Yep, and they got that way by being the most comfortable with hedging the line, and the most skilled at getting away with stuff. Great sociopaths make great CEOs--it's just that their kink is money, which is a fixation society tends to admire rather than censure. I don't think the public was all that furious at even the Enron guys--the closer the stink got to the Bush administration, the more people dismissed it as "political," like Whitewater.
shut the hell up! I always find it weird that people talk so much about the things they aren't supposed to be doing. Yes, you have to be on the same page. But if you and I already know we're doing that thing at that place next week or so, do we need to explicitly say that in a conversation right now?
I've never been involved in crime per se, but I've done stuff I didn't want broadcast (to my parents, employer, then-wife, etc) and the most galling truth is that people can't keep their mouths shut about things they don't really need to talk about.
Technically, everything we experience or think causes changes in the brain, because all brain activity is electrical or chemical activity. And though I'm not a gamer, I'm less concerned about gaming violence than I am the effects of everyday TV. I'd rather my kids kill zombies in a game than sit on the couch and watch 24, where they're given an intellectual framework where torture is rationalized into normalcy. I don't "get" why videogames are so fascinating, but I detest TV. At least games require problem-solving skills and mental interaction. Heck, my kids play DDR 2-3 hrs a day sometimes, which probably burns as many calories as running a couple of miles.
I can't figure out the phenomenon that is Ron Paul. On paper I agree with him. I'm borderline libertarian and I like what he seems to stand for. And then there are the racist wackos who are coalescing around his movement. Militias, Christian Identity types, etc.
I call this the "side of the room" problem. You can be listening to someone and thinking "you know, he makes a bit of sense," and then you notice that David Duke or other wackos are standing on the same side of the room with him. I'm not going to stand on the same side of the room with the Aryan Nation, ostensible libertarianism notwithstanding. This isn't just a fear of guilt by association--I have to start wondering what there is about his movement that is so attractive to people whose views I find repugnant.
The "side of the room" problem works both ways, alas. Many people would be open to the ideas talked about by Michael Moore if giving them a fair hearing didn't involve standing on the same side of the room as, say, Michael Moore.
Seriously, compassion and understanding for wrongdoing has been stigmatized out of our culture. I was watching the news at work a few months ago and I said about some miscreant "maybe we shouldn't judge too much, since we don't really know the story." A co-worker responded, "you must be a liberal." What's a liberal? A dirty varmint, which has undermined and weakened our nation.
Recognizing that people make mistakes and that we also make mistakes, that perhaps we should forgive, or even trying to understand what led to the act...all of these have been caricatured and stigmatized as "liberal" soft-headedness. Even pointing out that someone's childhood may have an effect on their actions as an adult elicits scorn and contempt. No doubt there are some "liberals" out there who wouldn't even punish a serial child rapist/axe murderer, but instead of arguing against specific bad arguments, our entire capacity to understand, forgive, and move on has been thrown out like a baby with the bathwater. To understand and forgive wrongdoing you have to have humility, which is not only lacking in our culture but which is actively discouraged.
I've been faulted multiple times for trying to have humility. You aren't supposed to admit that you could be wrong, or that that person in the dock could, by the grace of God and bit of luck, be you as well. Everything is black and white, all the time. Well, unless we're talking about Rush Limbaugh's drug conviction or something like that--people seem to have no trouble handling nuanced arguments about blame and addiction when it comes to Rush. Anyway, I can't tell you how surreal it is for me, an atheist, to be lectured by an evangelical Christian I work with that I shouldn't be so humble, that I should be more proud of what I've done, and so on. Humility and forgiveness go hand in hand, and right now forgiveness, and that whole "don't judge a person till you've walked a mile in their shoes" thing, has been caricatured and shunned almost out of existence, or at least out of influence, in the USA.
"All grues are pink" isn't a negative. "There are no pink grues" is a negative, and subsequently you can't disprove it, because you can't search every location in the entire universe. You CAN construct negatives that can be proven, such as "there are no elephants in this shoebox," because you can look in the shoebox.
Don't worry yourself too much. It won't last. After the next election the millions of Americans who have all this time believed that holding the President accountable under the law was equivalent to helping the enemies of our nation will suddenly discover a newfound skepticism of government, a newfound fondness of government oversight, and a newfound reverence for the rule of law. Signing statements will go from being a vital tool in the war on terror to the mark of a looming dictatorship. Detention without trial will go from being vital to our freedoms back to what it has always been, a hallmark of totalitarian governments. Torture will become torture again, especially when the militia movement pulls a couple of stunts that clearly qualify as terrorism.
