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Author Topic:   Evolution is random! Stop saying it isn't!
RAZD
Member (Idle past 1405 days)
Posts: 20714
From: the other end of the sidewalk
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Message 5 of 99 (414981)
08-07-2007 1:46 PM
Reply to: Message 3 by bdfoster
08-07-2007 12:54 PM


But natural selection is a decidedly non-random process.
It's a response to random (sometimes catastrophic) events and the random change of environmental factors over time.
quote:
1 a: lacking a definite plan, purpose, or pattern b: made, done, or chosen at random
2 a: relating to, having, or being elements or events with definite probability of occurrence b: being or relating to a set or to an element of a set each of whose elements has equal probability of occurrence ; also : characterized by procedures designed to obtain such sets or elements
Definition 2b doesn't alow bias.
But others do, so that doesn't refute the issue. Let's look at definition 1a: random that allows the unplanned response to random (sometimes catastrophic) events and the random change of environmental factors -- and still be random in it's result.
Thus you get small beaked Galapagos finches one day, large beaked ones the next, and small beaked ones another day. Random.
Enjoy

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This message is a reply to:
 Message 3 by bdfoster, posted 08-07-2007 12:54 PM bdfoster has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 6 by bdfoster, posted 08-07-2007 3:27 PM RAZD has replied

  
RAZD
Member (Idle past 1405 days)
Posts: 20714
From: the other end of the sidewalk
Joined: 03-14-2004


Message 11 of 99 (415191)
08-08-2007 5:48 PM
Reply to: Message 6 by bdfoster
08-07-2007 3:27 PM


random selection and a model of evolution
Suppose a population with random variation is in equilibrium with its environment, and the environment changes. Natural selection will select the individuals that best fit the new environment.
We can discuss two different levels of environmental (or rather 'ecological' to include more of the biome than just the environment) change - catastrophic and gradualistic.
Under catastrophic ecological change whole populations survive or perish depending on a luck of the draw chance: were they within the area of death or not. This is obviously random selection having nothing to do with the fitness of any particular genes or adaptations.
Such random selection could wipe out a main population and leave widely separated (or separate a main population from) peripheral sub-species, ones that do not necessarily recognize the other peripheral sub-species as potential mates, thus leading to "instant" speciation by accident.
Under gradualistic ecological change we have fluctuating changes about generally average conditions -- such as the annual rainfall on the Galapagos Islands that can lead to selection first in one direction and then in the other. The direction of the selection is random (and the result is generally not currently open to prediction).
We can model this with successive throws of dice: the first throw sets the survival of a hereditary trait, and the second sets the reproductive success of that hereditary trait (the product of those plus the surviving parents make the next generation potential). Once the survival and reproductive success of each variation of that hereditary trait is modeled the overall size of the population can be modeled by a final throw of dice and each hereditary trait generation potential adjusted accordingly to make up the total population (with the increase or decrease in total numbers) to model the severity of the selection pressure on each generation.
We can do this with beak size in Galapagos Finches and just two alleles\traits in the model. The result will be an oscillation around an average with an occasional "drunken walk" over several generations in one direction (larger beaks) and an occasional "drunken walk" over several generations in the other direction (smaller beaks).
This models generation to generation evolution with a random process that matches the observed behavior of the Galapagos Finches.
Even if the environmental factors and changes are totally random, the selection imposed by it is not. A truly random selection of individuals would appear drastically different than the selection chosen by the random swings of nature. The random selection would not be biased toward survival. It would not be biased in any way.
But the observed process can be modeled by a random selection process. This is because the selection pressure in this case is random in direction (based on random changes in direction and severity of the ecology in question). This makes the result of such selection random.
The only conditions this may not be applicable is where you have gradualistic ecological change with fluctuating changes about a long term trend to a different ecology (whether by movement of the population or due to long term climate or similar).
However these too are random (but long term) effects on the selection and can be modeled with another throw of the dice or two.
Therefore the process of evolution can be modeled by a random process that produces the same kind of results as are observed in the natural history of change in species over time. It's all just a luck of the draw.
Enjoy.
(arguing as devil's advocate)
Edited by RAZD, : clarity

