Dawkins ideas are akin to those of Ernst Mayer or RA Fisher or something and all biologists have just accepted his word blindly as gospel whoa consider me floored in retrospect I should have seen this coming Hancock’s history of neo Darwinian evolution in the modern synthesis placed it long before the idea of the selfish gene so it makes sense that the phrase neo Darwinism and even modern synthesis cannot be referring to Dawkins selfish gene interpretation of Darwinism

[01:21:46]  Blue: well according to chat GPT this this term goes back to the early well it’s actually it’s early to mid 20th century and all it means is a synthesis of Mendelian genetics and Darwinism yeah which obviously predates Dawkins 1976 book but that his book maybe you maybe it is again an emphasis kind of a thing where it his book shifted the focus to the role of natural selection being dominated by genes that’s kind of what I’m getting

[01:22:27]  Red: yes so you got the the you have the dates exactly right neo Darwinism was coined in the late 19th century so wasn’t even the 20th century modern synthesis is 1930s to 1930 1940 Dawkins book is 1976 so there are decades between these theories yeah so it was impossible that neo Darwinism could have meant the selfish gene interpretation of Darwinism despite this I was floored when I realized that I completely misunderstood what neo Darwinism Darwinism meant at least to an evolutionary biologist like Hancock so Hancock and by the way you just said maybe it shifted the the emphasis okay so let’s let’s continue with that realization because that could be it could be that these are that the theories don’t stay the same so it could have been that the selfish gene book that it it made us rethink neo Darwinian evolution in modern synthesis and to see things from the gene the gene centric the genes I view and maybe that then went on to be the kind of the accepted interpretation of neo Darwinism maybe that’s why we think of neo Darwinism as meaning Dawkins theory okay Hancock continues one hour 39 minutes 29 seconds the fact that noble equates the modern synthesis neo Darwinism and gene centricism as the same thing is a stunning testament to his misreading of the history of evolutionary theory oops apparently that’s not what Hancock was saying

[01:23:53]  Red: he is now going to argue that that is just wrong that that that Dawkins theory is not the modern way we would think of neo Darwinism so we’re just talking about terms though right surely modern neo Darwinism Darwinians all accept selfish gene theory as the best explanation of Darwinism right Hancock then says one hour 39 minutes 36 seconds to virtually all the architects of modern synthesis as well as Fisher right and Haldane natural selection acted on individuals not genes that is the modern synthesis that is the modern synthesis is not gene centric Hancock says again consider me flawed so he’s not claiming that he’s not merely trying to say that

[01:24:43]  Red: these came before but maybe now the term refers to gene centricism he’s saying modern evolutionary theory is not gene centric that is not the accepted paradigm of of neo Darwinism that’s what Hancock’s actually saying okay so I had no idea whatsoever prior to watching Hancock’s video that evolutionary biologists do not widely accept gene centricism interestingly Hancock goes on to agree with nobles criticism of gene centricism referring to them as subtle Hancock quotes noble approvingly and this is the only place he does in his criticism of the human genome project and how it has yet to produce any cures to the supposedly genetic diseases like heart disease or cancer at one hour 42 minutes 56 seconds Hancock says but to people like noble and myself for the record this promise of the human genome project finding genetic cures was built on a false premise it was assumed that all of these things even had a genetic basis in the first place however in the 20 years since we still don’t know anything about the generic genetic basis for any of these big killers at one hour 40 45 minutes and 58 seconds I’m also largely sympathetic to nobles critique of genetic reductionism largely because it can slip dangerously close to hereditarianism so

[01:26:11]  Red: now let’s look at Hancock’s own summary of his views of the third way at one hour 46 minutes 46 seconds he says honestly these this happens this has been the consistent theme throughout the third way supporters have consistently misrepresented or just just like misunderstood the history of of and development of evolutionary theory they’ve straw manned arguments by the proponents of the modern synthesis he then gives a specific example of how the third way is incorrect taken from Carl Zimmer’s account of an exchange between Dennis Noble and David Shuker at a third way conference there’s an experiment where they cut off the tails of bacteria so they can’t swim and in less than four days the bacteria are swimming again nobles conclusion is quote this strategy is to produce rapid evolutionary genome change in response to the unfavorable environment Shuker was unsatisfied and asked Noble to comment on the mechanism of how it worked according to Zimmer who’s a journalist but obviously one that’s way more sympathetic to Shuker Shuker’s viewpoint Noble was unable to give more than a vague answer and about it being

