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Member (Idle past 4885 days) Posts: 310 From: Broomfield Joined: |
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Author | Topic: Page's misuse of Haldane's Dilemma | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Fred Williams Member (Idle past 4885 days) Posts: 310 From: Broomfield Joined: |
I have posted a refutation of Scott Page's latest claims on my web site:
http://www.evolutionfairytale.com/articles_debates/page_refutation_2.htm I've been pretty busy, but I hope to find time to engage evolutionists here when I do find time. Sorry Mark that I haven't gotten back to you, I realize you have posted a few things that I just didn't have time to address.
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mark24 Member (Idle past 5224 days) Posts: 3857 From: UK Joined: |
quote: No problem Fred. Mark ------------------Occam's razor is not for shaving with.
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Peter Member (Idle past 1508 days) Posts: 2161 From: Cambridgeshire, UK. Joined: |
I've asked this question elsewhere before, and not got much of
an answer, but you seem much more knowledgeable so I'll try you. How do we know that there are few beneficial mutations, or thatdeliterious ones outweigh beneficial ? A 'bad' mutation will have an effect which limits the mutant insome way, perhaps even killing them outright. A 'good' mutation would, presumably, not impede the individualand so go unnoticed. How do we detect mutations and calculate the 'good':'bad'ratio ?
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joz Inactive Member |
Just a small entirely pedantic point given that you and not SLP based your argument on a use of Haldanes dillema SLP can`t have "misused" it....
Possibly you did but he didn`t even use it.....
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toff Inactive Member |
quote: We don't have to; it's simply inevitable that mutations are predominantly good, rather than bad. For an organism to have a mutation, it must be alive...which means it 'works'. Since mutations are random, and there are vastly more ways of 'breaking' something that works than there are of 'improving' it, there are vastly more bad mutations than there are good. And vastly more that are neither good nor bad. Imagine a complex engine. At random, you weld a piece of metal on to it somewhere. Now you turn on the engine. What are the odds that you 'broke' it, compared to that you 'improved' it?
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derwood Member (Idle past 1905 days) Posts: 1457 Joined: |
Entirely true, Joz. Another poster once wrote of Williams continued and unfaltering insistence upon utilizing just a few tidbits of information (Haldane, and the Eyre-Walker papers) under any and all circumstances as "when all you have is a hammer, you try to make everything into a nail."
This is exactly true - all Williams has is a hammer. And he simply contiunues trying to turn everything into a nail, despite the fact that his hammer lost its head and the shaft is splintered. Indeed, it is Williams and his soiurce for all information on this topic - ReMine - that in fat have been misusing Haldane's dilemma. But, you go with what you know, I suppose. Of course, it is far more informative to read my relaity based response to Williams first laughabvle attempts at 'refutation"
'Honest yet mistaken' [sic] Fred I will be tearing down Williams pseudoscinetific gibberish in a day or two. [This message has been edited by SLP, 02-26-2002]
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Percy Member Posts: 22504 From: New Hampshire Joined: Member Rating: 4.9 |
I'd like to see the response couched in a measured tone, and presented from the point of view that William's opinions are honest but mistaken. Pretend you're writing a rebuttal letter to a journal.
--Percy
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Fred Williams Member (Idle past 4885 days) Posts: 310 From: Broomfield Joined: |
Scott, I would specifically like to see you address the errors I listed in the summary that I've pasted below. Comments from others also welcome.