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 Message 13 by Bodhitharta, posted 08-08-2007 11:14 PM RAZD has replied

  
RAZD
Member (Idle past 1405 days)
Posts: 20714
From: the other end of the sidewalk
Joined: 03-14-2004


Message 15 of 99 (415293)
08-09-2007 9:03 AM
Reply to: Message 13 by Bodhitharta
08-08-2007 11:14 PM


Re: random selection and a model of evolution
Welcome to the fray Bodhitharta
Since evolution is supposed to be a biological event it would seem clear to me that if Life can occur without evolution than evolution is not needed to explain any portion of life.
I watched your video. If you want to discuss it you should open a new thread (go to Proposed New Topics) and provide the link to the video and tell us what you think is the most compelling argument from the video. Be prepared for a reality check.
This is really off-topic on this thread which only deals with evolution being random, and what you are talking about is abiogenesis. (check the forum rules).
Enjoy.
ps - also check out (help) links on formating questions
type [qs]quote boxes are easy[/qs] and it becomes:
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RAZD
Member (Idle past 1405 days)
Posts: 20714
From: the other end of the sidewalk
Joined: 03-14-2004


Message 19 of 99 (415357)
08-09-2007 5:13 PM
Reply to: Message 17 by Bodhitharta
08-09-2007 3:28 PM


topic subtleties
I thought this was on topic, ...
Let me see if I can help you see the problem.
... I am saying that evolution is random ...
That is the topic -- and how it is random and how it is not random.
... and yet life is not random.
That is not the topic. There are other issues, logical problems, misunderstanding of evolution, mixing up abiogenesis, just for starters, and it will take considerable discussion to cover these aspects of your video and the excerpt from it (it IS your video right?)
Enjoy.

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RAZD
Member (Idle past 1405 days)
Posts: 20714
From: the other end of the sidewalk
Joined: 03-14-2004


Message 28 of 99 (415399)
08-09-2007 11:07 PM
Reply to: Message 20 by Bodhitharta
08-09-2007 8:06 PM


random mutation and non-random selection
... usually by the so-called means of "natural selection". Natural selection has been a term greatly misused as it can only genuinely mean Biological viability/fitness. Nature doesn't actually "select" anything. Therefore if the ToE states that randomness tempered by NS is the biological outcome it makes no sense in several ways ...
Nothing "so called" about it. When one individual dies and another lives selection has occurred. That selection affects the next reproduction cycle. When an individual is sick, that could affect its survival or its ability to breed, and it has been selected. All that is needed is very small selection pressure in any one direction to have a significant effect over time.
Your inability to make sense of it is no hindrance to nature behaving as it has for billions of years.
... especially in terms of sexual reproduction.
Most emphatically false. When a male elk takes over a herd of female elk he prevents other males from mating with the females, thus eliminating their genes from the next generation. That is selection and nothing BUT selection.
Even with more "democratic" species the number of opportunities for mating is different for different individuals due to sexual selection on the part of one or both potential mates, and those more able to mate are selected for producing more of the next generation than those less able to mate. That is selection and nothing BUT selection.
If the mutations are random then the biological viability/fitness would also be random.
Before selection, but not after, as not all mutations are selected equally (why they call it selection and not viability\fitness).
Enjoy.

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This message is a reply to:
 Message 20 by Bodhitharta, posted 08-09-2007 8:06 PM Bodhitharta has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 30 by Bodhitharta, posted 08-10-2007 4:08 AM RAZD has replied

  
RAZD
Member (Idle past 1405 days)
Posts: 20714
From: the other end of the sidewalk
Joined: 03-14-2004


Message 40 of 99 (415477)
08-10-2007 10:44 AM
Reply to: Message 30 by Bodhitharta
08-10-2007 4:08 AM