[01:27:32]  Red: related to quote networks and regulation and a desperate search for a solution to a crisis and then at one hour fifty minutes Hancock says while Noble was this is Hancock quoting the journalist now while Noble was struggling according to Zimmer to respond Shuker went back to the paper on an iPad and now he read the abstract in a booming voice our results demonstrate that natural selection can rapidly rewire regulatory networks Shuker said he put down the iPad so it’s a perfect beautiful example of rapid neo -Darwinian evolution he claimed in short the genes did in fact ignore the schoolroom version of Darwinism and instead did hypermutation to within the lifetime of the organism change the genome and adapt in real time but because this hypermutation process itself follows the price equations Hancock Zimmer Shuker broadly understand neo -Darwinian evolution such that this would still be considered regular old neo -Darwinian evolution so let’s be clear this example shows that evolutionary biologists do not understand neo -Darwinian evolution as gene -centric or via sexual replication they understand it broadly as anything that follows the price equations the information does not even have to be passed via DNA to count as neo -Darwinism that is why epigenetics aren’t seen as refuting it and if it happens quickly in response to the environment that is still to them is still considered neo -Darwinian

[01:29:11]  Red: so one hour 50 minutes 55 seconds Hancock says this is the fate of all third -rate claims they are they are specific details about specific systems they are the proximate mechanisms but what evolutionary theory is is all about the ultimate mechanisms what is the source of the origin of these systems and what allows them to spread and be maintained in a population the answer to these questions lies in the basic modern synthetic paradigm mutation selection and drift by the way drift basically means the random events that lead to random fluctuations in the inherited frequencies usually alleles if we are talking DNA and is unrelated to selection itself so obviously there is just a certain amount of natural drift that just takes place it has nothing to do with mutation or selection to Hancock that is all there is to it neo -Darwinian evolution is a non -gene centric is non -gene centric does not require DNA and really the thing that makes it neo -Darwinian is that it does mutation selection and drift to summarize Hancock then neo -Darwinian evolution is anything that follows the price equations and has nothing to do with genetic replicators epigenetic ones are fine nor with seeing genes as central or as the blueprints Hancock is denying any of that is central to neo -Darwinian evolution or put another way the correct theory of natural selection says nothing specific about DNA or genes now

[01:30:45]  Red: up to this point you’re probably thinking Bruce just spent most of his time saying positive things about the third way so he must be against Hancock’s claims and in favor of the third way claims you would be wrong in every conceivable way Hancock’s view is the better view here at least so far ok yes I am claiming noble and Shapiro are saying something worth hearing they are right to the degree that there are legitimate misunderstandings of natural selection and that is a problem and we’ll consider that question in a moment but there is no doubt that Hancock has explained this way better than noble and company put bluntly Hancock is correct that the correct way to understand Darwinian evolution or natural selection is the price equations that define hard to vary principles of evolution and are to use an analogy substrate neutral i.e. they don’t care if we’re talking about DNA and genes or not I’m kind of misusing the term substrate neutral here and Hancock’s definition of Lamarckism is also hard to vary in that he’s quite precise in how he defines it so that his view would be easy to falsify if he was wrong but in fact he can’t be falsified presumably because he’s correct or at least more correct than Noble by comparison Noble and Shapiro are squishy in how they understand terms like natural selection and Lamarckism when Noble and Shapiro refer to natural selection they seem to solely mean the simplistic version taught in school i.e.

[01:32:17]  Red: that there is a set of genes that gradually change over a very long period of very slow mutations one base pair at a time likewise when Noble speaks of Lamarckism he seems to mean something like non -genetic inheritance via epigenetics that take place in the lifetime of the organism and fails to mention that this form of Lamarckism easily and quite naturally fits into the price equations which is the best way to understand natural selection making Noble’s form of Lamarckism really just a subset of natural selection so now as a side note this also explains why Deutsch understands Lamarckism as a form of knowledge spontaneous generation Hancock’s definition of Lamarckism is falsifiable he’s quite specific of what a counter example would look like but also basically impossible if it did take take place it would presumably break everything we think we know about how knowledge is created via variation and selection it would be indistinguishable from spontaneous generation that’s what Deutsch was actually getting at and why he defined Lamarckism that way so I see Deutsch and Hancock ultimately as agreeing on this the prepared analysis is pretty straightforward here Noble and Shapiro’s squishy theories and definitions are not preferred to Hancock’s hard to vary theories because we know exactly how to falsify Hancock i.e. he lays out precisely what would count as a form of Lamarckism that violates the price equations by comparison Noble and Shapiro are correct in that there is no doubt that there is such things as non -genetic inheritance epigenetics not entirely random mutation i.e. genes

