Privilege in argument, especially regarding human physical matters

Yet another closure of an "aquatic ape" discussion, on typical grounds, prompted my considering - as I have in some other matters (GMOs and racial diversity and free will and a couple of others) - how it comes to be that hypotheses without actual support in evidence, argument, or experience, can acquire the status of standard scientific explanations requiring extraordinary evidence and argument to even cast doubt upon.

In the current example: It seems to me that if the aquatic ape explanation for human bipedality had been advanced first it would be conventional wisdom by now, one of those "most plausible" explanations that await firm evidence but have a long track record of agreement with both old assessments and a chain of new discoveries. Other than this lack of priority, there seems to be little wrong with it - the advantages to a wade foraging ape of height and free hands are obvious, and of course the penalties for bipedal locomotion imposed on a quadruped are much lower in near shore water; with an increased payoff and reduced penalty, an ideal setup for incremental evolutionary change, one would have thought the possibility unremarkably plausible and worthy of consideration.

In the years since its first rejection, essentially every other contemporary explanation for the evolution of bipedal locomotion in humans has been contradicted by new discovery (Ardi lived in the trees) and/or suddenly recognized as the faintly ridiculous implausibility it was all along (seeing over tall grass? really?). But this has not brought the wading ape notion to the front of the group - instead, it remains dismissed, while the old savannah transition guesses that never made sense anyway have been rehabbed as a between-grove transition with a horizontal-branch-while-carrying-food preparatory stage, or a transporting carrion back to the forest from the middle of leopard - populated grass openings transition with a reduced-shadow-in-the-hot-sun factor penalizing the ordinary three-legged carry, and the like.

Whatever their merits, these are not evidence-rich hypotheses.

There is no direct evidence for any of this, and never has been any. It's all reverse engineering for the mechanism and plausibility for the evolutionary pressures (not much of that, as it appears) and vice versa. And if there is any weight to be given to the better reverse engineering arguments and more obvious evolutionary pressures, that weight would favor a wading ape possibility - there's much less to overcome, and demonstrated available reward of the appropriate kind (rich, patchy in time and space, intelligence challenging rather than elusive or dangerous, not in need of tools or processing, transportable, nutrient balanced to our physiology, etc), and current support in apparent human nature as well as physiology.

So how, among a collection of various degrees of plausibilities, did the community of scholars settle on its current standard view - and why does it attack this one other view so vehemently and with such prejudice?

This makes a better example than the safety of GMOs, nuclear vs solar power, free will, and the like - other venues where "science" appears to have taken slipshod reasoning uncritically and carelessly derived positions as its own, "scientific" viewpoint - because big money and religion are not involved, as far as I know. The entire matter is internal to the scientific establishment. But if another example better suits, feel free.

 

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It seems as though you are assuming that there is no evidence against the aquatic ape hypothesis and there is no evidence in favor of the idea that humans never lived in the water. It does not seem that either assumptions is true.

 

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show the evidence
please show the evidence

 

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"without actual support"
therein lies the rub
There is often scant evidence("actual support") for our distant past, and from that very small amount of evidence, wildly speculative hypotheses are drawn.
The simple fact that these hypotheses are wildly speculative becomes obscure as they enter mainstream textbooks and are taught to followers within the discipline.
And, as new evidence mounts, and the speculative hypotheses are brought into question, primacy and the word of "the great men" of the discipline require much more rigorous proofs than did the original highly speculative hypotheses.

---Reminds me of the 3 little words that men have a hard time saying(from the red-green show):
The words "I don't know" are indeed hard for many folks to acknowledge yet alone voice.

