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Luke_A_Somers comments on Wrong however unnamed - Less Wrong
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Comments (27)
I understand synergy as when Effect(A) + Effect(B) < Effect (A & B). Basically, when you get nonlinearity in response.
This would not only be if you try to use it as medicine as you say, but also in their own capabilities.
So in this case, if you consider the algal component of lichen, take them alone, and see where they can live and what they can do, and if you consider the fungal component of lichen, take them alone and see where they can live and what they can do, your results will be (if the claim is correct) that these will not be half as widespread or capable as the two together are.
It seems pretty clear to me that this is what is meant. Does it make sense? Is this also an incorrect statement of biology?
But what effect? You can determine, for example, how much CO2 do the fungi and algae produce when taken together not as lichen, but they won't occupy the same habitats (and so their CO2 emissions will cause different effects in the environment, and totalling them would not be correct). I mean that yes, obviously you will obtain some values, and they even might be lower than for the lichen containing the exact same amounts of both. It just won't have any practical sense.
The effect here is just being able to survive and thrive in a place. Their range and coverage and so forth grow a lot.
Prove it.
Prove what? That that interpretation is what "they" meant or that it is biologically accurate?
The parent says in his final paragraph that he does not know whether it is biologically accurate or not.
The question is not is it whether this is accurate, but rather whether this is meaningful at all. I think it isn't. I do not expect, therefore, that it can be proved, and any other defence seems to me to be circular, but I might be wrong.
Whether 'the range and coverage and total population' is meaningful at all? I can't even understand how this being meaningful could be in question.
No. Sorry. I meant 'whether a comparison between the parameters for the f&a and for the lichen is meaningful at all, given different methods of [sampling, cultivation, quantification] 'searching' for all three, different ways of reproduction for all three, and different dissemination strategies for all three'.
It is sometimes difficult to compare two populations of the same species, for example for orchids. Suppose there are twenty adult-to-senescing plants in the location A, and no young plants visible at all, and ten struggling adult plants plus three possibly young ones in location B. What population has better prospects? The three young plants might actually be underdeveloped adults; the dust-like seeds, however uncommonly maturing, might germinate considerably far away; and both young and old plants can just sit under the ground eating their mycorrhiza for years and be, therefore, uncountable.
Now compare the difficulty of this estimation with the difficulty of the f&a vs. lichen one. The second boggles the mind.
Measuring it would be a ridiculously exhaustive task, but it seems like evolution has already performed the measurement for us.
No, it does not. The less faith people put into the 'evolutionary explanation', the more water it holds. Everything that is not forbidden is allowed; as long as the two versions both exist, there is no better one.