They will loudly denounce all the very things they considered so vital. The 180-degree turn will be fun to watch, but also sad, in that I know now that they're all lying would-be totalitarians who only distrust government because they don't happen to like who's in charge that week.
When he had a 90% approval rating, conservatives counted him as one of their own. When he got reelected, conservatives counted him as one of their own. When did he stop being a conservative?
He wasn't any smarter then that he is now. He wasn't a better speaker. Iraq wasn't a better idea then than now. The "Bush doctrine" wasn't smarter then than it was now. Habeus corpus was just as valuable then as now. Torture was as wrong then as it is now. Whether the Executive Branch should be exempt from all laws hasn't changed. That spending vastly more than you bring in creates a huge deficit was as true then as it is now.
It's just that the critics over the years were dismissed as "Bush haters" while you ignored all of their specific, detailed, prophetic criticisms, and now all of a sudden you don't want him in your little club anymore. I'm a bit amused at all the conservative hand-wringing, as if they had no way of knowing that all of this was happening before their very eyes, when all the time millions of Americans were hopping up and down, pointing vigorously, and yelling at the top of their lungs that all of these criticisms were true. You just impugned our patriotism and dismissed the obvious. Go you!
Yes, but anecdotal evidence that confirms my preexisting opinion is actually evidence, whereas anecdotal evidence that runs counter to my preeexisting opinion is, well, just a bunch of anecdotes, and you know those don't constitute evidence.
I've used Win95, 98, 2000, and XP. Though I hated the aesthetics of XP, I had problems with none of them. I've used Linux, and it too did what I wanted, minus being able to install some software on some distros (probably attributable to my own igorance). I've had a MacBook for ~6 months, with no problems. But during all of this time, I've heard and read complaint after complaint about all of these operating systems, about how this or that is garbage, unsuitable for serious users, and so on. I'd guess about 10%, if that, have viable complaints. Most have unreasonable expectations, or just like to bitch. Add that to the fact that people get emotionally defensive about a decision that has no bearing on what kind of person you are--what OS you use--and we're doomed to keep hearing this crap.
Between the bare metal and the end user experience are tens of millions of lines of code, all typed by people of different abilities, outlooks, and so on. I'm amazed that this thing even works at all. Yes, I wish it worked better, faster, more intuitively (but for whom?), but overall I've been happy with my experience on all of these operating systems. Currently I prefer OS X, though I haven't upgraded to Leopard yet. When I do, it may delete my data, catch my MacBook on fire, and send a squad of goons to my house to beat me up. I'll say "that sucks!" and go on with my life. I'll probably still use Apple products the next day, because I like their stuff.
I doubt many cops see that as an option. Any disagreement, defiance, or attitide is something that has to be dealt with (i.e. the person has to submit to the cop's authority and position) even if the original reason for the interaction was trivial. It's not that all cops are like that, but that enough are like that to make it a predictable phenomenon.
Because no one wants another pandemic like the one that killed more people than WWI. No one wants to be responsible for that, so they use the tools they have available--antibiotics. Those tools become less effective every day, but when it's all you have it's all you have.
As far as being "maladapted," it depends on how you want to look at it. All species will reproduce until they come up against the limits of the resources. Other animals don't reach equilibrium with the earth because they're smarter, but because they don't have our ability to change to earth to suit our ends, at least not beyond the scale of bird nests, beaver dams and so on.
If the oil runs out before we have a viable energy source, our population will decrease substantially, because billions will just die. This is assuming that disease doesn't get us first. We aren't exempt from the resource constraints faced by other organisms; we just have the capacity to manipulate the environment more extensively than they can, so we widen our window a bit. Ultimately we're doomed of course, but the ride was fun.
I'm just tired of it being presented as a snake oil cure for everything when it isn't.
I'm tired of people claiming that medical marijuana proponents claim that marijuana cures everything, when in fact they don't. You're making a sensible, supportable position--that marijuana can help with a wide variety of conditions--and turning it into a caricature, then objecting to the caricature you've made as if it's the position people actually hold.