Re: random mutation and non-random selection
So is the male elk acting with intention?
The male elk is acting with "intention" to pass on his genes (mate) to the next generation - whether that "intention" is conscious or not is irrelevant: he gets the opportunity to do so by defeating the other male elk. His genetic and developmental makeup defeated their genetic and developmental makeup.
BTW, Are you saying that in an accident or terrorist attack "natural selection" is taking place?
Not necessarily.
An event that kills all individuals in its path is a different kind of selection - one not based on the genes of the victims vs non-victims. The result is still a change in the gene pool, but this is usually referred to as genetic drift rather than natural selection. The terrorist attack is a catastrophic event, like a volcano or earthquake or fire. Another source of genetic drift is accidents: a tree falling on a person, a lightening strike.
Genetic drift - Wikipedia
quote:
In population genetics, genetic drift is the statistical effect that results from the influence that chance has on the survival of alleles (variants of a gene). The effect may cause an allele and the biological trait that it confers to become more common or more rare over successive generations. Ultimately, the drift may either remove the allele from the gene pool or remove all other alleles. Whereas natural selection is the tendency of beneficial alleles to become more common over time (and detrimental ones less common), genetic drift is the fundamental tendency of any allele to vary randomly in frequency over time due to statistical variation alone, so long as it does not comprise all or none of the distribution.
Genetic drift - Understanding Evolution
quote:
Genetic drift”along with natural selection, mutation, and migration”is one of the basic mechanisms of evolution.
In each generation, some individuals may, just by chance, leave behind a few more descendents (and genes, of course!) than other individuals. The genes of the next generation will be the genes of the “lucky” individuals, not necessarily the healthier or “better” individuals. That, in a nutshell, is genetic drift. It happens to ALL populations”there’s no avoiding the vagaries of chance.
... Genetic drift affects the genetic makeup of the population but, unlike natural selection, through an entirely random process. So although genetic drift is a mechanism of evolution, it doesn’t work to produce adaptations.
Genetic Drift is a random process.
When I said (Message 28) "When one individual dies and another lives selection has occurred" I should have been a little more specific about the cause of death: predation, disease, age, physical inability to survive flood, drought, fire when others could, are all selection where there is an opportunity to survive based on the genetic and developmental makeup of some individuals compared\relative to other individuals.
If there was a genetic and developmental ability of some people to survive a terrorist attack compared to other people then such would be natural selection.
For natural selection to operate on the genetic and developmental makeup of individuals those makeup elements need to be "tested" by the selection event.
Enjoy.

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RAZD
Member (Idle past 1405 days)
Posts: 20714
From: the other end of the sidewalk
Joined: 03-14-2004


Message 43 of 99 (415503)
08-10-2007 1:51 PM
Reply to: Message 42 by Percy
08-10-2007 12:00 PM


side on Polar Bears
Maybe they'll all survive by successfully taking up residence near human garbage dumps. ... Of course, a biologist familiar with polar bears would be aware of the key factors and could probably tell us some things with a fair degree of certainty. For example, perhaps he knows that polar bears can only hunt on sea ice and would never take up residence near human habitation (I have no idea whether that's really true, this is just an example), ...
Google "Churchill Manitoba"
PolarBear - Nature
quote:
Each October, the remote Canadian town of Churchill in Manitoba plays host to some very unusual guests. More than a thousand hungry polar bears gather there to await the refreezing of Hudson Bay and then move out on the ice in pursuit of their traditional winter diet of seal.
If memory serves they do take up residence near the garbage dump.
More to the point for long term survival would be breeding success. Polar Bears habitually build dens in snow.
Enjoy.
Edited by RAZD, : subtitle

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RAZD
Member (Idle past 1405 days)
Posts: 20714
From: the other end of the sidewalk
Joined: 03-14-2004


Message 45 of 99 (415575)
08-10-2007 11:01 PM
Reply to: Message 44 by Doddy
08-10-2007 10:37 PM


How about directed ?
You could say that the direction of adaptation is predictable -- towards a more heat tolerant polar bear -- but that the degree and kind of adaptation is not predictable. It's like a compass, it tells you (predicts) where north is but not where your camp is.

