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Author | Topic: How long does it take to evolve? | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
AZPaul3 Member Posts: 8564 From: Phoenix Joined: Member Rating: 5.1
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As Dr. A has already pointed out mutation rates depend on what mutation type is being considered. Another thing is that evolution, even assuming some useful mutation just shows up when needed, doesn't work in that strictly linear a fashion.
If the goal is to determine how many mutations it takes to go from the simplest single cell progenitor to human then you have to make so many assumptions on so many processes that, ultimately, any number you come up with will have error bars larger than can be useful. You will have learned nothing. If the goal is, as you say,
... how long would a best-case-scenario human evolution have taken? then we already have that answer. Not a best-case-scenario but an only-case-scenario. 3.8 billion years give or take a couple hundred million years or so. The earliest life on this planet is dated around 3.8 billion years ago. From then until humans, about 200,000 years ago. So pick a number from 4.0 to 3.5 billion years and that's the best you are going to get. And because I'm feeling impish I'll add this. We live in a probabilistic universe, not a deterministic one. If you back up to 3.8+- billion years ago and let the whole scene run unhampered yet again you will most probably not have humans. Ever.
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AZPaul3 Member Posts: 8564 From: Phoenix Joined: Member Rating: 5.1 |
Let's see:
22,000,000 mutations in 6,000,000 years, that's 3.67 mutations per year times 3,800,000,000 years gives us 13,946,000,000 mutations start to finish divided by 20,939,940 species involved equals 666. uhh
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AZPaul3 Member Posts: 8564 From: Phoenix Joined: Member Rating: 5.1
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I am still unclear what you hope to gain from this exercise.
...if toe could Happen, ev wins. There is no if. Evolution has already won. It not only could happen, it did happen and continues to happen. We already know this with an exceptional level of confidence and certainty. If your goal is to convince the nay-sayers and creationists then you should know by now that isn't going to happen. There already are tons of much stronger evidence they choose to ignore. Saying you think it may have taken this x many mutations and this x amount of time, will be ignored like everything else they have been presented. If this exercise is intended to show that evolution can happen and can make complex multi-cellular structures like humans and oak trees, we already know that. This "mutation time-line" data point you may develop will not do anything to change any opinions. But, hey, academic exercises can be fun without ultimately being of any use. The major problem you face is in identifying all the steps required in that mutation time-line. There are billions of them. No one can even begin to identify a bunch of them let alone most of them or, heaven forbid, all of them. The best that might be done is to sum experienced and knowledgeable speculations from a list of specialists in everything from intra-cellular messenger protein cascades to zygotic structure generation with the expectation that most of these will be off by 2,3,4 orders of magnitude. The end result may be a pretty number that you will have already determined is not even close to accurate. And, further, you will know that this time-line is not anything close to what actually happened to get from simple proto-bacteria to human. So, again, why are we doing this? Edited by AZPaul3, : No reason given. Edited by AZPaul3, : No reason given.
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AZPaul3 Member Posts: 8564 From: Phoenix Joined: Member Rating: 5.1 |
Ahh, yes. Dumbass conspiracy weenies. Gotta love 'em.
Welcome back, Big_Al35.
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AZPaul3 Member Posts: 8564 From: Phoenix Joined: Member Rating: 5.1 |
...that Dawkins fellow. It is rumoured that he is a freemason. Hitchens is possibly another. Well, Hitch is dead and Dawkins is atheist. You cannot be an active member of a Blue Lodge in either of those conditions.
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AZPaul3 Member Posts: 8564 From: Phoenix Joined: Member Rating: 5.1 |
Care to elaborate how you got this information? No. And, no, I am not a mason. I am atheist. I am not allowed into the foyer let alone the meeting lodge. Edited by AZPaul3, : No reason given.
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AZPaul3 Member Posts: 8564 From: Phoenix Joined: Member Rating: 5.1 |
I guess you tried to get into that foyer right? The Great Architect and I parted ways back in High School. I have never had an interest in joining a religious organization.
