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Author | Topic: Explaining the pro-Evolution position | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Theodoric Member Posts: 9140 From: Northwest, WI, USA Joined: Member Rating: 3.3 |
I wonder if he could calculate the odds of the one particular raindrop hitting me on the head this morning. I mean they must be astronomical.
Facts don't lie or have an agenda. Facts are just facts "God did it" is not an argument. It is an excuse for intellectual laziness.
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Theodoric Member Posts: 9140 From: Northwest, WI, USA Joined: Member Rating: 3.3 |
Isn't he just repackaging a bizarre amalgamation of the Junkyard tornado and Behe's irreducible complexity arguments?
Facts don't lie or have an agenda. Facts are just facts "God did it" is not an argument. It is an excuse for intellectual laziness. |
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Dr Adequate Member (Idle past 304 days) Posts: 16113 Joined: |
We might, then, crudely distinguish between three kinds of selective pressure.
* Conservative pressures. Imagine a species of (let us say) mice on an island somewhere, that have been there for a long time and are already well-suited to their niche. They are subject to a thousand conservative selection pressures to stay how they are; this does not particularly interfere with their ability to adapt to one more adaptive pressure. * Adaptive pressures of threat. Now introduce three new predators to the island, each of which by its presence reduces the population, and requiring three different adaptations to evade effectively. If their effect on the population is significant, then it might well be the case that the mice would evolve more effectively if we introduced them one at a time, introducing one when the mice have evolved to cope with the other. * Adaptive pressures of opportunity. But suppose instead that we introduced three new food sources to the island, each of which requires a different adaptation to exploit effectively. As this exerts no downward pressure on the population, the mice would adapt faster if they were introduced concurrently than if they were introduced consecutively, by reason of the math presented in my previous post. (By analogy, it is faster to roll 1, 2, and 3 on a die in any order than to roll them in that order.) So when considering the evolution of birds (for example) it would be important to know what the pressures were on dinosaurs. The conservative pressures can be neglected. If the adaptive pressure was a pressure of threat --- if small dinosaurs were all but driven to extinction by the emergence of many threats which applied to anything that couldn't fly --- then the more of these pressures there were, the more slowly they would evolve. But if the pressures were pressures of opportunity, if there were benefits available to dinosaurs which were better at jumping/gliding/flying, then if these pressures were concurrent, then the more of them there are the faster the dinosaurs would evolve. So the nature and not merely the number of the adaptive pressures on the dinosaurs would be crucial to know if we wanted to know how long it would take. Without knowing the nature of the pressures we can't just say "it would be slower if there was more of them", nor can we say "it would be faster if there was more of them" --- and nor should we be counting conservative pressures at all if they are irrelevant to the benefits of flight.
_____________________ This is all very qualitative, and we may note that there are quantitative caveats. If, for example, the pressures of threat only reduced the population by say 1% each, then it would still lead to faster evolution if they were introduced concurrently. This caveat does not apply to combination therapy, since anything that reduced the population of pathogens by a mere 1% would not be considered as a therapy, and no-one would bother to include it in a drug cocktail. Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.
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Kleinman Member (Idle past 355 days) Posts: 2142 From: United States Joined: |
quote:I watched the first 5 minutes and listened to a description of what they were going to talk about and then a moderater talking about how great the next lecture was going to be. You complain that I don't get to the point. So give us an empirical example of what they claim their model is showing. If you want to look at a good computer simulation, look at Tom Schneider's EV simulation or rmns. But don't take Schneider's superficial analysis of his algorithm, do a thorough analysis of his computer program including varying the mutation rates, population sizes, genome lengths and most importantly, the complexity of his selection conditions. His model not only demonstrates how rmns works, it can also be used to demonstrate how drift works (if you do a thorough analysis which Schneider didn't do).
quote:If you want to make realistic interpretations of the fossil record, you need to take into account the mechanisms of genetic transformation.
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Taq Member Posts: 10033 Joined: Member Rating: 5.3 |
Kleinman writes: If you want to make realistic interpretations of the fossil record, you need to take into account the mechanisms of genetic transformation. We already have. The divergence between the genomes of species matches up with the age of morphological divergence seen in the fossil record when we include population sizes, mutation rates, and the rest.
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Kleinman Member (Idle past 355 days) Posts: 2142 From: United States Joined: |
The administrator states that I haven't abided by forum policy by posting links without description.
