"I have yet to see proof that Evolution explains how life began."
If by "evolution" you mean "evolution of species by means of natural selection" you are right... as much as I'd be if waiting for explanations on black body radiation on Galileo's relativity principle. Hint: "evolution of species by means of natural selection" is NOT about how life became to be.
On the other hand, to grasp the concept that *if* some kind of particle were by chance able to produce slightly imprecise copies of itself then life was almost unavoidable you don't need a theory, just plain common sense.
"But Newton's theory is not wrong, not by a long shot."
Not on my book. Newton's theory is absolutly wrong, on bold letters: for one, space and time are absolutly NOT absolute; there's absolutly NOT a favoured reference system.
It only happens that for quite a lot of experiments its numbers are quite near the mark.
"They still teach Newtonian Mechanics in colleges for a reason."
1. Inertia 2. On most cases its numbers are good enough and a bazillion times easier to manage and comprehend 3. It still is an amazingly brilliant intelectual effort
"Yes, I understood what he was saying, I just don't agree that it follows."
And I understand your point, and you certainly are right: veganism is well part of our human nature. On a more general matter, making abstract choices (even stupid ones) is on the very human nature. On the other hand...
"Saying that people CAN eat meat and vegetables, therefore they MUST eat both is the most basic fallacy out there."
This is not as simple as that. Eating meat is "more" in our human nature than a simple choice. On the opinion of many paleonthologists it probably was our ability to eat meat a keystone on our differentation from other primates in that it allowed our brain to grow far beyond that of our herviboral "cousins" (meat is not only more energetic but easier to digest too, so we would get shorter less expensive digestive apparatus that render more energy for our expensive brains).
So it can be said that, while the ability to choose not to eat meat is within your human nature, it was your ability to eat meat what gave you your human nature to begin with.
"In the christian case, however this disappearance is interesting since it was atheists who prosecuted christians."
Which atheists? Surely not the Jews nor the Romans. Which atheists, then?
"the Romans, which brings the question why they did this... which is imho not sufficiently answered"
It's so simple it hardly needs an explanation. On one hand, don't tell Romans were atheists, they were not. On the other hand, christians were prosecuted because they were a (relatively) easy target on a time it meant political advantage having a "racial" enemy (for more information, look for "Emmanuel Goldstein" or "Al Qaeda"). Just the same reasons than in the case of Jews, women, black people or any other easly distinguishable people pool.
We are humans, social mammals, with a strong tendence to promote "our" group against "others" as a mean to make our gene pool to perdurate. Social prosecution is just a symptom emerging from our biological ancestors.
And about religion, more of the same. We are strongly programmed to stablish causal correspondences. Every "why" must have a "because". You know every baby born grows to the phase of "why this daddy? why that daddy?" and more importantly, you will see little children *never* question daddy's answers (only they will add another "why" to the answer): the Moon is made of cheese, because my daddy so said; babies come from Paris, because my daddy so said... We need *answers* much more strongly than *correct* answers. Given the choice of a crackpot answer or no answer most people will accept the former to the latter.
"..or terrified that what they've believed their whole lives might actually not be true. It's the ultimate test of your faith!"
Or so terrified to start with that they need to believe on people wandering over the waters, pink unicorns and things like these. They have faith, yes, but they are still equally terrified.
"You'd "all" nod your heads in agreement? What about the "general Slashdot wisdom [sic]" that there should be no intellectual property rights?"
I am one of those "no intellectual property rights" and I find no contradiction. This is not a case of property rigths. There was a *contract* between parts able to negotiate (Harlan and Paramount; not one of those take-it-or-leave-it CLUFs and the like) that stated that if Paramount did X, Harlan would recieve Y. Once the conditions got agreed, Harlan went to work and now Paramount must comply on his side.
In fact, that's the very way we, the "no intellectual property rights", propose to all those "but think of the artists!": instead of producing first, then forcing your terms on everybody once your never asked for work is made public, find some part to agree to some conditions, sign a contract, then start your job.
"Since he didn't document at the start, it was much cheaper to hire a post-grad than spare a more expensive employee from actual development work."
That's part of the problem./* This is intended to do foo by means of algorithm bar which was selected because this and that */
is as much code as
void main()
Misunderstanding this fact is what puts us into these troubles to begin with.
"I wonder if perhaps there's an argument for pairing senior employees who do the critical design work with fresh hires to document the what and why of it."
