Extent of Mutational Capability

Then you provide a reference to an Electrical Engineer writing something somewhere about mutations. Lots and lots of words and formulaes and nothing else. No maths done.From there: What? He writes a paper only dealing with point mutations in organisms having kids asexually and diploidy? Then goes on about humans and chimps?Colour me unimpressed. To me ReMine seems to be a bit of a loon. He missed all those other forms of mutations we know of and discovered since 1957.So, CRR, could you show us the maths? Not a reference. The maths supporting your claims.

I'll make this same point to CRR, that he can argue any position he likes regardless of any current scientific consensus and that he's encouraged to argue Walter ReMine's position here, but that he must bring the arguments into the thread.

Participants here are encouraged to make their case in their own words and use links only as references. It's actually in the Forum Guidelines:

5. Bare links with no supporting discussion should be avoided. Make the argument in your own words and use links as supporting references.

Which, as you say, is not the way evolution works. Thank you for supporting my more bald assertion that "For the purpose of maths we can say that this has a probability of >0.99, so we can use 0.99 and be conservative."For each generation.But the question I was addressing was the probability of two successive mutations and whether one was dependent on the other. They aren't. The probability of the second mutation occurring is not reduced because another mutation preceded it. The probability of a mutation is dependent on the whole genome, not any previous mutations. Precisely. When a mutation happens in one generation then it becomes part of the genome for the next generation, and the probability of a mutation in the next generation is still 0.99, and whether or not it forms a synergy with the previous one is the same as whether or not it forms a synergy with the rest of the genome.That successive mutations do happen has been observed in experiments ([i]E.coli[i]), but that occurs because the first mutation is built into the genome where the second mutation occurs, not because they are linked into a pattern that must happen.Enjoy

In this case it is a publishing company located in St Paul Minnesota but still just a vanity press it seems with the sole purpose of hawking the authors own books.

And yet you have seen fit to engage with the only person who did dismiss your nonsense out of hand, rather than with any of the people who carefully pointed out what's wrong with it. Really you should be grateful to Coyote: it seems that without him you'd have had no comeback at all.

From Musgrave's post cited in your quote, Weasels, ReMine, and Haldane's dilemma:

quote:

---

There has been some discussion on the newsgroups talk.origins and sci.bio.evolution over the last year or so regarding Walter ReMine's claims that a version of Dawkins' "weasel" program, which demonstrates the efficacy of selection, nevertheless demonstrates a serious limitation on the rate of evolution, in agreement with Haldane's Dilemma, a rate so low that Mr. ReMine claims this makes the current accounts of human origins (and other higher vertebrates) implausible

​

. . .

​

Fortunately, Will Pratt of the University of Nevada found a copy, and as a result Robert Williams was able to get a copy of David Wise's program MONKEY (see http://www-personal.monash.edu.au/~ianm/whale.htm), which ReMine used. As I also noted earlier, after running it several times, and looking at the code, I couldn't find any hint of Haldane's Dilemma in the program. What was I missing?

​

The answer is actually blindingly simple, and is an embarrassment to Mr. ReMine.

​

. . .

​

Can you see where ReMine has made his error? I actually wasted a couple of hours comparing the effects of mutation rates on different programs before I realized it, but it should have been blindingly obvious (so I'm stupid, okay, but I was expecting something subtle).

​

Here's the key line: "Then we reduce the reproduction rate to that of the higher vertebrates, say to n=6."

​

Well, knock me down with a stick of mortadella and call me Jake. Mr. ReMine doesn't know how these programs work! In the vast majority of weasel simulations, including Wise's, the program takes a string, makes x copies of it with single letter mutations in one or more copies of the string, then chooses the best string and makes x copies of that with mutations, then chooses the best string from those copies, and makes x copies ad infinitum until the target string is reached. In many of these programs, the value x is a user entered variable called "number of offspring" or similar wording.

​

The important thing to note is that in Wise's program, Dawkins' original, Wesley Elsberry's weasel.pl and my WEASEL4.BAS (see sig) the "reproduction rate", i.e. number of offspring, IS ALSO THE POPULATION SIZE! Of course you will see only slow substitution in any of these programs when you only have 5 offspring, as there is only a TOTAL POPULATION of 5 strings at any one time![1]

​

Of course, in the real world, most organisms have populations of more than 5 individuals :-). Trying to compare the substitution rate in a population of 5 indviduals with the substitution rate in a population of between 10,000 to 100,000 individuals is a pretty big blunder to make, even allowing for the other problems in trying to compare this program with a real population. The information about "offspring" number isn't hidden, it's clear in the description given by Dawkins and in David Wise's documentation.