[01:33:59]  Red: being somewhat smart and so they control the mutation to be more beneficial but this really only falsifies the schoolroom version of natural selection not the far broader and more precise price equations version of natural selection so theory wise we should go with Hancock and Price not Noble and Shapiro now that being said it was due to Noble and Shapiro that I discovered I had an incorrect gene centric understanding of natural selection and Darwinian evolution I only became aware of the gene neutral price equation version of natural selection due to trying to research what I had read in Shapiro to see if he was correct or not and basically if you scrape away the vibes and look only at the content we can summarize Hancock’s view as saying something like this yes you learned evolution wrong in school and Noble and Shapiro are basically correct about that but really the correct way to understand natural selection is the price equations approach sure you’ve never heard of that and it doesn’t get taught in school as well but once you adopt that view all these non -genetic evolution turns out to still be a form of natural selection and it isn’t really some kind of separate Lamarckian theory so

[01:35:24]  Red: let’s take seriously Hancock’s claim that natural selection means mutation, selection and drift in any form so unless the third way can show examples of evolution that do not boil down to mutation, selection and drift of any kind they are not even challenging our neo -Darwinian evolution as Hancock and evolutionary biologists understand that term now as I’ve mentioned I sure did not know this was how evolutionary biologists understood the term neo -Darwinian evolution and in fact I’m floored that this is the case why did I or we apparently many of us think that neo -Darwinian evolution was a term that referred to selfish gene theory why didn’t our years in biology class in correct this misunderstanding are we maybe just stupid lay people and pretty much all smart scientists have this correct this is really an empirical question so let’s actually test this question okay using real life examples this is quoting Shapiro page XVI from his book at the symposium a highly respected oncologist informed us that research grant proposals in the National Cancer Institute and CI are not considered seriously if they do not accept the fundamental premise of the modern synthesis namely that genomic change in cancer tumor evolution results from the action of accidental mutations and natural selection okay so to be clear the NCI at least according to this oncologist is claiming that the idea of accidental mutations by regulatory regular natural selection is the basis for cancer mutation and if you think otherwise you won’t get funded there is a good chance my audience just went wait of course it is how could it not be natural selection and mutation now we’re starting to get to the key question consider this example from Shapiro quoting Shapiro here it turns out that tumor cells often when they become more dangerous use deeply evolved DNA damage responses shared by plants and animals to create radically new genome structures enabling them to grow unceasingly metastasize in new tissue in the body and resist chemotherapy contrary to what conventional evolutionary wisdom teaches about the long periods of time needed for major hereditary changes to accumulate these complex genome modification responses in cancer obviously occur within the span of a single human lifetime and often within a few cell division cycles in laboratory experiments moreover it is becoming clear that certain highly toxic chemotherapies can trigger the very macro macro evolutionary changes that convert tolerable tumors into unstoppable lethal malignancies in other words taking a 21st century view of somatic tumor macro evolution may lead us to extending life expectancies of patients with cancer by understanding better the genomic consequences of the therapies we apply to treat the disease and moderating their use to avoid triggering a fatal macro evolutionary cascade that was all from pages XVI to XVI so when I read this passage that may have been a little bit hard to solve to parse because Shapiro talks with really big terms but I realize something I had no idea that cancer cells evolve

[01:38:50]  Red: I would have assumed they did they did so more or less similar to regular organisms but if that’s true the process of mutation would be very very slow and there would be no real need for concern I also had no idea whatsoever that cancer cells adapt to treatment via hyper mutation I mean like that’s what he was trying to say in that last quote that’s a little bit hard to parse he’s saying the cancer cells when you treat them they will just like a bacteria responding to antibodies they will increase the rate of the hyper mutation until they become resistant to the cure so the issue here is that Shapiro words this as evolution doesn’t happen through natural selection and mutation when what he really means is doesn’t happen solely through the kinds of simplistic natural selection and mutation that you’ve been taught in school i.e. via vertical transfer via generations this is going to prove the key misunderstanding that emerges between third way types and the more mainstream but knowledgeable evolutionary biologists mainstream evolutionary biologists are going to say look the price equations i.e. mutation and natural selection is mutation and natural selection all the way down and the third wayers are going to say yes but you now mean something totally different by those terms than what everybody else thinks those terms mean and the mainstreamers are going to respond what are you talking about you’re still describing exactly what we mean by mutation and natural selection and a huge part of the argument is going to be over whether or not the term natural selection and the term mutation means what you were probably taught in schools i.e.