Cue the tin foil hats about how this is a conspiracy from the government/Big Pharms.
If people are working in concert to do something they shouldn't be doing, that meets the textbook definition of a conspiracy. Government used fraudulent data and scare tactics to ban marijuana, and "Big Pharma" supports them in this--that isn't "tin foil hat" material. You're caricaturing a reasonable position, one backed up by well-documented facts, and then spewing your contemptuous bile at your own caricature, once again pretending that it's the position people actually take.
When I was a kid I'd be out all day, only coming back for meals and when it got dark. My kids (living with my ex-wife) had to be one yell away. She had to be able to see them, or call them to her, at any time. Almost all parents I know are like that, because even if they personally would give their kids more leash, they know that if something happened, everyone (including the police) would consider them to be horrible people.
Everyone thinks that if you don't know everything your kids are doing every minute of the day, you're a horrible person. When I was a kid, we did things we shouldn't have done (exploring abandoned buildings, playing doctor, whatever) but these things are generally considered to be part of growing up. Freedom entails risk, and we as a society have sworn off of risk.
There will be no single solution to the energy problem. We have to recognize that small changes, added together, accumulate into large changes. Even with CFL bulbs, I still turn the light out when I leave the room. Each light turned off for the 5 min till I re-enter the kitchen is individually insignificant, but you have to see things as part of a larger whole.
Thanks for the info--it was this kind of post I was hoping for. I'll look at the Prius. It just seems to be a shallow field--either the Prius, or the Honda Civic Hybrid. I wish Mini made one! I might look at the Volkswagon TDI, but I'd like part of my money to pay for research into hybrids, not just more fuel efficient diesels. I'd get a Prius with an EDrive if I could afford it. The Smart diesel looks nice too, but I have two children who selfishly demand to ride in the car.:)
There are many energy-saving questions I'd like to see investigated. For example, I have an old Subaru, and I'm not sure if I should buy a new fuel-efficient car. Mine isn't a guzzler, and I can afford a newer one. But that new car, even if it gets twice the MPG, costs energy to make--would an extra 20mpg offset the energy cost of making the car, and if so, how long would it take? Money aside, I don't know whether to keep the beater (which gets about 20mpg) or get a newer car.
Also, what about TVs? I have a 19" old-fashioned TV. Cheap, and it works. But I'm looking at a 32" LCD. The LCD might pull less electricity, but would the difference offset the energy costs of making the TV?
Great--you have an example of something that went unexpectedly well. Iraq is still an example of something that was anticipated and warned about, only to have those warnings ignored. "I ignored the warnings I was given" isn't the same thing as "We had no way of knowing this would happen."
Most people, I guess, figured once they were rid of Saddam, that they'd jump at the chance to unite, and form a
They did combine, with others of their ethnic group. They didn't combine as an Iraqi people because there isn't an Iraqi people--the nation was created, partitioned, by western powers. Saddam was installed as a cap to keep the ethnic strife under control. Only idiots ignored the underlying ethnic hostilities and assumed they would get along, form a freedom-loving western-style liberal democracy, and live happily ever after.
Don't act as if this was unforeseen--it wasn't. Idiots just ignored the advice from many (Colin Powell, among many many others) and believed what they wanted to believe, per the PNAC agenda. We are seeing not a shocking, unforseen eventuality, but the natural, obvious, expected consequence of the hubris held by Cheney, Wolfowitz, Rumsfeld, Kristol, and the other PNAC (and affiliated) neoconservatives.
How do you find stuff in the body of an email? Ctrl-F forwards the email. When I use Outlook (which I don't hate, though I can't read msg or pst files at home) Word is used as the composer, supposedly, but it doesn't work like it should.
So any complex email I have to compose in an actual Word document and either copy/paste over or send as an attachment. And don't even get me started on Outlook stripping out tables, "extra" line breaks, etc. I'm not saying it absolutely sucks, but I'm not digging it. I really like the way Gmail does stuff, where you can view attachments in-line without loading (or even downloading) the file. Outside of work, I rely completely on webmail.
If you want to find out if someone is a holocaust denier, you mention the holocaust and ask their views. You'll know in short order if they're the kind of person you want to vote for. Same goes for science.
Faux populist appeals aside, evolution is the best answer science has (meaning the best answer we have), and since science has given us air conditioning, the internet, medicine, sanitized food/water, etc, we can probably agree that science is important. If someone dismisses science because it conflicts with their personal religion, that matters.
