No Established connection between humans and primates

[Roy]

@RichardG

What i have been asking for is for people t look outside the box of scientific assumption, expectation and approach. If you start with the expectation of ancestry then you will find it. Ancestry predates evolution? So what? that does not make it right.
I have yet to see any evidence that anyone has ever looked at the data without assuming ancestry.

Linnaeus did, obviously.

[RichardG (Richard Gillett)]

@Roy

Linnaeus did, obviously.

And nobody has thought differently since.

@T_aquaticus

@RichardG

No I am not. I am asking them (you) to observe them from a different perspective

Which perspective is that?

Richard

[T_aquaticus (The Friendly Neighborhood Atheist)]

@RichardG

Richard

You ask people to look at biology from a different perspective, but can’t say what that perspective is.

You can’t explain why shared ancestry and vertical inheritance should not produce a nested hierarchy.

You can’t come up with any other explanation for why we observe a nested hierarchy.

Your words are hollow.

[paleomalacologist (David Campbell)]

On a geological timescale, modern humans do show a fair amount of innovation, but indeed not all individuals show much.

In prokaryotes, no one gene has been free of lateral transfer, but there is generally enough similarity to establish the general nested hierarchies - prokaryotes can generally be classified into a series of taxonomic categories, though I would not be surprised if there’s something out there that is a sufficiently equal mix of multiple sources as to not be traceable. There is a lot more noise than with eukaryotes. We keep our DNA tucked away in a nucleus and are much less likely to just pick up random DNA from the environment. Viruses, on the other hand, are extremely variable, have only a few genes, probably have originated from multiple sources, and do not have clear nested hierarchies - groups can be recognized but not clear relationships between them.

If you are paying attention to the data (not always the case), trying to run an analysis on data that do not reflect a nested hierarchy (either because there is no hierarchy or because the data are not good for the purpose of the particular analysis) will give poorly supported results. For example, I have an ongoing project investigating the relationships of certain clams. If you download the DNA sequences for some commonly analyzed genes listed for that group in the database where everyone sends their data and try an analysis to find the nested hierarchy, you get a big mess (massive polytomy, for those wanting technical terms). If you look at the sequences, you find that some of them look very different from the rest. Analyze those different sequences, and they turn out to reflect misidentifications or data mixups of other types of animal and do not belong in this group. The big data projects have not been careful about getting identifications correct, messing up further studies that rely on those data. (Which is also relevant to the discussions on the weaknesses of AI). Once you eliminate the sequences that do not belong in the hierarchy that you are trying to look at, the support for hierarchies within the particular group of clams is much better. I did not simply assume the hierarchies; I looked for indications that there might be problems with the assumption of hierarchies. (Because DNA has the options of A, G, T, C [or deletion], if two sequences change enough, the random similarities from both happening to change to the same thing may outweigh any similarities inherited from a common ancestor, if they did inherit from a common ancestor. Thus, a gene that has a good level of variation to detect the pattern of relationships within a closely related group of organisms is likely to be a hopeless mess for relationships of more distantly related organisms. There are ways to either make your analysis less vulnerable to such problems or to identify what individuals in the analysis are not fitting in well. Analyzing other data does support the larger hierarchies that would include both the misidentified things and the group I am interested, but that wasn’t the goal of my analyses.)

[T_aquaticus (The Friendly Neighborhood Atheist)]

@RichardG

The point being, that the data you have could be interpreted differently, but you do not seem to want to consider that option. All your proofs and corroboration start from the same premise: that there is a continuous hierarchical link. If you started from a different premise?

The observation that life fits into a nested hierarchy does not start with the premise that there is a continuous hierarchical link. It starts from the premise that species have some shared features and some features specific to a group. That’s it. The only premise I am starting with is species have morphological features. Linnaeus didn’t start with the premise that species were linked or shared ancestry and instead believed life was created separately. He also observed that species fit into a nested hierarchy.

Is there some other perspective you want me to use?

Can you or can you not explain why we observe a nested hierarchy?

Added in edit:

Now, since the days of Linnæus this principle has been carefully followed, and it is by its aid that the tree-like system of classification has been established. No one, even long before Darwin’s days, ever dreamed of doubting that this system is in reality, what it always has been in name, a natural system. What, then, is the inference we are to draw from it? An evolutionist answers, that it is just such a system as his theory of descent would lead him to expect as a natural system. For this tree-like system is as clear an expression as anything could be of the fact that all species are bound together by the ties of genetic relationship. If all species were separately created, it is almost incredible that we should everywhere observe this progressive shading off of characters common to larger groups, into more and more specialized characters distinctive only of smaller and smaller groups. At any rate, to say the least, the law of parsimony forbids us to ascribe such effects to a supernatural cause, acting in so whimsical a manner, when the effects are precisely what we should expect to follow from the action of a highly probable natural cause.

