The evolution of Rapid Fire Syndrome
by KrauzeIn response to my list of 5 signs you might be an intelligent design critic, Mark Nutter has put together a 45-item long You may be an intelligent design supporter if"¦ list. Item 29 goes:
You blame the theory of evolution for war, rape, the Holocaust, bestiality, racism, the high cost of gasoline, and the fact that you never seem to notice that the toilet paper roll is empty until after it's too late.
While it's clear that the theory of evolution cannot be blamed for any of those things, there might be reasons for blaming evolution itself for them. Take the fact that you never seem to notice that the toilet paper roll is empty until after it's too late. If this is a trait in humans, then evolution must have created it, right? This insight prompted me to provide an explanation for the evolution of this trait, which I'll present below, freshly pulled out of my… no, let's not go there.
First, we need to define this trait in a rigorous manner. It struck me that rather than defining it in a negative sense (as not noticing that the paper roll is empty), it would be far more productive to define it in a positive sense (as using the toilet before checking whether the paper roll is empty). This also allowed me to give this trait the formal name Fecus eruptus, or Rapid Fire Syndrome.
Now, having defined my terms, I will proceed to give an evolutionary account of the origin of Rapid Fire Syndrome. Before toilet paper was invented, prehistoric humans probably used leaves instead. Also, since the toilet itself was also as of yet un-invented, our ancestors presumably sought coverage behind bushes and other foliage when the waste products of digestion were to be dispensed. We can easily imagine natural selection being the cause of this behavior, as it would place the defecating hominid close to the very leaves it would later use to clean itself.
When squatting to relieve themselves, our forefathers would be vulnerable to predators, thus a selection pressure for quickly getting done with business would be established. It is now easy to see how Rapid Fire Syndrome evolved: Hominids would be anxious to unload the contents of their bowels as fast as possible, and since leaves would always be available, it would be a waste of time to check before sitting down.
My thesis also explains why many feel discomfort relieving themselves in public restrooms, as we feel vulnerable from predatorial attacks. Whether the thesis can also be expanded to explain why men are more reluctant to change an empty toilet paper roll than women will be the object of further research.
May 17th, 2006 at 12:32 pm
Cute. Now, on a related subject, do you have a hypothesis about why kids are fascinated with the products of defecation (indeed, they will call out to each other and gather around to view them), but adults are just the opposite (most adults, anyway; let's leave fetishes out of this for now)? I have a hypothesis, but I'm wondering if others will come up with the same one…
Comment by Allen_MacNeill — May 17, 2006 @ 12:32 pm
May 17th, 2006 at 1:22 pm
I must admit, Mark Nutter's list is well thought out, and a lot of fun — if you are an evolutionist or an IDer like myself who can laugh at yourself. I looked at it, however, and was tempted to put down a side-by-side equivelant for an evolutionist. I found a near perfect fit for each of the 45 points by just looking in the proverbial mirror.
Allen_MacNeill, Freud provided all manner of explanations as to why kids love #&$* but most adults dont. However, we all know that Freud was full of #&$* don't we.
Comment by bFast — May 17, 2006 @ 1:22 pm
May 17th, 2006 at 1:52 pm
I'm glad this blog has finally risen above all other ID/crea/evo blogs and is finally addressing the pertinent matter of the cacadookie and the stinky stinky.
Comment by Guts — May 17, 2006 @ 1:52 pm
May 17th, 2006 at 2:00 pm
I saw the humor as a traditional theist even but here is # 3
3. You think that ID is "testable" because Behe predicted that nobody would ever find a way that natural processes could produce IC. You do not think that ID was falsified when natural processes were found that did produce IC.
I suppose if you are an ID critic you think that ID is not falsifiable and yet you think it was falsified by finding a natural process to IC.
Now on to my real question: Obviously, ID critics are convinced IC is falsified. I'm guessing many here are not so sure. Anybody care to offer why or point me to a relevant discussion?
Comment by samohth — May 17, 2006 @ 2:00 pm
May 17th, 2006 at 2:16 pm
I believe the argument would be that IC is a negative argument against the Theory of Evolution, rather than a positive argument for ID (as was admitted by Minnich at Dover), thus falsification of IC is in no way related to falsification of ID.
