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A chimp-pig hybrid origin for humans?

m.phys.org

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Re: A chimp-pig hybrid origin for humans?

#81

Post by mistercow »

a-priori wrote: post #24
mr_luc wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Claims, yes. But he doesn't claim it. He puts it forward as a hypothesis. All useful hypothesis are, by definition, extra-ordinary.

Of course. It was the phys.org post which invoked Sagan's quote, and I was merely reusing it for rhetorical effect.

>Sagan's quote

Minor nitpick, but while Sagan popularized the saying, it probably originates with Laplace's "The weight of evidence for an extraordinary claim must be proportioned to its strangeness" (which is itself a rephrasing).

This makes sense in historical context; the quote comes from 1814, two years after Laplace published the most well-known formulation of Bayes' theorem, which is exactly what the saying embodies.

Re: A chimp-pig hybrid origin for humans?

#82

Post by specialist »

jhewitt123 wrote: post #77
tokenadult wrote: post #52

Gah. Another crap submission from PhysOrg. This has been going on so long that many HN participants have called that out as a bad source before. PhysOrg appears to have been banned as a site to submit from by Reddit (according to what I've read here on HN). I learned from other participants here on HN that there are better sites to submit from. Comments about PhysOrg: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3077869 "Yes…

I think each submission should be judged on its own merit. HN might do better to ban crap comments like yours

Who's got time for that? There's a reason we consider the source. The Bozo Bit works.

Re: A chimp-pig hybrid origin for humans?

#83

Post by beemoe »

hcarvalhoalves wrote: post #30
a-priori wrote: post #19

So colour me skeptical. As they say, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, and this theory is making several extraordinary claims: 1) A hybridization event indeed occurred in the relatively recent genetic history of homo sapiens (rather than the unusual anatomic features being produced some other way). 2) The hybridization was with a close relative of pigs (rather than another family that has some simi…

If you ask a cannibal what's the taste of human flesh, he will say "pork", which makes this hypothesis funny. That said, this is way, way too far fetched. Proposing that a primate and a primitive ungulate can produce an hybrid is already a big stretch, let alone producing a fertile one. Then, he supports his claim by refusing the genetics, and hand picks morphology aspects from the suinae that confirm his theory. Wha…

re: "naked skin" Did you read where he addresses this question in the first green box on this page: http://www.macroevolution.net/hybrid-hypothesis-section-1.ht...

Is there some evidence that the hairless trait was the result of human selection and no hairless varieties existed before human selection?

Re: A chimp-pig hybrid origin for humans?

#84

Post by hcarvalhoalves »

beemoe wrote: post #83
hcarvalhoalves wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you ask a cannibal what's the taste of human flesh, he will say "pork", which makes this hypothesis funny. That said, this is way, way too far fetched. Proposing that a primate and a primitive ungulate can produce an hybrid is already a big stretch, let alone producing a fertile one. Then, he supports his claim by refusing the genetics, and hand picks morphology aspects from the suinae that confirm his theory. Wha…

re: "naked skin" Did you read where he addresses this question in the first green box on this page: http://www.macroevolution.net/hybrid-hypothesis-section-1.ht... Is there some evidence that the hairless trait was the result of human selection and no hairless varieties existed before human selection?

His argument is that the domestic pig and the wild boar are not the same animal, which is pretty obvious. Then, he claims we don't know where the domestic pig came from, and that a common ancestor could be hairless.

That is still a pretty weak argument considering from all suinae, the domestic pig is the only hairless, and for his hypothesis to work, hairlessness would have to be a dominant trait (otherwise, logic says we should be hairy like a chimp).

I'm no geneticist or anything like that, but there are some pretty (big) holes that he doesn't address and attributes to ignorance. You can't make an hypothesis plausible by claiming about what you do NOT known - you have to show positive correlation, not absence of negative correlation.

Re: A chimp-pig hybrid origin for humans?

#85

Post by jhewitt123 »

specialist wrote: post #82
jhewitt123 wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think each submission should be judged on its own merit. HN might do better to ban crap comments like yours

Who's got time for that? There's a reason we consider the source. The Bozo Bit works.

The source was Eugene McCarthy from macroevolution.net. I took the time to analyze, weigh, summarize, and find a place to publish it. Physorg took it at face value from me, and published it.