The basic science and mathematics of random mutation and natural selection - PubMed The mathematics of random mutation and natural selection for multiple simultaneous selection pressures and the evolution of antimicrobial drug resistance - PubMed Random recombination and evolution of drug resistance - PubMed I have given layman's descriptions for the two papers on rmns, I'll repeat the description here: Let's say that in order for your family to survive, your family must win two lotteries. And the probability of winning the first lottery is 1 in a million and the probability of winning the second lottery is 1 in a million. For you to win both lotteries, that probability will be 1 in a million times 1 in a million, 1 in a trillion, a very low probability. But let's say you are lucky enough to win one of the lotteries and now you are very wealthy and because of all your wealth, you can raise a very large family. And now all your descendants start buying tickets to the second lottery. As soon as you have enough descendants, you will have a reasonable probability that your family will win both lotteries. Now let's extend this idea to a real example of random mutation and natural selection. Let's say I want to treat someone with an infection with an antibiotic. And let's say the bacteria I'm treating need 3 mutations to become resistant to the antibiotic. It's very unlikely that in a single replication that a bacterium will get all 3 mutations but let one lucky member get the first beneficial mutation. Now that member has to replicate for many generations so there are millions of members with that mutation and then there is a reasonable probability that one of those members will get the second beneficial mutation. That new member must now replicate for many generation so there are millions of members with the first 2 mutations and then some lucky member gets the third beneficial mutation and now is resistant to the antibiotic. So random mutation and natural selection works in a cycle of beneficial mutation followed by amplification of that mutation (increase in number of those with that mutation) to improve the probability of the next beneficial mutation occurring. But what happens if we use two drugs? Let's say the first drug requires mutations A, B, and C and the second drug requires mutation X, Y and Z. Even if some lucky member gets mutation A, the second drug interferes with the amplification of that member. And if some lucky member gets mutation X, the first drug interferes with the amplification of that member. It is this principle that has led to the successful treatment of HIV. The second paper on rmns extends this concept with computing the joint probability of two (or more) simultaneous beneficial mutations occurring when multiple simultaneous selection pressures are acting on a population. This is conceptually similar to computing the probability that someone will win two lotteries. The third paper concerns the mathematics of random recombination. I haven't discussed this paper yet but will now give the layman's version. Random recombination is very similar to a random card drawing problem. In this case, you have a population with various different alleles. The probability of two particular alleles showing up in a descendant by recombination is dependent on the relative frequencies of the different alleles. Now I apologize that these papers are behind a paywall but the open source cost is prohibitive for me. If you have access to any medical school library or good college library, which subscribes to this journal, you can get the papers for free. WRT giving copies of the papers to the administrator, I have to check with the editor of the journal to see if this violates copyright agreement.
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Taq Member Posts: 10033 Joined: Member Rating: 5.3
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Kleinman writes: Let's say that in order for your family to survive, your family must win two lotteries. I will repeat my challenge from earlier. Can you point to any two vertebrate species where two simultaneous mutations had to happen in one of those lineages since the time that they shared a common ancestor? If you can't, your analogy is completely irrelevant. Added in edit . . .
Now let's extend this idea to a real example of random mutation and natural selection. Let's say I want to treat someone with an infection with an antibiotic. And let's say the bacteria I'm treating need 3 mutations to become resistant to the antibiotic. Can you name a single example of antibiotic resistance that required 3, and only those 3, mutations to occur simultaneously in order to get resistance? If not, your question is completely irrelevant. Edited by Taq, : No reason given.