This isn't really to see if Hillary or Mitt have an informed opinion on quantum mechanics or different types of speciation--it's to see if they are actually plugged into objective reality. It's a kook identifier. Sometimes people who appear to be perfectly normal reveal themselves to be just about crazy if you let them talk long enough.
Anyone who proposes the definitive answer to how life began on this planet...
Science doesn't offer definitive answers--all science is tentative. All you have to do to unseat the prevailing scientific theory, in any field, is offer another theory that better explains the known facts, better predicts the outcomes of experiments, etc. You are attributing claims of certainty that don't exist. Every mention I've read of abiogenesis in evolution books is accompanied by a caution that this field is speculative. The only people who say that scientists purport to give definitive answers are creationissts, or others who are trying to discredit the scientific method.
I'm going to start using them, because frankly I find that the law interferes with the direction I want to take with my life. I will definitely give serious thought to each of them, because you don't lightly set aside the recommendations of the legislature, but sometimes the unitary executive (in this case, me) has implied powers that frankly supercede other concerns. As laudable as I consider the law, both in letter and intent, sometimes it imposes inefficiencies and limitations that would place an undue burden on my planning and execution.
The question is--how can inanimate particles combine to form a living thing? Is that question inappropriate for science? Though I concede that it can never be definitively answered, there is interesting, ongoing research into how it might have happened. Google for self-replicating molecules and you'll come up with some interesting stuff. True, there will always be naysayers standing there saying "you can't prove it!" but there are always going to be those who just don't like science.
The assertion that disease is not caused by demonic possession is not falsifiable--does that cast doubt on the germ theory? My point, loosely, is that many attack evolution through what they consider to be its weak point--abiogenesis. Abiogenesis actually isn't part of evolutionary theory, and Darwin's Origin of Species doesn't even address where life came from, only where the variety came from. Anyway, the attack on abiogenesis is easy because you can turn skeptic and say "you can't falsify this, so it's not science," and my point here is that science deals only with the natural world, and all explanations are going to lie in the natural world, even if they have to remain speculative and even hazy. At no point is science going to throw up its hands and say "we can't prove where life started, so it must've been Shiva|Mithra|God|Zeus!" I've read a bit on abiogenesis, and all of the writers I've seen have cautioned repeatedly that the area is speculative at best. It has no bearing on evolutionary theory.
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Yep, and they got that way by being the most comfortable with hedging the line, and the most skilled at getting away with stuff. Great sociopaths make great CEOs--it's just that their kink is money, which is a fixation society tends to admire rather than censure. I don't think the public was all that furious at even the Enron guys--the closer the stink got to the Bush administration, the more people dismissed it as "political," like Whitewater.
I've never been involved in crime per se, but I've done stuff I didn't want broadcast (to my parents, employer, then-wife, etc) and the most galling truth is that people can't keep their mouths shut about things they don't really need to talk about.
Technically, everything we experience or think causes changes in the brain, because all brain activity is electrical or chemical activity. And though I'm not a gamer, I'm less concerned about gaming violence than I am the effects of everyday TV. I'd rather my kids kill zombies in a game than sit on the couch and watch 24, where they're given an intellectual framework where torture is rationalized into normalcy. I don't "get" why videogames are so fascinating, but I detest TV. At least games require problem-solving skills and mental interaction. Heck, my kids play DDR 2-3 hrs a day sometimes, which probably burns as many calories as running a couple of miles.
I call this the "side of the room" problem. You can be listening to someone and thinking "you know, he makes a bit of sense," and then you notice that David Duke or other wackos are standing on the same side of the room with him. I'm not going to stand on the same side of the room with the Aryan Nation, ostensible libertarianism notwithstanding. This isn't just a fear of guilt by association--I have to start wondering what there is about his movement that is so attractive to people whose views I find repugnant.
The "side of the room" problem works both ways, alas. Many people would be open to the ideas talked about by Michael Moore if giving them a fair hearing didn't involve standing on the same side of the room as, say, Michael Moore.