Re: A chimp-pig hybrid origin for humans?

#86

Post by tokenadult »

jhewitt123 wrote: post #85
specialist wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who's got time for that? There's a reason we consider the source. The Bozo Bit works.

The source was Eugene McCarthy from macroevolution.net. I took the time to analyze, weigh, summarize, and find a place to publish it. Physorg took it at face value from me, and published it.

Physorg took it at face value from me, and published it.

Well, now I understand why you seem personally offended by the call to weigh the evidence, which includes weighing the evidence that submissions from PhysOrg often have the Bozo bit turned on. The previous discussion in this thread already linked to a much better write-up on the substance of the issue

http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2013/07/02/the-mfap-h...

by a developmental biologist who understands and explains why this speculative hypothesis makes no sense. Read up more about biology before summarizing next time.

Re: A chimp-pig hybrid origin for humans?

#87

Post by jhewitt123 »

tokenadult wrote: post #86
jhewitt123 wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The source was Eugene McCarthy from macroevolution.net. I took the time to analyze, weigh, summarize, and find a place to publish it. Physorg took it at face value from me, and published it.

Physorg took it at face value from me, and published it. Well, now I understand why you seem personally offended by the call to weigh the evidence, which includes weighing the evidence that submissions from PhysOrg often have the Bozo bit turned on. The previous discussion in this thread already linked to a much better write-up on the substance of the issue http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2013/07/02/the-mfap-h…

I'll let physorg handle themselves on that. I am sure you know more about their content history here on HN then me. Either way, your "crap submission" comment was to me so I responded, as you no doubt would yourself to a similar attack. You will be seeing a lot more science from me on physorg, and elsewhere, since I just got started http://hewitt123.com/blog/?page_id=45 Blocking it hurts your community here a heck of lot more than than me, so chill out and tune in. Pharngula made a nice composition, did his post start this thread? If he was honest he would have said what I did, biology and genetics can't prove or disprove this right now, and that is among the reasons I raised it for intelligent discussion in the first place. Until we can watch, and sufficiently understand, chromosomal translocations, pairings, matching, splittings etc. during meiosis/recombination, criticism from ignorance best shut up and learn something. Professional scientists calling this guy an idiot, or pig, or saying, like pharygula, that this guys pants are probably full of semen, are those that you would be better served in blocking to improve this forum. Pharygula calls for an experimental cross between a human and swine, that's not even what was proposed here as an explanation of human origins.

Re: A chimp-pig hybrid origin for humans?

#88

Post by twstws »

eshvk wrote: post #72
twstws wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing I find most depressing about these crackpots is that some otherwise productive scientist has to spend an evening debunking their nonsense. And it still doesn't stop. I taught evolution for undergrads, and occasionally had to deal with these issues from students. It takes time to look into them, and no matter how thoroughly debunked the theory, some kids find them too irresistible to let go of. It undermines…

> some kids find them too irresistible to let go of. It undermines real education in the end. Teaching is not my cup of tea but isn't an important life lesson teaching kids how to smell bullshit? If they can do that, surely they will know what books to pick and what to learn.

True, to a point. Debunking one of these in a class is a good exercise. Preparing a lesson takes time, though, especially when you have to respond to something out of the blue. You could easily get caught spending all your limited spare time discussing why these theories aren't science, instead of the ones that are. Evolution is a big topic, and I'd rather spend my limited time dealing with the substantive bits.

Re: A chimp-pig hybrid origin for humans?

#89

Post by jhewitt123 »

jhewitt123 wrote: post #87
tokenadult wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Physorg took it at face value from me, and published it. Well, now I understand why you seem personally offended by the call to weigh the evidence, which includes weighing the evidence that submissions from PhysOrg often have the Bozo bit turned on. The previous discussion in this thread already linked to a much better write-up on the substance of the issue http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2013/07/02/the-mfap-h…

I'll let physorg handle themselves on that. I am sure you know more about their content history here on HN then me. Either way, your "crap submission" comment was to me so I responded, as you no doubt would yourself to a similar attack. You will be seeing a lot more science from me on physorg, and elsewhere, since I just got started http://hewitt123.com/blog/?page_id=45 Blocking it hurts your community here a heck of…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IIrE9TaC2rc Seems Jimmy Kimmel liked it.
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