Mutation

Exactly! Scaffolds!Nobody says evolution has to be a straight path. It just has to be locally advantageous each time. The way you get an irreducably complex system is by starting with a reducably complex system that does the job poorly, adding elements that increase effectiveness, and then removing most of the now inefficient original system. Scaffolds are reducably complex. You can usually take parts out of a scaffold without it collapsing, and they're easily built piece by piece. Not everything is irreducably complex. For instance, eyes are reducably complex. I'd like to see your math, I guess. The only reason I think you come to this conclusion is because you don't want evolution to be true.

No. We're talking about how natural processes that have to be locally advantageous at each step can give rise to systems that fail if any piece is taken away.For purposes of analogy, it doesn't matter that it's humans putting the scaffold together, only that each step in building the scaffold is locally advantageous. We already know that natural selection and random mutation can accomplish, eventually, any step that is locally advantageous.

I wouldn't be. In a random world I would expect it to happen once. After all one guy has already won the lottery twice, and that's within my lifetime.The problem is that you're substituting your own incredulity for any kind of statistical guideline. How low do the odds have to be before you won't believe it could happen?

Yeah, the Powerball or something. What if he played the lottery twice a day? What if he played it a hundred times every second, for 3 billion years? What might happen then?I submit that you just don't have the information, nor the statistical training, to make these kind of judgements about what could happen or what couldn't. Your off-the-cuff feelings about probablility just don't constitute any sort of proof, no matter how much you apply the term "reasonable" to them. I'd say it's something like 1 every 50 individuals, based on that 2 percent fixation rate. One in every 50 individuals has a beneficial mutation that will fix in the population. Now, how many individuals have lived in the last 3 billion years?Now figure it out. I'm not inclined to accept statistical reasoning that starts with the baseless assumptions of somebody who so desperately doesn't want evolution to be true.

I have a problem with people substituting personal incredulity for actual statistical reasoning.How many times does he play the lottery? Do you still have such a problem with it if he plays a hundred times every second for 20 years? The odds get a little better, don't you think? How many individuals have lived and died in 500 million years? Every one of them is like running the "evolution lottery."

Yes, but I don't think you do.Every mutation is a chance, right? And every organism has about 50-500 chances, right? And there's been how many individuals born - of any and all species, including bacteria - in 500 million years?And you"re seriously suggesting to me that that's not enough time? That those odds are too low? Just how many chances per second do you think there are for beneficial mutations, even if you assume a 2 percent fixation rate for one out of a thousand mutations? I'm not even sure we have a number that large.Every single individual is a chance for several beneficial mutations. I don't think you even come close to realizing how many times per second that lottery is being played. Because I don't think we have the numbers to go that large. I'm talking about individuals of every single species, including bacteria and virii.If just thinking about how many individuals that would be over 500 million years doesn't knock you out of your seat, then you're not trying hard enough. Sure. There's a vast, uncountable legacy of individuals on this planet. Every one of them represents the chance for some 50-500 mutations to be beneficial and to fix in the poulation. My off-the-cuff, made up numbers suggest to me that every organism has something like a one in a thousand chance of donating a beneficial mutation that fixes into it's population.What's one-thousandth of every individual that has ever lived? I can't tell you, but it's a lot. That's a lot of beneficial mutations. That's a lot of beneficial mutations every single second. How many individuals have ever lived? Do you get that yet?

Ok, so I got in the shower, where my best thinking happens, and I think I can come up with the example math you're looking for, kind of.Let's say I'm Joe Q. Organism. In my genome there's about 20,000 active gene sites, but since I have 2 copies of each chromosome, I actually have 40,000 mutatable genes.Adding up my conspecifics and me comes to one million organisms in my generation. That's 40,000,000,000 mutatable gene copies total in the gene pool.Now according to your citation, every one of those genes has about a one in 10,000 to one in 100,000 chance of mutating. Let's go halvsies so we'll estimate that each gene has a one in 45,000 (that's half of the difference between 10,000 and 100,000) chance of mutating.So far we have, on average, 888,888 mutations in the entire gene pool. Your source says that one in 1000 of those is benefical, so we have almost 900 beneficial mutations. Two percent of those will fix, so 18 beneficial mutations from that population will become permanent.18 mutations out of one generation of one million conspecifics. Sure, that's not a lot. But in three years (for example), when this generation has hit sexual maturity, that million will have dwindled to maybe a tenth of that. Then they'll have another million children, or ten per organism. 180 of those individuals have the beneficial mutations from the last batch, and there's another 18 mutations this time.Over 500 million years, it adds up. For our hypothetical population of organisms that's 3 billion benefical mutations. And you're telling me you don't think 3 billion benefical, permanent mutations are going to constitute significant evolutionary change to a population of organisms?I'm sure my math is simplistic in the extreme, but I hardly think I'm being that generous. You may disagree but I've used the numbers you dug up. And remember that we haven't even taken into account that sometimes just shuffling existing genes is enough to effect considerable adaptation and change to a population.Like I said, when you've done some of the math, I'll be a little more willing to lend credence to your off-the-cuff dismissals of the probabilities. But your argument is simply "it seems too unlikely, so it must not be true." But you refuse, for some reason, to spell out the specific mathematical reasoning that leads you to that conclusion.Well, I've tried to give you the steps of my reasoning. I'd like to see your math, now.