Being that such documentation is there mainly for those fresh hires can understand the "whys" of the former developers (or the developer himself in a future incarnation), that makes as much sense as mandating users of a product the burden of developing user manuals instead of the makers.
"Telecommunications cost someone, somewhere, somehow. We all know this"
So it's an assumption that the provider knows it too, isn't it?
"It is abuse to take advantage of some free service"
How can it be abuse to make use of a service the way the provider says you can?
"Google's "free" offerings are meant"
Are meant "free" or else the provider would state otherwise.
"Pretending ignorance doesn't impress anyone."
That's true. I'm certainly not impressed by you arguments.
"If you are going to steal Google's"
You can bet Google will sue you. This has not been the case. Might it be because nobody was stealing Google?
"We might respect an honest thief."
If by "honest thief" you mean a company trying to gain competitive advantage by promising what it was not in the situation to support, well yes, we respect it by the name of "marketing practices".
"Has Red Hat committed not to sue open-source projects? That would be the logical step, if their patents are truly defensive. I'll step in for Red Hat's defense."
You don't see the point then. Red Hat has commited not to sue. So what? Does that mean that they'll remain true to whatever they said? Are you really betting for some kind of "honor" on a corporation? And even if current directors board remain that way, do you think next CEO will find reasonable to support past CEO's promises if she finds better bussiness opportunities on not doing so? Even more: for a publicly traded company wouldn't she be legally bound to try to get the most out of the company's patent porfolio given the chance?
"If Red Hat doesn't patent the idea, then Microsoft or Apple or Google will patent the idea later on, and suddenly the open-source idea is now closed-source."
Red Hat (nor any other company) has no means to avoid being sued (look at the SCO case for ludicrous sueing). But for the "if I don't patent it others will" argument prior art is enough. That won't prevent the other side to sue (nothing will) but it will make its attack moot.
"Dude, we've spent the last twenty years in the US economy merging, analyzing and looking for these synergies, and it's failed."
No it isn't. There has been a lot of endevours within those last tweinty years that would have been impossible without entities collaboring. What has been failed, and it was my point is the simplified vision that one size fits all (even literally: on the technical side, this current crisis is fingerpointed to the use of a single analysis model).
"run each different division as a separate company, responsible for one thing - the bottom line. If they don't produce, then close them down. "
You are no better than the environment you disqualify. Both of you are members of the "see this complex problem? it's not complex but simple and here you have the solution for 100% of the cases" brotherhood. Your solution fails on the locale optimum side and it is visible at all levels. With your proposal you are guaranteed to never look for projects with returns of benefits outside your division scope, exactly as current corporate culture avoids for the most part projects that go far beyond next quarter.
It is said so many times it's boring but a company's best asset is people, specially while despite being said so many times management always seem to benefit "machinery" above people to cover their asses. If you put your focus on local optimus you'll lose a lot on sinergies; if you only look for far reaching goals day-to-day bussiness will take you out the game and it makes *people* to properly judge a situation and find the most profitting middle ground.
"If you make $30,000 a year and bought a $500,000 home, you were stupid and deserved to get screwed."
I hear this again and again, mostly from USA people, and damn me if I can make any sense out of it.
So I make 30.000US$ a year and I manage to have a 500.000US$ home even if only for a while and somehow *I* am the stupid not the one that lent 500.000US$ to guy doing 30.000US$ a year!!!???
That's from the pure financial side of things. Now, from the ethical standpoint you have on one side a NINJA, usually without studies, without even a roof of their own signing one mortage and on the other some tycoons with tons of advisors with masters and what not, signing mortages by the thousands and still the one to blame is the poor guy? What the heck!!!???
"Which is why it's caught on. Sharing someone else's copyrighted material is still not legal"
Talk about your country. It is legal on my country and, AFAIK, as counterintuitive as it seems (being the first "three strikes" adopter) it is legal in France too. They have/had to change law first and then come with the three strikes idea. It is clearly fairer than previous 'statu quo'.
"This really doesn't have a whole lot to do with Microsoft or IE. This is an "ignorant person" story."
It has a lot to do with Microsoft then. Do you relly thing there would be a lot of "ignorant persons" serving web pages out of their own personal VMS or AIX? Microsoft's best bussiness choice was developing tools that seemed so easy that even "ignorant persons" could achieve difficult tasks. Now you have "ignorant persons" atempting difficult tasks and miserably failing at it.