 

I don't doubt that there's some degree of "arbitrariness" in the predominance of some scientific ideas over others, but at the same time, proponents of the less-preferred ideas will often be overlooking loads of evidence that fits better for an alternative, or even evidence to the contrary. I don't know much about this particular case, "aquatic ape", but the notion that "birds aren't dinosaurs" fits well with this idea. And also, happens to be a counter-example of your hypothesis that the first idea takes precedence, as the idea that birds aren't dinosaurs is somewhat older. Aquatic ape isn't the only fringe idea that isn't accepted, there are other "alternatives", such as that humans didn't come so much from an ape-like ancestor, but rather from tarsier-like primates or much smaller tail-less monkeys. Small primates indeed have skulls that are somewhat more close to the proportions of our skull (not tarsiers, they almost have only eyes and nothing more), relatively much bigger brain relative to the face and so forth. There are lots of tiny bits of "evidence" one can find to match this idea, and I'm almost certainly that there is somewhere a couple of guys who have this as their pet theory, gathering up evidence, ignoring what doesn't fit, and complaining about scientific dogma and unfairness. They would certainly be more known and have larger numbers if the theory could somehow be ideally linked with a popular ideology, like feminism -- somehow the aquatic ape theory is deemed to be more pro-feminist than the "jungle/savanna theory".



But things aren't really "settled" in many instances, I'd say even in the "aquatic ape", at least it's weaker/non-crazy versions or elements/degrees. There's just the way the evidence balance is tilted at a given time, which theoretically can change with further evidence favoring more one way or another. Still in the subject of the ancestral hominid niche and adaptionist hypotheses, I'm not really knowledgeable at all, I think that both/all sides suffer much from the "just so story" problem.

The main advantage of the mainstream savanna-and-forest ape idea may be that humans nowadays and other extant apes seem to inhabit more these environments, and, according to some versions, we've even lost some of our supposed aquatic (leaning to "extreme aquatic" -- deep diving) adaptations, such as cranial bone thickness. It would really help if there were things like some khoi-san-like old culture of deep divers, and also another "naked chimp" perhaps, or even more inambiguous paleontological associations of hominids/ancestors with an aquatic environment. So, even from this superficial analysis, it starts to become less parsimonious. It's based mostly on "what could have happened", and perhaps requiring quite a few "hidden episodes" of evolutionary history.

"But just so is the idea that we became bipeds to see farther in the horizon in the savannas and so and so". Yes, I'd agree, somewhat. I don't like most of these adaptionist "stories" of what exactly were the selective pressures and scenarios. I think the most solidly scientific things we actually have are just the phylogeny, from genetics and morphology/ontology. What happened "exactly" will probably always be unknown, and most such purported scientific theories start to blend into science fiction. The best position, in my humble opinion, is to be somewhat "agnostic" to a whole range of things that are plausible, paying attention to not find oneself suddenly trying to explain every tidy bit of details from such conjectures, the odds is that's starting to become just scientific fantasy. Morphology and genetics can inform a rough direction, and evolutionary "inertia" will usually be preferable over overly-detailed but sparsely evidentiated selectionist/adaptionist hypotheses.

Say, perhaps early hominids already had much of a bipedal anatomy from the very start, that arboreal apes were just pre-adapted "bipeds" with arms that are too long to not walk clumsy in the ground. Like orangutans and gibbons. Environments change here and there, as these populations grow. It turns out that the ones that born with smaller arms and longer legs don't all die. Just that. Lineages with those traits eventually arise, and evolve different proportions. One remains strictly bipedal, while others converge to proportions of arboreal monkeys, being also fast, powerful, quadrupedals on the ground. Fast forward millions of years, and the bipedal lineages happened to have a better luck, in a more broad range of environments, from savannas to sea shores, while the other ones can't even cross rivers. Natural selection happened along the way, refining anatomy and faculties that adapted them to this whole range of environments. Sometimes, a trait that is "selected for" in a given environment, just happens to be quite good to do an "unrelated" thing, so there may be ambiguity regarding what really drove the evolution of every trait. The end.




More details on the problems with the aquatic ape hypothesis here:

http://www.aquaticape.org/

 

Details?
Seriously?