[01:40:37]  Red: that there is a specific sex cell with a specific gene base pair that gets mutated by a cosmic ray and accidentally gives the offspring an advantage that causes it to replicate versus what actually happens in real life which is far far far messier. For example the fact that the cancer cells have actual learning algorithms that exploit to intentionally mutate in partially random but partially non -random ways specifically to overcome a treatment that’s being used to kill them so this isn’t so weird i mean this is basically what we learned back in episode 77 how the immune system works the immune system would be useless if it could only respond to pathogens that had existed in the history of the genes

[01:41:22]  Blue: so cancer is an example of lamarcaism is that what i’m kidding

[01:41:27]  Red: i mean yes depending on how you define lamarcaism i guess okay yet when it comes down to it the immune system or cancer cell is still doing something just like natural selection and mutation it’s just over the lifetime of a cell instead of of an organism the mutations aren’t pure chance but they are quite intentional as a response to a challenge

[01:41:50]  Red: so this is still neodarwinian evolution is this still neodarwinian evolution or not if you decide neodarwinian evolution slash modern synthesis specifically means gene -centric mutation of sex cells then Shapiro is not describing neodarwinian evolution slash modern synthesis anymore this is a new theory but if you decide neodarwinian evolution slash modern synthesis actually means the price equations as Hancock and apparently according to him all evolutionary biologists assume then you are going to look at Shapiro and say wait this is just neodarwinian evolution and modern synthesis there’s no there there i suppose what i’m arguing is that both of these views are in their own way correct for neodarwinian evolution and modern synthesis simply does not have the same meaning for everyone okay but i can hear you protest layman don’t count sure bruce you misunderstood and maybe even you were taught wrong in school but yes of course they teach simplified and false views of things i mean think about how they used to as a child they probably taught you about electrons orbiting a nucleus and it’s totally not true and like they know it’s not true but they lie to you as a child they tell you electrons orbit the nucleus because they know that you’re going to understand it easier if they teach it to you that way okay so it’s just not that uncommon for us to intentionally lie to school children with a simplified view of a theory how is this any different okay

[01:43:23]  Red: now if the misunderstandings were strictly held to say elementary school children or even high school students okay but keep in mind that i was taught wrong in college biology as well right so okay maybe i can hear you say layman still don’t count maybe we shouldn’t even expect college students to be taught the real truth about our theories in a class it’s only a 100 level biology class it’s meant for non biology students so the key point here is that we should expect is that we should expect better not not of bruce and peter but of Shapiro and noble they should have been well aware that neo -darwinian evolution was really the price equations not Dawkins selfish gene theory but if this is what you are arguing you’ve now got a new problem to deal with because Shapiro just gave you a specific example of where the national cancer institute had misunderstood neo -darwinian evolution as well and they make decisions to we’re making decisions to exclude research based on that misunderstanding so at least for the nci there is apparently there is a there there in Shapiro’s criticisms okay but maybe that’s just one more one -off example right so

[01:44:36]  Red: you might be thinking tell me Bruce do you have any more examples than this one isn’t there isn’t this isn’t it usually just laymen that misunderstand maybe bruce is cherry picking here how about a prominent scientist then recall that according to Hancock the Dawkins selfish gene version of Darwinian evolution is not the best interpretation of evolution and he claims neo -darwinism is not gene centric but David Deutsch claims otherwise from the fabric of reality this is page 176 this gene based understanding of life regarding organisms as part of the environment of genes has implicitly been the basis for biology since Darwin but it was overlooked until at least the 1960s and not fully understood until Richard Dawkins published the selfish gene in 1976 and the extended phenotype in 1982 um Deutsch continues along this lines on page 334 it is specifically Dawkins version of Darwinism that has become the prevailing theory of evolution in the pragmatic sense Dawkins elaborated Darwin’s theory in its modern form as the theory of replicators when we talk about David Deutsch’s four strands we do not mean Darwin’s evolution to Deutsch the founders of the current four strands are from page 335 Popper, Turing, Everett and Dawkins so now we have a problem who is correct Zach Hancock who is an actual evolution biologist or world famous physicist David Deutsch are we going to claim that Zach Hancock is just outright incorrect and that neo -darwinian evolution um is just outright incorrect and that neo -darwinian evolution actually is Dawkins gene centric selfish gene version if so then apparently noble and company were actually correct about their main point that neo -darwinian evolution is modernally equated to Dawkins interpretation of evolution

