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Author Topic:   Why is evolution so controversial?
New Cat's Eye
Inactive Member


Message 706 of 969 (739752)
10-27-2014 3:05 PM
Reply to: Message 705 by zaius137
10-27-2014 2:53 PM


First question I ask myself when going to bed at night At least for now my question excludes idiot.
You should probably start including that, because the bahavior you've exhibited on this thread perfectly matches that of an idiot.
In case that question ever pops up at night, How do you answer?
I don't, because I'm not a moron. That's why I asked you: you seem to have the necessary experience.
But if you ever want to get back to the topic of this thread, I have 3 unanswered posts to you that you could start on:
Message 547
Message 572
Message 589

This message is a reply to:
 Message 705 by zaius137, posted 10-27-2014 2:53 PM zaius137 has not replied

  
Coyote
Member (Idle past 2106 days)
Posts: 6117
Joined: 01-12-2008


Message 707 of 969 (739754)
10-27-2014 3:10 PM
Reply to: Message 695 by zaius137
10-27-2014 1:17 PM


Re: Recent origins
If a individual was determined to be an ancestor of 500,000 tears ago they might only be as recent as 5,000 years.
I figured you'd be getting to modern man originating around 6,000 years ago sooner or later.
And I suppose that you'll be telling us next that all of our radiometric dating methods are wrong too?

Religious belief does not constitute scientific evidence, nor does it convey scientific knowledge.
Belief gets in the way of learning--Robert A. Heinlein
How can I possibly put a new idea into your heads, if I do not first remove your delusions?--Robert A. Heinlein
It's not what we don't know that hurts, it's what we know that ain't so--Will Rogers
If I am entitled to something, someone else is obliged to pay--Jerry Pournelle
If a religion's teachings are true, then it should have nothing to fear from science...--dwise1
"Multiculturalism" does not include the American culture. That is what it is against.

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sfs
Member (Idle past 2533 days)
Posts: 464
From: Cambridge, MA USA
Joined: 08-27-2003


Message 708 of 969 (739756)
10-27-2014 3:49 PM
Reply to: Message 704 by zaius137
10-27-2014 2:44 PM


Re: Any real comment?
quote:
"We are more different genetically from people living 5,000 years ago than they were different from Neanderthals." Genome study places modern humans in the evolutionary fast lane
Any real comments?
Yeah -- it was a really bad study. It misrepresented the findings of the Voight et al. study and it didn't take into account how much easier it is to detect recent selection than older selection. The paper should be dropped into the ocean and forgotten.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 704 by zaius137, posted 10-27-2014 2:44 PM zaius137 has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 713 by zaius137, posted 10-27-2014 5:28 PM sfs has replied

  
NoNukes
Inactive Member


Message 709 of 969 (739757)
10-27-2014 4:03 PM
Reply to: Message 704 by zaius137
10-27-2014 2:44 PM


Re: Any real comment?
zaius137 writes:
We are more different genetically from people living 5,000 years ago than they were different from Neanderthals." Genome study places modern humans in the evolutionary fast lane
Any real comments?
Comments are scarcely needed. The entire article absolutely shreds your position here without countering the theory of evolution in any way. Someone here might well have cited this paper in rebuttal to some of your assertions. My question for you is why you even bothered to link to this article?
quote:
The parallel to humans is obvious: The human population has grown from a few million people 10,000 years ago to about 200 million people at A.D. 0, to 600 million people in the year 1700, to more than 6.5 billion today. Prior to these times, the population was so small for so long that positive selection occurred at a glacial pace, Hawks says.
So the part you quoted is based on this kind of population data. What's your point.
Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.

Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also in prison. Thoreau: Civil Disobedience (1846)
I have never met a man so ignorant that I couldn't learn something from him. Galileo Galilei
If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom, and deprecate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground, they want rain without thunder and lightning. Frederick Douglass

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NoNukes
Inactive Member


(1)
Message 710 of 969 (739758)
10-27-2014 4:10 PM
Reply to: Message 707 by Coyote
10-27-2014 3:10 PM


Re: Recent origins
Coyote writes:
And I suppose that you'll be telling us next that all of our radiometric dating methods are wrong too?
If there is anything funnier than zaius137 pretending to understand biology, it is zaius137 rambling on about physics. Don't encourage him.

Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also in prison. Thoreau: Civil Disobedience (1846)
I have never met a man so ignorant that I couldn't learn something from him. Galileo Galilei
If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom, and deprecate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground, they want rain without thunder and lightning. Frederick Douglass

This message is a reply to:
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Replies to this message:
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 Message 715 by zaius137, posted 10-27-2014 5:31 PM NoNukes has not replied

  
sfs
Member (Idle past 2533 days)
Posts: 464
From: Cambridge, MA USA
Joined: 08-27-2003


Message 711 of 969 (739759)
10-27-2014 4:16 PM
Reply to: Message 710 by NoNukes
10-27-2014 4:10 PM


Re: Recent origins
I haven't been following this thread, and trying to go back and read it just gave me a headache. Is he making some kind of coherent point about linkage disequilibrium?

This message is a reply to:
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Replies to this message:
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New Cat's Eye
Inactive Member


(2)
Message 712 of 969 (739761)
10-27-2014 4:26 PM
Reply to: Message 711 by sfs
10-27-2014 4:16 PM


Re: Recent origins
I haven't been following this thread, and trying to go back and read it just gave me a headache. Is he making some kind of coherent point about linkage disequilibrium?
No, he is not.
What is clear is that he doesn't like evolution and he is willing to lie and cheat to try to make his points.
He doesn't understand the equations he's using, nor the variables that are within them.
He's desperately grasping at any straw he can to try to make some kind of point that humans did not evolve from primitive apes over the course of millions of years.

This message is a reply to:
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Replies to this message:
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zaius137
Member (Idle past 3409 days)
Posts: 407
Joined: 05-08-2012


Message 713 of 969 (739763)
10-27-2014 5:28 PM
Reply to: Message 708 by sfs
10-27-2014 3:49 PM


Re: Any real comment?
quote:
Yeah -- it was a really bad study. It misrepresented the findings of the Voight et al. study and it didn't take into account how much easier it is to detect recent selection than older selection. The paper should be dropped into the ocean and forgotten.
sfs unbelievable. Why are you even talking to me? I thought you had enough our last go-around. Well as for my part I really like talking to you. So let’s see if I can turn you into a creationist (obviously I failed last time).
I will first ask you your opinion on why how much easier it is to detect recent selection than older selection.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 708 by sfs, posted 10-27-2014 3:49 PM sfs has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 720 by sfs, posted 10-27-2014 7:00 PM zaius137 has replied

  
zaius137
Member (Idle past 3409 days)
Posts: 407
Joined: 05-08-2012


Message 714 of 969 (739764)
10-27-2014 5:30 PM
Reply to: Message 712 by New Cat's Eye
10-27-2014 4:26 PM


Re: Recent origins
Great post... Cheers!

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zaius137
Member (Idle past 3409 days)
Posts: 407
Joined: 05-08-2012


Message 715 of 969 (739765)
10-27-2014 5:31 PM
Reply to: Message 710 by NoNukes
10-27-2014 4:10 PM


Re: Recent origins
Great post... Cheers!

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 Message 710 by NoNukes, posted 10-27-2014 4:10 PM NoNukes has not replied

  
Dr Adequate
Member (Idle past 284 days)
Posts: 16113
Joined: 07-20-2006


Message 716 of 969 (739768)
10-27-2014 5:57 PM
Reply to: Message 696 by zaius137
10-27-2014 1:23 PM


Very funny how about english.
You've seen it in English. It was in English on that website that you cited. You remember, the one that said you were completely wrong?
So it is pretty much your move. Find me one paper, published any time in the 170 years since Verhulst, that says that the logistic equation does not have a stable equilibrium at K.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 696 by zaius137, posted 10-27-2014 1:23 PM zaius137 has not replied

  
Admin
Director
Posts: 12998
From: EvC Forum
Joined: 06-14-2002
Member Rating: 2.3


Message 717 of 969 (739769)
10-27-2014 6:02 PM


Moderator on Duty
I haven't participated in this thread since April, so I'm going to move to a moderator role.
Participants, please follow the Forum Guidelines. Stick to topic, treat other participants respectfully, try to constructively move the discussion forward.
Like sfs I had trouble following the technical aspects of the discussion. If some good Samaritan wants to volunteer to neutrally summarize the positions in layman's terms it would be greatly appreciated.