 

Another brilliant site, ask just what the problem is with positing water having had an influence on human evolution that it didn't have on the other simians, and the moderators simply ban you. Please excuse me for making up my own opinion before I chime in on the sneer choir or not. Thanks for again making an inquisitive mind feel like Bill Maher asking irritating questions in the Vatican. It's all stupid prejudice, and you detractors are not gonna read the sources to this idea, because you think you don't have to.

aquaticape.org ... there's perverted etymology if ever. Like a creationist calling his site darwinism.org. That site is one long character assassination of any daring to state, that the idea of humans being past wading apes is not unreasonable. If you only took that site to heart, you'd think that Desmond Morris, David Attenborough and Philip Tobias are all lunatics! A site, which oddly enough doesn't source a single of its claims, so you can't fact check whether a piece of criticism is fair! You have to guess where some comma sentence or other comes from. And I've made the attempt, and I can tell you, the individual editing that site use comma sentences very freely, quite like creationists commenting on Darwin! On aquaticape.org, the criticism against the aquatic ideas doesn't have to make sense!
Elaine Morgan, this big heretic on this issue, used to do exactly that; not sourcing her claims. Led to an outcry among academic anthropologists. And they had a point, you have to source your claims. And she got the point, she sources everything in her writings on the topic from 1990 and onward. She got the point! Here, with aquaticape.org, suddenly non-sourcing is not a problem! And why? 'Cause this site says exactly what the detractors want to hear! That this irritating, persistent idea from some armchair scientist, an amateur that sold books, is nuts! If it just presents that fantasy, aparently this site edited by another scientific amateur, doesn't have to source anything! Did somebody say hypocrisy???

This is the flooded Danakil depression in East Africa circa 2.5 mya. This is where Homo started to grow its brain, on seafood in coastal salt water from the Indian Ocean. This is where we grew up:

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So we're old beach apes, so what?

 

"Did somebody say hypocrisy?"
Yes, You did.
And rightly so.
Welcome back!

Source of your map?

 

LETTURA MAGISTRALE
Urologia 74 no. 2, S-7 2007 pp.S1-5
12 OCTOBER 2006, TORINO
"The kidney speaks: Man is from the sea"
SALVATORE ROCCA ROSSETTI
(Paper in Italian.)

 

From prior thread, "Aquatic Ape Theory"

Scales, fins, gills??? What in the hell does this user think the aquatic ape hypothesis posits??? No, we are not fish, not since our ancestors were lungfish-like tetrapods 390 million years ago. It doesn't argue, that we're somehow dolphin apes, 'cause it does not make sense to argue that level of aquaticism ever factored in during recent human evolution, from the late Miocene through the Pliocene through to today. Scientific consensus is that humans are apes, and yet we differ greatly from our nearest genetic cousins - chimps, gorillas, orangutans - in terms of our physiology, biochemistry and in some respects our ethology. AAH does not differ from that consensus, nor does it differ from placing human origin in Africa. In terms of trying to discern the selective cause for those profound differences, for instance bipedalism, furlessness, our much larger brain, etc., some have found analogies to such traits in aquatic, semiaquatic and former semiaquatic species, this called convergent evolution. For instance, furlessness is a common adaptation seen in aquatic mammals, e.g. hippos, dolphins, etc. Which would lend our species Homo sapiens to have underwent a key period of semiaquatic life in recent million years, rather than the traditional posited savannah existence, where it is difficult if not impossible to find similar convergences among grassland species. No, it's not impossible, that humans have lived in the savannah as well at brief spurts, but such an existence cannot explain the many traits that sets us apart from the other apes, where as a partially aquatic one can, especially when applying parsimony.

If you are to critisize the aquatic ideas, at the very least critisize what's actually being presented!!! Instead of some warped, nonsensical version, that is easy to sweep off the table. Like this classic distortion of a great thinker's work:

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But that's the problem, isn't it? You can't ridicule what's actually being presented; the idea, that we are old beach apes. And somehow, the AAH-detractors have a sociological need to ridicule the entire concept. Why is that? If the entire concept is bonkers, you don't have to distort what's being talked about. You can just go by this ridiculous representation of our recent biological origin:

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From other thread, currently in "cesspool", user Bells:

Why don't you just go ahead and say it? "Unbeliever!"

What I edited on the AAH wikipedia page was a fuller presentation of the arguments in this debate. And aparently, that pisses off a lot of people!!! Suddenly, it's a huge problem for people to read, what this idea is actually talking about! Suddenly, people don't need to read this information on an article relaying the topic! If AAH is really pseudo drivel, then what the hell are people afraid of???

