Quality Control the Gold Standard

I'd really like to join this discussion, it feels like one that should be right up my alley, but when it came down to finding a specific post or subissue to respond to I couldn't find one. The more I read the more uncertain I became about what this thread is discussing. But I see lots of discussion so I figure everyone else must know what this thread is about. So someone please help me out here. Is this thread about the unlikelihood of abiogenesis? Or is it about the unlikelihood of evolution being able to produce sufficient change to account for life's diversity? Something else? What?Thanks in advance! --Percy

So I'd be on-topic if I started talking about genetic algorithms? Or would that be redundant now?--Percy

Sorry, Evopeach, I don't see anything I can respond to there. I can tell you believe that natural processes are insufficient because you also believe that seven sigma quality is too challenging without intelligence, but these are only your beliefs. You argue them from a position of personal incredulity ("how could anyone logically believe...") rather than from tightly argued logic. I can't tell how you're tying your various assertions together, and so there's nothing concrete to respond to.If you want to believe seven sigma marks the deathknell for evolution, go ahead. But if you want to convince others to believe it, too, then you'll need a little more.--Percy

I haven't even seen you make a case for why this is a problem. If you feel further clarification is unnecessary then I guess we're done. Evolutionary theory has no premise about mutation rates. This is a measured quantity, not a theoretical one. The mutation rates do not derive from theory.--Percy

I'm afraid you're going to have to connect the dots for me. How does this tie in to seven sigma?--PercyThis message has been edited by Percy, 02-09-2006 08:13 AM

Hopefully this is just misexpressed. Hardware error correcting codes and software patches are not related in the way you imply here. Such codes have nothing to do with software bugs. I've been praying for years for the "do what I mean, not what I said" correcting code, but alas, in vain.Seriously, you do understand that hardware error correcting codes are for correcting data read from media like DVDs and hard drives or transmitted across some types of internal buses. They do not correct software bugs. There is no such thing as correcting codes for software bugs. The best that can be done is when the error becomes fatal to raise an exception that calls a routine that attempts recovery. These recovery routines can be quite sophisticated, and many software packages include their own recovery routines, but just the same, there are no correcting codes for software bugs.--Percy

This is very difficult to parse, but I'll give it a shot.First, I agree the early replicators were more error prone. This has been established in the lab where primitive RNA replicators have been constructed and evolved. Selection mechanisms quickly improve the accuracy.But pre-life and early life are also thought to have traded, swapped and exchanged genetic material much more freely than modern cells currently do. And cells which consume other cells can end up also acquiring some of the genetic material. Invasive forms like viruses inject genetic material into cells that take it up into their own genetic machinery.Sexual life has even more mechanisms for modifying the genome, since the allele frequency of a population can vary over time without a single mutation ever surviving.So you would be incorrect to state that "Mutation is the only mechanism". I don't know. Life spent the first several billion years doing pretty much the same thing. I expect that the collective genome of life on earth was gradually building up variation and complexity until it reached the point around 700 or 800 million years ago when the first multicellular life forms began appearing. It is possible that the replication accuracy increased gradually over this period, but how would we ever know? Are you trying to say the measured rates are insufficient to support observed evolution? Or are you saying the estimated rates are fabricated to give correct results? Or are you saying something else?Whatever you're saying, raising the possibility is not the same as making the case. You haven't made any case yet.--Percy

That's just unsupported assertion. Could you provide some specific examples to support your claims? One experiment performed by the origins of life community involved putting primitive RNA replicators into a beaker of raw materials, such as amino acids and so forth. These primitive RNA replicators were fairly error prone, so changes accumulated very quickly, and the replication process was not very fast. After being in the beaker for a fixed time period, say 30 minutes, they extracted the most successul replicators and put them in a new beaker of raw materials for 30 minutes. They did this again and again, and in a relatively short time, I'm not sure how long, maybe 20 or 30 cycles, they had evolved an RNA that was very fast and highly accurate. If you'd like references to the paper I could probably find out for you. I assume it would happen through some equivalent selection process to the experiment I just described. The fastest most accurate replicators win the competition for resources and get to produce more of themselves.--Percy

Okay, now that you've got that out of your system, can you perhaps provide an argument or chain of logic justifying drawing a comparison between human designs and genetic copying? I think to most evolutionists the comparison seems invalid because hundreds of millions of years of evolutionary refinement through competition and changing environments should produce much better results than anything mere humans could achieve.--Percy

Hi Evopeach,More than anything other point, your reply makes clear that you are a believer: As declared by the Designer with a capital "D"?You cannot draw upon arguments of faith to form arguments of science. But you didn't draw a logical framework, you drew a religious one. Have you forgotten that your topic is sigma seven? Sure they have. I believe genetic algorithms have already been mentioned in this thread. We can discuss them if you like.--Percy

Say what? Are we still speaking English around here?You offered a religious argument in the first half of your post (Designer with a capital "D" declared it be so), and you offered an argument from personal incredulity in the second half of your post. It isn't possible to respond to scientific arguments not made.What you need to do is provide an argument or chain of logic that justifies a comparison between human designs and genetic copying. As I said earlier, the comparison seems invalid because hundreds of millions of years of evolutionary refinement through competition and changing environments should produce much better results than anything mere humans could achieve.--PercyThis message has been edited by Percy, 02-09-2006 08:54 PM

Evopeach, you seem to have lost your way. This is your thread, and the topic is seven sigma as it pertains to genetic copying. The topic is not the existence of God. Besides, you won't be successful convincing people that ID is science and not religion if you have to rely upon God as an authority.I still recommend that you follow my suggestion from my previous post.--PercyThis message has been edited by Percy, 02-09-2006 08:57 PM

Hi Evopeach,You're mostly just repeating your initial premise again. We already know you don't believe natural processes are sufficient for the emergence and evolution of lifeBy the way, I don't know if anyone has mentioned this yet, but your view contains an inherent contradiction. Because only human intelligence has been observed creating complex and intricate things, you conclude that only an intelligence can create something as complex and intricate as life. You draw parallels between life and human designs. Then you conclude that because human intelligence has failed to synthesize life in the lab, that proves that life must have been designed.Your reasoning is obviously backward. If life was designed by an intelligence, and if the structures of life are really analogous to human designs, then human intelligence should be able to duplicate that feat. You must therefore reason that since human intelligence has so far failed to create life that intelligence is insufficient for the task, and that life must have been created naturally.Of course, the fallacy in all this is that the structures of life are not analogous to human designs. False assumptions yield false conclusions.--Percy

You're describing God again. All the rest of your argument is based upon God as a premise, and hence fails to qualify as science.On a more general level, if you have evidence for the qualities of the ID designer, please let us know what that evidence is. If you really think the above about the Designer is off-topic then we should drop it, but it was you that offered an argument about the Designer when I asked how you justify a comparision between human designs and genetic copying. I'm not the IDist here. I don't tend to introduce the Designer into discussions. You did that yourself. First, I don't think evolutionists think of the genetic copying process in terms of seven sigma. The modern synthesis of evolution and genetics into the synthetic theory of evolution was solidified long before we had any idea of genetic error rates. But you are correct to note that it is a very high level of accuracy.But second, understanding how this came about *is* something that the origins of life community is working on. In response to your original inquiry about this I provided you an example of such an experiment in Message 87. You never replied. Why don't you take a look at it now and see what you think.--Percy

Hi Evopeach,I think you must have missed the last paragraph of Message 128. It's an on-topic answer to your inquiry about the origin-of-life community's investigations into the possible evolutionary development of the modern cell's genetic machinery. It actually references Message 87, which you also missed.--Percy