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RAZD
Member (Idle past 1405 days)
Posts: 20714
From: the other end of the sidewalk
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Message 57 of 99 (415880)
08-12-2007 7:03 PM
Reply to: Message 56 by epo5
08-12-2007 6:02 PM


Re: The Fallacy of Evolution
Welcome to the fray epo5
What's this?: "creationists are right when they..."
That's referring back to the thread topic -- the theme for this thread. Compare:
Message 51
... I guess creationists are right when they say that evolution is random in this way.
With
Message 1
we're running out of creationists, so I'm going to role-play
It is often said in this forum that evolution isn't random, usually in reply to someone who mentions that "something complex can't have appeared by chance". But, evolution certainly is random, by any sensible definition of chance or randomness.
It's always a good idea to read the first post in a thread to see what the intended theme is. If what you want to say doesn't fit the thread theme\topic, you can always start your own thread.
Go to Proposed New Topics to post new topics.
Enjoy.
ps - type [qs]quote boxes are easy[/qs] and it becomes:
quote boxes are easy
and check out (help) links on formating questions when in the reply window.

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RAZD
Member (Idle past 1405 days)
Posts: 20714
From: the other end of the sidewalk
Joined: 03-14-2004


Message 79 of 99 (416069)
08-13-2007 4:51 PM
Reply to: Message 74 by epo5
08-13-2007 3:17 PM


Crocaducks and Hopeful Monsters and Going Off topic
As I predicted this is going way off topic on whether evolution is random or not.
This exactly what I'm asking to find. I don't see how making light of it impacts the fact that they should have existed. I see your ridicule, I don't see your argument.
The answer is that changes from generation to generation in any species breeding population are smaller than the kind of wholesale change that the terms "crocaduck" and "hopeful monster" imply.
Instead what you have are transitions from one species to another over many generations and those species are closely related in form, behavior and appearance.
When you look at the fossil record you see a nested hierarchy of lines, some leading to dead ends (extinct) and some leading to modern life. At every stage along those branches the fossils found are intermediate in form from the ones before and the ones after.
You can see this kind of change over time in the evolution of the horse:
http://www.flmnh.ufl.edu/natsci/vertpaleo/fhc/Stratmap1.htm
Evolution is the change in hereditary traits - like the length of leg bones and the shape of the skull - in species over time. It's that simple.
If you want to pursue this further though it IS off topic and a new thread should be started.
Go to Proposed New Topics to post new topics.
Or you could go to another existing thread with this kind of discussion, such as Evolution and complexity or When does microevolution turn into macroevolution?. Both of these debates will give you some additional information (some good some bad, so ask if you have questions), and both are stalled for now, and the issue of "crockaduck" complexity or macroevolution would be on topic.
Then we can get back to random evolution.
Enjoy.
Edited by RAZD, : clarity

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This message is a reply to:
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Replies to this message:
 Message 81 by epo5, posted 08-13-2007 5:24 PM RAZD has replied

  
RAZD
Member (Idle past 1405 days)
Posts: 20714
From: the other end of the sidewalk
Joined: 03-14-2004


Message 84 of 99 (416082)
08-13-2007 5:59 PM
Reply to: Message 81 by epo5
08-13-2007 5:24 PM


Re: Crocaducks and Hopeful Monsters and Going Off topic
As far as your little map is concerned, most of this "well understood" progression of life forms is now being uncovered as just a lot of misunderstood malarkey.
Here's the tip of the iceberg:
The New York Times - 8/9/2007
FOSSILS IN KENYA CHALLENGE LINEAR EVOLUTION
Heh. See Two New Hominid Finds (re: Time overlap of H. habilis and H. erectus). You see the curious thing is that those skulls do not challenge branching evolution, which is what we have. The fact that the media is ignorant of a lot about evolution and can't get the facts straight from the scientist interviewed is another topic.
I'll see you on your new thread.
You're playing with different scenarios of the same concept, which does not add to or detract from any of this. It really doesn't matter if the changes were small, incremental changes or quick, sudden changes. At the end of the day, there should have been some very strange creature all over this planet. And it doesn't matter who said this or how many times it was said -- these strange creatures should have exited and they don't. Unless you can find them, all the talk-arounds have little meaning.
Oh please please please make this the topic of your new thread ...
Enjoy.
Edited by RAZD, : .

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