Yet, you use math terms like "probability". I guess that's what had me confused. I hadn't quite realized I was talking to someone who feels totally free to redefine words without explanation. Nope. Math and observation both.We observe that, say, only one out of 1,000 100-ft fall victims survive. Therefore (here comes the math) we assign the probability of survival of a 100-ft fall to be 1/1,000. We don't just make numbers up to get probabilities. We construct a ratio (there's that math again) of the number of successes (the number of people who survive) out of the total number of trials (the number of people who have ever had a 100-ft fall onto a certain surface.)Math is used to make sense of the observations, and that's how we get probability. How do you think bookies do it? They don't just guess, they analyze the win/loss records and make statistical judgements. On the other hand it depends what they land on or in. Landing in water or deep snow can improve your chances (again, based on mathematical compilation of observation) dramatically. But that's just a quibble. This is simply non-sensical, I'm sorry. If you want to communicate with me, you have to do so in English. Defining words anyway you see fit means we're speaking two different languages. Sure, I'd believe you. I'd ask for more details, of course, because my first immediate thought would be "there's obviously something that is unique about this group of 100 people, because their survival is exceptional, though not impossible." My first question would be "what did they land in?" My second would probably be "how did you come to meet them?"But unlike you, I guess, I recognize the difference between improbable events and impossible ones, and as a rule, I only immediately reject the latter. 100 survivors isn't that improbable compared to the number of people who have ever fallen that far. You misapprehend me. I understand all too well your position, because it's an all-too-common mental error that people make. "Improbable" isn't the same as "impossible." You may consider 1/1000 odds a certainty that anybody who makes the jump is going to die. I certainly wouldn't trust my life to 1/1000 odds.But that's not evidence that no one survives. In fact if 1000 people jump off a ten-story building, all things being equal, we would expect one of them to survive. Now I imagine that, in a space of 30 years or so, one hundred thousand individuals might have had that fall. So it wouldn't surprise me that you could find the 100 who probably survived if you looked hard enough.Repeated trials make low probabilities certainties. All it takes is time and repetitions. No matter how low the likelyhood of a fixed, beneficial mutation occuring is, it's a guaranteed certainty that it will happen (and happen often) to a population of sufficient size because every individual represents a separate trial. Incredulity can't take the place of reason, as it seems to with you. Some things about the world are simply incredible - incredible but true. I appreciate you repeating that like I'm an idiot so I'm going to afford you the same courtesy. I'd like to know if this sinks in:Repeated trials make low probabilities certainties.Repeated trials make low probabilities certainties.Repeated trials make low probabilities certainties.Any time you're ready to take a mature attitude and subsititute sound mathematical reasoning for simpleminded incredulity, we'll be able to move on. But as long as you continue to take the ludicrous position that you can talk about probabilities without using math, you'll be impermeable to reason.

I beg to differ. What else is redefining "probability" if not a semantic game? What was the first one? Well, the other forms of the root. What was the first definition that wasn't just another form of the root word? This one, which you seem to have ignored: [quote]3 a (1) : the ratio of the number of outcomes in an exhaustive set of equally likely outcomes that produce a given event to the total number of possible outcomes (2) : the chance that a given event will occur b : a branch of mathematics concerned with the study of probabilities[/qs]"Ratio" "Number" "Set" "Total" - how can you escape that the dictionary is telling you that probability is established by math, not by guessing? Can you show me which of your definitions defines the word as "guessing"? Because I didn't see it. You're staggeringly ignorant of meteorology. The likelyhood of rain is calculated by comparing the total number of days recorded with similar conditions with the total number of those days where it rained. That's how they give you the chance of rain. They don't just make up the numbers. There's that math again!You can't escape math if you want to talk about the chance of something happening. Your attempts to disinclude math - presumably because you have no math to refute evolution's - are at best nonsensical and at worst a cynical, disingenuous ploy. That's because it is. When you ask "what's 2+2?" that's a math question. When you ask "what's the probability?" that's a math question, because finding the answer involves math - comparing two numbers - not guessing. Like a meteorologist, if you wanted to figure that out, you'd look back through the records, find every day with the same or similar conditions, and see how many of them rained. You then express that as a percentage, aka "60% chance of rain." How did you think they got that number in the paper today? Made it up? How high is high? How low is low? You make a mockery of probability and statistics - through your ignorance of them, I presume - by trying to pretend your subjective, off-the-cuff guessing represents any kind of equivalent process. How can I, when the only examples you ever try to give are of people using statistics to figure out probability?I notice too that "repetition makes low probabilities certainties" didn't sink in. I could easily prove it with math but ludicrously, you don't believe math and probability are related.Look, your subjective guesses about probability aren't scientific, and therefore don't form any sort of basis for rejecting the claims of science. You don't reject evolution because it's "improbable", because you don't know how to figure out how probable it is or not.You reject it for exactly the reason I suspected the minute you started posting - you just don't want it to be true.I'm done talking to you. You won't listen to me, so why should I?