"The counter to his comeback on that is "microwalking". That is, he'll say he believes in micro evolution (variation) but not macro-evolution (dino->bird)."
It's only that this is no "counter". I never stated my position about evolution, I only defined it. Saying "there's no way a dino can become a bird" is a counterargument for "biological evolution is the appearence of new characteristics on an species population" no more than saying "yeah, but they don't exist" against "a unicorn is a kind of a horse with a horn"
"Evolution is not defined by "new characteristics", whatever that is."
I specifically said "new characteristics" because *that* is what evolution is. There's no need to go into technicalities. If you don't have something "new" (for some operative definition of "new") you simply cannot have evolution. Specifically, without some *genetical* change you can't have *genetical* evolution.
"Could you please provide a reference that defines evolution as "new characteristics"?"
I certainly didn't think I need to offer references for evolution defined as "something new appears" neither on its general usage nor on its technical one. Nevertheless, of course I can provide references:
* From the free dictionary: "evolution, concept that embodies the belief that existing animals and plants developed by a process of gradual, continuous change from previously existing forms. This theory, also known as descent with modification, constitutes organic evolution."
* From Darwin's "On the origin of species by means of natura selection, or the preservation of favoured races in the struggle for life." (no less):
"From the strong principle of inheritance, any selected variety will tend to propagate its new and modified form. This fundamental subject of Natural Selection will be treated at some length in the fourth chapter; and we shall then see how Natural Selection almost inevitably causes much Extinction of the less improved forms of life and induces what I have called DIVERGENCE OF CHARACTER." (emphasis mine).
All in all if there isn't something "new" there's no evolution. Or do you think human race has evolved from the XVII century to-date simply because our *average* life expectancy and our maturity age have grown? Do you really think that just changing frequencies of preexisting alleles can indeed be called evolution? That a species going from 98% brown hair individuals plus 2% blond hair people to 2% brown hair plus 98% blond hair people (same alleles, different frequencies) has indeed evolutioned? Is it really your positon that somehow, because of the previous sentence, Brazilians (heavy multiracial mixture) are somehow evolutionary different from their black, caucasian and/or mediterranean grandparents (with same alleles overall, only different frequencies)?
"Furthermore, you assume that only frequencies change. "
That's not an assumption; that's a fact. If there's nothing more than environmental pressure all that changes is frequencies.
"A phenotypical change in size (as in this case) might also very well be caused by mutation"
Truly it can be. But then you have environment pressure *and* a mutation. And it is the mutation the one that makes a *new* phenotype to appear. All that environmental pressure can do is change such mutation's frequency within the general population as it would do with any other selectable character.
"Superficially you have no way if distinguishing the two processes."
Of course I can. Or how do you think taxonomy has been done from the days of Linnaeus to about 1970?
I think this biology teacher will have to revise his concepts.
"This is a clear case of directional selection."
Yes.
"If, over time the frequencies of the alleles for large and small change in the population, then we have, by definition, evolution."
No, we haven't. We just have frequency variation. But we haven't change the gene pool a dime. Without new characteristics we have no evolution, by definition.
In fact, the very article states that we could reverse those population changes within some generations. Evolution is not reversible.
"What makes you think this wouldn't be an example of evolution?"
Environmental pressure changes population frequencies and *can* drive evolution towards some direction (mutations that embetters fitness within such pressure will be favoured) but it's no evolution by itself. Environmental pressure by itself cannot make a bird out of a dinossaur.
Slashdot Mirror
"Newtonian physics is generally thought to encompass Galilean relativity, which does not entail a favored reference system."
I'm aware of Galilean's relativity but what is it inertial mass, what does light travels through and how clocks manage to stay sincronized, then?
"At one point in history, every known "scientist" had proven the Earth was flat."
Can you please name one?
"I have yet to see proof that Evolution explains how life began."
If by "evolution" you mean "evolution of species by means of natural selection" you are right... as much as I'd be if waiting for explanations on black body radiation on Galileo's relativity principle. Hint: "evolution of species by means of natural selection" is NOT about how life became to be.
On the other hand, to grasp the concept that *if* some kind of particle were by chance able to produce slightly imprecise copies of itself then life was almost unavoidable you don't need a theory, just plain common sense.
"But Newton's theory is not wrong, not by a long shot."