[01:46:42]  Red: or we’re going to claim that Hancock is correct neo -darwinian evolution is based only on the gene neutral price equations and that it’s David Deutsch that is that neo -darwinian evolution what neo -darwinian evolution is if so then isn’t that a tacit admission that the level of misunderstanding of neo -darwinian evolution reaches far beyond mere layman if so noble and company are actually correct when they claim that neo -darwinian evolution has come to mean the Dawkins interpretation and Hancock’s key counter argument against them must be understood as itself the misunderstanding it would appear that we have to choose between these two bad options there doesn’t seem to be any middle ground we can jump to recall also that Deutsch has so strongly adopted the gene centric version of Darwinism that he has made it the most prominent feature of his constructor theory of knowledge namely the portion that I have called the two sources hypothesis that there are only two sources of knowledge genes and memes consider that Zach Hancock’s view which he claims is the view held by any competent evolutionary biologist is at odds with Deutsch’s two sources hypothesis since for example epigenetics can be considered a source of knowledge i.e.

[01:47:58]  Red: a source of mutation albeit not yet believed to be a major one since they don’t persist for more than eight generations ok but eight generations is nothing to sneeze at so this exchange between Hancock in the third way poses an interesting problem for Deutsch’s theories apparently both sides of this argument reject Deutsch’s gene centric Dawkins version of evolution noble and company are arguing that Dawkins version is the overwhelmingly is the overwhelming accepted view of Darwinian evolution today and they’re giving examples of how it’s wrong Hancock is not denying the examples are they raise are and he’s claiming they’re correct he’s just denying that we should we should have ever understood neo -Darwinian evolution as equivalent to the Dawkins gene centric view and this is what they’re disagreeing over both are agreeing Deutsch’s fusion version is incorrect now of course this doesn’t prove Deutsch wrong it could be that Deutsch’s theory including the two sources hypothesis is correct and Hancock and noble are each partially correct and partially wrong ok I’m trying to make a point here though that there is no way to read Deutsch’s two sources hypothesis from his work and read his version of the four strands and not realize that Hancock must be at least partially wrong about something ok

[01:49:19]  Red: interestingly regardless of where you land on this point it would appear the third way are seem to making some sort of fair point Hancock must be off base in his claim that neo Darwinism has it come to be widely equated to gene centric Dawkins interpretation if even a prominent scientist like David Deutsch thinks it is regardless of whether he’s correct or not then it is apparently isn’t mere laymen that are confused according to Hancock on this point ok I hear you argue but David Deutsch isn’t a biologist maybe non biologists get this wrong maybe even occasionally biologists get this wrong but do you have more examples Bruce of examples of biologists misunderstanding neo Darwinism as the Dawkins version in fact we covered more examples in our first episode the previous episode I just didn’t make a big deal out of them at the time but here they are again from Wikipedia on Barbara McClintock McClintock noted unusual color patterns in the leaves this is the the maize corn for example one leaf had two albino patches with almost identical size located side by side on the leaf when comparing the chromosomes of the current generation of the plants with the parent generation she found certain parts of the chromosome had switched positions this refuted the popular genetic theory of the time that genes were fixed in their position on chromosomes also recall this quote from

[01:50:41]  Red: Shapiro the ideas of genetic transposition and control of gene expression by these non -coding mobile elements were heretical notions that did not fit the narrow confines of the modern synthesis concept of genome function and variation Barbara McClintock told me how angry looks from her colleagues greeted her after the first presentation on controlling elements at the cold spring harbour symposium in the 1950s Barbara McClintock went on to win a Nobel prize but she was hated by her colleagues because this was a discovery that changed that went against what they thought evolution allowed for ok now you can easily look back now and say well that was dumb they shouldn’t have been upset because this still fits the price equations it’s still natural selection

