Science nitpicks at Consonance

[kanef]

It may be unfair to nitpick the science depicted in old "sci-fi" movies (like we did in the con suite, where giant bug movies played throughout the weekend) or Star Trek (like I did in "Mutant Generations"), or in typical filk songs.  All of those, after all, are meant for entertainment.  But I did comment on two works at Consonance that had a

Comments

[catsittingstill]

Easy fix: "every creature running loose has one paramount priority and that's to reproduce."

Unit of selection: isn't it kind of moot? It's the individual creature that reproduces or doesn't--and a gene that interferes with that drags down all the genes the creature carries along with it.

I agree that leaving fossils is a sign of success and talking about "animals that failed" is hubris when, IIRC Homo sapiens hasn't survived even as long as the *average* species yet. When we've been around as long as the coleacanth it will be time to talk about "animals that failed."

OTOH I think it's great that Tim even writes songs about this stuff; there aren't many people who do. So I guess I shouldn't kick too much if he's got some of the details wrong.

[kanef]

It isn't moot. The selfish gene theory and the selfish individual theory would make different predictions about how much risk an animal would take to save the lives of her children. (Especially female animals who are certain that they're her children.) One theory predicts that the individual's paramount priority, instinctively, is its own survival. The other predicts that a selfish gene can program an individual to sacrifice herself to save, say, four children who on average are likely to represent two copies of itself. (The selfish gene theory about each individual gene looking out for itself, not the whole genome -- if it were the whole genome, the only way to test which theory is right would be to look at the behavior of identical twins

[catsittingstill]

I was not arguing against the selfish gene--I agree that many of the predictions of that theory appear to work out--but against the unit of selection being the gene. (Except probabilistically, over long periods of time, of course, but even there things like genetic drift and the founder effect complicate things.)

I wonder if people are noticeably more willing to sacrifice themselves to save their identical twin as opposed to fraternal twin, actually...

I would not take the conflict of interest between males and females *too* seriously; songs are written by and about individuals and way too many people are running around claiming women are genetically programed to be thus and so and would we individual women please shut up, sit down and *do* it already.

Natural Selection

[anonymous]

Hi Bob

Re: Natural Selection

[kanef]

Thanks for the reply, Tim. I understand completely about accepting criticism; I rationally want to be better at it than I naturally am. I think most people are not as good at it as they should be. There's probably a reason in evolutionary history that that gene has been so wildly successful in beating out its competitors

[patoadam]

Yes, ozarque makes the same argument at the beginning of "The Joy of American English Grammar", which she serialized on her blogTeaching that "lay" takes a direct object and "lie" doesn't is probably not important. But for the following reasons I am annoyed that schools, both public and private, teach less grammar than they did when I was growing up

[kanef]

Re 1-3: I think it was from the above-mentioned Pinker book that I learned the history of the split infinitive rule: Because the Romans had conquered the Anglo-Saxons and were economically and militarily powerful, the Anglo-Saxons aspired to emulate their betters and to talk more like them. Since it's literally impossible to split an infinitive in Latin, it was considered "bad grammar" to split it in English. And while I agree that everyone can learn to speak the same standardized dialect, there are socioeconomic and class and ethnic influences to that, because the standard tends to approximate the dialect the more powerful groups speak. Pinker points out that AAVE, for example, has just as consistent a grammar as "correct" English. Or take the fictional Western-inspired English of the Browncoats: Vixy carefully wrote "there's many a man has tried his hand" in Mal's Song, which sounds correct for that dialect, although it's arguably incorrect grammar to say "them that run with me" -- I'm pretty sure, admittedly from watching

[patoadam]

Sure, you don't have to know the grammatical names for things to be able to talk. You don't even have to be conscious of what you're doing. I did not realize that there are two "th" sounds in English, one voiced and one unvoiced, until I read it in a book, yet I flawlessly pronounced words like "thin" and "then".

[kanef]

Hence the word "instinct" in the book's title. Pinker is arguing against the widespread theory that language is a product of general intelligence. He argues that language is a second amazing and almost unique capability of our species. The evidence includes studies of people whose brains were damaged by accident so that they lost the ability to think coherently but could still talk, or vice versa. (Or, technically, not language, but the framework for learning any human language in the first few years of life.)

[batyatoon]

I have been trying to figure out what happened to "spat", as past tense of "spit". I keep seeing "spit" used as past tense and it drives me up the wall.

[kanef]

It seems to be official. The dictionary that comes with a Mac configured for U.S. English (the New Oxford American Dictionary) says for spit, in the Jack and Rose sense: "past and past part. spit or spat". (For spit in the Hans and Ewok sense, it's of course "spitted".) Surprisingly, Google Ngrams seems to show that in published books, "he spat on" not only remains more common, but actually became relatively even more common last century than it used to be, although it peaked in 1930 and had a sharp decline during our lifetimes before recovering a bit in the 1990's. Maybe it was actually invented just a few centuries ago by analogy with "sit".

By the way, since posting this I discovered that "wrought" is an archaic past tense of "work", not of "wreak" as is commonly believed, and both "wreaked havoc" and "wrought havoc" are considered acceptable by the dictionary writers.

Rules of grammar

[batyatoon]

I never paid attention in grammar lessons and learned to use the language pretty well just from listening and reading. However, I went back as an adult and took a semester class in grammar; it was one of the most useful classes I've taken for my job of teaching elementary school to immigrants. See, now I can explain *why* we say something a certain way. For kids who are themselves or whose parents are from non-English speaking countries, the role modeling of grammar at home is not much help; likewise for non-standard variations of English, i.e. Ebonics or Spanglish. I teach that learning standard English is just as useful for a young inner-city kid who wants to study or work outside of the ghetto as French would be in Paris. That does not make standard English "better," it just allows you to go more places and project the ethos you need to get along well with the people you'll meet there; and just as you would take off your coat and tie in favor of a T shirt and jeans after a day working at the bank, you can switch from S.E. back to