Not on my book. Newton's theory is absolutly wrong, on bold letters: for one, space and time are absolutly NOT absolute; there's absolutly NOT a favoured reference system.
It only happens that for quite a lot of experiments its numbers are quite near the mark.
"They still teach Newtonian Mechanics in colleges for a reason."
1. Inertia
2. On most cases its numbers are good enough and a bazillion times easier to manage and comprehend
3. It still is an amazingly brilliant intelectual effort
"Try reading #6 he does make a rather good point."
No, he doesn't. This is elementary and high school not university.
Why don't we pass rules to question Euclide's third axiom or Weggener's tectonics too?
"Yes, I understood what he was saying, I just don't agree that it follows."
And I understand your point, and you certainly are right: veganism is well part of our human nature. On a more general matter, making abstract choices (even stupid ones) is on the very human nature. On the other hand...
"Saying that people CAN eat meat and vegetables, therefore they MUST eat both is the most basic fallacy out there."
This is not as simple as that. Eating meat is "more" in our human nature than a simple choice. On the opinion of many paleonthologists it probably was our ability to eat meat a keystone on our differentation from other primates in that it allowed our brain to grow far beyond that of our herviboral "cousins" (meat is not only more energetic but easier to digest too, so we would get shorter less expensive digestive apparatus that render more energy for our expensive brains).
So it can be said that, while the ability to choose not to eat meat is within your human nature, it was your ability to eat meat what gave you your human nature to begin with.
"Is Purgatory really that much better?"
Limbo, not Purgatory. Purgatory is basically Hell for a limited time. Limbo is like a "grey zone": no sufferings but no presence of God either.
"In the christian case, however this disappearance is interesting since it was atheists who prosecuted christians."
Which atheists? Surely not the Jews nor the Romans. Which atheists, then?
"the Romans, which brings the question why they did this ... which is imho not sufficiently answered"
It's so simple it hardly needs an explanation. On one hand, don't tell Romans were atheists, they were not. On the other hand, christians were prosecuted because they were a (relatively) easy target on a time it meant political advantage having a "racial" enemy (for more information, look for "Emmanuel Goldstein" or "Al Qaeda"). Just the same reasons than in the case of Jews, women, black people or any other easly distinguishable people pool.
We are humans, social mammals, with a strong tendence to promote "our" group against "others" as a mean to make our gene pool to perdurate. Social prosecution is just a symptom emerging from our biological ancestors.
And about religion, more of the same. We are strongly programmed to stablish causal correspondences. Every "why" must have a "because". You know every baby born grows to the phase of "why this daddy? why that daddy?" and more importantly, you will see little children *never* question daddy's answers (only they will add another "why" to the answer): the Moon is made of cheese, because my daddy so said; babies come from Paris, because my daddy so said... We need *answers* much more strongly than *correct* answers. Given the choice of a crackpot answer or no answer most people will accept the former to the latter.
"..or terrified that what they've believed their whole lives might actually not be true. It's the ultimate test of your faith!"
Or so terrified to start with that they need to believe on people wandering over the waters, pink unicorns and things like these. They have faith, yes, but they are still equally terrified.
"You'd "all" nod your heads in agreement? What about the "general Slashdot wisdom [sic]" that there should be no intellectual property rights?"
I am one of those "no intellectual property rights" and I find no contradiction. This is not a case of property rigths. There was a *contract* between parts able to negotiate (Harlan and Paramount; not one of those take-it-or-leave-it CLUFs and the like) that stated that if Paramount did X, Harlan would recieve Y. Once the conditions got agreed, Harlan went to work and now Paramount must comply on his side.
In fact, that's the very way we, the "no intellectual property rights", propose to all those "but think of the artists!": instead of producing first, then forcing your terms on everybody once your never asked for work is made public, find some part to agree to some conditions, sign a contract, then start your job.
"Since he didn't document at the start, it was much cheaper to hire a post-grad than spare a more expensive employee from actual development work."
That's part of the problem. /* This is intended to do foo by means of algorithm bar which was selected because this and that */
is as much code as
void main()
Misunderstanding this fact is what puts us into these troubles to begin with.
"I wonder if perhaps there's an argument for pairing senior employees who do the critical design work with fresh hires to document the what and why of it."
Being that such documentation is there mainly for those fresh hires can understand the "whys" of the former developers (or the developer himself in a future incarnation), that makes as much sense as mandating users of a product the burden of developing user manuals instead of the makers.
