Information and Genetics

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Yeah, if you evolve anything in software, it is usually almost impossible to understand. If readability is a goal, then you probably shouldn't touch a GA with a 10 foot pole

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By contrast, if you employ programmers (aka intelligent designers) to produce software, it is usually almost impossible to understand. Even for the programmers.------------------

In genetics, truncation selection can be a form that natural selection takes, but it's such an extreme form that it's unlikely to occur in practice. Truncation selection occurs when there is a threshold in a quantitative trait (height, for example); all individuals that fall above the threshold survive and reproduce, while none of those below the threshold do. Natural selection is much more likely be partly random: more fit individuals have a higher probability of reproducing, but the probability is always less than 1.0. (On the other hand, the converse is not true: there are genotypes that give the individual zero chance of reproducing.)------------------

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(as an aside, in real life, is there ever a really random component. The creteaceous extinction appears to be random relative to long term evolutionary pressures, but isn't it really a sudden change in the nature of selective pressures? After it being small and a scavenger may have been a great survival advantage. Isn't it always "truncation selection"? That is selecting for what is desired? But nature keeps changing (slowly or quickly) what is "desired"? )

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Being small and a scavanger would be considered a selective advantage in the new environment that follows an asteroid impact. Standing in the wrong place when the asteroid hits would be considered a random component.------------------

I'd be interested in finding a single scientist on the HGP who thinks the information in the genome didn't evolve. You can certainly find people who think it's ultimately the product of a creator, but I've yet to run into anyone who thinks it didn't evolve.