--Percy
EvC Forum Director

Replies to this message:
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Genomicus
Member (Idle past 1941 days)
Posts: 852
Joined: 02-15-2012


Message 718 of 969 (739770)
10-27-2014 6:02 PM
Reply to: Message 585 by zaius137
10-23-2014 5:27 PM


Re: What if God used evolution to create man?
Yes at the time the paper was accepted there was no controversy about mutation rates because indels were not in play, that is because they were not thought to affect protein coding. I have not seen any appropriate argument that indels are excluded in equivalency to SNP’s since about 2001. The statistics are the same.
The statistics are often not the same since indels are categorically different than point mutations. And, in particular, the formula you are using is based on point mutations, not indels, so it's completely wrong to figure indels into the formula in the way you're doing it.
I can do the math.
Just about anyone can do plug-n-chug math. It takes a higher level of expertise to know when it's appropriate to use a given formula -- and when it's not.
However, you can't directly plug 5% into the formula you're using. That's because the formula is based on the percent identity estimated from point mutations, not indels. If you trace the formula you're using back to the primary literature, you can see that it's all about point mutations -- indels don't work in the formula if you're going off of gross percent dissimilarity. The formula comes from Kimura's landmark 1983 work. Read it.
I really need a quote (in the literature) from you to back up your point.
You're using the formula u= k/(2t+4Ne). But do you know how this formula is derived? Do you understand -- on a rudimentary level, at least -- the different components of this formula? Or are you peeling this off the scientific literature and just plugging numbers in? You need to know the nuances of the formula before you can ever hope to use it effectively.
The formula, as I stated, is found in Kimura's 1983 monograph on neutral evolutionary theory. And in this formula, k represents the rate of substitution mutations (see Kimura, 1986). This symbol, k, will be familiar to most students of molecular phylogenetics. It comes in handy in a bunch of formulas. But it represents the rate of substitution mutations, not the gross percent dissimilarity of sequences. Substitution mutations are not indels. They are thoroughly different, and equating the two in this formula is biologically incorrect -- and that's exactly what you've been doing.
So will you concede that your initial argument for a recent human origin falls short? Otherwise, I'll be expecting a biologically sound response to my points above.
References
"DNA and the Neutral Theory," M. Kimura. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, 1986.
Edited by Genomicus, : Added reference. Have better things to do with my time than format it according to any standard, tho.
Edited by Genomicus, : No reason given.
Edited by Genomicus, : Fixed typos. Drugged on caffeine.

This message is a reply to:
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Replies to this message:
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Dr Adequate
Member (Idle past 284 days)
Posts: 16113
Joined: 07-20-2006


Message 719 of 969 (739777)
10-27-2014 6:55 PM
Reply to: Message 717 by Admin
10-27-2014 6:02 PM


Re: Moderator on Duty
Like sfs I had trouble following the technical aspects of the discussion. If some good Samaritan wants to volunteer to neutrally summarize the positions in layman's terms it would be greatly appreciated.
Zaius has made the following mistakes:
* He has implicitly assumed that he can count the number of mutations that have occurred by measuring them, which is obviously false, since one mutation deleting 1,000,000 bases of non-coding DNA is in fact one mutation and not a million of them.
* He supposes that math shows that for a constrained population to stay around the same number is an unstable situation, whereas the math (including his own citations) and indeed common sense shows that it is stable.
* He supposes that in order to account for the degree of genetic diversity in humans the population must have stayed at exactly the same level for oodles of years, whereas math and indeed common sense shows that the same result can be produced if the population fluctuates.

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sfs
Member (Idle past 2533 days)
Posts: 464
From: Cambridge, MA USA
Joined: 08-27-2003


(1)
Message 720 of 969 (739779)
10-27-2014 7:00 PM
Reply to: Message 713 by zaius137
10-27-2014 5:28 PM


Re: Any real comment?
quote:
sfs unbelievable. Why are you even talking to me? I thought you had enough our last go-around.
Sorry -- I had no memory of having dealt with you before. I run into a fair number of creationists who don't understand genetics.
quote:
I will first ask you your opinion on why how much easier it is to detect recent selection than older selection.
Much easier. The long-haplotype tests that the Hawks paper referenced lose all power after about 20,000 years or so.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 713 by zaius137, posted 10-27-2014 5:28 PM zaius137 has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 727 by zaius137, posted 10-28-2014 12:15 AM sfs has replied

  
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