"Telecommunications cost someone, somewhere, somehow. We all know this"
So it's an assumption that the provider knows it too, isn't it?
"It is abuse to take advantage of some free service"
How can it be abuse to make use of a service the way the provider says you can?
"Google's "free" offerings are meant"
Are meant "free" or else the provider would state otherwise.
"Pretending ignorance doesn't impress anyone."
That's true. I'm certainly not impressed by you arguments.
"If you are going to steal Google's"
You can bet Google will sue you. This has not been the case. Might it be because nobody was stealing Google?
"We might respect an honest thief."
If by "honest thief" you mean a company trying to gain competitive advantage by promising what it was not in the situation to support, well yes, we respect it by the name of "marketing practices".
"Has Red Hat committed not to sue open-source projects? That would be the logical step, if their patents are truly defensive. I'll step in for Red Hat's defense."
You don't see the point then. Red Hat has commited not to sue. So what? Does that mean that they'll remain true to whatever they said? Are you really betting for some kind of "honor" on a corporation? And even if current directors board remain that way, do you think next CEO will find reasonable to support past CEO's promises if she finds better bussiness opportunities on not doing so? Even more: for a publicly traded company wouldn't she be legally bound to try to get the most out of the company's patent porfolio given the chance?
"If Red Hat doesn't patent the idea, then Microsoft or Apple or Google will patent the idea later on, and suddenly the open-source idea is now closed-source."
Red Hat (nor any other company) has no means to avoid being sued (look at the SCO case for ludicrous sueing). But for the "if I don't patent it others will" argument prior art is enough. That won't prevent the other side to sue (nothing will) but it will make its attack moot.
"Dude, we've spent the last twenty years in the US economy merging, analyzing and looking for these synergies, and it's failed."
No it isn't. There has been a lot of endevours within those last tweinty years that would have been impossible without entities collaboring. What has been failed, and it was my point is the simplified vision that one size fits all (even literally: on the technical side, this current crisis is fingerpointed to the use of a single analysis model).
"I've worked in management positions and I don't really need advice on who my most valuable employees are."
That's what you think. Now, probe it (even to yourself).
"run each different division as a separate company, responsible for one thing - the bottom line. If they don't produce, then close them down. "
You are no better than the environment you disqualify. Both of you are members of the "see this complex problem? it's not complex but simple and here you have the solution for 100% of the cases" brotherhood. Your solution fails on the locale optimum side and it is visible at all levels. With your proposal you are guaranteed to never look for projects with returns of benefits outside your division scope, exactly as current corporate culture avoids for the most part projects that go far beyond next quarter.
It is said so many times it's boring but a company's best asset is people, specially while despite being said so many times management always seem to benefit "machinery" above people to cover their asses. If you put your focus on local optimus you'll lose a lot on sinergies; if you only look for far reaching goals day-to-day bussiness will take you out the game and it makes *people* to properly judge a situation and find the most profitting middle ground.
"If you make $30,000 a year and bought a $500,000 home, you were stupid and deserved to get screwed."
I hear this again and again, mostly from USA people, and damn me if I can make any sense out of it.
So I make 30.000US$ a year and I manage to have a 500.000US$ home even if only for a while and somehow *I* am the stupid not the one that lent 500.000US$ to guy doing 30.000US$ a year!!!???
That's from the pure financial side of things. Now, from the ethical standpoint you have on one side a NINJA, usually without studies, without even a roof of their own signing one mortage and on the other some tycoons with tons of advisors with masters and what not, signing mortages by the thousands and still the one to blame is the poor guy? What the heck!!!???
"I expect the ISP will demand at least a little evidence. "
They'll do... when it's John Doe accusing Big Corp. When it is Big Corp against John Doe, on the other hand...
"And I'm also sure that lying in a deliberate attempt to terminate someone's internet connection would fall foul of some law."
Yeah, we see examples about John Doe making a hard day for Big Corp by the dozens.
"Which is why it's caught on. Sharing someone else's copyrighted material is still not legal"
Talk about your country. It is legal on my country and, AFAIK, as counterintuitive as it seems (being the first "three strikes" adopter) it is legal in France too. They have/had to change law first and then come with the three strikes idea. It is clearly fairer than previous 'statu quo'.
