Fixation of genetics - program

Rei's Fantasyland refuted here:http://EvC Forum: Fred Williams' Mutation Rate Article Obsolete -->EvC Forum: Fred Williams' Mutation Rate Article ObsoleteMsg 26

Baloney!!! I know it is mathematically impossible for your program to produce increasing overall fitness if you set the advantageous rate to 1 in 1000 while leaving your other paramters alone. Also, DID YOU FIX THE BUG where the top 4% always fall in the 10% advantageous bracket? If you did not, then your program will likely still produce your fantasyland results (since 1 in 25 will be advantageous at a whopping 10%) as I stated in my prior post, a post which appears you did not read carefully.

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The overall mutation rate is one in 50 per gene (or trait), not one in 50 per organism.

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I never said otherwise. I don’t know, maybe you missed it when I said: Your gene mutation rate is set to 1 in 50. (msg 26)

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Me: The lowest deleterious rate I’ve seen from the scientific community is 1.6 per
organism/generation (after selection), yet yours is roughly 0.3 per organism.

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You responded: Nope. My mutation rate was 1 in 50; 100 genes; that's 2 mutations average per organism

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You are flat wrong. I am talking about the deleterious mutation rate after selection! Here again is what I wrote, please read it this time:

Your gene mutation rate is set to 1 in 50. That means out of 100000 genes, roughly 2000 will contain a mutation of some sort. At least 110 of the 120 (2000*.06) lethal mutations will be removed. For simplicity we’ll favorably assume exactly half of the remaining 720 (2000*.36) deleterious mutations will be removed (the vast majority, or 98% of comparisons will be against genes with a fitness of 1). So after one generation, at most 370 deleterious mutations will remain. This means at best only 1 in three organisms will have a deleterious mutation going into the next generation (a poisson distribution will lower the ratio somewhat, as some organisms will have multiple mutations).

Do you agree, or disagree, that at most 370 deleterious mutations will remain after 1 generation? If you think more than 370 will remain, then make a case for it here. Remember, I explicitly referred to the post-selection mutation rate, as is how the rate is often cited in genetics studies (ie see Keightley paper). Your deleterious rate clearly was U ~= .3. Feel free to deny it all you want, but denials do not equal reality. You need to make a case for it (or get it through your thick skull that the rate was U=.3).

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And yet, I had one in 7 bad mutations be -90%! And check out what rates I'm going to use below...

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Big deal! Lethal mutations are almost impossible to detect (if you don’t know why please seek help soon ). That is why mutation rates cited in the journals typically represent post-selection mutation rates. We just can’t account for lethals.The rate you set your lethals to is arbitrary. In fact, I can quote quite a few evolutionists who will tell you the spontaneous abortion rate is near 50%! This means you need to boost your lethals to assure half your offspring croak! Now I never saw compelling evidence to support this evo claim, but it was made by evolutionists in their failed attempts to deal with the reproductive cost problem spelled out in my mutation rate article (more on this if asked). If these same evolutionists were to avoid a double-standard, they should be telling you right now that your lethal rate is way too low!!!! I suspect at least one of them is reading this right now, since he follows me like a shadow around the internet. You know who you are, my young apprentice!

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Fatal-mutation rates are irrelevant; a fatal rate to offspring born is basically the same thing as having more offspring,

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That is precisely why it is relevant, because of the impact on reproductive cost/capacity.

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Let's take out all of the mutations that do nothing, because you're using them to try and skew the interpretation of the results.

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Huh? I’m doing no such thing! Do you deny the existence of neutral mutations? Of course they do have bearing because they slow the rate of evolution since they eat up a proportion of the spectrum of mutations. It never ceases to amaze me what hoops evolutionists try to jump through to prop up their fairytale!

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As you can see, *any* bad rate can be handled and good genes will fixate, so long as there's a large enough population.