Recognizing that people make mistakes and that we also make mistakes, that perhaps we should forgive, or even trying to understand what led to the act...all of these have been caricatured and stigmatized as "liberal" soft-headedness. Even pointing out that someone's childhood may have an effect on their actions as an adult elicits scorn and contempt. No doubt there are some "liberals" out there who wouldn't even punish a serial child rapist/axe murderer, but instead of arguing against specific bad arguments, our entire capacity to understand, forgive, and move on has been thrown out like a baby with the bathwater. To understand and forgive wrongdoing you have to have humility, which is not only lacking in our culture but which is actively discouraged.
I've been faulted multiple times for trying to have humility. You aren't supposed to admit that you could be wrong, or that that person in the dock could, by the grace of God and bit of luck, be you as well. Everything is black and white, all the time. Well, unless we're talking about Rush Limbaugh's drug conviction or something like that--people seem to have no trouble handling nuanced arguments about blame and addiction when it comes to Rush. Anyway, I can't tell you how surreal it is for me, an atheist, to be lectured by an evangelical Christian I work with that I shouldn't be so humble, that I should be more proud of what I've done, and so on. Humility and forgiveness go hand in hand, and right now forgiveness, and that whole "don't judge a person till you've walked a mile in their shoes" thing, has been caricatured and shunned almost out of existence, or at least out of influence, in the USA.
"All grues are pink" isn't a negative. "There are no pink grues" is a negative, and subsequently you can't disprove it, because you can't search every location in the entire universe. You CAN construct negatives that can be proven, such as "there are no elephants in this shoebox," because you can look in the shoebox.
They will loudly denounce all the very things they considered so vital. The 180-degree turn will be fun to watch, but also sad, in that I know now that they're all lying would-be totalitarians who only distrust government because they don't happen to like who's in charge that week.
He wasn't any smarter then that he is now. He wasn't a better speaker. Iraq wasn't a better idea then than now. The "Bush doctrine" wasn't smarter then than it was now. Habeus corpus was just as valuable then as now. Torture was as wrong then as it is now. Whether the Executive Branch should be exempt from all laws hasn't changed. That spending vastly more than you bring in creates a huge deficit was as true then as it is now.
It's just that the critics over the years were dismissed as "Bush haters" while you ignored all of their specific, detailed, prophetic criticisms, and now all of a sudden you don't want him in your little club anymore. I'm a bit amused at all the conservative hand-wringing, as if they had no way of knowing that all of this was happening before their very eyes, when all the time millions of Americans were hopping up and down, pointing vigorously, and yelling at the top of their lungs that all of these criticisms were true. You just impugned our patriotism and dismissed the obvious. Go you!
I've used Win95, 98, 2000, and XP. Though I hated the aesthetics of XP, I had problems with none of them. I've used Linux, and it too did what I wanted, minus being able to install some software on some distros (probably attributable to my own igorance). I've had a MacBook for ~6 months, with no problems. But during all of this time, I've heard and read complaint after complaint about all of these operating systems, about how this or that is garbage, unsuitable for serious users, and so on. I'd guess about 10%, if that, have viable complaints. Most have unreasonable expectations, or just like to bitch. Add that to the fact that people get emotionally defensive about a decision that has no bearing on what kind of person you are--what OS you use--and we're doomed to keep hearing this crap.
Between the bare metal and the end user experience are tens of millions of lines of code, all typed by people of different abilities, outlooks, and so on. I'm amazed that this thing even works at all. Yes, I wish it worked better, faster, more intuitively (but for whom?), but overall I've been happy with my experience on all of these operating systems. Currently I prefer OS X, though I haven't upgraded to Leopard yet. When I do, it may delete my data, catch my MacBook on fire, and send a squad of goons to my house to beat me up. I'll say "that sucks!" and go on with my life. I'll probably still use Apple products the next day, because I like their stuff.
Sadly, I knew this. Just wasn't thinking of the virus/bacteria difference when I wrote it. Doh!
As far as being "maladapted," it depends on how you want to look at it. All species will reproduce until they come up against the limits of the resources. Other animals don't reach equilibrium with the earth because they're smarter, but because they don't have our ability to change to earth to suit our ends, at least not beyond the scale of bird nests, beaver dams and so on.
If the oil runs out before we have a viable energy source, our population will decrease substantially, because billions will just die. This is assuming that disease doesn't get us first. We aren't exempt from the resource constraints faced by other organisms; we just have the capacity to manipulate the environment more extensively than they can, so we widen our window a bit. Ultimately we're doomed of course, but the ride was fun.
