An Example Of Evolution By Adaptation: The Inuit

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In the video below, Chris Masterjohn is talking about the fact that most inuit people have an alteration regarding the CPT1A gene, which is the gene that is involved in the formation of ketones from fatty acids. He explains this fact using the theory of natural selection, which is very dear to the neo-darwinists. He speaks as if evolution is something not inherent to all life forms, but, instead. as almost a God, which is above the organisms and makes all the judgements and decisions for them . But Lamarck and maybe Peat too would say that what really happened wasn't that the maladapted died and the well-adapted lived because they innately and randomly were bestowed with this gift. I think that they would agree that the living matter is adaptive and creative and is always in contact with its invironment, which would mean that as people spent more and more time with a huge influx of ketones from fat, the cells, intelligently, came up with ways to better utilize fat and not have dangerous amount of ketones in the blood all the time. I'm not necessarily saying that natural selection never happens, but to say that a RANDOM mutation happened to the right organisms at the right time for a specific issue just seems extremely unlikely. Natural selection may have a place in the total process of evolution, but, in my view, what STARTS and DRIVES evolution is adaptation, which is passed to the offspring. Or else we would be seeing people with tails or wings here and there before seeing a useful and coherent change, since, according to the neo-darwinists, mutation is random. It just makes a lot more sense to suspect that life is adaptive and is in control of what is the most appropriate change given its specific context. This is similar to the fishes that lived in the dark and after just one generation, the offspring were born blind and also to the rats whose offspring were scared of cat urine, even though only their parents( but not themselves)made the connection between the cat and the urine.

At the end of the video, he proposes a theory for how this could have happened. But it doesn't really explain anything. He included genetic explanations and also natural selection and environment imposition to try and explain the inuit scenario, but it is still a fact that the chance of a specific random mutation happening to the right people in the right place in the right time for a specific issue is extremely small. If mutation really was random, then the inuit would probably be extinct well before the correct random mutation ocurred.

What are your thoughts?
 

SonOfEurope

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Well... I agree with you on the aspect of mutations following need not the other way around...but it does not exclude that their occasional randomness might sometimes fit the environment.

Thousands of years and hundreds of bottlenecks... Where a certain population came close to extinction and that allowed a mutation.. Not necessarily the most optimal but the precursor of one, to spread. And when that populations numbers bounced back up it spread.

Thousands upon thousands of generations, semi extinction events.... Sexual selection since our intelligence has grown more and more we've been guiding our own evolution through it.

We don't see people with Wings and tails because those traits would be maladaptive and sexually rejected.... Whether in equatorial Africa or Siberia, for a mutation - or a change to spread among a population - it must be beneficial... And you'd need a bottleneck effect. If the mutation of light eyes (beneficial in a dark environment like conifer forests or Cave Dwelights for refuge during winter )appeared in a tropical population it would be ditched... Not in a thousand years but eventually it would be ditched out of going unnecessary.

Few people realize the brutal cold of North and especially North-eastern Canada... I sometimes check their forecast for Churchill, Manitoba (which borders Hudson Bay ) in February you have afternoons of -32c with wind gusts of 50km/h.... And until May you have temperatures of a New York winter over the tundra. No surprise such a brutal environment put the proper evolutionary pressure on them.

During the last glaciation Europe was under ice down to England and North Germany, the areas south of this were very cold but near the Mediterranean the Atlantic influence made Spain, Italy and the Balkans similar to South Siberia and there was still plenty of vegetation and large prey despite the cold winters... The habitable zones of Europe were a "humid tundra with open conifers" of mostly cloudy skies and open woods near the Mediterranean coast, very cool Winters but mild summers - which is why Europeans display an "incomplete" or "intermediate " adaptation to both cold and warmth, light skin and Eyes to maximize D production in a dark environment but no short limbs to torso ratio as do the Eskimos, hair that traps heat - but not to the extreme of Mongoloid hair, no epicantic eye fold, prominent noses to warm the air up but not designed to avoid frostbite etc.... Unlike Eakimal and Central Asian peoples who have been under clear skies at minus 30 in a vegetation-free frozen hell for a much longer time.
 
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lvysaur

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This is similar to the fishes that lived in the dark and after just one generation, the offspring were born blind and also to the rats whose offspring were scared of cat urine, even though only their parents( but not themselves)made the connection
Or like the mice who were fed PUFA, and gave birth to more obese offspring (even if the offspring didn't eat PUFA)

I also am open to the idea that some of what we call "natural selection" may in fact be intelligent genetic adaptation. But whatever the case, the end result is the same.

I definitely don't discount natural selection wholesale. But there is definitely an overreliance on it, as if it explains everything in the biological universe.

I also think most people's understanding of natural selection is very rudimentary (it almost never has to do with animals dying off due to a deficiency, rather it's due to "fitter" animals outcompeting them with greater energy metabolism, sperm production, resource acquisition, etc)
And you'd need a bottleneck effect. If the mutation of light eyes (beneficial in a dark environment like conifer forests or Cave Dwelights for refuge during winter
I doubt that light eyes have anything to do with seeing in the dark, especially since they were absent in Siberians and North Americans. They definitely had some kind of "purpose", because 100% of Europeans had them. I've read that light-eyed women experience less stress after pregnancy or something like that.
 
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