Further even if it was a positive argument for ID, unless it was necessary for IC to be true for ID to be true (which is a far stronger connection) falsification of IC would not falsify ID (as a matter of pure logic), it would merely mean that you could not rely on IC to substantiate ID.
This is why, where possible, scientists prefer to have predictions, that have to be true in order for their hypothesis to be true, to test. Other predictions provide far weaker support.
Comment by Hrafn — May 17, 2006 @ 2:16 pm
May 17th, 2006 at 2:32 pm
But why were we designed not to notice the toilet paper roll is empty? Making use of multiple designer theory, my hypothesis is the ID designated to write the defecatory behavior code for the human brain enjoyed practical jokes, and thought it was hilarious watching us waddle around with our pants around our ankles trying to find a roll of toilet paper!
Comment by Aagcobb — May 17, 2006 @ 2:32 pm
May 17th, 2006 at 2:37 pm
Behe's argument is predicated on the assumption that someone could actually falsify Darwin's theory by employing the test of falsification offered by Darwin himself. It is a negative argument because that is the terms in which Darwwin framed how his theory could be falsified.
What is not so clear is why Darwin thought that his theory could actually be falsified according to the criterion which he offered. My suspicion is that evolutionary thinking muddles one's critical thinking apparatus.
This does not mean that Behe's argument cannot be put to good use.
Comment by Mung — May 17, 2006 @ 2:37 pm
May 17th, 2006 at 2:41 pm
Well, the fact of the matter is that some are more 'rapid fire' than others. I believe medical science has attributed that to fiber. As for the as… er… TP, exactly one half of every 2-ply sheet is in fact a cleverly disguised piece of dryer lint that disintegrates on contact, requiring yet more sheets to dislodge the now-stuck lint, which explains why a 12-roll Super-Pak lasts exactly as long as a 2-roll pack of Scott's 1000-sheet nearly-newspaper. Which, speaking of newspaper…
Nevermind. Do you know the details of the evolution of wire coathangers? When was the last time you actually purchased a wire coathanger? Does anybody really sell them? Have you seen any for sale? Yet you've gotta admit that no matter how often you clean your closet or move from place to place, there's always more wire coathangers than there were before. Where do they come from?
Safety pins. Now, I've been a costumer in my time, so I know safety pins. All sizes from wee baby gold-color ones all the way to diaper pins with duck-heads. Bra size, slip size, hold-your-pants-up size… I've seen 'em all. And I buy them in bulk quite regularly - because there's never a safety pin around when you need one, even in the junk drawer. I figured it out finally about 15 years ago.
Safety pins are the larval form of wire coathangers…
Comment by Joy — May 17, 2006 @ 2:41 pm
May 17th, 2006 at 3:09 pm
Hi Guts,
With my post, I believe we've risen to the top, floating serenely in the blogosphere toilet bowl.
Comment by Krauze — May 17, 2006 @ 3:09 pm
May 17th, 2006 at 3:16 pm
samohth:
Let me take a whack. Though the scientific community has suggested that IC is ID and ID is not science, there has been some amount of energy put in to falsifying the flagellum. My understanding is that the following successes have been made:
1 - A subsystem has been discovered which uses some of the same genes as the flagellum does. This system does a different task than the flagellum. (Sorry, I don't have the name of the system or exatly what it does at my fingertips.)
Though it doesn't make that much difference to the case, Behe and others argue that this subsystem appeared after the flagellum, so it was a devolution of the flagellum rather than a precursor.
However, Behe also pointed in his original text to the concept of cooption, suggesting from the beginning that cooption would not disprove IC. The issue remains that though the other system exists, even if it was a precursor to the flagellum, you can't get to the flagellum from there without a series of mutations that have no natural selection support resulting in a leap that far exceeds UPB.
2 - All but two of the genes involved in the flagellum also have been found doing something else somewhere.
Again, however, this is a mere case of the cooption challenge. What this does show, however, is that the gene level is the correct level to analyze the flagellum from. Ie, if these genes are used elsewhere, one can assume that these genes somehow got together to make a flagellum, rather than the dear thing developing from the individual mutations requred to make a gene — which are monumentous.
