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Gunnar_Zarncke comments on What false beliefs have you held and why were you wrong? - Less Wrong Discussion

28 Post author: Punoxysm 16 October 2014 05:58PM

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Comment author: Salemicus 16 October 2014 06:45:57PM 11 points [-]

I think this was a great idea for a post. If LessWrong rationality is worthwhile, then it ought to get lots of replies on concrete facts - not moral preferences, theology, or other unproveables.

I used to believe that embryos pass through periods of development representing earlier evolutionary stages - that there was a period when a human baby was basically a fish, then later an amphibian, and so on. I believed this because my father told me so; he was a doctor (though not an obstetrician), and the information he had given me about other subjects was highly reliable. Most knowledge is second hand - it was highly rational for me to believe him. I now know (also second hand!) that Haeckel's ideas were debunked a long time ago - although they might well have been in a textbook when my father was at medical school.

To me, the lesson is trust, but verify.

Comment author: Gunnar_Zarncke 17 October 2014 02:48:16PM 1 point [-]

Oh horror. I believed this until right now. Not exactly literally. I never knew Haeckels strong thesis. But from what I had been told (probably as contracted as "ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny") I still assumed the linearity part to be true. And I passed this wrong simplification on to my children (probably like your father did). So now I have some damage control to do...

Indirect quotes from the cited Wikipedia article:

Darwin's view, that early embryonic stages are similar to the same embryonic stage of related species but not to the adult stages of these species, has been confirmed by modern evolutionary developmental biology.

"Embryos do reflect the course of evolution, but that course is far more intricate and quirky than Haeckel claimed. Different parts of the same embryo can even evolve in different directions. As a result, the Biogenetic Law was abandoned, and its fall freed scientists to appreciate the full range of embryonic changes that evolution can produce—an appreciation that has yielded spectacular results in recent years as scientists have discovered some of the specific genes that control development."

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