BumpI assume you're busy, M, and that's ok, take whatever time you need. Just didn't want this very interesting and lively thread to get lost in the shuffle.

I can't even imagine how you would begin to come up with a figure, because the history of life on Earth is a bush, not a ladder. Evolution doesn't optimize or take straight paths; it meanders as a result of environmental conditions.Tell you what. You tell me how many different environmental pressures have ever existed on Earth where living things lived, and I'll tell you how many beneficial mutations were required. Ok? No, we do have that. That was the purpose of my math, remember? I showed you how many benefical mutations you could expect to see in my hypothetical population over such-and-such a time frame. That they occur, and at a siginficant rate - in fact a more than sufficient rate to account for adaptation of populations, given environmental change of sufficient gradualism. How improbable? Let's have a number.If you can't give a number, then we have to conclude that you're not deducing the probability, but rather, guessing at it. Why should we give your guesses any credence? You're still comparing the number of carpenters who make cabins in the desert to the number of carpenters who make cabins total. Comparing numbers is math. Try again. No. You say that you have a magical ability to assess probability without doing math, but then you give examples where you're doing it with math. It's pretty confusing. You're not deducing. You're guessing. Until you can assign a number to your probability, it's not a deduction, it's a guess. Again, "repetition makes improbabilities certainties." Why do you always ignore that when I say that to you? Do I need to tell you again or something? Let me know when it sinks in, ok?It's unlikely that a single mutation, in a single organism, in a single gene, will fix in a population. But when you have many mutations, in many genes, in many organisms, it becomes a certainty. That is math.

I did, remember? The subsequent discussion has been getting you to accept math as a reasonable tool of discourse, which qute frankly, was a little "Alice in Wonderland." What's the next argument that you won't accept? One containing words? I don't have to know. I just have to know that beneficial mutations aren't so rare that they never happen. They aren't.Remember how there were over 3 billion fixed mutations in my hypothetical population? That's a pretty lowball estimation. Things like population size affect the rate at which mutations are fixed, meaning small populations can fix mutations very rapidly (this is basically what they call punctuated equilibrium.) So depending on the interactions with the environment over that period of time there could be as many as a thousand times what I estimated. Much like, if I heard about a man flipping an unbiased coin 6 billion times, we could readily assume that the likelyhood was pretty high that at least a few of those flips had been "heads."

Ok, sure.Let's pretend you had a 100-sided die. (these do exist, they're almost totally spherical and look a little like golf balls. They do roll true, however.)What are the odds that you'll roll, oh, say, 66? 1/100 (.01). Simple math. Not very likely, right?Ok, what are the odds that you'll roll at least one 66 after 100 rolls? Well, better to ask what the odds are that you won't:.99^100 = about .336, or maybe something like 1/3. So that's a 2/3's chance that you will have rolled a 66 sometime in those 100 rolls. In 1000 rolls? .99^1000 = .0000431 that you haven't, or .9999 chance that you have rolled a 66 by this time.See? Repetition makes improbabilities certainties. You may not win the lottery the first time you play, or the tenth. But if you play the lottery once a second for a thousand years, you're practically guaranteed to win at some point.The odds that one organism will have one mutation in one gene that will fix in one population is very, very low. But there's millions of genes, millions of populations, and countless trillions of trillions of individual organisms that have ever existed. That makes the odds just a little better, don't you see? It's simple math.

That's not all I did in the shower.

Yet, it is referring to math when you use it to make scientific statements.And moreover, even though your definitions don't say "math", every one of them implies math, through words like "evidence", "probability", and "likely".It's like you're telling me something is the tallest thing on Earth, but you refuse to use numbers. "How tall is it, exactly?" we ask, but you refuse to answer. "It's just tall - I don't have to give a number," says you, but you're wrong. In order to asses your claim we do have to compare height, and that requires math.You say that it's improbable, too improbable to occur, but how improbable is that? What are the odds, exactly? How can we assess your claim without the ability to compare?