–George Romanes, “Scientific Evidences of Organic Evolution”, 1882

If you don’t believe eukaryotes fit into a nested hierarchy, then demonstrate it.

[Roy]

@RichardG

@Roy

@RichardG

I have yet to see any evidence that anyone has ever looked at the data without assuming ancestry.

Linnaeus did, obviously.

And nobody has thought differently since.

Everyone after Linnaeus but before Darwin did, obviously.

[Roy]

@RichardG

@Roy

@RichardG

@T_aquaticus

The nested hierarchy isn’t a decision. It’s an observation.

No, it is your understanding. It is not observed as such. You read the data and draw your conclusions. (Based on what you are looking for)

Life was observed to fit into a nested hierarchy some 300 years ago

That proves rather than denies my argument.

Pointing out that it was observed that life fits into a nested hierarchy proves that the nested hierarchy is not observed?

[jpm (Phil McCurdy)]

What is telling to me is that every new advance has confirmed, rather than denied what was proposed in nested hierarchies, with a few exceptions that were gotten wrong. Genetic sequencing is of course the big technology that did so. Thus, mushrooms are more closely related to animals than plants.

[T_aquaticus (The Friendly Neighborhood Atheist)]

@Roy

Pointing out that it was observed that life fits into a nested hierarchy proves that the nested hierarchy is not observed?

Apparently, the views of 18th century creationists isn’t far enough outside the box, or a different enough perspective. If so, I have to wonder what even more extreme perspectives we are supposed to adopt.

[Apistos]

What is it about nested hierarchies, knowledge, reason, that could possibly destroy faith? Why is it the straw that would break a person’s back? Any ideas anyone? I bet GPT5 can have a good guess!

[T_aquaticus (The Friendly Neighborhood Atheist)]

@Apistos

What is it about nested hierarchies, knowledge, reason, that could possibly destroy faith?

Nested hierarchies certainly didn’t destroy the faith of 18th century creationists. They were the first to describe them and publish on it. Even more, the nested hierarchy never shook their belief in creationism.

One parallel that comes to mind is the retrograde orbit of Mars. Over many nights, Mars takes this circuitous route through the night sky.

When this was first observed and recorded it was widely believed that Earth sat at the center of the universe and the whole thing moved about us. This strange path was explained in various ways, such as epicycles. No one thought the retrograde was a threat to the belief in Geocentrism.

Then along came some folks who showed that the strange movement of Mars was better explained by Heliocentrism. Now the retrograde orbit was evidence for Heliocentrism, as were many other observations made well before the Heliocentrists.

If we were to adopt the strategy of some in this thread, the Geocentrists should have argued that Mars really doesn’t have the movements in the night sky that we can all observe. If we adopt some other perspective then the retrograde movement won’t appear, I guess. They will argue that the only reason we observe this strange movement in the sky is because we are looking for it. In the end, it’s just denialism.

[Roy]

@jpm

What is telling to me is that every new advance has confirmed, rather than denied what was proposed in nested hierarchies, with a few exceptions that were gotten wrong. Genetic sequencing is of course the big technology that did so. Thus, mushrooms are more closely related to animals than plants.

That genetic hierarchies so closely matched hierarchies determined based on morphology was extremely good evidence for common descent. But the match of genetic hierarchies derived from apparently non-functional parts of the genome, including codon 3rd nucleotides, was even better.

[Apistos]

@T_aquaticus

If we were to adopt the strategy of some in this thread, the Geocentrists should have argued that Mars really doesn’t have the movements in the night sky that we can all observe. If we adopt some other perspective then the retrograde movement won’t appear, I guess. They will argue that the only reason we observe this strange movement in the sky is because we are looking for it. In the end, it’s just denialism.

Oooooh. I dinnee see the logic, but that’ll be me. As in I cannot visualize the above without this superb demonstration (invoke video). OK, you’re making an analogy between nested hierarchy and the apparent retrograde motion of Mars every 780 days over 72 days, both of which are inescapable if you look, and then they ultimately lead to evolution and heliocentrism respectively, so better not look. There! I wonder what else we must not see in biology, for it not to imply evolution? Apart from all of it?