Natural Selection: What Did Darwin Get Wrong?

Here we look at Natural Selection as Darwin understood it, and then look at how our understanding has changed since then. Surprisingly, he pretty much nailed it on his first try, but several fascinating twists have since been discovered.

[MikkoRantalainen]

6:30 "There are limited resources in environment [...] so you have this natural struggle for existence. It's undeniable. The only way reject the struggle for existence is to reject math – like it's just basic fundamental math."

Well put!

[GeorgeTheDinoGuy]

There’s this wonderful line in the lost world about how stuff medieval people believe we see as ridiculous and how things we believe could be seen that way to people in the future, I feel like understanding that our greatest minds didn’t get everything right is important to understanding humanity. Great video!

[kinglyzard]

I really appreciated the parting message on this insightful video.
Keep fighting the good fight

[Biophile]

I'm sorry to "well actually" you but those are Sugar Maples (Acer saccharum), not silver maples (Acer saccharinum). :P Sugar maples are very shade tolerant, and as you say a perfect illustration of the struggle for existence. I pretty much agree with everything else you said though, great explanations. :)

[heatherlewis]

Fantastic video once again. Love your work!

[Lordlaneus]

I sometimes try to wrap my head around what it would look like if their were no natural selective pressures, and most every thing managed to reproduced, so we would end up with an untrimmed tree of life containing everything that ever could evolve. physics would need to be fundementally different for it to work in any "real" sense, but it's still a nice way to picture the incomprehensible amount of potential genetic material that natural selection is sifting through.

[JiveDadson]

How about that John Collier? He painted the (savagely cropped) portrait of Darwin. It is a full length portrait. Gorgeous.

[cowboyfrankspersonalvideos]

I was just thinking, would cats with 6 toes be an example of a generic modification that doesn't offer a benefit, therefore the trait doesn't fill the entire cat genome?

[ratfuk]

11:46 you should talk about what "hereditary" means. Lots of people (including me) have the wrong idea of it.

[HansPolak]

I think you were going to compare the eight phrases with modern understanding. According to the modern understanding, the eight phrases are quite accurate "... but", as Steve Jobs liked to say: "... there is more!" Genetics, epigenetics, genetic drift, etc.

[giovannirocket]

The end of the vid is good tho because you give examples rather than wannabe-laws

[frankcardano]

Currently half way through Charles Darwin’s biography by Janet Browne. 👍

[sledderal]

Well, I guess I must have graduated to step 2 now that I've acknowledged my own silver maple privilege ;)

[justasapien]

Where did you get that hominid skulls??

[aki-figk]

Hey jon, are you aware with the latest research which suggests that mutations arent as random as we thought and certain genes are less protected by dna repair mechanism proteins to intentionally cause mutations in the hopes of it benefiting the organism or plant during drastic change.

[peters]

Here is a thought for you lot. In a way, mitochondria have been “colonized” by their host cells: to such an extent that they have a hugely pared down genome, including they can’t reproduce without help from the host. They are trapped serfs of the host, in a sense. Now here is my point: this is an example of the genome of an organism being “cleaned up”. The mitochondrial genome is very small, rationalized to only what is needed, lacking “junk dna”. I’d assume this occurred as a function of natural selection, where the mitochondria is the target organism, and the host cell the environment in which it is struggling for survival. Thanks.

[thegoodlydragon]

I think this stronger emphasis on epigenetics with respect to evolution is largely a bad faith attempt by ideologues to promote what might be politically expedient rather than what the evidence actually suggests. The epigenome creates some flexibility within the lifetime of an organism, and a generation or two of his descendants, to somewhat variable environmental conditions, but ultimately it's limited to what already exists within your genome and unlike genetic mutations can't actually create new information on which evolution can select.

Epigenetics might be important to consider for the future of medicine and possible reversal of aging, but its role in evolution is minimal at best. It's Larmarkism 2.0. Lysenko would be proud of the West for reviving his idiocy.

[NickDy]

"Seedlings", not baby-trees! :)

[giovannirocket]

Can you read “what Darwin Got Wrong” by Fodor Jerry and redo this video ? It’s important

[mduvigneaud]

Heh, I would argue that organisms *do* survive exponentially... just that the exponent is less than 1.