Everyone thinks that if you don't know everything your kids are doing every minute of the day, you're a horrible person. When I was a kid, we did things we shouldn't have done (exploring abandoned buildings, playing doctor, whatever) but these things are generally considered to be part of growing up. Freedom entails risk, and we as a society have sworn off of risk.
There will be no single solution to the energy problem. We have to recognize that small changes, added together, accumulate into large changes. Even with CFL bulbs, I still turn the light out when I leave the room. Each light turned off for the 5 min till I re-enter the kitchen is individually insignificant, but you have to see things as part of a larger whole.
Thanks for the info--it was this kind of post I was hoping for. I'll look at the Prius. It just seems to be a shallow field--either the Prius, or the Honda Civic Hybrid. I wish Mini made one! I might look at the Volkswagon TDI, but I'd like part of my money to pay for research into hybrids, not just more fuel efficient diesels. I'd get a Prius with an EDrive if I could afford it. The Smart diesel looks nice too, but I have two children who selfishly demand to ride in the car. :)
Also, what about TVs? I have a 19" old-fashioned TV. Cheap, and it works. But I'm looking at a 32" LCD. The LCD might pull less electricity, but would the difference offset the energy costs of making the TV?
Great--you have an example of something that went unexpectedly well. Iraq is still an example of something that was anticipated and warned about, only to have those warnings ignored. "I ignored the warnings I was given" isn't the same thing as "We had no way of knowing this would happen."
Don't act as if this was unforeseen--it wasn't. Idiots just ignored the advice from many (Colin Powell, among many many others) and believed what they wanted to believe, per the PNAC agenda. We are seeing not a shocking, unforseen eventuality, but the natural, obvious, expected consequence of the hubris held by Cheney, Wolfowitz, Rumsfeld, Kristol, and the other PNAC (and affiliated) neoconservatives.
So any complex email I have to compose in an actual Word document and either copy/paste over or send as an attachment. And don't even get me started on Outlook stripping out tables, "extra" line breaks, etc. I'm not saying it absolutely sucks, but I'm not digging it. I really like the way Gmail does stuff, where you can view attachments in-line without loading (or even downloading) the file. Outside of work, I rely completely on webmail.
Faux populist appeals aside, evolution is the best answer science has (meaning the best answer we have), and since science has given us air conditioning, the internet, medicine, sanitized food/water, etc, we can probably agree that science is important. If someone dismisses science because it conflicts with their personal religion, that matters.
This isn't really to see if Hillary or Mitt have an informed opinion on quantum mechanics or different types of speciation--it's to see if they are actually plugged into objective reality. It's a kook identifier. Sometimes people who appear to be perfectly normal reveal themselves to be just about crazy if you let them talk long enough.
I'm going to start using them, because frankly I find that the law interferes with the direction I want to take with my life. I will definitely give serious thought to each of them, because you don't lightly set aside the recommendations of the legislature, but sometimes the unitary executive (in this case, me) has implied powers that frankly supercede other concerns. As laudable as I consider the law, both in letter and intent, sometimes it imposes inefficiencies and limitations that would place an undue burden on my planning and execution.
The question is--how can inanimate particles combine to form a living thing? Is that question inappropriate for science? Though I concede that it can never be definitively answered, there is interesting, ongoing research into how it might have happened. Google for self-replicating molecules and you'll come up with some interesting stuff. True, there will always be naysayers standing there saying "you can't prove it!" but there are always going to be those who just don't like science.
The assertion that disease is not caused by demonic possession is not falsifiable--does that cast doubt on the germ theory? My point, loosely, is that many attack evolution through what they consider to be its weak point--abiogenesis. Abiogenesis actually isn't part of evolutionary theory, and Darwin's Origin of Species doesn't even address where life came from, only where the variety came from. Anyway, the attack on abiogenesis is easy because you can turn skeptic and say "you can't falsify this, so it's not science," and my point here is that science deals only with the natural world, and all explanations are going to lie in the natural world, even if they have to remain speculative and even hazy. At no point is science going to throw up its hands and say "we can't prove where life started, so it must've been Shiva|Mithra|God|Zeus!" I've read a bit on abiogenesis, and all of the writers I've seen have cautioned repeatedly that the area is speculative at best. It has no bearing on evolutionary theory.