It's funny but I am a christian and yet I've never been invited to join a lodge. You never will be invited. That's not the way it works.
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AZPaul3 Member Posts: 8564 From: Phoenix Joined: Member Rating: 5.1 |
I can't even get a member rating on these forums ffs. You're trying to set me off on a rant aren't you? Member ratings are juvenile. Most of us here are at least supposed to act like adults. You don't need a member rating. I don't need a member rating. In fact, you can have mine! I give it to you.
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AZPaul3 Member Posts: 8564 From: Phoenix Joined: Member Rating: 5.1
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it's a piddly 4.9 Piddly? Piddly!? Do you know how long it took me to earn that memb... Wait. I'm not supposed to care. Never mind.
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AZPaul3 Member Posts: 8564 From: Phoenix Joined: Member Rating: 5.1 |
Do you think I should apply using the following link? No. If you don't know anybody in the lodge a web site is useless. You have masons in your church? work? friends? Ask them. It is always best to have a friendly sponsor bring you into the social settings before you decide if you even want to join. Then you will have to meet every member of that lodge before you interview with the Masters. [abe] You already have one strike against you. You are asking an atheist these questions. Edited by AZPaul3, : No reason given.
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AZPaul3 Member Posts: 8564 From: Phoenix Joined: Member Rating: 5.1
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...last month that I had a 1000 rating and now look at me! Oh, Tany, we don't care what Percy says, you're still a 10 in our book.
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AZPaul3 Member Posts: 8564 From: Phoenix Joined: Member Rating: 5.1 |
Now , the most likely answer I would expect is, that each step of NS is intrinsically "programmed " to stay put, as it provides some sort of advantage to the creature. This is one of the reasons these simulator programs are not all that useful as analogies to natural selection. They concentrate on the individual steps instead of the whole. Natural selection works on the phenotype. The whole individual. Any new mutation may well be passed on to the babies be it good, bad or indifferent. The key in natural selection is the combined phenome, the whole of the individual, with respect to their ability to make healthy babies (fecundity). There may be dozens of novel differences in an individual. If the combined effect makes the individual less fecund than another then that individual is less fit (in evolutionary terms) than the other (though, officially, "fitness" in not just how many babies you make but how many babies you make that go on the make even more babies). Over time, as pieces parts of the population-wide genome are mixed around, some individuals arise with much more benefits than others, make many more healthy babies that make even more healthy babies, and these benefits, these mutations, then become the norm in the population as all the while more mutations are working their way into or out of the population gene pool sparking an endless string of these cycles.
But I don't get that either, as each step towards a "good thing" is hard to believe that it really helps that much. Ie, is a little snub of liver or kidney really so useful to an animal? As dwise1 pointed out, a small one with limited filtering capabilities would be more beneficial than an even smaller one less efficient, or not having one at all. And if it adds in any way, no matter how small, to the health, and thus the fecundity, of the whole individual then that entire suite of genes may be passed on in greater numbers then without that small filtering capability. Keep in mind that these organs were in development even prior to our fishy days. Even the smallest waste filtering organ would have had a significant health benefit to the small mass of the pre-fishy polyp that, 800 million years later, would become us.
What I don't get is, that the program was designed with "monkey" in mind. wouldn't it be more fitting to compare NS to trying to program some unknown word . Yes, very much so. In this case, however, whatever word the program produced would have to be accepted as a viable result of the process whether or not it falls into an English lexicon. There is no goal. There is nothing to consider an acceptable end result. Take 7 places. Randomly put a letter in each. DIBLMWX. That is your animal. Now randomly change one letter in one position. DIBHMWX. That is a different, related, animal. If after 3.8 billion years you come up with something like SAPIENS then good for you. If not, then, whatever you did come up with is the animal you now have. There is no targeted result. What you get from the process is what you get. Edited by AZPaul3, : No reason given. Edited by AZPaul3, : No reason given.
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