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Kleinman Member (Idle past 355 days) Posts: 2142 From: United States Joined: |
The following message is a response to message 129, 130, 132
quote:Are you arguing that conservative selection pressures are what transformed dinosaurs into birds. It's not just scales to feathers, it's mouths to beaks, limbs to wings, muscles suited for weight bearing into muscles suited for flight, bones suited for weight bearing into bones suited for flight..., all the alleles which differentiate reptiles from birds. Lenski's starvation selection pressure experiment targets only a few genes and it takes thousand of generations per beneficial mutation. quote:I have empirical examples of rmns for microbes, plants, insects, rodents, cancers, some of these examples are for clonal replicators, some for sexually reproducing replicators. All show the same thing, there ability to evolve against selection pressures efficiently only occurs when there is a single selection pressure targeting a single gene. When more than a single selection pressure is acting, the probabilities of evolving against these selection pressures drop multiplicatively. quote:Even if birds could evolve as quickly as HIV does, the theory of evolution does not have a chance. Are you going to argue that combination therapy doesn't work for the treatment of HIV? Even HIV with its high mutation rate, huge populations, the fact that it does recombination can not evolve efficiently when selection pressures target only two genes at a time. HIV obeys the laws of probability just like every other replicator. It's the multiplication rule the kills the theory of evolution. quote:HIV does do recombination but it has no significant effect on evolving drug resistance. I did the mathematics for that case. The mathematics for that case is analogous to a random card drawing problem. Unless the resistance alleles are in high relative frequency in the population, the probability of recombination for two different beneficial alleles is low. quote:Of course, you don't know what the selection pressures are which would transform a reptile into a bird because they don't exist. You could prove me wrong by naming the selection pressures but then we could test the concept. And targeted selection pressures are those pressures which target a single genetic loci. Examples of these are antimicrobial agents, herbicides, many modern anti-cancer agents. Non-targeted selection pressures are those which target more than a single genetic locus. Examples of this are starvation, radiation, bleach, alkylating anti-cancer agents, etc. It is the targeted selection pressures when used singly which are most easily evolved to by rmns. The non-targeted selection pressures like bleach are not easily adapted to if at all.
quote:Don't hide your empirical examples, but make sure they are real, measurable and repeatable examples of rmns. quote:So three drug combination therapy does not work for the treatment of HIV? You'd better notify the WHO, CDC, FDA, and NBA quote:I really haven't studied the age of the earth and techniques used to compute this. It has taken me a decade to unravel the bloody mess that evolutionists have made with the rmns phenomenon. I would say one thing about evolutionist estimates of the age of things. If the T Rex fossils that still have soft tissue and red blood cells are really 70 million years old, would these evolutionists apply the physical laws that allow this to happen to my freezer so that when I forget something in there for 6 months so it won't be totally ruined. quote:I'm going to stop you right there because you are making the same error in physics which Haldane and Kimura make in their models of substitution and fixation. Fixation is neither necessary nor sufficient for rmns to work. Do you understand why? I'll give you empirical examples of this after you think about this for a while and explain to you why you are wrong if you can't figure it out yourself.
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Kleinman Member (Idle past 355 days) Posts: 2142 From: United States Joined: |
quote:Fixation is neither necessary nor sufficient for rmns to work. This notion of fixation is based on an erroneous application of a physical principle. Do you think that natural selection is a conservative phenomenon?
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Kleinman Member (Idle past 355 days) Posts: 2142 From: United States Joined: |
quote:These papers are totally apropo to the discussion. I am total pro-evolution, I'm just anti the theory of evolution. These papers correctly describe the physics and mathematics of rmns including the mathematics or rmns to multiple simultaneous selection pressures, as well as a paper on random recombination. I've already posted the layman's description of how this phenomenon works several times on this thread but you with your skill in probability theory might be interested in the mathematics which goes along with it. All real, measurable and repeatable examples of rmns obey the mathematics in these publications. rmns has nothing to do with chaos theory. Before they called it chaos theory, they called it ill-conditioned mathematics. I published papers on an ill-conditioned problem years ago and rmns is far from being ill-conditioned. And there are actually two different random trials in the rmns phenomenon, the first random trial is the replication where p=the probability that an error does not occur at a particular site in the genome and q=the probability that an error does occur at a particular site in the genome. Now the mutation itself also is a random trial. In this case, it is not a binomial probability. The mutation can be a substitution of a base, an insertion, a deletion, double insertion,...
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Dr Adequate Member (Idle past 304 days) Posts: 16113 Joined: |
Are you arguing that conservative selection pressures are what transformed dinosaurs into birds. No, of course not. You can tell I'm not arguing that by the way in which instead of saying "Conservative selection pressures are what transformed dinosaurs into birds" I said "But to even start applying this to dinosaurs we'd need to know how many beneficial mutations get your from dinosaurs to birds and how long it took."
I have empirical examples of rmns for microbes, plants, insects, rodents, cancers, some of these examples are for clonal replicators, some for sexually reproducing replicators. How nice for you. Do you also have the data relevant to dinosaur-bird evolution I mentioned in my post?