​

ReMine's argument totally collapses, without even having to point out the other, obvious problems.

---

I am that David Wise and MONKEY is my program (http://cre-ev.dwise1.net/monkey.html). Not only do I describe what MONKEY does, but I also analyzed the probabilities involved. I even provide the source code (then written in Pascal, but now also converted to C). What the program does is so easy to understand and information is so freely available, it boggles the mind how creationists like Remine and Royal Truman can get it so wrong. They have to be trying very hard to misunderstand it. They certainly have strong motivation to misunderstand everything: protecting their faulty theology from reality.Verily it was written: "Everybody's got something to hide, except for me and my MONKEY!"

And an obvious proof of Intelligent Design and Control is that I happen to be listening to the White Album right now.

Looks like I was right in not trusting your source without looking at it.From the posts that followed mine it appears that site is Walter ReMine's!He's the one pushing the "Baraminology" nonsense! I'm familiar with that stuff--what a joke. He's just trying to make "kinds" seem scientific to bolster his religious beliefs. In fact, he's doing the exact opposite of science.

Yes, Coyote, for some reason YEC's think that nobody knows about nonsense YEC's write? Even me, as a non-genetisist could pick up that ReMine wrote nonsense.Hey, CRR, show us the maths.YEC's really are delusional. What bothers me is that they think that all people are as delusional as they are.CRR, show us the maths.Edited by Pressie, : No reason given.Edited by Pressie, : No reason given.Edited by Pressie, : No reason given.

I don't think this is accurate. Deluded maybe, but not necessarily (insane) delusional. Being deluded is similar but worse than ignorant, imho, because they are mis-informed not uniformed.This is like Faux Noise Nutwerk listeners knowing less real facts about current events than people that don't listen to any news. Again, the problem is that mathmatic models cannot change reality, they can only model it, and when the results do not match reality then either the assumptions used or the model itself is wrong, not reality.Enjoy

Actually your (or sfs's) maths is wrong by several orders of magnitude.By your argument the number of mutations in the human lineage should be 100 x average population size x 350,000. Say an average size of 1 million and you get ~3.5x10^13; which is larger than the size of the genome. If all those actually got fixed it would be error catastrophe!But they don't all get fixed; only a very small proportion do. Genetic drift is far more likely to eliminate a neutral mutation than to fix it.A large number of conceptions never even make it to birth if the mutations are lethal within the first 9 months so the a filter has already been applied to the types of mutations that appear in each succeeding generation. This is probably why so many of them appear to be near neutral.A bit of thought should show you that the calculation is flawed. If we have fixed 18 million mutations in 350,000 generations that comes to 50 mutations being fixed per generation. The human genome is not varying at anything like this sort of rate. There are only a couple of mutations that are currently in the process of being fixed, one of which is adult lactose tolerance. It would also mean that there would be a great deal of variation in the human genome around the world, but it is actually notable for the low variation worldwide.It appears you and sfs have been seduced by fortuitously good agreement between a wrong calculation and experimental results.

I have a real life so can't always respond immediately. That happened to be one I could tackle in some down time on the train. I have now responded to you so you don't need to feel left out.

Who has refuted ReMine's paper? No one that I know of.

I see what you're missing.You're not familiar with the math, are you?It's actually very pretty. Y'see, the chances of a neutral mutation going on to get fixed is inversely proportional to the size of the population (as you say "only a very small proportion"). Whereas (this is what you seem to be getting at with your "100 x average population size" bit), the number of mutations per generation in the population is proportional to the population size.And so these two things cancel out exactly, leaving us with the lovely result that the rate of fixation of neutral mutations in the population is exactly their rate of occurrence in an individual!Isn't that nice? Yes it is. The figures for the mutation rate are taken from observing how much mutation happens. What a strange thing to say.Why in the world did you say it? It seems that you are being prematurely condescending.---ETA: From Wikipedia: Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.