If I need 40 separate parts to make a machine. I have the 40 parts, plus 10,000 other parts, in a box, and give it a good shake, I am not likely to get the machine that I want. Even if I have a set of 10 of those parts pre-assembled, and used for some other task, I still am not likely to get my machine. But such is the case against IC.
3 - Somebody, I forget who, has proposed a mechanism for mutation to produce irreduceable complexity. It works something like this: we begin with a gene that does some task. We have a single mutation event producing two copies of the gene. These two genes slowly mutate so that copy 1 is doing half the job, and copy 2 is doing the other half. Now copy 1 looses the ability to do that which copy 2 is doing, and copy 2 looses the ability to do that which copy 1 is doing. At this point both copy 1 and copy 2 are required to make the system go. Extrapolate this concept a bit and — wala, irreduceable complexity.
This argument, however, would require a bunch of supergenes that can do incredible things. I defy anyone to make a rotary motor and control system from one supergene.
4 - There is a "just so story" floating about that proposes a gene-by-gene development of the flagellum, proposing a selective advantage for each gene. The problem with this and all "just so stories" is that each stage seems reasonable from the position of the armchair quarterback. Yet science is supposed to work on evidence. This just so story might be useful fodder for a good research project (but then such a research project would prove that ID produces scientific research and that would be devistating to science and to civilization) but without the research demonstrating that each of the stages (or at least the "we lost one gene", its no longer a flagellum, but it does something useful") is viable in the real world, this remains to be a "just so story".
If anyone has evidence that the challenge of the bacterial flagellum has gone beyond this, please let me know. I believe that this is the state of science on the matter.
This is the response from an armchair quarterback cheering for the ID side. You can get a more official response by Behe
here.
Comment by bFast — May 17, 2006 @ 3:16 pm
May 17th, 2006 at 3:38 pm
I'm going to say that this is a question of economics.
Remembering to check for toilet paper requires a certain amount of brain capacity, so you have less of an ability to do other things (like remembering to check for predators, or remembering that stupid advertising jingle that's been stuck in your head since they played it on the radio last week.)
Not-remembering to check has a variable cost. If you have enough toilet paper then the cost is zero. If you don't have enough then you have the labor cost of running the bathroom curtains through the washing machine. On average, that's probably more burdensome than not-checking.
But there's something in the human psyche that prefers a slight risk of a large inconvenience to the guarantee of a slight inconvenience. (From an evolutionary perspective slight future risks don't matter, because the odds are that you'll starve to death or get eaten by a predator long before you run out of toilet paper.)
The solution is to increase the perceived-risk by buying toilet paper in smaller rolls, and to free up additional brain capacity by banning advertising jingles.
Comment by chaosengineer — May 17, 2006 @ 3:38 pm
May 17th, 2006 at 4:39 pm
hi bFast,
Thanks. What you wrote is pretty consistent with what I could gather from the refutations I've seen. When I hear from ID critics that IC has not only been refuted but soundly refuted it leaves me scratching my head. But I'm sitting in the ID cheering section also.
Hey maybe we should have a tailgaiting party, paint ourselves bright colors and drink ludricous amounts of beer.
Anyway, it looks like this thread is going to be overrun with potty humor.
Comment by samohth — May 17, 2006 @ 4:39 pm
May 17th, 2006 at 5:27 pm
Tailgate party? Count me in!
Comment by bFast — May 17, 2006 @ 5:27 pm
May 17th, 2006 at 6:08 pm
Slightly off-topic:
I've developed the habit to drop some toilet paper in the toilet before I sit down. This has two advantages: When you flush everything really flushes down without leaving marks and you notice an empty roll before it's too late.
Comment by gmlk — May 17, 2006 @ 6:08 pm
May 19th, 2006 at 2:46 am
Hi Allen,
It seems that no one have a good evo-psych explanation for children's fascination with products of defacation. Are you going to share your explanation, or do we have to flush it out of you?
(Apologies to Mike, whose joke I just stole.)
Comment by Krauze — May 19, 2006 @ 2:46 am