Even if birds could evolve as quickly as HIV does, the theory of evolution does not have a chance. Are you going to argue that combination therapy doesn't work for the treatment of HIV? No, I'm not going to argue that combination therapy doesn't work for the treatment of HIV. I'm going to argue that you have done no calculations relevant to the evolution of birds.
Of course, you don't know what the selection pressures are which would transform a reptile into a bird because they don't exist. Well, don't you think that being able to fly is kinda useful to birds?
And targeted selection pressures are those pressures which target a single genetic loci. Locus. I'm still not sure what that would have to do with, for example, the evolution of birds from dinosaurs.
Don't hide your empirical examples, but make sure they are real, measurable and repeatable examples of rmns. As I said, the evolution of antibiotic resistance in bacteria. If you are going to count the conservative selection pressures on dinosaurs, and claim that these would impede their evolution into birds, then I am going to count the conservative selection pressures on bacteria and point out that these don't impede them at all in evolving resistance to ampicillin.
So three drug combination therapy does not work for the treatment of HIV? You'd better notify the WHO, CDC, FDA, and NBA As the paper I cited shows, it doesn't completely stop evolution in HIV. Obviously it works in terms of conferring benefits on the patient, but it works rather less well in bolstering your claims about the way evolution works.
I'm going to stop you right there because you are making the same error in physics which Haldane and Kimura make in their models of substitution and fixation. Fixation is neither necessary nor sufficient for rmns to work. Do you understand why? Well, I wouldn't like to be like those dunces Haldane and Kimura. Your meaning is rather obscure, since fixation is one not uncommon product of evolution, so writing "fixation is neither necessary nor sufficient for rmns to work" is rather like writing "Traveling to another country is not necessary for airplanes to work". Of course evolution can produce other results, e.g. when it produces genetic polymorphism. However, if we want to think about the evolution of birds from dinosaurs I would respectfully submit that all the traits which make birds birds and not dinosaurs have in fact been fixed in birds.
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Kleinman Member (Idle past 355 days) Posts: 2142 From: United States Joined: |
quote:I'm one of those sayers that says Darwin got it half right. quote:I've never really studied the age of the earth issue, I'm too busy unraveling the bloody mess evolutionists have made with the rmns phenomenon. I do think it is really weird to think that a T Rex red blood cell could last 70 million years.
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Dr Adequate Member (Idle past 304 days) Posts: 16113 Joined: |
I've never really studied the age of the earth issue, I'm too busy unraveling the bloody mess evolutionists have made with the rmns phenomenon. I do think it is really weird to think that a T Rex red blood cell could last 70 million years. Well, the young-Earthers think it's lasted four thousand years old. Unless you think we're dealing with freshly-killed dinosaurs, you must admit that there are conditions which sometimes keep organic material in dinosaur bones from decay. Now, decay doesn't happen on its own, it involves bacteria. If a bone can go four thousand years without bacteria getting into it, it can go a hundred million years without bacteria getting into it. Why not? But we digress.
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Taq Member Posts: 10033 Joined: Member Rating: 5.3 |
Kleinman writes: Are you arguing that conservative selection pressures are what transformed dinosaurs into birds. It's not just scales to feathers, it's mouths to beaks, limbs to wings, muscles suited for weight bearing into muscles suited for flight, bones suited for weight bearing into bones suited for flight..., all the alleles which differentiate reptiles from birds. Can you show how any of those adaptations required 2 simultaneous mutations? If not, what are you going on about?
I have empirical examples of rmns for microbes, plants, insects, rodents, cancers, some of these examples are for clonal replicators, some for sexually reproducing replicators. All show the same thing, there ability to evolve against selection pressures efficiently only occurs when there is a single selection pressure targeting a single gene. Where did you show this? If what you claim is true, then you need to show how all genes in the genome were experiencing neutral driftm, including non-synonymous mutations, while only a single gene showed selection for specific mutations. Where is that evidence? For humans, we can find areas around the equator where mutations for malaria resistance and mutations for skin color are being simultaneously selected for. Same for lactose intolerance and skin color in northern latitudes.
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Taq Member Posts: 10033 Joined: Member Rating: 5.3 |
Kleinman writes: I've never really studied the age of the earth issue, I'm too busy unraveling the bloody mess evolutionists have made with the rmns phenomenon. What mess? You can't even point to a single adaptation in vertebrates that couldn't be produced by rmns. All you have is an argument from incredulity apparently fueled by your religious beliefs.
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