pianobutter

Do you still keep in touch with Courtney Love?

That's not a very solid argument. Hands can't be genetic because we'd expect them to have mutated off in various groups. That's the exact same argument as the one you are making. If trait X is genetic, it must be subject to mutations. If trait X persists in groups that have been separated over evolutionary time, it can't have been subjected to mutations. Thus, trait X cannot be genetic.

The flaw in your logic is that genetic traits persist because they have utility. That is, they enhance fitness. Mutations aren't going to "wash them away" as you seem to imply. That's not how evolution works.

I disagree with Chomsky, but that argument from you alone makes it very difficult for me to take anything you say seriously. Variation provides the "raw material" on which selection acts. It's not a generalized blurring process as you bizarrely seem to imply.

You implied that there is no relationship between function and selection. The core of your argument was that genetic traits must by necessity drift and that it would be impossible for them not to. Which makes it seem as if you don't understand that traits are stabilized according to utility relative to environmental constraints.

One would not expect the original language capacity of, say, Homo erectus/sapiens to remain invariant after tens of thousands or even a million years.

You would expect it if innovation were detrimental. That was my point about hands: they are useful and innovation does not confer an advantage.

Consider lactose tolerance, the persistence of lactase enzyme after infancy. This is found in a couple of parts of the world and is about 6,000 years old in its recent evolution. It is associated with cattle ownership in Europe and Africa and is a prime example, among others, of gene-culture Dual Inheritance Theory. The so-called pro-drop parameter in Romance languages is about that old. But we see no such development.

Surely you understand that there's no point in comparing an innovation selected because it enhanced fitness according to regionally-specific environmental constraints and an innovation that confers an advantage to every human being who might want to cooperate?

Almost every neuroscientist in the world agrees that he's a quack, though.

How do you feel about the fact that there is a risk of causing cancer every time you run a SPECT? Do you feel that bragging about running tens of thousands of these is okay even though statistically speaking you are almost guaranteed to have caused cancer in someone?

Especially when considering that most neuroscientists consider you a fraud? Because that's what you are. A fraud. I don't think you're evil though. I think you're just too stupid to realize you're a fraud. I think you believe you're doing something good.