Pardon me for being enraged about the gross mistreatment of this idea, which may well turn out to be our modern day equivalent to the theory of the heliocentric near-universe. Scientific concern for pseudoscientific nonsense, that I can deal with. But when a host of people claiming to be of a scientific mind, many of them professional academics, exhibits a psychological mind frame quite similar to that of creationists, where they refuse to deal with the actual presented arguments, but continously goes back to discuss dolphin apes or mermaids or what ever crap, that has never been part of the argumentation, then I'm left severely depressed as to the scientific potential of our species. 'Cause if an entire scientific field ignores their own scientific method just because an idea is irritating them personally, how can we expect half the US population not to doubt evolution???

Every time human science has made a leap forward in understanding the cosmos and especially our own place in it, we have this stupid tendency to pee ourselves and aim the pitchforks at the discoverers. That is why the threat of torture of a 17th century Italian lens maker in his 70's is the greatest sin ever committed in the history of science. That is why a 19th century British naturalist is still being persecuted for his studies of the tree of life. That is why a German weatherman got ridiculed for fifty years by geologists, who should've known better. And that is why a Welsh TV screenplay writer has been ridiculed for the last forty years by anthropologists who should bloody well know better, especially after the Piltdown scandal! Scholars who betray their own scientific method, because this pathetic little 'splash-splash' notion about our origin for some damned peculiar reason is an inconvenient truth!

And yes, I speak up about that. How dare I?

 

Nothing? Seriously? Look, aparently, I need help here. For some fifteen years, I've tried desperately to get a clear answer to why it is so obviously pseudoscience to posit, that the profound phenotypical differences between ourselves and the other great apes can be explained as a result of a semiaquatic existence in our recent evolution as a species, seeing analogies for these traits in aquatic, semiaquatic and recent semiaquatic species. In short, why is it nuts to perceive humans as old beach apes???

Every detracting reply I have ever seen falls in two categories, and two only:
1) Ridicule of a grossly distorted version about the aquatic ideas, that I have never understood as part of it, primarily that it argues us living 24-7-365 in open seas during our unique evolution. I recent years, I have gone back and forth on the key sources to these waterside ideas, and only one or two individuals has ever argued that high level of aquaticism, and that angle is quickly rejected every time. Nobody worth serious mention takes these perceived semiaquatic hominins beyond the beds and coasts, that is the thoroughly Darwinian concept of aquatic human evolution. And this is the concept, that detractors refuse to deal with, when they resort to critisize a "dolphin ape" idea, that is simply not on the table.
2) Blind reference to aquaticape.org, a site I have to say has a severe credibility problem. A site, that sources none of its claims and seems bent on vicious character assassinations of everyone from Alister Hardy to Philip Tobias, as long as they don't chime in on the aquatic ridicule. Basically, detractors simply fall back on, "I don't have to answer that, just read aquaticape.org." I have heard about anthropologists and biologists, professional academics, waving off irritating aquatic questions from students by simply referring them to that site. A site by an amateur, where it's almost impossible to fact check anything, because nothing is sourced. And again, Elaine Morgan was critisized for lack of sourcing in her works untill 1990. At least she got the point, but the amateur editing aquaticape.org doesn't have to, 'cause he says what the detractors want to hear.

What I'm constantly left with is the gnawing sensation, that something is awfully wrong about this idea, and that it isn't the idea. It is a simple enough idea; that some hominoids in Africa ventured into the water's edge and had their phenotype influenced by it over a course of a number of hundred thousand years, and that a strand of them became extant Homo sapiens, us. There's no need for all this panic, so we're a bathing ape, so what? But history shows, that we do panic every time science discloses a deeper understanding about ourselves. Problem is, here it isn't creationists or the like that panic, it is anthropologists, the very experts who are supposed to be our last line of defense against our own hysteria.

Some years back, I met a student, that had felt compelled to stop studying anthropology, because she couldn't accept her professor's nonsensical (her phrasing) rejection of Elaine Morgan's points. After also having referred her to aquaticape.org, which she countered with the same argument about credibility as I state above, the man basically looked her in the eye and said something akin to, "Look, you seem like a bright young student. Don't ruin your academic career this early by pursuing this idea." He basically told her to ... shut ... up. He couldn't counter her questions about why this idea isn't pursued ('cause there aren't any arguments as to why it shouldn't be), like you detractors can't in here, so he just decided to pull the gorilla card. Subsequently, she felt she couldn't waste her time on such a fraudulent academic field and switched to biology. (Her version of it.)