[01:51:38]  Red: but that memo didn’t make it to any of her colleagues that’s a large group of biologists right also recall the surgeon general wrongly declared from the previous episode declared the war on infectious disease as one because the studies have shown bacteria should only be able to adapt at a relatively slow rate to antibiotics only to then have superbugs adapt to antibiotics far faster than theory said should be possible due to the bacteria’s ability to gather immune gene variants from a wider population via horizontal transfer of genes via plasmids from page 22 of Shapiro quote there were problems both with the science and the new public health policy based on it the surgeon general misunderestimated the bacteria which followed their own evolutionary rules and did not listen to what the scientists said they should do although experimentally confirmed the laboratory the mutation theory of antibiotic resistance failed to account for most cases in the real world resistance continued to spread among bacteria isolated in the clinics around the globe does having the surgeon general have a misunderstanding of neo -darwinian evolution count would that then falsify Hancock’s assumption that this is super well known and that there’s no misunderstandings can we at least agree that even if noble is technically incorrect that neo -darwinian evolution equates to the Dawkins interpretation that he is at least correct that this misunderstanding is widespread even among scientists and biologists and if so doesn’t that mean that his criticisms are valid this is similar to the problem around the central dogma of molecular biology sure you can say actually noble is just misunderstanding what neo -darwinism actually is but if the term neo -darwinism is widely misunderstood to be the Dawkins version of evolution at what point do we have to admit that the phrase neo -darwinism has come to mean the false version of the theory and thus nobles and chaperones criticism is correct another interesting aspect of this that I want to quickly mention is the fact that David Deutch’s gene centric view of knowledge other than memes of course is in fact a reductionist view of biology exactly like noble claims gene centricism is noble page 16 from music of life we also need to recognize that much of what is stated about genes at the reductionist level comes close to circularity here you might object but Deutch admits this is correct from page 176 of beginning of infinity or was it fabric of reality I think it’s fabric of reality the great explanatory theories of Darwin in modern versions such as that proponent by Dawkins and of modern biochemistry are reductive

[01:54:22]  Red: that’s a quote there’s a common misunderstanding I want to clarify there’s nothing wrong with reductive theories per se there is no doubt that reductive theories have been a powerful way to understand science and to come to understand the world Deutch’s actual view is that reductive explanations are not more fundamental than emergent explanations the misunderstanding that reductive explanations are more fundamental he refers to that as reductionism but he never intended to imply that reductive theories themselves are therefore somehow invalid perhaps surprisingly even Dennis Noble admits that the reductive view of biology as found in Dawkins theories has been invaluable and we can’t do without the gene centric view I didn’t get a quote for that one but he does say that in one of his interviews and he talks about how needed it was and how important it was he just is arguing that we need to look at also emergent theories and not only look at the reductive ones so Noble’s real point here he claims is that we should not see the gene centric view as fundamental because emergent explanations are often better or more important to explaining evolution

[01:55:30]  Red: so to summarize Noble and Shapiro are raising valid specific issues and Hancock is agreeing with that much but Hancock is claiming that these issues are not at odds with the correct view of neo -Darwinism as contained in the gene neutral price equations so there’s no need to appeal to Lamarckism or some new form of evolution but Noble and Shapiro are objecting to objecting that they really are widespread misunderstandings that are creating rigid thinking and slowing down more innovative emergent theories of natural selection and that their specific examples are meant to break people out of this rigid thinking Hancock is correct that we can stick with the price equations and we don’t need to introduce Lamarckism but who is right about how widespread the misunderstandings in rigid thinking are and this brings us to the research of Michael Levin which we will cover in the next episode and that is it

[01:56:24]  Blue: well Bruce you are on your own unique intellectual journey through this life and it’s an honor to even try to keep up with you here so I’ll look forward to next time and have a great week alright

[01:56:40]  Red: you too thanks a lot Peter

[01:56:44]  Blue: hello again if you’ve made it this far please consider giving us a nice rating on whatever platform you use or even making a financial contribution through the link provided in the show notes as you probably know we are a podcast loosely tied together by the Popper Deutsch theory of knowledge we believe David Deutsch’s four strands tie everything together so we discuss science, knowledge, computation, politics, art and especially the search for artificial general intelligence also please consider connecting with Bruce on X at B. Nielsen 01 also please consider joining the Facebook group the many worlds of David Deutsch where Bruce and I first started connecting thank you

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