"Oh yes, murder is very a popular social movement in Japan, at about 1.1 per 100,000 per year (the U.S. is around 9 per 100K; UK have 1 per 100K.)"
Ah! That's only because those japs manage to cover nine out of then murders as train suicides!
"This really doesn't have a whole lot to do with Microsoft or IE. This is an "ignorant person" story."
It has a lot to do with Microsoft then. Do you relly thing there would be a lot of "ignorant persons" serving web pages out of their own personal VMS or AIX? Microsoft's best bussiness choice was developing tools that seemed so easy that even "ignorant persons" could achieve difficult tasks. Now you have "ignorant persons" atempting difficult tasks and miserably failing at it.
"The counter to his comeback on that is "microwalking". That is, he'll say he believes in micro evolution (variation) but not macro-evolution (dino->bird)."
It's only that this is no "counter". I never stated my position about evolution, I only defined it. Saying "there's no way a dino can become a bird" is a counterargument for "biological evolution is the appearence of new characteristics on an species population" no more than saying "yeah, but they don't exist" against "a unicorn is a kind of a horse with a horn"
"Evolution is not defined by "new characteristics", whatever that is."
I specifically said "new characteristics" because *that* is what evolution is. There's no need to go into technicalities. If you don't have something "new" (for some operative definition of "new") you simply cannot have evolution. Specifically, without some *genetical* change you can't have *genetical* evolution.
"Could you please provide a reference that defines evolution as "new characteristics"?"
I certainly didn't think I need to offer references for evolution defined as "something new appears" neither on its general usage nor on its technical one. Nevertheless, of course I can provide references:
* From Mosby's Medical Dictionary, 8th edition. © 2009, Elsevier:
"2 a change in the genetic composition of a population of organisms over time.
3 the appearance over long periods of time of new taxonomic groups of organisms from preexisting groups."
* From the free dictionary:
"evolution, concept that embodies the belief that existing animals and plants developed by a process of gradual, continuous change from previously existing forms. This theory, also known as descent with modification, constitutes organic evolution."
* From Darwin's "On the origin of species by means of natura selection, or the preservation of favoured races in the struggle for life." (no less):
"From the strong principle of inheritance, any
selected variety will tend to propagate its new and modified form.
This fundamental subject of Natural Selection will be treated at some
length in the fourth chapter; and we shall then see how Natural
Selection almost inevitably causes much Extinction of the less
improved forms of life and induces what I have called DIVERGENCE OF CHARACTER."
(emphasis mine).
All in all if there isn't something "new" there's no evolution. Or do you think human race has evolved from the XVII century to-date simply because our *average* life expectancy and our maturity age have grown? Do you really think that just changing frequencies of preexisting alleles can indeed be called evolution? That a species going from 98% brown hair individuals plus 2% blond hair people to 2% brown hair plus 98% blond hair people (same alleles, different frequencies) has indeed evolutioned? Is it really your positon that somehow, because of the previous sentence, Brazilians (heavy multiracial mixture) are somehow evolutionary different from their black, caucasian and/or mediterranean grandparents (with same alleles overall, only different frequencies)?
"Furthermore, you assume that only frequencies change. "
That's not an assumption; that's a fact. If there's nothing more than environmental pressure all that changes is frequencies.
"A phenotypical change in size (as in this case) might also very well be caused by mutation"
Truly it can be. But then you have environment pressure *and* a mutation. And it is the mutation the one that makes a *new* phenotype to appear. All that environmental pressure can do is change such mutation's frequency within the general population as it would do with any other selectable character.
"Superficially you have no way if distinguishing the two processes."
Of course I can. Or how do you think taxonomy has been done from the days of Linnaeus to about 1970?
"It seems correct to this biology teacher."
I think this biology teacher will have to revise his concepts.
"This is a clear case of directional selection."
Yes.
"If, over time the frequencies of the alleles for large and small change in the population, then we have, by definition, evolution."
No, we haven't. We just have frequency variation. But we haven't change the gene pool a dime. Without new characteristics we have no evolution, by definition.
In fact, the very article states that we could reverse those population changes within some generations. Evolution is not reversible.
"What makes you think this wouldn't be an example of evolution?"
Environmental pressure changes population frequencies and *can* drive evolution towards some direction (mutations that embetters fitness within such pressure will be favoured) but it's no evolution by itself. Environmental pressure by itself cannot make a bird out of a dinossaur.