User talk:Dpbsmith

Comment posted on talk page for Commandments:

Seeing as you seem to be our resident Evolution Expert, I have a question. How Does evolution explain the instinct in bees to only harvest nectar from one kind of plant on any given day? According to the survival of the fittest, the bees should be going to the flowers closest to their hive so as to maximize the amount of nectar that they could gather in a day. --CJS 21:43, 15 January 2007 (EST)

I don't want to be "resident evolution expert" if that means I'm supposed to "prove" evolution, or have a pat answer for everything, or anything like that. And, by the way, I love to argue, but I'm a stranger here and trying to be a polite guest.

I don't know a specific answer to your specific question.

So I'm going to answer your question with another question: how can you be sure that going to the closest flowers is really the best survival strategy? How can you be sure that what they actually do may not be better?

Scientists have discovered some surprising things. You might wonder why sickle-cell anemia, a genetic disease, persists in African populations. You'd think that according to Darwinism, the people without sickle-cell anemia would be fitter and that over time the population carrying the sickle-cell gene would be selected out. So, does the continued existence of the sickle-cell gene disprove Darwinism?

It turns out that the gene that causes sickle-cell anemia only does so when there are two of them... and when there is only one of them, it provides protection against malaria! So, in places where there is malaria, there is selection for the sickle-cell gene. This benefits the population as a whole, because most members of the population only get one gene, so they get malaria protection without getting sickle-cell anemia. Only the unfortunate people who are homozygous for the gene get sickle-cell anemia.

So, it may not be at all obvious what is really being selected for... in fact it may take a research study to discover it.

So, with respect to the bees, the real scientist's question: how would you find out? What experiments could you perform to find out whether it is better for bees to go to the closest flowers than to go to the flowers they actually go to?

(Pretty feeble, but the best I can do at short notice!) Dpbsmith 22:24, 15 January 2007 (EST)

                   Dpbsmith, I reflected further on your criticism, which was well-taken. Accordingly, I have changed the Commandment #4 in response to your criticism as follows: 4. When referencing dates based on the approximate birth of Jesus, you must give appropriate credit for the basis of the date (B.C. or A.D.). "BCE" and "CE" are not acceptable substitutes because they deny the historical basis for the date. 

                   Thanks for your thoughtful contributions to Conservapedia. --Aschlafly 12:33, 20 December 2006 (EST) 

Feel free to respond there. Thanks!

--Aschlafly 12:34, 20 December 2006 (EST)

Much better. Fine, in fact. Dpbsmith 13:43, 20 December 2006 (EST)

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I moved our interesting debate about perpetual motion machines to its own talk page for that entry, in the hope it will enlighten and perhaps spark debate by others. I've marked that page as "Watch" now so I will be notified whenever you post to it.

Thanks. --Aschlafly 19:00, 1 January 2007 (EST)

Your explanation of Bell Laboraties is superb! I worked there in the mid-1980s and became an expert in UNIX there. --Aschlafly 22:15, 1 January 2007 (EST)

Nice image of Phillip Brooks! --Aschlafly 20:08, 6 January 2007 (EST)

• Thanks. Dpbsmith 20:26, 6 January 2007 (EST)

Thanks for your entry on <math>\pi</math>. I improved the symbol using our LaTex capability. --Aschlafly 21:25, 13 January 2007 (EST)