Again I'm are left with the notion, that an entire scientific field is flouting their own work. And why? Elaine Morgan's argument would be the only logical explanation: That the entire concept of water in human evolution is rejected simply because she as the chief aquatic proponent for forty years was an amateur, an "armchair scientist" (her phrasing). And only because of that. Because her contribution made anthropology brass look bad, having pursued unparsimonous scenarios for decades. And then any and all possible merit from Morgan gets thrown down the toilet. The null hypothesis in anthropology still seems to be, that Elaine Morgan is wrong by default, regardless of what ever she posited. Yes, she was an amateur selling books, an amateur of a type where 99 out of 100 are nutballs, from Dan Brown to Erich von Däniken. But every once in a while, the number 100 is a Gregor Mendel. Or a Galileo. Or an Elaine Morgan, might be the case, a woman, that lived to be 92. If she had a point about human aquatic evolution, and I'm still not getting anything that properly rejects that, she is one of the giants of modern science. Somebody who should've been awarded the bloody Darwin-Wallace medal, while she was alive. Anthropology had more than enough time to seize their nonsense and recognize their own giant. Instead they chose to piss on it. Who knows, what the state of this idea had been, if Louis Leakey or Wilfred Le Gros Clark had picked up on Hardy's suggestion instead of a Welsh housewife. Then I gather it would've been a no brainer at this point:

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Ah, that's the next classic response to the aquatic suggestion. Silence it to death. That was also one of Morgan's points.

Guys, right now you're just confirming all I'm talking about.

 

It is time to silence the argument. It seems entirely fanciful.

 

to the narrow minded

 

Illustrating the OP perfectly. How do some considerations get dismissed as "entirely fanciful", and all argument involving them "silenced", amidst an apparently complete absence of relevant counterargument, or evidence and argument for less fanciful alternatives?

Here is an example of what the supposed "scientific consensus" in this example issue takes seriously:

Now that would appear to need some serious argument and evidence, no? Odd and implausible on the surface, not at all plausible at first glance, entirely fanciful in appearance and confused in presentation (arboreal apes with "bipedal anatomy" - such as what, exactly?), it's obviously an intriguing notion that needs a lot of observational support and argument - in a sober and realistic discussion of the origin of bipedal locomotion in a terrestrial ape. Instead, it's taken as a dismissal of superficially far more plausible alternatives just as it stands - it's privileged. How does this happen?

 

Just like in the cosmology threads where alternative theorists assume that physicists, astronomers, and cosmologists don't think of the possible challenges to their positions, so too do the aquatic ape proponents assume that biologists, anthropologists, archeologists, and so on do not think of the possible challenges to their position.

There is evidence. Go look at it.

Getting stoned and thinking that something is cool is not science.

 

http://talkrational.org/showthread.php?s=5f2e01dd85b5bfb32f393ef12d3e3eee&p=1346537#post1346537

 

the savanna hypothesis is an alternative hypothesis

 

Evidence of what? You have to be clear, because you are in a camp with a long history of positing evidence-free nonsense and accepting very poor (even rhetorically deceptive) reasoning , so the assumption you are being sensible and arguing in good faith is not warranted.

Which is why it is so odd that in some issues fundamentally silly ideas, the kind stoned people come up with, have been so readily accepted as scientific and respectable without evidence or sound argument - even used as bases for dismissing much better reasoned and supported guesses, such as (in the illustrative example of the problem here) a hypothetical adaptation or two to wade foraging explaining some key features of human physiology.

The fact that a whole series of those less intrinsically sound guesses for the origin of bipedalism in humans have been dismissed or radically altered in light of later discovery, while the more intrinsically sound have been acquiring more support as more research comes in, should at least have engendered some wariness, one would think.

Since that does not apply to anyone here, we can record the observation as probably true of some people somewhere and move on - right?

The problem, after all, is not that anyone here assumes the pros in these particular fields have not thought of possible "challenges" - the problem is that their reasoning and evidence for adopting some positions as "consensus" or "standard" and dismissing others as "alternative" or "fringe" is so visibly poor. Unscientific, and often flagrantly so.