Evolution and Probability

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Why would the fact that the axctual values are likely to be ABOVE the average make you choose the average ?

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Paul, do you have *any* evidence whatsoever to back up this claim? Not only is Dillan’s average reasonable, it is incredibly conservative. The actual values are very likely far BELOW the average, the opposite of what you claim. Why? For one, there is little or no evidence that beneficial mutations where the mutated type is more viable than the wild-type in normal environments even occur. Yet we are graciously assuming a significant generous rate of this kind. Second, just because there are hot-spots does not necessarily increase the odds for a beneficial mutation, unless you can demonstrate that copy-mistakes in hot-spot regions are more likely to be selective than those outside hot-spot regions. Third, the model completely ignores the impact of the deleterious mutation rate. Three generous assumptions (two of them incredibly generous) yet the numbers still look horrible for evolution producing even a paltry 50 steps. Not even a toe-nail in 10 million years. Time to give up the fairytale!

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No, Spetner made a major error there. It is simply invalid mathematically - and has no biological basis.
Try this example. If you toss a coin 10 times what is the probability that you will get at least 5 heads ?
Calculate it using Spetner's method of dividing the tosses into blocks of 2 and insisting on getting at least one head in each and the probability comes out as 0.75^5 ~= 0.237. Which is less than half the real probability - and it gets worse the more steps you use.

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This is an invalid analogy, Spetner is doing nothing of the kind. Assume a change that results in 5 new fixed nucleotides consisting of specific nucleotides a, b, c, d, and e. Spetner calculated the odds that all 5 nucleotides become fixed (except in his example he calculated a 500-nucleotide change). They can become fixed in *any* order. Perhaps b, then a, then c, etc. Your analogy is bogus. It is a bit similar to an analogy Thomas tried to pull at NaiG, but unfortunately I was too busy at the time to respond (Though I was itching to do so!)

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If convergence on the molecular level is rare

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I tend to recall evolutionists admitting both morphological and molecular convergence are common in nature. I’ll have to do some more digging

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a significant proportion in vertebrates involve larger changes at the genetic level

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This is a just-so story. I smell a logical fallacy coming[INSERT CIRCULAR-REASONING REPLY HERE]

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To restate, if events in a probabalistic chain are linked - as are evolutionary eevents since every change in an organism allows certain others not previously allowable and prohibits certain other changes previously allowable - theoretical probabalistic calculations regardless of the sophistication of your mathematics and assumptions are simply not possible.

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Translation: The mathematical evidence is devastating for my position, so I’ll pretend the assumptions are too vague to produce reliable results.Welcome to the world of evolution science! Dance and evade PS. Mark, would it be presumptuous of me to predict that you also believe information science does not apply to biology?

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I don't need evidence to back up the claim that those with higher probability are more likely to appear. By definition they will appear proporitonately more frequently.

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LOL! You don’t need evidence? In a way I don’t blame you for taking this position. Meanwhile, I will stick to hard evidence instead of tautologies to defend my position!

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Insertions, deletions and transpositions contitute a large proportion of the mutations in vertebrates.

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Not according to geneticists I’ve talked to.

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"...most organisms tolerate only relatively low levels of point mutation in a generation [1]. Instead, they have evolved mechanisms that generate multiple sequence changes in a single step
No circular reasoning involved.

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You avoided circular reasoning by re-defining your position. Let’s find out where the goal posts are. Are you claiming that most evolutionary changes are due to insertions/deletions/transpositions, or are you claiming that the mechanism that produces these multiple sequence changes has evolved?

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So when Fred writes Widely recognized geneticist James Crow in an article in the same Nature issue agrees that the deleterious rate is more likely twice the rate cited by Eyre-Walker and Keightley, then this is just flat wrong since the number of genes is estimated to be 30,000 or so.

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This had a minimal impact on the problem. I deal with more recent data in the addendum at the bottom of the article. Clearly the situation has not improved for the evolutionists.

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Apparently you don't know that tautologies are necessarily true.

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Paul, you’ve completely missed the point, and I see you are continuing your error in posts to Dillan. Let’s recap:1) You claim some mutations would have higher probabilities and they would be more likely to be found as a result.
2) Dillan replied that the mutation rate and selection value represent an average.
3) You reply that the actual values are likely ABOVE the average.
4) I reply that this is a nonsense statement without evidence to back it up.
5) You defend your claim by invoking a tautology based on #1 above. The truth of the tautology itself IS NOT THE ISSUE, the issue is that the tautology DOES NOT SUPPORT YOUR CLAIM that Dillan’s AVERAGE is too low.Just because those with higher probability (or selective value) are more likely to appear does not mean there are necessarily enough of this type to offset those with probabilities below the average that either eventually fixate or vanish so we don't see them!

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I note that you have had the wisdom to drop any further comment on probability theory.

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I really saw little value in replying any further to all the handwaving. Using probabilities to draw baselines or establish a criteria to determine the validity of something are frequently used by scientists, despite Mark’s equivocal attempt to dismiss them. It seems obvious you agree with me on this, or else you would have embraced Mark’s argument instead of debating further with Dillan.

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I did not make either of the assertions "most evolutionary changes are due to insertions/deletions/transpositions"

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Then what the heck are you saying? You clearly implied the above.The problem transpositions pose for evolutionists is that they have all the ear-markings of non-NeoDarwinian behavior, ie they are likely non-random events.

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But don't expect to see Fred update his argument anytime soon, as most of the newer estimates are going against him.

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They are? Which ones? Surely you would not just say this without being expected to produce evidence?My queries show three new estimates since my article: the slightly lower Keightley-revised number, and two studies that support U=3 or higher. I guess in the world of Fedmahn one is more than two.

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To make things clear let us apply the points to the sum of two dice.
1) Some values are more probable than others and therefore appear more often. Do you disagree with that ?
2) If we use Dillan's idea of the average the probability is 1/11 for EVERY possible sum.
3) The probability of the actual sequence may well be HIGHER than 1/11 raised to the number of rolls. After all the probability of getting any of the values in the range 7-9 is higher than 1-11 and 2/3 of all rolls will be in that range.

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This is both a good and bad analogy, good because it illustrates the point you are trying to make, bad because it is a strawman analogy in how you are using it. By using the dice analogy you are using what is called a Gaussian distribution. The problem is that you are trying to impose this distribution on Dillan’s model and have essentially erected a strawman, particularly with #2 above. That is, you’ve essentially drawn your X-axis above an axis you arbitrarily assigned to Dillan (that is why I asked you to justify your claim that the true average was above Dillan's). More importantly, your Gaussian model doesn't apply because the individual nucleotide probabilities are a really a fractal distribution, and the Fisher/Spetner/Dillan mutation rate/selection values represent the average of that distribution.

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And transpositions are not contrary to Darwinian theory at all. Darwinian theory has no problem wiith the idea that mutations are typically caused by chemical reactions - no matter how deterministic they might be under a highly detailed analysis.

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If they are deterministic such that they are adaptively directed, it certainly is a problem for the theory of evolution in its current paradigm.