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ROTFL!!! Rei, you are so brainlocked on genetic algorithms it has blinded you to plainly obvious problems. What if you set the lethal rate to 99%, and the beneficial rate to 1 in 1000? This exposes just one of the many problems with your logic. You have no parameter to completely kill off organisms that fall below a certain threshold. Over time your program will create scores of losers (Lahooo Zahers) who will compete against one another and yield a, yep, Lahooo Zaherrr! LLLLLlll...loozer! (L on forehead) It’s like the Rodney Dangerfield joke about two ugly parents who have reallll ugly kids! In other words, your program DOES NOT ALLOW EXTINCTION! A piece of jello is allowed to mate with another piece of jello. In some cases the jello gets paired against one of the few robust organisms that have garnered a beneficial gene or two, and is highly likely to lose (alas a form of truncation selection creeps in). The beneficials odds of winning go up dramatically because they get to consistently compete with jello. No lethal mutation can possibly wipe out the robust, because there are 100 other genes to compensate for that -90% bad one you are so proud of. No burden whatsoever is placed on reproduction, so low and behold Rei can produce evolution!This leads you to make these ludicrous claims:

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Want to make the already preposterously unreasonable mutation rate numbers even worse? I've jury-rigged this as far as I can in your favor, Fred, and evolution still occurs.

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This is intellectual dishonesty to the highest degree. But feel free to continue to live in your fantasyland, it is a free country after all. But while your at it, please do the following:1) Cite for our audience just one article in any of your very own evolutionist peer-reviewed journals, just one, that supports a beneficial mutation rate of 1 per 1000 organisms! You have the audacity to lump this as a preposterously unreasonable mutation rate! You are in a dream world, Rei, a dream world.2) Explain why mush is allowed to survive.3) Explain why there are no lethal mutations to wipe out robust organisms in your later generations? Impervious to mutation! It’s not a bird, not a plane, it’s SUPERMAN! (ie fairytale)Finally, I would like to see your latest source code. I suspect I’ll find additional bugs/flaws. Hmm, I’m willing to bet you set your mutation rate to 1 per 1000 genes instead of per organism, which means a whopping 1 in 10 organisms will get a new beneficial mutation each generation! Zing Pao, its a miracle!

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How you could find that bug while ignoring the significance of Rei's way high deleterious rates, all the way up to 90% while the favorable rate is 10% max, is beyond me.

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That bug wasn't hard to find becuasse the positives moved into play way too quickly (in just a few generations). I knew something had to be wrong.As far as the rest, Read my reply to Rei, and just maybe, just maybe, you will see the illusion, unwitting as it probably was. Perhaps your following words might be that wop against your dome to turn the light bulb on:

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At some point harmful mutations will outnumber beneficial mutations to such an extent that the small number of beneficial genes that become fixated cannot overcome it and fitness won't increase, and in fact will likely decrease steadily and cause eventual extinction.

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Hmm. But Rei wrote: As you can see, *any* bad rate can be handled and good genes will fixate, so long as there's a large enough population. Perhaps you need to correct her?Bottom line is that Rei’s fantasy program doesn’t allow extinction, and instead permits mush, the mellow yellow jello to survive and compete. There is no parameter to remove individuals below some threshold.

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in that realm beneficial mutations are so likely that they happen over and over and over again.

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This is a huge exaggeration. Countess experiments on Drosophila invariably produce less viable flies than the original wild type. If the beneficial rate were even 1 in a billion we would have know this by now. Now consider bacteria. The problem is the same. The mutated type is invariably less viable than the wild type in the original environment. Only stressing a bacterial population seems to cause these beneficial mutations. Why is that? Why is there so little evidence where a random copy error produced a mutated bacteria more viable than the parent in the original, stable environment?One estimate of beneficial u is between 2*10^-9 and 5*10^-10 (The fate of competing beneficial mutations in an asexual population Genetica. 1998;102-103(1-6):127-44. Gerrish PJ, Lenski RE.)I have to be blunt and say that no one in his or her right mind would propose a beneficial rate of 1 in 1000! This is called la la land, not science.