From: robd@cherry09 (Robert Derrick)
Subject: Re: dawkins/_the selfish
X-Newsreader: Tin 1.1 PL5
Distribution: talk
Date: 4 Sep 92 18:09:58 CDT

"herb sutter" (herb.sutter@canrem.com) wrote:
: 
: There have been centuries of intelligently directed breeding of many
: plants and animals; a short time compared to thousands of millenniums, but
: far far more directed.

Is there a conclusion you draw from this?  Is there evidence to support
that conclusion?  Here follows your conclusion in the form of a rhetorical:

:                         Is it not surprising that, if evolution does in
: fact give rise to different `kinds' by natural selection, genetic drift,
: and other methods, that something of the sort has not been observed in all
: this intelligently directed breeding and cross-breeding?

Really?  Should we be surprised?  I don't see how it follows, unless you
take an extraordinarily simplistic view of the process, and have an
extraordinarily conceited view of human accomplishment.

How many times will some armchair Aristotle declaim that since we are
unable to create life in the lab, how can any thinking person believe
that it is possible?  Gee Whiz, Mr. Wizard, I thought you could do
anything!

We are also unable to cure a cold, and we have been trying to do that
for several thousand years.  What conclusion can we draw from this?
Is perhaps God forbidding us from accomplishing this "trivial" matter?
God Thunders, "Smallpox?  Ok, but my common cold?  Never!"

Or maybe it is just as Harold Morowitz testified at the Arkansas Equal
Time trial, when ask why "in over twenty-five years you have not 
uncovered the cause of life?", he smiled blandly and said, "Young man,
it is a very difficult problem."

Anyway, the main point is: Why do you believe that directed breeding,
for which all changes are essentially selected on a morphological 
level, should somehow speed speciation?  It does not follow.  If
for no other reason than that we are not breeding for survival
charateristics, or perhaps even more important, genetic diversity,

Conclusion:  Nature is quite adept at speciation, but humans are
currently missing a few details.  Maybe even a few million.

Lastly, a lesson in precision:
: So isn't what I said true, namely that "you can breed dogs for aeons and
: (breeding evidence seems to prove) you will always end up with a dog"?

It will be very difficult to determine if what you said is true, 
because no one has ever breeded dogs for "aeons".  An aeon, sir,
is not a trip done to the corner drugstore.  5000 years is not
an aeon.  An aeon is "an immeasurably or indefinitely long period
of time."  5000 is not immeasurable, indefinitely, or even beyond
my feeble powers of comprehension.  5000, is for the purposes
of our discussion, somewhat shorter than a gnat's fart.  Real 
research with _intent_ has been going on for less than 200 years.
200!  And in a beauracracy, yet!  You people seem to act as if the
entire weight of effort of the population of the planet has devoted
their lives to the goal of creating a new species in a lab.  It is
just a handful of people with a few thousand dollars.  No, it is
not surprising!  What is surprising is that a thinking individual
would think it should be surprising!

: I think someone asked for a rigorous definition of `kind'.  I was asked
: the same question in email and tentatively put one forward (without
: thinking about it all that much and without being an expert in the field -
: You Have Been Warned!); if posting it would help, I'd like to get your
: feedback.

Why do you, Herb Sutter, have to devise a RD of a K?
That should be a clue right there.
That is what I would call surprising, were it not that I already
know that Theistic-Anti-Evolution (aka Creation Science) is void
of content.

rob derrick