* Mistakenly claiming that Haldane based his substitution estimate on the observation of peppered moths (Haldane did the opposite, see Haldane 1957, p521) * Implying that a large population is a bad assumption for evolution (Haldane did the opposite; see Haldane 1960, p351) * Claiming that a wild-type allele can still persist in a population even after its mutant allele reaches 100% fixation in the same population! * Because of his previous error, reaches the erroneous conclusion that a dominate allele does not need to be replaced, which implies it has no reproductive cost. * Claiming that a beneficial mutation will spread through a population in a sexual species "as well" as it would in an asexual species, even given an environment free of deleterious mutations. I wonder if there is even one population geneticist in the world who would agree with him. * Claims that Wu's study dos *not* assume human/simian ancestry in its determination of the substitution rate. * Re-visits circular reasoning by asking why 620,000 substitutions from the Keightley study is not sufficient to account for simian/human shared ancestry, given the 500,000 he believes Remine set as a minimum. The problem is, the Keightley study also arrives at its numbers by first assuming simian/human shared ancestry. Thus, it is circular to use their numbers when contrasting against any arbitrary guestimate of mutations that would separate simian/man. [This message has been edited by Fred Williams, 02-26-2002]
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John Paul Inactive Member |
[b]
quote: quote: John Paul:Is that so? Peter it just happens that most mutations are either harmful or neutral. Very rare are the beneficial mutations. If Fred reads this maybe he can re-post the graph that shows this. quote: John Paul:Sharp fella, this one. quote: John Paul:Oh the irony. Can anyone else see it? If you are saying that copying errors, ie point mutations, are random, fine. But if you are calling mutations such as recombinations, duplications, insertions, deletions, tranposons, blah, blah, blah, random, just because we don't yet understand them, and especially since these types of mutations require special enzymes to do the trick, there would be no justification for that term.
quote: John Paul:ie neutral. quote: John Paul:Are you saying biological organisms are like engines? Recognizing the similarities between biochemical systems and machines is the first step to becoming an IDist! Way to go toff!
------------------John Paul [This message has been edited by John Paul, 02-26-2002]
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LudvanB Inactive Member |
I think that what they mean by most mutation being beneficial is that scientists believe that every part of our being is the result of a mutation of some kind. For instance,microbes,which according to scientists are our most distant ancestors,had no eyes per say. We developed eyes as we evolved...same thing for hands,feet,teeth and so on. Viewed in that light,we can conclude that most mutation were befeficial to us,since we're all here.
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Fred Williams Member (Idle past 4885 days) Posts: 310 From: Broomfield Joined: |
quote: My pleasure. The graph is from Futuyma's Evolutionary Biology textbook, 1998.
Futuyma believes that "the great majority of mutations are deleterious or nearly neutral". Not neutral, nearly neutral (ie, slightly harmful). It is false to claim most mutations are purely neutral, especially as we uncover more and more examples of non-coding DNA that serves some function.
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Mister Pamboli Member (Idle past 7606 days) Posts: 634 From: Washington, USA Joined: |
Interesting stuff. Largely irrelevant, I suspect, but interesting.
I'd be interested in how the graph was arrived at - criteria for defining benefit, how mutations were observed, in what species, that sort of thing. How would it class say a mutation to greater body weight by the increased adiposity in a mammal? Detrimental - making escape from predators more difficult? Beneficial - better able to survive a harsh winter? Or beneficial today but detrimental tomorrow? I'm skeptical about graphing a qualitative judgement.
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John Paul Inactive Member |
quote: John Paul:There you have it. Thank you Fred. Also what is a beneficial mutation? All beneficial means is that it gives that organism a (slightly) better chance at survival than it would have without it. And seeing there is no way to predict what would be selected for at any point in time, 'beneficial' would be a relative term. ------------------John Paul
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joz Inactive Member |
Note that the text on the graph explains that it is hypothetical and the real shape of the curve is unknown (hang on aren`t you the lot that want to be able to observe something before accepting it?). The text also implys that the distribution would be gaussian around some point between deletious and neutral (by inspection it is apparent that this mean would lie closer to neutral than deletious), however the distribution is skewed by an absolute lethality constricting the effect on fitness axis to the left....
What are you trying to use this to prove? Because this all seems fairly standard stuff to me.... [This message has been edited by joz, 02-27-2002]
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mark24 Member (Idle past 5224 days) Posts: 3857 From: UK Joined: |
I actually don't have a problem with the graph. It shows a higher proportion of harmful mutations to beneficial, most are nearly neutral, slightly on the harmful side. As such these will be weeded out in the ns process. Go much further to the left, & potential monkey man simply isn't going to make it out of the uterus alive.
This leaves us with the mostly neutral mutations. And a negative mutation CAN be positive in other circumstances (& vice versa, of course). What the graph DOESN'T show us, is where the beneficial line ends. The more it goes to the right the greater the benefit, & the greater the chance that mutation stands of being fixed in the population. All the while the negative ones are being removed. Mark ------------------Occam's razor is not for shaving with. [This message has been edited by mark24, 02-26-2002]
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